Life After Theft

I tugged at the lame plaid tie that was about three millimeters away from suffocating me, and revised.
I hate this tie
. The whole uniform get-up—tie, buttoned shirt, slacks,
sweater-vest
, I kid you not—was worlds away from the baggy cargoes and T-shirt I’d worn to my old high school just last week.

I caught sight of the name tag the chubby advisor with too much lipstick had slapped onto my chest—
HI! MY NAME IS JEFF
—and changed my mind again.
I hate the name tag the most, the tie second, and I still hate this school
.

What started out as an idea my dad had six months ago to move us all from Phoenix to Cali had morphed into an exciting but unlikely adventure three months later, and then a nightmare when I literally came home from school and the
SOLD
sign was up on our house. Yeah, I agreed to it in the beginning, but how many of Dad’s ideas
ever
came to fruition?

The big ones, I guess. Maybe I should have known better.

I tried to make the case that it was the middle of the school year and transferring credits was going to be a nightmare, but apparently private schools are more interested in bank-account numbers than GPAs.

I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand and then up at the rows of lockers. I was pretty sure my assigned locker was on this floor, but I must have taken a wrong turn out of the office. I backtracked, trying to stay out of the way of the stream of students, and finally found the right corner.

The first thing I saw was the pink bubble gum, four feet lower than it should have been, inches above the ground, framed by a set of perfectly painted lips.

It was one of those huge bubbles you just know is going to pop and cover the girl’s face, and she’ll shriek and yell and whine that her makeup is ruined, blah, blah, blah. But the bubble didn’t pop—she did that thing where you suck all the air back into your mouth, and the bubble deflated into a little pink heap.

The girl and her bubble were lying on the floor.

In the middle of the hallway.

I tilted my head to get a better look at her legs. Maybe this school wasn’t
all
bad.

A guy came tearing around the corner clutching a bright pink backpack that I had a sneaking suspicion was not his. He pushed a few people out of his way, veering to the side and clipping me with his shoulder before I could move away.

“Watch it, jerk!” I muttered, not quite loud enough for anyone to hear.

Then I realized he was running straight at the girl on the floor. He was looking back over his shoulder, so there was no chance he would see her before he ran right over the top of her.

“Hey!” I yelled, pushing past a guy in front of me. I had to warn her. Or stop him.

But she just rolled her eyes and pulled her arm out of the way an instant before his Eckos pounded down right beside her head. “Look out, asshole,” she said without flinching.

Jerk didn’t even glance back.

I rushed forward. “You okay?”

She looked up at me with wide, surprised eyes. “Are you talking to me?”

Right. Any girl who could look that hot in a black skirt and plaid vest and had the guts to lie in the middle of the hallway was not going to tolerate being talked to by some brand-new nobody like me. “Forget it,” I said, and turned to look for my assigned locker. Again.

“Wait!”

I stopped walking but didn’t turn around.

“Were you talking to
me
?”

I turned and gave her my best I-don’t-care-that-you’re-rich-popular-and-gorgeous look. I admit: I haven’t had much practice with it. “Yeah. And?”

She sat up. “You can see me?”

So
that
was a pretty weird conversation starter. Still, a hot girl was talking to me; I’m not one to question these things. “I sure can.”

“What color is my skirt?”

What
? “Black,” I replied hesitantly, trying to figure out where she was going with this.

She sighed. “Stupid uniforms. What color are my eyes?”

I looked. She fluttered her lashes dramatically. Was this some kind of trick? “Blue?”

“Is that a question?”

“Your eyes are blue, okay?”

She stared at me for a long time in a way that made me want to look over my shoulder. She was . . . impressed. And that certainly didn’t make any sense. I had to be missing something. “You really can see me, can’t you?” she said, sounding—of all stupid things—
awestruck
.

Our conversation had sailed straight past run-of-the-mill weird and docked in crazytown. Hot or not, I was ready to get away from this girl. “Yeeeeah, well,” I said, looking down at my schedule, “it’s been fun and all, but I have to—”

“Nobody else can see me,” she said. The seriousness in her voice was kind of freaking me out. “No one in this entire school, except you.”

“Sorry, I didn’t notice your invisibility cloak,” I said, edging away. Was everyone in California this nuts? I could feel the crowd around me staring as they walked by, and despite the crazy coming out of her mouth, I had a feeling they weren’t staring at Blond Girl. Fabulous. My chance to make a decent first impression in this school was swiftly and surely melting away.

“How many?” the girl said, holding up two fingers like rabbit ears, then changing her mind and switching to four.

“This is ridiculous.” I was still trying to look cool—or, barring that, casual—but I was on the verge of exploding at her.

“Answer the question, freak.”

Just my luck—it had taken a whole five minutes for the school nut job to latch on to me. Don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess. Or a girl by her hotness. “
I’m
a freak? You’re lying in the middle of the floor pretending to be invisible, and
I’m
a freak?”

She gasped. “It’s really true! You
can
see me. This is the best day of my . . . well, more than a year, anyway. I thought this would never happen. But now you’re here. You’re here . . . um . . .” She glanced at my loser label. “Jeff.” She scrunched up her nose. “Jeff? Ew.” When I rolled my eyes she raised her hands in surrender. “I take it back. Jeff’s fine. But can I call you Jeffrey at least? That is your whole name, right?”

“No.”

“Can I call you that anyway?”

“No.”
I gotta get out of here
. People were starting to seriously gawk.

“Fine, we’ll work on the name later. We have so much to
do
!” And then, I kid you not, she started bouncing up and down on her toes.

“Stop!”
No, really, for the love of all that is holy, stop
. I held up both hands. “Who
are
you?”

I’m not sure what made me ask—a name to put on the restraining order, maybe?—but she gestured to herself like she was a celebrity I should recognize instantly. Maybe she was—this was Santa Monica, after all. “Kimberlee Schaffer?
The
Kimberlee Schaffer?”

I shrugged.

She sighed dramatically. “Come with me.” I followed her down a hallway and into the main foyer, where she backed up against a wall and gave me a cheesy, toothy grimace—more sarcasm than smile. She gestured grandly to her left at an eleven-by-fourteen framed picture of herself.

“So . . . your parents paid for the school?” I asked. Maybe it was the only way they’d let this psycho in.

She rolled her eyes and pointed a long, fake fingernail at a small bronze plaque beneath the portrait.

IN MEMORY OF KIMBERLEE SCHAFFER

I glanced at her, then back at the photo. “That’s really funny.” I made myself look her in the eyes, my best fake smile plastered into place. “You almost had me. Ha-ha. Joke on the new guy. That’s really good. Now if you’re finished, I have to go to class.”
Preferably before everyone starts staring again
.

“Can I come?” she asked all chipper, like she hadn’t just pulled the world’s lamest joke on me. Pretending to be a dead girl—that was seriously messed up. And stupid.

I’m such a moron
.

“No, it’s
school
. You go to your class; I’ll go to mine.” I knew I should feel flattered that a hot girl wanted anything to do with me, but there’s a saying about what you don’t do with crazy people.

Ever.

She jumped in front of me. “Listen,
Jeff
.” She said my name like it was a bad word. “You don’t get it. I’m dead. Ask anyone. I’ve been stuck for a year and a half and no one has been able to see or hear me except you.”

“Look, your little trick worked, Kim. Isn’t that—”

“Kimberlee.”

“What?”

“Kimberlee. With two
e
’s.
No one
calls me Kim.”

Unbelievable
. “Forget it. Just leave me alone, okay?” I stepped around her and continued walking. Maybe I could blend in with the other sweater-vests all over the place and get away. Sadly, this wasn’t my old, overcrowded public high school, and disappearing would take more work than I was used to despite the matching uniforms.

“Wait. Please?”

I didn’t.

She trotted alongside me. “What class do you have?”

“Like I’m going to tell you.”

“I’ll help you find it.”

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” I stopped and turned to her. “Then you could get me totally lost and ditch me. A special welcome for the new guy. Just leave me alone!”

A tall brunette edged away from me like a first-grader who had just learned about boy cooties. “What a dork,” she said, loud enough for everyone within ten feet to hear her.

“Really, Jeff,” Kimberlee said, far too calmly. “You should stop yelling at me. People are going to think you’re schizo.”

I looked down at my schedule and pretended Kimberlee wasn’t there.

“You gotta go upstairs for Bleekman’s classroom.”

I gritted my teeth, and hurried up the stairs hoping I could lose her. In the hallway I slowed down and counted off room numbers.

204
.

205
.

206
.

Damn
. She was standing outside room 207.

“Clever boy. You found it all by yourself.”

There must be an elevator
. . .
somewhere
. I let my eyes slide by her and walked into the half-full classroom, hurrying to plant myself in the last seat on the back row.

“I wouldn’t sit there if I were you. That’s Langdon’s spot,” Kimberlee said, sounding almost bored.

Ignore, ignore, ignore
.

“Fine, but don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I kept my head down and pulled out a notebook as more students filed in, quickly filling the remaining seats.

“Dude. If you’re not out of my desk by the time I count to two, I personally guarantee your life will end before lunch hour.”

I looked up at what appeared to be a non-green version of the Incredible Hulk.

“One. One and a half . . .”