Laura Nagle
The Reefer
Everybody knows student council elections are just popularity contests, but I’m still shocked that our classmates thought it would be a good idea to put Zak in charge of anything. Don’t get me wrong, I love the guy; he’s been my best friend ever since we met in toddler swim class. (We had identical SpongeBob trunks. Two-year-olds’ friendships are not based on much.) But Zak’s a few fries short of a Happy Meal, and the Madison High Class of 2023 deserves better leadership than he is capable of offering. I say this to his face as we slide around the inside of a refrigerated truck while serving as human bubble wrap for the signs he just stole from a work zone on the highway. At the mention of Happy Meals, his face lights up. He yells to Jared—his brother, now our getaway driver—to stop at McDonald’s.
Let’s bring you up to speed with a quick Q&A.
Q: Why did Zak steal signs from a work zone on the highway?
A: We needed a senior prank, and our school colors are orange and black. (I found this argument about as compelling as I imagine you do, but I’m only vice president of our class, so what do I know?)
Q: Why did he also take the big panel of lights that does the flashing-arrow thing?
A: Direct quote: “For the same reason that dude climbed Everest, bruh.”
Q: Why are Zak and I in the back of a refrigerated truck?
A: Because Jared rented it for the weekend. He’s moving tomorrow and reserved a small moving van, but when he showed up at the rental place, the guy at the counter asked him if he’d like a free upgrade to a “reefer,” and the dumbass said yes because he thought it was old-people code for complimentary marijuana.
Q: Why did Jared agree to aid and abet a high school prank when he graduated eight years ago and should theoretically have better things to do with his time, such as packing his stuff for this move that’s supposed to happen in under twenty-four hours?
A: As my mom once put it: “There is something wrong with that whole family’s prefrontal cortices.”
The three of us sit in the McDonald’s parking lot, chowing down on McNuggets, our legs dangling out the back of the truck, our stolen goods on display where the whole town can see them. That last part seems foolish to me, and I say so. I am told to shut up.
We get back on the road and assume our positions. Instead of lying on the floor and sliding around with the arrow panel every time the truck goes around a curve or Jared hits the brakes, this time Zak and I sit with our backs to the sides of the truck, legs straight out towards the middle, and hold it stable with our feet. It is upsetting to realize how long it took us to figure this out.
I think about how this whole thing could have been avoided if the three slates of totally competent candidates hadn’t split the people-who-appreciate-competence vote. The fact that my friends and I won that election is a searing indictment of who we are as a society. At the very least, it should give us pause about the advisability of first-past-the-post voting systems. If our school adopted a two-round system, like the ones both my French teacher and my AP Comp Gov teacher kept blathering on about last year, the Olivias would have wiped the floor with us in the runoff. And, you know, the Olivias are not my absolute favorite people, but I can’t picture them committing felony theft of government property, so they’ve got that going for them.
I ask Zak what we’re going to do with the arrow.
“Good question,” he says.
“This thing is probably worth a lot of money. We are going to get in trouble for stealing it. Like, not even just school trouble; legal trouble, maybe. Is there at least a reason for having it?”
He shrugs.
“We should have done the thing where you let a quantity of farm animals loose in the school building and label them incorrectly,” I tell him.
“Like you label a horse a pig? Who’s gonna fall for that?”
“No, like you let loose two sheep, numbered one and three, so the administration spends the whole day looking for sheep number two.”
“Bruh, that’s genius.”
“It’s probably an urban legend, but yeah.”
“But where would we get sheep from?”
“I don’t know, rent them? Legally? Or get permission to borrow them. Unlike state-owned electronic equip—”
That’s when we fall over and bang our heads on the floor.
Here’s what I see when the back of the truck swings open. Standing beside Jared is Mr. Dyer, my college counselor, who has no fucks left to give now that the “days ’til retirement” sign on his office door is in the low double digits. The man is beside himself with awe. And it’s not because he’s found Zak and me, miraculously alive despite being unrestrained in the back of a refrigerated truck that rear-ended his car two blocks away from the school. That part might not even have registered yet. He can’t take his eyes off our loot.
You know how they say your life flashes before your eyes when you die? I think maybe your immediate future flashes before your eyes when you have a concussion, because suddenly I know there’s a purpose to it all: Jared’s reefer, Zak’s crime spree, the hours I spent in Mr. Dyer’s office listening to him gush about the joys of backyard chicken farming. Our senior prank is going to be epic. Maybe our classmates made the right choice after all. The Olivias could never.
Laura Nagle
Laura Nagle is a writer and translator from French, Spanish, and Irish. Her short fiction has appeared in Iron Horse Literary Review, and her translations of prose and poetry have appeared in journals such as The Southern Review, The Los Angeles Review, Anomaly, and Circumference. Her translation of Prosper Mérimée’s notorious hoax Songs for the Gusle was recently published by Frayed Edge Press.