Once, while in the tenth grade, I found an iPod Nano in the school parking lot. It was a little scratched on one side, but otherwise brand spankin’ new. This happened a month or two after a Christmas when iPods were all the rage. Unfortunately, such gadgets didn’t fit into the Miller household budget, which I understood, even at the age of fourteen.
Well, I found this thing, picked it up, and powered it on. I expected nothing but a blank screen after some careless owner had dropped it on the concrete and left it to the Ohio cold for God knew how long. Sure enough, however, the screen lit up and the buttons and wheel worked perfectly.
There were only three songs in the music library. “Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin, “Gin & Juice” by Snoop Dogg, and “99 Luftballons” by NENA. I reasoned these were all songs that would eventually find their way onto my own iPod if I had gotten one for Christmas. So this had to be a sign, right? Finders keepers and all that?
Not exactly.
I pocketed the iPod, and marched on up to the front office to turn this two hundred dollars' worth of technological genius into the lost and found. What fourteen-year-old kid in their right mind would do that? Well, I won’t lie, it was a hell of a struggle. Many thoughts ran through my head at the time—thoughts of how I could get away with it, how I could only use it at night, never in front of the other students or, God forbid, my father. Hiding it from him would’ve been easy, but if he saw it…he’d ask where it came from, and since I was unemployed and he knew I spent the little cash I received from distant relatives for my birthday on either comic books or trips to the movies with Stone and Jonas (rather than saving it for college like he wanted me to), he’d know I was full of crap. On top of that, I thought about how if the roles were reversed and it had been me who lost an iPod that my hard-working father bought, I would’ve died of guilt, humiliation, and embarrassment. Then, of course, there was the fact that lying, just the idea of it, tore my insides to shreds.
I remember the secretary (I’ve forgotten her name; it’s been awhile, sue me) behind the desk gasping and raising her hand to cover her mouth, and how her eyes gleamed with mischief for a moment as she no doubt thought about keeping the gadget for herself. The mischief faded as fast as it came, however, and she said, “Wow, thank you for your honesty, Mr. Miller. If no one claims it in the next two weeks, then according to policy, it’s yours.”
The glumness within me burned away as endless fireworks of hope ignited and burst through my interior. I walked home with a pep in my step, unaware of the cold winter wind turning the tops of my ears beet red (back then, in hindsight, that thirty degrees and dusting of snow was nothing compared to what came after July 4th, 2020). What followed was the longest two weeks of my young life. Well, thirteen days, because one day before the ownership passed to me, some eleventh grader claimed the iPod. Yeah, it sucks, majorly sucks, I know—but not every story gets a happy ending.
Anyway, digression aside, I stayed as honest as I could for as long as I could, almost abstaining completely from even the white lies, though some slipped through the cracks here and there. They always do, but those don’t count, do they?
The big lies, however… I told none of those until Eleanor asked me how much fuel we had left outside of our dead sled.
“We’re fine,” I told her, hating myself and hoping I sounded more convincing than I did to my own ears. “No worries.”
“Yeah?”
“I promise, dear.” A smile stretched across my face; it felt genuine enough.
Eleanor bought it, and I hated myself for the time being.
But a few minutes later, after another barrage of shots shattered the cold silence, and I saw the guy with the assault rifle clutched against his chest charging through the hazy curtain of falling snow, our lack of fuel suddenly seemed like no big deal.
I was reaching for Ell’s hand with my right. I cradled Chewy, wrapped in his blankets, in the crook of my left. Ell squeezed my fingers hard, and she yanked me down just as a spate of gunfire rippled through the air. I turned my head, seeing the man rushing toward us. A terrible fear stole over me, icing over my joints more than the actual cold had. Though the man held the gun with the muzzle pointed upward, my fear refused to leave. All it would take for him to kill us was a slight shift of his aim.
The sound of the shots rattled my eardrums, but I still heard him shout, “Leave me alone! Leave me alone, you fuckin’ shadows!”
I waved at Stone and Mia. “Go! Get outta here!” I yelled. There wasn’t enough time for us to make a clean getaway with the man so close. Their snowmobile stayed where it was, and the passenger’s side door opened. Mia leaned out into the snow with tears of fright in her eyes.
“Come on! What the fuck are you waitin’ for?”
More shots roared through the dark.
Rising, I pushed Ell toward the sled’s open door just as the man stopped about thirty feet away.
I remember thinking this was it. I remember waiting for the sudden warmth of my blood
