“But it’s wrong,” I’d tell him repeatedly. It was the same old conversation. “If you get caught, you’ll be in serious trouble!”
“I’m not going to get caught,” he retorted. “I’ve never been caught yet! Besides, I don’t steal from anybody too bad like the bikers.”
“Well, when you do get caught, I’m going to laugh at you and tell you how much I told you so!”
“Good, I hope you do.” I hated that he was so nonchalant about it, like he didn’t care at all about getting caught.
“You’re so stupid!” and that was usually the last words I’d say before the matter was dropped.
He didn’t get caught, and after a few years of getting better and better at what he was doing, I stopped that conversation with him altogether. He had gotten so good at thieving, he even invested in high quality lock picks he bought from a shady man I suspected worked for the bikers and carried them wherever he went.
It was interesting watching him grow up. I’d always been a watcher of everything around me. Quiet and timid as I was, I still saw things others didn’t, and it became my personal enjoyment logging frivolous information away and later reflecting on them.
Jaxon was a confident kid with a good sense of humor. He was handsome, bigger than boys his age, and he drove the girls wild. He was like his mother when it came to relationships. In and out, the glow of the start of a relationship ended faster than a speeding bullet hitting its target.
Lucinda had many men in her life and Jaxon hated every one of them. For a kid who I learned never knew his father, he carried that chip on his shoulder and aimed his anger at almost every older man he came across.
“I’m never going to work in some stupid job for ten hours a day and earn pennies when I can just find enough money for a week in one day somewhere on this street, Sara.” He motioned to the street we were on that was bustling with shoppers.
“You know you’re going to be old too one day,” I said to him once, catching his glare at a man in a suit that we walked past.
“So what?” he rebutted.
“So you can’t be staring daggers at every older guy. You’re going to be seeing them everywhere, and you’ll be working for one too.”
He laughed loudly at this. “I’m not working for anyone. I work for myself.”
“You mean you steal for yourself.”
I was never afraid of telling Jaxon my thoughts. He was the only person I was ever entirely open to, and it was pretty much because of the level of comfort we shared with each other. It helped I was his closest friend and he was mine too. I knew him well enough to know there was no talking sense into him, so I just shrugged and let it go.
Though we saw each other every single day, we probably hung out about three nights of the week. Other nights he was out and about and stressing Lucinda over the edge. I was with her almost every day after school. Sometimes I’d spend the night there on the couch to comfort her until Jaxon came through the door. I told her time and time again that the town was only small and there was nowhere he could really go that was dangerous. I knew I was telling her a lie, but it comforted her. And troubled me.
Some nights I wondered if a police officer would show up at the door and let us know that Jaxon had been arrested for breaking and entering. For a reason I tried to suppress, that made me feel like my world would collapse.
I’ll never forget one night in particular. It was quarter to eleven and Lucinda had long passed out on the couch. My fourteen-year-old self waited outside in the dark streets for any sight of Jaxon.
The projects were dead quiet on this particular Wednesday night. I walked down the sidewalk until I made it to the small kid’s park at the end of the street. It was run-down; the slides had lost its shine, and the paint all around the monkey bars and jungle gym had long chipped and rusted from disregard.
I sat on one swing, threw my sandals off and dug my feet into the sand. I felt the humid air all around sucking me dry, but I didn’t care. I waited patiently for Jaxon to emerge from the shadows. His routine meant crossing the park on his way home.
I reflected pleasantly on how different he and I were. We didn’t like the same foods, didn’t have the same taste in music, and I hated all of his no-good friends and he hated the few I had. It was alright this way, though. It meant hanging out was something we did just the two of us, and I longed for any alone time with my good friend.
He’d tell me he was going to be out of Gosnells one day and would never look back. That he would be rich and own the fastest cars and have models for girlfriends. When I asked him once what he would do for a living he just shrugged and said, “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to make money any way I can.”
His ambitions reflected a lot of his insecurities. He wanted women because he didn’t know what a relationship even meant. He wanted money because he was brought up having none. He wanted to get out of town because he felt too small in it. I never told him that I thought this of him in fear of wounding his ego, but I also didn’t think it was impossible.
Deep down, aside from the stupid law breaking that thrilled him and the girls that came and went, he was actually very smart. He could remember anything he’d ever read from years past and recite it back word for word. He was great at mathematics and was always doing my math homework for me (after I begged him for three or so hours with a ten-dollar note on the side). He enjoyed reading when no one was around, and the books on his bookshelves in his room were worn out and tattered from overuse. Yet when it came to school itself he just didn’t care. He skipped most classes, didn’t touch his assignments, and passed only by the hairs of his chinny-chin-chin.
I talked too. About everything. I could tell Jaxon what life was like at home. I could tell him what my father used to do to my mother. I wasn’t embarrassed to say that I still slept on a mattress on the floor and that my mother was still leeching off the government to make it by, and that she still cried almost every night because she was lonely and missed my father. That she hardly ever talked to me. Hardly cared if I was around. In fact, sometimes she looked at me like I was to blame for my father’s absence. That look only drove me further away from the house.
“You’ll get out of here too,” he promised me. “Even if I have to steal you from Gosnells, you won’t be like your stupid mom and you won’t live in this stupid town. We’ll go to Winthrop and you’ll get a good job and be happy. I swear.”
I smiled and relished at that thought.
“You okay, kid?” I jumped at the sound of a guy’s voice from behind me.
My shoulders tensed and my heart beat frantically in my chest as I turned my head around and made out a tall man heading over to the swings beside me. How had I not heard him earlier? I mentally kicked myself for musing so intensely. I hated strangers, and I especially hated strangers in the dark while I was alone at a park much more.
“I didn’t mean to scare you,” his baritone voice then said, taking a seat on the swing next to me. His large frame made the swing look ridiculously tiny under him. I wondered if it was going to collapse under his weight.
He was an adult, early twenties. He was donning a black leather jacket, and the emblem of a jackal’s ferocious snarl on the back of his jacket in white ink was inescapable under the full moon’s light. A biker. I’d never talked to one before. I’d always been told to turn the other way and never under any circumstances get near them. The warning alone had frightened me into obedience. Yet here I sat next to one, and he’d been the one to engage in conversation.