right? How could it be broken already? The fratboys all gathered
around and gave me advice, and I played up all bitchy, you know, 'I've been
fixing these things since I was ten, get lost,' whatever. They loved it. I was
all spunky. A couple of them were pretty cute even, and the attention was great.
I felt safe -- lots of people hanging around, they weren't going to try anything
funny. Only I was starting to freak out about the car -- it was really dead. I'd
reseated everything, self-tested every component, double-checked the fuel.
Nothing nothing nothing! I was going to have to call a tow and my mom was going
to kill me.

"So I'm trying not to let it get to me, trying to keep it all cool, but I'm not
doing a great job. The frat guys are all standing too close and they smell like
beer, and I'm not trying to be perky anymore, just want them to stay! away! but
they won't back off. I'm trying not to cry.

"And then the cops showed up. Not real cops, but Sony's Vehicle Recovery Squad.
All dressed up in Vaio gear, stylish as a Pepsi ad, packing lots of semilethals
and silvery aeorosol shut-up-and-be-still juice, ready to nab the bad, bad perp
who boosted this lovely Veddic Series 7 from Mom's lot. Part of the franchise
package, that kind of response. It took me a second to figure it out -- Mom
didn't know it was *me* who had the car, so she'd called in a theft and bam, I
was about to get arrested. The frat rats tried to run away, which is a bad idea,
you just don't ever run from cops -- stupid, stupid, stupid. They ended up
rolling around on the ground, screaming and trying to pull their faces off. It
took, like a second. I threw my hands in the air. 'Don't shoot!' They gassed me
anyway.

"So then *I* was rolling around on the ground, feeling like my sinuses were
trying to explode out of my face. Feeling like my eyeballs were melting. Feeling
like my lungs were all shriveled up into raisins. I couldn't scream, I couldn't
even breathe. By the time I could even roll over and open my eyes, they had me
cuffed: ankles and wrists in zapstraps that were so tight, they felt like piano
wire. I was a cool fifteen year old, but not that cool. I started up the
waterworks, boohoohoo, couldn't shut it down, couldn't even get angry. I just
wanted to die. The Sony cops had seen it all before, so they put a tarp down on
the Veddic's backseat upholstery, threw me in it, then rolled it into their
recovery truck and drove me to the police statio