First Big Check Learning What Can Wait (January – Trade School Begins)   The alarm still rang at 5:12 a.m. The apartment still slept while Caleb moved quietly through the familiar routine—water splashed in his face, boots by the door, a notebook tucked under his arm. Winter pressed hard against the windows, and the house he’d just bought waited silently across town, half-finished in his mind and completely unfinished in reality. Trade school started this week. The paperwork h

Chapter 4 (Age 19): PASSING THE PATTON The Year After Applause (Early Fall — September) The summer was coming to an end and this morning felt exactly like the ones before it.   The alarm still rang at 5:12 a.m. Caleb shut it off before the sound could travel, muscle memory guiding his hand. The apartment was quiet in that familiar, deliberate way—his siblings were still asleep, his mom just home from another night shift, the blackout curtains doing their job. Nothing about th

Eighteen Isn’t a Door—It’s a Weight of Responsibility (Late September – October) Caleb turned eighteen quietly.   There was cake—store-bought, small, the kind that came in a clear plastic container and slid a little when you lifted the lid. They ate it at the kitchen table while the apartment hummed with late-night sounds: the refrigerator clicking on, a car passing outside, the soft shuffle of his mom getting ready for another night shift. She sat half-awake, still in her wo

Time to Meet His Mentor September seventeenth came quietly. The day he had been waiting two weeks.   The alarm still rang at 5:12 a.m.   Caleb’s hand moved before his mind did, silencing it in one practiced motion. Nothing about his mornings had changed just because he’d turned seventeen three days earlier. He still dressed in the dark. Still splashed cold water on his face. Still moved through the apartment as if sound itself cost money.   His mom had managed to get him a ca