‘Moments. Your life is filled with a series of moments, let them go’. I had read this plaque a thousand times walking down the very steps I had been left upon thirteen years ago. There upon the damp step, on a winter’s night, wrapped only in a tethered cloth piece I had been introduced to a life of being nothing. This is a ‘bad’ moment I guess you could call it, had a glimmer of hope, her name Mrs Hope ironically. Mrs Hope was the keeper of St Petersburg Boys Orphanage, and was the lady who had took me in and tried her very best to make my life and me normal. Unfortunately for her normality was not my greatest asset, and happy couples wanting to adopt never picked the scrawny boy, with holes in his socks and hair like a mop that had been used one too many times. I was isolated and alone I guess, unwanted and misunderstood. I continue walking to my favourite shop, The Corner Store, it had just about everything from lollies to books. I got money weekly from delivering papers for the owner of the shop, and the spent my money on luxuries we didn’t get at the orphanage like chocolates and magazines with comics to relieve from the boredom. On the way out something catches my eye, a poster taped in the window, it was an advertisement for a job at the local art gallery. I was into art; it eliminated the loneliness of the room consisting of one mattress which the springs had buckled and a single lamp shade, and opened my eyes into a fantasy world where I could draw my feelings. I take the number too keenly and tear the last three digits clean off, more carefully I take a second tab ensuring that I do not repeat my last mistake. I almost skip home, humming a happy tune in my head, up the stairs and inside, down the dark hallway and straight to the phone hanging on the wall. I dial the digits, crossing my feet and fidgeting as it connects at the other end, a man answers
”St Petersburg Art Gallery, John speaking” he said in a chirpy happy voice
“How may I assist you?” I clear my throat, stumbling a little on the words I say “I’m Edward, I’m calling about the advertisement hanging in the window at the Corner Store about your job opening”
“Just a moment, ill check with my supervisor” he responds.
This moment was possibly the longest moment I could’ve experienced, i guess it would’ve been as long as the moment between the times my birth mother had rang the doorbell at the orphanage and the time it took for Mrs Hope to respond, when she left me there like a scrap of rubbish empty of information and unknown to even myself. It takes me a brief moment to realise, the man on the other end was talking to me, and I wipe away the salty tears running down my freckled cheeks, “sorry?” I say choking a little in an attempt to hide the fact that I am in fact sobbing.
“Can you come down tomorrow around 4pm?” he repeats in an almost annoyed tone.
I know to other people looking at me right now my face would probably look like a child at Christmas getting all the toys in the world imaginable, it lit up literally like a Christmas tree; I probably could’ve squealed but refrained from doing so. I barely slept that night, then again I hardly slept any nights, these were the moments I thought about every possibility and every question possible such as “How do they get those ships into those glass bottles?” or “Who is my Mum…my dad…maybe a brother or sister… or a pet?” Questions nobody could answer.
The alarm I had set went off bright and early, the sun had just touched the sky, brightening it with alluring and truly brilliant colours of orange gold. I head downstairs to find the my socks had completely torn right out the front exposing my uncut toenails and selective hairs growing unattractively from my large toe. “Great” I murmur. I had forgotten I have no formal attire to wear to this prestigious art gallery; I would be fired before I got hired. Unhopeful, at 3:15pm, I begin to walk barefoot down the pavement. It begins to rain, basically