My cat: inspiration for Buck... or was it Henry?

So I tried it in the present tense again but something was still wrong. I was writing it from a third person perspective (He did this... Tommy said this... etc.) and it seemed to distant the reader from what was happening to Tommy.

I had to draw the reader closer to Tommy so in the end I switched back to the first person perspective (I did this... I said this...). So I ended up with a present tense, first person perspective and I was much happier. There was now a connection between the reader and Tommy. The reader could look into Tommy's head and feel his thoughts and share his emotions. I felt this was necessary because the reader had to sympathise with Tommy. The reader had to understand the pressures that Tommy was facing, the temptations that pressed on him and feel his need to impress Li Sher.

Getting the reader's understanding in Skive was very important because I wanted the reader to see how easy it was for anyone to become what Tommy became by the end of the novel--a shoplifter.

That's what he was plain and simple, even though he never called himself one. Sure, his gang had a codename--skive--for what they were doing, but call it what you will and it's still shoplifting. I'm not moralising, just wanting to show the reader how someone as perfectly well-behaved as Tommy can end up being caught red-handed while stealing from a store. I wanted to show how it can happen to you or me or to anyone under the right circumstances.

And how did I come to write this story? Well, back when I was in school, I did know of a group of boys who were just like Boon Leong and his gang. They were kids from well-to-do families and were considered cool and just like the gang in the book, they were shoplifters too. Some of them got caught eventually and the others have long since mended their ways, but that notion of well-to-do kids who ended up being shoplifters stuck with me. Why would they do that? Certainly not for the money. If they wanted something, they could've easily bought it. It certainly wasn't because they needed the stuff. Sometimes, they threw away what they stole.

My second cat

I came to realise that it was a social thing for them. Stealing and getting away with it was seen as something cool and brave and if you wanted to be considered cool, you had to steal. It was a peer pressure thing. Peer pressure can be a powerful force in one's life and when you're young, who you are is defined by who you hang out with. So once they got started with the shoplifting, it was very hard to stop. Only getting caught or seeing someone get caught will shake up your world and bring you to your senses. Peer pressure can drive teens to do things they would normally not consider and it sometimes drives them to behaviour which we would never believe them capable of.

That was what happened to poor Tommy. Of course, he stole also to impress Li Sher and get stuff for himself but I think he felt great to belong to a group of boys who respected him and thought highly of him. That's a great feeling to have. But the truth was, he never felt brave. He was always nervous when he was about to steal something. What's more, the gang was never really friends with him. They just stuck together for mutual benefit. It was a hollow friendship. Tommy never realised this until it was all too late. Even if he realised this earlier on, I doubt if he couldn't stop himself. Stealing is addictive and if you get away with it, the urge to steak will come back more and more. It would always be a case of "just one more time and that's it". In the end, he had to learn the hard way that it was wrong.

Is there hope for Tommy? For those of you who have read Nearest Available Chick Syndrome, I think you saw a glimpse of what happened to him after the novel ends, right?