Oscar reached out and felt the cold handle of the emergency door, resting his hand on it. Finally. Escape. With one single action he would get out of this nightmare and back to his normal life, pretending this day had never happened. He would run home with the protection of the concealing night and no one would ever suspect him of being involved.
With one simple action. Piece of cake.
That simple action turned out to be the biggest mistake of his life. The peaceful darkness instantly turned into the complete opposite. The alarm was screeching with a constant ear-piercing sound and the red spotlights cut through the dark like daggers, exposing him. Panicking, Oscar ran out through the metal door, out into the darkness of midnight.
It was raining. The rain looked like black ink from the faint glow of the new moon, and splattered all over his face, making it hard for him to see. Or maybe it was the tears that had started falling without any warning.
Suddenly he bumped into something. Or someone. Through the blur of his eyes a man could be seen, who seemed to have appeared from nowhere. The man was harsh, pulling Oscar's arms behind his back and handcuffing him. A deep voice in front of Oscar's bending figure confirmed he had been arrested.
The words made Oscar wince. How could things have gone so badly so quickly? What had seemed to be the best time of his life turned out to be the worst. If only he could relive the last week of his life. But he had been so happy...
It was ten o'clock in the morning on a Tuesday of October. Sitting alone on a bench in front of the school building was 17-year-old Oscar Hamilton. People walked past him without giving him as much as one glance. They were used to seeing him by himself. Oscar didn't care either. He was used to it. Of course it would be nice to have someone to talk to and laugh with at times, but being alone wasn't that bad either. At least that's what he was trying to convince himself of.
Things hadn't always been this way, though. He used to be very outgoing, always having a group of friends surrounding him. But then his closest friend had decided to turn on him. At the age of 12 he started to smoke, becoming the 'cool kid'. People didn't like that at first, but they were afraid of confronting him. Instead, they joined him, helping him to bully Oscar. Every single day of school was like surviving hell, but Oscar kept a straight face, keeping in the pain and longing for high school to start. Finally the time came, and he chose a school far away where no one would know him and he would be able to start over again from the beginning.
That's not exactly what happened, however. It turned out to be that he had been affected too strongly by the three year period of being bullied; he had developed a phobia for people. So he kept to himself, watching other people meet new people, imagining what it would feel like to have friends.
This Tuesday was going to be out of the ordinary. Oscar could say that for sure when a guy came over to him and sat down beside him.
"Hey!" He greeted him. His tone suggested that they were life long friends.
"Hello," Oscar replied quietly, still not sure how to behave around people his age.
"Aren't you Oscar Hamilton?" he asked. Oscar was surprised the guy even knew his first name.
"Yeah," he confirmed, feeling slightly less uncomfortable. "I am."
"I'm Lucas Cole, we're in the same Biology class." He reached his hand out and Oscar took it, albeit slightly hesitantly. He was quite sure he had seen the guy before.
They continued to talk until the end of the break. Oscar wasn't sure how he was supposed to react, having someone at his age talk to him for the first time in months. But he was surprised at how nice Lucas was, not to mention how thrilled he was about the fact that someone actually was talking to him as a person and not some weirdo.
It turned out that Oscar and Lucas was in the same English and Algebra class as well. Before Oscar even had the time to react he had someone to talk to, laugh with, wait for. He had a friend. They spent a lot of time together, both inside and outside of school. So it was completely normal to Oscar when Lucas one Saturday invited him over to his house. He knocked on the wooden door, and Lucas let him in. But they weren't alone. The living room was full of teenagers from their school. The naughty kids, those that broke rules and failed classes. And they smoked. Oscar contemplated whether or not he should make a run for it, but Lucas pointed at a chair for him to sit down on and the opportunity to get out of there was abruptly in the past.
After a while Oscar was glad he hadn't ran away. They were all like Lucas, astonishingly nice. And they called him buddy, making them friends.
He, Oscar Hamilton, was friends with the cool kids. He could hardly believe it.
After sitting and talking in Lucas' living room for a while they decided to head out. Oscar's whole day was spent with the boys, having fun. He started to come out of his shell and was more or less his old self when the evening approached. That was also when other things happened. They all went back to Lucas' home, where the biggest of the boys revealed a several-times folded paper from his back pocket. He unfolded it and laid it out on the table where everyone could see it. From what Oscar could see, it looked like a blue print. Of bank vaults. That same guy confirmed Oscar's suspicions; they were going to rob a bank.
Lucas interpreted the uncertainty in Oscar's eyes and started to tell the whole story. They wanted scooters to become an MC-gang, but since they were all from lower-income families they couldn't afford any. Their solution? Robbing a bank. As if that was somehow going to change Oscar's mind about the situation.
At first, Oscar pretended he was in, that he was going to help them. But what really was going on was that he was in a major dilemma: He wanted to keep his friends. They'd had more fun during this day alone than Oscar's entire high school career.
On the other hand he had also been raised to not do anything illegal. 'The last thing you want is to have the cops on your back', his father had said. 'That complicates just about everything in life'.
But then, he still didn't want this short period of happiness to end. It felt like going in a circe; to get his happiness he had to do a crime. To avoid crime he had to avoid happiness.
While Oscar stood there lost in his own world, weighing the pros and cons of robbing a bank with each other, the other guys were getting ready. They picked out black outfits from Lucas' wardrobe and put them on.
Lucas handed one to Oscar, and that was when it got to him. During his whole life he had been mocked around with, and then ignored. Nobody had cared enough about him to bother getting to know him. No one except for Lucas. But that wasn't enough. He needed to show the world he existed.
Watch out, he thought as he took the clothes from Lucas' hands. Here comes Oscar Hamilton.
