The Thief

by Aine Crabtree

  I picked mine up, feeling a little dizzy. Had that been intended to be informative? I felt more confused than ever. I followed Camille out the door and into the now-empty hall. She looked around dully, sharing none of my nerves. Her stoicism only made me feel more panicky by contrast. Maybe she knows what to do, I thought, as she flipped open her folder and frowned at the contents. I should talk to her. I should ask her a question, maybe.

  “Did you, um, did you understand any of that?” I asked.

  She gave me a sudden hard look and I cringed. “I understand,” she said, her bizarre accent even more noticeable. Short, clipped vowels and off-balance accents on her syllables. Where on earth was she from?

  “Oh,” I relented. “Sure. Of course. I just don’t get, um, what we’re supposed to do now?”

  She gave me a blank look and returned to staring sullenly at her folder’s contents.

  I should be used to being ignored by now. It still felt like a slap in the face.

  My panic from earlier in the morning was returning in full force. I opened my own folder, the pages quivering slightly from the fine tremor in my fingers. There was a map there, but the lines swam in front of my face. The words bled together. None of it made sense. Out of the corner of my eye, Camille was turning her packet sideways, and upside down.

  I just wanted to go home. No one wanted me there either, but at least I knew where I was.

  Someone cleared their throat.

  “Are you - ahem - I mean, hi,” said a voice behind me.

  I turned to look, then angled my gaze down about six inches. A boy with shaggy blonde hair looked up at me cheerfully. He honestly didn’t look old enough to be in high school.

  “You look lost. I mean new. I mean...hi,” he said. “I’m Mac.”

  I blinked at him. Where had he come from? “Um, hi,” I said. “I’m Jul. I am new, yes.”

  “Those packets are pretty useless,” he said. A slight southern accent relaxed his vowels. “Lucky for you I know the place like the back of my hand. I was born here. Not uh, here in the school, here in town, I mean. Obviously.”

  I smiled weakly. This was better.

  “So um, do you know who you have for first period? For homeroom?” he asked.

  I looked at Camille. She shrugged, expression blank.

  “Homeroom...” I racked my brain. “I think she said...Tailor?”

  His face lit up. “Awesome! You’re in our class!”

  “Oh, ok,” I said. I couldn’t begin to share in his enthusiasm without context, but it was nice to talk to someone upbeat for a change. “You’re really in tenth grade?” I blurted, and immediately regretted it.

  His face fell for an instant, but he recovered almost immediately. “Skipped a grade,” he explained briefly. “Come on, English is upstairs. You’ll love it, Tailor’s got all the charm of a wet cat. Don’t tell him I said that.”

  “Oh. Alright,” I said. I started to follow and then paused, looking back at Camille. “Are you coming?”

  She looked at me, her sideways folder, closed it with a little huff and followed.

  Mac led us up the stairs onto the second floor landing, overlooking the atrium. I thought of the boy from earlier. He had been looking at something up here. I blushed slightly, glancing down at where he’d stood. Now, if he had found me wandering the halls...

  Oh, let’s be realistic. I’d have been too flustered to even say a word, much less anything intelligent.

  “Over here,” Mac said, leading us down the hall to the right, to a door labeled 2-B. “Found the new students!” he announced as he opened it. I was acutely aware that over a dozen pairs of eyes were staring at me. My pulse hammered. Transmute, transmute, transmute, I repeated in my head like a mantra.

  Inside, the teacher paused mid-lecture, at the board with chalk in hand. He was thin and bookish, but handsome, though he wore a pinched sort of frown as he turned to us. Then his eyes widened in a moment of real shock as he saw me. It was just like when I’d surprised Bea on the phone - he was afraid of me.

  Mac also appeared confused by Mr. Tailor’s reaction. “See?” he prompted. “Jul Graham and...um...” he looked at Camille. “You know, I just realized I missed your name.”

  She rolled her eyes.

  Mr. Tailor seemed to recover somewhat, but I still didn’t like the way he was looking at me. Like I was liable to end the world at the slightest provocation. “Graham,” he murmured. “Yes, of course. Go have a seat. In the back.”

  The back of the room? I clutched my bag to myself and went down the aisle. Was that another way of saying he wanted me as far away from him as possible?

  Was this kind of reaction going to become a trend around here? What had I done? I slid into my chair, convinced that the butterflies in my stomach had mutated into parasites of the nervous system. At least I was still breathing ok. Small blessings.

  Tailor turned and adjusted his glasses, focusing on Mac. “And why exactly were you wandering around in the hall, Dupree? What excuse did you cook up so that you could play white knight?”

  Muffled chuckles from other students around the room. A flush crept up Mac’s neck. “Uh...that is...”

  “Oh just sit down already,” Tailor groaned. “I don’t have time for this.”

  Mac slid meekly into a desk near the front, next to a tall boy with dark hair that covered his eyes, who slipped him a piece of paper when Tailor turned to Camille.

  She was still standing just inside the door, shoulderbag slung across her back, hands stuffed into the front pocket of her hoodie. She met his scrutiny with a bland expression and his eyes narrowed.

  “That makes you Teague,” he said with distaste.

  She shrugged.

  “Do you speak?” Tailor asked.

  “Sometimes.”

  “What sort of accent is that?”

  “Mine.”

  Someone in the room snickered, but a quick glare from Tailor silenced the room. “I love clever students,” he said dryly. “They get to sit up front where I can keep a nice, close eye on them.” He pointed to an empty desk.

  That was the first hint of discomfort I saw from her, as she slid into the desk, metal bracer clinking against the plastic. Did she not like being up front?

  “Alright, unless any more mid-semester students are joining our class today – ” Mr. Tailor picked up his thick, heavily sticky-noted notebook, glanced at it, and dropped back onto his wood desk with a resounding plop – “no, those were the only ones, so now we can actually get something done.”

  Mid-semester or not, that was unfair. It wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose. But my cheeks still flushed. I couldn’t see Camille’s face up at the front of the room, but I learned she was left-handed by the way she somewhat awkwardly situated herself to take notes in a right-handed desk. I bent to retrieve my notebook and pencil from my bag, and tried to use the opportunity to sneak a glance at some of my other classmates. Though only a cursory look, it was clear that the beautiful people lived in the back left corner, furthest from the door. There was a blonde girl who had the looks and posture of a model, another girl who was a brunette but otherwise matched her, and two guys sitting against the back wall. One had tousled brown hair that made him look like he’d just woken up, so therefore had probably been styled within an inch of its life; he was staring out the window with his chin in his hand, looking bored to tears. The fourth was him. The guy from the atrium was twirling his pencil in his fingers, apparently paying far more attention than the other three combined as Mr. Tailor talked about the social norms of Elizabethan England that informed the opening act of A Midsummer Night’s Dream. I continued to rummage in my bag as a pretense to keep staring surreptitiously. Maybe my initial impression had been wrong. He was actually far plainer than the other three. When I considered him separately, nothing about him actually stood out, despite the fact that he was Asian.

  His eyes flicked to mine, and he winked.

  I straightened up in a flash. My hands were un
commonly steady as I opened my notebook and found a clean page to take notes, but my brain was endlessly repeating what was that? What was that? What was that?

  Plain? No. No, certainly not. I couldn’t believe that had even crossed my mind. I kept flashing back to his almond-shaped eyes as they locked onto mine for that brief instant, and my heart constricted.

  Oh crap.

  I didn’t think I heard any of the rest of the lecture, but apparently my right hand could take notes separately from my brain, because when the bell rang I had a full three pages of scribbling about Demetrius and Hermia’s parallels to – I balked at my own handwriting – Romeo and Juliet? How had I missed the mention of my namesake? I sighed and hoisted my bag over my shoulder.

  Mac approached with his tall friend behind him. He had the grace to look sheepish this time. “Sorry, that probably wasn’t the best intro ever.”

  “Well,” I said, “I survived, I guess.” Boy, did I sound positive. I glanced fearfully at Mr. Tailor, but he was focused on Camille collecting her belongings, like she would steal something if he looked away. Teachers around here seemed to really not like her...

  “We have chemistry with Ms. Miller next,” Mac explained, bringing my attention back to him. “She’s way nicer,” he said in an undertone. “The labs are down in the basement, did you want us to show you where? Oh, this is Destin,” he introduced his friend, the tall, lanky boy with dusky cinnamon-colored skin and overlong bangs. He gave an awkward wave.

  A slender arm looped through mine. I looked in shock at the girl who’d moved up next to me; it was the blonde Model, with her matching friend in tow. “Let me save you the embarrassment,” she told me condescendingly, drawing a circle in the air around Mac and Destin with her finger. “This is a girl-free zone. Come on, we’ll show you where chemistry is.” She pulled me away before I could say another word. We passed Camille on the way out of the room and her brow creased slightly, noting my unexpected change in escort.

  The Model weaved us expertly through the crowd of students changing classes. Some people even seemed to get out of the way for her. “Sorry about my little brother,” she said, in a melodious voice.

  Her friend, on my other side, added, “He’s like a puppy that just won’t grow out of being a puppy.” She had an accent I couldn’t quite place - French, maybe?

  “He sees new people and he just has to latch onto them,” said the Model.

  Aren’t you the one latched onto my arm? I thought, but I’d never say that. Beautiful people never talked to me. They certainly never fought for my attention. This was arguably the most bizarre day of my life.

  “Mac is your brother?” I asked. I suppose I could see the resemblance. The wavy blonde hair. Something about the nose.

  “Too late to deny it,” she sighed dramatically. “I’m Hayley, by the way. Hayley Dupree. This is Amity Clairmont,” she introduced her friend on my other side. “You certainly made an impression on Tailor. Are you acquainted?”

  I was having trouble paying attention simultaneously to the conversation and the stairs we were descending. Tripping would be very bad. “Um, no, I’ve never seen him before.”

  “That’s interesting,” she said. “I missed your name when you came in. Julia, was it?”

  “Jul,” I said. “Graham.”

  “Graham,” she lit on the name, like she’d been waiting for me to say it. “You aren’t related to Bea Graham, are you?”

  I couldn’t shake the feeling this exchange had been rehearsed. “Um, yes. She’s my grandmother.”

  “That’s right, I think I heard you might be moving down here,” she said. “Is it true your father was kidnapped? That’s so horrible, it doesn’t seem like something that would happen in real life.”

  The air around us had gotten cooler as we exited the stairwell. This had to be the basement level. Though the hall was just as long as it was upstairs, there were only a handful of doors. The classrooms here had to be quite large. Hayley and Amity led me down the hall. A couple of other students trickled in behind us.

  “It’s um...I don’t...the police are still investigating, and...”

  “Hmm,” she said, in disappointment. “There’s been so much gossip flying around and I wanted to know the real story. I’ve known old Ms. Graham my whole life, but she’s a pretty private lady, you know. I mean she lives just down the road, but the only person she’ll talk to is Mac when he cuts her grass, or if you go to the library. And honestly, who uses libraries anymore?”

  I went to the library constantly. Most days it felt like the only place that was real.

  “Well, here it is,” she said, finally releasing my arm and opening a door labeled B-2.

  Inside, a woman in a white lab coat with long, frizzy red hair tied back in a braid hunched over a table of experiment materials, carefully dosing them out. A cabinet of ingredients stood open at the back of the room. She looked up at our arrival, and nearly dropped the beaker she was holding.

  Yet another adult shocked by the sight of me.

  “Kyra?” she gasped.

  “Um, Jul,” I said. “Jul Graham?”

  With a nervous laugh, she put a hand to her chest. “Oh! Oh, yes, of course! I should have known, I’m sorry. They did tell me you were coming. You must hear it all the time, but you look exactly like your mother. It’s uncanny.”

  I blinked. My... “I didn’t know that,” I murmured.

  No one mentioned my mother. No one ever mentioned my mother. Dad went into a rage if you even got close to the topic...

  “I went to high school with her. Simon and John too,” Ms. Miller explained, in a pronounced southern accent. “The last time I saw her, she was about your age, so, you can imagine it’s a little like seeing a ghost. I see the difference now, though. Something about the eyes. And you’re taller, I guess. Hayley, would you be a dear and pass out these instructions?” She handed her a stack of papers.

  Hayley’s immediate reaction was disdain, but she forced her face into an acquiescing smile. “Sure thing,” she said, moving to lay them out on the several two-person lab tables.

  “Thank you. Oh, I’m Charlotte Miller, I should have said. This is chemistry,” she said, with a sweeping gesture. “I also teach theatre, if you end up taking that. How has your morning been? Not too bad, I hope?”

  “She got Tailor’d,” said a familiar voice.

  I turned; Mac and Destin had entered. His enthusiasm had tempered in the interim.

  Ms. Miller huffed, one hand going to her waist. “I told him not to do that to new students.”

  “I think he was just...um...surprised, is all,” I said.

  “Hmm, that’s probably true,” she mused. “He and Kyra never did get along. Ah, and here’s Camille,” she said, smiling as the foreign girl entered the room.

  I’d never seen anyone look simultaneously lost and calm, but Camille managed it. When her eyes lit on Ms. Miller she seemed to recognize she was in the right place.

  “I hope you don’t mind, but I think new people should stick together, so I’ve put you at an empty lab table together,” Ms. Miller said, pointing toward a table near the back. “Across from Hayley, there. Will that do?”

  “Um, sure,” I said. Camille shrugged.

  “Go get settled in, we’re just waiting on a few stragglers,” Ms. Miller said.

  Camille and I made our way to the back of the room. Our table was in the middle of three rows of two-person lab tables. Hayley and Amity were already seated at their table next to us. Mac and Destin apparently had a table up front.

  Hayley turned her chair towards me, apparently not done with her interrogation. She ignored Camille entirely; the foreign girl was hunched over a notepad, scribbling aimlessly in one corner.

  “So you’re from New York?” Hayley asked. “You must know where all the good stores are.”

  “Not really,” I admitted.

  “Oh.” She made a delicate frown. “How about plays? Do you see many of those?”

  I shoo
k my head.

  “You live in New York and you don’t see plays?” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that the whole point?” She gave me a look of suspicion. “You’re not one of those people who sit inside and play video games all day are you?”

  “No...” Without a computer or a game console, that would be difficult.

  “Hmm,” she intoned, like I’d still somehow failed a test. She looked up; her face immediately brightened. “Kei, did you find it?”

  It was Him. The guy from the atrium and the bored guy with the overstyled hair had come in. My face flushed and I reflexively became very interested in the experiment instructions on my desk.

  “Find what?” he said. They sat at the table behind Hayley and Amity. The girls turned around to face them.

  “Keiiii, you said you were going to help me find my bracelet,” Hayley pressed coyly.

  His name was Kei. My heart gave an awkward lurch. “Oh that?” he said offhand. “Completely forgot. I wanted coffee so I went to the teachers’ lounge.”

  “If they ever catch you you’ll be done for,” Hayley admonished. “But I’m really worried about my bracelet.”

  “What if someone stole it?” Amity added.

  “Rhys, make him help us find it,” Hayley told the other boy.

  “I can’t make him do anything, you know that,” he said flatly, filling in lines on the worksheet.

  “I’m sure he wishes he could,” Kei said.

  “The world would be a much quieter, less annoying place,” Rhys grumbled. Was he writing in the answers? We hadn’t even started the experiment yet...

  “Alright, I think that’s everyone, let’s get started,” Ms. Miller said, shutting the door. “Ladies, face the front of the room please.” Hayley and Amity turned their chairs around reluctantly. “Boys, put down your pencils, I can see you writing notes.” Mac and Destin sat up straighter. “Jacques, give me your phone. You can have it back after class is over.” She held out her hand. A boy across the room with bleached hair trudged up to her desk, handed her a sleek phone with a sour look on his face, and returned to his chair muttering in what I assumed was French.