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Young Kieran Lane
Many would consider a fifteen year old just a boy but Kieran Lane believed he was adult.'

Kieran Lane hated school with a visceral passion. The monotony of the morning assembly with its military like formality and ridiculous songs that the students were forced to sing truly bugged him. The teachers parading in black gowns at the front stage of the large and somber school hall irked him severely and then finally the headmaster taking center stage and basking in the exuberance of his dull dictator ego completed the nausea he felt. It was all so English and traditional. Naturally it reinforced the system of hierarchy in the College but it never did generate a sense of bonding for him with the school, rather it added to the divide that permanently existed between Kieran and authority.

His family poverty had determined that he was not chosen to advance academically or socially in what seemed to him a living hell-hole. He had no purpose or personal dignity in such a sham. It may have provided some of his peers with an open door to achievement and fulfilling careers; in his mind it was a stifling prison and he yearned to be released from its rules and gloomy oppression.
Liberty finally came with the aid of broken wrist that he acquired through fooling around with some of his rough friends. There was still another six weeks before he turned fifteen but with a plaster cast on his arm he arbitrarily decided that it was a reasonable excuse for him to be liberated from the college of loathing. His mother submitted to his assertiveness and claims of adulthood. She had no interest in any further professional development or education for him. It was his life; he was old enough to choose for himself.
When an official letter arrived from the College inquiring after the truant student, Kieran drew up a letter explaining his absence but added that because he had turned fifteen he was no longer returning to the High school. He had no intentions of obtaining a Leaving Certificate from the School, as far as he was concerned they could shove it where it fitted.' He presented the drawn up letter to his mother Nancy and she signed it. He had already perfected her signature and would have signed it had she disagreed. Nancy was appallingly indifferent to the whole thing.
There was euphoria in the freedom he experienced and the Monday morning cloud of dread no longer hung over him. The uniform that linked him to the bad memories were like putrid grave clothes so he

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