There’s a saying that a good friend will bail you out of jail, but a great friend will be sitting by your side saying, “Man, that was fun.” That’s the phrase that was going through my head when I saw the police lights in my rearview mirror.

My junior year spring break was the best break I’ve ever had in all of high school. My days consisted of being completely reckless and carefree. Responsibilities were nonexistent. There were no restrictions. The house was empty when I was home, and I was out at night. I took that freedom too far sometimes, and I landed myself in ton of trouble.

My best friend, Jordan, and I are completely alike. We’re interested in the same things. We’re in the same activities at school. We do the same things on the weekend, listen to the same music, and even laugh alike. That also means we like getting into the same kind of trouble. Because I had an empty house throughout the day, we spent all of our time there. One day we got the extremely intelligent idea to take one of the family cars out for a ride. We had nowhere in particular to go, but we didn’t want to be in the house anymore and we were too lazy to walk. The first time we took the car, it was no big deal. We didn’t go far, didn’t get caught and managed to park it in exactly the same spot.

We didn’t exactly have permission to drive the car. I didn’t have a license.

We didn’t exactly care how stupid we were being, either.

By the fourth or fifth time we drove, we were getting pretty confident and adventurous. We got an invitation to meet some friends in Lewisville and quickly jumped on the offer, disregarding the fact that I needed to pick up my little sister in Carrollton in less than an hour. We made the mistake of visiting with friends too long and had to rush back home. On the way back, I was speeding right through Carrollton cops’ playground: Hebron. As I passed over a small hill, with my thoughts wandering to various unimportant topics and making small talk with Jordan, I noticed a police car sitting at a stoplight up the road. I was obviously speeding so I slowed down as inconspicuously as possible. When my parents’ small white car rolled past the light, my heart felt it was going to jump out of my chest. I had some halfhearted hope that we would once again get lucky, but the cop immediately made a right turn behind us. My heart sunk. The cop got in the middle lane behind a black BMW, turned its lights on, and for a split second Jordan and I were ecstatic. We couldn’t believe the incredible luckiness we were dealt at the moment. Then he got in the left lane behind me. This time my heart didn’t drop — it plunged into my stomach. Then the cop was in the middle lane again. Then he was in my lane. Remember what I said about being on his playground? He pulled over two cars at once for barely driving above the speed limit. I was issued three tickets for speeding, driving without a license and driving with expired registration. Luckily Jordan didn’t get in any legal trouble.
Both of our moms were far from happy with either one of us. But when the time came for me to go to court for the tickets, Jordan was sitting right beside me on that bench, waiting to take on the world.