You Changed My Life Read Online Free PDF Page A

screwed.”
    â€œNo we aren’t, and why? We didn’t take anything!”
    â€œBecause we didn’t have time. And we still broke in.”
    â€œWho broke in? You? Did you bust that door, Yacine? Of course not, and neither did I! The door was open, and we just walked in!”
    With these words, I lift the toilet lid and drop in the chisel.
    A few minutes later, the guard comes back with two cops. We give them our version of the story. Not stupid, but unable to prove anything whatsoever, the guard lets the cops go and takes us back out the way we came in.

    â€œFYI, guys, this door is an alarm. When you walk through it, it triggers a red light in the surveillance room.”
    I pretend to be awestruck in the presence of this new miracle of technology.
    â€œWow, that’s great. That thing must be very useful.”
    â€œVery.”
    The metal door slams behind us. We go back and find the others on the slab, dying laughing.

    My biggest job, in terms of volume, was before I was ten. I swiped a go-kart at the Train Bleu toy store in the Beaugrenelle shopping center. A real electric car—you could even sit in it! I can still see myself, balancing that bad boy on my head, racing down the steps with the manager on my heels.
    â€œStop, thief, stop!”
    The thing was worth a fortune.
    A lot of us tried it out on the slab afterward. It didn’t run very smoothly. Honestly, it wasn’t worth the money.

6
    The die was cast. I couldn’t change now. At twelve, there wasn’t the slightest chance of me suddenly becoming the model citizen that society was hoping for. All the other boys from the project, without exception, had taken the same road as me and weren’t turning back. You’d have had to take away our freedom, everything we had, take us away from each other, maybe, and still . . . nothing would have worked. You would have had to totally reprogram us, like when you erase the hard drive on a computer and reinstall the operating system. But we aren’t machines and nobody would have used the same weapon we used—strength, no laws, no limits.
    Early on, we understood how things worked. In Paris, in the Villiers-le-Bel suburb, or in Saint-Troufignon-de-la-Creuse, it was the same combat: wherever we lived, we were the wild animals against the civilized people of France. We didn’t even have to fight to keep our privileges because, in the eyes of the law, we were like children, no matter what we did. Here a
child is considered irresponsible by definition. We find any and every excuse for him. Overprotected, not protected enough, too spoiled, poor . . . As for me, I claim “trauma by abandonment.”

    Now in seventh grade at Guillaume Apollinaire junior high in the XVth district, I had my first visit to the psychologist. The school psychologist, obviously. He wanted to meet me in person, having been alerted by a transcript already full of suspension notices and unflattering evaluations from teachers.
    â€œAbdel, you don’t live with your real parents, correct?”
    â€œI live with my uncle and aunt. But they’re my parents now.”
    â€œThey’ve been your parents since your real parents abandoned you, correct?”
    â€œThey didn’t abandon me.”
    â€œAbdel, when parents stop caring for their child, they abandon him, correct?”
    He better stop with the “correct” . . .
    â€œI’m telling you they didn’t abandon me. They gave me to other parents, that’s all.”
    â€œThat’s called abandonment.”
    â€œNot where I come from. Where I come from, it’s normal.”
    A sigh from the psychologist in response to my stubbornness. I soften up a bit so he’ll let me go.
    â€œMr. Psychologist, don’t worry about me. Everything’s fine. I’m not traumatized.”
    â€œBut yes, Abdel, you are, you obviously are!”
    â€œIf you say so . . .”
    What’s for sure is