Life After Theft

by Aprilynne Pike

Another endless silence. “So . . .” I said, scrolling down to the next episode. “You ready for another?”

  She stared intently at the now-blank television screen as if it might hold the answers to all of her questions. Then she shook her head. “I’m not in the mood. I’m gonna go.” Without waiting for a response, she started toward the window.

  “Wait a sec,” I said, scrambling to my feet. “When are you coming back?”

  She gazed out at the streetlights illuminating the sidewalk in front of my house. “I don’t know. Tomorrow, maybe?”

  I nodded but said nothing.

  With a scarcely audible “Bye,” she slid through the window and dropped to the ground. I watched her go. Her head was bent and her shoulders curled forward. She looked so real, and—at that moment—so heavy. Weighted. You’d have never thought to see her that she was less than a wisp of air.

  Twenty-Seven

  MONDAY MORNING I WOKE UP early and couldn’t get back to sleep. This was it: the day I got rid of my spectral friend.

  Kimberlee didn’t say a word about our conversation Saturday night or her disappearance all day Sunday, and I had a feeling she wouldn’t appreciate me bringing it up—especially on her special day. “This is the most awesome plan!” she gushed in what was possibly her very first sincere compliment to me ever. “Hennigan is going to be so pissed. He might just keel over and have a heart attack right then and there.”

  “Oh good,” I grumbled, “then I can have that on my conscience for the rest of my life.” I wasn’t sure why I couldn’t get into the spirit of it like she could. Maybe it was because the drop wasn’t finished yet or because of everything I’d learned in the last week.

  “It would so not be a loss,” Kimberlee said, studying herself in the mirror. “He’s such an asshole. I wish I could wear something else. Some kind of party clothes. Or at least do my hair,” she added, swirling it around and piling it on the top of her head. But as soon as she let go it slipped back down around her shoulders. “Oh well.” She turned away from the mirror. “Maybe I’ll be able to do more wherever it is I’m going.”

  “Yeah,” I said hoping my sarcasm would cover my nerves. “It’s a big day for you.” It was easy to be cavalier when you weren’t the one risking your neck.

  If Kimberlee noticed my tone, she gave no indication.

  The timing was delicate. I drove to school, parked in the school parking lot, and ran over to the south side, where Khail was waiting for me in the borrowed truck.

  Then we headed to Hennigan’s.

  Kimberlee was actually keeping watch today. She was going back and forth between making sure Hennigan was still roaming the halls suspiciously and checking that no one was watching his house.

  The actual drop-off took less than a minute. That was mostly Khail’s brain at work. We stacked everything on the tarp and laid another tarp on top of the whole thing. At eight thirty-five we backed the truck over the curb onto Hennigan’s lawn. Then Khail and I ran to the tailgate, unlatched it, gave a good tug, and the tarp—loaded with bags—came sliding right out.

  It took about ten more seconds to grab a big sign from the truck bed that had a huge version of the little stickers: the red rose and a scripted I’m sorry.

  That part was actually Kimberlee’s idea. She said it was like a billboard and that some student late for school was bound to see it.

  Khail and I jumped back in and hurried away from Hennigan’s house. He pulled over behind the school and let me out so he could go ditch the truck, driving off almost before I could close the door. Hennigan would probably get suspicious when Khail missed his first class, but Khail assured me he could handle it.

  I wished I shared his confidence. If I got him busted, Sera would never forgive me.

  Either way, I had to get my ass to class before I got caught too. I was only about seven minutes late, but if I slid into my seat more than ten minutes late, it would count as an absence.

  And then they would call my mother, which was almost scarier than expulsion after the promise I’d made that I would stay out of trouble. After which, of course, I broke into the school.

  “Jeff, wait!” Kimberlee called, but I didn’t have time to stop and knew she could catch up.

  I almost ran into Mr. Hennigan before I saw him. The one time I really should have listened to Kimberlee.

  “In a hurry, are we?” Mr. Hennigan said pointedly.

  I put on my best I-am-an-idiot voice and pointed at my watch. “Late,” I said.

  Mr. Hennigan circled me like a vulture. “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the alleged returning of stolen items today, would it?”

  “Huh?” I said, trying to look confused. “Oh, the lost stuff. Yeah, no. If I was missing anything, it would still be in Phoenix. I just moved here.” Smooth, suave, and totally stupid-sounding. Perfect.

  Hennigan looked over the edge of his glasses and studied me. “Oh, yes. Mr. . . . Mr. Clayson, is it?”

  “Yeah, that’s me.”

  Frustration passed over Mr. Hennigan’s face, but he only allowed himself a small sigh before he snapped back to attention. “On your way, then,” he said dismissively. “You’ve got one minute to get to class before you’re marked absent.”

  I took off the second his eyes left me, walking as quickly as possible, and managed to slip into the door of Mr. Bleekman’s class just as the clock turned to eight forty.

  Mr. Bleekman looked up at me and his eyes darted to the clock. With obvious disappointment, he marked a tardy down in his grade book.

  Twenty minutes after the bell, a girl named Katie—which, since she lives in Santa Monica, is short for Katerina, not Katherine—burst into class, her face pink.

  Mr. Bleekman smiled very slightly and walked over to his grade book. “More than ten minutes late, Miss Chardon; you’ll be counted absent for this class period.”

  “Sorry,” Katie said, sounding distracted.

  As soon as she sat down I watched her pull a Ziploc bag out of her backpack and—after a quick glance at Bleekman’s back—hand it to the girl across the aisle.

  The girl giggled quietly and asked—in a voice so loud half the class could hear—“Where?”

  “Hennigan’s!” Katie squealed, drawing a stern look from Mr. Bleekman. But no one was paying attention to him anymore.

  “Hennigan’s?” another guy asked. “Like, his house?”

  “Yeah. Right in his yard! There’s a big sign and everything. I saw it on the way to school. That’s why I was so late,” she added in a whisper. As if we couldn’t all figure that out.

  In the front row a girl’s hand shot into the air.

  Bleekman ignored her.

  “Mr. Bleekman,” she said, refusing to be put off so easily.

  Bleekman sighed. “Yes, Miss Sanderson?”

  “I gotta go. Like, to the bathroom,” she added.

  He glared at her for a long time, but no teacher in his right mind tells a girl she can’t go to the bathroom. Finally he sighed and motioned to his desk. “Take the pass.”

  She positively bounced to the desk for the pass and almost ran out the door.

  “I’m next when she gets back,” a low, threatening voice said.

  I knew who the voice was before I turned, but it surprised me so much I had to look anyway.

  Langdon.

  Unfortunately for him, he wouldn’t find anything there. Langdon was one of the only students I knew of who Kimberlee had never stolen from. I guess friendship meant something to her.

  By the time lunch rolled around, the school was buzzing and full of stickered bags, half the kids were tardy to my third-hour class, and Mr. Hennigan was storming around the halls in a rage.

  But we were done.

  Kimberlee popped up beside me. “There are six bags left,” she said nervously. “What if no one takes them? What if they’re absent today?”

  “Don’t worry,” I whispered, while pretending to arrange books in my locker. “Even if they’re gone, one of th
eir friends will take them. I guarantee.”

  She nodded reluctantly. “I guess you’re right. I’m going back, though, just to be sure.”

  I watched her speed off and chuckled as I shook my head. I grabbed my backpack and headed toward the lunchroom to meet Sera. I hadn’t seen her since Friday. Which meant that I hadn’t actually spoken to her since Khail admitted she was involved in a friend’s death.

  I had to admit, I was nervous. I didn’t want to think badly of Sera—it really wasn’t her fault—but was I actually a big enough person to just let it go? I figured seeing her face-to-face was the only way to know for sure.

  I was about to turn the corner when I heard Mr. Hennigan call her name. “Miss Hewitt,” he said, his voice stern, but also a little raw. I suspected he’d been yelling at kids all day. Not that there was anything he could do about the legions of bags entering the school. Nothing in them was a banned item, and he couldn’t suspend anyone unless he could prove they were involved.

  After a pause Mr. Hennigan said icily, “We need to talk.”

  I peeked around and saw Sera standing in front of Mr. Hennigan’s office. But she didn’t have the confident, straight posture I was used to seeing. Her shoulders were slumped and her head hung forward, her hair almost blocking out her face.

  She looked . . . guilty. And it killed me inside.

  I didn’t want her to know I’d seen her get called into Mr. Hennigan’s office again, so after the door closed I continued on past the front office and into the lunchroom to the table where we normally sat.

  She didn’t come back the whole lunch period. I had to catch her on her way into her history class. “Hey,” I said, laying a hand on her shoulder.

  She turned and smiled, but I realized it looked a lot like Kimberlee’s smiles. The fake ones.

  “Hey!” she said, her voice sharply chipper.

  “You didn’t come to lunch,” I said, refusing to actually ask her where she’d been. I wanted to see what she would say.

  “Oh,” she said, waving a hand dismissively, “I had to stay after in English. I totally screwed up an assignment and had to work with Bleekman to make it up. Sorry I didn’t tell you. I didn’t know till right then.”

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes.

  “Oh, okay,” I said, looking down at my shoes.

  “But we can do something tomorrow after school,” she suggested.

  I nodded and accepted a kiss before she disappeared into her history class. It tasted strangely sour.

  She lied.

  But then, who was I to judge? Technically, I’d been lying to her from day one. I tried to remember that as I walked into my own class.

  Twenty-Eight

  WHEN I ARRIVED HOME, KIMBERLEE was restlessly pacing in my room. “What if it doesn’t work?” she said, without a greeting. “What if something got lost, or someone stole somebody else’s bag and I’m stuck here forever!”

  “Fate wouldn’t hold you responsible for someone else’s actions,” I grumbled, already in a bad mood; what the hell did I know about fate? “You can only be held accountable for things you actually did.” I was pretty sure I’d seen that in a movie once. Or something.

  She paused and looked down at me where I had dropped into a beanbag with a pint of Ben & Jerry’s I’d grabbed from the kitchen on the way in. Sugar therapy.

  “Are you sure the cave was completely empty?”

  “Kimberlee,” I said firmly, “you checked twice. It was totally empty. Everything you stole has been returned or donated to a good cause.”

  But my mind wasn’t on our latest stunt. I couldn’t help but be angry that Sera hadn’t admitted to being called into Hennigan’s office. And if she’d lied this time, she’d probably lied last time, too. If she had been pressured to help him, it didn’t matter anymore. But the thought of Sera in league with Hennigan made me look at her differently. It pissed me off.

  More than the drug thing. I could think of a million excuses for that. She made some bad friends, bad choices, and then got dumped in a situation where she had no choices at all.

  But this felt weirdly personal.

  And if she was lying about him, what else was she lying about? After all, she had never told me about the girl who died. I had to drag it out of Khail. And she hadn’t said anything about her problems with Kimberlee at all. She was the victim in that situation—why wouldn’t she tell me? Didn’t I have the right to know? I was her boyfriend.

  But then . . . did that mean she owed me a full life’s confession? I didn’t want to think that way either. My sense of right and wrong—of justified and unforgiveable—felt completely screwed up.

  Kimberlee sat down in the other beanbag. “Why hasn’t it happened?” she said in a very small voice. “Shouldn’t it have happened by now?”

  I shrugged, my mind whirling so fast I could hardly concentrate on what Kimberlee was saying. “Maybe it’s one of those things that happens at midnight, or at night when you—I’m sleeping. It’ll happen,” I said, stretching my arms over my head.

  Khail and I had managed a very brief conversation in the bathroom—it was a bit nostalgic, actually, considering our first conversation—and talk around the school confirmed that before fifth hour, everything on Hennigan’s lawn was gone. Including the tarp. The deed was most definitely done.

  All we had to do was wait for Kimberlee to pop.

  “Sit,” I told Kimberlee. “I have a surprise.”

  She sat—albeit a little warily—and I reached into a bag beside me. I stopped by the video store on the way home—a little farewell . . . present, I guess . . . seemed appropriate. With a little ta-da! I pulled out a cheesy romance movie, one she’d managed to talk me into way back at the beginning of all this. Kimberlee’s face fell.

  “What?” I said. I looked at the movie case. I had gotten the right one, hadn’t I? All the sappy romances look pretty much the same to me.

  “No, no,” she said, waving her hands. “It’s great really. It’s just, you’ve been so nice to me. After everything. Me almost getting you beat up that first day, and bothering you about Sera, and having to take so much stuff back. And you still brought me a movie you hate. I guess I . . . well . . . for a nerd, you’re pretty cool.”

  She was getting weepy now, and not the fake-weepy she used to get what she wanted out of me. This was new, and not entirely comfortable. I didn’t want to embarrass her by making a big deal out of it—okay, I wanted to, but I knew it wasn’t the nice thing to do—so I just smiled and nodded before turning and putting the movie into the player.

  I think chick flicks have superpowers. Really. They’re so boring that I theorize supersleep waves actually come rolling out of the television screen when you watch them. Because I know the movie didn’t get over any later than eight o’clock and by the time the credits rolled, I was out. Like out, out. I didn’t wake up until the next morning at six a.m.

  With Kimberlee in my face, shouting. Not her usual mad shouting, but wild, crazy, panicked shouting.

  “It didn’t work. Jeff, wake up! It didn’t work. I’ve been watching the minutes click by and nothing. Nothing!”

  She continued ranting as I attempted to sit up. It felt like every bone in my back was out of alignment and my neck couldn’t turn more than about forty-five degrees to the left. My mouth tasted dry and sour after eating so much ice cream before falling asleep, but I managed to make it work and mumbled, “Wait a sec; I don’t get it.”

  “I’m still here!” she shrieked, sounding much more like her normal, angry self.

  “I can see that,” I said, shaking my head. It was starting to unfog and behind the fog lurked a sense of unease. This was not what I had planned.

  I finally managed to stagger to my feet—still wearing my full uniform, including tie, mind you—and rubbed one eye, then the other as I looked at the clock and then at the window, where weak sunlight was starting to light the edge of the sky.

  Kimberlee was silent—for once—and stared at me with
an empty, hollow look in her eyes. “I’m not gone,” she finally said, voice trembling.

  I let out a big breath. “No, you’re definitely not.” I walked over and sat on the edge of my bed. “Maybe . . . maybe it takes longer.”

  But Kimberlee only shook her head. “I should have been gone yesterday, or at least by midnight.” She dropped onto the bed beside me and tears, real tears—I could tell by now—streaked down her face. “I’m stuck,” she whispered shakily. “It’s been over a year and I’ve done everything I can think of, and now I’m stuck.”

  “You’re not stuck,” I said with very little conviction. “Ghosts don’t just get stuck.” But really, what did I know? I hadn’t even believed in ghosts until I met Kimberlee. The doubt I couldn’t keep out of my voice shattered whatever hope she’d been holding on to. Her chin dropped to her chest and her shoulders curled in as sobs shook her whole body.

  “Kim,” I said softly. “Don’t—”

  “I hate this,” she said, her voice a little muffled. “I hate everything about my life. My unlife, what-the-hell-ever! It’s torture every day and I’m so tired.”

  “It’s not that bad,” I said, wishing I could pat her shoulder or something.

  She looked up and pushed her hair away. “No, you don’t understand. I’m a nutcase. I’m a serious, lock-me-in-a-padded-room klepto and being a ghost is killing me.”

  For a second I thought I’d misunderstood. “Wait, you’re pissed because you can’t steal?” The look on her face was answer enough. “Kimberlee!”

  She wouldn’t meet my eyes. “I thought dying would make everything easier.”

  What? “You thought dying would make everything easier? You told me you got caught in a riptide!”

  “I did. I didn’t commit suicide, okay? Chill.” She was silent for a long moment, but tears continued trailing their way down her face. “But I thought about it,” she confessed in a whisper. “I was down at our beach, my parents were gone—as always—and I was superdepressed. I stole, like, six things that day trying to feel better and nothing was working. And I . . . I considered it. Who hasn’t?”