A Stolen Bottle

(Author's note: This was a response to a prompt that asked for a flash fiction where the narrator is recounting an event from their youth.)

When I was young, I wished with all my heart that I could travel through space; I loved any show that put me there. From Star Trek and Firefly to Cowboy bebop and Futurama, my home was somewhere between planets, between stars; a spaceship which was not just a tool, but a trusted friend that needed care and attention to keep me moving between fantastic destinations.

I used to pretend with my friends that we were astronauts. The schoolyard became our spaceship and alien terrain alike; inevitably, these games would turn into a scifi version of cops and robbers. Who could blame us? Anything could happen in our imaginations, but we only knew our Earthly childhood problems: Confiscated toys, fragile friendships, disparate home lives.

One time, however, our game was a little different.

I was playing the spaceship captain, and my crew had come to me with a problem: Spaceman Jeffrey had appeared in a request from Earth command, and we were to turn him over to the authorities immediately. Jeffrey had always been quiet, but he was a capable crewman; I was loathe to let him go, so I asked him, "What have you done that command wants you?"

"I stole something." Jeffrey said simply.

"Jeffrey, you've got to give me more than that; I can't simply let you go. The ship needs you, the crew needs you!" We had gotten the melodrama down pat; countless hours of television and movies had seen to it.

Jeffrey looked at me; I remember thinking that he was putting on some really convincing tears. "I stole..." I imagined he was looking for something that sounded plausible, something which was worthy of filling the rest of recess. "A top-secret substance." He looked away shamefully, but I knew this was golden material; we'd flee from Earth and eventually prove that Jeffrey had done the right thing by stealing whatever the substance was.

"Well, go on! Tell us about it!" Lucy, taking the role of science officer, also saw the potential. "Are we talking super fuel, or a weapon, or what?" She paused for a second. "Maybe some kind of mutation serum?"

Jeffrey sighed, but he produced a bottle from his pocket; he had brought a prop! He had to have been thinking about this one for a long time. We looked at it with the sort of awe and reverence that an object wanted by Earth command deserved. It was filled with amber liquid, the seal on the lid still intact. A shred of paper backing clung tenaciously to the glass, the last remnant of whatever label it had once carried. He said nothing, so I invented a story to go with it. "That must be...! I didn't think it was real, but I'd heard whispers of a mind-control drug! Despicable stuff, that...One drop and even the most aggressive enemy will turn on his closest friends."

Lucy looked aghast. "That sounds horrible! Powerful, but awful...I didn't know we were working on anything like that."

Jeffrey only stared at the bottle in his hand.

"What did you plan to do with it, Jeffrey?" I was trying to encourage him, but I was starting to recognize that there was something really bothering him.

"...I was just going to pour it out." Jeffrey looked up from the bottle to meet my gaze; he looked tired, maybe even exhausted. When his eyes flew open with alarm I followed his gaze and saw a teacher facing our direction, and when I turned back he had already shoved the bottle back into his pocket. "It's too dangerous. I don't want to get you involved."

I can't remember how the rest of that recess played out, but it was the beginning of what we'd later call "Jeffrey's dark phase." He still played with us, but his presence faded into the background. Always around, but just enough for us to recognize his presence. We had lost the capable crewman, and in his place was now an outcast that always seemed to be somewhere else even when he was right there with us. I often wondered if that bottle had really been some kind of mind-control drug that he had drunk.

The day after I didn't see Jeffrey in class; when we were waiting for the buses to arrive, he showed me a pink slip where he had received detention for carrying contraband. I asked about it, but he wouldn't tell me. I started to wonder about the bottle he had had, but I couldn't imagine what it could have been to get him detention.

The next week, Jeffrey didn't come to class at all. Our homeroom teacher told us that his father had died in a car accident, and that we needed to do our best to support him when he got back. Words don't do justice to how depressed he was the next time we saw him. He was never quite the same, and no construct of our imaginations could change that, but we tried to make good on our teacher's advice.

It must've been a year later, waiting in line at a convenience store, that I found myself looking at the wall behind the cash register inside a gas station when I recognized the shape of Jeffrey's bottle on the shelf, carrying that same amber liquid, its label fully intact.