Mickey, the sell-out

02Dec08

Midway through my senior year of high school I started getting into trouble with a few friends.  We vandalized property, stole things, pulled off elaborate practical jokes.  It was all in good fun, nothing too serious.

My partners in crime were my buddies, Brian and Matt, and my girlfriend, Mickey.  Together we’d get hammered and do donuts in the park with our parents’ cars, paint rival schools’ statues or emblems with our own school colors, sneak into the marina and get stoned on their parents’ yachts and blow up mail boxes.  It was fairly standard, as far as high school shenanigans go, until one of the mailboxes we blew up caused an elderly man to go deaf in one ear.  It was an accident, of course, but the old man’s son was the mayor and someone had to pay for the deed.

My friends all came from affluent, upstanding families.  I did not.  My dad was a drunken war vet and mom had disappeared several years prior.  As such, I became the scapegoat for this crime.  In early June of my senior year, I was to go to jail for 90 days and miss graduation.  I later learned that Mickey, Brian and Matt all teamed up with one another’s respective lawyers in order to sell me out.  They walked with community service and were allowed to graduate.  I learned this the day before I was to do my time in the county lockup.  Mickey told me, tears in her eyes, that she and Matt and Brian simply had more to lose than I—which was true, sort of, though it didn’t make it feel any better.

“Well I hope you had fun slumming it, Mickey,” I said.  Hearing her break down into sobs, I didn’t look back.

I picked my dad’s lock when I got home, took out his rifle and walked to the marina where all the rich kids’ parents had their beloved yachts.  I waited until the shadows grew long and unloaded several boxes of ammo, shooting every yacht I could see below the water line.  I knew insurance would cover those bastards, but that wasn’t the point.  I just wanted to sink something that someone else loved.

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