Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Chapter 1 - A Month Before
Chapter 2 - Wasn’t She Cross with You on Account of Your Fighting?
Chapter 3 - How Could One Girl Have So Much?
Chapter 4 - She Tinks Shés .the Queen of England
Chapter 5 - Miss Silk Skirt
Chapter 6 - From Intermediate to Advanced
Chapter 7 - I Did It Alone
Chapter 8 - I Absolutely Loved Rhinestones
Chapter 9 - This Is What Everyone’s Raving About?
Chapter 10 - Everyone Was Off Losing Their Virginity
Chapter 11 - If You Lie in Life You Lie Onstage
Chapter 12 - Maybe Something Was Wrong with Me
Chapter 13 - Shoplifting Is Not a Game
Chapter 14 - Thank God I Was Seeking Professional Help
Chapter 15 - I Will Not Get a Thing
Chapter 16 - Only a Misdemeanor or Something
Chapter 17 - Trying to Sound Normal
Chapter 18 - Can You Get into Flattery?
Chapter 19 - I Wasn’t Scared of Spider Plants Anymore
Chapter 20 - The Ides of March
Chapter 21 - I’m Only Going to Buy
Chapter 22 - Alone in the Tennis Bed
Chapter 23 - Boys Will Come and Go
Chapter 24 - Two Julies
Acknowledgements
It’s too easy.
“Good afternoon, ladies,” he said with some kind of accent, and we said hi back.
Then, like a flock of chirpy birds, these three women about our moms’ age came in, looking so rich and Park Avenue. They were in navy and tan and looked like they were going boating. The moustache man got really flirty with the ladies and they were giggling, and I started checking out these really expensive knee-highs. I was thinking, Jesus, twenty dollars for a pair of knee-highs just because somebody painted some swirly colors on them? I mean, come on. Julie was near the window inspecting this opalescent white purse with tiny beads on it. She called me over.
“Check this out,” she said under her breath. She opened and closed the purse a few times and the snap was kind of magnetic. It was fancy. Sixty-five dollars.
“Very cool,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said, and then suddenly, with her back to the guy at the register, she stuck the purse in the waist of her jeans, pulled her shirt over it, and whispered, “Let’s go!”
The next thing I knew we were running down the street, my Chocolate Soup bag thumping against my side and the swirly-colored pair of knee-highs balled up in my fist.
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First published in the United States of America by Viking,
a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 2006
Published by Speak, an imprint of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2008
Copyright © Jenny Pollack, 2006
All rights reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s
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THE LIBRARY OF CONGRESS HAS CATALOGED THE VIKING EDITION AS FOLLOWS:
Pollack, Jenny.
Klepto / by Jenny Pollack.
p. cm.
Summary: In 1981, fourteen-year-old Julie, a drama major at the High School of Performing Arts in
New York City, becomes best friends with an attractive new girl who introduces Julie to the exciting but
dangerous world of shoplifting.
eISBN : 978-1-101-17670-2
[1. Shoplifting—Fiction. 2. Stealing—Fiction. 3. Best friends—Fiction. 4. Friendship—Fiction.
5. New York (N.Y.)—History—20th century—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.P7566K1 2006 [Fic]—dc22 2005015809
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For J.K.,
with all my love
Prologue,1981
It Wasn’t Like I Hadn’t Done It Before
I wore my baggy red overalls ’cause Julie Braverman said to, and she wore her big army pants. Wearing baggy pants to Fiorucci, this totally cool clothing store, was really important, Julie said. She was acting like what we were gonna do was no biggie. She said it was so easy at Fiorucci. Especially on a Saturday if it was pretty crowded. We headed straight downstairs to the jeans department. There were floor-to-ceiling wooden shelves that held all the different kinds of Fiorucci jeans and pants by size and color and style. Leaning on the counter in front of the shelves was a guy with spiky green hair, ready to get down the pair you wanted.
Julie went up to the spiky green hair guy and said, “Hi. Could I please try on one pair of regular jeans, size twenty-eight, one pair of turquoise corduroys, size twenty-seven, and ummm . . .” She paused to act like she was mulling it over even though she knew exactly what she was going to say. “One pair of the rust-colored jeans? Twenty-eights?” Then I asked him for my three pairs.
As we walked toward the dressing rooms with our armloads of pants, Julie said under her breath, “Try on all three and decide which are the ones you want, okay?”
I was pretty sure it was going to be the regular blue Fiorucci jeans. Oh my God, I suddenly thought, getting excited, I’m gonna have a brand-new pair of Fiorucci jeans for free! I tried to my hide my nervousness. I mean, it wasn’t like I hadn’t done it before. I’d done it once or twice. Only, it was just little stuff, like candy or lipstick from Woolworth’s. I’d never walked out of a store wearing a pair of expensive jeans under my pants!
I tried on the pink corduroys, but they made me look fat. I’ve always wished I was one of those skinny girls like my sister who could eat anything all the time. When we were little, Ellie was really skinny, so Dr. Beaumont said she should drink one milk shake a day to gain weight. Mom didn’t want me to feel left out so she let me have a milk shake, too, even though I certainly didn’t need it.
I tried on the regular jeans and thank God they fit. Then I put my red overalls on over them and looked in the mirror. Pretty good. You couldn’t really tell. A little bulky, but not much more than usual. I felt my heart kind of beating fast then, and for some reason I couldn’t stop smiling, even though I was alone with myself in the dressing room.
1
A Month Before
I got off the subway at 50th Street and Broadway and walked down to 46th Street feeling excited and thinking, I can’t believe I’m fin
ally in high school. It was the Tuesday after Labor Day in 1981, the first day of freshman year. I was actually going to the High School of Performing Arts (or P.A. for short, as everyone called it), where I got accepted as a drama major. There were only three departments: drama, dance, and music. P.A. had academics, too, but just the basics like English, math, history, science, and foreign language. You spent half the day in your major and half in academics—what a change from my old school.
As I walked up to the old brown stone building, I saw this girl on the top of the steps, and I knew I recognized her from somewhere. I thought, My God, she’s so pretty! She looked kind of like Brooke Shields. She was wearing these dark-blue-and-purple-striped painters pants from Reminiscence, and I thought, What a coincidence, ’cause I was wearing my new striped cotton boat-neck shirt from Reminiscence. I had bought it as my first-day-of-school shirt. Reminiscence was my all-time favorite clothing store. It was on Macdougal Street in the Village. They mostly sold 1950s-type stuff, which I totally loved, and these really cool pants in a zillion different colors. It was a store that made me wish I was rich, ’cause I wanted almost everything. The rest of my outfit included my Levi’s and white Keds—I had carefully laid out this combination of clothes on my orange pillow chair the night before. Maybe we’ll be friends, I thought, looking at this girl, since we had the Reminiscence connection.
As I stood that morning outside P.A., the sun made me squint my eyes and scrunch up my forehead. It was just before the first bell, and it seemed like there were zillions of kids hanging out outside, not going in. Some were in covered-with-pins jean jackets and tight Jordache jeans. I could hear a few different boom boxes playing WPLJ or The Police or Human League or whatever. All I could think was, How do I know that girl in the painters pants?
I noticed this cool-looking group of friends: two girls and a guy smoking clove cigarettes. The girls were wearing black suede boots with their jeans tucked in. They also had identical hairstyles—long one-length perms and frizzy bangs with lots of mousse—only one was a dark brunette and the other was kind of an orangy-blonde. They must have been upperclassmen, ’cause they seemed to be a little clique already. I started to get that annoying hollow feeling in my chest, like no amount of deep breaths would make it go away. My parents always said I had no trouble making friends, but I was still nervous. I knew I’d see my old friends Kristin and Olivia sometimes, but it wouldn’t be the same since we were going to different high schools.
“Eye-ee-sha!” I heard someone scream.
“Queechy!” screamed another voice, and two tall, thin black girls wearing leg warmers and their hair pulled back in tight buns ran to each other and hugged, jumping and squealing.
“You got taller!” “You lost weight!” and “How was your summer?” called random voices. It felt like everyone knew someone except me.
I looked back up at the familiar pretty girl on the top step of P.A. again. At that moment it suddenly came to me, and she turned around as if she knew I was going to say, “Didn’t you go to Caitlin Braunstein’s Bat Mitzvah?”
Last June, my friend Caitlin Braunstein had a Bat Mitzvah and she invited practically every kid from Riverdale, which was a school for rich kids. Her dad was a big lawyer and they lived in this huge apartment on Central Park West where Miss America used to live, Caitlin said. The front hallway and foyer had marble floors, and the bathroom off the study had a little gold door in the wall with a button. When you pushed it, the toilet paper popped out. I really liked Caitlin, but when I met her Riverdale friends at her Bat Mitzvah, they seemed cooler or older or something. They were all these pretty girls with expensive clothes and great hair and names like Alyssa, Jackie, Robin, and Elise. Oh, and Julie—one of them was named Julie. Like me.
“How did you remember me?” Julie said as she stepped down a couple of steps so we were both on the sidewalk. She smiled this big smile with her movie-star teeth and adjusted her canvas bag that I recognized from a store on the East Side called Chocolate Soup. It’s a bag I always thought was really cool, but too expensive.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I remember people.”
“I’m Julie. Julie Braverman. You’re a friend of Caitlin’s?” she said.
“Yeah. I’m Julie, too. Julie Prodsky.”
“Oh, right! You went to elementary with Caitlin, right?”
“Yeah,” was all I could say.
It turned out that Julie and I were on our way to the same homeroom, Mr. Werner’s, room 301.
In room 301, Julie and I found seats next to each other in those chair-desks, and this big kid in the back with stringy black hair and an army jacket took out some drumsticks and started playing the desk in front of him. Other kids were filing in, and the room buzzed with so many conversations going on at once. Occasionally you could hear screaming in the hallway from more friends reuniting. The bell rang, an obnoxious high-pitched shriek.
“So, where do you live?” I asked Julie.
Her big brown eyes looked right into mine as she feathered her fingers through her bangs.
“On Ninety-Ninth Street and Riverside Drive,” she said.
“No kidding! I live on a Hundred Sixth Street—hey we’re practically neighbors!” I blurted back. Oh my God, I sounded like such a dork.
“Yeah,” Julie said, seeming kind of distracted by all the kids and noise. Then I started staring at her lips. They were perfect and full and heart-shaped. She was so pretty, I couldn’t get over it. I mean, it wasn’t like I liked her liked her—I just couldn’t stop staring.
“Are you trying to figure out what lipstick I’m wearing?” Julie said. Oh my God. Caught in the act.
“Yes!” I said. “Where’d you get it?”
“It’s Shiseido, my favorite brand. It’s called Iridescent Baby Pink.” Then she pulled the tube out of her purple LeSportsac makeup bag to show me.
“Here it is,” she said, handing me a shiny black lipstick with curves in the plastic.
“Oh my God, Julie Braverman!” screamed a husky voice with a Brooklyn accent. Both of us spun around to see a short girl with thick eye makeup, her hair in a bun, and a huge Capezio dance bag, almost twice as big as her body. Anyone with a bun walked like a dancer, with her feet turned out. Even guy dancers had that walk.
“Natalie!” Julie said as she got out of her seat to hug her. “What are you doing here?”
“I got in!” Natalie screamed.
“I never heard from you after I got home,” Julie said. “How was August?” The two of them hugged and giggled and whispered a little about something for a few minutes while I pretended to be interested in the contents of my fluorescent green pencil case.
Then suddenly Julie turned to me and said, “Oh my God, I’m sorry, this is Natalie Schaeffer. We went to camp together last summer. Buck’s Rock. That’s Julie.”
“Hi. Another Julie!” Natalie said.
“Hi,” I said.
“Are you in drama, too?” Natalie asked me.
“Uh-huh. You’re in dance?”
“How could you tell?” she said sarcastically, slinging her huge dance bag under the chair next to Julie. At first I thought she was making fun of me, but then she laughed, and Julie looked at me and laughed, too.
“So you’re in my homeroom?” Julie said to Natalie.
“Uh-huh.” She cracked her gum.
Great. At first it seemed like Julie needed a friend, but in fact she already had one. I wouldn’t be surprised if she knew other kids in our class, too. She was popular, and it wasn’t even lunch yet.
Mr. Werner, a tall, white-haired man with little half-moon glasses on the end of his nose, came in and asked us all to simmer down. He took attendance, calling everyone by their last names.
“Auerbach? Barinni? Braverman?” he shouted, peering at us over his glasses.
“Here!” Julie said.
Normally, homeroom was going to be in the afternoon—it was only in the morning today because it was the first day of school. Mr. Werner e
xplained how this would be an abnormal day, with shortened classes and orientation and special instructions, and then he told us about some rules, but I wasn’t really paying attention. Then the bell rang again.
“Hey,” Julie said, lightly touching my arm. “If we end up in different classes later, do you want to meet after school and take the subway uptown together?”
“Sure!” I said, trying not to sound too desperate, and I went off to find room 205, Mrs. Krawler’s class, Voice and Diction.
Julie and I had acting and French class together. Acting was every day, but French was only on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. The schedules were confusing. There was so much to remember that by the end of the day, my brain hurt.
On the number 1 train going uptown, I noticed guys checking Julie out as they passed. Julie acted a little like she was used to that. I asked her if she had any siblings.
“I have four,” she said. “Three sisters and a brother. But I only live with one of them—Mandy—she’s just a year older than me. We’re the only two that have the same dad. I mean, like, the same mom and dad. We all have the same mom. There are three dads among the five of us.”
Well. I didn’t know what to say. I’ve never known anyone who had such a big family, let alone with all those fathers. I’ve always wished I had brothers, older or younger—that my parents hadn’t stopped with me. But I just had Ellie, who annoyed me and barely acted like a big sister. She never gave me advice about guys, ’cause she was totally inexperienced, which was completely pathetic. I mean, she was seventeen! One time I asked her what kind of birth control she would use if she needed it, and she got all flustered and made me get out of her room, saying she had too much homework.
I was still mulling over Julie’s big family. “Uh-huh,” was all I could muster. Should I have acted like three dads was no big deal?
Klepto Page 1
