Pretty Crooked (15 page)

Be ice
, Tre had said. You had to have a martial-arts Zen kind of attitude to pull this stuff off. This was hard to do when one’s heart felt like a monkey on a pooflinging rampage.

I tried to watch the video. All I could feel was the blood rushing around in my head and chest. It felt like I was drowning in my own body.

The toe of Nikki’s boot struck my calf. She was kicking me to get my attention. I turned to her. Her face was twisted into a frown.

She saw. She knows. Oh my God, what do I do
?

What she said came out in slow motion, like the scene in a movie where a boxer is hit and going down—all the sounds and movements warped by my addled brain.

“This class blows,” she whispered.

“Yeah, totally,” I practically shouted in relief.

“Mademoiselles,
attention
!” Bruning hissed.

I heaved a quiet sigh, trying to release my shakiness by the lungful. Then I sat back in my seat so I could pay attention—or at least fake it for the rest of the period.

All day I was hyperaware of the notebook in my bag, but I waited until after school, when I’d safely made it to the Mountainside Galleria, to look at it again. In the first ladies’ room I could find, I dove behind a closed stall door and pulled out the bills to count them. Four hundred bucks. I stared at them in disbelief. That was a lot of latte money to be carrying around. I folded the bills into my cookie purse and stuffed it into the backpack.

I came out in front of the sink and splashed some water on my face. Then I reapplied my lip gloss, taking my time. I wanted to do this right. I didn’t want to rush. A beautiful woman in a camel trench coat came into the bathroom with her toddler daughter, who was grasping a Mylar balloon. I turned around to smile at them and then looked back at myself in the mirror and thought,
I definitely don’t look like a thief right now
.
Thieves don’t smile at strangers. Thieves don’t wear Tickle Me Pink lip stain
.

I wasn’t just a thief, I reminded myself. I was an equalizer, and I was about to make some things right.

I swung the backpack over my arms and stepped out into the mall. I’d picked a different one than the one I usually went to, so as not to risk running into Kellie and Nikki. This mall was twelve miles away and all indoors, lined with marble tile, the whole atrium cool and caged in glass. The splashing of fountains mingled with the hushed voices of shoppers and new agey flute music. The air smelled like new clothes and rosebuds, though
the occasional palm tree was there to remind you of the desert outside.

I circled around past Tiffany, and L’Occitane, and a fancy jeans boutique, following the mall walkway until it opened up into the mouth of Saks Fifth Avenue. This was my destination. As I neared the glowing entrance, I imagined Mary and Sierra and Alicia were with me, and I felt as high as if I’d sucked down five bags of Skittles.

I practically skipped in, brushing past displays of resortwear bikinis and maternity clothes. A saleswoman adjusting a display of scarves smiled at me. I was headed for the “Contemporary” department, when one of the faceless alabaster mannequins caught my eye. It was draped in a gold shirred minidress with a deep neckline and a matching belt. It looked like something either a disco goddess or an alien princess would wear, wild and luxurious, and very bold.

I found it on the rack in my size and draped it over my arm, along with a strapless purple dress with a tulle skirt and a few tops. A saleswoman with brassy yellow hair and multiple strands of pearls guided me into the dressing room.

“Let me know if you need any help, dear,” she said, hanging up the items before leaving me alone.

I wriggled out of my jacket and dress and tried on the tops and the purple dress first. They were okay, perfectly fine for any other occasion, but they wouldn’t wow you, even if they did come in a mysterious packet
from a stranger. You’d be like,
Nice shirt. But why is this on my doorstep
? I needed something hot enough that the person getting it wouldn’t care where it came from.

That would be the gold dress. It was a knockout—sexy and chic and stunning all at once. I ran my hands over the fine fabric, feeling its weight.

“Fabulous,” the saleslady said.

I nodded into the mirror. It
was
fabulous. It would look perfect on Mary. She’d probably never had a dress like this before. To Nikki it would have been just another piece of fabric hanging in her closet, but to Mary it would be something to treasure, a life-changer of an outfit.

Two dressing rooms down, a door opened. Behind it was Morgan Whitney, a girl from Valley Prep who was rumored to have been the heir to the founder of a large oil corporation, at least according to Cherise. With her sharply angled face and large ears, she was not particularly beautiful, but she made skinny-and-rich work for her. She was trying on a pair of jeans, and she pulled the waistband away from her tiny waist, below which her hipbones were jutting out.

“Too big,” she pouted.

A petite middle-aged woman carrying a Birkin bag—by all appearances her mother—said, “I’ll go back and get you the zero.”

“Make the lady get it, Mom,” Morgan commanded. “That’s what she’s
paid
for, isn’t it?”

She must have caught me staring because she looked
in my direction. Out of instinct more than anything else, I smiled at her. She was a senior and part of the older branch of the Glitterati—she had been at Nikki’s party the other night, and I’d talked to her briefly in the kitchen, though she’d been pretty drunk.

She squinted at me. “Do I
know
you?”

“No,” I said, smiling, and slipped back inside my dressing room to change back into my own clothes. A few months ago it might have bothered me that Morgan Whitney didn’t recognize me. Now it was proof that I was doing the right thing.

Some of the streetlights were just flicking on as I pulled my bike into Mary’s apartment complex in Maryvale. In class, my Comp teacher had been trying to explain the “gloaming,” and I was pretty sure this was it, the time of day before dusk decides it’s really night. The palm trees rustled together in the slight Arizona evening breeze. Outside, on some of the balconies, laundry swayed like flags. This was technically the bad side of town, and I’d noticed more graffiti creeping up the buildings, more litter on the street as I rode in.

I looked around to see if anyone had seen me but there were no cars going by, and nobody on foot. Just me, and the crazy thing I was about to do. My hands shook as I leaned my bike against the back wall of the building. There wasn’t time to lock it properly—I had to move quick to escape detection.

I may as well have been carrying a bomb in my school-bag. But it was just a neat little package with the tissue paper the saleslady had used to wrap up my purchases: the dress, and a matching gold necklace with a delicate tassel. I’d learned from Kellie that a shiny piece like the dress only needed a tiny bit of embellishment, otherwise I risked overaccessorizing. For that little bit of wisdom, at least, I could’ve thanked her.

I’d included a note I pasted from cutout magazine letters. Slightly psycho, I admit, but I had to play it safe. It said simply, “A gift for you.”

According to Whitepages.com, I was looking for 48C. I scanned the numbers, looking for any visible signs of Mary. The apartment was the fifth one down on the left-hand side, just one unit from the end, where there was a covered staircase leading to the upper level.

One, two, three
. I pounced lightly, trying to be quiet on my feet, and quickly set the package down on the front mat. I took a breath. I could hear a TV blaring from inside the apartment, and the smell of dinner wafted out, onions and meat and pepper.

Insides churning, I rang the doorbell, then made a mad dash for the staircase, pressing myself against the adobe wall so that I was cloaked in the shadows. I breathed hard, and it occurred to me that I’d done something like this before: the ding-dong ditch game the kids played in Searchlight. We were in third grade and our objective was to mess with the cranky old lady who lived
on our block. She’d step out onto her stoop and yell at us down the street. This version would have a much nicer ending, I hoped.

C’mon, c’mon
. I looked at my watch and wondered if I was going to have to go back and ring the doorbell again. Maybe the TV was on too loudly and they hadn’t heard. Maybe the doorbell was broken.

But then the door opened, and I saw Mary poke her head out. She looked around before her eyes dipped down and noticed the package. She stuck out her bottom lip, eyeing it, then picked it up and went back inside.

Score
.

I wanted to wait longer and see if I could hear or see something more, like her reaction, maybe. But it was too risky now and I needed to get home. The package was in her hands. That was the important thing.

On the ride back, I practically hugged myself with excitement. What was Mary going to think? I could
not
wait to see what happened at school!

By the time I pulled into the driveway, it was nearing seven o’clock, and some of the lights were on inside my house, so I assumed my mom was home.

Act natural
, I thought, as I dismounted the bike in the garage and walked in through the laundry room. I was not a very good liar. In fact, every time I’d ever tried to lie to my mom, whether it was about a failed quiz or a lost scarf, she could see right through me. One time
I’d tried to cover up the fact that I’d broken a zipper on a jacket I borrowed, but I couldn’t get it past her. “Give it up, Willa,” she’d said, and I’d relented, showing her the damage. She always knew. That’s why it had been so hard to hide all the clothes I’d been buying.

Lying
, she liked to say,
is poison in a relationship
.

This was different, though. I knew instinctually that she wasn’t going to get what I was doing, but I couldn’t let that stop me.

That’s why I had an excuse prepared in case she asked where I’d been—I was hanging out with Cherise. I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this, though. For one thing, my alibi could not be corroborated: Cherise had left school early to visit her brother at Cornell. For another, I felt a goofy nervous smile coming on, lurking just beneath the surface. In my delirious, postthieving state, I was in no shape to be lying. How did real criminals pull this shiz off?

“Mom?” I called out tentatively.

Nothing. Maybe I was lucky and she was out, though it was odd for her to leave the lights on—ordinarily she was an eco-fascist about that sort of stuff. No note, either, I saw as I traipsed into the kitchen. I had to assume she’d stepped out for a minute and would be back soon.

I got myself dinner out of the freezer, microwaved a few tamales, and sat down to eat. Then I went to my room and did some homework, like it was any other
night, trying to stay focused on the task at hand, even though my mind was racing.

By eleven she still wasn’t home, so I went to bed. I stared up at the ceiling and replayed the last several hours carefully in my mind. Had anyone seen me doing anything weird? Had the lady at the store looked at me funny? No and no. Nothing at all had given me a reason to pause. In fact, the whole thing had gone so smoothly, so easily, it was like this was exactly what I was supposed to be doing. Maybe this was my true calling.

My body pulsed with restless energy and I didn’t think I was going to be able to fall asleep, but I must have drifted off at some point.

Sometime in the middle of the night, I thought I heard the sound of my door opening. In the cone of light swept in from the hall, I could see that my mom was standing over me, wearing her denim jacket and carrying her purse.

“Mom? What are you doing?” I asked, half-asleep.

“Nothing,” she said. She had a faint smile on her face, but it was a sad, regretful sort of expression, like she was dreaming herself. She touched my forehead gently with two fingers, tracing a line across my eyebrows. “I just wanted to check in on you. Go back to sleep.”

I watched as she stepped out into the hallway, melting into the shadows, and I heard the whisper of the door dragging over the carpet.

I thought I must have dreamt it, because it was so
strange to see her like that, and because I was so swept up in other dreams—wonderful, undulating, colorful dreams that pulled me back down with them into the mattress and the dark.

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE BREADSTICK ON my plastic tray seemed to form a finger of blame, and it was pointing in my direction. Or maybe that was just my state of mind as I stared down at it.

I hadn’t seen Nikki all day but I knew I was going to have to face her sooner or later, and this lunch period was a very probable “sooner.” Surely by now she’d noticed something, and I’d have to confess. I just didn’t think I could flat-out lie like that—not to her face, not in the middle of the dining hall.

Somehow, the high I’d felt after my Friday escapade had dissolved into serious misgivings over the weekend. And now I was convinced it had all been a terrible mistake. I’d spent Saturday and Sunday at home, ignoring my phone, and feeling increasingly freaked out as a mixture of doubt and guilt set in. It was like the ectoplasm in a horror movie, oozing under the door and coating my
shoes to trap me. I knew I would never get away with what I’d done, and even if I got away with it this one time, I couldn’t pull it off again. So what was the point? One dress could hardly save the world.

Of course I couldn’t tell Cherise any of the things that were on my mind, so I sat there listening distractedly as she talked about her weekend.

“Oh my God, can I just tell you that the guys at my brother’s school were total hotness?” Cherise smiled dazzlingly as she sliced into the sashimi on her plate. “You
have
to come with me next time, Willa. Maybe winter break.”

“Sounds fun.” And it did. Or it would have, if I wasn’t fairly sure I’d be suspended from school by then.