Atomy - M A Moisander

Ant is sixteen, abandoned by his friends and desperate to leave his childhood behind. He boards a train to the city alone on New Year's Eve where he meets Nes and her friends who seem everything he wants to be - tough, cool and wise beyond their years. He lends them his cherished phone, a Nokia containing his dead father's last words to him, and they accept him into their gang.

Ant makes the first of many bad decisions that night in his desire to belong, starting with handing his skateboard to bash in the head of a defenceless boy. Driven by both lust and fear, he joins Nes in running away from the crime to her hometown. There, Ant punches Nes's Stepdad after he attacks them and they leave him bleeding out, unconscious on the floor. They flee to a drug-den where a day and night of partying sees a junkie plunge to his death after stealing Ant's phone. After these tragic events, Ant becomes even more aimless, smoking weed and couch surfing while he is meant to be at school, so when an unplanned pregnancy happens, he feels they cannot keep it. Nes has an abortion and that decision drives them apart.

Ant's life is now a mindless routine of meaningless labour, smoking weed and bad friendships. When his 18th birthday arrives, Ant thinks that this means his childhood and all its sad chapters are over. He celebrates by going clubbing with his work crew. Coming down from the night of partying at his boss's unit, Ant has a karmic and random encounter with the roommate of his boss, a young man with a heavily scarred face that Ant swears he has seen before. And as the young man with the scarred face picks up Ant's skateboard and examines the graphic, Ant knows his past has caught up with him.