That Innocent Night Out

• Nathan Lam, Grade 10
• Short Story
• 2013

Don’t ya just hate it when you were gonna do someth’ng bad, but then ya change your’s mind, but then you’re suddenly found at a crime scene and they take ya to them coppa’s station? It happen all them time, don’t it? Because now I’m sitting in this darn small concrete cell, with those darn cops everywhere. I thought we just gonna have a mighty time at dat bus stop, man. Like seriously nothing went wrong.

We were blowing coupla of them cancer-makin’ cigs and drinking coupla bottles of foul beer; having a mighty time at dat bus stop. Oh, it was mighty, man! Just me and them boys out doin’ what we did every Friday avo. I s’ppose I was less drunk than usual, which was why I made the stupidest decision in me life. I said to them I was goin' home! How crazy was that?! I s’ppose I felt bit sleepy and wanna hit the shack early.

But the other guys shouted at me, “Hash-tag YOLO!” Oh that teen wisdom. It was very persuasive. It was. It’s true: you only do live once, unless you believe in that reincarnation stuff like them Buddhists or Hindi. I actually like them Buddhists and Hindi, they’re so in one with nature, man. So peaceful. So not angry and stuff like other guys. You know. Like you don’t see any Buddhist terrorist groups or see ‘em fighting them wars in like Afghan. They don’t barge around tellin’ stranger folk what to do. It‘s good man. I like it. I do.

Anyway I agreed with them guys and stay’d bit longer. One dude decided to chuck his beer bottle at them window panel of them bus shelter-thingies. It broke so loud, man and look like, uh, I don’t know; breaking glass. It was cool, man. It like broke into near billion pieces, man. So unreal. All them guys started hootin’ and squawkin’, lookin’ like a flock of them black ‘n’ white birds. Then another guy broke another. The raucous was so loud, man. Oh it was cool, man. I could of sworn them whole neighbourhood could hear our mighty good time.

Dat was when them cops arrived. Oh they’re like party crashers from them government. We weren’t doin’ anything wrong, were we? They came in their flashy-light cars and came jumping out like them funny jack in them boxes. Oh we laughed and shouted at them, holding up them beer bottles. But they start grabbin' at us. Some guys ran for fun. I can’t remember exactly what happen to me. All I know’s that I’s thrown in dat car like trash. Surely we ain’t dat trashy? We were making art! But them cops didn’t think so. Eventually we cool guys headed for them coppa HQ, again.

I try tellin’ ‘em dat I was about to leave. But they didn’t believe me. So now I’m here waitin’ for mom to pick me up. She won’t care. She won’t say a word.