My tyres flick up gravel which taps against the underside of my car. I shove the wheel to the right as hard as I can but I am going far too fast. I miss the turning, shoot off the road, and bounce away across the field.

“Why were your fingerprints all over the steering wheel, then?” The older police officer asks. His kind eyes suggest that he would never send me to prison over something as petty as this.

“I’m bloody 12,” I say. “I don’t even know how to drive.”

“We know you stole the Mercedes last month,” the younger police officer says. I can see a spectacularly hairy chest through his undone top buttons. “You were like ‘I don’t know how to drive’ then as well. There was CCTV. Witnesses. We know it was you.”

“The witnesses are liars,” I say. I know there were no witnesses this time. I made sure of it. I stole the car at night. I stuck to country roads as well so there’s not going to be any CCTV.

“This is becoming more and more serious by the day,” the judge says. I am sat behind a brown table with my hands handcuffed behind my back. There is a small backpack at my feet. My lawyer said I had to bring some things in case the judge sent me to prison. 

“Forensics reckon you were going at least 70 when you left the road,” the judge says. “You could have hurt someone, Danny; you were not in control of the vehicle. Somebody could’ve died.”

“I didn’t do nothing,” I say for the thousandth time. “The police are framing me. The police frame people all the time.”

“What you in for?” The ginger kid asks. The dining hall of the prison has the longest tables I’ve ever seen. We are sat right at the end of one of those tables. There is a plastic tray in front of me. The mashed potatoes on the tray do not look very appealing.

“Police framed me,” I say. “I didn’t do nothing.”

“Police framed me too,” a kid to my right says. His eyebrows are so thick they are almost a monobrow. He talks around a mouthful of mashed potatoes. “Do I look like a murderer? Little old me? I wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“You didn’t murder someone?” I ask, thinking about how much cooler that sounds than not stealing a car. When they let me out I’m going to try harder. Next time I’m in front of a judge I will have a far more impressive list of sins.

Artwork by: George Romney