The Classy Crooks Club

by Alison Cherry

  I’m about to grab the Cheetos-dusted receiver when I hear a car door slam outside, followed by the sound of quick footsteps approaching the convenience store. My heart starts banging so hard I’m pretty sure people can hear it five miles away, but then a male voice calls, “Miss AJ? Are you in there?”

  It doesn’t seem possible that Stanley is here right now—maybe I’m so stressed out that I’m hallucinating. But when I peek over the counter, there he is on the other side of the glass door. “It’s just me,” he says. “Can you let me in?”

  I run to the door and undo the dead bolt, and then he’s inside, wrapping his arms around me in an enormous bear hug. He’s wearing a worn green T-shirt, and the fabric feels soft against my cheek. Since that time Stanley hugged me at the soccer field, I’ve imagined him doing it again a zillion times. But in my made-up scenarios, it was never in an empty convenience store in the middle of the night, and I was never crying, something I suddenly seem to be doing.

  “I came as soon as your grandmother called,” he says. “Are you okay?”

  “I think so,” I say.

  Stanley lets go of me and looks me up and down. “AJ, you’re bleeding.”

  It’s only then that I even remember my scraped leg. The bleeding has mostly stopped, but there are thin streams of dried blood snaking all the way down my shin, like the veins of a leaf. “It’s fine,” I say. “It doesn’t even hurt. Can we go home?”

  “We have to wait here for the police, kiddo,” Stanley says. “They’re on their way here, and they’re on Betty’s tail.”

  “How did you get here so fast? Where’s Grandma Jo?”

  “She and her friends are at the police station. Something to do with trespassing and destroying someone’s garage? I don’t really know. My parents’ house is ten minutes from here, so your grandma asked me to come help out. She thought you might want to see a friendly face.”

  I nod hard. “I did. I’m really glad you’re here.”

  “I should call the cops and tell them I’m with you. One second, okay?”

  I nod, and Stanley makes the call. When he’s finished, I ask, “Did they find her?”

  “Not yet,” he says. “But your grandmother said you took her keys and her glasses, so she probably hasn’t gotten very far. That was really quick thinking.” He wraps an arm around my shoulders and gives me a little squeeze, and something like happiness blooms in my chest.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “Do you want to tell me what happened?”

  I’m sure I’m going to have to tell the police everything, and the thought of repeating the whole story an extra time feels exhausting, so I shake my head. “Not really, if that’s okay.”

  “No problem. Hey, I know what we can do instead.”

  Those drugs Betty gave me must’ve done something seriously weird to my brain, because for a split second, I think Stanley’s going to dip me back and kiss me like in one of Amy’s sappy movies. But instead he says, “Go sit back down behind the counter, okay? You’re probably safest where nobody can see you. I’ll be there in a second. I promise I’m not leaving the store.”

  I nod and huddle down in my spot by the Cheetos phone. When Stanley joins me a minute later, he’s holding a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream from the convenience store freezer and two plastic spoons. He reaches for his wallet and counts four dollars onto the counter next to the cash register, and I want to hug him for being so careful not to steal.

  “Your favorite, right?” he asks as he settles back down beside me.

  I nod. “Thank you,” I say, and I don’t just mean for the ice cream.

  “Of course,” he says, and I feel like he gets it.

  We sit there behind the counter in silence, our arms pressed together from shoulder to elbow, and spoon ice cream into our mouths. Even before the police arrive and shatter the quiet with their sirens, I start to feel safe again.

  21

  The rest of the evening is a blur. A police car and an ambulance arrive at the gas station, and even though I say I’m not hurt, a couple of paramedics rush me to the hospital anyway. Stanley sits in the back of the ambulance with me and holds my hand, and it’s so distracting that I barely remember anything else about the ride. In the emergency room, the doctors bandage my knee, examine me from head to toe, and do a blood test to try to figure out what Betty used to knock me out. When they find out my parents are in South America and my grandmother has been arrested, they ask if there’s someone else who can come get me, and I tell them to call Maddie’s parents. I can’t wait to see Maddie’s face when she finds out what happened to me tonight.

  By the time the doctors give me a clean bill of health, I’m completely exhausted. But instead of letting me sleep, a pale, skinny police officer with freckles sprinkled across his nose takes me into a little room and makes a video recording of me telling the whole story of the kidnapping. He keeps asking the same questions over and over and over: Why was I with Betty in the car? Where did she say she was taking me? How did I manage to pick the lock on the convenience store door? It’s hard to answer his questions without getting my grandmother, Cookie, and Edna in trouble. I’m not sure if you can be punished for planning to steal something, but I feel like it’s safest to pretend I don’t know anything about a heist. Instead, I tell him Brianna’s family owns one of Edna’s paintings and that she wanted to see its new home, just from the outside. I say I learned to pick locks by watching videos on the Internet and that I’d been practicing in my grandmother’s house earlier that day, which is why I had my picks with me. The officer looks skeptical, but he doesn’t push me. Sometimes it pays to be twelve.

  “That’s all we need from you tonight, Annemarie,” he finally says when I’ve told the story about five times. “You’ve been very brave.”

  “Did you find Betty?” I ask.

  He nods. “She’s in custody. You did an excellent job immobilizing her.”

  “What will happen to her now?” I ask. I wish I didn’t care, that I could think of Betty as purely evil, but part of me can’t help feeling bad for her. Like I told Grandma Jo a few days ago, you can’t ever really know what’s going on in someone else’s head.

  “She’ll likely go back to prison,” he says. “Kidnapping is a serious offense, especially since she transported you across state lines.”

  “Wait,” I say. “Back to prison?”

  “She served three years for kidnapping a seven-year-old girl in 1991,” says the officer, and I remember all the comments Edna and Cookie made about what Betty was up to that year. The trial they all followed so closely must’ve been hers. Man, my head is spinning.

  “We’ll need to speak with your parents as soon as they get home,” the officer continues. He slides a business card across the table. “Please don’t hesitate to call me if you remember any other details about tonight, no matter how small they seem.”

  I make my way back out into the waiting room, so tired I’m basically asleep on my feet, and find Maddie’s mom waiting for me in the ugly orange chair next to Stanley’s. Her sandy hair is a tangled mess, and she’s wearing a gray hoodie over the ratty old American Cancer Society shirt she sleeps in. I guess she was so eager to come get me that she didn’t even bother to change. It’s exactly how my own mom would act, and I have to swallow hard around the lump that rises in my throat.

  When she sees me, Mrs. Kolhein springs to her feet like a jack-in-the-box and pulls me into a tight hug. “AJ, honey,” she whispers into my hair. “Are you all right? I can’t believe what you’ve been through tonight.”

  I bury my face in her shoulder and breathe in the familiar smell of Maddie’s detergent. “I’m okay,” I say. “Just really tired.”

  “She’s a tough girl,” says Stanley’s voice, and I suddenly realize he’s right next to us. I picture him telling Talia about all of this tomorrow, emphasizing how brave and cool I am, and I smile up at him, suddenly shy.

  “How’d it go with the cops?” he asks.


  “All right, I think? I don’t really know.” I turn back to Mrs. Kolhein. “Is Maddie here?”

  “No, honey, she’s sleeping. It’s four in the morning. But you two will have plenty of time to talk tomorrow—I’ve worked everything out with the police so you can stay with us until your parents get home. Is that all right with you?”

  A few hours ago I was sure things were over forever between Maddie and me, but now all I want to do is climb into the second twin bed in her room and fall asleep to the sound of her breathing. Next to everything else that’s happened, our fight seems so petty and stupid.

  “Yes, that’s perfect,” I say. “Let’s go home.”

  • • •

  The doctors at the hospital give Mrs. Kolhein medicine to help me sleep, which is totally ridiculous—I’m out cold the second I’m buckled into the car. When we get to their house, Maddie’s mom has to half carry me up the stairs. I don’t even manage to change into pajamas before I fall facedown into bed.

  My night is filled with dreams of running from various things: a swarm of wasps, a taxidermy bear that has come back to life, all four of the grannies dressed in swan feathers and threatening me with giant lock picks. Sometimes my feet feel so heavy I can barely move them. Sometimes I can’t open my eyes all the way, so I can’t see where I’m going. Sometimes my wrists and ankles are tied. I can feel wings and claws and fingers grazing the back of my neck, and I know that if I slow down even for a minute, they’re going to—

  I wake up with a gasp. My legs are tangled in the sheets, the comforter’s on the floor, and my arms are trapped under me. Every single one of my muscles hurts, but I can’t tell if it’s from being tied up or from thrashing in my sleep. My heart starts to slow down as I look at Maddie’s cheery butter-yellow walls glowing in the sunlight that streams through the windows. Then I notice my friend standing by the foot of my bed, staring at me with wide eyes.

  “Mom sent me up here to check on you, and you were, like, wrestling with the mattress in your sleep,” she says. “I didn’t know what to do. Are you okay?”

  I sit up and push my tangled hair out of my face. “Yeah. I was having a nightmare.”

  “Okay. Good. I mean, not good. But good that you’re okay.”

  “Yeah.”

  The two of us stare at each other for a few endless seconds. Maddie’s only about five feet from me, but she feels incredibly far away. When I can’t take the silence any longer, I blurt out, “Maddie, listen, I don’t want—”

  At the exact same time, she says, “My mom told me what happened, and I’m so—”

  We both burst out laughing, and spiderweb cracks appear in the barrier of awkwardness between us. I feel like if I give it a couple good kicks, it’ll shatter. “You first,” I say.

  “I just can’t believe you got kidnapped.”

  “Me neither.” I feel kind of removed from the whole thing, like it’s something that happened to another girl I don’t know very well.

  “My mom said it was a friend of your grandma’s?”

  “She was this sweet little old lady. She always seemed super nice. Honestly, she was the least weird of my grandmother’s friends. I didn’t see it coming at all.”

  “Did you really pick a lock on a convenience store?”

  “Yeah.” I smile. “Want me to teach you?”

  “Obviously. How did you even know how to do that?”

  I consider repeating the story I told the police last night. But if I want things to go back to normal between Maddie and me, I have to tell her the truth. It’s not up to me to protect Grandma Jo and her friends anymore.

  “There’s a lot of stuff I haven’t told you since I went to my grandma’s,” I say.

  “Yeah, ’cause you’ve been telling it all to the freaking Bananas.” Maddie’s clearly trying to be gentle with me because of what I’ve been through, but I can tell she’s still really angry, too. She looks down at her toes, which she’s burrowing into the rug so hard it’s like she’s trying to dig to China.

  “No, Maddie, I haven’t told this stuff to anyone. Definitely not the Bananas. It’s, like, seriously secret.” She finally looks up at me, and I lower my voice. “If I tell you what really happened, do you promise not to tell anyone? Not even Amy or your parents?”

  Her eyes get bigger. “Of course.”

  “Close the door, okay?”

  Maddie shuts the door, then climbs onto the bed next to me, and I scoot over to make room for her. I start with the night my grandmother caught me breaking into the storage room, and I plow right through the bird heist, the lock-picking lessons, the bear heist, my scouting mission at Brianna’s party, my attempts to convince my grandmother’s friends not to steal the painting, and the kidnapping. Maddie listens to the whole thing, her mouth hanging slightly open. I can tell she’s soaking everything up, and best of all, I can tell she believes me.

  When I’m finished, I expect her to ask a ton of questions, but instead she just says, “Wow. I mean . . . wow.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Wow.” She shoves me with her shoulder so hard I tip over. “I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this! I thought we told each other everything!”

  “My grandmother said I had to keep it a secret or she’d make my life miserable. I was afraid she’d bugged all my stuff, so I never knew when it was safe to talk.”

  “Wow,” Maddie says yet again. “Are you going to be traumatized for life?”

  I shrug. “Actually, the whole thing was kind of fun for a while. I got to sneak around and, like, serve justice or whatever, you know? I really thought it was for a good cause at the beginning. Even when it got complicated, part of me didn’t really want it to end.”

  “Well, it’s over now, anyway.”

  “Yeah.”

  Maddie shifts around and crosses her legs. “Do you think your grandma’s going to get in trouble?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, she’s already in trouble for driving into Brianna’s garage, but I tried to keep her out of the whole thing when I talked to the policeman last night. I’m not sure he believed my lame story, though. It looks pretty suspicious that she was at Brianna’s house in the middle of the night.”

  Maddie toys with the edge of the sheet. “So . . . you’re really not friends with her?”

  “With Brianna? No, Maddie, I swear. I only started talking to her ’cause you told me to, remember? You said I should make her jealous and put her in her place.”

  “That’s what I thought you were doing at first, but then it seemed like you started to mean it,” Maddie says. “It seemed like you’d actually started caring about . . . that stuff. Money and expensive clothes and things. And then, when you went to her party even though you said you weren’t going to, I just thought . . . I don’t know, it kind of seemed like you were too good for me now or something.” She abandons the sheet and starts picking at a tiny hole in the cuff of her pajama pants.

  “I don’t care about any of that. And that party was totally ridiculous. You should’ve seen the way the Bananas were drooling over the makeup ladies, like they were movie stars or something. All I could think about the whole time was how I’d rather be eating Zappetto’s and playing Mega Ninja Explosion with you. I can’t wait to move back home and have everything go back to normal.”

  “I bet you’ll miss Stanley, though.” Maddie makes a stupid goo-goo-eyed expression.

  My cheeks grow warmer as I think about the way I cried all over his shirt last night. “Maybe a little,” I admit. “But it’s not like he feels the same way about me. Anyway, he has a girlfriend.”

  “Hey, that kind of thing never stops Brianna. That’s what she says, anyway.” Maddie rolls her eyes. “What a liar. She’s such a spoiled little brat.”

  I’ve just gotten my best friend back, and I don’t want to do anything to ruin it, but I feel like I should get absolutely everything out in the open. “I actually feel kind of bad for her,” I say.

  Maddie snorts. “For Brianna? Why?
She gets everything she wants!”

  “She doesn’t, though. She has nice stuff, but her parents are horrible. Have you ever seen them at a soccer game, even once? And her mom skipped her birthday party because she wanted to go to the gym.”

  “What? For real?”

  “Yeah. Brianna was super upset.”

  Maddie’s quiet for a second. “Okay, I guess I feel a little sorry for her,” she finally says. “But I still basically hate her.”

  “Girls?” Mrs. Kolhein calls upstairs. “I made pancakes. You hungry?”

  I hadn’t realized I was until that moment, but my stomach growls loudly in response, and Maddie and I both laugh. “Be right down,” I call back.

  Maddie clambers off the bed. “So, you’re going to stay with us until your parents get home?”

  “I think so . . . if that’s okay with you?”

  She looks at me like I’m crazy. “Of course it’s okay with me. Hey, do you want to watch Tentacle later? Jordan said I could borrow it.”

  “Yeah, sure. Is Amy coming too?”

  “She wouldn’t like it—too much screaming and not enough kissing, remember?”

  I laugh. “Yeah, you’re probably right.”

  “I mean, I can invite her if you want. But I thought maybe . . .”

  I look at my best friend in her wrinkled T-shirt and her stretched-out pink-and-green-striped pajama pants, her hair totally flat on one side and standing up in all different directions on the other. I’m so grateful to have her back that I feel a weird pressure in my chest, like my heart’s going to explode if it gets any bigger.

  “No,” I say. “You’re right. It should just be us.”

  22

  Two weeks later

  The day of our last soccer game before the playoffs is so hot and humid that stepping outside feels like being wrapped in a microwaved wet towel. Ordinarily, I’d walk over to the field with Maddie, but when my parents offer me a ride in the air-conditioned minivan, I gladly accept. It’s only partly because of the temperature—even though I’d never admit this out loud, I kind of can’t get enough of my family these days. Being home is so blissfully normal, and even though I miss Debbie’s cooking, it’s amazing to be back in a house filled with regular furniture and dog hair and laughter and hugs from people who love me in a totally nondisturbing way.