Suspect
SCENE: Inside a suburban home – door bell rings
NICK: (opens the door:
GEORGE (pushes into the room accompanied by Frank and a swat team) Nicolas Barrens?
NICK: (in a weak voice) Yes?
FRANK: You’re under arrest (pulls out cuffs)
NICK: For what?
GEROGE: You’re a suspected terrorist
NICK: But I’m only a high school student
GEORGE: Don’t give us lip, boy, you’ll get your chance to talk when we get you downtown.
NICK: I need to call my mother at work.
GEORGE: You’ll call no one.
NICK: But I have a right to…
GEORGE: Under the patriot act you have no rights. Bring him along, Frank.
FRANK: I think we should let the boy call his mother, George.
GEORGE: No way. He’s a terrorist suspect.
FRANK: But he’s only 17.
GEORGE: Seventeen year olds can kill. Remember Vietnam? Those kids were half his age and they blew GI s up.
NICK: Can you tell me what I did?
GEORGE: I told you to shut up, boy, and I mean it.
NICK: But I didn’t do anything that I know of.
GEORGE: Nothing short of planning to murder your teachers.
NICK: What?
GEORGE: We have the emails, boy.
NICK: Emails? You mean my messages to Billy?
GEORGE: That’s right. He’s in custody, too. As are all the others the message reached. You’re a whole terrorist network.
NICK: I didn’t mean anything. I was just blowing off steam for flunking a test.
GEORGE: So you wanted to kill some teachers?
NICK: Sure. Don’t you say stupid things when you’re upset?
GEORGE: I don’t plot to kill people. And the teacher wasn’t the only one.
NICK: If you mean my message about getting even with Rocco and his gang, you’d be upset if you got picked on by that bully day after day.
GEORGE: You said you would buy a guy and shoot him.
NICK: I said if nobody at school was going to stop Rocco then maybe those who us he picks on would have to defend ourselves.
GEORGE: That’s terrorism, boy, and you’ll pay dearly for it.
NICK: You’re crazy. I’m not a terrorist. I want to talk to my mother. I want to talk to a lawyer.
GEORGE: You’ll get to talk to neither as long as this is treated as terrorism
FRANK: George, the boy ought to tell his mother we have him other wise she may think someone kidnapped him.
GEORGE: You, too? What’s this country coming to when a cop won’t obey orders?
FRANK: He’s a boy, George
GEORGE: Some of the pilots on the 9/11 planes were boys, too. Or have you forgotten 9/11?
FRANK: I haven’t forgotten 9/11. But we’re not hoodlums. We can’t just grab a kid off the street and not tell anybody.
GEORGE: We have to. For security reasons. Who can tell who else is involved with this terrorist network, and if they know were’ onto them, they might pull another 9/11.
FRANK: We’re talking about the boy’s mother.
GEORGE: Yes, we are. How do we know if she’s not involved. After all, didn’t she raise this terrorist? Come on, boy. We have a nice dark cell for you, right next to Bin Laden’s.