Excerpt from new short story: Running Out The Clock

     The unquiet students found themselves at odds with the story being told about them, that they were destined for the scrap heap and needed something more, that they were somehow lacking.  For them, it wasn't as simple as admitting to having a flaw, but rather that they were defined by the very things that were unfairly denied them, and that, in some cases, they never wanted.  That they had to accept a legacy of immeasurable loss as a birthright.  That it was a loss they would never be able to fully comprehend, let alone mourn.  That they would have to reckon with the echoes of history through the emptiness in their collective conscience.  That life in the full bloom of adolescence must also be in thrall to the ever-unfolding tragedies of the past.  How could they be the heroes and heroines they dreamed themselves to be, as children, when it was they who needed to be saved?
     Rather than reply to the well-intentioned man at the front of the room, Langston deferred to a friend, whose shambling words passed the time until another took up the relay, and another, and then the bell exploded time and space in to the hallway, the door, the weekend outside. "Freedom," Langston uttered, "at last."