Smash & Grab

by Amy Christine Parker

  I can’t tell if I’m about to laugh or cry.

  We explode out of the garage and into sunlight so bright it’s blinding. We’re in an alley behind the garage. Miraculously, it’s empty, but it won’t be for long. We need to get as far from the bank as we can, as quickly as we can, without attracting attention.

  “We have to split up. A group of eight people running down the street attracts too much attention,” I say, panting because I can’t seem to catch my breath. My head is pounding after the beating I took in the chute, and my whole body is racked with pain. Lexi seems okay. She’s limping, and there’s a long friction burn on her right arm, but that’s it. We share a look. I don’t think she expected me to leave the cash. There’s a lot to say, but I’m not going to get the chance to say it. This is goodbye. I’m losing everything I want in the space of a minute.

  “We come out the end of this alley and we disperse in twos,” Quinn says, taking charge because I’ve let myself get distracted by Lexi and the money.

  “It’s been real, gentlemen,” Leo says. “Oliver.”

  “Good luck to all of us,” Oliver says, and then he and Leo take off down the alley and disappear.

  Carlos and Eddie go next. Then it’s just Quinn and Lexi, Benny and me.

  “Our turn,” Lexi says. “Sorry about the money. Good luck, Christian.” She looks ready to say more, but Quinn throws her arm over his shoulders, and with his help, she runs.

  “It was all for nothing,” Benny says, staring at the pavement like he’s still seeing the duffel bags back in the garage.

  Except it wasn’t. Soldado, Twitch, and Psycho are still under the bank, and now that the money will all be recovered, there’s nothing linking us to this job. There is the Eme to worry about (maybe—unless Soldado exaggerated their involvement) and the rest of Soldado’s boys, but given the heat that’s surrounding this whole thing, chances are good no one will come after us. At least not right away.

  “Let’s go,” I say.

  Benny and I take off, running from the bank as fast as we can. And the funny thing is, as sad as I am about saying goodbye to Lexi, I’m excited, too, because for the first time in a long time, I have no idea what comes next.

  Most of the time when I leave a guy, I get a sense of release, but not this time. Running away from Christian makes me feel more tied up into knots instead of less. I think about the last moments we were alone together, the way his lips felt, the way I felt kissing him. It was like jumping off the bank building times a hundred, simultaneously peaceful and violently exciting. It’s that feeling of knowing for certain that something is so right it actually takes your breath away.

  Quinn and I run only as long as we are safely hidden in the narrow alley, and then we force ourselves to walk, to amble like we don’t have a care in the world. And we don’t. We have the thumb drive, and I know, I know that the evidence we need has to be on it. Harrison’s private offshore accounts—given how much money was lost during the mortgage crisis and knowing that less than a quarter of it was traced back to my dad—he has to have them. All that’s left to do now is transfer the funds, which is a whole lot easier and less conspicuous than toting giant black bags from a vault.

  I’d gloat except I don’t feel like it. Christian left the cash. He ended up with nothing. And he didn’t try to take back the thumb drive. I got it all wrong. I’m the one who couldn’t be trusted. Christian had no choice but to leave the bags and walk away. I’m the one with all the choices, and I’m starting to realize that all I want to do now is make the right ones.

  After the excitement of the heist, watching Quinn transfer some of Harrison’s funds into the account he created was anticlimactic. A few taps of the computer keys, and according to cyberspace and the Central Bank of the Bahamas, we are fifty million dollars richer—sort of. We’ve decided most of it should go to the victims of the mortgage scam. I want to right what few wrongs I can.

  Getting Harrison into trouble, however, was much, much more satisfying. The thumb drive contained not only all his offshore account information but a trail of complicated bank records that linked the mortgage program to a well-known vacation-club operator. Turns out lots of the mortgages my dad and Harrison were approving were for time-shares in that vacation club. Harrison was getting a kickback from the club’s owner, as well as bonuses and profit off the mortgages themselves. We didn’t even wait twenty-four hours before we put the thumb drive into an envelope and anonymously mailed it to the FBI. It wasn’t twenty-four hours more before he was being dragged out of his house the way my dad had been dragged out of mine. And because the records make it clear Harrison was the one who had orchestrated the fraud, my dad got offered a plea deal to testify against him. Dad will still get jail time, but nowhere near as much. Harrison, however, is another story.

  As for the bank, the police found the tunnel and managed to dig out Soldado, Twitch, and Psycho before they suffocated. They went straight to jail, which probably wouldn’t have been that big a deal for Soldado—after all, he’d already sworn allegiance to the Mexican Mafia, so going to prison would almost be like getting a transfer to headquarters—except apparently they found out he’d been fudging the numbers on all the jobs Christian and his crew did for him so he didn’t have to pay all the gang taxes his “brothers” required. He was dead in his holding cell before the sun came up the next day. Then a week later, Twitch and Psycho, too. It wasn’t on most of the news programs, but there was this tiny piece in the Los Angeles Times, most of it about the perils of gang life and the Eme’s reach. I wonder all the time whether Christian feels bad that Soldado and the others didn’t make it, considering how much trouble we went to in order to keep them alive in the tunnel, or whether he’s just too relieved to care that much. With all three of them gone and all the stolen money accounted for, it looks as if Christian and his boys will be 100 percent free—as long as all of them remain legit.

  So what this means is that the LL National job doesn’t appear to be a job at all. There was no money missing, no safe-deposit box items gone except for most of what was in Harrison’s lover’s deposit box, and it isn’t like either of them will ever speak up about it. The FBI might figure it out, but by the time they do, the account we transferred it to in Angela’s name will be closed and the real Angela won’t know anything about it. As for Detective Martin, he watched Christian and his crew for the better part of the summer. After investigating Soldado, he had a hunch they were the Romero team. But two days ago there was a bank robbery on the outskirts of LA. The robbers hit as the tellers showed up for work and cleaned the place out and then shot and killed three of the five tellers. I’m guessing Martin reprioritized his cases.

  Life is slowly returning to normal. Quinn and I start our new school next week. Principal Weaver tried to get us reinstated, but in the end, the board and most of the parents didn’t want us—or, more precisely, Dad’s scandal—tainting things. Bianca had to leave, too. Mean as she is, I feel sorry for her. Her friends didn’t stick by her the way Elena, Whitney, Leo, and Oliver did for Quinn and me. I think about going to see her. Maybe sometime soon I will.

  Now there are only a few loose ends to tie up: getting money to the mortgage victims without giving ourselves away—a BAM-worthy feat—and to Christian.

  I sit in the car, watching his house, waiting for him to walk with his family to church. I haven’t talked to him since the day of the heist, and he hasn’t tried to talk to me. Not that I thought he would. With Martin watching him so closely, revealing any sort of connection between the two of us would have been a bad idea. Now that so much time has gone by, I’ll admit I don’t know what’s better for him: to try to see him and tell him I still care or to just let him go. But I do know what I want.

  And there he is. I watch Christian open the front door of his house and walk outside with his little sister on his back. He does a giddyup and she squeals and grabs hold of his neck. His mother and grandfather are behind them. I don’t see his dad, but then again, h
e doesn’t go to mass. He’s probably passed out inside the house like every other Sunday when I’ve driven by and thought about breaking in.

  Seeing Christian is like poking at a wound. I shouldn’t do it. It’ll never heal if I keep this up, but I can’t seem to stop. His hair is still wet from the shower, and his dress shirt is tight across the shoulders and chest so that I can see the outline of his muscles. I’m too far away to see his eyes, but I can still remember them clearly, the deep brown shot through with bits of gold. I watch as he rounds the street corner and then he’s gone.

  I get out of the car, shoulder my backpack, and head for the house. I walk around to Christian’s bedroom window, where the iron bars I dismantled are still leaning against the side of the house. I can’t leave what I brought in the mailbox or by the door, so I use tools to jimmy the window and slip inside. The whole house smells spicy and warm because Christian’s mother has already prepped the afternoon meal. I listen for his dad, but there is nothing, no sound other than the hum of the refrigerator.

  Christian’s room is exactly the way it was last time. Everything in its place. I wrestle the box from my backpack and stare at it for a minute before I set it on his pillow. On my way out I notice his stack of books, a nearly complete collection of Cormac McCarthy and some random others: Lord of the Flies, The Catcher in the Rye. And then I notice it: tucked among them is The Princess Bride.

  Someone was in the house. The moment I come in my room I can feel it, even before I notice the box on the bed. The air inside feels disrupted somehow. Off. And besides, the window’s cracked open. I close it and then shut and lock my bedroom door. Sitting on the edge of the bed, I stare at the box for a second. It’s from her. Somehow I know, and for some reason I can’t quite bring myself to open it. Probably because it feels sort of formal. Final. But then, if I don’t open it, I’m just going to obsess about what might be in it. It’s heavy. I tear the top off and dump the contents.

  Three thick stacks of plastic-wrapped one-hundred-dollar bills fall out, along with a letter addressed to me.

  Christian,

  Your cut of the real take from the thumb drive. One million dollars in unmarked, clean bills. Buy yourself a whole lot of doughnuts. Maybe someday you’ll get a maple bacon one and think of me. —Lexi

  I stare at the money and the note. I don’t know what to feel. It’s more than enough to start over. I didn’t know what was on the thumb drive, but I suspected. What I didn’t expect was for her to share it.

  Someone starts pounding on the door. I take the money and shove it back in the box and then tuck the whole thing under my bed. “Yeah?”

  “It’s us. Open the door,” Eddie calls, and knocks nonstop until I do.

  “Dude. Calm down,” I say as he barges past—Benny, Carlos, and Gabriel hot on his heels.

  “Did you get any mail today?” Gabriel asks, his eyes brighter than I’ve seen them in years.

  I stare at him. “Yeah. You too?” Five million dollars. One mil for each of us. I can’t wrap my head around it.

  “So what do we do now?” Carlos asks, dumbfounded.

  “Anything we want!” Eddie grabs Carlos by his enormous shoulders and laughs. “Anything we want.”

  Benny walks over to my bookshelf and picks up the book lying on top. I hadn’t noticed it before, but it’s out of place. I always put my books back underneath, on the shelves, spines out.

  “The Princess Bride?” He raises an eyebrow and grins at me. “Getting in touch with your feminine side?”

  I take the book. Some of the pages are bent, tucked in so that the book falls open. Circled in black is one sentence: “Her heart was a secret garden and the walls were very high.” Beside it, Lexi has written in the margin: I wish you would scale them.

  We haven’t done a BAM since the heist. Not that Leo and the others haven’t brought it up. It’s just that I haven’t felt like it. I don’t want to forget about what happened with Christian: the kisses we shared on the roof and during the heist, the doughnuts and chess—even that day at the Griffith Park zoo. I thought I was immune to all this sappy sort of stuff, but all I want to do is hide in the house with a container of Ben & Jerry’s and binge-watch chick flicks. Somewhere along the way, I went from total badass to total mess.

  But today, after weeks of listening to them beg and plead, I finally let Quinn, Leo, Oliver, Elena, and Whitney drag me out of the house for a maneuver they’ve planned without me. They’re calling it a celebration, but I don’t feel much like celebrating. Christian and his crew have their money. We have ours. The only thing I don’t have is him. He read my note and maybe found what I wrote in the book, but he hasn’t come around or called, and so it is officially and totally over. Now all I need to do is figure out a way to move on. It used to be so easy to do, but I think I’ve forgotten how.

  I went into this whole thing to steal back my family’s life, and for the most part I did, but what I never counted on was that along the way I’d have something stolen from me. My heart. God, it sounds melodramatic, but there it is. Christian stole my heart even if he didn’t mean to.

  “So what are we doing?” I ask.

  “You’ll see when we get there,” Leo says. He puts an arm around me, and I rest my head on his shoulder.

  Elena and Oliver are up front. Quinn decided to take his motorcycle. I watch him drive by with Whitney behind him, her arms wrapped tightly around his waist. It’s almost twilight outside and the sky is filled with pastel light. We drive out of the city and toward the canyons. Oliver’s playing some audiobook on learning Japanese, and he and Elena are laughing and repeating the Japanese words for cup and fish and hello. Now that Oliver’s got the money to leave, he’s decided to actually do it. In a few weeks he is going to Japan to live with his mom. Since he’s nearly eighteen, he won’t have to worry about his dad making him come back. He says if he likes it he might stay for good. Elena is planning to visit over the winter holidays from school. Our group is gradually going to start drifting away. Oliver now; Quinn after this school year, when he heads off to college. Leo, Elena, Whitney, and I will graduate the year after, and then we’ll be off to college, too. Tonight might be the very last BAM we do together.

  We park down the road from an extreme-sports place that does tree obstacle courses and zip-lining. It’s closed up for the night, but after bank robbery, it is no big thing for us to scale the fence. And tame as it is to break into this place, after all we’ve done, the thrill level feels just right. We put on the head lamps Quinn brought, but we don’t turn them on until we are next to the obstacle course. I shine mine up at the trees and the rope course.

  “Got room for one more?” Christian comes up behind me in the dark. My heart squeezes. I don’t have to shine my light in his direction to know it’s him; I’d know his voice anywhere. I slip the head lamp off my head and shakily set it on the ground.

  “I didn’t know you were into this sort of thing,” I say, trying to play it cool, but in the end I can’t. A big, silly grin spreads across my face. He’s here. After so many weeks it almost feels as if we’re meeting for the first time.

  “In scaling things? You could say I’m a recent convert.” He holds out his hand. “I’m Christian, by the way. I don’t think we’ve met.” Obviously, seeing me again is strange for him, too.

  I laugh because this is silly and I feel silly, but I also feel wonderful. He wants to start over. Can we? After everything that’s happened? After all the things we did, or almost did, to each other?

  I wouldn’t have left him the note if I didn’t believe it.

  “I’m Lexi.” I hold out my hand.

  We shake, and then he brings my hand up to his lips. My friends make noises behind us, cheers and gagging sounds.

  “A little privacy, please?” I pretend to glare at them and they busy themselves with climbing, all except Leo, who holds up his camera and snaps a picture just as Christian scoops me up and spins me around.

  The way he looks at me—for a moment
I can feel that old familiar panic, the animal-like instinct to run because it is too much, I feel too much, but then he takes my face in his hands and leans in to kiss me.

  The night we met I jumped off the US Bank Tower downtown. As exhilarating as it was, it was no match for this moment, this kiss. I’m hanging off the edge without a parachute, trusting him to catch me before I hit the ground. Given what I’ve known about love and all the ways it can go wrong, it seems like a reckless and crazy thing to do, but suddenly I can’t seem to stop myself. I close my eyes and let go.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks are due to the incredible Random House Children’s Books team. I am lucky to work with such creative, dedicated people. It takes a village to make a book, and I am so very happy you are mine.

  To my editor, Chelsea Eberly, who is always just a phone call away. Thank you for all the patience, care, and attention you’ve given to this book and to me. I enjoy working with you more than I can express!

  To Caroline Abbey, who gamely took the time to nudge me in the right direction early on.

  To Elizabeth Tardiff for the brilliant cover. You captured the essence of Lexi perfectly!

  To Barbara Bakowski for your genius copyediting. I’d still be lost in the revision stage if not for you.

  Much love to my agent, Lucienne Diver, who is my own personal superhero. Thank you for believing in me and having my back. You are more than an agent. You are a very dear friend.

  To Stefanie Marks and Shann Keckler for helping me work on the bank-related bits. Every technical thing I got right is thanks to the two of you.

  To the YA Chicks: Vivi Barnes and Christina Farley. One of the best things that has come out of this whole writing thing is meeting you both. Here’s to many more years of crazy adventures!

  Shout-outs to my GFA girls: Michele, Ruth, Amy, Lori, Corinne, Kim, Natalie, Gemma, Deborah, and Stephanie. I’m honored to be sharing the journey with you all.