Life After Theft

by Aprilynne Pike

  “Oh, it’s subtle,” she retorted. “It helps that you always get me home on time.”

  “No that I want to,” I said, leaning forward for a quick kiss. “Ever. Come on,” I said, tilting my head toward the swings. “We can both swing tonight.”

  Despite her giggling protests, I pulled her down on my lap and we swung together for a while. I liked the feel of her weight on my legs, the wind blowing the curled ends of her hair against my face. After a while she got on her own swing, and we raced, seeing who could go the highest and fastest.

  “I bet I can jump farther than you,” I called over to her, her hair streaming behind her as she pumped back and forth.

  “Not a chance!” she yelled back.

  I focused on the sand in front of me as Sera counted. On three we both let go of our chains, and for just a second, I remembered the feeling of flying that I hadn’t had since I was a kid, and the thrill of the earth rushing toward me. I hit the ground and rolled while Sera landed gracefully on her feet, but I got six inches farther.

  “I win!” I said, pointing to the mark my knees had made when I fell.

  “No way,” Sera said, giggling. “You have to measure from here, where your feet landed.”

  “You’re only saying that because you didn’t think of falling forward to get farther,” I said, wrapping my arms around her and picking her up to spin her around. Once we were both too dizzy to spin anymore I took her hand and pulled her to the hill we’d walked up after the party. I sat down on the cool grass and patted the spot beside me. She smiled and joined me and I put my arm around her shoulder, drawing her close and laying my head against her hair.

  “So was it a good do-over?” I asked, more serious now. “Can we just forget that the other night happened?”

  She hesitated and I got a little nervous.

  “Is it going to happen again?” she asked seriously.

  “What? Going to a Harrison Hill party? Uh, no. Believe me.”

  “Not just Harrison Hill,” she said. “Are you going to keep partying?”

  I laughed. “You make it sound like I have a habit. Even back in Phoenix, I didn’t go to many parties.”

  “I don’t mean it like that,” she said. “I just . . . I’ve tried a lot of stuff.” She chuckled softly. “A lot of stuff. And . . . it’s all bad news, Jeff. It’ll mess you up. It messed me up,” she added softly. “And in the end, I got off easy.” She swallowed hard and for a second the secret-filled silence chilled me. “I think you’re great, but . . . I can’t get involved in that world again. Not even through you. So if getting toasted every weekend is your idea of fun, then . . .” She let the sentence hang.

  Although my brain was screaming at me to ask her what a lot of stuff was—combined with what the other cheerleader had just said about watching out for her—I knew this wasn’t the time. “The hangover sucked big time,” I confessed. “I think I’m off that kind of partying for a while. A long while.”

  “Okay,” she said, turning and leaning her head against my shoulder.

  “Now can we forget it happened?” I asked.

  “Forgotten,” she whispered. I lay back on the grass, wishing I’d thought to bring a blanket, and Sera curled her body against me and rested her forehead against my cheek. One of her hands rested on my chest for a moment, then after a bit of hesitation, she pushed her hand under my shirt, laying it against my bare stomach and awakening pretty much every nerve in my entire body.

  “My hand is cold,” she offered as an excuse.

  That was just fine with me.

  I brushed her hair away from her face. “Thanks for rescuing me.”

  “From the party?” she asked.

  “That, too,” I said, leaning close. I wanted this kiss to mean something—to show her how much she meant. I didn’t quite know how to put all that into a kiss, but I tried.

  Somehow, she seemed to understand. Beneath the vanilla of her lip gloss I swear I could feel how much she wanted me at that moment, and the thrill of it made me light-headed. I wasn’t just kissing her—she was kissing me. And she really, really meant it.

  And that made everything else worth it.

  Nineteen

  “ARE YOU CRAZY?”

  Khail’s words echoed in my ear even though I pulled the phone away.

  “Khail, just lis—”

  “We cannot break into the school!”

  “Quiet!” I hissed. Who knew who might hear him in his house?

  Sera, at the very least.

  “I told you he wouldn’t go for it,” Kimberlee said from the passenger seat.

  “You’re the one who wanted to do this with style,” I said into the phone, waving at Kimberlee to hush. Not that anyone could hear her.

  “That’s, like, a professional job, though. And illegal,” he added, as though I hadn’t thought of that.

  “And easy when you’re working with an invisible person,” I said.

  That stopped him. “Kimberlee? Seriously?”

  “Yes! She can get us all the security codes, watch for anyone coming, make sure the school is empty—you know, all that stuff.”

  “Just one problem, brain-boy. Master key. Alarm codes are all well and good, but all those doors still need a key, and from what I understand, your little friend can’t touch anything.”

  “Bailey,” I said, naming our assistant principal. “She’s got keys to everything, but she’s never in charge of actually locking up. I bet we could steal her master key and she wouldn’t notice it missing for weeks.”

  Khail was silent for a long time.

  Since he wasn’t arguing with me, I took advantage of it. “Think about it: We go in at night, like, Monday, maybe, open the front doors, you go put in the alarm code, I start unlocking classrooms, we leave a stack of stuff on every teacher’s desk,” I said, grinning even as I laid out the coup de grâce.

  “Why the hell would we leave stuff on the teachers’ desks,” Khail said flatly.

  “That’s the beauty of it. The thing about getting stuff back is that, like you said, sometimes it’s really important stuff. If even a fraction of the stuff we give back to the teachers is important, they’re going to stop caring so much about catching us and we can take a bunch of student stuff back in the process.”

  Silence again, and I forced myself to breathe slowly as Khail considered it. “Okay,” he said slowly. “I get it. This . . . this’ll work! See, this is why you’re the brains of the operation. That is genius, Jeff. Genius!”

  I decided against telling him it was Kimberlee’s idea. Her great dream to pull off a true heist.

  Only, in this case, it would be an antiheist.

  “There are a bunch of details we’ll have to get exactly right, though,” Khail said, sobering now. “Cameras.”

  “There’s only the four everyone knows about,” I said, acting as though I had known about them all before Kimberlee told me. “Front doors, cafeteria, office, computer lab.”

  “We can avoid all of them except the front doors.”

  “And the office.”

  “Why do we have to go into the office?”

  “That’s where the alarm panel is.”

  Long pause. “And you know this how?”

  I shot Kimberlee an apologetic glance and then said, “I’m working with the klepto; she knows where everything is.” Everything. When she first came to me with the idea, I had about a billion arguments, and she had an answer to every single one. A clearly well-thought-out answer. The irony of fulfilling her biggest stealing dream to undo hundreds of small thefts wasn’t lost on me.

  “So . . . what about those?”

  “That’s the risky bit. Someone’s got to get close enough to cover them, and I think it should be me.”

  I could practically hear Khail bristling. “Why you?”

  “Because your build is too distinctive. All you guys. Face it: You look like wrestlers.”

  “I guess so,” he said grudgingly.

  “And everyone wil
l have to wear gloves.”

  “Obviously,” Khail said, and I wondered if he was pacing. I stayed quiet, letting him mull it over. “So,” he said after a while, “you and Kimberlee lift the key and get the codes and then what, we all just gather at the school?”

  “In your truck. Everyone in the back, where they can’t be seen. I run up and unlock the doors, go enter the codes, and cover both cameras. After that I’ll start unlocking classrooms with the master key and the guys can come in and be assigned one, or maybe two classrooms each.”

  “That’ll take too long. You need to let me help, Jeff.”

  I pursed my lips, not wanting Khail to risk himself for me anymore.

  “How about this: You handle the key; I’ll handle the codes and the cameras. Twice as fast—we’ll be out of there in ten minutes, tops.”

  I hesitated, wondering briefly how in the world I’d managed to get myself in this predicament at all. “Fine,” I said softly. “But you have to promise me you’ll stay off camera as much as possible.”

  “You think I want to get caught?”

  Talking to Khail was near impossible when his ego made an appearance.

  “When?” Khail said when I didn’t reply.

  “How about Monday? I’ll try to lift the key this week, when the opportunity comes along.”

  “I’ll tell the guys. Can you sneak out at two a.m.?”

  “I think so,” I said. I hope so.

  “Okay,” Khail said. “We’re on.” Then he hung up without saying good-bye.

  I held the phone against my ear for a long time before relaxing my arm and letting it fall. I looked over at Kimberlee, sitting anxiously at the edge of my bed. “He said yes,” I said weakly, realizing that I was hoping Khail would refuse.

  Kimberlee just grinned.

  “We should do something different today,” Kimberlee said from her spot on my bedroom floor, where she was lounging on her stomach, watching me brush my teeth.

  “Yeah, because we haven’t done anything exciting lately,” I said dryly. Kimberlee had finally managed to figure out Mrs. Bailey’s schedule, and when she would be away from her desk. With Kimberlee acting as lookout, I’d managed to sneak into her office and find her key ring lying oh-so-innocently on top of her desk.

  Now minus one key.

  Twenty-four hours later my nerves still hadn’t recovered.

  “Well, it’s Saturday, so how about we hit the mall?”

  The mall? Last time I’d mentioned the mall to Kimberlee, she’d been less than enthusiastic. “I don’t need anything.”

  “Not to shop; to take stuff back.”

  I groaned as I turned my razor off. “You’re kidding, right?”

  She shot me a glare.

  “Seriously, Kimberlee, when are you going to figure out that I am the one doing you a favor and not the other way around?” I studied the mirror again and added quietly, but loud enough for her to hear, “Probably not until you see those bright lights everyone is always talking about.”

  Despite my best arguments, several hours later I stood in front of a corner store in the mall and studied the list in my hand. “Claire’s?”

  “Oh yeah,” Kimberlee said from behind me. “This place is so easy to steal from. They have these total airhead cashiers who are more interested in their nails than what you’re doing. They don’t even have cameras.”

  “Thus the reason you have four bags of stuff from them?” I asked out of the corner of my mouth.

  “What can I say?” she asked, already striding toward the store. “It was just too tempting.”

  I let out a very long sigh and followed her. We’d been at the mall for about two hours already and my feet hurt. I’d loaded the backseat of my car up with three boxes of merchandise and I would fill my backpack, take stuff into the store, drop it off, usually with an obliging but confused clerk, and move on. I started my returns small, mostly because I was nervous—to little kiosks that Kimberlee had only stolen maybe a set of earrings or some kind of makeup from. Little trips; a thing or two. Nothing to draw attention.

  But it was time to start taking merch back to the stores that were bigger. And had multiple bags of stuff.

  Claire’s was first.

  Sure enough, the girl behind the counter was much shorter than me and looked like she was younger than me too. A lot younger.

  “Yes?” she asked in a squeaky voice after I stood at the counter for about five minutes trying to get her attention.

  “Hi,” I said with what I hoped was an extremely nonthreatening smile. “I’ve got something for you.”

  She watched wide-eyed as I placed the first gallon-sized storage bag on the counter.

  “Do I know you?”

  I looked down at her, confused. “Oh no, these aren’t for you personally—they’re for the store.”

  “The store?”

  “Yeah. I’m returning some things.”

  “Um, do you have receipts?” she asked doubtfully.

  “Nope, these are free.” I placed the last bag on the counter and smiled. “Have a nice day.”

  “Wait!” she called. “Come back.”

  Sucker that I am, I turned. Stupid me. “Yeah?”

  She hesitated, opening the bag and sifting through the contents, lifting a few items. “I don’t even recognize most of this stuff. How old is it?”

  “Uh . . .” I glanced sideways at Kimberlee.

  She shrugged.

  “Two, three years some of it . . . I guess.”

  She held a pair of silver hoops up to her scanner. Nothing. “I don’t think I can take this back,” she said. “It doesn’t even register on my computer. How am I supposed to sell it?”

  I shrugged. “I just thought the store should have it, that’s all.”

  “Do you know how long it’s going to take me to inventory all this?”

  “Sorry, not my problem,” I said.

  “Wait, I really can’t take this stuff,” she said, coming around the counter and trying to dump it back into my arms.

  Oh, no you don’t.

  I hurried my step a little more and reached the double doors at the same time she did. “Really, you should—” She sucked in a breath as my bag hit something big and solid.

  I turned around and found myself facing a white shirt with a blue badge-shaped logo on it. Perfect. Just perfect.

  Twenty

  TURNS OUT MALL SECURITY HAS its own little interrogation room. Okay, so it’s not really an interrogation room; but it sure felt like one as I sat on a chair with two security guards looking down at me.

  “Now, son—”

  “I’m not your son,” I insisted in a surge of bravery.

  The two guards exchanged a meaningful glance. I’m sure the meaning was something along the lines of stupid smart-ass kid. “All right, Jeff, I need you to tell us again why you have a backpack full of women’s jewelry. And a car full of brand-new clothes.”

  “How do you know about my car?” I asked. Way to stay cool under pressure. Fail, fail, fail.

  “We’ve been watching you. Clutching at your backpack, looking nervous, browsing aimlessly. You may as well wear a sign that says thief. You kept walking outside to your car, and coming back. So we checked it out. There’s a lot of merchandise in there. Would you like to explain that to me?”

  This is so embarrassing. “I have a . . . friend . . . and she’s a girl,” I added stupidly. “And a couple of years ago she went through this theft stage. She’s had a change of heart and I agreed to help her give the stuff back.”

  “Uh-huh. And your friend apparently doesn’t have a name.”

  “Of course she has a name,” I snorted. “I’m just not going to give to you.” Because then I’ll look like a loon, and it won’t be juvie where you toss me before you throw away the key.

  The guards shared another long look. “Stay strong,” Kimberlee coached from the corner. “They’re not cops; they can’t do anything except escort you from the premises.”


  I took a long, slow breath.

  “Or call the real cops, I guess.”

  I could hardly look at Kimberlee, I was so mad. She was the master thief; couldn’t she have given me some kind of, I don’t know, pointers on not getting caught? Or at least not doing stuff that makes the mall security follow you around?

  Big Guard pulled out a notebook. “Okay, kid. I need her name and you’re going to give it to me.”

  “I would love to, sir, but I’m afraid I gave my word to keep her identity anonymous.”

  “Kid, you have to tell me.”

  “No, I don’t.” I crossed my arms over my chest. “I have the right to remain silent.”

  The two guards stared at me for a long time as Kimberlee laughed raucously from her corner. I shot her a glare.

  The security guards told me to stay put and left the room. I heard them muttering on the other side of the door but I didn’t get up and try to spy. Honestly, I don’t think I could have gotten up at the moment if I tried. Kimberlee may have been in this room a dozen times, but I’d never been in trouble like this. Never.

  The bigger guard came in and crossed his beefy arms over his chest. “Here’s what we’re gonna do. Joe’s calling the police and they’re going to send someone over to take you home. To make sure you get there and tell your parents what you’ve been doing.”

  Crap.

  “I don’t want to see you back at the mall for a few weeks. And I don’t ever want to see you causing trouble again, or the cops’ll do more than just take you home. You understand?”

  “Yessir,” I whispered.

  “That’s better,” he grunted. “Now we’ll just sit tight till the higher authorities get here.”

  He leaned over and switched on a television. “Y’like baseball, Jeffrey?”

  Great.

  Officer Herrera suppressed a grin as he looked through the contents of my backpack. “I’ll take care of this, gentlemen,” he said to the hovering security officers, dismissing them.

  Both guards gave me a nasty look before retreating behind their door. To the baseball game, I was sure. “Let’s go out this way,” the deputy said quietly, gesturing toward a back exit. Kimberlee walked ahead of us, sliding right through the wall before the cop got there.