Low Caliber - brainstorming opener.

Another B and E that's all it was.   Jerry would kick in the door and Chester would follow him in and they'd pick off a few pieces of jewelry - earrings, necklaces, bracelets - and then pick up any petty cash or small electronics like - PlayStation's, DVD players.  Filling their five dollar backpacks - each one carried two - with whatever would fit.  And me, sitting in the car having a panic attack and cursing myself that I'm doing this again.   I'm not even sure why I said yes.  A part of me laughs at the notion that I'm a getaway driver, on his way to retirement - college - and that this is my last job that I've been pulled back into by my crime family - childhood friends.  I'm going on the straight and narrow.  I'm going to study business, economics, and make a name for myself.   Not likely.   I may have high hopes for my eventual entrepreneurial skills but I'm big eyed and bushy tailed enough to buy into the idea that it'll be anything more than a mom and pop shop in my hometown.  That's fine.   I never wanted anything bigger than that, I just didn't want to be like Jerry and Chester.

My names David.  I'm sitting in the drivers seat of my parents Ford Focus sedan.   It was a graduation present because I'd done so well.   Tenth in my class.   Not bad for a class of three hundred plus.   Yet, all that potential - I suppose - and here I am.   I've known Jerry and Chester since I was six.   We moved into a modular home down the street from the school.  It was a quiet community, not affluent, not degraded.  Chester and Jerry lived on either side of me.   Childhood friends, neighbor friends.   Our parents couldn't have been any more different.   My dad's, Frank and Theo were rather committed to their marriage and I was born to a midwife on the thirteenth of July, Dad 1 claims he was the donor, but I look more like Dad 2.   The numbers are alphabetical order.

Chester's mom was a drunk.   His fathers, of which there  were many candidates were any one of several thousand - exaggerating - rejects that Chester's mom picked up on a Saturday night.  I'm not saying his environment led to his psychopathy, but I am saying it didn't help.   Chester didn't fall into that category of child development as a product of his low socioeconomic status.  He was one of the resilient ones, highly intelligent - whatever that means - but 200th in our class roster.   He couldn't give two shits about high school, but he was extremely calculated.   He loved his mother too.   He would often sneak out money from her purse just to go and supply the house with groceries, and they'd let him purchase a bottle of vodka just because they knew just who his mother was.  Chester was hopelessly devoted to making his mother happy even if that meant feeding into her addiction.  She'd chastise and hit him for taking the money to buy bread just as she screwed the cap off of her Absolut.

Jerry had your typical household.  The nuclear family.  Mom, dad, one sister, and him - the oldest.  He was an idiot academically and had the notion of being a rapper - like Eminem since any respecting white boy slinging ghetto speak aspired to be.  His parents hated the way Jerry talked because they knew it wasn't his natural language.  He'd accuse them of racism, and they'd yell at him, and he'd go into his room and crank up Rap God and force them to listen to him sing along - he was terrible.   It didn't stop their for Jerry though because he was keen on being a real "gangster."

That is where our mess happened.  Jerry was fixated on stealing stuff.  He was a kleptomaniac.   His parents were overbearing - I only bring that up because he always used that as a bullshit excuse.  He'd walk passed the teachers desk and take a stapler and slide it not to conspicuously into his hoodie pocket, and then in the hall when I'd ask him about it he'd say, "My parents are always riding my ass."  He didn't keep any of the shit he took.  He just dropped it in the trash can on the way out the main doors.   That was in middle school.  Around the sixth grade. 

In school we were nowhere near each other.   Not if we could help it.  We had friends from classes - mine were usually girls caught up in their bisexuality and gender non-conformity who were super proud of me for loving my parents - but Jerry, Chester and I were not associated in school.   I cared too much about making my parents proud, Chester didn't care about grades because his mother didn't care, and Jerry didn't care because his parents berated him constantly about why he should care.   Outside of school though we were inseparable.  It was mostly convenience.  Living next door was easy, plus I had all the cool new gadgets and my dad Frank was an accountant who being a neighborly guy helped Jerry and Chester's parents maximize the returns on their taxes every year, and my dad Theo was a landscape architect.   Dad 2 was obsessed with appearances, and when he bought the fix me up ranch house, next to the trash heaped front yard of Chester's, and the overgrown grass of Jerry's homes he saw the potential to develop his skills into beautification.

I'll admit my respect for my academics wasn't completely out of respect for my dad's.  There was a fourth member of our gang - which would be a more accurate descriptor of our life by the end of the sixth grade.  Her name was Emma.   She lived across the school district, was salutatorian of our class, and my girlfriend.   When I wasn't with Chester and Jerry I was with Emma.   We started dating in tenth grade.   Jerry had lost his virginity in the eight grade to Mary Lou Michaelson, but I didn't lose mine until 11th.   I only say that because Jerry was obsessed with his junk.   In our earliest years he'd always talk about his dick and balls, and just had an unhealthy obsession with sex before he even knew what it was.  When he found out what it was - he was away - like a horse at the races.   By the time I caught up with him he had already fucked six girls in our school.   Though I didn't understand why, Jerry was a dick himself.

To clarify, we had a bond, but I didn't particularly like them.   We had been through a lot and before I met Emma I got caught up in being a little crazy.  Like I was saying before I got distracted, Jerry stole shit, all the time.   He'd break into houses eventually, and pretty soon he was the dirty public secret of the neighborhood.  People wouldn't let him near their houses.  There was never any proof that he'd done thing so Jerry never ended up in Juvenile detention, but he ended up adopting this persona.   Ghetto speak I called it, but I called it lousy imitation.   It was the way racists perceived the average African American.   It wasn't an homage, as much as it was a middle finger to a race.   He spoke in "What up Dogs," and "catch ya later -" just insert your favorite racial epitaph here, and then his pants sagged to his knees.   The joke was that we had maybe four African American students on campus, and none of them sounded like Jerry.   We were in a decently affluent neighborhood.  Our school had a roof and running toilets, and state of the art computer labs, which is golden compared to the conditions of the schools in the City.  Jerry made up his ideal hoodlum, and sought out anyone local who was a punk and that was how come he met Tommy Reid.

Tommy Reid was a dirty rumor around town.  He was the nephew of a major crime family, and he was the network connection to our little suburb.   Tommy found Jerry because Jerry tried to steal from Tommy.   Tommy dealt coke out of the back of his Taurus.  He saw the potential of Jerrrys theievery but Jerry needed a car, and Jerry didn't have a car, but I did.