Today is the last day I am eroding in these concrete walls. Tomorrow, I am finally going home. I miss my family. I was sent to prison barely after I returned from the Great War. It has been 2 years, 8 months, and 14 days since I have been here. I will be free tomorrow. I can finally get out of this cursed prison and start fixing America.

Entry 31 (May 7, 1922)

God, why? When I came home four days ago, I was greeted with the sight of my mother taking my younger sister away. My father will be sent to prison because the federal investigation had evidence that he abetted the Teapot Dome Scandal with President Harding last month. She had enough of “this criminal family” with the younger brother Hyro deserted from his duty (he ran away from home early), me being sent to prison, and my father abetting in a big political Scandal. She did not even shed a tear. I tried searching for her after she rushed out the door with my family’s life savings, but it was almost as if she vanished into thin air. My father was detained earlier today. He is being sent to the same prison I was in, so the best I could do is give him a few tips, but his last moments were him using his connections on the telephones to try to reduce his sentence. I have not seen my family in years, but when I see them like this, I feel nothing but apathetic and numb to all of the drama.

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My mother, before she left, told me a shocking revelation that I still do not know how to feel about. Apparently, I am not their biological child; I was adopted when I was about one month old. I still view her as a mother figure and my father as a father figure. My mother had a miscarriage, and my father was coming back from a business trip. She did not want to break the hard news, so she went to an orphanage and adopted me, acting like I was their child. She named me “Pæral” instead of “Pyro” because I was not their biological child. This became apparent when I grew blond hair instead of my father's and mother’s black hair. They had me grow out my hair, so they hid my sharp, deformed ears, “an ugly birth defect.” All the clues were there, yet I did not decide to piece that simple fact together. That revelation is not so much a revelation but telling me what I should already know. She said she would have cared for me less and told me earlier if their other child, Hyro, did not run away from home. That was the only thing she said to me before she went out the door. Not a goodbye, not an “I love you", not an "I am very disappointed in you", only a piece of truth. Father was not surprised to hear that piece of truth; I guess he either figured it out long ago or my "mother" already told him.

I also lost my job at Standard Oil because they “do not hire criminals,” not that I would work there anymore. I will become a writer and expose all the filth underneath that thin layer of gold. I will become a muckraker finding the muck underneath that false glory. I will right the wrongs of America. My alias will be known as the Renid Network, and my work starts now.