AN: As always, Danny Reyes is the property of Carlos Pedraza and Judas Kiss but oh how I wish he were mine!
Getting Away With It
I hate that mirror, it makes me feel so worthless
I'm an original sinner but when I'm with you I couldn't care less
I've been getting away with it all my life
~ Getting Away With It, Electronic
The consolidation of the rural schools in Nova Scotia was a financial measure: the tiny populations of the shoreline villages weren't worth the tremendous costs of educating them. Most of them wound up on welfare anyway. But the move was pitched as a means of "bringing up" the poor; exposure to better education (families) would equalize the society, providing opportunity and role models to the economically disadvantaged. A noble concept it seemed but in practice it further stigmatized the children from rural routes, creating sharp division in the classroom that regularly erupted in hostilities.
Danny was one of those bussed from a port on the Bay to the comfortably middle class community of Bridgetown. As a result he did indeed change, but not quite in the way intended. Close encounters with the easy life made him bitterly resentful; theirs was the life he should have had, the love and support he should have known. He became harder, stronger, more determined. The well-meaning patronizing types who treated him as if he should be pitied enraged him, making him angrier still until he was ruthless. By the age of eight he was stealing from the more privileged children, usually candy and chips and other foods from their lunchboxes that he couldn't get at home. Next he stole their lunch money for his own purchases; then their toys and trading cards. He watched them from across the room when they discovered the foul play, fascinated by their expressions. He began to study human reaction to unpleasantness.
He became increasingly daring as the years went on, stealing a guitar and an amp for the band he wanted to start when he was thirteen. By then a skilled thief, he moved out of the school and into the neighborhoods, hitting the houses nearby and then working his way into the wealthiest part of town. He moved like a cat, scaling walls and slipping undetected through back doors and windows. He delighted in his prowess and scorned his victims for thinking themselves superior to him.
He stole virtually anything he could get his hands on, sometimes pretty objects like paintings to keep for himself. He had a large collection of such items in his room. Sometimes he stole things he could pawn or trade. Mostly he stole because it amused him to get away with it.
When he was fifteen he nicked a camcorder off an unsuspecting tourist in a food market.
He shot his first film with it.