The Innocents

loved so much, and given him the money. But when the coach said Ryatt must also buy costly protective gear, he had thrown the towel in.
That’s when Ryatt was schooled in yet another lesson for poor people: like decent clothes, shoes, and tasty food, ambition needed funding, too. Mad skills and natural talent weren’t enough in Ryatt’s world. The next day, he had given the money to the pawn shop guy who had bought the necklace from Iris. But the cocksucker had swindled an extra $20 out of Ryatt. Interest, he had said. Ryatt, biting down the anger, paid him and reclaimed the necklace and returned it to his mom.
However, the same night he and his two trusted lieutenants threw seven Molotovs inside the shop, converting the building into a dark skeleton of its former self.
“What do your parents do, son?” Michelin Man spoke this time.
There was a fatherly quality and care to his voice, and Ryatt took an instant liking towards him. He imagined this guy would be a cordial but stern dad, a responsible husband who probably owned a nice three-bedroom house in the suburbs which stayed free of crime, drugs, and vandals. No sirens, no gunshots, and no loud arguments like Ryatt’s neighborhood. Oh how desperately he wanted to rescue Iris from that disgusting place which festered with vermin.
“They dead,” Ryatt said. First rule of the streets, according to him anyways, was that no one should know anything about you. Except your very best buddies, everyone was an enemy, everyone a snitch.
“I’m sorry for that, I truly am,” Michelin said, his sympathetic eyes locked at Ryatt’s in the rearview mirror. “But crime is no way to live your life, boy. Trust me on this: money can’t buy you happiness.”
“You don’t know what you talking about.” Ryatt scoffed and smirked, his voice carrying a mix of anger and sadness. He didn’t really need to have a heart to heart with this guy, but what he began doing to stall the pigs was quickly turning into a conversation he’d rather do without.
Ryatt chased the thoughts away, turning his attention once again to the job at hand. The tumbler clicked and the first cuff unlocked.
Yes! Fuck yes!
Like fear, he didn’t allow excitement to go to his head. Calming down, he reminded himself he still had one more cuff to do, or undo rather, but not a lot of time. The precinct was just around the corner.
“I don’t?” Michelin asked. “I’ve seen kids like you, good kids with a lot of potential gunned down in alleys and gutters, and left to die like dogs.”
“If they have brains the size of dogs, then they deserve to die like dogs,” Ryatt retorted.
The pig smirked. “Too tough for your age, you know that? Say, is this your first time?”
“Yup,” Ryatt said truthfully. First time getting arrested that was. However, he had committed his very first act of crime when he was eleven. During recess at the playground, he threatened a nameless Asian kid with a sharp stone into handing over his batman lunchbox. That’s when Ryatt discovered the gratification of taking things that didn’t belong to him. The pleasure was double-fold when you yanked it right out of the possessor’s hand. It brought some kind of much-needed justice to the world. The grotesque gap between the rich and the desperate slightly filled every time the latter robbed the former. In a way, people with things to spare were fat gazelles, and the poor and needy, a pack of hyenas. No matter what the law said or ordered—or like in Ryatt’s case now, tried to reason with—nature happened. No one had the power to stop nature. Not the police, not the government, and certainly not God. If he did, why so much inequality in the world?
“There’s hope for you, kid,” Michelin said.
“How come?” Ryatt said, cursing inside. They had turned onto the street where the precinct was. He had one minute. The most important one minute of his life.
“The arresting detective said you didn’t even try to run. Must mean you’re feeling guilty for selling dope, don’t it?”
Um… no. Ryatt didn’t run because the odds were stacked against him. The pig that caught Ryatt was also black, but a lot leaner than these two. He had at least a foot on Ryatt, and his sinuous forearms and neck, and broad chest and long legs insinuated that, like Ryatt, he was also an athlete. Or he had been at some point in his life not so long ago. Running meant Ryatt would have easily been caught, adding ‘resisting arrest’ to his charge sheet, which didn’t bother him as much as another problem: they would have taken better care of chaining Ryatt and kept a closer eye on him.
So Ryatt bid his time. And when he saw that the police cruiser the detective pig had called in was driven by two fat pigs, he had almost laughed in happiness. He knew, one way or another, he wouldn’t see the inside of a jail cell that day.
“I am sorry, sir,” Ryatt said, mainly to distract the pigs from the noise that the desperate paperclip was making inside the other cuff. It was not coming undone, and Ryatt believed that he’d bent the tip out of shape and got it stuck.
Then his stupidity dawned on him.
Ryatt could do a lot better by also employing his eye, couldn’t he? Cursing himself, he slowly brought his hands around his stomach, not letting the movement reach his upper arms, which were visible in the rearview mirror.
“It’s alright, son,” Michelin said. “The judge’s a good lady. She’d probably let you off with a warning, if you tell us just one thing.”
“What?” Ryatt asked, almost too hastily. He should hurry.
“Who supplied you with drugs?”
Yeah, right. That would be the fastest way to meet your maker, but also the