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Got in with the wrong crowd, they said. Eyeballs rolling down the hill. Where boys look like men, men look like boys, girls are just toys. Substance over style. It started with a smoke, an inexperienced choke, a whiff, a snort, a sniff of powder like sherbet from the newsagent. Then I was shooting for the stars, only to whack my head on the ceiling of the earth. Come crashing down, sprawled on the ground. Wasted potential, they said. Always asking for more. Reams of notes rolled like cigarettes. What’s a family heirloom anyway? Grandma doesn’t need her pearls. In the park, in the dark, take the packet, put in in your jacket, the one you found smelling of beer, smelling of pee in the alleyway. Lungs like factories, ash, billowing smoke. What did you do for that bloke? The money was worth it anyway. Family, identity, dignity, trivialities to be kept in a purse really. Sitting on the bench with nothing but a fix, drifting with happy blood. Waking, hunched on all fours. Rigid, dry bones. Wind whistling through the slats, gaps in my body. I kick the empty cider cans at my feet guzzled by the kids from the street. Tattooed with graffiti on my back. Joggers run back, joggers run fourth, stopping for a rest on my knee. Their pink, working lungs heaving as they breathe. Then the thunderous rumble of pushchair wheels, sore mums nipping, chasing at childcare’s heels. A woman, old, lowered herself down avoiding the chewing gum, my skin’s mysterious stains. Grappling with a crossword, she swatted away dementia like a fly. Then she looked to the sky, interpreting the message in the clouds: spoilt are the young who ruin their lives.
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Ending of a novel
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Film Script by Lottie, Year 9