Sample Chapter

"Man cannot remake himself without suffering, for he is both the marble and the sculptor."
— Alexis Carrel

Windows Not Walls

The police car found me on a darkening Nelson street - four years old, upset I had no ice cream, yet entirely confident in what I was doing.

I’d walked across town to withdraw money from an ATM because my mother had said no to ice cream and I’d seen the system work - card in, buttons pressed, cash out, reward. The logic had imprinted weeks earlier when Dad lifted me up to watch the whole ritual. A whirring sound, a mechanical sigh, and then cold, sweet, immediate satisfaction. I knew which card to take from Mum’s purse: the one with the holographic bird that caught the light in a way that made it seem more powerful.

The city centre felt impossibly far for someone with legs as short as mine, but the distance didn’t register. Desire erased scale.

By the time I reached the ATM, the shops had closed. Shadows stretched. The sky dimmed but hadn’t yet gone dark. I couldn’t reach the slot, so I climbed onto the machine, small fingers fumbling the card into place. It disappeared, but the screen didn’t respond. No sliding panel. No whirr. I pressed buttons. Nothing. Pressed again. Nothing. My throat tightened. Tears gathered. The machine had betrayed me. Or I had done something wrong.

I climbed down, defeated, and wandered the street looking for a shop that might open magically if I asked nicely enough. All were shut. Families were home for dinner. I was alone.

Eventually, tired and hungry, I started walking back. I hadn’t gone far when the police car pulled alongside me.

“Are you Dayyan James?” the officer asked through the open window.

Terror went straight through me. I knew what happened to people who took things that weren’t theirs. Jail. I said nothing. My eyes must have been enormous because the officer softened his voice and repeated the question.

“Walk home,” I managed. It was all I could say.

He opened his door and stepped out with a smile. I bolted. “WALK HOME!” I shrieked as I sprinted away, five metres before one of my jandals flew off my foot. Panic flipped instantly: I might get in trouble for losing my shoe. I turned back to grab it and the officer scooped me up mid-stride.

I thrashed and sobbed in his arms, hysterical with the certainty that I was about to be taken to jail. A four-year-old doesn’t know his crimes fall under the category of “cute misunderstanding.” All I knew was guilt and capture. But by the time they drove me home, I’d become best friends with both officers. They let me switch on the lights, and a quick burst of police sirens had me all excited. They talked to me gently. The fear drained away.

When they walked me up the steps to our house, I dropped my gaze to the ground, bracing for the explosion. Instead, my parents rushed toward me, pulled me into their arms, checked my limbs for cuts and bruises. Relief hit first, fast and overwhelming. Then came the quiet adult conversation at the doorway, the smiles exchanged with the officers, the thank-yous, the soft gratitude.

The reckoning came next.

Mum needed to know which card I’d taken. I didn’t understand why she was frustrated; I didn’t know the difference between cards or banks or holographic birds. The explanation tangled. Eventually they figured out which card had been swallowed by the ATM. I don’t remember the punishment, only the shape of the cycle: worry, relief, then consequences.

And I learned something. In that moment of being hugged and checked over and told I was safe, I assumed the worry would always outweigh the wrongdoing. I thought the relief was the resolution. I was wrong. But the pattern was set: impulse, escape, danger, discovery, return, reckoning. It was the first major event I can remember, the first time my operating system revealed its logic. The thrill of independence. The clarity of the mission. The total absence of fear until fear arrived fully formed.

I didn’t want money. I wanted the mechanism. I wanted the autonomy. The ice cream was just the symbol. The real reward was movement itself.

I was nearly five, restless before the day had even begun. Mum was in the garden tending her vegetables, lost in the rhythm of watering and weeding. I hovered beside her, already out of things to do, already craving attention she didn’t have to give.

“Find something to keep yourself entertained,” she said, not unkindly.

I asked if I could go play with my friend.

She said yes.

She assumed I meant the boy next door.

I didn’t.

My intended friend lived on the far side of Nelson, multiple suburbs away, well beyond the radius any adult would imagine a five-year-old could traverse alone. But I’d paid attention during car rides: the corner shop with the mural, the street that sloped down toward the park, the turnoff marked by a big purple letterbox. Landmarks had arranged themselves in my mind like stepping stones.

So I left.

The walk was long, far longer than my sense of scale could grasp. My jandals slapped against the pavement, gravel sticking to my feet. I followed the remembered sequence: street, corner, bend, shop, park, letterbox. The world felt big but navigable, like a puzzle I’d already solved. Time compressed; the distance didn’t register. I wasn’t scared. I was purposeful.

When I reached my friend’s house, no one was home. It didn’t matter. My dad’s speech-language clinic was nearby, a place I knew as well as my own bedroom. I cut across a small field, climbed the small rise behind the building, and knocked on his clinic door.

Dad opened it mid-session, a student seated behind him peering back at me over his shoulder.

“Oh - hello, Dayyan,” he said, blinking as if his eyes were malfunctioning.

“Hi Dad!”

“Where’s Mum?”

“At home!” I announced proudly.

“Are you with… your friend?”

“No.”

A pause.

“How did you get here?”

“I walked,” I said, beaming with the satisfaction of having completed a mission.