The Thief (7 page)

Tailor turned and adjusted his glasses,
focusing on Mac. “And why exactly were you wandering around in the
hall, Dupree? What excuse did you cook up so that you could play
white knight?”

Muffled chuckles from other students around
the room. A flush crept up Mac’s neck. “Uh...that is...”

“
Oh just sit down already,”
Tailor groaned. “I don’t have time for this.”

Mac slid meekly into a desk near the front,
next to a tall boy with dark hair that covered his eyes, who
slipped him a piece of paper when Tailor turned to Camille.

She was still standing just inside the door,
shoulderbag slung across her back, hands stuffed into the front
pocket of her hoodie. She met his scrutiny with a bland expression
and his eyes narrowed.

“
That makes you Teague,” he
said with distaste.

She shrugged.

“
Do you speak?” Tailor
asked.

“
Sometimes.”

“
What sort of accent is
that?”

“
Mine.”

Someone in the room snickered, but a quick
glare from Tailor silenced the room. “I love clever students,” he
said dryly. “They get to sit up front where I can keep a nice,
close eye on them.” He pointed to an empty desk.

That was the first hint of discomfort I saw
from her, as she slid into the desk, metal bracer clinking against
the plastic. Did she not like being up front?

“
Alright, unless any more
mid-semester students are joining our class today – ” Mr. Tailor
picked up his thick, heavily sticky-noted notebook, glanced at it,
and dropped back onto his wood desk with a resounding plop – “no,
those were the only ones, so now we can actually get something
done.”

Mid-semester or not, that
was unfair. It wasn’t like I’d done it on purpose. But my cheeks
still flushed. I couldn’t see Camille’s face up at the front of the
room, but I learned she was left-handed by the way she somewhat
awkwardly situated herself to take notes in a right-handed desk. I
bent to retrieve my notebook and pencil from my bag, and tried to
use the opportunity to sneak a glance at some of my other
classmates. Though only a cursory look, it was clear that the
beautiful people lived in the back left corner, furthest from the
door. There was a blonde girl who had the looks and posture of a
model, another girl who was a brunette but otherwise matched her,
and two guys sitting against the back wall. One had tousled brown
hair that made him look like he’d just woken up, so therefore had
probably been styled within an inch of its life; he was staring out
the window with his chin in his hand, looking bored to tears. The
fourth was
him
.
The guy from the atrium was twirling his pencil in his fingers,
apparently paying far more attention than the other three combined
as Mr. Tailor talked about the social norms of Elizabethan England
that informed the opening act of
A
Midsummer Night’s Dream.
I continued to
rummage in my bag as a pretense to keep staring surreptitiously.
Maybe my initial impression had been wrong. He was actually far
plainer than the other three. When I considered him separately,
nothing about him actually stood out, despite the fact that he was
Asian.

His eyes flicked to mine, and he winked.

I straightened up in a
flash. My hands were uncommonly steady as I opened my notebook and
found a clean page to take notes, but my brain was endlessly
repeating
what was that?
What was that? What was that?

Plain? No. No, certainly not. I couldn’t
believe that had even crossed my mind. I kept flashing back to his
almond-shaped eyes as they locked onto mine for that brief instant,
and my heart constricted.

Oh crap.

I didn’t think I heard any of the rest of
the lecture, but apparently my right hand could take notes
separately from my brain, because when the bell rang I had a full
three pages of scribbling about Demetrius and Hermia’s parallels to
– I balked at my own handwriting – Romeo and Juliet? How had I
missed the mention of my namesake? I sighed and hoisted my bag over
my shoulder.

Mac approached with his tall friend behind
him. He had the grace to look sheepish this time. “Sorry, that
probably wasn’t the best intro ever.”

“
Well,” I said, “I survived,
I guess.” Boy, did I sound positive. I glanced fearfully at Mr.
Tailor, but he was focused on Camille collecting her belongings,
like she would steal something if he looked away. Teachers around
here seemed to really not like her...

“
We have chemistry with Ms.
Miller next,” Mac explained, bringing my attention back to him.
“She’s way nicer,” he said in an undertone. “The labs are down in
the basement, did you want us to show you where? Oh, this is
Destin,” he introduced his friend, the tall, lanky boy with dusky
cinnamon-colored skin and overlong bangs. He gave an awkward
wave.

A slender arm looped through
mine. I looked in shock at the girl who’d moved up next to me; it
was the blonde Model, with her matching friend in tow. “Let me save
you the embarrassment,” she told me condescendingly, drawing a
circle in the air around Mac and Destin with her finger. “This is a
girl-free zone. Come on,
we’ll
show you where chemistry is.” She pulled me away
before I could say another word. We passed Camille on the way out
of the room and her brow creased slightly, noting my unexpected
change in escort.

The Model weaved us expertly through the
crowd of students changing classes. Some people even seemed to get
out of the way for her. “Sorry about my little brother,” she said,
in a melodious voice.

Her friend, on my other side, added, “He’s
like a puppy that just won’t grow out of being a puppy.” She had an
accent I couldn’t quite place - French, maybe?

“
He sees new people and he
just has to latch onto them,” said the Model.

Aren’t you the one latched
onto my arm?
I thought, but I’d never say
that. Beautiful people never talked to me. They certainly never
fought for my attention. This was arguably the most bizarre day of
my life.

“
Mac is your brother?” I
asked. I suppose I could see the resemblance. The wavy blonde hair.
Something about the nose.

“
Too late to deny it,” she
sighed dramatically. “I’m Hayley, by the way. Hayley Dupree. This
is Amity Clairmont,” she introduced her friend on my other side.
“You certainly made an impression on Tailor. Are you
acquainted?”

I was having trouble paying attention
simultaneously to the conversation and the stairs we were
descending. Tripping would be very bad. “Um, no, I’ve never seen
him before.”

“
That’s interesting,” she
said. “I missed your name when you came in. Julia, was
it?”

“
Jul,” I said.
“Graham.”

“
Graham,” she lit on the
name, like she’d been waiting for me to say it. “You aren’t related
to Bea Graham, are you?”

I couldn’t shake the feeling this exchange
had been rehearsed. “Um, yes. She’s my grandmother.”

“
That’s right, I think I
heard you might be moving down here,” she said. “Is it true your
father was kidnapped? That’s so horrible, it doesn’t seem like
something that would happen in real life.”

The air around us had gotten cooler as we
exited the stairwell. This had to be the basement level. Though the
hall was just as long as it was upstairs, there were only a handful
of doors. The classrooms here had to be quite large. Hayley and
Amity led me down the hall. A couple of other students trickled in
behind us.

“
It’s um...I don’t...the
police are still investigating, and...”

“
Hmm,” she said, in
disappointment. “There’s been so much gossip flying around and I
wanted to know the real story. I’ve known old Ms. Graham my whole
life, but she’s a pretty private lady, you know. I mean she lives
just down the road, but the only person she’ll talk to is Mac when
he cuts her grass, or if you go to the library. And honestly, who
uses libraries anymore?”

I went to the library constantly. Most days
it felt like the only place that was real.

“
Well, here it is,” she
said, finally releasing my arm and opening a door labeled
B-2.

Inside, a woman in a white lab coat with
long, frizzy red hair tied back in a braid hunched over a table of
experiment materials, carefully dosing them out. A cabinet of
ingredients stood open at the back of the room. She looked up at
our arrival, and nearly dropped the beaker she was holding.

Yet another adult shocked by the sight of
me.

“
Kyra?” she
gasped.

“
Um, Jul,” I said. “Jul
Graham?”

With a nervous laugh, she put a hand to her
chest. “Oh! Oh, yes, of course! I should have known, I’m sorry.
They did tell me you were coming. You must hear it all the time,
but you look exactly like your mother. It’s uncanny.”

I blinked. My... “I didn’t know that,” I
murmured.

No one mentioned my mother.
No one
ever
mentioned my mother. Dad went into a rage if you even got
close to the topic...

“
I went to high school with
her. Simon and John too,” Ms. Miller explained, in a pronounced
southern accent. “The last time I saw her, she was about your age,
so, you can imagine it’s a little like seeing a ghost. I see the
difference now, though. Something about the eyes. And you’re
taller, I guess. Hayley, would you be a dear and pass out these
instructions?” She handed her a stack of papers.

Hayley’s immediate reaction was disdain, but
she forced her face into an acquiescing smile. “Sure thing,” she
said, moving to lay them out on the several two-person lab
tables.

“
Thank you. Oh, I’m
Charlotte Miller, I should have said. This is chemistry,” she said,
with a sweeping gesture. “I also teach theatre, if you end up
taking that. How has your morning been? Not too bad, I
hope?”

“
She got Tailor’d,” said a
familiar voice.

I turned; Mac and Destin had entered. His
enthusiasm had tempered in the interim.

Ms. Miller huffed, one hand going to her
waist. “I told him not to do that to new students.”

“
I think he was
just...um...surprised, is all,” I said.

“
Hmm, that’s probably true,”
she mused. “He and Kyra never did get along. Ah, and here’s
Camille,” she said, smiling as the foreign girl entered the
room.

I’d never seen anyone look simultaneously
lost and calm, but Camille managed it. When her eyes lit on Ms.
Miller she seemed to recognize she was in the right place.

“
I hope you don’t mind, but
I think new people should stick together, so I’ve put you at an
empty lab table together,” Ms. Miller said, pointing toward a table
near the back. “Across from Hayley, there. Will that
do?”

“
Um, sure,” I said. Camille
shrugged.

“
Go get settled in, we’re
just waiting on a few stragglers,” Ms. Miller said.

Camille and I made our way to the back of
the room. Our table was in the middle of three rows of two-person
lab tables. Hayley and Amity were already seated at their table
next to us. Mac and Destin apparently had a table up front.

Hayley turned her chair towards me,
apparently not done with her interrogation. She ignored Camille
entirely; the foreign girl was hunched over a notepad, scribbling
aimlessly in one corner.

“
So you’re from New York?”
Hayley asked. “You must know where all the good stores
are.”

“
Not really,” I
admitted.

“
Oh.” She made a delicate
frown. “How about plays? Do you see many of those?”

I shook my head.

“
You live in New York and
you don’t see plays?” she exclaimed. “Isn’t that the whole point?”
She gave me a look of suspicion. “You’re not one of those people
who sit inside and play video games all day are you?”

“
No...” Without a computer
or a game console, that would be difficult.

“
Hmm,” she intoned, like I’d
still somehow failed a test. She looked up; her face immediately
brightened. “Kei, did you find it?”

It was Him. The guy from the atrium and the
bored guy with the overstyled hair had come in. My face flushed and
I reflexively became very interested in the experiment instructions
on my desk.

“
Find what?” he said. They
sat at the table behind Hayley and Amity. The girls turned around
to face them.

“
Keiiii, you said you were
going to help me find my bracelet,” Hayley pressed
coyly.

His name was Kei. My heart gave an awkward
lurch. “Oh that?” he said offhand. “Completely forgot. I wanted
coffee so I went to the teachers’ lounge.”

“
If they ever catch you
you’ll be done for,” Hayley admonished. “But I’m really worried
about my bracelet.”

“
What if someone stole it?”
Amity added.

“
Rhys, make him help us find
it,” Hayley told the other boy.

“
I can’t make him do
anything, you know that,” he said flatly, filling in lines on the
worksheet.

“
I’m sure he wishes he
could,” Kei said.

“
The world would be a much
quieter, less annoying place,” Rhys grumbled. Was he writing in the
answers? We hadn’t even started the experiment yet...