Running the Risk by Lesley Choyce

twenties before marrying, but she would never talk about it. Both of my parents had done an excellent job of keeping me safe for over sixteen years.
    â€œWe think you should find another job,” my father said at the dinner table that night. “Or concentrate on your studies, maybe. Prepare yourself academically for university.”
    â€œI’m going back to my job,” I told him. “I know it doesn’t seem like much of a job, but I like it.” I wondered which, if any, of my former coworkers would be back there when I showed up Saturday night.
    â€œThen we’ll get Ernesto to switch your times.”
    â€œI like working nights,” I insisted.
    â€œBut we’re worried about you,” my mother chimed in.
    â€œI know. But I’ll be all right. I need to do this for me.”
    I had a list of things I wanted to change about me. I wanted to be more assertive. I wanted to be more adventurous. I wanted to be more willing to take chances and I wanted to be able to make my own decisions. Including the one about going to the cops about what I thought I knew about the gunman.
    I guess I wanted to be more like my grandfather. I had thought about this more than once as I got older. What would old Hank do in this situation? Once, in an unguarded moment, when Hank had been drinking, I think, he took me aside and whispered,“Sean, you have to really live your life. You have to experience everything you can.” I didn’t really get it. But it was the way he said it.
    It was odd to think that Jeanette was claiming to be the voice of reason. Here was a screwed-up girl who couldn’t get her own life straight, and she was telling me to keep my mouth shut about a criminal. But she was right. If I opened my mouth and went to the cops, somebody back there on the street would be waiting to get me. I would be in over my head. There would be a gun involved or a knife or god knows what. It could be violent. The cops wouldn’t be able to protect me.
    The next day I went to school and failed a history test I had not studied for. I was a useless lab partner in biology and discovered that trying to read a nineteenth-century English novel was not all it was cracked up to be. Jeanette avoided me as best she could. Whatever spark there was between us beforewas gone. I still thought she was really hot, but I knew that nothing was going to happen between us.
    I began thinking about other girls I knew and plotting a way to actually get noticed by them. I had always been kind of invisible but I needed to work on getting noticed. I was looking forward to returning to work on Saturday. You never knew who might walk in through those glass doors.
    But right then I felt like I was going nowhere. The only woman in my life was Priscilla, and I was not at all sure it was a good idea for me to trek downtown to see her again. After school, I holed up in my room and played a couple of video games I’d been ignoring. They weren’t nearly as much fun now as I remembered them to be. I got bored and fell asleep early.
    My father was surprised to see me in the kitchen while he was eating breakfast the next morning. “You’re up early,” he said, setting down the morning newspaper.
    â€œI was hungry,” I said and popped a couple of pieces of bread in the toaster.
    That’s when I saw it. The story on the front page of the paper.
    There’d been another robbery. At a gas station this time. And someone had been shot and killed.
    My father watched me as I read the story. The blood drained from my face. There was a picture of the victim, a university student who had been working part-time at night at the service station. And there was a fuzzy in-store security cam image of the guy holding the gun. You couldn’t see his face but it was a guy with a ski mask. I was pretty sure it was J.L. I even recognized the sweatshirt he was wearing.
    I prayed that I was wrong, but I knew I had to go