"write about something you might have gone to jail for" assignment.
This is Cate, by the way. I made a blog back in the day on blogger & it looks like I'm stuck with that name.

Utica

The beat up house – red brick gone brown, boarded up windows and glass like crooked teeth. Behind it, train tracks, disused, misused. Teal glass bulbs and iron rods cracked on the ground. What are they? Lights? Fancy railroad spikes? Electricity. Put them in the back for Reilly. El says. And the brokedown car with wildflowers growing up through the holes in the floor. Then Kevin gets a call and we’re on the move, on the hunt.

            In an empty parking lot, Buick baking, my legs sticking together, sticking to the beige leather and I can’t touch anything in the light because my fingertips will burn. We’re supposed to be buying boat glue for El’s father, but this mission takes precedent. Waiting. Waiting. Waiting until Dylan and his seventeen-year-old girlfriend, his child bride, arrive. Her name is Katie, just like me. They have no money, no place to stay so they’ll sell their Pontiac with the smashed driver’s side window for half of what it’s worth.

            Then around the city. Katie going in and out of wilting houses with chain-link fences separating them from one another. They like her better. Kevin parked a block away. And it occurs to me that I should be nervous. I should be fearful, worried. How many years for dope possession? And I try to make myself frightened, so we’ll be safe, but you can’t trick the universe like that, so you might as well do nothing.

            A new parking lot – Price Chopper – and more waiting. Finally Asian Rob – who will later be arrested after a dramatic, drawn out police chase with his four-year-old daughter in the back seat – breaks radio silence and El suggests we get out.

Do you want me to push you in the cart? And in that moment there is absolutely nothing I want more. But it’s impossible; the cart is booted.

Then we notice the Buick is gone and I am hoping we’ve been abandoned forever, just me and El. But, of course, Kevin returns, smiling, Katie and Dylan gone. Rejoice! Rejoice! Time to head back home.

Little packets, slips, with moons stamped on the front and back. On the way home, on the highway, we’re in it, all three of us. I bought this for you. I got this for you. Damn, if that isn’t true love, buying dope for someone else. So fuck the boat glue, nothing matters anymore, just you and me and we’re free again.