Sin $101

When I walked in, it was just a normal day. I was completely oblivious of what was to happen in the next few hours. Halley routinely grabbed a shopping cart and offered me a seat in it, as she always did. I clumsily climbed into the cart, and just like that my destiny was set. How we came about the idea is a blur to me, but after we started we never stopped. Before anything happened, we were blissfully strolling about the store, when two young men walked by with suspicious but playful looks on their faces. I didn’t think much of it, not even after the second, third or fourth time seeing them. We continued walking, collecting more petty things and putting them with me in the shopping cart. It was my job to remove the goods from their packaging, in order to prevent the beeping when walking out of the store. Iulia took out her phone and put on familiar tunes that we all sang along with. We were almost done, finding that there wasn’t anything left that we desired, as we came across the pharmaceutical section. We had all heard rumors and talks of what cough syrup did if it was misused, but our curious and foolish minds decided that we wanted to see it for ourselves. We knew exactly what we were doing, we were just unaware of the consequences. After at least paying for the hangers, we sat down at Dunkin Donuts, exhausted from all the walking and with my fingers sore from carefully tearing apart packet after packet. We continued playing our songs, murmuring the familiar words, and waving at Ms. Waterman who was standing a few feet away, talking on the phone. With almost fifteen minutes to spare, we finally began exiting Walmart and walking towards the bus. What happened next is something that makes me close my eyes and tighten my shoulder in agony every time I think about it. The two young men who had been observing us ran in front of the shopping cart and caused us to abruptly stop walking. When they first ordered us into the room to my right my mind couldn’t grasp the words coming out of their mouths. I didn’t fully understand it until Halley started walking, following their hand gestures leading to a small, light grey room containing only a desk and a bench. Our next order was to sit down on the bench in front of us. We stood there, frozen all looking at each other with question marks stamped on our foreheads. The blond guy repeated the words, and I motioned for Halley and Iulia to come sit down next to me. This huge, excruciating lump formed in my gut as I stared into the gray wall in front of me. “We know what you did” kept repeating in my head like a broken record. I don’t even know what I did, I thought, still staring into the wall. The lump in my gut expanded, and turned into a state of panic and surrealness. Is this real? I thought, not being able to express emotion until I heard the helpless whimpers coming from my right. Iulia sat there shaking, tears rushing down her cheeks with her hands covering her mouth, desperately trying to muffle the sobs. That was the moment the first tear hit my chest where there were soon to be many, many more. Suddenly, Ms. Waterman rushed into the room, coming to our defense.
The brunette guy explained to her that we had be caught stealing for the past hour and a half. “Is this true, girls?” she asked, and the look of sadness and disappointment covering her face as we all hesitantly nodded our heads will never leave my memory. After sometime, a police officer came to collect necessary information about each of us. “How tall are you? How old are you? How much do you weigh? Is black your natural hair color?” he asked. Completely zoned out, I nodded to every question he asked. I was told to call my mom, and her first response was “You have got to be kidding me, what is wrong with you?!”. I handed the police officer my phone, and after telling her the situation all he kept repeating was “Ma’am, calm down, it’s alright, ma’am..”. The total sum of our unpaid items was $101. After some time, we were given back the items we had actually paid for, and all we were left with were those stupid hangers. Not much later, we were picked up by Mr. Jones, who told us as soon as we sat in the car that it was not necessary for us to talk until we reached Hebron. I had not yet stopped crying throughout this process, neither had Halley or Iulia. When we sat down with Mr. Jones, telling him our part of the story he bluntly said “If anyone asks, just tell them to fuck off”. The way he chose to help us instead of throwing us under the bus is something I’ll always appreciate. The following days were filled with fake smiles and vague answers to the very curious spectators. This experience will forever make me cringe in complete embarrassment and shame, and it is not something I’m happy to talk about with anyone, not even my fellow “partners in crime”. The incident itself may have been tough, but it wasn’t the toughest part of the event.
Everything that was later caused by it hurt so much more. People may say that mistakes are made to learn from, but doing community service every day after school, is not the way I had wanted to spend my last week at Hebron. I missed out on so many opportunities to spend time with people I may never see again, and words cannot express how much I regret this. I suppose in a way it has helped me grow up, and I hope that someday this will simply be a funny story to tell at dinner parties.