My First Stolen Car

Before we start, here’s a picture of my fourth-grade class. The story happened a few years later but this is the last picture we are both in so here it is. That’s me back there in the last row. I’m the fifth one back. R is in here too but I’m not going to tell you who he is. Take a minute and study the faces. Any idea which one of these choir boys will be leading me astray?

I was in eighth grade so how old could I have been, probably about thirteen. I was hanging around with R, a kid from my class who had already figured out how to steal cars and go joyriding. I never knew how he had learned, older brother, friends, whatever, regardless he had learned how to wander along the street, nonchalantly eyeing the locks for doors left open, then looking for keys still in the ignition. It was December, early in the Chicago winter. The neighborhood streets were glowing with Christmas lights, the houses warm and cheery looking. Thick snow was falling; big soft flakes floating down in the calm night air. Everything was perfect, the world turned a glistening white, all the edges softened and blurred, a postcard.

We were sitting in a 53 Oldsmobile, not ours. I was cold, my gut filled with animal desire to flee, I sat hunched forward on the seat, shaking and scared but R was an old pro. He started the engine and dropped it into drive. Stepping on the gas he pulled away from the curb, driving slow…