Danny Sham was born full-term in the small town of Tullamarine, Vermont. His parents were anesthesiologist Richard Sham and Child Psychology Professor Janelle Sham. But if you've read this story up until now, you already know that. So why am I telling it again?

Because it's important.

Well, as Danny got older, he'd be told stories about how his parents had exhausted so many options to get his mother pregnant that he should feel grateful to be alive. But Danny would call bullshit on that, saying that if his parents were so determined to have a child, they wouldn't have given up on the responsibilities that came with parenthood so soon.

Danny rarely saw his parents after age three. That's when he was diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder. Owing to the difficulties this posed, his parents had apparently decided that they couldn't take care of him any longer, so they'd looked for any other option.

They should've just had the decency to put me up for adoption, Danny would later think to himself. At least that would've been a more honest act if they really didn't want an autistic son.

Instead, after some shopping, they placed him in the Sacred Heart Institute of Tullamarine, which some of the residents affectionately referred to by its initials. It was a Catholic organization; although Danny's parents were not religious themselves, they evidently thought this arrangement would be the best fit for him.

When Danny became old enough to understand his lot in life, he was faced with many questions. And the staff at Sacred Heart offered answers. Perhaps they weren't the right answers, or at least not the ones supported by the most evidence, but they were answers nonetheless.

Why am I here?

"Your parents love you. They love you so much that they understand you need extra support that they could not provide, which is why they sent you here."

How is that love?

"They were willing to give you what you need."

Quite frankly, these answers couldn't be questioned. They were just like the other axioms of life. Two plus two equals four. Vegetables are good for you, candy is bad for you. We draw on paper only. They were to be taken uncritically as fact.

Although the students had no real use for these skills if they couldn't leave, they were given numerous "social thinking" lessons from an early age concerning how they were meant to act. How would you feel if this happened? What is expected behavior if your friend tells you their dog has cancer?

From the moment he was placed in the Institute, Danny's roommate was a black-haired boy his age named Barrett. The boys quickly became friends out of necessity, bonding over the fact that they both had nowhere else to go. They'd sometimes stay up well into the night talking about their hopes and dreams, as the Institute did not enforce lights-out. You needed to go to bed, but you didn't have to go to sleep.

One evening, when the boys were eight or nine years old, they lay awake gazing out the window.

"So, Danny," Barrett asked his roommate, "what do you wanna do when you grow up?"

Danny smiled, showing off his buck teeth that would no doubt require braces eventually. "I want to be a conductor."

"Conductor? Like, you'd drive trains?"

Danny nodded vigorously, the sort of nodding he'd sometimes engage in as a stim when doing so wouldn't risk injury. "Yeah!"

"Why do you want that?" Barrett inquired. This was not with an accusatory tone, but rather a childish sort of curiosity.

"Because it just sounds awesome!" Danny exclaimed. "I wanna wear that hat and uniform, and I wanna see the world! Mountains and forests and oceans, oh my!"

Barrett smiled sadly. "I wish I could do that when I grow up."

If Danny were being honest with himself, he knew that having spent his childhood isolated from most of his peers wouldn't help his efforts to become a train conductor. After all, that required "people skills", and Danny's such skills had been stunted from an early age. But a man could dream, especially if that man was a boy of nine.

"Well, what do you wanna be?" Danny asked.

"I wish I could be a Pokémon!" Barrett exclaimed, gesturing at the Charmander plushie that lay atop his dresser.

"Huh?"

"You know, like those card games! I wanna be something that can fly, like an eagle! Or a dragon!"

"That's nice" Danny mouthed, knowing that such a dream could not come true. Well, maybe it was true if you believed in miracles, but who's to say miracles were even possible?

"Really, Danny, I'm serious! Imagine being an eagle! You'd soar over all the land, and gravity wouldn't matter!"

"Yeah, that does sound nice."

It was almost midnight by the time either boy fell asleep. Danny's dreams were punctuated by owls and eagles, a phoenix rising from the ashes, and other majestic birds. At one point, he was convinced he'd been given wings and the ability to propel himself through the air.

And then Danny woke up to the morning sunlight streaming through the windows, and he realized that his dream had in fact been a sham.

"What a mess. The dreams in which I'm flying are the best I've ever had."

Barrett didn't ask his roommate what he meant by that. Sometimes the boys just understood one another, as though they were simply brothers from different mothers.

Classes continued the next day, but Danny barely paid any attention. The dream was just too fantastical to let go, no matter how hard society might have wanted him to let it go. What was more, sitting still in class was difficult for just about any kid, and Danny was expected to do it for six hours a day.

What's the point of getting good grades anyway? It's not like we're ever going to be able to use them for anything.

That was the cold, hard truth. For all the fantasies Danny might harbor about his future, none of them would ever come true as long as he remained stuck in the Institute. They were just that - fantasies.

"Danny!" his math teacher, Mr. Zealand, barked, whacking a ruler on the desk.

Danny flinched at the sound; like many people of a similar neurotype, he jumped at loud noises, and this was no exception.

"Pay attention, please," the math teacher announced. "If you do not want me to call on you, you'd do well to show that you are engaged."

Danny's eyes may have been fixated on the whiteboard, but his mind was somewhere else. It was all he could do to not let tears fill his eyes, to not break down right in front of the other students.

During his one-on-one therapy session later that day, which the Institute mandated each resident attend once a week, Danny brought this up to the therapist. "I just…had a dream last night" he admitted.

"Well, everyone has dreams," the therapist, an older woman with frizzy gray hair, muttered. "It's what you do with them that counts."

"My dream is to work in transportation," Danny stated. "I want to be a conductor or a pilot when I grow up."

The therapist smiled. "You can do whatever you set your mind to, Danny."

"Except I can't," the boy whimpered. "I can't, because I'm stuck here."

"But when you're older, you'll be able to leave. And then you'll find that the outside world is not a cakewalk either."

The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.

The therapist did not understand; or maybe she did, and was trying to discourage him from following his dream. Neither reflected well on her chosen career path. In any case, Danny broke out into a sob shortly thereafter, and it took a five-minute mini trampoline session to calm him down.

After that, Danny tried to put his conductor-related dreams to bed. But, much like a child who didn't want to get under the covers to rest, his dreams refused to be put away for life. Not even for a night. And whenever he woke, he felt progressively more morose.

He tried to make friends at the Institute besides Barrett. Quite frankly, this was easier said than done. Whenever he tried to talk to another resident, they very often had something else to do. And even if the conversation actually began, Danny's eyelids would become heavy from the stress of carrying on said conversation for more than five minutes. In the end, Barrett was the only other resident he truly felt he could confide in.

The weeks went by, and then the weeks turned into months. After that, it wasn't long before the months became years.

The boys experienced their growing pains, braces were fixed on their teeth, a few of them hit puberty early, and more. In other words, they were growing older. That didn't mean they "grew up" - Barrett still had an ever-expanding collection of Pokémon cards on his desk, and Danny still wanted to be a conductor or an eagle. But Danny couldn't help but mark each birthday with the thought: One year down, six to go, or something to that effect.

When Danny was twelve, the boys' Geography class started talking about the way Amtrak, as well as rail systems in other countries, operated within their respective countries' geographical constraints. They talked about countries far and wide, and Danny pictured himself getting on a plane (or being a bird) and flying across the border into an exotic land. If he believed in miracles, such things might just be possible; alas, he didn't. Still, Geography class was engaging enough that Danny did not want to miss a day at any costs.

November rolled around, and with it came reports of a coming severe flu season. As dorm room after dorm room was quarantined off from the rest of the Institute, Danny hoped he would not get sick. Had he been more pious, he would have prayed that the illness would miss him. However, in his heart of hearts, he admitted he was probably a sitting Golduck, as Barrett would have said.

One morning Danny woke with a tickle in his throat, which he didn't think much of at first. Maybe he just hadn't had enough water to drink last night.

But then came the coughing fits. They were so powerful that Danny's body curled upward as though he were doing sit-ups for exercise. And his head throbbed, too.

Danny had just finished a twenty-second cough session when Barrett stirred. "Danny, what's wrong?"

"I think…cough…I think I'm sick!" Danny rasped, and only then did it sink in exactly what that meant. For the next week or so, judging by the time this flu bug had put down his peers, he'd be excluded from all social activities including classes. What was more, he'd already exposed Barrett, meaning Barrett was a sitting Golduck too. And it was Danny's fault.

"I'll go tell an adult, okay? You just rest."

That's what Danny tried to do for the next few hours. He was vaguely aware of Barrett talking to their floor coordinator Mr. Wellington, someone (likely a nurse) coming into the room and giving him a shot, and the words, "Yep, he's burning up. He's got the same thing as the rest."

But it wasn't long before Danny fell asleep for good, and he didn't wake up for what seemed like a long time afterward. And, as often happened when your temperature was well over 100, his mind wandered to places he didn't expect it to go.

However, unlike most fever dreams, this one was blissful. At first it gave the impression of being inside a cocoon, like a caterpillar about to become a butterfly. Or, in an example more relevant to Danny's own life, the sensory swing they had in the OT room at the Institute. It felt like a giant hug, yet without the discomfort of physical contact with another person.

This sensation continued for an indeterminate period of time, and if this truly was a dream, Danny didn't want to wake up. He never wanted to leave this cocoon, no matter what.

That is, until his dream got even better.

Danny burst out of his cocoon and found himself flying out the window of his dorm room. He didn't even injure either of his wings in the effort - he was able to smoothly gain altitude until the Institute and all the vehicles parked outside it looked like mere toys.

"This is amazing!" Danny found himself exclaiming. "I'm flying!"

He spread his wings further, noticing that they resembled those of an eagle. Just like he and Barrett had fantasized about! His dream had come true!

The cold, clear autumn air rushed through Danny's wings, ruffling the feathers on his face, and cooled him down as he kept flapping them. He soared over the Vermont countryside, past forests both deciduous and evergreen.

"If this is a dream, don't wake me up!"

Danny had no concept of how fast he was going, or how far he'd flown. Eventually, when his wings started to tire, he held both of them out in the shape of a pair of headphones, allowing them to slow his descent like a parachute.

When he landed in the grass, Danny glanced skyward. The sun was shining weakly, but it had failed to eliminate the frost on the ground. Nonetheless, the boy (who might well have been an eagle) smiled.

"I never wanna wake up," he said with a smile. "Please let this be real."

Indeed, the scene was incredibly vivid. In years to come, Danny would describe the experience of flying over Vermont as "realer than real", for it felt like less of a lie than real life. If anything, he had the sense that this was how things should be. Danny Sham was an eagle soaring high in the sky.

Soon, however, the scene began to fade. His vision was darkening, and Danny, realizing that it was in fact a sham, pleaded with the universe to let him stay here.

"No! Don't wake me up! Let me stay here forever!"

But the universe (or God, depending on your religious persuasion or lack thereof) was under no obligation to conform to any human's desires. Least of all a mere 12-year-old boy who wanted to cling to his feverish fantasies.

The next thing Danny knew, he was laid up in his bed at the Institute, his sweaty hair propped up on several pillows. The dampness led to some discomfort, as did the residual ache in his legs. Yet that paled in comparison to the discomfort of knowing that his flight had been a figment of his imagination.

"Oh, you're awake."

Danny lifted his head weakly to see that a younger middle-aged man stood beside his bed, checking a fluid bag hanging on a pole next to him. The man was dressed in scrubs, implying that he was a nurse. Which meant…

"Right" Danny sighed weakly. "I'm…cough…sick."

The nurse nodded. "The illness seems to have done a number on you. You've been basically delirious all day, so we've worked to keep you hydrated. How do you feel?"

Danny frowned. "Awful, I'm afraid."

"That's to be expected, given how high your fever got. But it might finally be breaking given how much you're sweating. But there's something else…".

Danny must've been staring pretty hard, because the nurse grimaced. When the nurse finally continued, it was in a tone of vicarious anguish.

"I don't know what you were dreaming about, Danny," he said, "but you sounded like you didn't want to leave that dream. You kept shouting 'don't wake me up' in your sleep, and I wonder if you would benefit from discussing this with your therapist."

It only took a few seconds for Danny to realize what the nurse meant.

"I'm not…cough…I'm not going to…cough…kill myself!" he exclaimed. "Not remotely!"

"Okay" the nurse replied, checking Danny's pulse. "I mean, I'm a physical health expert, not a mental health one. But I trust that if something is wrong, you'll go to the appropriate professional. You need to take care of yourself, Danny."

"I do take care of myself!"

"Good," the nurse replied. "Because in order for us to help you, you need to help yourself. And that means accepting the world as it is, not as you might like it to be."

Within a few days, Danny had recovered from his physical illness. However, as his body grew stronger, his mind grew weaker.

Whenever he closed his eyes, Danny fervently hoped that he'd find himself in the dream world he'd made for himself. It did not matter that he knew it was a sham, merely an escape from his cold reality. He needed an escape.

Sadly, he couldn't enter that world at will. His subconscious just wouldn't let him see what he wanted to see. And every time he woke from sleep, he would feel tempted to weep for what could not be.

The next few years, the start of adolescence, were difficult for just about anyone, especially for people like Danny. He hit growth spurts, experiencing the aches and pains that came with that process. His braces eventually came off. But the dream did not leave his mind, even if he never again visited that world.

That's how things ought to be.

Of this, he was certain. He just couldn't explain why he felt like he should be an eagle, the national bird of the county he lived in, when he was merely a citizen of said country. And if he talked about past lives, the staff would think he was losing his marbles, even if some of them believed in equally crazy things.

At any rate, Danny increasingly comforted himself with a quote he'd read in a book somewhere: Growing old is mandatory. Growing up is not.

That quote was everything to him. It meant that there was nothing wrong with embracing your childhood curiosity. Indeed, you were never too old for fairy tales, so long as you understood that they weren't true. Of course, Danny struggled with that last part more than once. (Read: Far more than once.)

The teen years were agony. Although they may have been isolated from the outside world, Danny and Barrett weren't isolated from some of its norms. For instance, when most people turned sixteen, they were thrilled to get their driver's licenses and be able to go places on their own for the first time.

Not the residents of Sacred Heart. They would not be granted this rite of passage common to most American teens; rather, they would remain here until they were eighteen, after which only "God" knew what happened. (No former residents ever visited the Institute, so the question of what came next was very much an open one.)

Danny figured it was just as well. Quite frankly, driving scared the hell out of him. To get behind the wheel of a potential death machine and have so much responsibility was a daunting prospect, to say the least. Besides, weren't cars bad for the environment? He wanted no part of driving if he could have any say in the matter.

Still, over the next few years, Danny found himself wishing he was someone else. That he could have a different life.

This wasn't new, of course. He and Barrett still spent many evenings lying awake in bed, talking about their plans for the future. Barrett's Pokémon fantasies may have come crashing down to Earth, as evidenced by how intensely he sighed whenever they discussed them. However, Danny still loved the idea of being a train conductor, saying it'd be less stressful and far more attainable than freeflight, and he let Barrett know it.

Danny was no longer content merely to dream. He wanted to live out his dreams, and he occasionally found himself considering what it would take to make them come true. He didn't care how much he had to lie, cheat, and steal to render it possible.

It all came to a head shortly before his eighteenth birthday.