The big couch is long enough for way more than three people, and Anne and Sierra were sitting so close together that it left extra space, technically. But the way they huddled together made it feel like there wasn’t any room for me at all.
“Now,” Dad added.
So I sat, as far away from everybody else as I could. Right up against the arm of the sofa.
“Anne came to talk to me today, Lauren,” Mom said. Her eyes were red, and she held a balled-up, makeup-stained tissue in the hand that wasn’t gripping Dad’s.
At the other end of the couch from me, Anne cleared her throat. “I told your mom about Mrs. Lee’s bracelet, Lauren, and a very large sum of money that was hidden in Amy’s closet, and several other stolen items.”
The TV was off, but the cable box was still on, and green numbers glowed on the display. I stared at those numbers while I tried to understand what Anne was saying. None of it made any sense, because Sierra had covered for me. I hadn’t even asked her to, but she had. And nobody knew about anything other than the bracelet. Sierra had specifically told me Anne hadn’t found the money.
“I had to tell,” Sierra squeaked then. “Everything. I’m so sorry.”
And it’s not like my skull suddenly weighed more than usual, but it took extra effort to pull my eyes off those numbers on the cable box and turn my head toward Sierra. I could only see a wall of mostly straight blond hair, slightly wavy at the edges. She needed a haircut to even out her ends. That’s the thought that went through my head.
“I know you want to fix things that are messed up,” Sierra said. “I know you want to make things fair. But it’s like you can’t stop now. It’s scaring me.”
I forgot about split ends and haircuts, and that hole that sometimes sat at the bottom of my stomach opened up so wide, my lungs couldn’t function at all. Scaring her? What happened to partners in justice? We were supposed to be a team!
And, what, it just didn’t matter that I’d spent all fall making sure she wasn’t stuck by herself at lunch or on the bus or in advisory? Trying to get her to smile a real smile instead of that fake one? Didn’t that mean she should talk to me, not Anne, if something was wrong? Didn’t that mean she owed me anything?
She looked over at me for just a second, and her brown eyes were so sad that for that one moment, I wanted to stay her friend more than I wanted to be mad at her. But then she turned away. Away from me, back toward Anne.
“Sierra?” Anne prompted, and Sierra took the white envelope full of money out of her sweatshirt pocket and set it down on the coffee table.
The stack was thick now, not thin like the pile of bills Mom had found soon after I got started. It was obvious that there was a lot of money there. Enough money to make some kind of difference.
“That’s everything,” Sierra said. “Seven hundred and thirty-three dollars.”
Anne started to stand. “Sierra and I should go. We’ll leave you to talk as a family.”
On the other couch, Mom sniffled, and Dad leaned his head back and stared at the ceiling.
A family. What a joke. What kind of family are we without Ryan?
Sierra bolted out of the living room, but Anne stopped and gripped both my hands. I thought she’d be mad at me for making Sierra take the blame for the bracelet, even though I hadn’t. Or for being a bad influence or a bad friend. I flinched as she leaned in close to whisper.
But she just said, “Talk to them, Lauren. Tell them how you’re feeling. Let them help.” Then she gave my hands a squeeze and followed Sierra out the front door.
Mom, Dad, and I were all quiet for a minute after the door thudded closed. Mom took another tissue out of the box on the coffee table and held it to her face, dabbing the edges of her eyes so her eye makeup wouldn’t smudge any more than it had already.
“I should have realized something was wrong when I found those things in your drawer,” she said, looking straight ahead, out the window into the backyard.
Brown, leafless trees, browning grass peeking out from under the graying leftover snow. That’s all there was to see out there.
“Or before then, even,” Mom went on. “I just . . . you stole, Lauren. That’s a crime.”
Dad stood up so fast that the toe of one of his shiny work shoes slammed into the leg of the coffee table. His heavy footsteps echoed as he stormed into the study. He came back with a legal pad and a black pen, which he shoved at me.
“You’re going to write down every single thing you took and sold and where every single thing came from,” he said. “And I will walk this list next door and ask Sierra if anything is missing, so you’d better not leave anything off.”
“But . . . but people already have the stuff I sold,” I pointed out. “It’s too late to—”
“It is certainly not too late for you to make some serious restitution!” he shouted.
I wasn’t sure what restitution meant. Usually I ask when he uses a legal term I don’t know. Usually he loves to explain. Tells me it’s a sign of intellectual promise, being curious about things I don’t know.
But right then, I couldn’t ask him anything because of the terrible way he was looking at me. With disgust. Like I was worse than those criminals he prosecutes because I was his responsibility. Tears leaked out the corners of my eyes.
“Right now, Lauren,” he said, a little softer but just as definite. “Let’s go.”
Mom pushed the tissue box toward me, but I wiped my eyes on the sleeves of my sweater and started the list.
1) Lucky jeans (mine, from Mom)
2) Brian Dawkins jersey (mine, from Dad)
3) Silver cuff bracelet (Audrey’s)
4) Cuff links (Walkers’ yard sale)
How was it even possible, how right it had felt to take each one of those items on the list and how wrong it felt to write down each of those words with Dad looking over my shoulder and Mom crying on the little couch?
“I know that’s not all, Lauren,” Dad said.
I left off Mom’s ring and the Fitbit, since he already knew about those. But I kept on writing the terrible words, showing him the terrible things I’ve done. The terrible person I am.
5) Shampoos (Aveda at the mall)
6) Ring and hair clips (Anthropologie)
Not a person with a great sense of social responsibility, like Mr. Ellis had said at the first Worship and Ministry meeting. Not a helpful sister, like Jenna had called me. Definitely not the best person Jake knows.
7) Cashmere sweater (Aunt Jill’s that she gave me at Thanksgiving)
8) Dress from Aunt Jill’s 40th birthday party (mine, too small)
9) Boys’ shoes (Ryan’s, too small now and never worn because they pinched)
10) Perfume (Mariah’s)
11) Swirly silver bracelet (Mrs. Lee’s)
When I was finally done, Dad sent me up to my room. Anne had said to talk to Mom and Dad, but they didn’t give me a chance.
Mom came up later, to bring me a bowl of pasta and a glass of seltzer water. She kissed the top of my head and said, “We’ll get through this,” but then, right away, she turned to go.
The next day was the second-to-last day before winter break, but just before my alarm went off, Dad came in to announce I wasn’t going to school and he wasn’t going to work. He made me write a note to every single person or store I’d taken something from and checked each one.
He took the money I’d made from selling the jeans, the jersey, Aunt Jill’s sweater, my old dress, and Ryan’s old shoes. Then he made me stuff each apology envelope with the money I’d made selling whatever I was apologizing for taking. Except for the note for Audrey’s mom, since I’d had to refund the money for the bracelet and she had it back. And I had to add some of my babysitting money to the Aveda and Anthropologie envelopes, since I didn’t sell that stuff for as much as it cost.
As soon as the mall opened, Dad drove me there and dragged me into the Aveda store.
"My daughter has something to say,” he told the tall
, pale-skinned woman behind the counter.
Her lips were painted dark red, and I focused all my attention on how precisely she’d filled them in with color. Those exact, curving lines where the darkness of her lips met the paleness of her skin, like in a coloring book but without any black borders to stay inside.
“I took some shampoo,” I said. “From your store. I’m very sorry.”
But it was hard to feel sorry standing in this store, where one giant wall was lined with hundreds and hundreds of bottles of shampoo and conditioner and hairspray and gel—more than anybody would ever buy. I held out the envelope labeled AVEDA, but she didn’t reach out to take it from me.
She pressed her dark red lips together and rubbed them around, but the color didn’t smear.
“There’s no shampoo inside that envelope, is there? Looks a little flat.” She said it like she was making fun of me. Like she thought this whole thing was a joke.
“Um, no,” I told her. “I sold it.”
I studied the rows and rows of skin-care products on display behind the lady. Moisturizers. Toners. Eye cream. So many different kinds of lotion that people think they need.
Better to focus on all those lotions than on Dad sighing next to me as his phone buzzed with work e-mails, or on this Aveda salesperson who thought I was a joke.
“This is money to pay for it, though. And, um, there’s a note, too. To say sorry.”
“Look, kids steal stuff from time to time.” She looked me up and down before she continued. “For the rush of taking something, mostly. Sometimes we catch them, and if we don’t, that’s that, you know?”
“It wasn’t for the rush!” I protested. There was that easy-to-breathe adrenaline jolt after I took something, yeah, but that wasn’t really why I did it.
Dad tore the envelope out of my hand. “Take it,” he ordered the woman.
Then he pulled me out of the store and led me straight past the food court, where we always, always stop for smoothies—mango, strawberry, banana for me and berry blast for him—and back to the car. I’d barely eaten breakfast, so my stomach rumbled loudly, but Dad ignored it.
As he pulled out of the parking lot, he turned on sports radio. Two guys were complaining about the moves the Eagles’ coach had made in the last game and freaking out about how they’re not going to win on Sunday if they can’t run the ball better, and how the defense has been underachieving.
I thought of the Dawkins jersey I’d sold and the look on Dad’s face when he saw it on my list. The rumbling in my stomach switched over to something sharper.
“Nega-delphia, right?” I said, pointing toward the radio speakers.
That’s what Dad usually says when we’re listening to sports radio and the people get extra negative, saying the Eagles’ season is over after one little thing goes wrong. Philadelphia fans are the most informed fans in sports but also the least optimistic, he used to tell me.
But this time, he didn’t say anything. He just switched the station to music.
“Restitution” went a little bit better at Anthropologie. Dad didn’t give any money to the homeless guy sitting a block away from the store, but I slipped the guy a quarter from my pocket. And the older lady at the front counter smiled sympathetically when I explained why we were there. She thanked me for my “courage,” even though being dragged by Dad didn’t feel very courageous, and then she said she tells the managers it isn’t a good idea to put out sale bins on the counter.
“Too much temptation,” she said.
But that wasn’t right, either. It wasn’t temptation that made me take things.
Dad drove me all the way back home even though we were right near his office. Then he left me with Mom and took the train back downtown to work.
“The Walkers’ house, then the Freedman-Taylors’ house, and then the Lees’,” I heard him instruct Mom before he left. “And I want her to apologize face-to-face, not just leave the envelopes.”
I ate leftover pasta for lunch and tried to hurry Mom up to go to Emma’s and Mariah’s and Audrey’s houses before they’d be home from school, even though technically I was supposed to apologize face-to-face to Audrey and not just her mom. But Aunt Jill called, and then somebody from Ry’s school called about the plan for picking him up for winter break, and by the time we finally left, it was way too close to the end of the school day.
Neither of us said anything for most of the walk to Emma’s house, but when we got to her street, Mom spoke up. “Anne said you wanted to give the money to Jenna.”
I looked down at the uneven slabs of the stone sidewalk and remembered the first time Sierra had pointed out all the stone in Mt. Airy. Stone Central, she’d called it.
She’d be getting out of Stone Central pretty soon now. I wondered if she’d be back at school after winter break or if she’d just go off with her mom for Christmas and never come back. I wondered if she’d even say goodbye.
“I just thought she could make a difference with it. For kids like that girl Hailey.”
I thought I’d have to remind Mom who Hailey was, but she nodded. “You’ve always had so much compassion, Lauren. It makes me sad that you stole. It scares me, really.”
There it was again. Me being so terrible that I scared somebody.
“But I know you,” Mom finished as we walked up to Emma’s house. “You’re going to find a way to do something great with all that compassion.” She paused before she knocked on the door. “Something legal.”
Emma’s little brother answered the door and ran to get her mom. I peeked inside, and I didn’t see Emma anywhere, at least.
“Kate! Lauren! What a surprise,” Mrs. Walker said. “Would you like to come in?”
“You’re sweet to offer when we just show up unannounced,” Mom said, “but this will only take a minute.”
So Mom wanted to get out of there just as fast as I did.
“Lauren?” she prompted, and I held out the envelope with Mrs. Walker’s name printed on the front.
“I’m really sorry,” I began. At least I had the spiel down by now.
Mrs. Walker was more confused than anything else when I explained what I’d done and gave her the money. She said she hadn’t noticed the cuff links were missing—she’d just assumed her husband had sold them. But apparently she was planning to donate what they made from the yard sale to a homelessness charity, anyway, and she said she’d add the money to what they already had.
“Looks like you got a lot more for the cuff links than we would have asked,” she joked when she looked inside the envelope. “I should hire you next time we have things to get rid of.”
Mom let out a strangled laugh and said we had to be going, and I was glad Dad wasn’t there. He wouldn’t have found that funny at all. Mariah’s house is only a couple of blocks away from Emma’s, so we walked up Mariah’s front path a few minutes later. I was kind of hoping her dad Jonathan would answer, but Mr. Freedman was the one who came to the door. I was pretty sure I could hear Mariah and her sister inside, but at least they stayed wherever they were.
Mr. Freedman was way angrier than Mrs. Walker. “I welcomed you into our home, taught you to create a beautiful meal, and fed you delicious food, and you opened up our bathroom cabinets to look through our things and then took something from us?” he said once I apologized.
There was nothing I could say to that except “yes” and “I’m sorry” again. But Mr. Freedman was wearing one of his aprons and busy getting dinner started, so I didn’t have to stand there feeling awful for very long before he thanked my mom for bringing me and said he needed to check on his soup now, and goodbye.
As angry as he’d been, I couldn’t feel too relieved as we walked back down the Freedman-Taylors’ front steps and started off toward Audrey’s.
“This last stop will probably be the hardest, huh?” Mom said.
Mom, Ry, and I used to walk this route together back when I was too young to be allowed to walk by myself. Ryan liked to come because Mom usually got
him a treat from Starbucks or the bakery on the Ave., and he would notice every car we passed on the whole walk over. Sometimes he’d count how many brand-new cars we saw and how many we saw that were ten years old or older. Then he’d list all the safety features the new ones had but the old ones didn’t, and Mom would joke that that was why she and Dad leased cars: She’d live in fear of all the safety features we didn’t have if we didn’t upgrade to a new model every few years.
“The dealership is grateful for your expertise, Ry,” she’d tell him, and he’d nod, even though she was mostly being silly.
Last year, Mom and Dad had started letting me walk to Audrey’s by myself, but I always noticed all the cars anyway, even without Ryan there to point them out. I didn’t know enough to tell how old every car was, but sometimes I’d count red cars or black ones or silver. When Aunt Jill and Melody stayed with me while Mom and Dad took Ryan to North Carolina over Labor Day weekend, I’d walked to Audrey’s, sure that if anybody could make me feel better, it was her. That day, I’d cried the whole way and counted blurry blue cars as I passed them.
But then once I got to her house, she just asked if Ryan liked the going-away gift she and her parents had gotten him—a soft fleece blanket with his initials sewed into the fabric—and then she didn’t listen when I said I didn’t think he should have gone.
And then that was it. She didn’t ask why I didn’t want him to go or how I was feeling or what it had been like, saying goodbye.
She lined up all her new fall clothes on her bed and asked me to help her pick her first-week-of-school outfits. And when I didn’t want to do it, she said I could borrow her new polka-dot shirt for the first day, since Mom hadn’t had time to take me back-to-school shopping yet. She seriously thought that would make everything OK.
And now, I hadn’t walked this way since the day we were supposed to make Halloween costumes but then Audrey freaked out and Sierra and I left. That day, red and orange leaves had crunched under my feet as I walked down these sidewalks. Now, a thin crust of old snow covered the grass that peeked through the stone slabs.
Every Shiny Thing Page 18