Prison Lives

Part 1: Secrets 

My name is Riley, I’m a 19 year old teenage girl and I’m homeless. I still go to college though, meet up with friends and they don’t know I’m homeless, they think I go home to a loving rich family, well guess what? I don’t. They only think that I am rich because of my clothing, I only get the latest fashions from Hollister, because I steal, I’m good at it; I have never been caught once. I have done it for four years now. I have long wavy brunette hair, and brown eyes. I have a very small mouth in comparison to my other features, very thin eyebrows and I am slightly tanned with no spots, I have a few freckles and long legs, which I hate, but I think that is what Bobbie liked the most about me.

I gave into peer pressure in fear of been alone with no friends, but doing that left me with no family and as I moved away, I was left with no friends. I have friends now and they are great, we have been friends since I went to their secondary school and I met someone on the streets, we became good friends and after a while she encouraged me to go to school and she pretended to be my Mum on several occasions and the teachers fell for it, because she looked like she was in her 30’s, very grown up for her age, she is in fact only 19. The only reason she kept encouraging me to go to school was because she didn’t, she feels that she missed out and without qualifications she can’t get a job- earn money, get a home and a new life off the streets.

She hates it, on the streets, it’s pretty dangerous, but we stick together. I don’t know how she ended up on the streets, she will never tell me even though I have told her my story, I guess I should say why I ended up on the streets…

 when I was a teenager I fell in with the wrong crowd, started hanging around with the wrong people and left my best friend, since the age of four, to try and be ‘cool’, the stuff they did was wrong and they involved me and as soon as I hung around with them, I did bad stuff, they were telling me to do it, all there egging me on and I had to, they were calling me names like “Pussy”, “Wimp” and just threatening me, all standing there, watching and waiting, I looked down at the boy, he seemed so young, a life ahead of him, he looked terrified, he looked up at me, with pleading eyes, I looked away from him to the faces of my ‘friends’ and I did, I pulled the trigger and the boy gave one last breath…. I had killed him…

We all ran off, leaving him there to die and I had to take the gun with me, and we ran off in opposite directions and I have been on the run since. My friends today hang around with a murderer and they don’t know that….

 I don’t know what happened to the rest of the gang, I know a couple of them rung me to tell me they had got away with it, but they wanted me to hand myself in, no way was I going to do that, so I threw away my phone, after ringing my parents and apologising and telling them what happened, so they moved away from our hometown, to a place where no one knew them and would get suscipious if they didn’t see me, because they don’t know I exist. My parents have covered for me for four years, and I feel so horrible that I cannot even ring them to thank them, they have to lie to everybody that is in their lives, about their pasts and about me, and I will never be able to thank them enough for this. I just can’t believe that I have put them through this. I still have the gun today, it is now wrapped in a old t-shirt of mine, stuffed at the bottom of my rucksack, its in amongst all my college textbooks and my pens, that have been lent to me by friends and I tell them that I lost their pen, but really I haven’t I have just kept it, it saves me from going and stealing them. Every time I steal, I always feel scared, scared that I am going to get caught, I know I have never been caught in the four years of doing it, but what if I get caught one time, what will happen to me? I have been lucky for so long, but I won’t be lucky forever, someone will find me out eventually and see me for what I really am… a murderer…

I look down at the gun, the gun that took somebody’s life away, the gun that took somebody’s son away from them, the gun that took somebody’s brother away from them, the gun that took somebody’s friend away from them. The boy that I killed could have meant so much to so many different people, he may not have just been a son, brother and friend, he could have been a boyfriend, or even a Dad, you hear about so many teen pregnancies, he was apparently only 15, when he died, the next day was his 16th birthday.

The gun is shiny and black, and is now bullet-less, I shot two bullets through the boys heart, I clutch the gun and start to cry.

“Hey, are you ok?” A voice says behind me, I think I may recognise it, so I look up and see my good friend Mattie (girl who pretends to be my Mum) standing behind me.

“Yeah fine.” I say quickly wrapping the gun back up and stuffing it back into my bag, I wipe the tears away with the back of my right hand.

“Did you just have the gun out?”

“No.” I say nervously.

“You did, I saw you, what have I told you, if you get caught with that it will not be good, also it’s probably not best to get it out for a long time, considering I have just seen the newspaper.”

“What do you mean?”

She holds the newspaper up and I see the front page news, the headline is: “Suspects are been held for questioning over the Danny Baker death.”

I read on a bit:

‘Danny Baker was a happy 15 year old boy, who had lots of dreams and aspirations, of which he hoped to achieve. The night before his 16th birthday he was found dead in his hometown outside of Tesco. He was a much loved friend, son, brother, nephew, boyfriend and even a Dad, he had a 1 year old son by the name of Callum Baker, and his son is now 5 years old, questioning his family continuously where his Daddy is? His Mum who is now 20 years old has said in a interview, that she can’t cope and she feels totally useless, without her lover, ‘he was an amazing Dad and boyfriend and I was really looking forward to our wedding day and our amazing life together. I also feel helpless because I still can’t tell Callum what happened to his Daddy, four years later, please do something and find this horrible person that took away a huge part of my life, half of me was all in Danny, now Danny has gone, I’m spilt in half.’

“Oh my god.” I breathe out,

“He was a Father.” I mumble to Mattie and then I just start crying and I can’t stop. Mattie looks down at me and looks right into my eyes,

“You… um… said that you let the gun off by accident, so you killed him by accident, is that still true?”

I look up at her with tears in my eyes, and shake my head, because I can’t bring myself to say it.

“Oh my god, I took you in because you said it was an accident and I felt sorry for you, and all this time you have been lying to me, and just let me believe that you aren’t capable of doing such a cruel action, purposefully, but you are and I have been hanging around with a cold blooded murdering liar!” She screams loudly so that women pushing their pushchairs suddenly stop and look horrified and I have to do something, but before I can Mattie walks off shaking her head at me, she looks so ashamed, but I can’t go to prison… I can’t.  I don’t know where Mattie is heading, but I have to follow her, no matter where she is going, so that I can find out where she is going and stop her from doing something stupid and something that she will regret. But I shouldn’t have followed her, I should have run forever, but now I can’t….