proper crooks.

I end up walking for about half an hour, following a path that’s been permanently burned in my memory--most likely for the rest of my life, at which point, I find myself standing in the middle of a field overgrown by dying, dried-out grass surrounded by trees and the same red-brick buildings I remember from what you could call the “good ol’ days.”

Some days they were. I suppose I could call myself somewhat of a high school king, but never in the sense that I was a sports star or super student. I did win Prom King senior year and stay apart of all kinds of leadership clubs, however. But there were only two important things that I ever did in high school, the first being picking up a guitar freshman year and the second being mustering up the courage to say hi to that gorgeous girl in the rehearsal room after school one September day during junior year.

I look around the field--there’s the auto class where we tried to fix my Beetle’s busted engine after I’d only had it for two weeks. We never did. There’s the basketball court, the cracked asphalt where some of my friends tried to teach me how to play basketball. I never could. There’s the baseball field where we’d hang out after school, whether there was a game or not. Oh, and there’s the tree where--

A round, yellow light in my peripheral vision catches my attention, startling me right out of my reminiscent cloud of high school memories that would be better off forgotten, anyway, so in a way, I’m grateful for the distraction. I watch the light grow brighter and larger until I see what appears to be a police officer approaching me with a torch in his hand.

I tilt my head back. “What seems to be the problem, officer?”

He tilts his head to the side. He’s not wearing those blue hats like they do in London. It makes him look less comical, I’ll give him that.

“What do you think you’re doing?” he asks me gruffly.

“Me?” My eyebrows pull together. “Nothing much. What d’you think you’re doing?”

Light-heartedness has always been one of my less-desirable traits. There’s no limit for the extent I will go to to make someone laugh, even if it’s a police officer. I’ve been tormenting them since I was ten years old. I think I must get it from Charlie.

“You better watch your mouth, boy,” he snaps.

I shrug. “It’s just a question. You asked me one, huh, now why can’t I ask you one?”

He snarls and shines his torch into my eyes. I instinctively shut my eyes and look away, finding a bald spot in the grass to focus my attentions on instead.

“What you’re doing here is loitering,” he explains to me as if I’m really two years instead of twenty-two.

“Loitering?” I echo in my best attempt at an American accent. It comes out sounding exactly like that kid at the airport did. The fat one.

He’s already lost his patience, I can tell, but he clears his throat and stretches his neck anyway. He looks like a dilophosaurus, but laughing now would probably not be in my best interest.

But when have I ever heeded to that kind of warning? I don’t remember the last time I did something because it would “be in my best interest.”

“It’s a crime,” he says.

I nod, eyes still glued to the ground and let out a short, almost sad and disbelieving laugh. “Well I say you should run along catch some proper crooks, huh?”