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I was vaguely aware of the officer finally shoving open his door, vaguely aware of him throwing open mine, vaguely aware of his fist wrapping around the front of my hoodie, shaking me like a bad dog. But I kept kicking and thrashing and maybe laughing or screaming, I’m not sure, because it felt good. It felt damn good.
I was mad at myself, and I liked it.
My elbow painfully caught the side the doorframe as the officer hauled me out, and I thought I felt something crack in my cheek when he slammed me to the concrete which smelled of grease and shit. There was shouting. More officers came. I felt their boots on the backs of my legs, trying to hold me down as I fought them. I was making things worse, far worse, but I couldn’t stop myself.
I didn’t want to.
There, forced and held in my field of vision with no way for me to look away from it, was the reason I was so mad at myself. Everything had gone according to Jack’s plan at the jewellery store. I spray-painted the security cameras in the alley with the cans I always kept with me—robbery or not. Mia, with her twitchy fingers and red-rimmed eyes, had picked the lock. Lee opened the glass cases with a key he’d snatched the day before from an older woman who leaned in a little too close toward his boyish curls and flashing smile while showing him a pair of earrings intended for his “dear, dear mother”.
The diamond necklaces and emerald rings and gold hoops were safe in Jack’s tattered backpack as he walked right out the back door. Mia went next, biting at her nails with a gleeful laugh. Lee followed, grinning at the camera in his ski mask. I was last into the alley.
Maybe it was the sense that we were in no danger that made me linger. No alarms. No bells. No alerted shouts. No distant wailing of sirens. Or maybe a part of me didn’t want to go with Jack and Mia and Lee. Because once we divided the loot they’d leave, one by one. Perhaps not till dawn, but eventually. Then I’d be alone once more. If I stayed there in the alley, at least I would be the one to do the leaving. Or maybe, if you believe in that sort of thing, the inspiration hit me so hard that there was no resisting it.
Jack had been nothing more than a shadow at the end of the alley when he yelled back that it wasn’t smart to linger, that police would probably be on their way. I’d shouted at him, spray of paint sweeping in a wide arc in the dark, that it would just take a second or two longer, that I would be right behind them.
“You’re on your own then, Aurnia.”
As if I fucking didn’t already know.
I’m not sure how long it took me to finish the piece. I never really know when I’m drawn in like that, transfixed. Time has a way of losing all meaning. All I know is that suddenly there was those damned red and blue lights and just a stroke or two left. I thought I could finish it and still run. I had been wrong.
So it was my fault. All my fault that I was being arrested, that there was a knee at the small of my back and vice-like grips on my arms, scrapes on my cheeks and mars on my record, and a new blackness to my already dark horizon.
The paint wasn’t even dry, I noticed, as the red and blue illuminated my artwork in alternating pulses. The dripping paint made it look like the girl on the abandoned, dirty, lonesome alley wall was crying, crying purple and green and blue. She looked down at me with eyes that I hadn’t meant to be so sad as I kicked and resisted and laughed. She watched and there was nothing she could do for me and nothing I could do for her.
We were on our own.
I was on my own.
In fucking hell.
