The Orphan's Tale

 

             As a child, he lived in an orphanage.  The nuns told him his mother left him at the hospital when he was born.  They told him she was only seventeen, and thought he would be better off with another family, one that could take care of him much better than she could.
            But no one took him in.
            So he grew up in an orphanage with many other children.  He had tried making friends before, but his relationships only lasted a few weeks, because that was how long most children stayed at the orphanage.  Most are wanted as sons or daughters by families who could not have children.
            But not this boy; no one ever took him home with them.  So he decided that as long he was going to stay at the orphanage, he should find something that he could invest himself in.  He tried studying, but he found his textbooks to be confusing, and without the help of a teacher, he could not decipher them.  He tried sports, but because of his small physique, he was always picked last, if picked at all.  He tried all sorts of things, but nothing made him feel special; nothing made him feel alive.
            But then one day, as he was sitting in the library, he found what he was looking for.  Sitting right across from him, fourth from the left on the fifth shelf, was a book was a book with no title.  Strange, he thought, that someone would write a book and be so careless as to not give it a name.
            So he pulled the book out of the shelf and examined it further.  It seemed fairly new.  The pages were not bent or torn like many of the other in the library.  No one had drawn vulgar pictures in the margins, nor had anyone crossed out words and replaced them with swears. The book was indeed in a very good state.  After he had flipped through it, he turned back to page one and began to read. 
            The book was about a poor young man, who lived on the outskirts of a castle town.  He had no home, and no family.  He begged for money, food, anything that would get him through the day.  Few people were generous to spare even a penny, but he was always thankful to receive even the scraps.
            The boy kept reading. He was intrigued by every sentence, awaiting every new word to enter his head.  He got through five of the eight chapters within an hour.  At this point in the story, the young beggar had found out that he was a prince, and that his father, the king, was dying.  So the young man went off to the castle to meet his father, and prepare to become king.

            The boy stopped here, for the first bell rang, and he was never late to class.  He packed up all of his things and took the book with him.
            He spent the next hour and a half staring at the clock, trying to make it speed up with his mind.  His teacher started to take notice, and would yell out the boy’s name whenever he caught him staring up.  So the boy was forced to watch his teacher demonstrate how to properly solve a quadratic formula.  As much as the boy tried, he could not pay attention, and eventually dozed off with his eyes luckily facing straight forward.  The boy was brought back down to earth with the sound of a bell, letting him know that it was time for lunch.  He quickly put away his things and headed out to the playground.
            The boy found a comfortable looking tree to lean against, sat down, and pulled out the book.  He looked around for a second, as all the children were playing on the playground, and sighed.  I wish I had friends, the boy thought.  And as soon as the thought had entered his mind, it had left, and he opened the book and started to read.
            At this point in the story, the young man has been crowned as king, and everybody in the kingdom loves him. 
“All the people of the castle town learned to love the young man, for he was fair in his decisions along with his actions.  He harmed no one, not even those that had done him wrong.

And so the young king had everything he could ever ask for.  He had servants that he could call with just the ring of a bell, and have anything brought to him in a matter of minutes.  At last, the young man was happy.”

            And as he finished reading that sentence, the boy felt someone tap on his shoulder.
“Whatchya’ reading?”
He looked up to see the thin figure of a young girl staring down at him with a small smile across her face.  Her brunette hair flowed behind her as she stood clutching a book of her own.  She kept her eyes fixated on him, eagerly awaiting an answer.
He stuttered for a second.
“I uh . . . I-I’m not sure, this book doesn’t have a name” he said shyly.
“Oh, I think I might have read that one, its about the man who becomes a king, right?”
“Y-Yeah, this is the one.”
            The boy spent the rest of that lunch talking with the girl.  He found her personality to be warm and kind.  She did not make fun of him like many of the others, but welcomed him.
            The next day, they met at the same spot, and the girl brought her friends.
“This is the boy I was talking about!” she exclaimed.  Her friends giggled and sat down.  While the girls were all sitting with the boy, the cooler kids seemed to take notice.  Before, they saw him as a dork, a geek, a nerd.  But today, they saw him in a different light.  He had finally gained the respect that he had for so long tried to earn.
            One of the ‘cool’ kids walked up to the boy.
“You wanna play some football?” the cool kid asked.
“Well, I’ve never really before,” the boy replied.
“That’s okay, we’ll teach you.”
            And from that moment on, the boy never felt alone.  He never felt of place; like he didn’t belong.  He owed all of it to a book; a book he didn’t even know the name of.

 

 

 

Artist Statement

 

My narrative is about a little boy who has no friends in the real world, however in his imagination, he is king. The key to his imagination is the book he reads. The story is a metaphor for times when someone is in a situation when they feel like they don't fit in, but they find something in the situation that they can relate to. I know I've had this experience before. Whenever I attended summer camps or school programs as a kid, I became very nervous. At first I was scared, and questions came into my head like "What if no one likes me?", or "What if no one wants to be my friend?" But sooner or later, I was able to find a group of friends; I was able to find a place where I fit in.