Life After Theft (7 page)

“Your designs’ll work. Can you just give me this white oval?” I pointed to a strip of plain white stickers.

The man scratched on his order pad. “What would you like them to say?”

“I’m sorry, comma, Kimberlee. That’s
K-I
—”

“Are you kidding me?” Kimberlee shrieked. “You can’t just blab to the world that I’m suddenly giving a bunch of stuff back a year after I’m dead!”

I shot her a nasty look, but she didn’t even notice.

“I forbid you to put my name on there! If you want to put someone’s name on there, put your own.” Her voice was grating on my eardrums and it seemed like it just got louder with each word.

I cringed as the salesman asked, “
M
next? Right?”

Kimberlee screamed again, a sound that probably would have shattered the windows if she’d been alive—and I forced myself not to cover my ears. “You know what? I have a better idea; give me these instead.” I pointed to the same round stickers, but just a little bit bigger with a pretty red flower and some decorative leaves printed along the bottom. “Leave off the name. Just print ‘I’m sorry’ on them with the flower.” I shot a very pointed glare at Kimberlee.

The sales guy glanced at me worriedly but said nothing as he scratched out the order and started writing again.

“This is ridiculous,” Kimberlee said. “But at least it’s better than the name thing.”

I rolled my eyes and turned back to the man. “How many?” he asked.

It was depressing to even think about. I looked up at the display. There was a bulk discount at a thousand. And that should definitely cover it.

I hoped.

“A thousand,” I said, digging into my back pocket for my wallet.

The guy looked over the rims of his glasses at me for an instant, probably wondering just how sorry I was for whatever I had done. “All right. About an hour.”

Kimberlee didn’t even bother waiting until we had left the store before starting up again. “Why are you doing this?”

“It’s the principle,” I said as I slid into my car. “If you’re stuck here till you make amends, you should do more than just return the stuff. You
should
be sorry.”

“And if I’m not?” she huffed, with her arms folded over her chest.

“By the time we’re done, I bet you will be. But if you start trying to apologize then, it’ll be too late. Start now.” I slid into my seat and pulled on my seat belt. “If I have to do this, I’m going to make sure it gets done right. You don’t get a choice on this one.”

Kimberlee rolled her eyes. “You are the lamest thing that ever happened to me.” Then she turned and walked away.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT
having a fight with a ghost that makes you paranoid in the morning. I kept checking over my shoulder in the shower, and I peeked out of my bathroom door before darting to my closet for the shirt I’d forgotten to bring in with me.

But in the end Kimberlee popped up beside me at my locker, two minutes before the bell, acting as if we hadn’t argued at all.

I think that was the moment I understood how desperate she was. She could get mad and rage and ignore me all night, but in the end, she needed me. It made me feel really powerful for a few seconds before the guilt sank in. Of course I was powerful. She was a helpless ghost. Pain in the ass or not.

Okay, there was no reason to even end that sentence with “or not.”

Nonetheless, when we put our plan into action a few hours later, I was glad she was there.

“Is anyone coming?” I asked.

“No, but hurry.”

Kimberlee watched the doors as I ran across the cafeteria to the table where I saw Sera sitting yesterday and opened my backpack. I threw six gallon-sized plastic bags into a pile in the middle of the long rectangle and ran back as my heart sped up to about three hundred beats per minute.

“All clear,” Kimberlee said, her eyes still scanning the halls. “Just look cool and keep your bathroom pass where the teachers can see it.”

I haven’t used a bathroom pass since I was in, like, third grade—and
never
one the size of a dinner plate. But at Whitestone they insisted such a nonconcealable pass cut down on the number of students who wandered the halls. Personally, I thought it was a good reason to hold it until lunchtime.

“Why can’t we just look everyone up in the phone book and drop stuff off on their porch?” I muttered.

“Oh please,” Kimberlee said. “People who can afford to send their kids to Whitestone are
not
listed in the phone book. And even if they were, do you know all these kids’ parents’ names? I sure as hell don’t, and I’ve been going to school with them since kindergarten.”

I glanced back down at the pass. “Fine.”

It was ten minutes until lunch when I returned the enormous pass to its spot and started on the assignment that would now be homework, since I didn’t get to work on it the whole class period. Great.

Everything was quiet—so quiet that when the bell rang, I gasped and knocked my book on the floor. I should never apply for the FBI. For everyone’s sake.

I entered the cafeteria hesitantly, and not just because the stuff I’d returned was there. Sera hadn’t actually
said
that I was invited back, but the guys seemed to think I was cool enough, and she was coming to see me at the party. So . . . that meant I could sit with her again, right?

Sera was nowhere to be seen, but I wasn’t going to make the mistake of standing like a dork with a tray full of food again, so I headed toward the table and hoped my invitation didn’t have an expiration date.

“Ah, man,” Wilson said just as I came into earshot, “someone left a bunch of crap on our table.” He raised an arm to sweep it onto the floor.

Stop! Don’t!
my mind screamed. If this stuff got trashed Kimberlee was going to haunt me
forever
.

“Wait a sec.” Hampton edged in and plucked one of the bags from the table. He pulled out a small day planner covered with Sharpie doodles. “This is mine.” He stared at the planner in confusion, then flipped through it, pausing at some of the pages. “I lost this when I was in seventh grade. It had a hundred bucks in it.” He dug into a small pocket on the back page and pulled out a Benjamin. “No way. Sweet!”

Brynley pulled a pink T-shirt from another bag. “This was my favorite shirt freshman year. Someone stole it out of my gym locker.”

I forced myself not to shoot Kimberlee a nasty look, but I heard her clear her throat behind me.

Brynley looked back at the bag. “What’s this?” she asked, poking at the sticker.

I proceeded to get very interested in the wall to my left.

“‘I’m sorry’? That’s weird.” But she tossed the empty bag into the garbage without another word and stowed her shirt in her backpack with a smile.

I caught sight of Sera making her way toward the table and subtly stepped back so I wasn’t blocking the seat beside my tray. Because I’m supersmooth like that . . .

A few other people pulled things from the pile as she walked up—one from two years ago and one from just a few weeks before Kimberlee drowned. It was exciting to watch all the happy faces around me, and I tried not to be too obvious as I turned to watch Sera find her bag.

She sat staring at her skirt and shoes for a long time with no expression on her face at all while everyone else started digging into their food. Finally, when the din at the table settled, Sera said, “This is too creepy.”

“Why?” I tried to ask casually. “Someone’s conscience got to ’em.”

Sera shook her head. “No. I know who stole these and she didn’t have a conscience at all.” She addressed the whole table again. “You all remember Kimberlee.” It wasn’t a question.

Wilson snorted. “Who could forget
that
beyotch?”

I stared straight ahead, not daring to look at Kimberlee. She told me she hadn’t gotten caught, so how did Sera know?

“
She
stole these,” Sera said. “I saw her do it. But she never would ’fess.”

I tried to look as clueless as possible. “Kimberlee who?”

“Schaffer,” she said with a dismissive wave. “Before your time.”

“So, she reformed and gave you your stuff back?” I hoped it sounded like a natural—and uninformed—theory.

“Dude, she’s dead,” Wilson said.

“And good riddance,” Sera muttered into her pasta.

I stared at Sera in shock. This was
not
the reaction I’d expected. Sure, she could be annoying as hell, but I figured it was just because
I
wasn’t one of her friends. Hadn’t Kimberlee told me how wonderful her life was? How popular she was? Open dislike was hardly the way someone as popular as Kimberlee claimed to be should be treated.

Especially a dead someone.

I chanced a look around. Kimberlee was nowhere to be seen.

She didn’t show up again until I got into my car after school. And even then she slid silently into her place.

“Hey.”

“Let’s just go to the cave,” she replied shortly.

We made it to the beach, and I filled my backpack with bags for Monday and started packing two boxes to set me up for the rest of the week before she spoke again. “I probably shouldn’t have taken all this stuff,” she said, her admission echoing in the cave.

I paused for a moment, then resumed yanking on my backpack zipper. “It’s not really a ‘probably’ thing. You said you had
everything
. Why wasn’t that enough?”

She sat on a box and stared at the ground. “I tried not to, but I couldn’t stop. You don’t know what it’s like. What if I asked you to stop breathing, or eating—could you?”

“But it’s not breathing or eating, Kimberlee. It’s
stealing
.”

“Don’t you think I know that?” she snapped. “Don’t you think that every time I came up here with more stuff to file away I hated myself for it?”

“Could have fooled me,” I said, gesturing to the masses of boxes surrounding us.

She looked at me for a long time; not glaring, just studying me until I started to feel uncomfortable. “You think being a klepto means I
like
to steal stuff? I don’t. I hate stealing. I hate stealing more than anything in the entire world.”

“Then why didn’t you
stop
?”

“I couldn’t. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true. I tried so hard. I went, like, four months one time. Then one day, I was walking behind this lady at the mall, and she had this stupid little fluffy keychain on the strap of her purse. And I wanted it so badly I couldn’t think about anything else. I walked away. I went and sat on the water fountain and tried to think of anything except the keychain. And I started to shake. My whole body was, like, having convulsions. I was seriously afraid I was going to die if I didn’t find that woman and take her keychain.” She stared down at the ground, something that looked eerily like shame filling her face.

“So what happened?” I asked quietly.

“I found her and took the keychain,” she said as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “And I’ve never felt so good and so bad at the same time. I got this amazing high like I could conquer the world. But that was the moment that I knew I would never, ever conquer stealing.” She shrugged dejectedly. “I kinda gave up after that. There didn’t seem to be any point. I guess dying was the only way to stop.”

“I’m sorry.” But it felt like a stupid thing to say.

She shrugged. “My own fault for swimming out into that riptide.”

“We all make mistakes.”

“We don’t all die from them.”

“No, but some of us end up being miserable for the rest of our lives.” I paused for a moment, considering that. “Maybe that’s worse.”

“As opposed to being miserable for the rest of your afterlife?”

Something in her voice made me feel sorry for her, and it wasn’t a feeling I wanted to have. I needed to stay rational and in control here. Kimberlee was a veritable emotional steamroller and I was constantly in danger of getting myself flattened. I sat down beside her, but not close enough to touch. The cold, creepy feeling still freaked me out. “But it might not last too much longer. You return everything and apologize and you’ll be out of here . . . to . . . wherever.”

“It’ll be a good place, won’t it?” Kimberlee said, starting to smile now.

A little.

But I was so the wrong person to ask.

When in doubt, lie
. “Absolutely,” I said, without meeting her eyes.

“WAKE UP, LAZY ASS!”
Kimberlee shouted at about two-hours-before-rational-time o’clock the next morning. “It’s Harrison Hill day!”

“Sure,” I said, grabbing a pillow and dropping it on top of my head. “And in case you didn’t hear right, I’m going at ten o’clock
p.m
.”

“Duh. We have to go shopping now and get you something decent to wear.”

That cheered me up like a kick to the head. “Shopping? Uh, no.”

“Dude, I’ve seen what’s in your closet. Old tees and faded jeans. And Converse? Please!”

“Vintage,” I corrected her, defending my eclectic collection of shirts I’d very carefully selected from some of Phoenix’s finest thrift stores.

“Whatever. Not good enough for Harrison Hill. When you go to a school with uniforms, you make the most of any chance to actually show off your taste. This party will be a full-on fashion show and your clothes will totes stick out. And not in the good way.”

“I never stood out in Phoenix,” I grumbled, smooshing my face back into the pillow.

“This is not Phoenix.”

I mumbled something incoherent into my pillow.

She sat down on the bed, almost touching me, and I cringed. “This is your first chance to make a real impression on the social scene. You want to do it right.”

Sometimes Kimberlee does have a point. “Fine,” I said. “But nothing too wild. I don’t want to look like some kind of weird freak show, fashionable or not.”

“Absolutely,” Kimberlee promised. “We’ll go chic and elegant instead of cheap and flashy.”

Chic. Elegant. That sounded good. Good enough to drag myself out of bed and into a nice, hot shower.

I admit, I didn’t hurry. I lingered over the coffee and donuts that my dad had declared a new Saturday-morning tradition—I think it was his own little rebellion against Tina’s health-food espionage—and I really
needed
to see the end of some news show that was on. Current events, right? By the time I finally grabbed my keys, Kimberlee had been pacing and throwing me dirty looks for fifteen minutes.