Free Origins (Remote) by Eric Drouant

each headed off to their separate rooms, Ronnie with Farrow and Cassie with Ruff. Ronnie had hoped at first that eventually they’d be brought into the same place at some time for study sessions or something but it hadn’t happened. Nothing was happening like he thought it would.
    His efforts at catching Cassie outside were borne out of curiosity about her experience in those sessions but much more so from a simple longing to be around her. At the very least it offered the chance to talk about something they shared, gave them some kind of mutual experience. Left to his own devices Ronnie knew he would have failed miserably at any attempt at conversation with her. Just seeing her filled him with confusion and a kind of helpless blank mind he knew would leave him looking stupid and awkward. But he had to try. He’d come out of his session with Farrow the last time and seen her walking towards her mother’s car. She’d been dressed in a pink blouse and yellow jeans, her hair woven into a braid in back and swinging back and forth, carrying a pair of books and a notebook under her arm.
    If there was ever a boy in love it was Ronnie Gilmore. He’d spent the better part of the last week lying on his bed and trying to think of anything but Cassie. It was no use though. Even the TV shows he watched with his mother at night didn’t give him any distraction. He watched the characters on the tube play out their lives and comedy sketches and thought of Cassie running after her friends in a game of Catch Me Kill Me. He ate dinner thinking of the way she laughed as someone said something funny when they were passing in the hall. He thought he’d seen her take a quick glance his way, maybe even smile in his direction. He’d ducked his head and moved on burning with embarrassment, his face growing redder every second. It was so wonderful he didn’t want to think of anything more. It was so painful he didn’t want her on his mind at all. But she was all he could think of.
    Now he approached her street still pushing his bike down the sidewalk. He’d intended to head down past her house and then make his way to the dime store. The plan was to spend a few minutes there and then reverse his path, doubling the chance of seeing her. It was a good plan he thought, and he’d been adhering to it. It had only one flaw and that was what he would do if the plan worked. What happened after that he didn’t know but he remembered his father telling him “Fortune favors the brave.” so he kept going.
    He pushed on down the street. He was thinking of the meetings with Farrow and what they might really be about. He’d been told about the scholarship program but he was beginning to have serious doubts. At thirteen, even Ronnie knew about scholarships and testing for college. At some point he should be sitting in a room with a #2 pencil and a sheet of paper with a column full of lines with little circles next to them and a booklet full of questions. You’d fill in the little circles, being careful not to mark the outside and you’d turn it in and a few weeks later get a pat on the back or something in the mail saying how you did. This was nothing like that. His time with Farrow was spent looking at pictures and making up stories. It was a funny thing though. When he was telling the stories they didn’t feel like stories. They felt like he was describing something he’d really seen, like a trip to the park, or a fishing trip. Sometimes he felt like he wasn’t even in the room. When he’d made up the story about the pilot he could feel the damp heat of the jungle and the burning sun on his shoulders. He could smell things he knew he’d never smelled before. Doing it gave him a going away feeling. He wasn’t sure he liked that feeling. He also knew when he came back he felt drained and tired like he’d been running hard or working with his Dad in the garden.
    He was so wrapped up in his thoughts of Farrow and stories and the jarring sense of