Mikayla Burnett
English 2 Dixon
September 10, 2016
Narrative Essay
The Blame Game
How did they track her phone to my house? I have no idea! As an African American, it was/is easy to blame anything and everything on me. Something went missing? Mikayla stole it. There was inappropriate writing written on the walls? Mikayla did it. That was my whole middle school and high school life. This situation, however, happened in my senior year of high school, and just when I thought we were all growing into adulthood.
In my senior year I was a Dance PE Aide for fourth period, and a girl that I don’t really get along with and shared a mutual friend with was in the same period. One night when I was face timing an old friend I heard a knock on the door; naturally I told my friend to hold on and answered the door. As soon I did there were three adults yelling at me about how I supposedly stole one of their daughter’s phone. Very confused and as scared as a white girl in a horror movie, I stood in the middle of the doorway frozen while they threatened to call the police. Eventually, I hung up on my friend and told them to call the police since all they were doing was just throwing threats instead of doing the action.
The police showed up in about five minutes later and asked the family what had happened. The family’s backstory was that their precious daughter, let’s name her Emma (for privacy) had her phone taken out of her PE locker while she was in class, and since I’m the aide it all matched up. The police asked them if they called the school and told them what happened to her phone, and the family said no they decided to track it by themselves instead, which smelled a little fishy to me. The police came to me and asked where I was the day it was stolen. Funny thing was that I was on an all day field trip from early morning to late night, so it couldn’t have been me. They asked permission to search my house, and my family allowed it to happen. After all the games of good cop bad cop, having me very uncomfortable while looking in my underwear drawer, they still found nothing. Everyone left, but the accusations stayed.
My relationship with Emma was never good. She was that one person that would make fun of what I’m wearing or just embarrass me when we were little. When high school came around I thought it was all over. I guess not.
The week before this all happened I was chilling. I was able to hangout with my friends and got to drive the car when I wanted to. When this whirlwind of a problem came around my mom wanted me to be safe, so I got some things added and taken away. I couldn’t have my phone at night or in my room, I wasn’t allowed to talk to my friends about what was happening (not even to my friend I was face timing during most of it) ,and my mom had me get a tracking device on my phone.
A week later, I got called into the school’s police office and was told the true story of what really happened to the phone. It turns out Emma just wanted to have a new phone, so she gave it to her friend who was found with the phone and told her parents that it was stolen. The friend that was found with the phone was questioned. His story was that I stole the phone and sold it to him, but Emma’s story was that her friend found it in his room. Since the stories didn’t match and I was on a field trip that whole day, I was no longer apart of the crime of a “stolen” phone. Emma and her friend were suspended from school for a week and had their privileges to Grad Nite and Prom taken away; the end of the world is high school language.
Once everything was all clear, I slowly got all my privileges back. I began to use my phone at night to fall asleep to pretty awesome music; I could drive and hang out with my friends, got my tracker off, and got to go out to the movies and fast food places. Man, did I miss Taco Bell!
All I wanted to do was ask Emma why she decided to blame me. I mean for sure I wanted to yell at her and possibly get a good smack in, but I wasn’t going to let violence and anger control me. I wasn’t allowed to talk to Emma anymore, so I instead went to our mutual friend, lets name her Jazzy (for privacy) to get information. It turns out Emma already blabbered about what had happened, so I didn’t need to fill her in with the story. I asked her if she knew why Emma would blame me, and these were the words I will never forget. “Dude, you’re the PE Aide, she hates you, and you’re black. It’s an easy pin.” With those words I moved on. I realized I just wanted to stop being the Vitim in this situation, and after the mixed up stories I was no longer apart of the crime. How did they track her phone to my house? This question was answered when they found the phone. Apparently the tracker the family was using was within a 500 foot radious and the friend that had her phone so happened to be my neighbor.
