Chapter 4 - Griffin
who am i? you ask, well who am i to know. maybe i'm the words you speak all
ALONE
i'm still figuring it out, my seams have yet to be
SOWN
How dare they?! How dare they refuse me from taking the public bus just because I went to reform?! So here I am, walking 5 kilometers westbound to my house. Reformatory school shapes a person back into a mold, it doesn't distort them even more! Uncultured swines...
I had been getting on the bus, real quietly like I always do when some narrow-minded northside girl turned around to face her friend and, not exactly quietly, whispered to her."Oh my gosh! Isn't that the guy who went to Juvi?!" Which in turn, caused the elderly bus driver to face me and said, "Ain't no problems gonna happen in my bus!" and kicked me off.
Grumbling to myself, I walked behind the school, kicking the ground beneath my sore feet. I was starting to calm down a bit, my breath evening out and my thoughts slowing down.
But I guess it just wasn't my day.
"Hey Griff!" A low voice called out to me, and I whipped my head up. Nobody's called me 'Griff' is a long time. "Hey!"
I turned my head towards the all too familiar, graffiti-clad brick walls. And just as I thought, there they were.
"'Ey! You remember me?" This rather brash and cocky boy, Conner had swaggered his way over to me, his arms outstretched as if he were welcoming me into his home. "Oh come on, Griff-Man! You remember your boy Conner! You know, Conner the Man, Conner the Great!"
"Yeah, yeah I do." I did, really. I remembered how he left me out in the dust, with nothing but blame on my hands. "Surprised I didn't see you back in reform, actually." He laughed, tilting his head back and holding his stomach, before whipping his pudgy face back to me, making his cheeks ripple like Jell-O.
"Well ya know my Dad, ya know, the lawyer?" Conner stepped closer to me with big stomping steps. His grin was getting wider and wider, exposing his yellowing tobacco-stained teeth. "Well, he got me outta that!"
"Yeah, so uh, what do ya want then? Money? You know I don't got none." I stepped backwards, trying to get his wretched body farther from mine.
"Ah, nah!" He grinned much wider and called his posse forward. "We want you back, Griff. And you know better than anybody that we got all the good stuff you need." The thugs behind him grinned at each other, grasping at their sagging pants and sniggering.
One particularly small boy, no older than 15 had spoke up. "Unless you're too chicken!" He laughed obnoxiously, which earned him a smack on the back of the head from Conner. "Shut up, Kevin!" Conner growled before turning back to me. "So, what do ya say?"
Shaking my head, I kept walking along the cracked cement path, staring back down at my feet. I was done with all that, I couldn't go back to them or the reformatory school. Not after what they did to me.
It started off like a normal day, get up, skip school with Conner and the gang and then find somewhere to smoke. It was great for a while, actually. Helped me get my mind off of everything, and it made me a part of something else. Then we got caught up in the stealing and the lies, and the money became a problem, the drugs becoming a part of us.
