Excerpted from Something Wicked by Sherry Ashworth. Copyright © 2004. All rights reserved.
It was only a short walk to the bus station, down the High Street and then across King’s Gardens where the moshers hang out. Another place I wasn’t supposed to go at night. It was a square lined with bushes. Each street bordering it had a path that led to the middle, where there was a fountain that hadn’t had water in it for years. Tonight it seemed empty. Maybe it was too early for the moshers – they were probably all at one of their clubs – Medusa’s or Hell’s Kitchen. I wondered if they also had to pay a fiver for entry. What annoyed me was the fact I’d wasted my money. Five quid entry, two fifty for a Coke, one fifty for the bus. Why was everything so expensive? Where did they expect people like me to get money from? I’m supposed to stay on at school to go to college and not earn money, but also go to clubs, buy the right gear, have a mobile, an MP3 player, a computer. ‘Cause people know teenagers want to fit in they target us with all the consumer goods on the market. It just isn’t – I would have said “fair”, but I didn’t have the opportunity. My conscious thoughts stopped there as in that split second someone ran at me and grabbed at my bag. Pure instinct took over. Not to run – you don’t run when someone is trying to take something from you. The instinct is to hold on tight. I did. I also filled with rage – how dare they? They? I looked at my attacker. A bloke. So I kneed him, as I’d been taught to do. Amazing! He let go of my bag and fell to the floor. I’d won. I was still too full of adrenaline to realise properly what had happened to me. I should have run then, but in an odd kind of way I felt sorry for the bloke I’d just crippled. He was doubled up on the floor. He was wearing trackies, trainers and a hoodie. The hood had fallen over his face so I couldn’t see him. But then he looked up at me. “Ritchie?” I questioned. “Anna,” he said.
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