The Classy Crooks Club

by Alison Cherry

  Before I go, I cut three big pieces of the leftover chocolate cake in the kitchen, wrap them in aluminum foil, and sneak them into my bag as a peace offering for Maddie. It’s only fair that my friends should get to taste Debbie’s baking even though they’re not allowed in my grandmother’s house.

  I avoid Brianna all through soccer practice, and I’m pretty sure Maddie notices, because things between us don’t feel awkward at all. I wonder if maybe I imagined the weirdness between us the other day. As we run our laps, she and Amy and I talk about nothing—whether Skittles or M&M’S are better, how Maddie’s sister wants to audition for a reality show, whether or not my parents have killed any anacondas in the Amazon. When Amy wants to know how to kill an anaconda, Maddie and I tag-team, explaining what my dad taught us, talking over each other and making wild hand gestures like we always used to do. Is it possible things have gone back to normal without me even having to try?

  I’m changing out of my cleats at the end of practice, feeling pretty relaxed about the evening ahead, when Brianna jogs over. She doesn’t say hi to Amy or Maddie; it’s like she doesn’t even see them. “Here,” she says as she holds out a thick silver envelope to me.

  On the front, my name is written in calligraphy—not AJ, but full-blown Annemarie. The paper is thick and expensive, and I feel bad for touching it with my sweaty hand. “What is this?” I ask.

  “It’s for my birthday party next week,” Brianna says. I can feel Maddie and Amy exchanging a look behind my back, but I say, “Okay, cool,” because what else am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can refuse to take the invitation.

  “Let me know if you can come as soon as possible, okay? We need to know how many cosmetologists to hire and how many lobsters to order.” Brianna spins around and stalks off, and Maddie shoots her a look of such pure hatred that I’m surprised Brianna’s head doesn’t explode, showering brains and diamond earrings and clumps of perfect hair everywhere.

  “That was really rude of her,” I say; maybe the damage won’t be so bad if I get that out in the open right away. “I’m sorry she did that in front of you guys.”

  Maddie snorts. “As if I’d actually want to go to her party. Lobsters are disgusting; they’re like giant underwater bugs. And what the heck is a cosmetologist? Is that like a Russian astronaut?”

  “I think that’s a cosmonaut,” Amy says. I try to stuff the silver envelope into my bag, where we can all forget about it, but she snatches it right out of my hand. “Let me see that.”

  I want to tell her to give it back, but that’ll make it sound like I actually want it, so I sit quietly while she rips it open. “Oh my God,” she says, holding it out so Maddie can see it too. “Can you even believe this? ‘Please join Brianna Westlake for a celebratory makeover and lobster boil on the occasion of her thirteenth birthday.’ ” She reads it in a snooty British accent that doesn’t sound anything like Brianna, but it makes Maddie laugh.

  “I mean, I’m not going to go,” I say. I take the envelope back and stuff it out of sight.

  Maddie shrugs. “You should go if you want to.” It almost sounds like a dare.

  “I don’t want to. Why would I want to?” I throw my cleats on top of the envelope to show her how much I don’t care about it, and they make a dent in one of the pieces of cake. I’ll be sure to take that one for myself.

  “Okaaay,” Maddie says. “All I’m saying is that if you—”

  “Let’s just go home, okay?” It comes out a little sharper than I intended, and Maddie gives me a look like, What is your problem? Why am I screwing everything up?

  “Fine,” she says. “Let’s go.”

  We head toward Maddie’s house, and I start chattering on about nothing again on the way, trying to get them back into a silly, lighthearted mood, but it doesn’t seem to be working. Even when I tell them about Edna’s weird clothes and her crazy comments about auras, only Amy giggles, and Maddie barely cracks a smile. This sleepover was such a bad idea. How am I going to make it through an entire evening of this?

  Mrs. Kolhein meets us at the door, and she, for one, looks genuinely happy to see me. She pulls me in for a hug even though I’m all sweaty from practice. “AJ! We’ve missed you! Are your parents back?”

  “No, not for another couple weeks,” I say.

  “Everything going okay over at your grandma’s?”

  I shrug. “I guess. She’s really strict. She doesn’t let me go anywhere except for soccer. That’s why I haven’t been over.”

  “Well, it’s good to have you here now,” Maddie’s mom says. “Hi, Amy. You left your hoodie over here on Tuesday—I put it in Maddie’s room for you.”

  “Thanks, Mrs. K,” Amy says. I didn’t even know she was over here on Tuesday. It kind of seems like she’s over here all the time now.

  Amy suggests we play Mega Ninja Explosion, and I breathe a sigh of relief—blowing up bad guys will probably cheer Maddie up, and maybe she’ll forget about Brianna’s party. We lug our stuff up to her room, and Amy pulls a package of Oreos out of her bag. “Look what I brought,” she says, dangling them in front of Maddie’s face.

  “Ooh, Double Stuf.” Maddie grabs them and rips them open.

  “Oh, hey, I just remembered,” I say. “I brought this superfancy chocolate cake my grandmother’s cook made the other night. Do you guys want some? I could run downstairs and grab forks. It’s seriously so, so good.” I dig around in my bag until I find one of the pieces of cake and hold the aluminum foil package under Maddie’s nose. “Here, smell.”

  She sniffs. “Mm,” she says, but she doesn’t sound very enthusiastic. “Maybe later. I think we’re good with the Oreos for now.” When Amy offers me the package of cookies, I take one, but it doesn’t really taste like anything.

  We spend the rest of the afternoon staring at our little ninja avatars on the screen, blowing up walls and bad guys and collecting lucky swords and jewels. When Maddie’s dad gets home, he tells us he’s ordering pizza from Zappetto’s, and I perk up a little—the food at Grandma Jo’s has been amazing, but there’s something about a super cheesy slice with extra pepperoni that no fancy rich-people food can ever touch. There must not be an expensive way to make grease. Mr. Kolhein delivers the pizza to us upstairs when it arrives. Usually, Maddie and I are thrilled when her parents don’t make us eat with the rest of the family, since we always have an endless list of things to discuss privately. But tonight it seems like everything we have to say to each other has been tied up in a big, tangled, confusing knot. I’m afraid to pull on any individual thread, because I can’t tell what it’s attached to or what it might unravel, so I mostly stay quiet.

  When we finish dinner, nobody mentions the cake, so I don’t bring it up again. Amy digs through her backpack, pulls out a bunch of DVDs—The Wild Winds of Love, The Rose’s Kiss, and Sweetness and Sorrow—and holds them up with a hopeful smile. The covers are overwhelmingly pink, and all feature swooning ladies and brooding men.

  I make some exaggerated gagging sounds. “No way. Let’s borrow one of Jordan’s alien movies. I really want to see Tentacle.”

  Amy scrunches up her nose. “Too much screaming, not enough kissing.” She turns to Maddie. “What do you think?”

  I expect Maddie to agree with me, but instead she says, “We can watch one of yours, if you want.”

  What is up with her tonight? “But you hate these,” I say. “We both do.”

  “They’re not that bad,” Maddie says. “Maybe you’re not the only one who wants to try new things.” She glances over at my bag, where the top of the stupid silver envelope is poking out.

  I take a deep breath. “Hey, if this is about—”

  “It’s not about anything—we’re just picking a movie.” Maddie randomly grabs a DVD out of Amy’s hand. “Come on, let’s go downstairs.”

  I tell myself she probably doesn’t want to talk about our private stuff in front of other people. Maybe later, after Amy falls asleep, we can have a real conversation, and I can r
eassure her that I don’t even like Brianna and that she’ll always be my best friend, no matter what.

  But right now, as I look at her clutching that stupid Sweetness and Sorrow DVD box, I’m afraid the feeling isn’t mutual.

  • • •

  The movie is exactly as horrible as I think it’s going to be. It’s about a woman who’s in love with the ghost of this guy from the Renaissance, and the only place they can be together is this enchanted gondola, but then the gondola sinks, and they’re separated forever. Ordinarily, Maddie and I would laugh our heads off and talk over the movie with our own silly dialogue, and I can see her rolling her eyes on the other side of the couch. But when I make a snarky comment out loud, Amy shushes me, and Maddie doesn’t take my side, so I shut up.

  When the movie ends, Amy is all teary, which is totally ridiculous. I mean, the word “sorrow” is in the title; she can’t have expected it to end well. “So romantic,” she says, wiping her eyes.

  “I guess, if you like wispy dudes in boats,” I say, and the corner of Maddie’s mouth twitches up a little. She pulls it back down before Amy can see, but it still feels like a reward.

  “Want to watch another one?” Amy asks.

  “I think I might go to bed,” I say, even though it’s only eleven. “I’m really tired.” I look at Maddie, sending her a telepathic message that she should leave Amy down here to swoon over The Wild Winds of Love and come upstairs with me so we can have a real talk.

  But she either doesn’t get the message or chooses to ignore it. “I’m up for another one,” she says. “Should I get more popcorn?”

  “Sure,” Amy says. “See you up there later,  AJ.”

  “Okay. Good night,” I say. I hope they don’t notice how strained my voice sounds.

  “ ’Night,” Maddie calls as she heads into the kitchen.

  I change into my pajamas and get into the second twin bed in Maddie’s room, the one I’ve slept in so many times I think of it as mine. The sounds of the Kolheins’ house wrap around me when I close my eyes—Jordan and Lindsay playing competing music in their rooms, Maddie’s parents watching some late-night talk show down the hall, the whir of the air conditioner as it flips on and off. This house has always felt like a second home to me, but tonight all the familiar sounds make me feel homesick. If Maddie were up here too, breathing quietly in the other bed, I’m sure I’d be able to fall asleep, but knowing she’s downstairs with Amy keeps me wide awake. I find myself straining for the sounds of their voices and laughter, and a couple times I hear it, but I can’t tell if they’re talking about important stuff or just messing around.

  Finally, a little after midnight, I can’t stand it any longer. I’ve gotten really good at sneaking around now, and I tiptoe down the hall and onto the first landing without making a sound. I crouch there out of sight, my arms tight around my knees. At first I hear only the TV—they really are watching another one of Amy’s stupid romances—but then Maddie says, “She was never like this before, you know?”

  My heart starts galloping in my chest. I try to tell myself they’re talking about something in the movie, but I know it’s not true. They’re talking about me.

  “What do you mean?” Amy says.

  “Like, she never cared about having fancy stuff or talking to the popular girls. Brianna’s always so mean to everyone, and after she did that thing with the dresses, I thought it would be funny if AJ bragged about all the nice stuff her grandmother had and rubbed it in her face. But now it kind of seems like AJ’s taking it seriously, you know? It’s like she’s turning into one of them or something.”

  “She still seems like herself to me,” Amy says, and I want to hug her.

  “But did you see the way she and the Bananas were acting at soccer the other day? All that giggling and whispering about gowns and ice sculptures and stuff? Even that thing with the cake earlier tonight, when AJ was all like, ‘Look how much better my dessert is than your low-class dessert.’ Sometimes I can’t even tell whether she wants to be friends with me anymore.”

  “I wonder where that cake went,” Amy says. “I kind of want it now.”

  “Amy, that is so not the point!”

  “I know. Jeez. It didn’t seem that way to me, though. I think she was actually just trying to give us cake.”

  I hear Maddie sigh. “Do you think she’ll go to Brianna’s party?”

  “She didn’t seem like she wanted to,” Amy says. “She probably didn’t know how to react when Brianna gave her the invitation. I really don’t think it’s a big deal.”

  “Maybe you’re right.”

  “The whole situation was super awkward, but I bet everything will go back to normal when her parents come back and she goes home. It’s only a few more weeks, right?”

  “I guess,” Maddie says. “Maybe I’m being paranoid. Can I have the popcorn?”

  Part of me wants to run down the stairs, throw my arms around my best friend, and tell her I don’t care about expensive stuff at all and I still think the Bananas are idiots and of course I want to be friends with her. But I know she’d be super embarrassed and angry that I’ve been eavesdropping, and if this is really what she thinks of me now, she wouldn’t want me to comfort her anyway. She’d probably rather talk to Amy.

  So instead I creep back upstairs and curl up in a tight ball in the guest bed, cursing that stupid silver invitation in my bag. There’s no way I’m going to that party.

  I’m going to make everything right again if it kills me.

  13

  I spend most of Friday shut up in my room, practicing my lock picking and stewing over the Maddie situation. Every half hour or so, I pull up her name in my phone and consider pressing the talk button, but I have no idea what I’d say to her. I wasn’t supposed to have overheard her conversation with Amy, so it’s not like I can tell her the stuff she said is wrong. Maybe I could get back on her good side if I convinced Grandma Jo to send us somewhere really cool with Stanley—Six Flags or a water park or a show or something. But that might make me seem even more like Brianna, flashing all my cool stuff around to make people like me. I guess I’ll have to hope that staying far away from the idiotic lobster boil will be enough to show my best friend I haven’t changed.

  Cookie, Edna, and Betty show up late in the evening for our bear heist, and hearing their excited voices downstairs perks me up and reminds me I have a job to do. I immediately start to feel better when I put on my ninja clothes. These heists are so wonderfully clear-cut, with no gray areas or confusing feelings to deal with. You go in, you liberate your target, and if you get out without being caught, you win. It’s a lot like soccer that way; either you score a goal or you don’t, and either way, you know exactly where you stand.

  I come down the stairs and join the grannies in the front hallway. Edna’s wearing her skintight black suit from last time, and tonight, Cookie and Betty are dressed in black too—the bear is so large that this heist will require all of us. Betty has even wrapped her walker in strips of black fabric so it’ll be invisible in the dark, though the tennis balls still glow bright green on the bottom. Grandma Jo will stay in the van because of her foot, but she’s wearing black anyway because she’s Grandma Jo.

  “There’s our star,” Betty says, and she reaches out to hug me. “How are you feeling, dear?”

  “I’m a little nervous,” I admit.

  Betty pats my hand. “You’re going to show that lock who’s boss.”

  “Darn tootin’,” Cookie says, and Edna raises both hands and does her wiggly fingered applause thing at me. Just having them all around me, knowing how much they believe in me, calms me down a lot. I squeeze Betty’s hand and smile. When Grandma Jo asks if I’m ready to go, I say yes, and I mean it.

  When we pull up in front of Bill’s place in Grandma Jo’s black van, that delicious nervous-excited feeling starts bubbling up in my center and fizzing outward into my arms and legs. I’m surprised by how tiny the house is; it’s low and squat and made of dark bric
k, and Bill hasn’t made much of an effort to make it look like a home. One of the porch lights is burned out, and the other illuminates a bunch of dead potted plants, a broken vacuum cleaner, and a sagging wicker chair with one arm. Cookie takes it all in with a snort. “I bought those drapes in 1990,” she scoffs. “I can’t believe he hasn’t replaced them. He probably hasn’t even cleaned them.”

  “Nineteen ninety,” Betty muses. “Is that when we lifted the Fabergé egg, or was that the year with the lion cub?”

  “I’m not surprised you don’t remember,” Cookie snorts. “You had other things going on in 1990, didn’t you, Betty?”

  “Wasn’t that 1991?” Edna says. “I remember the trial wasn’t front-page news because the USSR dissolved.”

  “What trial?” I ask.

  “Oh, just a trial we were all following closely,” she says.

  “Betty was following closest of all,” Cookie says.

  “Cookie, don’t.” Even in the dark, I can tell Betty looks a little scared. I don’t know why it’s such a big deal that she was interested in a trial, though.

  “My mom really likes true crime stuff, too,” I say to make her feel better. “There was this one time—”

  “Focus,” Grandma Jo snaps. “Is everyone ready?”

  “Ready,” the ladies say, stacking their hands up in the middle of the van, and I add my hand to the pile. She’s right, I really do need to focus. This time, I remember to whisper “Heist!” instead of shouting.

  “Operation Teddybear, commence!” Grandma Jo announces.

  The four of us slip out of the van, and Edna and I make our way around to the back of the house while Betty and Cookie guard the front. We cross a small yard that’s more dirt than grass, pass a ramshackle toolshed, and tiptoe up to the back door. There’s one of those motion-sensor floodlights over the patio to our left, and we’re careful to stay out of range.