My Felony
By: Danica M.
“It’ll be fine! What are you worried about?” my mother queried, exasperated. “They won’t actually check to make sure you’re eighteen.”
I continued to hyperventilate.
Isabella just laughed.
My brother, unsurprisingly, wasn’t paying attention.
As well you may guess, ‘it’ was not fine and there was everything to worry about.
I could have been arrested! My parents could have been arrested! Everyone I know and love could have been arrested!
Well, maybe not everyone.
But I could have been!
And really, what obligation did I have to do it? It wasn’t my issue. I didn’t break my brother’s iPhone just months after receiving as a Christmas present. It wasn’t my fault that my mom couldn’t do it. So, why did it fall to me?
I see it as an act of favoritism. Really, what it is, is that my mother loves my brother more than I. She would
sacrifice my spotless criminal record for my brother’s replacement device. I see how it is now, mother. I see
what you did there!
“But, Danica,” I’m sure you’re asking. “How could your mother possibly prefer any other child than yourself?”
Ah, you flatter me. I shall assure, you, in return, that these questions did not go unasked when I reflected back on the situation I was naively lured into. Yet, this being a memoir, I must tell all truths. I have been dishonest with you, my good readers.
It was not favoritism that I was harshly subjected to. It was enforced crime.
I know, you are appalled. My own mother? Yet I do not lie.
I will reveal what she had me do.
I had to sign off on a package.
I know. How could anyone have knowingly placed me in such a predicament?
Here I am, a lawful minor, wishing to both obey my parents and uphold the foundation of America’s order. What was I to do?
The answer: panic.
For the next fifteen minutes after my mother abandoned me to go buy a cat bed at TJ Maxx, with my brother in tow, my breathing spiraled towards asthma-attack frequency, pulse skyrocketing, and palms
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