THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 9

It was an electronics store. We should have known they’d have cameras, even if we didn’t see them. There wasn’t any audio. It looked like I was talking Natalie into taking it. It was clear that Angelica and I were acting as look-outs. Did you know that’s the same thing as if you were the one stashing something into your bag? We were all charged with shoplifting. Angelica and Natalie didn’t say anything while we were in that little room with the store manager, waiting for our parents to come and get us. I didn’t say anything, either. I was too miserable imagining how disappointed my parents were going to be.

That was the incident. Some advice: If you’re going to do something incredibly stupid and/or illegal, you should make sure you’re doing it with friends who’ve got your back.

My parents got there first, and insisted I be honest, so I told about how the girls were always going to the mall, and about our first trip and Natalie shoplifting, and how today I hadn’t thought she’d really steal it, but I was trying to fit in. Natalie and Angelica didn’t say anything, they just stared at me as if they couldn’t believe what I was saying. Then my parents took me home.

Natalie’s father was an attorney, so they didn’t say a word that night. When they gave their statements to the police, it was all my fault.

They were top students, in the International Baccalaureate program. I was the new kid in the wrong classes. I was the one who convinced them to skip school twice—the only times either of them had been absent all year. I was the one who stole the nail kit, which they’d thought I paid for until I said Natalie took it. I was the one who challenged Natalie to steal that electronic gadget. She was doing it on a dare and fully intended to return it to the store, once she’d proven she wasn’t afraid to take it. Their statements agreed with everything down to the wording of my challenge.

Natalie and Angelica, as top students, were put onto a diversion program. All charges would disappear from their records once they behaved for six months. Even though I was not the one who actually took the device, I was charged with felony theft—I told you it was crazy expensive. The attorney my parents hired recommended that I plead guilty, since I clearly was guilty, on tape, and ask for leniency because I’d never been in trouble before. But the store wanted to make an example of someone, and given the statements of the other girls, I was the bad seed. The judge sentenced me to one month in juvenile hall, and then I was to attend the court school, where I wouldn’t lead any other good kids astray. That placement would be reviewed at the end of the school year.

I was terrified, and it was only the first step toward this cliff I’m sitting on.

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The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

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THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 8

When Mom caught me walking home alone one day, I assured her it was fine, that Angelica and Natalie had to stay after for talking in one of their classes, but that I was being alert and felt comfortable walking home alone. Even outside the gate, it was a decent neighborhood.

So the fall went okay. I even got invited to a Halloween party one of the kids in my art classes was having. My Dad checked out the address and nixed my going there at night, but at least I was asked.

After that invitation, my parents started investigating private schools for me and Rose. We’d been in public school in our small town, where everyone knew everyone, regardless of family income or which side of the tracks you lived. I’d never really thought about it, how it was only kids my parents approved of that I’d spent time with back home. There was this one girl in my Scout troop who wore the same clothes every day and we didn’t make fun of her because we knew she didn’t have any others and that the nurse washed them regularly while the girl wore a donated gym suit. But I don’t know anyone who ever went to that girl’s house.

So the city was different in a lot of ways—and regardless of my Inparents’ belief it was a small town, we were part of the metropolis. I didn’t notice anyone wearing exactly the same clothes every day, but some of the boys would when they’d been out all night partying. They talked about it right in front of the teachers, so I guess no one cared.

Of course, I was in classes with throw-away kids.

It seemed like Angelica and Natalie asked me to go to the mall with them at least once a week. That should have rung some alarm bells, but it didn’t. I knew I could miss half my classes and still ace them. Maybe the IB program wasn’t all that hard, either, or maybe they were smarter than I thought.

I was so stupid. It never occurred to me that they weren’t going without me, that they didn’t shoplift on a regular basis.

They asked about the boy I’d used as an excuse and I told them it was all over. He’d kissed another girl, made me cry, got me in trouble, and that was the end of it for me. In reality, I did have a crush on a boy in my art class, but I wasn’t about to tell anyone about that.

Joey was such a good artist, and he had the longest, thickest eyelashes. I’d never seen him with a girl, but I was sure I wasn’t the only one who liked him. We had the same two art classes, back to back, in the same room, so we could keep working on a project for both periods. He didn’t talk a lot with anyone, he’d get so involved in his art, but when we had to critique each other’s work, he always found something nice to say about mine. Actually, he did the same thing with anyone, but it felt special at the time. Then the first week in December, in art class, I heard him ask another girl to go to the Christmas dance with him. I knew no one would ask me. No one else even talked to me much.

So the next day, when Angelica and Natalie tried to get me to go to the mall with them, I jumped on the chance to avoid art. They seemed surprised, almost reluctant to have me go along, even though they’d been asking me for weeks.

They were both going to the Christmas dance, so we spent all morning looking at dresses. I tried some on, too, so they wouldn’t know I wasn’t going. Out of habit, I kept checking price tags and shying away from the expensive dresses. They made fun of that, as if price was never an object for them.

During lunch, they barely spoke to me. In fact, they’d talked mostly between themselves all day. After we ate, they wanted to go to an electronics store. There was some gadget Natalie’s boyfriend wanted for Christmas. We must have looked at everything in the store before we found it, and it was crazy expensive.

“You’re not going to try and walk out of here with that, are you?” I asked.

I should have kept my mouth shut. Natalie took it as a challenge.

“If you and Angelica watch that no one’s coming.”

We went to opposite ends of the aisle and gave her a thumb’s up when no one was coming. She slipped it into her bag and we headed for the door. We started giggling about ten feet outside the store.

Right before the security guard stopped us.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction #Writing

THE INCIDENT – CHAPTER 7

It’s not really an excuse, but aside from art, my classes bored me stiff, even Spanish. The teacher had such a horrible accent, I could hardly understand whether he was speaking English or Spanish at any given moment. Angelica and Natalie kept walking to school with me. At first it shocked me when they talked about skipping classes. I mean, they were in the illustrious IB program, not the drivel I had to slog through every day.

But there was a mall near the school, and eventually I went along with them, partly because they offered to help me buy makeup and get my nails done properly. Mom’s never been into that stuff. She and Dad would rather hike a mountain than go to a formal dinner, though they don’t do either now. He’s always at work. But I was woefully ignorant of girly things.

Nail polish was my gateway drug.

See? I may not be in AP classes anymore, but I still plan on college, if I live that long.

Anyway, that first time I went to the mall with them, they showed me posters of French and American manicures and they debated which was better. Angelica acted like I was someone special when I agreed with her that the American manicure looked better. It was more natural-looking. We got a kit to do an American manicure, two different emery boards and a pair of cuticle scissors, mascara, eyeliner, and eye shadow that they said would really make my eyes pop, by which I figured out they meant my eyes would stand out more with the makeup. By the time we had it all in the basket, I realized I hadn’t brought enough cash. It was embarrassing, but I admitted I hadn’t realized how much I’d need. Natalie offered to put the American manicure kit back on the shelf and pick up a clear polish, since I liked the natural look.

We got home about the same time we’d get there if we’d been in classes all day. We dropped by my house long enough to tell my mom that we’d made it back to the gated community safely. I dropped off my pack. We’d put all my stuff into Angelica’s bag—I’d have to keep it at her house or my mother would want to know when and where I’d gotten it. I couldn’t very well tell her I ditched school. We all went to Angelica’s house to do our manicures. Angelica had some of the stuff we needed, but they used what I’d bought, too.

When our nails were all shaped and ready for polish, Natalie got this devious smile on her face and said to wait, while she opened her pack. She pulled out the American manicure kit.

“You went ahead and bought it?” I asked. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Of course I didn’t have to buy it. I just put it into my pack.”

“You stole it?”

“It was overpriced.”

If I’d said I wanted no part of it and gone home that day, I would have lost the only people I talked to outside of school. Looking back, that sure would have been the better choice. But I really liked the way those nails looked, so I went along with them and let them do my nails with the stolen kit. So I guess my Gateway drug wasn’t really nail polish, it was the whole kit.

“The only people I talked to outside of school.” You notice I didn’t call them my only friends outside of school? Of course I am writing this with hindsight—I know now they were not my friends—but even back then, on some level I knew they were simply entertaining themselves with me. I thought that meant they were helping the little country bumpkin learn city ways. That would have inferred that they liked me, but they didn’t. They proved that, alright, but not until December.

Through the fall, I went back and forth within myself about the shoplifting. I mean, I used the kit, so did that make me just as guilty as Natalie? I avoided most of their trips to the mall, saying a teacher had called home and my parents were suspicious of my explanation. Having invented this phone call, I then had to invent an explanation. So I said I’d told my parents I had a crush on a boy and had been so upset seeing him locking lips with a girl on the way into art class, and that I had hidden in the bathroom to compose myself.

Angelica and Natalie considered my imaginary excuse to be brilliant and cursed the teacher for being a busy-body who’d call home if I missed class. Other teachers didn’t do that. I blamed Mr. Bonhomme’s artistic nature for caring too much.

In reality, he rarely took attendance. I was more concerned one of the other teachers might say something if I was absent too often, though that was probably me being paranoid. The classes I was in had so many losers in them that a quarter of the seats were empty most days. I doubted any teacher phone calls home for absent students. But Angelica and Natalie bought the excuse. That was all that mattered. We still walked to school together, and often I’d run into them on the way home.

And they still asked me to go to the mall with them, maybe when there was a sub in art.

I thought they liked me.

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

The Incident is contemporary YA (Young Adult). Following time-honored tradition, I’m publishing it here in installments. To be alerted when the next segment goes online, “follow” this blog. The entire story will be published here. You are welcome to share this link with others, but please respect copyright by contacting me for permission if you want to publish the story elsewhere. Thank you.

#teenmoving #teenintrouble #teenchangingschools #teenincrisis #bullying #teencontemplatingsuicide #YA #freefiction #YoungAdultFiction #fiction