[i]Today is my graduation. Today is my last day here. After the longest two years I’ll hopefully ever live, I’m free.[/i]

I wrote the words in my white journal. It was volume five of the journals I had to keep while being at Reynard’s School for Boys. The pages were ripped and tattered from many long nights with only a journal on my side. Sometimes I felt like it was really helping me work stuff out, only to wake up and see all of my “progress” read over by the guides and taken out of it wasn’t the progress that [i]they[/i] were looking for. I couldn’t write anything about you. That’s for sure. I tried it once and had to stay in my room for a week without anything but the occasional food delivery and maybe the mail. The mail didn’t matter either. The envelopes always came opened because they had already read it for me. The occasional letter from Mom and Dad saying everything was going fine at home. They never mentioned you though. Maybe they thought that at the sound of your name, I’d turn into the Hulk or something. I contemplated the idea sometimes, but it was all too ridiculous to think about.

I stood up from my bed. The thin mattress I’d grown so used to. The dilapidated metal coils underneath that squeaked at the slightest movements. The kind of alarm system for any boys that dared to jack off while here. They sure learned quick not to do that. I crossed the room to my closet where the outfit was hanging. Black slacks, black tie, white shirt, white graduation gown, white cap. I sighed before pulling it on. It felt weird after wearing the uniform for two years. The uniform consisted of scrub-like attire only coming in gray or white. Reynard’s school colors almost. If the school colors, so to speak, were gray and white, than the mascot was the ram. For what reason, I had no idea. They didn’t even need a mascot. There were no teams or clubs. Yes, they were required to go to school on the side, but it all seemed like a cover up to me. Trying to make this place look like a fancy New York private school, when in reality it was a psychological institute.

I looked at myself in the mirror. My hair was short due to the biweekly haircuts they gave. I half remember my hair before I came here. It was longer. I think it might have touched my shoulders or close to. It was lighter, I think, too from the sunlight. I didn’t get much of that around here. All the students got the same haircut. I think they thought if they made us all look alike, we wouldn’t be inclined to be attracted to one another. Stupid theory.

I looked back to my bed and saw my bags packed. Ready to go. The speech was lying on my bedside table. The speech they had "me" write. They told me I was a really big deal for them. Because I had taken so long to graduate. They said there were a couple doctors from the college institute coming or something. They were gonna get more funding if the doctors could see the program was “working.” They wanted me to read the speech they had written for me. I couldn’t say no. The speech was a piece of shit sob story about how much I needed Reynard’s. Nothing that would have come from my pen.

I heard a knock at my door. I opened it and saw Dr. Klause on the other side. One of the head doctors/founders of Reynard’s. Most students didn’t even see him till graduation, but I had seen him a lot over my time here. He was my personal counselor. I was the first student for Dr. Klause to take on himself. I was the first student to need more than nine months. The Dr. had a smirk on his face, outlined by his white beard, “Are you ready?”

I nodded. What was I suppost to say?

“Here let me take your bags. You can go wait in the student lobby. The other boys are waiting there for the ceremony to start. They’ll sit you down in the seminar room. The parents are already here. Your mother looks quite lovely today,” he grabbed the luggage. The two suitcases that had been kept away from me the whole time I’d been here. I’d brought clothes, some comics, a few CD’s, but they were all things that according to guidelines, I didn’t need.

“Okay, thanks Dr.” I said with the slight grin.

“Gerard,” he stopped. “I hope you know I am very proud of you and your parents are very proud of you. I know it’s been a long journey for you, but I just hope you know that I’ve never had more faith in a student then I have in you.”

I wanted to knock his light outs. But I couldn’t. “Thank you Dr. Klause. That means so much to me.”

The Dr. left and I was alone again. I took a look around for one last time. The linoleum floor, the twitchy fluorescent lights, the sanitized surfaces of pristine clean, and the windowless white walls.

I was overcome with emotions. I was pleased that I was leaving of course. But a little bit fearful. What would I do without this place? I felt like I was being rereleased into the wild. I had to care for myself now. I had to wake myself up every morning and decide what I was gonna do that day. Worse of all, you were gonna be there. I would go from not being able to think your name to having to see your face every day.

The edges of your face were blurry in my mind. Like someone I’ve only met once or twice. I would get the specific features mixed up with the boys around school. All I could indefinitely remember was your brown eyes of wonder and the thin glasses that rested too low on your nose. But I hadn’t thought about those features in a very long time. Even thinking about them now gave me a knot in my stomach and a tension in my jaw.

I sighed heavily and felt like with one heavy breath I was ridding myself of this room, of this place. I grabbed my journal and my speech and shut the door on that part of my life, on those two awful years.