Shitbox Tarkov

We spent the summer after our senior year stealing from the middle class (our parents) to support our car parts habit (yours) and nourish our budding kleptomania (mine). We had our driver’s licenses. You wanted freedom. I wanted possessions.

We were speeding down the interstate when I suggested we steal your dad’s heirloom signed portrait of Dale Earnhardt Sr., the one with the sunbeam that made him look almost holy. The steering column shook the wheel under your palms, and you shrugged me off. He was your one-weekend-a-month parent, someone you would eventually be estranged from. You didn’t think we could sell it for much (secretly, you didn’t want to steal it because you knew he believed in God, and even though you resented him, you didn’t want him to live in a world where God would allow his most prized possession to be stolen), but we needed gas money.

You wanted to drive across the country. I wanted to gamble. We had a plan to go to Las Vegas: acquire fake IDs, find someone willing to tattoo American traditional flash on our arms (to further prove our age, laughable), and in the time it took our skin to heal, pawn enough cabinet china, jewelry, CDs, golf clubs, items so abundant and inconsequential our parents wouldn’t notice them missing. We’d leave in a bellow of bluish smoke, burning a trail of full synthetic behind us.

It was your dad’s weekend, which was a problem because we hadn’t seen each other in a few days. We were codependent. I wanted you (the portrait). The sky was humid and dark, and I walked to your dad’s house on suburban sidewalks in plastic flip-flops until the tops of my feet blistered. You’d brought me to your dad’s once, snuck me in through the back. When he caught us having sex, instead of lecturing us about pre-marriage or condoms, he preached about the greatest NASCAR racer of all time while I put my pants back on.

I found the portrait on the mantle and slipped it under my shirt while your dad slept on the couch. I could’ve walked home, but my feet hurt, and your car was in the driveway. A black-silver-blue bodied, rear-wheel drive, mufflerless, base model makeless sedan (my favorite car). You’d left the keys in the ignition, and as the engine coughed and started, suddenly, the plan changed. I was my own getaway driver. I sold Dale Earnhardt Sr. for three hundred dollars to a man who also believed in the gospel, convinced a Caesar’s Palace bouncer to let me lose it all on the roulette table, and when I did, God, I’d never been so delighted to have nothing.

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Chelsea Bouchard is a writer and evening shift nurse from New Hampshire, where she lives with her husband and two tuxedo cats. This is her first publication. You can find her lurking on socials @chelfmarie.