Life After Theft (23 page)

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 their 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.

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?”

I shrugged rather than answering. But thinking and doing are two very different things.

“It was sunny, but the water was freezing and I went out anyway. I was out way too deep in the water by myself—me, the water, and my chattering teeth. And I may have been a little drunk, so I wasn’t thinking very clearly. And I laid back floating with this little noodle thing, and I looked at the sky and wished I could just float out into the ocean and die.”

I checked my spider senses, but they didn’t seem to be tingling. I cautiously concluded that she was telling the truth. For now.

“So I . . . I had a good cry and started swimming in. And I noticed I was out farther than I thought and I tried to fight the stupid current—which you’re not supposed to do—and after a while I was so cold and tired I couldn’t hold on to the noodle anymore and I sank.” She looked up at me, her eyes wet. “And it turns out that all of your problems are actually worse when you’re dead. Stealing included.”

“But you
couldn’t
steal stuff anymore. Wasn’t that better?”

“I wish,” she said. “Cold-turkey withdrawals are a bitch. I couldn’t touch anything. The first few months were hell. No, really,” she said, turning to me for a second. “I thought I was in hell. Everything in me screamed out to grab things, to take things, and I. Just. Couldn’t. And it
hurt
. I spent so much time yelling and screaming and cursing God, and Buddha, and Allah, and anyone else who might have made me a ghost. But it was no use.” She gestured to herself. “Obviously.”

“Did the urges finally wear off?”

She shrugged noncommittally. “Yes and no. I mean, I found ways to deal with it—I had no choice—but it’s like being an alcoholic or a chain-smoker or something. You can quit, but you never lose that urge, especially when you’re around the good stuff. And I’m around
stuff
all the time. The best I can do is distract myself with other things. I can go wherever I want and listen to private conversations. Spy on private moments. Sometimes stealing people’s privacy feels almost as good as taking their stuff. But it’s not . . . it’s not the same. And it’s—” She paused for a second to take a few breaths and get a hold of her emotions. “It’s just so damn
hard
.”

“I didn’t know,” I said quietly. “I mean, I
knew
about the kleptomania, but I didn’t know it affected you like this. I . . . I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t want you to know. I just wanted to get the stuff returned and move on, whatever that means.” She shrugged helplessly. “And now that’s not going to happen.” She flopped back onto my bed and started to cry again.

“Don’t cry, Kim, please,” I implored. “We’ll find a way. We’ll make things happen.”

She opened her wet, black-lined eyes and looked at me. “Do you think so?”

I knew the life or death of her hope lay in my answer. An answer I already knew was going to have to be a lie. “I know it,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. Faith was never my strong suit; I’d never had any use for it. But even when all I really felt was doubt, Kimberlee needed more than
ifs
and
maybes
. “We’ll find a way. I—”
This was the hardest part to say
. “I’ll help you.”