Ruining His Summer

Chapter Four: The Defiance of Guidians

According to Norman, I’m supposed to tell Elsie the “graphic details of my crime.”

This isn’t something I really want to do. I’d much rather keep the fact I’m the one who gave Abe his ugly scar a secret from everyone here.

But I’m not ashamed or anything, I don’t know how attached these kids are to Abe. I could be forming a Guidians mafia if they find out. Although, I guess they’re going to eventually.

That still doesn’t mean I have to be the one to tell them.

Elsie flipped the pen Norman gave her to write down the points in my “lesson.” “Aren’t you supposed to tell me about what you did or something?” she asked.

I nodded. “Yeah,” I told her.

She gestured for me to go on. “Well, then . . .”

Sighing, I looked at the points of the lesson I was supposed to tell her about offenses. I had to explain what I did and why, what my punishment was, and how it totally sucked.

This basically just means scare the kid from making crappy decisions like you did.

“Okay,” I said, and across the room I could see Stella and Tristan sitting on the floor, going over their own lesson, “I set fire to my dad’s boat two years ago.”

“You said that already,” Elsie informed me. She pointed the eraser of her pen to the now-empty circle of metal chairs. “Introduction, remember?”

This was already grating on my nerves. “That’s too bad because that’s all I’ve got,” I told her.

Elsie glanced at my sheet of points. “You’re supposed to explain why you did it.”

Only one thing came to mind. It probably wasn’t the best answer to give but if they wanted the truth, it was the only one they’d get from me.

“I was angry,” I told her.

For the first time during our whole “lesson” she makes eye contact with me. “Why?”

Now here is where it starts to sound stupid. “I don’t know,” I answered, running my fingers along the small table. “I just was.”

I wasn’t even lying. I really didn’t know where the sudden rage came from, but suddenly it was there and it wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon.

And two years later, it’s still there like an uninvited guest and you had no idea what they were doing here to begin with, and you don’t know when they’re leaving.  

“What did they do?”

I blinked. “They hauled me off to juvie,” I said flatly, like I was saying that it was meant to rain tomorrow or what I had for breakfast.

Elsie looked around. I thought for a second a small smirk crossed her face. “None of us has been to juvie before,” she said, like it was an inside secret. “What was it like?”

I guess this could be described as the How it Sucked part, and suddenly the whole room was looking at me, eyes wide and a jaw dropped.

The dropped jaw was Tristan’s by the way.

I didn’t know if they were all generally interested in the answer of my question, to decide whether or not going to juvie was a big enough deal to forgo their troublemaker ways, or if they were surprised that someone actually went to juvie.

Either way, it didn’t matter to me. I didn’t like being the center of attention.

And they were waiting. Waiting to hear what juvie was really like, from someone who was a two year resident.