Billy Wayne felt like he’d grown wings, a couple of bone and feather things ready to fly him away from this lousy place. His head ached a little, like it always did. But it wouldn’t for much longer, not when he got these wings working.

“You walk out that door and you ain’t never allowed back in, Billy Wayne Hooduk!” his mother shouted, the recliner under her bottom groaning from the massive weight. But he knew better and was all too familiar with the mumbled pleadings in her tortured dreams. Billy Wayne had spent a thousand nights cringing at the far edge of her bed which reeked of the talcum powder she used on the sores under her breasts. He’d listened in the dark to her fear of him ever leaving, each word another pound of burden pressing down on his chest. Who was going to do the laundry and the shopping? Who was going to use the pumice stone on her corns? Who was going to help her out of bed to the toilet and wipe up her mess?

“I’m a fat old lady and I’m going to die alone in my own filth!”

Billy Wayne -- who had baked his own birthday cake and bought his own thirtieth birthday present two weeks earlier -- stopped on the top step, just on the other side of the storm door. He turned and squinted into the darkness. He could see the back of his mother’s chair, her blubbery right arm draped over one side, a wad of tissues dangling. A soap opera flickered beyond the lunch tray he’d left for her. Billy Wayne recognized his life was about to change forever the moment he dared turn his back and walk down the cracked front steps of his mother’s house in Asbury Park, NJ. He swore it would. It was his time and nothing could ever bring him back, not even his mother’s threats of not wanting him.

Billy Wayne put down the small green Samsonite suitcase he was carrying to open the book which had caused these turn of events, this new chapter in his life. The book was due back at the library in three days, but Billy Wayne had come to terms with the fact that the nice lady behind the library desk would just have to order a new copy. Libraries must get all their books for free since they let you read them for nothing. And this book had become Billy Wayne’s bible, more precious to him than it would be to anyone else. Billy Wayne needed it. It had surely been written for him.

HOW TO BECOME A CULT LEADER IN 50 EASY STEPS had caught his eye the moment he’d seen it in the Religions section. He’d fumbled the skinny book off the shelf, knowing right away he’d been meant to find it. He opened to the first chapter, and there it was in black and white:

“How do you know you are the Chosen One?”

Billy Wayne read on.

“Do you hear voices in your head when nobody else is around?”

“Yes!” Billy Wayne was alone among the stacks, shaking his head. “Almost all the time.”

“Have you noticed that people have come to rely on you more and more?”

“The bed pan,” Billy Wayne said with a mixture of marvel and disgust.

“Do you feel the suffering of the sick on your back?”

“Oh, God.” Billy Wayne was almost in tears of ecstasy and revulsion. “I have to sponge her privates.”

“Have you been persecuted for your beliefs?”

“She threw all my Screw Magazines in the trash and said I was a dirty sinner boy,” said Billy Wayne in hushed voice.

“Are you ready to rise from the ashes and take your place as the Chosen One?”

Billy Wayne’s hands were shaking as he closed the book, clasping it to his thumping chest, letting the epiphany fully take hold. Sweat dripped down his back, making his shirt stick to his skin.

“I am ready. ” All these books were about Islam, Christianity, and Judaism; titles about Buddhism and the Rastafari movement. All stupid fakes, Billy Wayne thought, running his hand over the shiny cover of this marvelous treasure, turning the book over and over. He didn’t expect to find an author’s photo and wasn’t disappointed. Did the Bible have real pictures? He opened back up to the first chapter. “Repeat these words: I am God.”

“I am God.” The words rolled off his tongue sounding hollow and whiney.

He tried again, deeper, with more authority: “I am God. Better. Much, much better.”

“How does saying those words make you feel?” he read.

Billy Wayne squinted to search his mind, making an all-out effort to give an honest answer. For some reason, he was overwhelmed with the feeling he must answer sincerely, not taking any of the usual shortcuts. His mother had nagged him about shortcuts, how he never finished anything he started, if he even got around to starting in the first place. Having some money to supplement her disability checks was all she’d hoped for. As a teenager, Billy Wayne had written down all the names of the neighbors he was going to approach about cutting their lawns, which were all little square plots of grass that would take a few minutes each. He wrote three dozen names he copied from mailboxes and the phone book, but then a toy store flyer caught his attention. Billy Wayne’s new list was for all the cool new toys he planned to buy with at least some of the money he was going to earn. A day later, he grew bored of the toys he thought he had wanted. And the whole idea of waking up on Saturday mornings and mowing lawns seemed like so much work. And what was in it for him, anyway? Billy Wayne spent weekends behind sticky bowls half filled with brightly colored milk and a few remaining soggy bits of sugary cereal, violent cartoons keeping him busy.

Billy Wayne was barely a teenager when he came to accept his mother’s assessment regarding the hill of beans he was destined to never amount to. Billy Wayne liked beans, especially smothered in catsup and honey, so the abuse rolled right off his plump back.

How did speaking the words make him feel? Standing among the rows of books -- advice on dieting, having better sex, and making tons of cash selling real estate with no money down right behind him -- Billy Wayne came to what he considered an accurate description: “They make me feel big.”

Billy Wayne Hooduk dug through his jeans pocket for his library card, taking it to the nice lady at the front desk. He stood nervously in front of the circulation computer as she scanned the bright yellow card and the bar code on the book. She stuck the receipt inside the front cover and handed it back with a smile.

“It’s due back in two weeks,” said the kind library lady.

“God bless you.” The words caught in his throat as he took the extraordinary book from her. What was supposed to be his first loving exaltation came out a mumbled thank you, as any sense of newfound confidence had washed away. Billy Wayne turned from what was surely now an accusatory smile and ran for the door, headed home to pack his Samsonite and try out his new wings.