The Escape Was the Worst Lesson - The Blip Between Kid and Alcoholic Drug User

Though both front windows were broken and wouldn’t roll up, I was oblivious to the frigid winter air screaming through my car. Inside of my stomach there was an anxious fire burning, and it stoked and fanned as I studied my surroundings. There were so many cars around me I couldn’t believe it.

Then, reminding myself that it was, after all, a parking lot I was sitting in, I continued my visual patrol of the area. So many cars meant the possibility of a lot of drivers, and not even taking into account the possible passengers it also could imply, I knew I had to be careful not to overlook one in carelessness. Though all the vehicles looked empty, I didn’t allow myself to take for granted that somewhere among them, hidden, watching me, there couldn’t possibly be a lone soul – even worse, a lone soul who recognizing me. I took a deep breath, and steeled myself one last time – it was now or never. Inching my food down on the greasy gas pedal, the car crept backwards out of the parking space.

Somehow, my hands shaking, eyes still strobing back and forth in caution, I managed to ease into drive. There was a little jolt as the gears switched and then another as the car began to accelerate. The scenery on either side of me began to move, slowly at first, but with gaining speed as I built momentum. I was doing it!

“I’m doing it!” I thought to myself. “I am actually going to leave school without getting caught! And I’m only a freshmen!”

Then, realizing I couldn’t afford to get cocky I tried to snap back to full attention. To late as it was, though, already cocky as could be, I had to pretend to myself I was still paying full attention. Already the announcer in my head was over the microphone, pronouncing me the reigning champion and still master of the free world. Already my mental bikini-babes were flocking around me, flipping their hair aimlessly while touching me for no good reason. Already adoring fans were giving me free things for having achieved another bay-leaf in my laurel, another feather in my cap, another kilowatt of luminous energy from the halo atop my nobly crowned head. About then, everyone who had ever been mean to me cried ruefully at the sky, shaking their fists knowing I was now and would always be better liked than they were. All of my friends added another bullet-point to the lengthy scroll they had listing all the reasons why they liked me and why I honored them by even deigning to spent time in their presence. The mayors of cities around the globe were clamoring for me to accept their key first, while I was graciously telling them, “calm down, don’t worry, there is enough of me to go around.”

If it seems like I was overdoing it a bit, one must understand how many imaginary people it takes to get through life as a nerdy, somewhat homely high-schooler, but that was the way of things those days.

“Nothing can stop me now” I whispered to myself as the gravel crunched under my tires and a victorious theme song played in my head. I had barely gotten through imagining half of what I was already inspiring in people across the world to do with my heroic actions, when I had to cut it short as the exit of the parking lot came into view. Reminding myself adoration would still be there when I had gotten done applying the break, pausing briefly, and making a right turn, I patted myself on the back for comfort that assuredly now, nothing could possibly go wrong.

Little did I know that the assurance couldn’t have been more erroneous.
I didn’t know at the time, but there was a traitor in my midst. In a few moments their cruel sense of justice would become all too apparent to me, and change my life forever. At the time though, as my car smoothly slid by the last row of cars in the lot and up to the intersection, there was no room for even the contemplation of such dastardly future-events in my swelled head. Nope, for the moment I was gliding on chariots of fire and tripping the light fantastic on easy-street. I was overly verbose, maybe, but I was sure that I had been right in this decision all along.

You see, about a week earlier I had turned sixteen. It was especially exciting for me, because, as the oldest person in my ninth grade class, I would also be the first to get a drivers license – ker-pow and a big old “look who’s laughing now” to the first grade teacher who smugly thought by holding me back a year she was bringing me down a notch. Ker-pow and ha-ha! The thought of me driving past all my classmates waiting to be picked up by their mothers, or, more likely at my high school, their nannies, was almost too much for me to take. I could see the envious looks on their faces, as in my minds eye I played the scene over and over again in slow motion. I was sure my popularity would skyrocket (of courses for me in those days, one person thinking slightly more than nothing good of me would have been such a rise). Yep, I definitely felt like things were going to be looking up for me. There was one thing I had not figured out yet though – a minor detail in an otherwise perfect system. The thing was, I didn’t have a car, and, after all, a license is pretty much just a poor-quality laminated photograph unless you have something to drive.

Driving my father’s car was out of the question, as he had told me many a time.

“It’s a company car”, he would say, not even looking up from his laptop, “if you damage it, I’ll have hell to pay.” I also knew my mother’s Mustang convertible was her pride and joy, not to mention a manual transmission, something I did not yet know how to drive.

“Well then, where will I get a car?” I wondered to myself. Then suddenly like mold out of a twelve-day-old meatloaf, the realization emerged, putrid as it was overwhelming. My only option left was one that I knew would take a great big chunk out of any plans I had to look “cool” in front of my classmates. I tried to convince myself I had other options available, wracking my brain for any idea, anything, so long as I didn’t have to face what I knew was about to happen next. Just then, my mother turned to me and made all my fears into reality. “Why don’t you take you brother’s old car?”

It was ugly and it smelled bad. I knew most of the exterior was attached with strength like that of Elmer’s Glue, as it had become harder to repair effectively after the fourth and fifth time my brother had wrecked it. It had at one time been a shade of red, but its color was now muddied with speckles of green and brown as if some sort of bacteria was growing all over the outside. The inside reeked as though once doused in gasoline in a failed attempt at insurance fraud, and the entire paneling had a slimy feel to it that seemed to support my theory. It was impossible to tell what the interior upholstery had once been, as the seats both front and back were ninety percent cigarette burns, and the escaping tar from the smoking culprits coated the back windows giving the glass a grey tint. Overall, the car was a pile of junk, but the beast had sat dormant in our front driveway for a few years since my brother had moved out, because no one seemed to have the time to tow it to the scrap yard. Lucky for me, now it was mine. I sighed and opened the door. Two dead flies lay on the driver seat. I knew how they felt.

I don’t need to tell you the response from my classmates was less than overwhelming. By the end of the week, I had resigned myself to the fact that not only did I not impress anyone, but also was being laughed at. The private school I went to had an unwritten law about the vehicles the students drove: if it gets more than 15 miles to the gallon and cost less than a small house then you might as well walk. I had waited sixteen years for this and by God if I was not going to get some well-earned respectful jealousy! I had to show other people that I was better than they were, and if the car alone wasn’t doing it, maybe I could use the car to do something that would. My brain started working, and it didn’t take me long to think up an idea.

There was a long-standing tradition at our school that the senior class could leave campus for lunch. Many students waited four years for this privilege, and so seniors were always very protective of it as their right. A student caught from any other grade doing it need not worry about the repercussions from faculty or their parents, but from their upperclassmen and a sense of gang justice that scarred one for life. On occasion a junior, and once in a while a very brave sophomore would do it and some even got away with it, but usually only the bravest, or perhaps the stupidest of students took the risk. I was a freshman. I was brave. Moreover, man was I stupid. I decided immediately that I was going to make history. I was going to be the first freshmen to leave campus for lunch. Then everyone would love me.

So, that’s how I ended up in my car on the way out of school. It seemed as though all my worries had been for nothing. As I pulled up to the stop sign that led to the main road, I was sure as ever in my cause, and that I was to be victorious. I was no longer worried about seniors, or the soccer moms bustling around me, too intent in their own tasks to take notice of a little red-green cars. I was about to be free. No longer nervous, I calmly applied my foot to the break to come to a perfect stop at the stop sign.

That is when I hear a mighty thump in fount of me.

Dread seeped into me like red food coloring into water, swirling and more intense in spots before finally saturating throughout.

“I just killed a kindergartener.” I said to myself. “A kindergartener or a puppy dog.”

I jumped out of my car too frantically to bother with whether or not anyone was watching me, but preying that I was still going unnoticed, I ran around to the fount of the car. There, on the pavement before me, was the battered form of the front bumper. It was still slowly rocking back and forth from its fall to the pavement. Relieved that it wasn’t a living being, though just long enough to remember the precarious position I was now in, I told myself not to panic. I briefly considered throwing the bumper off to the side and just keep going, but knew somehow that my parents would notice if I came home with a piece missing from the car. Without further hesitation, I began to try to reattach it.

By now, cars were building up behind me, as I was blocking the right turn lane out of the school. My hands were shaking as it was a freezing day, but I was sweating profusely. I had limited car knowledge, and no Elmer’s glue handy – the bumper just wouldn’t reattach. Though I was concentrating on the task at hand, from out of the corner of my eye I could see that cars were starting to drive around me, tired of waiting for me to move. I was working my hardest, but my hands were becoming numb, and along with them so were my mind and body. The bumper was not going to reattach and each time I would set it in place, and it would hit the ground again I felt like hitting the ground right along with it.

I saw to my dismay that, though cars were going around me, that one exit lane could no longer compensate for all the traffic and that I was causing a traffic jamb. Cars began to honk at me, and each time one sounded its horn it was like a banshee scream that shot through my eardrums, down my spinal cord and into ever pathway of my body, making me cringe and my heart skip a beat. I had to get out of this mess, and whatever was required to fix my car certainly was not available to me where I was. I would have to take the bumper along with me and fix it later.

Scooping up the bumper, I stood from where I had been kneeling in front of the hood. It was unwieldy, and I had to struggle for a minute or two to balance it. Once I had a firm grip on it I glanced briefly around and now finally realized the extent of what my mishap was causing, as cars were lined up nearly as far as the back entrance to the school… an entire school length of cars, all waiting on this one Freshmen and his car from hell. Those close enough to see what the hold up was stared irritably and intently, silently blaming me for making them late for where ever it was they were headed. I saw no one among them who knew me, but I knew it was only a matter of time before I did.

I carried the bumper around the car to the right back door (I knew the left one didn’t open from the outside), and awkwardly balancing it in my arms, I somehow managed to free a hand to open it. Once open, I slid the bumper into the back seat as far as it would go, and breathing a sigh of exhaustion, I slammed the door shut. That is, I tried to slam the door shut, but it bounce back open again. The bumper was too big for the back seat.

By this point, I was sure that whether I had seen them or not, someone had recognized me, and I was no longer so nervous as I was angry. This car had betrayed me! The Judas that rumbled and sputtered before me had gained my trust only to crush my spirit and all my dreams. As the red began to run down my line of sight, I no longer cared about the people in the cars around me, or what they may know of me or my class. My fists clenched, my teeth grinding against one another, all I could see was that bumper. It looked an abomination, an evil, spiteful thing, sticking just millimeters too far out of the back seat. Keeping the door just millimeters from shutting, just millimeters away from the end to this nightmare that had been haunting me now for what seemed like an eternity. That door was going to close. I readied myself, took aim, and with all of my one hundred and thirty pounds I slammed my foot into that door as if it had killed my mother.

With that blow, I beat the car into submission. As I stepped back, and that door remained shut, I felt like David having slain the mighty giant Goliath. All too short was my moment of glory, however, as I only felt that way for approximately three seconds. Sometime, when you kill a giant, it falls in your direction. Because, after those three momentous seconds, I was squished flat: the door fell off the car.

Defeated I let out a sigh. This was becoming an all too common occurrence.
What was I to do now, I wondered. Hope in my hobbled vehicle and drive off, leaving the door where it lay and hoping the bumper wouldn’t slide out of the back seat upon some turn I took or lump I bumped over in the road? Or should I just walk away, leaving car and detached parts behind, pretending I knew nothing of them? No, neither one of these would do, and as I stood there, half stunned, mostly paralyzed, and completely exhausted, I heard from beside me a sound. Indeed, the first sound other than my own harried breath I had heard in a good ten minutes or so.

I was a sound of roaring laughter.

Turning head towards the sound slowly, half hoping to disappear in the process and half wishing to lunge at the voice, claws bared, teeth sharpened to kill, I woke up from what had very much been like a dream state – so concentrated on myself as to forget anything else existed in reality. As my eyes focused again to the reality of the real world, I found myself staring at a pretty girl in an oversized Jeep. She was laughing so hard that even from my distance of a few feet I could see the beginning of tears running down her clenched eyes.
“That”, she said, gasping in an effort to make the words comprehendible, “that was the funniest thing I have EVER seen.”

If I had the time, I would have thought over the implications of an overly endowed, overly pampered, overly monetarily privileged teenager looking upon my puny car with one door, no bumper, reddish-green colored car with front windows that wouldn’t close, laughing her ass off at my misfortune. As it was, however, the chortling face was too welcome an interlude within my entire ordeal to put much thought to it. So approached me as a friend, and so I treated her as such.

Throwing my hands to my face in an over-exclaiming act of incomprehension, I shook my head wildly back and forth, and said through slit lips:
“I want to just die.”

She couldn’t respond right away, because of the severity of her laughing fit. After a moment or two, though, she managed to say, “You are in so much trouble.”

My stomach sank for a minute, thinking she was implying that this ‘trouble’ would be coming to me by her doing, but quickly she assuaged my worry by saying:

“Well, hurry up then, throw that thing in the back, and let’s get out of here!” Companion to this statement I heard the back hatch of her SUV pop and released, rising up slightly. Deciding to act rather than think, I got down, heaved my hardest, lifting the door from the asphalt where it lay, and carried it over to her open trunk. Depositing it with a mighty thump, I then returned to my little car for the bumper, which I lumbered over to the back hatch and dropped with an equally as satisfying thump. Talking to me through the rear view mirror, the savior in the Jeep Explorer then said, “Now get in your car and follow me before someone sees you here and you catch a hella’ trouble.”

In no place to do anything but obey, I slammed her trunk, ran back to my car, jumped in, and readied myself. As she pulled out, I followed close behind, racecar drive style, speeding, but not even sure where we were going or why this girl was helping me. It wasn’t long before these questions were answered however, and the satisfaction of my curiosity would be the beginning of a new life form me completely – a life of freedom and poorly made self-decision.

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Tags:

creative, fiction, high, non, reflection, school, short, story and teen