Best Friend List by Tanai Dawson

Best Friend List

Sasha and I ran the length of the empty mall, trying to get out by the back doors before the guards chasing us rounded the corner. Even with the good amount of distance we had on them, their shouts for us to stop still echoed.

Sasha suddenly skidded to a halt in front of me. Was she about to fall? Did she lose her mind? The girl pointed at the trash can next to her and gave me a huge smile.

"What?" I asked, confused.

"Look on the side of the trash can."

She pointed to the side of the trash can. There was a vent.

"Help me open it, Adrienne," she said. What she meant, I realized as I opened the vent, was 'Open it while I watch for the guards'.

As soon as I got it open, Sasha barged in front of me and crawled inside. "You gotta be faster than that."

I crawled in after her, but not before lightly pinching her butt for cutting in front.

"Ow," she said. "That's sexual assault, I can report you."

"Shut up and crawl, before we get arrested."

We crawled for what seemed like an endless amount of time until we reached another vent opening.

"Is this a good spot to get out at?" she asked me. "Yes? No? I think it's whatever, because we're getting out right here."

After that, she crawled out of the vent and immediately started running. When I got out, I had to run even faster to catch up with her. Where she led us outside, there were two policemen hanging out. Thankfully, their backs were turned to us. We both raced to my car and collapsed on the backseat.

"That was a complete bust," Sasha said.

I couldn't agree with her more. We had planned to spend the night in a mall illegally and we were chased down not even two hours after it had closed. This item on the list would have an X beside it.

"On to the next adventure." Sasha got up after her words and sat in the passenger's seat of my car. "Your turn to drive, bud."

I groaned from where I laid on the backseat, but got up anyway. Our only rule was that if one item on the list became a failed attempt, we immediately had to start another. Next to me, Sasha closed her eyes and started snoring before even a minute had passed.

The 'list' was Sasha's idea: our bucket list. All the things that we said we would do during our last four years of high school were written down on a list, meant to be done our senior year. We were already seniors, but we had never gotten to the list.

Now, during our nine day long spring break, we planned to do all of the long overdue activities. With no concern over any plans I may have had for spring break, she just handed me a crisply printed copy of our list three days before break and told me to pack clothes and supplies. If anyone else had made such demands, I would have laughed in their face. Especially because I had yet to pick out the tuxedo I would wear for prom, which I was going to do with my boyfriend, Austin. Sasha happened to be my best friend and I loved her, so I eventually accepted the idea. I also figured that this was maybe a birthday present for me; my birthday was April 20th, the day we got back to school. Completing the list sounded like a fun way to use spring break, so I could get my tuxedo with Austin later.

Before this, we were sneaking into a bar called The Bronze in Los Angeles, purely because it was the same name of the bar in our favorite 90's show Buffy the Vampire Slayer. that was yesterday and a complete success, we'd seen three men that could pass for any supernatural character in Buffy and had gotten drunk off our asses (maybe not that, but drunk enough to dance on top of the bar). We had tried to spend the night at a mall in San Francisco because Sasha got kicked out of girls' scout in fourth grade and never got to do the famous Night in Mall of America trip.