Ryan sat in that Hilton lobby, head cradled in hand as if it was resting in a pool of remorse and guilt. Ryan pulled it out of his pocket, that dreaded receipt, the very recept that represented how far Ryan had fallen. $214.15. Those very numbers burned a hole right through Ryan’s soul. Ryan was not who he used to be. It was if the generosity had been sucked from his soul, he was not that munificent child who had given away all of his candy to his friends. Ryan looked up, tears dripping from his eyes. He watched the smokers go in and out of the hotel, poisoning their lungs with nicotine. Ryan was not home anymore. He was in Hawaii, across the country.  Ryan was sitting in some cursory hotel at 3 in the morning, circumferential to the people that his parents had always taught him to stay away from. Ryan could not say those things anymore. He was one of those forsaken souls parents taught their kids to stay far away from. He was a criminal. That $214.15. That wretched $214.15 was the source of all of this. The truth is, none of that money belonged to Ryan. In fact, none of the $10,000 Ryan carried belonged to him. It all belonged to his friend Sean, his one and only friend, his friend who meant the world to him. But that was over now. Ryan couldn’t take it anymore. The repetition, the torturous repetition, It was pure insanity. Ryan couldn’t even fathom how all these “robots” could go through their lives without even questioning the repetition. But this was not right. Ryan could not simply steal money from his friend, but it was done. He really had gone through with it. Once again, Ryan pulled out that receipt and gazed upon it again. The detestable things he had done to get to this point all flashed through his mind. At this exact moment, Ryan quite literally snapped out of it. He came to a sort of realization, telling him that what he did was not acceptable. These thoughts Ryan had been thinking were like poison to his mind, filling his brain with fallacies about reality itself. Ryan knew what he had to do. He had to meet up with Sean and return the money. He would leave this exact moment, get a plane ticket back to Illinois, pay off that $214.15 he owed Sean through pure hard work, life would be great. Unfortunately, that’s just not how life works. There are no second chances. Within one blink his eyes, siren screeched into Ryan’s ears. Sean had called the police. Ryan was going to prison.

The door of the hotel swung open and the police ran over to Ryan, forcing him to down on the ground. There was no point in resisting. It was over. Ryan had no future. In a way, Ryan always figured it would all end like this. There was no way he was going to escape the police while stealing $10,000. Maybe this is what Ryan needed. He wanted something different, something that would bring his life true excitement. This may an unusually unorthodox way of obtaining such a rush, but it is definitely a way of doing it.