The Boy Who Steals Houses

by C. G. Drews

  ‘I looked at them when you slept. All the time. Hundreds of times.’

  ‘Not creepy at all, Avery.’

  ‘I liked them,’ Avery says. ‘But Vin says—’

  Sam flips channels faster. ‘Just leave me alone.’

  Apparently Avery doesn’t understand that phrase because he rubs a hand through Sam’s hair and then shows Sam his palm. ‘Still glittery.’

  ‘Surprise,’ Sam says, flat.

  ‘Vin’s just trying to help us.’ Avery flicks his fingers by his ear and then stops suddenly, ramming his hands under his thighs.

  Sam shoves hair out of his eyes and gives Avery a long hard look. ‘She’s stopping you stimming?’

  ‘Everyone says it’s annoying.’

  ‘That’s not … Look, Avery, you need to tic.’ Or you melt down later, he doesn’t add. Isn’t it painfully obvious?

  Avery chews his thumbnail, eyes on the TV. ‘I can take care of myself.’

  That’s a hilarious joke.

  ‘You didn’t tell me how you got caught,’ Avery says.

  Sam doesn’t want to, but somehow it tumbles out like colourful marbles – the butter-yellow house and where it is and why he liked it and then how he lost it. Avery looks worried and Sam’s story trails off. It doesn’t matter anyway. It happened. It’s over.

  There are things with sharper edges to unpack.

  Sam sighs. ‘Do you know how long you go to prison for armed robbery?’

  Avery springs off the chair. ‘I just said I can take care of myself.’

  Sam’s about to pursue this argument but the front door bangs open.

  Vin glides in, folding sunglasses and tossing her perfectly groomed hair like the pretentious jerk she is. She wears white pants and stilettos today and carries a thick red wallet and a greasy bag of takeaway food. Sam’s still isn’t sure how old she is. Twenty-four? Twenty-five? She has a smile for everyone and is very hands-on and affectionate. And it always seems like a rehearsed act.

  She dumps the greasy paper bag on the coffee table. Then she kisses Avery on the mouth. She kisses a lot of different people, Sam’s noticed. He thinks Avery knows too, but Avery will just anxiously skim away from confrontation, and Sam has no idea how to talk about this with someone who doesn’t understand unspoken rules. Avery deserves to be kissed by someone who wants him, not wants to use him. But talking about kissing and sex is too awkward, OK? It shouldn’t be Sam’s job. He’s only fifteen.

  Except it always is his job.

  ‘Avery, your little brother just gets cuter by the day.’ She drags off her heels and throws them amiably. ‘I bought an extra kebab if he wants one.’

  She empties the bag, tossing a tin foil wrap at Avery and then Sam. She flops in a sofa and unwraps hers.

  Sam accepts the kebab even though every time he sees Vin, he kind of wants to break her kneecaps.

  ‘He’s not that cute.’ Avery sets to work destroying the kebab but not eating it. It’s soggy with oozing meat and sauces and a wild mixture of greens – exactly the opposite of what Avery will ever eat. Vin hasn’t figured it out? Or is this another thing she’s fixing? No tics. Eat your food mixed. Be normal.

  Avery’s eyes take on a panicked sheen while he tries not to flick his fingers.

  Sam entirely hates Vin.

  Why is Avery putting up with it though? Because he likes her? How can he adore her while his body betrays how scared he is?

  Sam feels sick. He wishes he was sandwiched between Moxie and Jeremy on a sofa with sand in their hair and waffles in their stomachs. He wants to twine his fingers with Moxie’s and explain himself. Apologise.

  Vin licks juice off her thumb. ‘How old are you anyway, Sammy? Thirteen? Fourteen?’

  Sam frowns. ‘Fifteen.’

  ‘You’re so small.’ Vin stuffs more kebab in her mouth. ‘Perfect size to fit through a window.’

  Avery shoots her a frazzled look. ‘No. He doesn’t want to do stuff like that. Just leave him alone, Vin.’

  ‘I said I’d toughen him up for you,’ Vin says. ‘I can make something out of the Lou boys.’

  ‘Yeah, well, I can do that,’ Avery says, like he’s the big brother for once.

  Vin’s eyes narrow. ‘Avery, help me out in the kitchen for a second.’ She untwines from the chair.

  Avery trails after her like an obedient puppy, which leaves Sam staring at his dripping kebab until he just abandons it on the already gross coffee table. He stares at the piles of laptops, the brand-new iPhones still in their boxes. He doesn’t know how Vin isn’t caught, but she’s clearly good at this. She gets her teeth whitened to prove it.

  A muscle twitches in Sam’s jaw. He knows he’s being a self-righteous ass, considering he’s a thief too, but he hates this. All of it. He’s taking Avery away after this and they can figure it out—

  Something thumps in the kitchen. Someone.

  Sam springs towards it, tripping over boxes of stacked junk.

  Avery’s up hard against the wall. Vin has a fistful of his shirt and is pressing against his collarbone. Her eyes are bottomless and frigid. She’s got height on Avery, she’s got steel he’ll never have.

  ‘—don’t disagree with me,’ Vin is saying. ‘There’s a place I want to crack and the best way around the security system is the window. That kid can fit.’

  ‘I said n-no.’ Avery’s voice shakes.

  Vin rams him against the wall again, harder this time and Avery’s head snaps backwards and hits the plaster.

  His voice takes on a desperate edge. ‘Vin, please. I-I-I don’t want him to get hurt—’

  ‘After all I do for you.’

  ‘Stop it!’ Sam’s muscles coil, tense, stretch. He springs into the kitchen and shoves Vin off.

  Vin’s breath escapes in a stunned gasp and she releases Avery and stumbles backwards into the sink. Cutlery slips and clatters to the floor. Her frost eyes snap to Sam, but Sam’s moving, fast as running water.

  He leaps and his fist shoots forward, knuckles slamming into the soft cartilage of Vin’s nose.

  She screams.

  Blood sprays hot over Sam’s fingers.

  Avery gives a startled yell and grabs Sam’s waist. ‘Sammy, don’t—’

  But fire blazes in Sam’s lungs. Intoxicating adrenaline sprawls up his throat and rushes into his muscles, that feeling he gets every time he loses it. Every time he explodes.

  Vin snatches a tea towel and presses it to her face. Blood soaks her shirt. She roars something but Sam’s ears are full of power and his fist is still clenched, and all he can think of is going at Vin again

  and again

  and

  again—

  Avery wraps his arms around Sam’s chest and clings so tightly Sam can’t catch a breath. ‘Don’t don’t.’ His voice cracks. ‘D-don’t hit people. You don’t – c-can’t … Sammy, don’t.’

  Vin throws the tea towel on the ground, but blood still streams from her nose and her look is black murder. Sam drops his curled fist to his side, his breath coming fast. He can’t feel anything. He’s spun out of invincible clouds.

  ‘Let go of me, Avery, just – let go.’ Sam’s voice rises. ‘Avery, stop it.’

  Avery drops to his knees on the floor, arms curled over his head, rocking and rocking.

  Vin raises bloody fingers towards the door. ‘Get out.’

  Sam’s anger is cooling, leaving his hands shaking. ‘Fine.’ His voice feels far away. ‘Come on, Avery.’ He wipes blood on to his jeans and reaches for his brother. Tries to grab his wrist.

  Avery jerks back.

  Vin’s voice explodes. ‘GET OUT.’

  Avery unfolds from the floor and for a second Sam thinks they’ll both run for the door and keep going until Vin is a faded, bitter memory. But instead Avery slips past Sam and bolts for the sta
irs, fingers flicking in front of his eyes and head tucked to avoid invisible blows. Sam tries to tell him to stop, come back, but the words stick.

  A door slams upstairs.

  Sam has to go after him, calm him down and make it better, say sorry for yelling at him – for scaring him. How could he scare his brother? But then Vin’s suddenly got a fistful of Sam’s shirt and drags him towards the front door. He trips on the threshold.

  ‘The quiet ones are always the psychos,’ Vin growls, her face and shirt a bloody waterfall. Then she hurls him out and slams the door. Locks click. Avery’s crushed expression and broken eyes play again and again in Sam’s memories.

  Sam waits

  just a minute

  to see if Avery will come out.

  He waits an hour.

  Then he walks while slivers of hope fall out of his pockets and splinter on the ground.

  The lock comes apart under Sam’s thin, light fingers.

  He uses paperclips and pretends he doesn’t miss the real lock picks that Avery gave him a few years ago, wrapped in an old chip packet and tied with a bow while he hopped on the spot in giddy excitement. ‘Happy birthday, Sammy, go steal me the moon.’

  Now the only thing he wants to steal is Avery.

  Except right now, Avery doesn’t want to be around him. Sam scared his brother. He scared his brother. He has to stop doing this, losing it. Hitting people.

  Sam breaks into a house and his footsteps echo on empty tiles. The For Sale sign was a pretty solid indicator that he’d have no trouble here. The thick coating of dust on the light switches says it’s been vacant a while.

  There’s nothing to take except handfuls of cobwebs.

  He wanders into a small bedroom and curls up in the corner.

  Close your eyes and pretend this is a bed.

  Pretend you don’t smell stale air and mouse bait. Pretend those are waffles on the stove, covered in maple syrup.

  Pretend Avery’s in the garage, taking apart the engine on his first car. He never stops talking about how badass it’ll be when he finishes.

  Sam tries to fit Aunt Karen into a cosy armchair, but she has a cigarette between furious lips instead. Was she ever happy with them?

  He puts in the De Lainey father.

  And then a handful of De Lainey kids.

  And somehow the house fills up with piles of Lego and yogurt tubs and Moxie putting caramel sauce in a coffee cup. Her eyes meet his, chocolate curls spilling across her cheeks.

  His words come cracked as a broken plate. ‘I’m sorry.’

  The fantasy turns to puffs of dust and curls of ghosts and he’s lying in an empty room, crying hot salty tears into the carpet.

  ‘Hi, Moxie. I’m sorry I was lurking like a sick creeper in your house. The truth is none of you actually know me and I just invited myself in because I’m pathetic.’

  Sam holds a spool of yellow thread out to the hydrangea bush.

  The bush waves encouragingly at him.

  Sam clears his throat. ‘This is an apology present. I didn’t steal it. Well, I mean, I stole the money for it, so technically I guess I stole it. I don’t know what your favourite colour is, but yellow reminds me of happiness, which reminds me of your house.’

  The bush appears to have lost interest in his spiel, or else the wind died.

  ‘So what I really want to say is …’ Sam rubs his cheek, picking off remnants of road rash scabs. ‘I’m sorry?’

  The bush does not accept his apology.

  To be fair, it was a terrible explanation and an even worse apology and he doesn’t think a bobbin is really going to fix this. But he has to try. He doesn’t have anything to lose.

  He doesn’t have anything.

  His shoulders ache for his backpack. He rubs a thumb over bruised knuckles on his right hand and wishes he’d done more to Vin.

  No. You’re not allowed to think about Vin. Or how you scared Avery so much he stayed.

  Sam needs to get himself together, get Avery someplace safe – a home. They need their own home. How much longer can he dream about this before he suffocates?

  Sweat soaks the neck of Sam’s T-shirt and the sun raps an unfailing rhythm on his shoulders. His borrowed shirt is too tight and his undone shoelaces are still coated in glitter.

  This can’t go well.

  He formulates a different apology to a lamppost that sounds like, ‘Hey Moxie, I’m not a creep, I swear,’ which is exactly what a creep would say.

  He’s so screwed.

  He sits in the gutter in front of the De Lainey house, fiddling with the yellow thread. Behind him the house is awake with alternating peals of laughter and shrieks. Moxie shouts, ‘EAT YOUR PEAS’ and there’s a wet thwap of, presumably, peas hitting the floor.

  Has Moxie told her family about catching him in the office? It’s been over a week and he’s been in and out of a few stale houses. He didn’t take a single key. He feels sick whenever he sees them now. He should hurry up and knock before the De Lainey brothers get home and beat the holy hell out of him.

  Get up, you spineless coward.

  He picks himself out of the gutter, dirt and gravel sticking to his jeans, and forces himself to the front door. His fingers curl to knock and then hesitate. From behind the door come strains of the TV and then the whir of the sewing machine.

  He knocks.

  His heart stutters.

  The sewing machine shuts off and there’s a muffled growl of, ‘If those girls are fake-knocking again, I’m going to turn Dash into an Elven mop—’

  Then the door rips open and she’s right there, all long tanned legs and wrists full of hair ties, in a patchwork shirt of rusty orange.

  Sam awkwardly holds out the thread. It’s so tiny. He’s such an idiot.

  Confusion fades from her face and fury washes down. Betrayal stings in her eyes and her lips part, but she hesitates like she doesn’t know what to scream at this boy who hid in her house.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sam says.

  Moxie slams the door in his face.

  OK.

  Well, that’s fair. He deserves that.

  He hesitates a second, rocks on his heels, and then leaves the spool of thread on the welcome mat. His feet march him away on autopilot, which is good because his anxiously hoarded courage is gone. He feels weak and sick and like the most filthy, pathetic worm to ever crawl the earth.

  He’s reached the gate just as the jeep pulls into the driveway. Boys covered in concrete dust vault out. Doors slam.

  ‘Hey, is that Sammy?’

  He can’t do this. He doesn’t want to be hit.

  Sam rips around the front gate, his shirt catching and tearing on the latch.

  ‘Sam, wait!’ One of the twins strides around the rosebushes.

  Sam runs.

  He’s fast fast fast and when he glances over his shoulder, Jeremy stands in front of his house, one hand shading his eyes as he stares after Sam’s flying legs.

  Sam’s stupid to come back.

  It doesn’t occur to him until he’s three streets away, that Jeremy’s face was puzzled, not angry. That his fists weren’t raised. That maybe he wanted to talk, not to hit.

  He can’t go back to Avery. Or the De Laineys’. And the last empty house he broke into made him feel like the air has been crushed out of his lungs.

  He’s tired. He’s so, so tired.

  He ends up outside Aunt Karen’s crumbling little house, made of whitewashed bricks and a leaky roof, pea-green curtains hiding sparse furniture. He scuffs the toe of his shoes against the letterbox again and again while he waits for her car to pull into the driveway. It’s nearly five. She knocks off from the petrol station around now.

  She used to.

  He hasn’t been back in over a year.

  A blue station wagon rattles
into the driveway and Aunt Karen gets out. She’s fighting with the name badge pinned to her shirt and doesn’t see him. Instead she rips out the pin and circles the boot of the car, jerking at the sticky lock until it pops. She’s dyed her hair lighter, but her throat still sports loud jewellery and the frown lines are the same.

  Her fingers close around shopping bags before she sees him.

  For a second they just stare at each other, her eyes narrowing and his widening. Like maybe he can make himself look younger, innocent, sorry.

  What should he say? I’m so out of options and I’m so tired of screwing up, that I came back?

  He forces his feet forward. ‘Hey, Aunt Karen.’

  She gives her head a little shake, like she can’t believe what she’s seeing. The hems of her black slacks are frayed and her grocery bags are pitifully light. Tuna, it looks like, powdered milk and rye crackers.

  ‘Are you in more trouble?’ Her voice is as sharp as the tins rattling in her grocery bags. ‘Are the police chasing you?’

  Well, obviously. They haven’t caught up with him from last year at school when he … he can’t think about it.

  ‘I’m not being followed,’ Sam says, ‘if that’s what you mean.’

  He thinks of doorknobs, unscrewed like puzzle pieces on the tiles, and Avery’s brightly proud smile over what he’s done.

  He thinks of sprawling over the scratchy carpet with homework drenched in red crosses.

  He thinks of curling up at the foot of Avery’s bed because he’d wet his and he was too old for that and neither of them wanted to wake up Aunt Karen and ask for help and get punished.

  ‘Where’s Avery?’ Aunt Karen says.

  ‘Living with some people …’ Sam leans forward and takes a shopping bag from her. She lets him. ‘He’s OK.’ No, he’s not. ‘He, um, works a real job. With a mechanic.’ A lie now.

  ‘I never threw him out, you know.’ Aunt Karen folds her skinny arms. ‘Just you.’

  Sam looks down. His shoelaces are undone. Perpetually.

  ‘If he needs to come back, I’ll do something about him.’