Klepto

by Jenny Pollack

  “I’ve tried, but she’s never home. I’m pretty sure she knows what happened with Josh ’cause Jennifer Smalls probably told her.” I still couldn’t believe it wasn’t me who told Julie everything that happened.

  The day we ran into Josh and Leah Reemer, I got home from school and put Billy Joel’s Glass Houses on my record player. I sat on my light blue carpet and cried and cried. I played the song “All for Leyna” over and over like eight hundred times. Billy Joel sang about how everything he did was all for Leyna, a lady who killed herself by standing on some train tracks or something, and that he wanted to throw himself into the sea and drown ’cause he couldn’t live without her. He sang about how he was failing in school, he couldn’t sleep, he was losing his mind, he just wanted Leyna one more time. I felt so pathetic, I could totally relate to this song. Then I played Toto IV, the tape Josh made me, because I must have been a masochist. How would I ever get over Josh Heller?

  “What do you want to happen now?” Joyce asked me, and I realized I was having trouble focusing. It was like my mind was in a million places. I thought about her question for a second.

  “I want my friend Julie back,” I said surprising myself. I sat there for a second, hugging Joyce’s box of Kleenex. “I really miss her.”

  I started to wonder if maybe I was more upset about the Julie stuff than the Josh stuff. Julie was my best friend, after all. I remembered one of our sleepovers when I lay in the trundle bed next to Julie’s bed, all tucked in, and we talked into the darkness until we fell asleep.

  “Remember,” Julie said, “boys will come and go, but true friends are here to stay.”

  At the time I thought I had heard someone say the same thing on some TV show like Eight Is Enough or something and I thought to myself, What boys will come and go? When will I meet just one boy who will come and go? I hadn’t even had one. Was Josh my first heartbreak experience, or was Julie?

  “We have to stop,” Joyce said. “But let’s continue with this next time.”

  “Continue with what?” I said, under my breath. God, I sounded like a typical angry teenager. I let the box of Kleenex fall into my chair and closed the door behind me.

  I got home after six and Ellie said Mom and Dad were at some concert and did I want fish sticks or chicken pot pie?

  “Fish sticks,” I said, throwing my book bag on the couch. “Do we have tartar sauce?”

  “Yeah. I’ll make them. You can clean up, okay?”

  “Okay,” I said. I didn’t have the energy to argue.

  “Hey, Julie . . .” Ellie called from the kitchen as I went to turn on the TV.

  “Yeah?”

  “What happened to your friend Julie?” she asked. My heart started racing. Had something happened to Julie and Ellie knew about it but I didn’t?

  “What do you mean?” I said, turning down the volume.

  “You don’t seem to hang out at her house anymore. Are you guys still friends?”

  I breathed out. Oh, Ellie was just being nosy.

  “Well, sort of,” I said. “I don’t really know.” I didn’t know how to tell Ellie about Julie and me without bringing up the whole stealing subject.

  “Did you guys have a fight?” she asked.

  “Not really,” I said, knowing these non-answers were going to annoy her.

  “What do you mean ‘not really’?” she called, still in the kitchen. I could hear her scraping the cucumber for salad. I exhaled loudly.

  “How come you’re so interested?” I shouted back.

  “Just curious. God. Excuse me for living.”

  I stood at the TV, changing channels. News. News. Doublemint gum commercial. M*A*S*H. Some part of me wanted to tell Ellie everything. To start with learning how to steal at Fiorucci and end with Josh cheating on me and maybe even ask her what I should do. Instead I went into the kitchen and sat on the stool at the counter and watched Ellie make salad.

  “What’s going on with your college applications?” I asked.

  Ellie sighed. “Oh, nothing. I’m just waiting to hear at this point.”

  “RISD’s your first choice, right?” I said.

  “Yes. I hope and pray I get in.”

  “I bet you will,” I said.

  Ellie looked up from the salad bowl. “Why do you say that?”

  “ ’Cause you’re a good artist,” I said, stealing a tomato out of the bowl.

  “Oh. Thanks. I didn’t think you noticed my stuff,” she said quietly into the bowl.

  “Well, I do. Jesus, Mom and Dad sure fight enough about where you’re going to college.”

  “They just fight about money,” Ellie said. “If I get into RISD and don’t get a scholarship, Dad’ll want me to go to a state school like SUNY Albany or someplace.”

  “Would you go there?” I asked.

  “Not on your life!” Ellie said. “If I get into RISD, I’ll beg, borrow, or steal to go—I don’t know, but somehow, I’ll find a way.”

  I couldn’t help but cringe a little when she said “steal.”

  Just before dinner the next Sunday night, I thought about calling Josh at his mother’s house on Long Island. I knew he usually spent Sunday nights there, and we had been ignoring each other in French ever since the run-in. I hadn’t answered my phone in a few days ’cause I didn’t know what to say to him if he called. Josh had called my parents and left, like, three messages, but I kept tossing the little notes into the garbage. I dialed the Long Island number I’d memorized months ago, and wondered if this would be the last time I’d call it.

  “Hello?” Mrs. Heller answered. Josh’s mother still went by Mrs. Heller, even though she and Josh’s dad had been divorced for eleven years or something.

  “Hi, Mrs. Heller,” I said, feeling a little nervous. “Is Josh home?”

  “Yes he is. Who’s calling, please?” She sounded like a secretary or something. Great. How many girls were calling him, that she didn’t know my voice?

  “This is Julie.”

  “Oh, hello there, sweetheart!” she said in her heavy Long Island accent. “How are you? When will I get to meet you face-to-face?” Before his mother could say anything else, I heard Josh grab the phone and shout, “I got it!

  “Hello?” Josh said, sounding a little relieved, or maybe I was just hoping I heard that in his voice.

  “Um. Hi,” I said.

  “Hi. Hold on a sec. Let me take this in the other room.” I heard his mother’s kitchen radio and various other sounds, like pots clanking. Then Josh screamed, “Mom! Hang up!” The kitchen receiver clicked and Josh said hello again.

  “Hi,” I said again.

  “I’ve been trying to call you,” he said. “Did you get my messages?”

  “Yeah,” I stammered. “I just wasn’t sure—”

  “I know,” Josh said, interrupting. “Listen, Julie, it’s not what you thought. I don’t like Leah Reemer; we’re just friends....”

  “How many of your friends are you sleeping with?” I asked, shocking myself with my bluntness. It took Josh a while to say something. I was dying to break the silence ’cause it felt so uncomfortable. It took every ounce of strength I had to wait for him to talk.

  “I’m not going to lie to you,” he said quietly.

  “Good,” I said.

  “Something did happen with Leah,” he said, sounding really solemn and serious. “But I don’t want to go out with her. I want to go out with you.” Then there was another long silence. “I want to date you, too, Josh,” I wanted to say, “but now I don’t know what to do.” I wanted to call him an asshole but I just couldn’t.

  “And I was going to ask you something,” Josh broke the silence.

  “Uh-huh?” I said.

  “Well. Um. I’ll understand if you say no, if you just, like, hate me now. But I was wondering if . . . if you’d go to the Spring Dance with me.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered into the phone, and let out a big sigh. “I don’t know, Josh, I don’t know what I’m supposed to say to tha
t. . . .”

  “Don’t say anything then. Just think about it. We have a few weeks still to get tickets.”

  When I hung up the phone, I went right to the kitchen. My mother was hunched over the counter reading a yellowed page from The New York Times Cookbook. There were several open cans of clams on the counter, parsley on the cutting board, and an empty box of Ronzoni linguini.

  “Mom, I know you’re gonna kill me, but I’m not going to be home for dinner tonight,” I said. She looked up at me over her reading glasses, keeping her finger on a spot in the cookbook. The other hand went right to her hip.

  “Why not? Where are you going?” she asked.

  “I’m going over to Julie’s. I just have to talk to her right now, it’s really important.”

  “Oh, honest to Pete, Julie. . . .” Her voice was on its way to shrieky. “I already have a pound of spaghetti in the water!”

  “So, we’ll have leftovers, Mom; I’ll take it to school tomorrow,” I said. I was trying really hard not to whine.

  “I just hate to waste food like that,” she said, like she hadn’t heard me at all.

  “It’s not a waste! I’ll eat it, I promise. I just have to go to Julie’s now, Mom, please? Please, c’mon, it doesn’t have to be such a big deal.”

  “Well, if it’s not such a big deal, why do you have to go to Julie’s right now?”

  “’Cause I just do, Mom. I need to talk to her. I meant, it wasn’t a big deal—”

  “All right!” she said, cutting me off. She was angry but I decided to ignore it.

  “Thanks, Mom!”

  I was out the kitchen door, racing to get my sneakers as I heard her complain loudly, “I just don’t get any help—I might as well be the maid!”

  24

  Two Julies

  I practically ran to Julie’s building on 99th Street and Riverside Drive. It was as if Julie were headed for the airport and I had to catch her. The truth was, I didn’t even know if she was home. I didn’t feel like calling first. I wasn’t even sure what I was going to say. “Julie, we have to talk,” I rehearsed under my breath as I hurried across West End Avenue toward the DON’T WALK sign. “Hi, Julie,” I said to myself, “we need to talk. . . . I’m sorry I didn’t call first, but it’s important. . . . Are you busy? Can we talk for a minute? It’s important.” I couldn’t even imagine what her response would be. Would she be mad at me for just showing up? Would she refuse to talk to me? What if Mimi or Mandy answered the door—then what would I say? I started to think about what to do if Julie wasn’t home, and I was so deep in thought and walking breathlessly that I almost smacked right into Julie on the street. She was wearing a bright magenta T-shirt that said PARACHUTE on it, so you’d think I would have seen her.

  “Hi,” I said, totally stunned.

  “Hi,” Julie said, looking pretty surprised to see me, too. “Where are you going in such a rush?”

  “Um . . .” Suddenly this struck me as funny and I started laughing. “Your house,” I said. Julie cracked a smile, too, but looked a little confused. Before she could say anything else, I said, “I really need to talk to you.” I tried to catch my breath.

  “Okay,” she said. “Do you want to come upstairs?” We were at the top of the hill on 99th and West End Avenue, standing in front of the building on the corner. It was a nice May night, kind of warm out.

  “Nah, let’s just sit on these steps for a little bit—is that okay?”

  “Okay,” Julie said.

  So we sat and I took a deep breath. It was kind of a shock to just stop running so abruptly like that. She didn’t seem mad. She seemed nice, like the Julie I knew. But maybe I had just caught her off guard and she didn’t have time to get mad. Suddenly I had no idea how to begin. Tell her about Josh cheating on me, even though Jennifer Smalls probably already did? Tell her about Josh asking me to the dance and should I say yes even though he cheated on me? Ask her what happened to our friendship? Remind her that she said true friends would always stick around even though boys would come and go, and wasn’t she a true friend? Before I even said anything, Julie said, “Actually this is kind of weird. I just tried calling you from my dad’s. But I guess you had already left.”

  “You tried calling me?” I said.

  “Yeah.” Julie looked down at her red-painted thumb-nail.

  “How come?”

  “’Cause I wanted to talk to you, too.” Oh my God! This was definitely a sign of our connectedness. We both knew we needed to talk at the same time! What were the odds?

  “You did?” I asked. “What did you want to talk about?”

  “I don’t know. . . .” she said. “You can go first.” I could hear her voice start to go up like she was trying not to cry, and she kept looking down so I wouldn’t see it, and that made me feel the tears behind my eyes. I thought, The two of us, we’re a mess. How did this happen?

  “I thought . . .” she said through tears, without holding them back now. “I knew I would cry.” She cried for a little bit and I didn’t know what to say. All I could think was, Julie was maybe the only person I could cry in front of and not feel self-conscious.

  Finally I said, “Um . . . I think you should probably go first. Did something happen?” It was so weird that I was saying that to her. I was the one things were happening to!

  She shook her head and sniffled. “No. Well, yes. But the something that happened was a couple of months ago. The night of your first date with Josh, actually.” She paused for a second, took a deep breath, started crying again, and quickly blurted out, “Julie, I’m sorry I’ve been so horrible. I mean, I never meant to stop being your friend. I never meant for all that stuff to happen. I just didn’t know how to tell you—”

  “Tell me what?”

  “I’m just so sorry,” she said, still crying. Then her nose was really running and neither of us had any Kleenex. “I feel terrible . . . especially that day in homeroom when you asked me why—”

  “Tell me what, Julie? What happened?” I said.

  Then, through her sobs and runny nose, she tried to catch her breath. “Remember that Friday we were gonna go shopping together? I got arrested that day. At Sak’s,” she said quietly.

  “Oh my God,” I said, and I took one of her hands. “Tell me.”

  “I was in the women’s department. You know, the fancy expensive section?”

  I nodded.

  “Well, I was trying to get this silk vest, but it had a plastic tag and I had my little scissors—”

  “How much?” I just had to interrupt.

  “Um. I think it was, like, a hundred seventy-five dollars or something.”

  I gasped. Now Julie’s crying had subsided a little.

  “And Jule, there were two-way mirrors there! And a hidden movie camera! They showed me a videotape of me cutting the vest and taking the plastic thing off!”

  “Oh my God” was all I could keep saying.

  “So this lady security guard comes out of nowhere the second I step out of the dressing room and she grabs my arm and pushes me toward this totally scary, like, French guy in a suit with a big black moustache and he takes me by the wrist and twists my arm behind my back and he pushes me into this dark room behind the dressing rooms. He was so mean. He was such an asshole!”

  I just sat there with my mouth open.

  “Wait,” Julie said. “It gets worse. They actually hand-cuffed me. . . .” And her voice got squeaky as if the memory upset her all over again. Down came more waterworks. “Of course, I was hysterical.” She took her hand out of mine to wipe her nose with it, and then she rubbed it on her jeans. “Gross. Sorry,” she said, and we both started laughing. She took my hand back. I just continued to watch her.

  “And there were other security guards in the back room, thank God. I mean, I was so scared of what that French guy was gonna do—”

  “How did you know he was French?” I asked.

  “His accent. Vhat do you sink you are doing, Mees, eh? I am going to call zee pol
ice!” she said, doing kind of a bad imitation of a French accent. “I can’t do a French accent. Anyway Jule, I just couldn’t believe it. I was, like, totally bugging out. I was screaming that I was fifteen, they couldn’t arrest me, and the French guy kept saying he could and they were gonna put me in a home for girl criminals and I was crying so hard I could barely see anything and they kept saying they were gonna call the police!”

  “Oh my God,” I said softly.

  “And I wanted to tell them it was my first time and it was a dare and all that stuff, but I knew they wouldn’t believe me ’cause they had the videotape and I had scissors, which they took from me, by the way—”

  “No—”

  “Yes. They grabbed my bag, you know the Esprit one with the turquoise netting?” I nodded. “They grabbed it and dumped it out on this dirty carpet to make sure I didn’t have any other stolen clothes—thank God I didn’t—and they went through my makeup bag and took my scissors!”

  “Jesus,” I said. Julie kept crying.

  “Jule,” she sniffled, her nose still running. “I’ve cried so much about this, I didn’t know I could cry any more.” She was breathing short, shallow breaths.

  “I wish I could have been there for you,” I said. “Take a deep breath.” We both inhaled a big breath together. Julie laughed a little and let out a huge hiccup, which totally made us laugh more.

  “It’s so good to talk to you,” she said, taking another deep breath. “I’m so sorry,” she said in her squeaky voice, and started crying again.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “But tell me the rest of what happened, ’cause I have a lot to tell you, too.”

  “Okay,” she exhaled again, curling her bottom lip so her bangs flew up. “Somehow I convinced them to let me call my mother, who was actually home—total miracle! She was pissed ’cause she was getting ready for a date with this new guy—oh God, there’s so much to tell you. There’s this new guy she’s dating—Nathan. Nate. He’s a carpenter. Anyway, so she comes all the way to Sak’s to get me and by then this policeman is there and I’m still crying and all she cares about is that she’s totally late for her date with Nate—” Then we both burst into hysterics. “She’s late for her date with Nate!” we said together in rhythm, laughing.