Young Writers Society

Hey there everyone! I'm nearly finished with this short story but I need a fresh pair of eyes to look over it. Lemme know what you liked, what you didn't like and if anything isn't clear. There are probably a few typos in here since they like to crop up in all of my writings so please point them out so I can fix them.

Finders, Keepers
By: Ralph Gallagher
“We tend to forget that happiness doesn't come as a result of getting something we don't have, but rather of recognizing and appreciating what we do have.” - Frederick Keonig
As he walked out of the busy mall, Fred grinned to himself, Jake is going to love this. He’d saved for months to buy the Playstation 3 for his brother’s birthday, and the kid was going to flip when he saw it. Walking to his car at the back of the parking lot, he grumbled about how lucky he’d been to get the space just half an hour ago. He was too lost in his own mind to notice that he was being watched.
He opened the trunk of the shiny silver Chevrolet Corvette that his grandparents had bought him two years ago for a graduation present, and carefully placed the box containing the $400 game system next to the few groceries his mother had asked him to pick up for the party.
After shutting the trunk, he walked around to the driver’s side door. When he got there, he noticed that a newspaper had been carelessly thrown on the ground. Rolling his eyes, he bent down and picked it up. Out of curiosity, he glanced at the headline. The headline was about the local girl who had gone missing, he knew the story well, as it was all over the news. The media had dubbed the kidnapper “The Monopoly Killer” because monopoly money always accompanied the ransom notes. They said that after the kidnapper got the money he would kill the child and leave a monopoly piece near their bodies too.
Fred walked the paper over to one of the trashcans near his car and tossed it in. One of his pet peeves was when people littered.
Just before he turned to go back to his car, something caught his eye. There was a large manila envelope leaning up against the trash can. He picked it up and was about to toss it in the can when he noticed that the envelope weighed quite a bit.
Once again his curiosity got the better of him and he opened the envelope. His jaw dropped as he opened the envelope and caught a look at its contents. Hardly believing his eyes, Fred struggled with suddenly clumsy fingers not to drop the entire package as he attempted to remove the contents.
Inside the envelope there was a stack of money. He leafed through the bills and for the second time, almost dropped it. They were all hundreds.
He counted all the money inside. Wow. There was $15,000 in there! He stood there staring dumbly at the wad of cash for five minutes before his brain began to function again. Surely he should turn in the money to the police. But then again… if someone has enough money to carry around $15,000 in cash, they wouldn’t miss it, now would they?
His body refused to move, too shocked by the find to do anything but stare dumbly. When he finally got the strength to move again he walked back to his car and got in. He sat in the driver’s seat for another five minutes trying to figure out what to do.
Turn it in or keep it… Turn it in or keep it… His mind raced with the possibilities. He knew turning it in was the right thing to do, but it was $15,000 for crying out loud! Times were tight, and he could really use the money. Everyone thought he was rich because of the car he drove, but really it was his grandparents who were rich. The $15,000 could really help pay off some of his student loans too.
A phrase that he hadn't heard since he was a kid popped in to his head: finders, keepers. It always worked for him back then, so why shouldn't it work now?
Instead of doing the right thing and turning it in, Fred decided to keep the money. He reached across the car and unlocked the glove box. After carefully putting all the money back in to the envelope, he locked it inside.
On his drive back home, he started to wonder what he should do with all the money. Some of it would be used to pay off some of his student loans. But that would still leave a good chunk of it. What else could he spend it on? A trip maybe? Yeah, a trip sounds good, he thought, but where to? Jamaica? No, maybe the Bahamas. Nah. Disney World! He hadn't been there since he was a kid. Maybe he'd take Jake there as an extra birthday gift.
Fred was too busy thinking about what he was going to spend all the money on to notice that he was being followed. A black Honda Accord had followed him from the mall all the way back to his house.
He parked the car in the driveway, right behind his mom’s minivan. As he put the car in park and shut the engine off, he was still oblivious to the men in black suits that were surrounding his car.
Fred opened the door and got out. Just as he stepped out of the car, two men, dressed in black with Kevlar vests on, rushed him.
"FBI," they shouted as they pushed him against the side of his car. Fred looked around. A dozen men dressed in black with Kevlar vests on had surrounded him with their guns drawn.
One of the FBI agents began to pat him down, taking out everything from his pockets. "He's clean," the agent announced when he had finished.
"What's going on?" Fred shouted as an agent put handcuffs on him.
"We saw you take the ransom money!" the agent said. "We know you have the girl.”
“Wha.. wha… what girl?” Fred stammered out as the agent shoved him into the back of one of the black Hondas that were parked up and down the street.
Fred looked up at the house as they drove off. He could see people searching his car, practically tearing it apart. They were searching the house too. He saw the agents walking around through the windows. His frightened mother and little brother were visible through the living room window. His mother hugged Jake tight; they were both crying.
He put his head in his hands. What the hell have I gotten myself into…?
His head began to spin by the time he arrived at the FBI building. He had a terrible headache from all the excitement and he felt like he was going to vomit. The agents led him into a small interrogation room.
The room was tiny and cramped; the walls were stone, the only furnishing were a table and some chairs, which barely fit within the tight constrains. It was boiling inside; it felt like they had the heat turned up to the max. A man pointed to a chair and told him to sit. The chair was an old metal one which was uncomfortable, to say the least. Across from Fred was a wobbly metal table that looked older than him, with two more chairs on the other side.
Time crept by as he waited for someone to come in. He sat in the hot room by himself for hours before someone came in. By the time someone finally came in to interrogate him, he was sweating profusely. His interrogator was a tall, older man with balding hair. He had with him a folder that had Fred’s name on it. The agent sat across from him and began his interrogation without even introducing himself.
He didn’t waste any time and began trying to intimidate Fred before he even sat down. The agent started by threatening him with the legal aspects of his crimes; jail, possibly even the death penalty.
It wasn’t long before the man began asking questions about the girl. Where was she, why’d he take her, was she alive?
Fred begged the interrogator to believe him as he pleaded his innocence with every question. "I didn't take anyone! I don't know where the girl is!" Fred would tell him.
The man seemed to only get more irritated with each answer and would dismiss what Fred said with a small flick of his hand."Lying won't get you anywhere, son. Now tell me where the girl is!”
Fred sat on the hard metal chair, sweating and fidgeting, praying that everything would all end soon.
“We know you’re the Monopoly Killer,” the agent said to Fred. “I’m willing to bet we’ll find a couple games of monopoly at your house, probably missing a few pieces too.”
“I don’t even own a monopoly game anymore!” Fred told him. “I haven’t played that game since I was a kid.”
“We have agents searching your parent’s house and your apartment as we speak. They’ll find the girl and they’ll find the board games too. There’s no use in lying to me. Now just tell me where she is and we can get this over with,” the agent told him.
Fred slammed his fist down against the metal table. “I don’t have any girl!” Fred insisted. “I didn’t do anything! All I did was pick up the money I found on the ground. That’s it!”
The agent was getting frustrated, as was Fred. “I’m getting tired of your lies. We’ll find her. Then, we’ll have your ass on a platter,” the agent said as he walked out, slamming the door and leaving Fred inside the boiling room.
Fred put his head in his hands and started to think about his mother and little brother. He kept beating himself up over ruining his brother’s birthday. They had spent hours planning the party. Now, he was stuck in this god forsaken room instead celebrating with Jake.
Damn it! Why did I have to take the stupid envelope? I never should’ve picked it up! Tears started to roll down his face and he struggled to keep control over his emotions. It wasn’t easy, but he eventually calmed himself and stopped crying.
After another couple hours, two agents came in and escorted him out of the interrogation room. By this point, he was about to have a mental breakdown, everything was happening so fast.
The agents took him to a cell down the hall that was even smaller than the interrogation room. In fact, it was about the size of his bathroom. The cell looked like the interrogation room, except the table and chairs were replaced with a cot and a toilet. The entire room smelled of stale urine.
He lay down on the lumpy cot and closed his eyes, trying to ignore the pungent smell of the urine. He stayed there hoping any minute he’d wake up and find out it had all been a dream. After a while he drifted off into a restless sleep. The entire night he was tossing and turning like a boat broken free from its moorings in the middle of a hurricane.
The next morning he was woken up abruptly by someone banging on his cell. When he sat up, someone opened the door and dragged him back down the hall back to the interrogation room.
When he got to the room, the same agent from yesterday sat at the table, waiting for him. The agent began the interrogation the same way as before, with threats and intimidation.
Once again Fred pleaded his innocence and once again it went ignored. Fred gave up trying to convince the man and put his head in his hands, wishing that everything would go away.
After what seemed like an eternity, but was actually only an hour, the interrogation was interrupted. A young looking man opened the door and asked the agent to step outside for a moment. The Agent didn’t look too pleased but left anyway.
Fred could hear their muffled talking at first; the younger man in a softer, quieter voice and the older one with his deeper voice. Whatever they were discussing, the older agent didn’t sound pleased. Then there was silence. The silence didn’t last long when a deep voiced yelling, pierced through it.
When the agent returned to the interrogation room, Fred pretended he hadn’t heard anything.
The agent’s face had turned a deep red color and the veins in his forehead bulging. The agent looked livid. Fred avoided looking him in the eyes. “It looks like it’s your lucky day,” the agent said as he walked over to him. He pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the cuffs on Fred’s wrists. “It appears we’ve made a mistake.”
He motioned for Fred to follow him. He walked Fred down the hall and stopped outside of a door. He gritted his teeth. “I’m sorry about this,” he said as he opened the door.
Fred walked through the door into what looked like a doctor’s office waiting area. It even had a TV set up. He glanced at the TV; the news was on airing a bulletin about the police apprehending a suspect in the Monopoly Killer case. He was that suspect. He looked to the front of the waiting area; his mother was standing there, pacing impatiently. Jake was sitting in one of the chairs, watching the TV. He jumped up when he saw his brother walk out. They both ran over and encompassed Fred in a giant hug.
“Oh, Fred,” his mother said hugging him tight. “I’m so glad you’re alright.”
After all the mushy greetings were over, the three of them walked out of the FBI building to the minivan. Jake wouldn’t leave his side as they walked out to the car. Fred put his arm around Jake’s shoulder, something he hadn’t done since they were little. The drive back to the house was a silent one. Everyone was glad to have this behind them and didn’t want to spoil the moment.
Jake eventually broke the silence from the back of the car. “So, what’d you get me for my birthday?”

This was a very interesting idea, and the reader could quite pity your characters. However, grammar errors dotted it, and it started out rather slow, to be honest. Not bad at all.

People littering was a pet peeve of his.

You should reword that. Perhaps 'His pet peeve was litter' or something like that.

'Wow.' he thought as he counted all the money.

I'm sort of unsure about this, but I think you should replace the period at the end of wow with a comma.

Turn it in or keep it… Turn it in or keep it…

Once would suffice.

"FBI." They shouted as they pushed him against the side of his car.

Again, probably to either replace with a comma or an explanation point.

One of the FBI agents began to pat him down, taking out everything from his pockets. "He's clean." the agent announced when he had finished.

The punctuation on this one definitely needs to be changed.

Fred stammered out as the agent shoved him into the back of one of the black Hondas that were parked everywhere.

I don't know, but this is sort of awkward. Maybe you should remove the 'that were parked everywhere' part.

He had a terrible migraine from all the excitement.

I think you mean a headache; a migraine wouldn't really match his behavior at that moment, and you'd probably mention vomit with it, anyway.

The agent started by threatening him with the legal aspects of his crimes; jail, possibly even the death penalty.

I think you need a colon, not a semicolon.

The next morning he was woken up abruptly buy someone banging on his cell. When he sat up, someone opened the door and was dragged back down the hall back to the interrogation room.

Who was dragged back down the hall, the person who opened the door or Fred? Also, buy needs to be by.

The silence didn’t last long when a deep voiced yelling, pierced through it.

You probably mean 'The short silence was pierced by deep yelling.'

The whole situation made me grin. Poor guy, picked up because of a misunderstanding. But let it be a lesson to him: always turn in random envelopes of money found next to garbage cans.

You put Fred's thoughts in single quotation marks, but I would recommend changing that to italics. In the single quotes, it is hard to tell whether it is dialogue or thoughts, considering the eye is just glancing over the quotes and it is hard to distinguish the two unless you're really paying attention. Italics, on the other hand, immediately jump out as different and are easily understood to indicate inner dialogue.

You use the passive voice a lot in this story and that sort of drags the pace down. All the usage of "was" really takes away from the intensity of this situation that should be a whirlwind. As a result, the thing sort of plods. Rather than saying "Jake was sitting in one of the chairs," write it as "Jake sat in one of the chairs." It seems like a small change but it actually makes a huge difference in how the entire piece reads.

Also, you begin a lot of sentences with "he" or someone's name. Shake up the sentence structure a little for some irregularities.

Also, you do some telling rather than showing. When Fred is locked in his cell, you tell about how he was beating himself up about screwing things up, and that he didn't sleep well. Rather than just telling us that, show us how he is beating himself up.

ex. Oh, how could I be so stupid? Fred ground his teeth together in frustration. He just had to go and pick up the money, didn't he? Couldn't he have just done the right thing? Shows what not listening to your conscience did for you. Now he was missing Jake's party. He and his parents had spent weeks planning that thing! A tear rolled down Fred's cheek and he wiped it away angrily. So stupid, he told himself. I am so stupid.

See the difference? This kind of thing draws the reader in, making them care about the character. Their concerns become our concerns.

A couple of nitpicks:

The agent began the interrogation the same way as before. By threatening him and trying to intimidate him.

I'd replace the period and "By" with semi-colon and combine the two sentences into something like "The agent began the interrogation the same way as before; threatening and trying to intimidate Fred."

The agent’s face was red with anger. Fred avoided looking him in the eyes.

“It looks like it’s your lucky day.” The agent said as he walked over to him. He pulled a key out of his pocket and unlocked the cuffs on Fred’s wrists. “It seems we’ve made a mistake. The real kidnapper was apprehended last night attempting to find the ransom that you walked off with.”

The start of new dialogue should start a new paragraph. Same thing here:

As he walked out of the busy mall, Fred grinned to himself

‘Jake is going to love this,’ he thought.He’d saved for months to buy the Playstation 3 for his brother’s birthday, and the kid was going to flip when he saw it.

(I added the bold.) The dialogue is internal dialogue (Fred's thoughts) but the same rule still applies, methinks.

I loved the ending. So typical of a little kid. No sympathy at all, just self-interest. Ah, the good old days when I could get away with that. *reminisces* Not so much nowadays.

Anyway, quite the interesting situation and rather amusing. My only question is: did they find the missing girl?

*thumbs up*

~GryphonFledgling

Pure dude I fell sorry for him, yet at the same time I was laughing at him.

The other two got most of the grammer punctuation things so not much I can exactly say except it's a nice short and when im older i'd tell my kids that if they find $15,000 on the street to give it to the cops, or if the walk to the police station is to long, to me, i'd take good care of it xp.

This is one of the two complimentary critiques you get for entering CIA's money contest. The other will come from Bittersweet, CIA's guest judge.

I really liked where you went with this prompt! When I started reading, it sounded a little dull, but you definitely added some spice.

However, you were forcing yourself to set things up a little too much. You put the newspaper and envelope there, conveniently right when he came out of the store. You told us all about this murderer. Yes, it's all important, but I felt like you were just giving me facts so you could get on with the story.

Instead, maybe show us him in the store. We can overhear women gossiping about the murderer as he passes them. We can see his struggle with money as he tries to count out the money and barely has enough. Maybe it's in Massachusetts with sales tax, which he forgot about, and someone offers him the money to make up the difference – that would show us that he's not opposed to taking what isn't his.

Also, I was very confused about his age. At first I assumed he was around 16 years old, then I thought he was an adult, then I thought he was college age. However, none of it made sense. He needed to pay back college loans so he's probably about 24, but he doesn't act that age. Work on showing us how old he is more – how he talks, dresses, acts, all of it.

The cop seemed very unrealistic. Yes, they can be cruel, but you seemed to go a little overboard. Do a little more research and make sure you present this correctly. He needs to be read his Miranda rights. The police has to ask a ton of seemingly unrelated questions. Stuff like that. Also, what proof do they have? He picked up money – big whoop. He didn't know it was ransom money. Give them an excuse for being allowed to bring him in. (Oh, and expand on why they let him out a bit more too – that was unclear.)

Finally, I'd love a little more description. You resorted to telling too much, and it really hurt your story. Try to show us what he's thinking – is he ashamed? Gleeful? Terrified at being in a cell? What?

Overall, I really liked this. PM me for anything!

~JFW1415

I have arrived with the second complimentary critique that you get for entering the February 2009 CIA contest! So let's get started, shall we?

As he walked out of the busy mall, Fred grinned to himself, Jake is going to love this.

The bit about Jake loving it should be in italics since this is Fred thinking to himself.

Everyone thought he was rich because of the car he drove, but really it was his grandparents who were rich.

I don't like this... I'm not entirely sure if I like the bit about him getting the car from his grandparents. It doesn't really add anything to the story and it's not really necessary to the story, you know what I mean?

What the hell have I gotten myself into…?

Again with the italics! Otherwise the reader thinks you made a mistake.

Damn it! Why did I have to take the stupid envelope? I never should’ve picked it up!

You probably guessed it already, but italics!

Anyway, that's really all that I found worth pointing out. I agree with Jen, you took the prompt in a nice direction. I loved the conflict. And you really feel for the character, poor guy. Even if he did the wrong thing. You really do feel the emotion of the story. In the middle of the story, you feel so hopeless. Like this will never end. I liked that aspect of the story. But you have a lot of telling in the story, and not enough showing. Especially in the beginning. I think you really need to go through and slow things down a bit, without making it too boring. Give us more description of what the interrogation room looks like, or the expressions of the FBI men. I think that's what will really make this story a great one!

Just one thing that really bothered me was how easy everything cleared up. He spent the night tossing in turning, and gave in. And then all of the sudden, he's free? I think you should explain what exactly happened. Who found out that it wasn't Fred who was the Monopoly Killer? How did they found out? Did they catch the killer, or did they find the girl? These are things that the reader wants to know. We want a resolution!

Speaking of endings, however, I liked the way you ended your story. It was really cute and makes you glad that things are back to normal for the family. Anyway, I'm sorry that this wasn't a fantastic ultra long review, but it seems like most everything was already fixed up, save for a few.

Good luck with the contest!
-Holly