The Paper Dragon

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He felt giddy and foolish and awkward, and he also felt like a thief. He was fearful and elated and apprehensive and uncertain, but beneath it all he felt like a thief and this was confusing because it was he who had been wronged. And yet, he felt much the same as he had that day when he was eight years old and stole a box of crayons from the school supply closet.

Just that way, with the same sort of trembling nervousness, the same heady swiftness of triumph — he had stolen the crayons, he had got away without anyone having seen him, he had tucked them under his sweater with no one the wiser — coupled with guilt, the overriding shamefaced embarrassment sitting just behind his eyes, the sickly somewhat pale smile on his mouth, he could not understand this feeling of guilt. It was almost as if he were identifying fully with the real thief, experiencing the thief's own reaction to capture and exposure, that's the goddamn trouble with me, he thought, I empathize too easily.

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