Jim was in and out of jail his whole life, he had never made the right decision during his time that he was a free man. During the days he spent in jail that was where he had gotten all of his tattoos and he had committed himself to grow a full, bushy mustache. Jim’s attitude reminded me much of a man that was up to no good; there was always the same look in his eyes that made me not trust him. Jim and my mother had been seeing each other for about two months before the whole fiasco of Steve and my mother having an outburst.
Every five day of the week my mother and I would travel by bus and be driven through the empty vast lots of dry, yellow, dead grass, and slightly lime-green leaves that barely hung from the trees; passing the distant lake; passing distant houses way, way in the distant; and finally reaching the outer gas station in the next town that was our destination. We walked the rest of the way until we would arrive at the very spacious T Park. T Park was a friendly looking park, with nature evenly split with every site you turned to. T Park contained a colorful playground, picnic benches, a gazebo, a skate park and horseshoe pits, also restrooms to your convenience. There was a concrete wall that ran along the back edges of the park, blocking just enough for any small children wouldn’t and get hurt in the creek that raised high or low depending on the amount of rain that shed.
When we would go to T park, I always thought to myself what a great time or moment that I had at the park. It was as if the park was whole ‘nother dimension’ that made me stress free every time we went. I thought wouldn’t it be great if I could come here everyday.

During the course of visiting the park within the months this had happened my mother and Jim the Rebel pressured me into making friends, with some of the local, troublesome teenagers. Just about everyday there would be a group of kids that would smoke and drink. They all smoked and drank just about anything you could think of: wee, cigars, cigarettes, molly, Jack Daniels, Vodka, etcetera (like I said, ‘just about anything you could think of’.

I came up with an idea of my own; kind of like a peace offer to let them know that I wasn't harmful. I brought a rolled up joint, made by Bob (in attempts to hurry me along so him and my mother could have ‘alone time’)and some extra to spare. I walked up to the only familiar face I knew, he had an older face and I had heard that he had dropped out of school. I had never gotten his name because in a hurried rush he left the day my mother and me were introduced to Jim the rebel. I remembered him. My mother and I thought that it was Jim the Rebel’s son. In a desperate attempt for male attention my mother said it would be best if I “go” for him.



I began to hear murmurs from the grouped teens and the the familiar face turned around.

“Hey”, was the response I heard.

“Hi”, I replied, trying to ignored the uneasy faces as they stared at me.

I could feel the faces. I was nervous. “Wanna smoke”, he asked.

I nodded and he jokingly yelled at his friends to hand me the pipe they all had smoked from.When the pipe came to him be handed it to me and watched as I lite and inhaled the smoke into my lungs. He had expected me to start choking when I only coughed once. I nervously handed him back the pipe and sat down at the end of the group, next to a pale, heavy-set girl. She looked familiar. Yes, I remembered her, her name was Emma.
Seeing that in all honesty I truly didn’t smoke cigarettes or weed (In the beginning I only pretended), but today was different and it had reached my insides, I began to feel like tears were forming from my eyes as I inhaled smoke two more times. I was a ‘light weight’.

Emma had recognized me too. She curiously asked me if we had went to Elementary school together and I replied yes. I offered to share my joint and asked her what the boy’s name was that was so familiar. “Tim”, yes that fit him. Tim joined Emma and I and smoked the rest of the joint, while the rest of the ‘buds’ I had I gave to rest of the stoned group. My eyes were turning bloodshot-red, and I was feeling dizzy.

During the commotion that had been made (which was every other night, cause in between thoses nights no one talked to each other), I had a strange, like something was missing or was about to become missing. That might have been why I had gotten up as quickly as I did when I heard my mother yelling at Steve and Joe, at ten o’clock at night, that and her slamming the door on the way out.
As we continued on our walk reaching the outer part of the small town my mother had stopped her walking, wiped her forehead, and took a swig of her fourth or fifth forty of the night (we had stopped at a local convenience store before our walking to the next town began). I gazed out into the night’s dark sky and thought ‘what a pretty night it was’, I didn’t have much other thoughts except for that I was tired had nearly sprinted out of the house. I guess I wasn't really thinking that much, cause when I had left the house I had a yellow and black, thick strapped shirt and my old, ripped-in-the-knee pants, that had happened earlier that day.
“Oh! Here!”, my mother said as she reached into her brown, small backpack-looking purse and pulled out a card. It was a phone card. I had gotten a prepaid minute phone for my fifteenth birthday, two months before this moment and had recently ran out of minutes. I was lucky that I had always carried my phone with me and had it in my pant pockets at all times. I quickly pulled out my phone and entered the numbers in and awaited my phone to have service.
“When did you get this? Thank you!”.
“I think it was a week ago, I knew you would run out of minutes so I got it for you when you needed it. Come on”, my mother said as she began to walk.
I followed quickly behind her.

It was beginning to get dark quickly. I began to trip on little pebbles of gravel and fall off onto the side of the road. It had seemed like hours had gone by in our walking when a dark colored truck drove a ways past us, stopped, and drove backwards until it was in front of us and we heard a males voice say, “Hey, want a ride”.
From my peripheral vision I saw my mother shrug her shoulders and say, “Sure… Ya!” .
As the dark colored truck continued to drive further back, it swung around and drove the other way. My mother began to walk a little quicker than what she had been doing and so did I. A worried thought had crossed my mind, what if when he came back that man tried to ‘do something”.
“Mom what if that man tries to do something bad?”, I asked in concern.
“We’ll be fine”, was her response. My mother very slowly started to fidget with her sleeves cuff and showed me a black pocket knife that was securely tucked inside. She exhaled and then quickly took the snug pocket knife from her sleeve and handed it to me. “Here take it, I have another one”.

Around twenty minutes later as our long dark walk continued, with occasional cars passing by, I heard a car coming behind us. I heard the noises it made as it was slowly coming to a stop near us; it sounded like the car was driving on a gravel road; (thats how I pictured it in head). I saw the headlights behind us, the lights gleaming on us. I turned around. Red and blue lights flashed as I turned and I quickly looked away and dropped my pace in walking as I called my mother who was determined to get away as quickly as possible and soon she stopped too.
We were there standing on the side of the road, for a good ten minutes and finally the police man had stopped his forcefully tone and police tactics as my mother had explained what had happened. The police man seemed like a good man, his uniforms name had read, Baltimore.
The officer was quick to ask if we needed a ride to where we were going at the time and my mother had said yes. While we were in the police car we sat in the back and the officer maneuvered around direct questions as to what had happened and my mother being the women she was gave simple answers and didn’t exactly tell the whole truth as to what had happened (as usual). I simply ignored the conversation and looked out the window falling asleep as we drove to wherever it was my mother was going to lie to the officer about. I thought once again, ‘what a pretty night it was’ as I looked into the star filled night.