The Beverage War

Short fiction

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During our senior year of high school, after every football practice, Harrison and I walked to the grocery store in our small town and bought candy, potato chips, and soda pop. It was our small ceremony. We would say hello to the old couple who owned the store, step into the walk-in cooler, grab our cold drinks, carry them out to the cash register, pay for them and our other snacks, and then head to John’s house or mine, depending on what our parents were planning to cook for dinner.

It was an average life for two average kids.

But, one day, near the end of our failed football season, Harrison and I changed our ceremony. We stepped into the cooler, as usual, and grabbed our favorite cans of pop. But then we looked at each other and we both had the same thought. I don’t know why it happened. But, without saying a word, John and I each grabbed a two-gallon bottle of soda and stuffed them into our backpacks. We still paid for our junk food because we thought adhering to our older patterns would hide our new theft. Then we ran to Harrison’s house with our stolen goods. We raced into his bedroom and celebrated. We drank all that pop and got energized and stupid on sugar, caffeine, and shame.

Maybe you’re wondering why we didn’t steal any beer from that cooler. After all, the booze sat right there with all the soda pop. But we didn’t take it because athletes never got drunk in our school. So we hypocritically adhered to a jock code of behavior.

And it also just seemed more criminal to steal something that was illegal for us to possess in the first place.

The next morning, John and I met up before school and vowed to never shoplift again. We decided that stealing only one time was almost innocent. To steal again would be decidedly wrong.

But after practice that same day, we did it again. Then again the day after that. We shoplifted for a week.

The thrill and guilt grew bigger each time.

With that two-gallon contraband in our backpacks, we joked and laughed with the old people who owned the store. We paid for five bucks of snacks as we stole three dollars worth of soda pop.

Then I couldn’t do it anymore.

“Harrison,” I said. “We have to stop. We’re going to get caught. They’ll kick us off the team. They might throw us out of school.”

“Just one more time,” he said. “Come on, Pete. They’re too old to catch us.”

“I can’t do it, man.”

“You’ve always been a wuss.”

I walked home alone while Harrison went to the store. I thought he might text or call me after he left with the soda pop in his backpack. But I didn’t hear anything from him.

When I got to school the next morning, I immediately heard the bad news. Harrison had been caught shoplifting. I knew they’d wonder how I was involved. Harrison and I went everywhere together. We were inseparable.

Halfway through first period, I was summoned to the principal’s office. That old guy was standing beside the football coach. They were there to interrogate me.

“Peter,” the principal said. “I’m sure you know why you’re here.”

“Because of Harrison,” I said.

“Yes,” he said. “Did you know what he was doing? Were you involved?”

I wondered if Harrison had already told them that I’d stolen nearly as often as he had.

“Pete,” the principal asked again. “Were you involved in this?”

“No, sir,” I said.

He and the football coach studied my face. They knew I was lying. And they were disappointed in me. I was the only person of color in the school. The only brown kid. And I was the solo brown boy who was a top athlete and top scholar. White adults were always being reminding me that I was a model minority. And there was the unspoken belief that my success was the best evidence that my white school and community was free of any racism. So even if they knew I was guilty, they couldn’t convict me of any wrongdoing. To convict me would force those white men to convict themselves for their own racist condescension.

“Pete,” the football coach said. “You gotta man up here and tell us the truth.”

I loved my football coach. He made me the quarterback from day one of my high school career—a meager career to be sure. But I was still the leader of the team, even as we lost five, ten, fifteen games in a row.

“Come on, Pete,” the coach said again. “Be the QB here. Be the boy with the golden arm. Did you steal the soda?”

There was part of me that wanted to be honest about everything. I didn’t have a golden arm. And I was not a model minority. I wanted to tell those two adults to stop putting their shit on me.

“I didn’t steal anything,” I said.

“Okay, Pete,” the principal said. “Harrison already told us he did it alone.”

I was falsely exonerated.

My best friend kept his silence even as he was kicked off the football team, sentenced to community service picking up litter around town, and suspended from school for a month.

During that month, he and I didn’t see each other. We didn’t call or text. We’d been constantly together for years but things had changed. I don’t know why he didn’t contact me. But I was too ashamed to talk to him. I’d let him take all the punishment. I kept playing football. I didn’t have to scoop up dog shit while my classmates watched. I wasn’t suspended. And my reputation wasn’t ruined. I wasn’t branded as a good kid gone bad. In fact, some people thought Harrison had harmed me.

When Harrison came back to school, he wouldn’t look at me. And I wouldn’t look at him. This silence went on for the rest of the year. We ignored each other at our graduation ceremony. Our parents ignored each other, too.

On the night of our graduation, at a kegger down by the river, we stood at separate campfires. I was sober. But Harrison got really drunk. I was worried for him. He caught me staring. He threw his beer into the fire and staggered up to me.

He shoved me hard and I had to do a backward stagger-dance to avoid a campfire. I wasn’t planning on retaliating but the other boys jumped in anyway to stop any further violence.

“You aren’t who I thought you were,” Harrison screamed at me.

I didn’t respond in the moment but I often wonder what I should’ve said. I think I should’ve confessed to everything.

But I didn’t.

Despite all of that, I think I’ve become a good man. I have the kind of job where I’m paid very little to help strangers in crisis. But does that matter? I’ll always be the thief who got away with it. I’ll always be the boy who betrayed his childhood best friend.

Harrison and I will always be illuminated by different flames.