A List of Best Intentions

A couple days later, I was released from the county jail and unleashed back onto society.

It wasn’t like I was a bad person…like Dakota said. I was just a stupid teenager. Of course, try telling that to my parents, and…try telling that to me now, ha.

It didn’t even matter if the world would end when the second millennium came around. I’d be locked in the house for the rest of my days…and when I died and went to Heaven…even if I went to Hell, I’d be done for.

Word got out. I wouldn’t be surprised if Cody was the one who opened his mouth. But when I got on the bus and went to school…

There were haters, and then there were people who didn’t think I was all that bad.

People would look at me and laugh, patting on my shoulder. Or, they would shoot me dirty looks in disproval.

And one poor bastard was at my locker, looking at me like I told one of his deepest secrets.

Cody.

He was in a blue collared shirt like he always was, hair a few inches shorter than I remembered it. A scowl was written deeply into his face, one that went beyond the aloof expression of sarcasm he usually carried – he was pissed.

I barely recognized him.

He knew who I was. Oh, man. You should’ve heard the growl he gave me when I apathetically opened my locker, getting my textbook out for science. He sounded like a freakin’ bear.

I cocked my brow and slammed my locker shut. Cody had on the meanest face he’d ever had.

“Well?” he said expectantly, turning to face me.

I tilted my head, doing my best to glare like he did. “Well what?”

“You ever gonna learn a lesson?”

I snorted. “What lesson?”

He crossed his arms. “A lesson. Just…grow the hell up.”

“You know what?” I hissed, getting angrier by the second. “I can’t even count how many times you and my parents and everyone’s told me that. Yeah, I know. Freakin’, act my age…”

I turned around, about to walk away, fed up with Cody once and for all.

I didn’t need that crap. I knew it already. Everything he could say to me was just another phrase coming from another person’s mouth, and it was up to me when or if I would ever decide to take it to heart. Me. My prerogative.

A strong hand clamped down on my shoulder.

I felt a sharp pump of blood send hate throughout me as I turned around and slapped Cody’s hand away.

“Dude-” he choked out.

But I punched him.

Square across the jaw, right on his right cheek. It was a cheap shot to him ‘cause he wasn’t expecting it, and I didn’t care. I was just so pissed off that I didn’t even give a second thought to the action.

He fell back onto the floor, hair in his face, bloody lip and a bloody nose. Damn. I didn’t even know I was that strong, and yet there I stood, my best friend’s blood on my knuckles.

The hallway crowds grew silent.

That’s when I noticed a circle of people had formed around the scene. It was the kind of crowd that would form in a middle school dance to make something happen in the center of the dance floor.

My vision blurred, then settled. There was blood on my fist. Cody’s blood.

Cody was knocked out, man.

And I was the one who did it.

Jesus. What else was gonna come out of nowhere?

Well, now that I think about it, the sight of Stephanie in the front of the crowd was also kind of random…and when I caught her looking with a hand over her mouth, I gained control of my senses and began walking over to her.

Rightfully, she ran. She turned on her toes, pushed through the kids, and ran.

I called her name above the chatter that had broken out, but she didn’t stop. I chased after her, doing my best to follow the path she made, relying on nothing but the faint gleam of her golden hair.

Why did I have to do that?

Why did I have to land myself in jail?

Why did Cody have to run away?

Why was all of this happening to me of all the people on the planet?!

I was a nobody! Before August, nobody even knew who I was! Of course I just had to play with I Am You Are at that party…I had to get into that list I thought would never take off the way I anticipated…

Y2K, I didn’t care.

You could’a taken the lives of everything electronic and set off all those nuclear bombs and destroyed the world, leaving the remaining people to repopulate the earth in a second stone age.

Because I had nothing left to lose.

“Stephanie!”

And finally, in the wing of the school that nobody really went in, she turned around and looked at me.

I’d have expected her to be in tears, but she just looked mad – as mad as Cody was before I punched him out.

“How could you be such a dick?!” she fumed.

“Is this about Cody just now? What does he have to do with anything?!” I growled back.

She sighed, clenching her fists. “He was the one who told me about you. And he spoke so highly…I thought you guys were, like, tight. Then we came back from Halloween and he didn’t want anything to do with you. So I asked him why, and he said you were in jail.”

“He wimped out ‘cause he was with me, but he ran away! If he had any balls he’d have stuck it out with me!”

“But he didn’t, ‘cause he had enough of the stupid stuff you did.”

Silence. She just stuck a knife in my weak spot, a spot that I never imagined her to scrape.

“Kevin…I liked you. A lot. I liked you because you were funny, and daring, and a little out there…sure, a little stupid, but…on Halloween, when we picked you up…we went skydiving together…God, not to mention what happened at that party with you and me…is there something else you’re not telling me?”

I gulped. “That night you and your mom picked me up on Halloween…I…I escaped.”

“From…from jail?” Her voice broke into pieces.

I slowly nodded. I could hardly look at her. “I’m sorry. But if I told you then…”

She sighed, her eyes brimming with tears. “I…I don’t think I can hang with you anymore.”

And then she walked right past me.