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The following is a true story. This was written for me mostly as a way to get it off my chest. I wanted to share it online too just so someone can read it. There’s not really anyone I can tell that I know. Do with it what you will. Enjoy.
I never meant to take it. In fact, I didn’t really want to. Earlier that day, he had been flashing his wealth without regard to consequence. I ogled as any teenager does at sums of cash. But once done fantasizing, I completely had forgotten about the episode. Last period had passed like a breeze as my mind had been anywhere but the present. I fiddled with the cold glossy buckles on my deep velvety green backpack. My eyes glanced upwards over my bag without any thought. I stared at it for a moment without realizing the opportunity ahead. That’s it. The navy blue pencil bag that I had been ogling before. No., not the case itself. What was inside, I wasn’t sure. All I knew then was nobody would notice. Or would they? Of course, they would, you’re standing out in the open! But no one seems to care or even notice me. If I could just slip it in quickly it would all be over with. This is a bad idea, what would you say if they caught you? Without a moment’s hesitation, I rested a textbook over the blue case and lifted both the book and the bag as one. Nestling into my bag, I folded over the flap and gave a quick suspicious glance around the room. No one. No one saw. Trying to maintain my cool, I reached the exit bidding goodbye’s and smiling as if I truly cared about anyone there.
I hate myself. How could you do that? They are absolutely going to find out! My mind battled for the next hour. Do I tell? Or do I lay low? It’s too late now, just follow through. I couldn’t care less about them anyway. What have they ever done for you? All they have done is slander your name. Beat you down in the name of banter. My muscles tense even thinking about their cruel actions. Looking back, I was surprised at how close I was to smashing their self-righteous, pretentious faces in. That’s absurd I’m not a violent person. Thinking about violence and doing it are two different things, right? I’d prefer not to think about it. Laying down to rest that night was eerily easy. At least ignoring it was.
This is now about two weeks after the incident. I felt no shame. No remorse. No guilt. That was scary for me. I knew how I was supposed to feel but I didn’t truly feel like how I ought to. It brought a hidden smile to my face to see them hurrying around the school trying to understand what happened. I can’t even explain how satisfying it was to see one in particular searching for answers when I had them all. Oh, how I hated him. Hate can be both acidic and addictive. Knowing I was angry brought about a desire for a change of heart. Feeling your anger is so much more satisfying. The internal rage that fueled the violent fantasies repeating themselves over and over. It was so wrong but felt so good. It all feels so good until it doesn’t. This is perhaps where the law of diminishing returns introduced itself. It wasn’t satisfying anymore. The excitement left along with time. I had the money but no motive. It was never really about the money anyway. Just payback and excitement. Someone once said people would die just to feel alive. I feel the same way but instead of the ultimate end, I replaced it with taking. The physical act of taking something in itself filled the desire for retribution. Something about committing an action and then vanishing fascinated me. Why don’t more people do this? Am I a weird exception? Or maybe people do, but just like me, haven’t been caught. From there, it was all petty theft.
2 weeks of petty theft got boring. It wasn’t making the impact I wanted it to make. I only took from people I either mildly disliked, or severely disliked. Or was my dislike only an excuse to keep taking? I don’t know. I lie to myself about my own intentions. It was time for a challenge. Okay, think… What do you want? How much do you think will make you happy? Do you want to give some away? Just write it down. I scribbled out onto a piece of paper four initial thoughts. 1) Get revenge on the certain individual you hate. 2) Save half of the money. 3) Give a fourth to my parents. 4) Spend a fourth for yourself. Just like that, I had a new objective. Going to school the next day was strange. It was like I had put on a lens that showed me to steal. Amplified my intolerance. Rushed my adrenaline. Before I knew it I was sitting at home with $700 worth of stuff sitting in my drawer. It all happened so fast. I couldn’t even keep track of what I had taken anymore. Did I steal from this person? I’m not sure… I considered it but don’t remember if I went through with it. What day did you take that? It was all a blur. Days felt like they were melded together in clumps of four. I set up an account to sell it all. After organizing my loot and managing my account, I laid down to sleep.
Sitting in class, I did anything but pay attention. My mind always grabbed on to the next fantasy whether it be innocent or painfully violent. Except I would never do it, of course… right? As long as you don’t actually commit anything I should be good. Don’t stress about it. Looking to my right I saw it. The infamous MacBook pro. At that point, it wasn’t infamous, just a couple days after that. I was going to steal his MacBook Pro. It was as if the stars aligned. He was the one I hated with a passion. He was the one that hurt me and my family. He was the one that deserved to be kicked out of any position of authority he had. I hate him. Justice. That’s right. Justice. I am the good guy here. He is the bad guy. In my self-proclaimed delusion, I was the hero. I could make things right.
Everything was set for the big day. I had a list of code I had written down to hack his laptop and factory reset it for selling. Today was the day he was going to open his backpack and realize it’s not there. I was going to be able to experience the great pleasure of watching him panic and try to understand why and what had happened. The look of sheer frustration and fear was something to be treasured to me. This was my payback.
He was at basketball practice. Not surprising basketball is the one sport I hate. Probably because he plays it. I was supposed to pick up my sister. She was finishing an art project at school. Earlier that day I had seen him flirt with her. That waste of oxygen had the nerve to flirt with MY sister. If it wasn’t for my pristine reputation at school, I would have slammed his head into the lockers by now. It’s okay, he will pay. Just focus on your plan and do it right. No emotion now, save it for later. I waited until he was out playing basketball to strike. A quick scan of the room. No one is here. This was it. I was finally going to do it. I had even checked where all the cameras were. Everything fell into place and now it was checkmate. I carelessly unzipped his backpack and took a look inside. Empty. It was empty. No laptop, no charger, no phone. Nothing. I started to panic. How could this go wrong? I had everything planned down to seconds! That’s when my eyes floated over to the bag next to his. This bag belonged to another individual whom I disliked but nothing serious. I couldn’t go back empty-handed. A failure. I knew he also had a MacBook pro. Whatever just take it. He’s a rich prick too, it doesn’t matter. Mommy and Daddy will fix his problem. Without hesitation the next moment the laptop was safely secured in my bag. Someone called my name. My body froze, but my head managed to turn to look. It was my sister. I smiled at her and said I was going to take her home. Did she see me? Does she know? She smiled back at me and beckoned me to join her. Close call. Now at this point, I walked over to join her thinking I won. Not knowing this then, but I walked straight in front of the camera.
Getting into the laptop was going to be harder than I thought. The code wasn’t working. I had to access what is called the terminal. After a lot of google searches and youtube videos, I had finally understood how to get in. From the terminal, I changed his password to “12345”. I was in. I took a quick look around his laptop and history purely out of the fascination that I could. He was at my mercy. I lost interest in his personal information pretty quickly because after all, he wasn’t the intended victim. I turned off the “find my MacBook” option so that I couldn’t be traced. Throughout the entire process, I was very unsure if I was doing anything correctly. It was my first time. I then accessed the terminal again and factory reset his laptop completely wiping his hard drive. It was done. I was going to take it to a sketchy part of town to sell it as most thieves did. I kept looking up the price for the MacBook Pro to decide how much I should sell it for when I got a message notification. It was the owner of the MacBook. For reasons I will call him “Slug”. He asked me if I had seen anyone around when I left. I replied, “No, why?”. He answered explaining to me that someone had stolen his MacBook. “I am so sorry to hear that. Have you reported it to the school?”. He said that he had. He also claimed that the school had a way to find out who did it for sure. I wasn’t convinced when I remembered one terrible mistake. When I had walked to join my sister, I had walked straight in front of the camera I had planned to avoid. If they review the footage, I am going to be a very strong suspect. The camera was located on the court and looked into the hall where I took the laptop. It didn’t show the direct spot of where I took it but it could capture me walking away from it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. I shouldn’t have let my guard down so quickly. The only thing I had protecting me was my reputation. Believe me, no one would have ever believed that I stole something. People thought I was an angel. I didn’t go to school the next day because I wasn’t feeling well. Was it guilt? Was it something I ate? Probably both. During school that day they had a whole school meeting to talk about all the thievery incidents that happened. They thought it was different people each time. It was strange because I felt almost proud that I, single-handedly, got away with everything. There wasn’t much I could do at this point but wait to see if they caught me. My father and the school director are good friends. The director invited himself over. When I heard he was coming, I knew why. He had seen me on the tape and wanted to discuss it. I had a gut feeling that they would search my room. I was right. That night I had gone to watch Endgame with a couple of friends. Before I left I gathered everything into two boxes and hid them in a guest room. While I was at the movie my friend got a text from the basketball group chat. “Hey everyone! They found Slug’s MacBook and a bunch of other stuff. They won’t say who it is but at least they have it!” My friend shared the message with my group of friends. They all celebrated and I did too but inside I knew they had found my stash.
On the walk home, I rehearsed my apology over and over. I knew my father would not be happy at all to find out his son was the thief responsible for multiple accounts of theft. I got home and to make a long story short I told him everything I have told you. Except for the parts about how I felt towards certain people. He handled it really well. Instead of yelling at me he told me that he was on my side. He explained that even though I would have to face the severe punishments ahead, he still was by my side. Hearing that put everything into perspective. I can’t believe that even after all I had done, he was still willing to love and forgive me. As cheesy as that sounds it was true. After much thought, I had made a decision. I am no longer going to continue as a thief. That was over. I know some might say, ‘Oh he’s only saying that because he got caught’ but I can assure you that I really was done with being a thief.
To wrap this up, I now have a long list of punishments, things I have to pay back and apologies to be made. I don’t know how in the world I wasn’t expelled. I showed them that I was sorry and maybe I talked my way through some of the problems. I really did want to change. For the next two months, I have to deal with the embarrassment of everyone knowing what I did. I never thought the consequences would be more mentally painful than physically. If I could do it all over again, I wouldn’t. Even if I hadn't;t been caught, there’s a heavy air that surrounded me. When I confessed all I did, it lifted from my shoulders. Stealing can be an outlet for many things. Anger, hate, greed, you name it. What it does to you mentally is something no one should have to experience. I was wrong for doing everything I did and I have no excuse. I wrote this to get it off my chest but now that it’s over I guess I want to leave a warning for those in similar cases like mine or even don’t relate to me at all. Any addiction or compulsive behavior you have is never worth it in the end. I paid the price and got it easy this time, but not everything is like that. Put everything into perspective and look at the big picture. It’s easier to move forward when you know where you’re headed.
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