Life After Theft (22 page)

“Sera stopped doing anything anyone wanted her to do. My parents have always pushed her hard in gymnastics, so she quit—refused to even do a cartwheel for her coach. Failed classes she didn’t used to have to even try in. Dropped her old friends and found new ones. Bad ones. Way older than her. She had money and they were happy to use her for it. They got her on weed, then coke, and one night they all got high and tried heroin.” He shrugged. “She was tripping hardcore when the only other girl her age OD’d.” Khail sighed and leaned back against the truck. “If anyone had been lucid enough to call 911, they probably could have saved her.”

“Holy shit.” I couldn’t think of anything else to say.

“My parents finally realized their stupid problems were having an effect on their kids. Sera went to court-mandated rehab for two months, Mom and Dad started seeing a counselor, worked some stuff out, didn’t get divorced after all, but it was a little late by then—we were already screwed up,” he said in a quiet voice that simmered with anger.

I didn’t say anything.
Couldn’t
say anything. Sera had told me she’d been a mess, but I figured she meant something . . . I don’t know . . . tamer. She seemed too good and pure to be involved in anything even remotely like this.

“She’s worked really hard to get over this. And, trust me, it hasn’t been easy. Some things she’s
never
going to get back. Her clean conscience, for one. I know that night still haunts her. On top of that she lost her shot at competing nationally in gymnastics. She’ll brush it off if you ever mention it, but it’s a major sore spot for her. She has a lot of regrets, but she’s dealt with them and moved on.” He hopped up onto the tailgate and fixed me with a hard glare. “That’s why I started watching you so closely when Sera told me she liked you. Why do you think someone as pretty as her hasn’t had a boyfriend in almost two years? She doesn’t trust herself to choose someone good. Someone who’ll understand that she’s made mistakes and let her keep moving forward. And if
you
can’t, then you should—”

I held up my hand defensively. “No, you don’t get it. I don’t hold it against her at all.” I hoped I was telling the truth, but I had a little ache in the pit of my stomach. Coke? Heroin? I had never even
seen
that kind of stuff, much less tried it. “But . . . what if Hennigan tried to use that against her? To put pressure on her?” I hedged.

But Khail was already shaking his head. “She owns her past—owns her mistakes. And she would never let someone else suffer for what she did. Besides,” he added as he jumped back onto the tailgate and lifted another box, “most people at Whitestone either know or have heard rumors. Who would Hennigan threaten to tell? You?”

He had a point. It really didn’t make a lot of sense. But . . .

“She would hate that we were helping Kimberlee,” Khail said. “But I guarantee she’d never rat me out.” He let the box fall hard into the bed of the truck. “And I don’t think she’d rat you out either.”

I nodded and tried to squelch the feeling that something still wasn’t right, but doubt haunted me . . . rather like a drowned girl’s ghost.

“DO YOU WANT TO DO
something else?” Kimberlee asked peevishly after I failed yet another attempt to conceal a yawn.

“No, I’m good,” I said, trying to sit up and look interested.

“Right,” Kimberlee muttered.

Since Sera was busy, I’d been watching TV with my only other nonsecret friend—loser much?—and she was on this nostalgia-for-childhood kick so we were on about our tenth episode of
My Little Pony
. I argued that she wasn’t even alive when
My Little Pony
originally aired, but she retorted that she wasn’t alive now, either, and there’s just no good comeback to that.

After a few more minutes of pink sparkle ponies, she turned to me. “It’s all going to be gone on Monday, right?”

I had to jerk to attention a bit. I
may
have been snoozing. And possibly drooling. “Wha—? The stuff? Like in the cave? Yeah. We’ll finish it all up on Monday.”

“Then what?”

“Huh?”

Kimberlee turned her whole body to me now. “Then. What?” she repeated, as though the problem was with my ears.

“I heard you,” I said, rolling my eyes, “but I don’t understand what you’re asking. We return the stuff, you go poof, I get my life back, the end.” I rolled over and closed my eyes again.

She was silent for a few seconds, then asked, “Yeah, but what happens to me?”

I figured that if she actually asked me a question three times maybe she was ready to hear a serious answer. But it wasn’t really an answer I knew myself. “Honestly?” I said hesitantly. “I think you’ll just fade out. Become at peace and then cease to be.”

She sat straight up. “What the hell do you mean, ‘cease to be’?”

Perhaps that was a bit
too
serious. “Okay,” I said, rolling over to face her, resting my chin on my crossed arms. “I always figured when someone died, they were probably just done. But now there’s you. I mean, are you an angel or a spirit or what?” None of those words sounded anything remotely like Kimberlee. “My theory is you’re kind of like an echo of a person. And you’re still here because you can’t find peace. So once you do, maybe you’ll slowly slip away, like drifting off to sleep.”

“So you’re doing this all because you want me to just
disappear
!” She looked genuinely horrified.

“No, it’s not like that.
I
like the idea of drifting away after I die. If you don’t, then believe something else.”

“But
you
think I’m going to disappear?”

Yeah, so maybe as an agnostic I’m not the most comforting spiritual advisor around. What did she want me to say? “I don’t think anything. I was just . . . presenting one possibility. You could also turn into the abominable snowman and terrorize skiers for all eternity.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Now you’re just being stupid.”

I let out a frustrated breath. “Look. I don’t
know
what’s going to happen to you—I don’t actually care about the details. I don’t know; that’s what
agnostic
means.”

“So you just live your life not knowing anything?”

“I know a lot of things,” I countered, then shrugged. “Whether or not there’s a god just doesn’t happen to be one of them. It doesn’t seem that important to me.”

Her jaw muscles flexed and she looked back at the television, although I doubt she realized the credits had started to roll. “Well, it seems awfully important to
me
right now.”

“I can understand that.”

“And even being confronted with a
ghost
doesn’t make you want to find out now?”

“Not really. Nothing in this world is going to prove or disprove that there’s a god. At least,
I
don’t think so. Religion is really good for some people, but being agnostic works for me. Like Einstein.”

“Einstein was agnostic?”

“Very.”

“Hmmm.” She was silent for a while. “What makes you want to be good?”

“I don’t know. I just want to.”

“That’s dumb. Why bother?”

I had to stop and think on that one.
Because I always have
seemed a little trite. “I believe that there’s enough bad in the world and that you should do what you can to put some good in there, because it’s the right thing to do.”

“You’re just a good person, I guess.”

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

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.

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.