“Am I under arrest or not?”
Birch spiked an eyebrow at his unrepentant offspring. “Answer the question. Did you push your sister off the wharf so you and your friends could pretend to save her?”
Aiden couldn’t meet his father’s eye. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he muttered, knowing full well that swimming at Doc Fran’s wharf was forbidden.
“And then you slapped her, so she’d cry because you thought I’d believe you?”
Silence, then, “Guilty. You’re grounded for a week.”
Aiden mouthed, “Sorry,” at his little sister, then trudged off to start serving his sentence.
I wrote this story from a line of randomly generated dialogue: “Am I under arrest or not.” Deciding to eschew a story involving police, I remembered an incident from my own childhood. It actually involved one of my sisters (I won’t say which) and her friends. And yes, they did slap me. My mother took no pity, though, and punished me along with my sister. I didn’t receive an apology.
Punished along with your sister? Unjust!
"Birch spiked an eyebrow at his unrepentant offspring." That's a great sentence.