I was never really a bad kid, I just kind of got that image because of my group of friends. I guess that's true for the first bit of my life up until 7th grade. That is when I started to earn my reputation. That's when I first smoked weed and started selling stepped on weed just to have money. I never really smoked that much though, only sold it. Once 8th grade came around I was a full blown kingpin in my school. I was moving so much that I had to get my group involved so I didn't get backed up. I was actually the guy everyone feared like in the movies. I was living life pretty good, I had my parents faked out so they had no clue, still don't and I had money to go around.
9th grade finally came and that meant more sales. But it also meant I needed a lot more product which proved to be quite the task. So, instead, I slowed down and started to smoke more instead. I also started studying and bringing my grades up, they still sucked, but hey it was an improvement. Then, at the end of the year my parents dropped the bombshell that we were moving out of my home town. I was 16 when they told me and I had just under $9,000 saved up in a bag buried in an abandoned yard. So before I moved I met up with my group, who at this point were more like family to me, and divided up all of the money I made and gave it to them so that i could avoid my parents finding out. Once we moved I vowed to never go back to selling because as one could imagine, it started to get pretty dangerous.
My first year at the new school was very uneventful. I just stayed low key and studied the way people act in this school, who to trust and who not to. My junior year things got a little rocky. I started to catch feelings for this girl in one of my classes. We talked and things got more serious, we started hanging out more and more and even people at school started to notice. I would pick her up almost every day and we would hang out, skip school, and smoke. Nothing that I thought was too bad. Then one night after I dropped her off, I was leaving her trailer park and some guy started to follow me. I wasn't doing anything wrong, but this guy seemed to think otherwise because he was on my bumper the whole ride out. I remember thinking he might have been one of the girls exes. I dipped out onto the main road pretty fast to get away but it didn't seem to work because as I pulled up to the first light he pulled up behind a couple of cars beeping his horn. He chased me until I gave up and then threatened me to follow him back. When I got there everyone was standing outside screaming at me calling me Andy. My name is not even close to Andy. Then 8 Oakland County police cars stormed in lights blaring. They ended up giving me a 6 point reckless driving ticket and almost impounded my car, for something someone else did.
When I got home that night I told my parents about it and they actually didn't get mad at me. They got mad at the OCPD instead. The next day my parents pulled some strings without me knowing and hired one of the best lawyers money could buy. Eventually the court date came and we went in to the courthouse early to meet with the lawyer. He told us that he already talked to the judge and got the ticket down to a 3 point careless driving, which was great. Until he told us what we owed him for taking the case. $6,000 just to get it dropped to a careless driving ticket and a driver's safety course, that also cost me $100.
At the beginning of the next week my parents told me that I owed the all the money they spent for the lawyer and everything. The total came out around $7,000 including the court fees and the price of the ticket. I just about lost it when they told me the sum, I work a crappy minimum wage job and go to school. I didn't make that kind of money and I knew it. Immediately I knew what I had to do and I wasn't too happy about it. So I picked up my phone and made the phone call I hoped that I would never have to make again.
Now, here I am, one year later, a senior in high school living check to check with barely enough money to fill the tank on my car. But hey, I only have $4,000 left to go until I'm clear. As bad as I need all the extra money that came with the full blown hustle, I just make enough to get by and pay off the debt little by little. Sometimes it gets very tempting to pick up just a little more and make some real money, I can't put myself through that again because I know it would be even worse now because it would attract more attention doing it at this age. Which means it would piss more people off and maybe even attract federal attention. I would really like to make the money the right way and pay off the debt that way but because I'm still in school, I can't work more than 24 hours a week. My place of employment enforces this law strictly, because they give me about half of the hours I'm allowed no matter how much I beg for more. I've tried to get a different job, but they all enforce that 24 hour law, which would make getting a different job completely pointless, and also makes the side hustle that much more enticing.