The Phoenices Volume 1 - Expired

Chapter 17 - Jeremy

We all piled into Marissa's car, as her's was the flashiest. I drove, heading to the nearest corner store to buy a shit ton of spray paint in a variety of colors, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet, silver, magenta, pink, and all the colors in between. The other passengers in the car began to connect the dots as to what our "scuffle with the law" was going to be. After the spray paint stop, I headed to my house to get some paint brushes and small step stools that I shoved into the trunk of Marissa's car, before headed to our final destination. We sat in the quiet comfort of Christmas music that was playing too early the entire ride to the biggest building within 20 miles, the Big House. We climbed out of the car, our eyes traveling across the large, blank bricks of the massive football stadium, Aidan gaped at size in awe, his eyes catching on one of the two humongous score boards in the football stadium. I dumped the duffle of spray paints down on the ground, the cans spilling out onto the sidewalk as I emptied the trunk of the small step ladders. I set up one step ladder every few feet until I was out, and then I texted them each a template of the doodle I had drawn, and we got to sketching the outline of the graffiti art. We sketched in brick red, so it would be easy to cover our mistakes, a swish and a curved line there, until we had the outline on the brick wall. I assigned each person a color and taped up a sheet that said which letter were which colors, before I handed Marissa blue and light blue along with a dust sheet to keep her lines crisp, Reilly received green and hunter green, Aidan collecting his pink and purple, and I grabbed black and white. We all climbed our perspective ladders, each person setting to work on their piece, precisely cutting each edge with a paint brush and mastering the font being used in a matter of strokes. I had done this type of art several times, so I was used to the font style and medium, as well as how to control the paint splatter and drip. My hands followed the familiar pattern of bumper, spray, brush, repeat as though I had been doing it my whole life, and the monotony of the task allowed my mind to travel. I began to think. What would my funeral look like? I think I would like it to be a party, all my friends invited and then a mosh pit where everyone just jumps and jumps and jumps to the music, maybe so much the floors begin to bend from the weight. I think I'd like everyone to be happy during it, have some virgin drinks and celebrate my life, not cry about the loss of it. The curves of my black spray paint closely followed the curves of the brick red, the splatter catching on the dust sheet. I think I would like colorful flowers and bright lights, no amazing grace music or any of the bull shit. Give me my freshman homecoming experience for everyone there, sweaty, happy, exciting. I thought back to my freshman homecoming, I had worn a fancy suit expecting a more formal dance. In reality, that's not at all what happened, I ended up suit jacket thrown on the back of a chair somewhere, the first two buttons on my button up undone, sweat pouring down my limbs and torso, my toes screaming at me to get out, as they had been stepped on by too many stilettos. I remember some random Junior girl spontaneously began to grind on me, I immediately ran away out of the circle to my friends who were playing it safe. They commented on the amount of sweat dripping down my body, and I grabbed two wrists, dragging them in with me. Noah and Chase I think it was, if I remember correctly. They pulled away from me, but I soon had met up with them again, this time they were dragging a freshman girl in tow. She was barefooted, wearing a dark teal dress and dark eye makeup. She had a shimmery sheen of sweat coating her body in a matter of minutes, and she was quite the lively little spirit on the dance floor. She was shoving people out of the way when they would step on her, and she was asked to dance by like four guys, turning them all down with a disbelieving stare, her eyebrow raised. She never danced with anyone but her friends that night, and I don't think I ever took anyone to homecoming since then. I fast forwarded to my Junior Prom, I went in with Sarah Jane, a sophomore girl with legs as long as the Great Wall of China, on my arm. That little blonde wore a red floor length dress with 6" heels and a major thigh split, almost to the point where she was revealing more than what needed to be revealed. I think she powdered her nose a total of 20 times, each taking progressively longer, and on the 21st powder run, the longest yet, I walked down to the door of the girls bathroom to check on her, only to be almost run over by her and a senior guy making out, the guy shoving her out the bathroom door, onto the wall on the other side of the hallway. I left that dance in tears, not realizing that I didn't even like her that much, I just wanted a date. I stepped back from my work, admiring the large black lettering before reaching down for my white can of paint to add the sharp, twisted highlights. I kicked the bag out of the way, startled when another can rolled out, one that I hadn't planned on using. The mirror finish smoothing paint, basically spray on chrome that made any surface as reflective as a mirror, no matter how rough. I quickly finished spraying on the white highlights onto my bold black wording before taking a paintbrush and painting out the outline of my next idea. I got some weird looks from the other three in my group, Reilly going as far as to open her mouth to ask questions before realizing what I was doing. I gracefully dragged my brush across the brick, watching the thick silver paint seep into the cracks and crevices of the brick to smooth the surface. I stepped back, checking the outline before quietly filling it in with fluid motions, the silver mirror like reflection beginning to form as the cloud of paint dried. I set up a tripod, telling the other three in my group to get just on the edges of the frame, facing the wall, staring at the colorful words surrounded by the mirror like cartoon cloud. I heard the camera shutter click and saw the flash reflect on the shiny wall, moving from my pose to check out work. We had just created a colorful, artistic representation of our legacy. The once blank brick now read 'We shall live forever in the hearts of those who knew us ~DHS November 21st, 2017' in huge bold, colorful letters, projected over the silver mirror paint, creating the illusion of the viewer being inside the image. I put my phone away, getting in the car and turning the headlights on bright, before speeding away down the road, hoping to entice the cops that were most likely already on their way to us. I began to hear the faint whirring of police sirens in the distance, and I slowed to give them a chance to catch us. I saw the red and blue lights on the bulding around me, and I stepped on the gas, prepring for a short, medium speed car chase before handing the kids in the car over and explaining our motives. I raced around the blocks of subruban Ann Arbor, the police cars hot on our tails for a good five minutes, the wind whipping through the open windows and mussing our hair up, until I eventually stepped on the brakes, pulling over and hopping out of the vehicle, telling all my friends to do the same.

"Officers you see here, we are all going to die in less that 10 days, and so are 40 people at our school, so we are just trying to real quick complete some stuff on our bucket list." I chuckled, my hands in the air. The cops obviously didn't beleive me, they were still holding several pairs of cuffs and advancing slowly. I slowly reached for my sleeve, pulling it up to my elbow and holding out my wrist for them to read. They took their hands and harshly rubbed their fingers against the date, ripping the scab from the tattoo I had just received and causing me to wince.

"He's for real, check the other kids tattoos." the officer who seemed to be in charge gestured to my friends behind me.

"Could I possibly request that this be on as an emergency news broadcast, for like 3 minutes about the kids who defaced the Big House so that the people from my school will see it?" I asked, him my arms crossed against my chest as the cops came back confirming the authenticity of our tattoos, "and also could you possibly leave it there until at least after we die?" I bargained with the cop. He glared at me, tapping the ends of the hand cuffs together and gesturing to the back seat of the car.

"Even if this is just a last minutes bucket list, you don't get the full experiance of a brush with the law unless you ride in the back of a police car to get held in a jail cell until someone can bail you out." he nodded towards the back seat of the car, and I looked back at Aidan shrugging, they all followed me to the car. We all crunched into the backseat, legs over top of legs and arms around shoulders until we arrived at the station, passing our artwork on the way there. We had a police officer on either side of our group as we entered the station, and my giddy mood dropped that very same moment. Along with several cops with looks of absolute annoyance on their faces, there was four sets of angry looking parents, each with their cold stare on their child, my parents were no exception.

"Hey mom," I muttered, waving nervously, "Would you believe this is a bucket list thing?" I asked her, flinching when she inhaled sharply.

"Your bail is going to cost me $400" she seethed, stabbing the tip of her nail into my chest. I sighed, hoping this treatment wouldn't last too long after I explained what happened to her.

A/N: 1838 words according to NaNoWriMo IM ONLY 700 WORDS BEHIND RN YEEEE