George suddenly felt like he wanted to hug Tabitha. Her time at Pilfer Academy sounded really lonely.
“Why are you telling me all this?” George asked.
“I honestly don’t know,” she said. “I suppose . . . I feel like I can trust you. I remember better than anyone what it’s like to be the new kid, since I’m still pretty new myself. And I guess I just can’t imagine you trying to sabotage anyone. I’ve noticed how you are—in class and in the dining hall and in the dorm. You’re pretty nice . . . for a criminal-in-training.” She started to laugh, but then she put her hands over her mouth, looking around to make sure the coast was still clear.
As they prowled into the Sundance Kid Wing in silence, George smiled. It felt good, talking with Tabitha. Maybe it was because they were both new and didn’t have to catch each other up on inside jokes. Or maybe it was because she always seemed to have his back. Even when she was trying to be a loner, she was still acting like a friend.
“Do you like it here yet?” she asked suddenly.
He looked at her and grinned. “I think I’m starting to. You?”
“I love it here! I’m getting the education of a lifetime!”
George laughed.
“Seriously! Pilfer is the best school of its kind, and I’m being challenged in every way possible. Physically, mentally, emotionally—it’s all such an amazing way to grow!”
“I guess I never really thought of it like that.”
Tabitha turned to him. There was a hunger in her eyes akin to the hunger he was feeling in the pit of his stomach, which gurgled again. “I’m going to be the best. In anything, everything, and especially this.”
“Sounds like a lot of pressure,” George said.
“Really? I think it’s fun.”
They reached a corner, and Tabitha peeked first while George guarded the flank. When they determined the coast was clear, they continued forward, walking through a room with rather creaky wood floors.
“Shhh!” George said.
“Shhhhhh!” Tabitha hissed back.
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!”
“No, really!” George said. “I think I hear something.”
Quickly, George pulled Tabitha behind a long window curtain, and they stood rigidly against the wall. There came a CREEEEEEEAAAAAAKKKK and a WAAAAAAAAAHHHHH and then nothing. George’s heart thudded like pounding footsteps.
“It’s just the mansion settling in,” Tabitha said after a moment, but George thought she sounded a bit unsure. “Just the sounds of an old house.”
They peeked out—the coast was clear.
They walked a bit more carefully now, pausing to look behind them every so often. Finally, they made their way into the Autolycus Wing, ever closer to the kitchen.
When they reached the kitchen door, Tabitha stepped up. She took out two wires from her pocket and began fiddling with the lock. Within moments, it clicked, and the door swung open.
“If they didn’t want us breaking in, they shouldn’t start teaching us how to pick locks in the first year,” Tabitha said, rolling her eyes.
Inside, the kitchen was positively glorious. There were rows and rows of foods of all kinds: crackers and cheeses and pastas and cereals and granola bars and fruits and breads and syrups and sauces and pretzels and chips and cookies, cookies, cookies—a full two rows of floor-to-ceiling cookies.
But George and Tabitha went right to the freezer. In the very corner, buried under pounds of uncooked lamb chops, they found exactly what they were looking for: a carton of Triple-dipple Ultra-deluxe Melty Creamy Creamer Rainbow Swizzle Milk Munch ice cream.
“YES!” Tabitha squealed, running to grab two spoons. “I’ve been waiting to try this for the last three months. You have no idea how often Strongarm taunts us with this.”
“Cheers,” said George, clinking his spoon on Tabitha’s, and then they both dug into the carton.
The ice cream was a taste-splosion of flavors in his mouth. At first, it was cool and light, perfect for a hot summer’s day, but then it became heavy and sweet, like a decadent dessert after an enormous feast. Then, it was like he was tasting colors: A punch of red, a kick of green, a buzz of yellow, a smack of purple, a burst of orange, a whack of turquoise, a wallop of magenta. Then came the munch of the cookie pieces inside. It was creamy and crunchy and melty and dribbly drippy soft.
George had never, ever, ever in his entire life tasted something so delicious.
“Oh my goodness,” Tabitha said, her eyes wide. She reached in for another spoonful, and George did, too. But just before he could take that second bite, the door to the kitchen opened.
“QUICK! HIDE!” Tabitha whispered. They scurried behind a wall of cereal boxes. There was just enough of a crack between them to see a long bathrobe shuffle close, close, close, too close, dangerously close, deathly close to where they were.
“Hello? Helloooooo!” called Strongarm’s voice, just feet away from where they hid. “I know you’re in here,” Strongarm said loudly. The footsteps paced the kitchen, and her voice echoed around the shelves. “Is someone here? Maybe? Possibly? Or perhaps not . . .” She walked to the door, her footsteps growing fainter.
GURGLE GRUMBLE BURGLY BURBLE GURGLEY GOO, shouted George’s stomach.
Tabitha elbowed him, but it was too late. The damage was done.
Strongarm whipped around and clomped toward them with renewed vigor. The look on her face was wild, like a panther on the prowl.
“Stay,” hissed Tabitha in George’s ear. “I can get us out of this. I’m a smooth talker.”
“No—”
But she crawled out from behind the shelf anyway. “Strongarm!” Tabitha gasped. “What are you doing here?”
“No, what are you doing here?” said Strongarm.
“I asked first.”
“But I’m older.”
“Age before beauty,” Tabitha said sweetly. Then she smiled widely and gave Strongarm a little wink.
Strongarm floundered. “Why, I was responding to the silent alarm that went off when the kitchen door opened.”
Silent alarm! George thought.
“Oh,” Tabitha said, putting on a sulking voice. “I was planning an enormous food heist so that I could impress you. But I guess my plan is foiled.”
“Humph!” Strongarm humphed. “It is foiled, indeed. Well, head on back to bed. I’ll have to have a word with Browbeat about teaching you to be more successfully stealthy. What in the world—” She spotted the carton of ice cream and spluttered.
George began to sweat.
“TWO SPOONS! OF MY OWN PERSONAL STASH OF TRIPLE-DIPPLE ULTRA-DELUXE MELTY CREAMY CREAMER RAINBOW SWIZZLE MILK MUNCH ICE CREAM! TWO SPOONS! TWO! SPOONS!”
“One for each hand,” Tabitha boasted.
“TWO DETENTIONS! ONE FOR EACH SPOON!”
There were some scuffling noises and yelps and arguing, and then their footsteps grew fainter and fainter until they were gone.
George crawled out of his hiding spot and finished the open carton of melting ice cream. He couldn’t help but smile. A thrilling adventure, a new friend, and delicious ice cream? He could definitely get used to this.
Class Rankings
For days, George felt excited whenever he thought about the kitchen raid. It had been exhilarating—the adrenaline rush, the fear of getting caught, the tension, the danger! He’d never pulled off anything like it before. For the first time since he’d arrived, George felt like thief school might be perfect for him after all.
He was so proud of himself that even poor Tabitha’s detention couldn’t dampen his good mood.
Tabitha tried to keep the details of her detention a secret, but after a few days of relentless questioning, George finally wore her down at lunch.
“Okay, fine! You win!” she said. She looke
d around to make sure that the table of third-years behind them wasn’t listening in. “In the basement, they have a room . . .” She trailed off as she slurped up a spoonful of matzo ball soup.
“And?”
“Well, it’s a pool filled with piranhas,” she said with her mouth full.
George’s jaw dropped. “They put you in a pool of piranhas? That’s—that’s inhumane!”
“Of course they didn’t drop me in a pool of piranhas—that would be ridiculous. I had to brush their teeth.”
“You brushed their teeth?”
“Apparently Strongarm takes oral hygiene very seriously.”
George laughed, and Tabitha tried not to smile.
“It’s so not funny—their teeth are sharp,” she said. “But do you want to hear something weird? Strongarm was supervising me, but then Ballyrag came in and said there was someone on the asparagus for her.”
“On the what?”
Tabitha poked a matzo ball with her spoon. “Asparagus. At least, that’s what I thought I heard. Then Strongarm and Ballyrag both left for a while. That’s when I did the bulk of the brushing. It was really rather terrifying. Still,” she said dreamily, “it was so worth it for a bite of that ice cream. When can we raid the kitchen again?”
“Soon,” George promised. “But let’s not get caught next time.”
“Deal!”
He took a sip of his milkshake. It was, sadly, not even half as good as Triple-dipple Ultra-deluxe Melty Creamy Creamer Rainbow Swizzle Milk Munch ice cream. But he wondered if anything would hold its own against that perfection. He couldn’t wait to try another bite.
But he didn’t get the chance in the week that followed. George soon found himself buried under mountain loads of homework.
Every day after class, Tabitha dashed off to study in the library for a few hours before dinner. But George found the library to be a bit stuffy, so on those rare occasions when they had to work silently, he had taken to studying in his room, or in the tiny nooks he found around the school, like a window seat in the Blackbeard Wing that overlooked a valley of trees, or an enormous couch he found in an attic room. He even made it back to the plushy chair in the greenhouse. He loved looking at all the exotic plants from around the world, though he was careful to avoid the poisonous ones.
But sometimes he couldn’t avoid the intimidating library. In the last week of August, George headed there during lunch to look at a few books for his project for Ballyrag—a binder on how to break into the Natural History Museum, complete with sections for the Introduction, Method, Purpose, Hypothesis, and Diagrams, which would have to include a full map of the Natural History Museum and another map of the getaway across New York City. The project wasn’t due for a week, but since George had never been to New York City before, it was going to take a lot of research.
He climbed the ladder to the second story and began to look around the shelves, but he couldn’t seem to find anything he was looking for. He passed Shakespeare and the Magna Carta, then he wiggled his way through the section on Pablo Picasso, and bypassed a section on the Federalist Papers. He stopped when he saw something that resembled the original subway plan for New York City from 1902. He went to take a book off the shelf, forgetting for a moment that it was chained to the wall.
George sighed a frustrated sigh. He tried to copy down notes, but it was a lot to juggle—a book, notebook, and a pen. After a dropping all three multiple times, he let out a groan. He’d probably do better climbing downstairs and working the assignment for Pickapocket’s class: an essay on fifteen different uses for a toilet plunger.
“You’ll have to steal a podium if you want to work in the library,” a second-year girl passing by suggested to him. “There’s no way you can juggle all that.”
“Where do I find a podium to steal?”
She smirked. “Keep your eyes peeled, kid. Treasures are everywhere,” she said, walking away.
Before George knew it, it was time for Practical Applications of Breaking and Entering. As he approached the classroom, he saw all of his classmates crowded around a piece of paper tacked up to a corkboard, everyone pushing and pulling and elbowing one another in an attempt to get closer to the front.
“What’s going on?” George asked.
Neal turned to him. “It’s our new class rankings—hey! Stop shoving me, Sunny!” And he rammed into her in response.
As Carrie attacked Becca, and Beth kicked Adam, and Tosh tripped Jacob, George moved closer to the list.
Big letters at the top of the paper said “NEW First Year Class Rankings,” and below was a list of numbers and names:
156
Tabitha Crawford
5,483
George Beckett
78
Sunny Knight
4
Robin Gold
725
Tiago Martinez
17,000,000 and ½
Milo Hubervick
5
Ezra Steinberg
111,222,333
Neal Fowler
32,840
Jacob Yates
999
Yuna Saito
0
Rebecca Ratcliffe
Infinity
Beth Ratcliffe
8
Sarah Kaide-Bradley
13,131
Carrie Parker
-20
Adam Hannon
15
Tosh Gupta
He wasn’t sure how to understand this list. Five thousand four hundred and eighty-three. Was that . . . good? Or bad? What did it even mean?
Out of nowhere, something smacked him on the head.
“What the—!”
He ducked as Milo’s fist came barreling his way again.
“What are you doing?!” George cried, backing up into Becca and Carrie’s brawl. His butt sent them barreling into Jacob, who was now sitting on Tosh’s head.
George turned toward Milo, who was all red-faced and sweaty.
“That’s my spot you took.”
George looked all around him and backed up a step. “There’s plenty of space to stand! No need to hit me!”
“That’s not what I—”
“STOP FIGHTING!” Strongarm bellowed, and they all froze exactly where they stood—mid-headlock, mid-punch, and mid-kick. Strongarm sniffed. “Every single time a new ranking comes out . . . You ought to be ashamed, fighting like this.” She shook her head disappointedly. “Why, you should never fight in public when you could anonymously attack later! Don’t you know a thing or two about sneak revenge by now?”
Everyone grumbled insincere apologies.
“All right,” Strongarm said, clapping her hands. “Let’s file into the classroom! Come on!”
As everyone began to march inside, George approached his teacher. “Strongarm, what do the rankings mean?”
“Silly child,” she said. “I should think this is self-explanatory. I mean, I made the list myself, and I had no trouble with it.” Strongarm rubbed her pointy chin thoughtfully. “In fact,” she continued, “if I were to make a test on reading this list, I would most certainly score a hundred percent.”
“Well, of course you would,” George said, “you made the list! And the test! But how do you expect anyone els
e to read it? Your numbers are in the wrong order.”
“They are in precisely the order I put them in,” Strongarm said, waggling a long, spindly finger. “Which means they are in the correct order.”
“I don’t think that’s how numbers work.”
“Numbers?” Strongarm chuckled. “What are you talking about, George? Thieves don’t need numbers!”
“But you need to be able to count the money you’ve stolen, right?” George said.
“Pishposh! That’s what you kidnap an accountant for!”
“But seriously, how—”
“Don’t worry . . . the numbers are worthless,” Tabitha said, peeking her head out of the classroom. “The only thing that matters is how close you are to the top of the page. The closer you are to the top of the page, the higher ranked you are . . . and the bottom of the list is, well, bottom ranked.”
George strained, trying to remember where exactly his name was on the list. He whipped around to look again.
Two.
He was number two.
George scampered into the classroom and looked around at his classmates. Robin was proud, Neal seemed disappointed, and Becca and Beth acted like they were too cool to care. A few people looked satisfied, some angry, some determined, and those at the bottom of the list looked awfully nervous.
Tabitha seemed confident, and as he looked at her, she pulled on a piece of string around her neck, revealing a key. She dangled it in front of him and grinned.
At that moment, Dean Dean Deanbugle popped into their classroom.
“Hello!” he said, little bits of his ravioli lunch flying from his mouth. “Strongarm, I wondered if I might take over your class for a little while.”
“Go right ahead,” she said with a curtsy.
“Right, but you don’t have to stay here.” The dean looked around shiftily. “You can go to the you-know-where and use the you-know-what.”
“What do I know?”
Pilfer Academy Page 7
