Misadventures Of A Teenage Dirtbag

01 can't stop

CHAPTER 01
[ can't stop ]
by red hot chili peppers

The idea first comes to me when I'm shoving my way through people in the hallway on the way to first period, scuffed boots thumping on slick floors and vaguely familiar faces flashing through my peripherals.

Life could be better than this.

To get you up to speed, here's a quick rundown of my situation. My name is Chester Kingston. I live in a crappy foster home, or at least I did before I pissed off our caretaker enough for her to pretty much kick me out a couple weeks ago. She never meant anything she said, basically ever, and when it came to stuff like that she was all talk and no game. Well, guess what? That's not my style. So when I took my backpack of stuff and said I wasn't coming back, I wasn't being facetious. Anyway, I found an abandoned garage that used to be part of a repair shop, and no one's stopped me from staying there yet. The school doesn't know—they can't—and neither does the state or anyone involved with Child Protective Services. I am so, so close to being eighteen, and by the time they all figure it out, it'll be too late. I'll be long gone, like a fart in the wind. Yes, I used the worst metaphor possible. Deal with it.

My school has to be the weirdest high school in all of California. To prove my point, I'll point out the cliques. Every high school has cliché groups, right? Jocks, nerds, cheerleaders, goths, whatever. Okay, so here's what the cliques at my school look like. We have jocks, yeah. But for some ungodly reason, our school board refuses to pay for football equipment, so our most prestigious sport is bowling. So you have the bowling team who wear letterman jackets with cartoon bowling balls on them and brag about being state champions three times running, with spiked haircuts and, the way they see it, the word 'cool' plastered across their foreheads. They don't get any girls. It's hilarious.

Then of course you've got your newspaper journalist kids who carry around microphones and only talk in reporter voices. Do not get one of those guys talking unless you have at least an hour because none of them have a great grasp on the concept of shutting up. There's also the chemistry nerds, who are kind of like mathletes except they cost the school a ton of money in property damage. The popular girls at our school instead of being brain-dead Instagram models are apparently finance gurus who earn money by running a makeover business in the bathrooms that the staff haven't found out about yet—they spend every day at lunch balancing the budget. Oh, yeah, and we also have cosplayers who dress up in a different theme every day. Picture theater kids but a thousand times worse.

I won't even get into the teachers because that's a whole other ordeal, including Mr. Riddick, who has a robotic arm with a built-in laser pointer and smokes cigars in class, and Mrs. Bridgers, who was somehow hired to teach Spanish but only actually knows German.

On the outside of all that, wandering around the edges, are the misfits. You know, people who aren't really in any specific group and either float around being acquaintances with everyone, end up as goth loners, or are just sort of losers who get shoved in lockers and spend free time volunteering in the library. This group is one that you can pretty much always count on to be lingering in the corners of the halls, no matter what school you go to. My friends and I are here, residing in a misfit subgenre most people have taken to calling the teenage dirtbags. A little bolder than the shy dorky types, a little friendlier than the edgy goths. Maybe some rule-breaking here and there, but you didn't hear that from me. We all trade eyeliner and cigarettes and stuff and are pretty much your average pop-punk wannabes. Nothing special.

It's pretty chill, and we're not that weird considering the rest of the school's population. We do have one minor thing—I don't really remember how it started, but we all call each other by like, super obscure nicknames. Mine is... gah, I shouldn't even say it. It's bad enough I have to hear it every day—