7. Crime Without Punishment
Muahahahaha. Evil laugh!
Ryan’s Not-Bucket List, Because I Will Never Die, You Can’t Make Me
Punch a shark
Invent a time machine
Be a badass
Get a leather jacket.Real badasses don’t need accessories to show their badassery
Break rules
Vandalize something
Catch a fish
Other manly rites of passage like… killing a defenseless animal or fight club but less violent?
Invent new, less violent manly rites of passage
Two dashing heroes cruised down the road. Two men with nothing left to lose. Doing bad was doing good the way they saw it, so that’s why they could still be called heroes. They answered to a different kind of law. The law of the wild. The call of nature.
Wait, that was peeing.
They were outlaws, antiheroes. Doing bad but looking good doing it. The guys you rooted for anyway because they had Reasons for being terrible. Even if those reasons were,it was on the list.
Yeah, there was a list. And they were checking it twice.
That was Santa.
Damn, narrating my life like an action movie was hard. I thought everything in a deep, ominous voice but then my thoughts’ throat got scratchy. I hadn’t even known that could happen, and I stopped my badass inner monologue to cough every so often, which undercut the badassery.
“Cut the lights,” I said to Luke in my cool outlaw voice.
“Do you need a cough drop?” he asked. He was still a villain. Or hero. A hero-villain. Just a considerate one. “You can check the glovebox.”
“No, I’m doing a thing.” Obviously, there was room for improvement if he couldn’t tell just from my dangerous aura. “A badass rebel without a career thing.”
“Rebel without acause,” Luke corrected. Didn’t he know he wasn’t allowed to know things I didn’t know?
Besides, he was technically right and really wrong at the same time. “You think rebelling is a 9-to-5 job?” I countered.
“I think I knew that one and wanted to point it out.” Luke being proud of himself was cute, so I let him enjoy the moment even though rebel without a career worked better. You’re welcome, James Dean… RIP. Rebels could be respectful of the dead.
My knee bounced up and down without consulting the rest of me. We weren’t there yet. But soon we would be almost there and then we would be practically there and then we would be there. And when we were there, then we would be there. That was how moving worked. Oh my god.
I wasn’t freaking out.
We were up to no good!
Only we might not be very good at up to no good. It was all Luke’s fault.
“You didn’t cut the lights,” I pointed out.
“Then we’d be driving in the dark.” That didn’t sound safe. And it was his job to keep us alive. But still, this was a stealth mission.
