Jail Break
By Matt Stewart
My mom is driving me to prison. She is pretty drunk, but she’d know the way. It’s right around the age kids go bad in this town, ‘she says,veering to avoid an invisible chicken, a dog, then banking hard for the mail truck. ‘Benjamin,”She says. “Daniel, Kerri, Caitlin.
Caitlin hd her tae kwon do bluebelt, Daniel made the spelling bee once, Kerri could draw bird picture like they flew right onto the page, and Benjamin two years younger than me and a life of canned chili and video games and internet futzing and silence, “he can stay up for two days straight if we have enough Red Bull on hand.” My mon stays quiet.
I’ll be fine. My mom points the truck off the highway and we backtrack down local road for twenty minutes. Be nice and try to listen, my mom urges. The school’s done up like old Spanish mission, with a wide counteryard paved over and stocked with basketball courts, an auditorium doubling as chapel, nifty white-arched classrooms offset by grungy temporary units arranged like boot camp barracks.
I walk, fast, out, away, charged, striding beside a bashed fence laced with hot – dog wrappers and soda bottles, waiting, feeling time slip, time dripping like sweat, the hot stupid sun, pulling down my cap, creating more and distance, feet on top of miles. I step out from behind a parked van and it’s like I’m knocking off liquor stores again.
Hey, man,” I offer. Then He grunts and shuffles and snorts before risking eye contact. Good to see you, “ I say, though I haven’t actually decided yet. He unfolds his notebook, shake open a page. Running with the same bozos when he gets up to high school. Landing his first bust doing somebody else’s dirty work, selling a dime bag or fencing an iPod or riding shotgun on the wrong night. maybe he will uncover a mentor along the way, a basketball coach or English teacher who puts him to work sinking his free throws and learning to craft a bankable rhyme. Somebody who would rather be honest than awesome.
My mom jogs down the sidewalk with one of the those new Starbucks coffees, and it’s impossible not to grin at her old-lady jiggling.
