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“I’d do it again!” Johnny yelled from the backseat of the cop car as he got arrested. Usually, Johnny only gets dragged away by the cops for more minor crimes, like stealing things and setting his homework on fire. But this time, Johnny did something much, much worse, he killed someone. He’s injured people before, when he stole a radio from an old lady and shot her in the leg, but he’s never killed someone. Until now. The guy he ran over was a business man probably, Johnny didn’t really get a good look at him before he was slammed onto the hood of the car he stole and handcuffed. Johnny fiddles with the hem of his boy-scout uniform's shirt, bored out of his mind. “You guys got music in this car?” Johnny says to the cops, trying to get some relief of boredom. Neither respond verbally, but Johnny can see their eyes narrow at his question in the rear-view mirror, so he drops the topic. He decides to look out the window instead, zoning out to the lavender-colored sky and the grass and trees and clouds shooting away behind them. He imagines a skeleton running along the curb, parallel to the police car, avoiding the trees, bushes, and signs as the highway seems to stretch infinitely in either direction.
About an hour passes before they get to the nearest jail, Johnny’s still staring out the window when the door opens and he steps out, his legs stiff from sitting for so long. Johnny keeps his mouth shut for once while they escort him to the holding cell, which was pretty hard for him since he likes to talk. Once he’s in the holding cell and they lock the door, Johnny takes in his surroundings. He sees a lot of criminals, some of them probably did way worse stuff than he did, so he quietly stands in the corner. Johnny daydreams about that cowboy movie he saw on TV a couple hours earlier for a while, eventually getting bored of that and thinks of something else to entertain himself with, he imagines himself in an alien invasion of some sort, killing and ripping them in half, his brain still preoccupied with aliens and space weapons when a cop calls him out and gives him a court date, in two weeks on Thursday, saying he’d better be there, or he’ll get fined 300 bucks. That snaps Johnny out of La-la-land, and he jolts upright before asking “Am I gonna go to prison?” Johnny nervously watches the cop glance at the documents in her hand, too worried about jail to try and keep his cool act up. A beat of silence passes before the cop answers. “No, you’re only 17, so you're gonna go to juvenile detention until your court date instead.” His thoughts ease momentarily at the conformation, before imagining any and all scenarios that could happen there, even the most ridiculous ones, as Johnny’s never been to juvie.
Johnny’s mind continues to spiral as he gets lumped back into the police car he came in. He forces himself to straighten up once he sits down, noticing a different cop is driving instead of the ones that sent him to jail when he hit that business guy. Johnny’s eyes eventually drift back to the window again, the sky had turned a deep blue, and the clouds turned pink since he saw outside last. Maybe I should ask this new cop if he’ll play the radio. Johnny thinks absentmindedly, his eyes not leaving the window. Eh, he’d probably say no, just like the last ones. Cops are strange like that, not listening to music while they’re driving and stuff. Johnny keeps thinking about how weird and boring cops are, and how they never seem to have fun, until they get to the detention. It’s night-time now. Johnny remarks, looking at the sky as he gets walked towards the building. The door opens and Johnny and the cop walk to the front desk, where a middle-aged lady wearing a blue t-shirt sat. She doesn’t look up from the papers she’s working on, and simply says “Room 97.” in a preoccupied voice. Johnny turns and makes his way into the hallway from the front desk, and counts the room numbers on the doors. “2, 8, 16, 24, 32...” He muttered to himself, trying not to wake anyone up, as that’d be an awful first impression, and juvenile detention is far from the best place to make enemies. Johnny reaches the room the lady at the front desk gave him and struggles to pull the door open, surprised by how heavy it is. He looks inside and sees nothing but a plain cot, a toilet, and a dull-looking table desperately trying to pass as a desk. Johnny’s too tired to say anything witty about it. but makes a note in his head to joke about the nonexistent funds of this place. He walks over to that sad-looking cot and crawls on top of it. At least they bothered with a blanket, even if it’s small as hell. Johnny chaffed to himself, his eyes falling closed.
6:30, a blaring, repetitive noise fills Johnny’s ears as he yanked himself upright. “They really do this every day...?” He says groggily. Johnny drags himself out of the cot, barely noticing he’s still in his scout uniform. Johnny doesn’t care though, he’s too irritated from being woken up right before dawn. Johnny looks down and sees a paper on the floor, he picks it up and reads it. “6:30 - Room cleaning and showers, 7:00 - Breakfast, - 8:00 - School!? Dammit, this has gotta be the stupid schedule they gave me, I freakin’ hate school.” Johnny puts the paper on his desk and, having nothing to clean, leaves to go find the showering room. After Johnny is done, he walks back to his room, now wearing a white t-shirt and grey sweatpants, his hair sopping wet and darker. Honestly, I haven’t even been here for a full day yet, but I already hate it. I’ve got to run! Johnny tenses his fists at the thought, fantasizing about escaping. He’s interrupted, because he hears someone ring a bell in signal for breakfast starting.
Johnny gets in the lunch line and observes his surroundings, noting that there aren’t as many kids as he’d thought there’d be. Only about four others, excluding himself. Wonderful, Johnny thought, his eyes flickering with a hint of annoyance, before returning to his usual look. They have waffles, and the syrup isn’t optional. I’m not gonna say anything, though. I don’t feel like letting people think I’m a stuck-up prick. After the lunch lad puts waffles on his tray and a half-full glass of milk, Johnny goes to sit at a table. He chooses the one furthest away from any of his peers, as he doesn’t feel like interacting with kids crazy enough to be here, even though he’s one of them. Johnny picks at his waffles, seeing how rubbery they are, he shudders at the thought of consuming them. Johnny eats them anyway, as his only other option was a single glass of milk, that he considered barely even filled, for breakfast. Johnny doesn’t consider that a healthy breakfast, even though he’s probably had worse. He puts his empty tray in the garbage bin and returns the empty glass, and gets escorted back to his room and given 6 5-page assignments to complete within 6 hours for school, each packet being a different subject.
Johnny stares at the papers in pure resentment, but before he could protest— he’s given a dull pencil with an eraser cap, and a timer, then the door shuts. Johnny stands in silence for a moment, his eye twitching. “At least in prison, they wouldn’t give me freakin’ school worksheets like I’m in 3rd grade.” Johnny uttered frustratedly. He hated school, it bored him so much that he couldn’t focus. He thought the teachers pretended to know things they didn’t, and that they acted all high and mighty. That they acted better than him, just because he was younger than them. At the very least, he wasn’t bullied by any of his classmates, since they were scared of him. That was the one thing Johnny liked about school, everything else he detested to no end. Johnny tries to focus on the paper in front of him, but he could barely understand the math problems on the first page, let alone the terminology. Johnny didn’t like not understanding things, it made him feel inferior. Usually, Johnny just reminds himself that he once built a pipe bomb with nothing but the parts of a mini-fridge, and that puts him back into a better mood. But this time, it didn’t, because it finally hits Johnny that he’s probably gonna get locked up for at least 20 years, maybe even for life, for killing that man. He won’t be able to really do anything that he considers fun, the authority’s way more strict than high-school faculty, and he’s heard plenty of awful things that happen in jails on TV. Johnny barely makes it to the third packet, before the six hours are up, and they get returned to the staff. One of the staff asks Johnny if he wants to go to the board game room, he refuses, because he wants to stay as far away from his peers as possible. The staff shrugs, and leaves him alone.
As soon as the door shuts, Johnny begins planning his escape. He knows it’s risky, and sorta cliche, but he wanted to get out that badly. He draws a plan— sneak out after the lights go out, grab a tray, run towards the window and break it, and escape. What if it doesn’t work? Johnny worries. What if they catch me, and I’ll never escape again? Oh well, Johnny reassures himself. I’ve got a chance, might as well use it. So he waits, keeping himself awake by doodling on the back of the schedule they gave him. Eventually, Johnny stops hearing anything from outside, so he hesitantly opens the door and creeps out, looking around as if someone could pop up at any moment. He decides to put his scout uniform over his current clothes, for protection and/or camouflage, then he softy, yet briskly, walked to the kitchen and grabbed a tray. Think of the consequences, Johnny. What if you get caught, Johnny? Johnny keeps telling himself what-ifs, until a chill runs down his spine. This is the breaking point for him, as Johnny lunges towards the window, tray in front of him like a shield, and breaks the glass. He lands on the dirt and half-dead grass with a thud and a muffled groan of pain. Johnny tries to ignore the shards of broken glass cutting into his skin and clothes to the best of his ability, and crawls towards the mailbox for the juvenile detention. Johnny places his bloody, cut-up hands on the mailbox and puts most of his weight onto it, getting himself upright, but his legs are still a bit unsteady. The pain is horrible, there are cuts all over his arms and legs, most probably have glass in them, but the worst pain is in the giant gash on his right hand. Johnny can barely think straight, that’s how bad the awful, searing pain is.
Johnny hobbles over to the side of the road, and walks along it, contemplating what to do now. He can’t go back to his hometown, they probably know what he did by the time he gets there. The only thing stopping Johnny from completely ruling out the idea of never going back, is the fact that he’d be abandoning his cat, Louie. Despite Louie’s name, she is a girl cat. Johnny was 14 when he got her, and only named her that because he thought it was funny, and his parents practically begged him to not name her a swear instead. Louie was really the only thing Johnny loved, aside from making others lives a living hell. He tried not to think about what would happen to Louie if he didn’t go back to get her. What if they put her in a shelter? At least it’d be better than putting her down... Man, I don’t wanna find my cat DEAD! Johnny doesn’t really like thinking of bad things that could happen when it comes to Louie, but he just can’t get it out of his head. He continues walking alongside the highway for a while, until he spots a forest. It’s pretty small, probably man-made, but Johnny doesn’t exactly feel like sleeping right on the side of the road, so he goes in. He doesn’t get too far into the forest before tiredness hits him like a wave. Johnny walks over to a nearby tree and lies underneath it, falling unconscious within minutes.