Juvenile records remain sealed, part 1
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For about a year I've been sitting on some SFDs (shitty first drafts, as Anne Lamott would say) and am just feeling compelled to get them out there. At some point when I have more... more time, more writing, more money, more space... I want to work with a writing coach to develop ideas and tell stories more fully, but today is not that day and stories still need to be told! If there's enough, maybe it will become a book... but for now I'll post little sections as they arise.
My awakening came one day in my fourteenth year. I woke up to a sunny day, stretched, and was ready to embark on a journey to Florida. I was a runaway at this point and had some ragtag companions. I was eager to get going, but the others were sleeping. The others are a mere mist in my memory — two guys, one named John and the other named Jimmy. I have no idea how our paths crossed, but by this morning we had ended a crime spree and were camped out in a dumpy trailer for the night.
They were older than I was, drinkers, and used to a life of petty crime. They weren’t used to having brains on board — with me along we were able to avoid the cops for a couple of weeks. And now we had stolen enough money and a car to make it to Florida, pretty much a long day away from North Carolina where we were living. Florida seemed simple. Simple is what we were each after.Not knowing how long they would be crashed out, I got up and opened the door to be rid of the smell of cigarettes and stale beer. And sun was what I was after — that simple feeling of warmth and fresh air. I reached for the door, that rickety metal thing that protects the inside from the outside, keeps secrets, allows for privacy. I turned the knob and pulled, not hard, not having confidence in the door’s integrity.
My eyes were turned downward through the motion, registering nothing. And then sun and fresh air greeted me. I looked up and out the door, started to take a step, and felt a sensation at once familiar although never experienced in this lifetime. There was a cocked gun against my left temple, and then the words, “Take a step and you will never live to see another day.”
Having an awakening as a teenager is an incredible thing. It’s almost impossible to get words through the haze of emotions and hormones. This was the perfect sentence. I knew what to do, and I did it. I didn’t move. I chose life.What life had in store for me was another matter, completely unknown. But to start that journey I had to stand still, stay silent, submit to cuffing and incarceration — not my first time for either — but this time was different. This time the message made it through the haze.
Suddenly I was in control of my own fate — not a haphazard control of a vague dream of going to Florida. Which, as we all suspect, had nothing to do with Florida or with a dream but rather with the desire to escape. I was running, running from many things, and, in actuality, I haven’t stopped running. But at that one moment, I was awake and standing perfectly still.