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Show over Harrison Ford and Mark Hamill, imagining the kind of house we would live in when we married them, how many children we would have, the car we would drive. If at the age of eleven Stacy had started doing the drugs that would eventually take her far away from me, I would have had trouble not following her. Everything she touched glittered. Which is maybe why I stole. Maybe she dared or double dared me. Maybe she talked one too many times about her "school" friends, friends who wouldn't think twice about swiping a candy bar or a pack of gum, friends who I worried would take her away from me, friends who seemed to be "in." Maybe I just wanted to know, one time, what it felt like to be her, someone who disobeyed her mother, kissed boys in the bushes, and swore. The ironic part of my very short-lived life of crime is that I stole with my mother, on a trip with her to Safeway. Chaperoned the only time I broke the law. My loot consisted of a single piece of candy from the Brach's Pick-O-Mix display. And I had convinced myself that it wasn't stealing but rather sampling. After all, if a pound cost $1.69, then surely one piece would be free. My mother had gone in search of baking potatoes or cheddar cheese or the kind of cold meat my brothers would eat on their sandwiches, leaving me to stake out the candy display. I walked by the pink and white bins of candy several times, before reaching in for a piece that resembled a small carton of Neapolitan ice cream. Without stopping, I shoved the candy into my shorts, tracked down my mother and mumbled some excuse, and then headed for the car. In the trapped air of our Volkswagen van, I took the candy from my pocket. It seemed smaller and misshapen, hardly worth the risk. A sick feeling in the pit of my stomach grew and my 137 |
