Unredeemable

Chapter 1
This was it. The last customer just clanged out the door of the Randolph convenience store, and my fourteen-year-old buddy Robbie and I rushed the cash register. I tried to look tough and dangerous. Robbie didn’t try. He just blurted out the words he’d heard before on dozens of old crime shows.
“Stick ‘em up!”
I elbowed Robbie hard in the ribs, rolling my eyes. When the two of us punks were planning this job, Robbie told me he wanted to use that classic line. “You’ll make us look like amateurs,” I told him. I suggested we say, “Give me all your money, and no one gets hurt.”
But then, the excitement got the better of him. The Pakistani store clerk heard Robbie’s squeaky delivery and grinned, sure we were goofing around. His smile faded when I took my hand out of my coat pocket and showed him the gun. “Now do it!” I said. Fear flashed in his eyes, and he opened the register. When he slapped a handful of twenties on the counter, his hand shook. Robbie pocketed the cash.
“Now the safe,” I said, pitching my voice downward.
“I don’t know the combination.” The clerk looked like he was only a few years older than us, and I could see sweat in his wispy mustache. I took a step closer. “Okay, okay. I’ll look.”
The office was behind the counter. My accomplice jumped over, his straggly hair falling in his eyes as he beckoned me to follow.
The safe—a typical gray box—was ajar already. I could see packages wrapped in brown paper.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing,” the clerk said with a shaky voice.
“We’ll take it anyway.”
He pulled out four paper-covered bricks, which Robbie stuffed into a paper grocery bag. “Let’s get out of here,” I said. We banged out of the door at a hundred miles an hour, running full speed for two blocks. I thought I could hear sirens in the distance, and I laughed and ran faster. We darted down a side street, and when we emerged onto another main street, we walked casually, like two young men with nothing to hide. Ducking onto the grounds of the local high school, we hid behind a dumpster.
“That was wicked cool,” I said as I ripped the brown paper off one brick.
“Yeah, wicked cool, Kev!”
We both fell silent as stacks of $20 bills fell out of the package. Some $2,000 in all. Robbie helped himself to the other three bricks, which yielded the same. We were hoping for a cool hundred to split between us—not $8,000. In 1965, $8000 was a fortune. We were the richest men in Randolph, Massachusetts!
Robbie gave a whoop and thrust out his palm for a high-five. When I leaned forward to return it, the gun slipped out of my pocket.
And bounced.
We burst out laughing. Scooping it up, I tossed the gun at Robbie, who bounced it off the brick wall. We had just pulled off the job of the century with a plastic dart gun painted to look real.
We split our haul into two paper bags and took off toward another part of town, the money already burning a hole in our pockets. Dinner, a movie, and a big bucket of popcorn were in our future.
Later that night, still full of adrenaline, we tumbled out into the street after a nine o’clock movie. I looked at Robbie, who was zipping his coat. “You going home?”
Robbie shook his head. “You?”
“No way.” My house was not an option. My dad had been gone for a few years, but my mother had a gift for sniffing out trouble—and for beating the daylights out of her kids. Robbie’s parents often let me stay at their house, and although the thought of a warm bed sounded good on this cold night, there would be questions to answer and pressure to go to school in the morning.
It didn’t matter. I knew of a safe place for us to hide out for the night. We fell into step and crossed the street to where two blue Goodwill donation boxes stood in a parking lot. I was taller than Robbie, so I boosted him to open the square metal flap and wriggle in. He thudded to the bottom, and I heard him shifting bags around.
“It’s good,” he called out.
“Great,” I said. “I’ll see you in the morning. Partner.” I heard him laugh as I hoisted myself into the second box. A pile of clothes in paper bags cushioned my landing. Wriggling around until I found the most comfortable spot, I leaned back against the side, hands behind my head.
Nothing troubled me as I fell asleep in that cold collection box—not the ill-gotten gains in my pocket, not the fact that I was a fourteen-year-old dropout, and certainly not the idea that my family might wonder where I was. Let them worry. There was nothing there for me.