The night was silent. Simon thoroughly enjoyed the calm, relaxing atmosphere of his countryside town. And sure like any place, the town had its fair share of pros and cons. The pros were fairly self-explanatory. However, he didn’t have very many friends.

Growing up in a small town allowed for a lot of things. One of them was ‘everyone knows everyone’ - which was much too true about school. No one new ever enrolled. For that, they would have to move to town, which no one had done in the seventeen years he’d lived there. Apart from literally last month when they finally had a new body.

This boy was, however, the complete polar opposite of Simon. In those three weeks, he’d already gotten laid, joined the football team (and quit the football team), bewitched all the teachers, and thrown his own party. A party which, no surprise, Simon wasn’t invited to.

He sighed to himself, looking down at the moons reflected image in the lakes still water.

Simon winced and held onto his wrist. He didn’t have to wonder how long the darkened purple ring around his skin would last. Or for how long it would hurt. After years of it, he’d gotten to figuring out the pattern. Still, it didn’t make it hurt any less.

He sat back to stare up at the real moon. When he was younger he’d wanted to become an astronaut. Of course, that was just a silly dream. It was a stretch for a normal child, let alone a broken one.

He flinched. This time from the water soaking his shoe. A moment ago it was as still as a pane of glass. It didn’t really bother him too much. Until he noticed flashing of red and blue lights over the top of the trees. He slowly got to his feet, ignoring for a moment that his shoe and sock were completely soaked. He didn’t really have to guess too much about what was going on. Just moments later he saw several of his classmates running down the hill. Some in cars and others running, with red cups in their hands.

It was moments like these where he was glad to be excluded, but still around for when karma struck. He chuckled to himself, covering his mouth and moving up the hill to see if he could get a look at the rest of the action. Like something out of a scooby-doo mystery, the police ran behind the drunk teenagers as they continued to evade them. Only a few of the four police managed to catch some of them. The rest had managed to escape in the chaos.

Then Simon noticed Nathaniel Rodgers, the orchestrator of the entire thing. For whatever reason, he held his wrists out for the police officer and tried keeping his grin to himself, but even Simon could see it from where he was hiding in the trees.

Without hesitation, the police officer slapped the metal cuffs around Nate’s wrists and escorted him to one of the parked cars.

Simon moved behind the trees as he watched the officer pull out and drive off. He turned back at the rest of the party. The house was trashed with liter sprinkled about the law and several shards of glass, from something, in the grass. He probably would have stayed and continued laughing at the stupidity of his classmates, but the buzz from his phone brought him back to a completely separate reality.

Mom: Where did you go?