Any Red-Blooded Girl (16 page)

Honestly, it was pretty ironic that Cal was
always talking about work, since as far as I could tell, he was
allergic to it—unless, of course, you counted driving the getaway
car. The truth was, Donny took all the risks. And now they’d forced
me into indentured servitude. The only thing Cal was good at was
pulling Donny’s puppet strings.

“This is what you’re after,” Cal said,
handing Donny an internet printout. On one side of the page was an
image, which I couldn’t see too clearly because of the way Donny
was holding the paper, and on the other side of the page was bold
black print that read: $599.

I gulped.

Donny studied the page for a few moments,
then stuffed it in his back pocket. “Be ready. This might get
tricky,” he warned Cal. “These are under glass, ya know.”

“I know,” Cal said. “But that’s the fun of
it, right?” He shot Donny an evil, mischievous grin.

“If you say so,” Donny agreed reluctantly.
“See ya in a few.” With the determination of a kamikaze, he
abandoned the safety of the SUV and stalked deliberately into the
face of danger.

And all I can say is, I was scared enough for
all of us. I mean, my heart was chugging away like a freight train
on an uphill track. Plus, I had to remind myself to breathe. But
the strange thing was—as hesitant as I am to admit it—the whole
stealing thing was kind of exciting. After all, we were
outlaws.

Now before anyone assumes I agree with what
the Goofball Goons were up to, let me assure you I do not. I’m
totally anti-theft. One hundred percent. But I wasn’t on this
little outing voluntarily; I was kidnapped. And I couldn’t help
feeling the rush of exhilaration that comes from doing something
naughty and hoping to get away with it.

“Keep that on,” Cal ordered, the second he
heard my seatbelt unclick. “Trust me, this ain’t gonna take long.
And if there’s any trouble, I might have to perform some evasive
maneuvers.”

Evasive maneuvers? He must have gotten that
phrase from TV. Still, I followed his directions and re-buckled,
since the last thing I wanted to do was perish in a police chase
without first professing my undying love to Mick one last time.
Damn,
I missed him.

“What time is it?” I asked.

“Nine fifty-five.”

Good. It was still early, which meant my
parents probably hadn’t even discovered I was missing yet—unless,
of course, Mick had come looking for me.

“So after this I just return that thing or
whatever?” I asked optimistically. “Then we’re done?”

“Depends,” Cal said.

“On what?”

“On whether you can keep your mouth shut. We
can’t have you blabbing the details of our operation to
anyone,
” he said. “Got it?”

“I swear, I won’t. I won’t say a thing,” I
promised. “I…I don’t want to get in any trouble.”

“That’s the right attitude. You’re cooler
than we thought, you know. For once, Mick was right about
something.
”

I
so
wanted to jump to Mick’s defense,
to drill into Cal the Creeper’s pea brain that Mick was his
superior and always would be. But I bit my tongue; I kept my big,
fat mouth shut and my eyes on the bigger prize: freedom. Because if
I could just get through the next hour or two with these idiots,
this whole ugly mess would be over—or so I hoped anyway.

“There he is,” I spat. While Cal fiddled with
the radio dials, Donny coolly strolled in our direction with a box
tucked under his arm. “There’s Donny,” I repeated louder.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Cal said, in a tone that
suggested I was an overreacting nag. Then he cranked up the engine
and cruised alongside Donny at the edge of the parking lot.

“Change of plans,” Donny said, as he hopped
into the passenger seat. And the weird thing was, he sounded kind
of out of breath, which I never would have guessed by the casual
way he’d exited the store.

Donny shoved the box at me sideways between
the seats. It was another Blu-ray player. Maybe even the same one
they’d made me fake-return before.

“What about the camera?” Cal asked, peeling
out of the parking lot so fast he almost wiped out a stop sign in
the process.
Evasive maneuver,
I guess. “That was worth like
twice as much as we’re gonna get now,” he complained.

Donny sighed. “I’ll get it next time. The
bitch behind the counter wouldn’t take her eyes off me,” he
explained. “There was no opportunity.”

“How do you steal all this stuff anyway?” I
asked, amazed he’d made off with anything at all. I mean, a free
Blu-ray player was a pretty big score in my universe.

“Trade secret,” Cal muttered.

“Two words: human error,” Donny said with
authority. “They can have all the security devices and cameras and
whatever else they want, but we get away with stuff because people
make mistakes. And that’s never gonna change. People’ll always make
mistakes, and we’ll always be there to take advantage of ’em.”

Wow. Donny’s explanation made total sense. I
mean, it was probably the most logical string of thoughts he’d put
together in his whole life. Too bad his insight was limited to
criminal endeavors. Because I was beginning to think that, even
though he was clearly no Mick Donovan, there was a miniscule chance
Donny could be saved from himself. Maybe. If he wanted to be.

Eighteen

WE drove for about another forty-five minutes
before Cal pulled off the road to set the stage for part two of the
day’s plan. And this time we’d stopped at a McDonald’s, which was a
great relief since I desperately needed to pee.

Cal tucked the SUV in behind a dumpster and
shut it down. “Whadda you guys wanna eat?” he asked. “You’ve both
been seen already, so you should keep a low profile.”

“I have to use the bathroom,” I interjected.
“Like
now
.”

I whipped off my seatbelt, threw open the
door, and sprinted toward Mickey D’s. And as I burst into the
grungy ladies’ room, an amusing thought occurred to me: I was in
love with Mickey D.
Mick Donovan.
I could already see how
the coincidence might lead to some humorous misunderstandings, or,
at the very least, some lowbrow entertainment. So for however long
it took me to empty my bladder (which seemed like about a week, by
the way), I dreamt up funny Mickey D sayings I could add to the
graffiti that already littered the stall—if I only had a pen.

And when I finally exited the bathroom, the
Goofball Goons were right there in the narrow hallway, poised to
pounce on me. “What’re you tryin’ to do, get us caught?” Cal
rumbled under his breath. “
We
make the decisions. Got it?”
He reached for my arm, like he was going to drag me from Mickey D’s
by force. But I pulled back before he even laid a finger on me.

“Should I have peed my pants?” I asked
sarcastically.

“No. But we have procedures. We operate below
the radar,” Cal said. “You’re gonna get us all nailed if you can’t
follow simple directions.”

“He’s right, you know,” Donny agreed.

“Fine. Get me a chocolate shake. I’ll be in
the car.” Sheesh, for supposedly bad-ass criminals, these guys sure
got jittery over the tiniest things. I mean, give me a break.

I returned to the SUV for a few good minutes
of pouting before the Goofball Goons showed their faces again. And
to be honest, the whole drag-Flora-along-on-a-crime-spree thing was
starting to get on my nerves. Because if something didn’t
change—and fast—I was going to miss my last opportunity to see Mick
for God only knew how long.

“Here,” Cal said, thrusting the shake at
me.

I smiled real bitchy, so he’d know my
patience was wearing thin. “Thanks a lot,” I snipped. After all,
there was only so much nonsense I could take from these idiots. If
it weren’t for the fact that they were Mick’s cousins, I would’ve
made an incredible escape by now for sure. But as crazy as this
sounds, I wanted to impress Donny and Cal; I wanted them to like
me. I guess I thought that if
they
liked me, maybe Mick
would keep liking me too. You know, the whole
blood-is-thicker-than-water thing. I didn’t want to be the water; I
wanted to be the blood.

With a sick sucking sound that just about
gagged me, Donny slurped up the end of whatever he was drinking.
“So who’s on package duty?” he asked Cal, when the last possible
drop of liquid had passed his lips.

“You and Flora.”

“Package duty?” I asked.

“Somebody’s gotta prep the box for return,”
Cal explained. “Take out the merchandise. Replace it with a decoy.
Wrap it back up again, nice and neat.”

“Why us?” Donny complained.

“’Cause I’m logistics, remember?” Cal said,
like it should have been obvious. “And you guys are labor.”

Well, that seemed right—at least the part about
Cal
not
being labor, that was. “Come on, Donny,” I said,
rolling my eyes. “Let’s get this over with.”

At the back of the SUV, Donny and I began
“package duty” by weighing the stolen Blu-ray player on a postal
scale. Then Donny carefully slit the box open with a razor knife
and removed the contents. I could tell by his skill and speed that
he’d performed the operation many times before, probably
every
time the Goofball Goons had run this particular
scam.

As for me,
my
job was to re-pack the
Blu-ray player in a plain cardboard box for shipping to an
unsuspecting eBay customer. And while I did that, Donny filled the
original box back up with bricks and Styrofoam peanuts, pausing
occasionally to weigh the thing as he went along. I guess the
closer he got to the original weight of the box, the smaller the
chance that anyone behind the returns counter would get
suspicious.

“You can do this part,” he said, handing me a
big roll of clear tape. “I’m not that good at getting it on
straight.”

He chuckled a little, probably at his
supposed impairment. But
I
laughed at him saying
getting
it on straight
. How mature.

As precisely as possible, I stuck a new layer
of tape over the old one and asked, “How’s this?”

Donny squinted. “Good,” he said. “I think
we’re done.” He shifted the real Blu-ray player to a safe spot,
thrust the decoy at me, and slammed the tailgate shut.

And that’s when it first hit me that I was
about to knowingly commit a crime. I mean, sure, I could claim I’d
been influenced, coerced, threatened—all of which was technically
true. But
I
knew I was making a choice. And the strange
thing was, the stealing didn’t really bother me that much. After
all, I’d already done it once, even though I hadn’t known I was
committing a crime at the time. It was a genius move by the
Goofball Goons, really: They’d desensitized me to criminal
activity.

But even though I was kind of desensitized, I
was still super nervous. A million times more nervous than before.
Because for the most part, I’m a pretty sucky liar. So pulling off
a crime without giving myself away was bound to be a monumental
challenge. And before I was ready, of course, Cal tripped the
blinker and whipped into the Garett’s Department Store lot.

“Garett’s again?” I asked. The idea made me
squirm.

“Yep,” Cal said. “Ready?”

Right at the curb, he stopped to let me out.
“But…isn’t this stupid?” I complained. “The same store twice in one
day?” As far as I was concerned, I’d already tested my luck enough
with Garett’s.

“It’s a different store,” Donny pointed out.
“We’re over two hours from where we were this morning.”

Okay, I’d give him
that
. It wasn’t the
exact
same store. But it was still the same chain. They
couldn’t be so lax about security that I’d slip through the cracks
again, could they?

“What if I get caught?” I asked.

Cal huffed, “You won’t. Just play it like you
did before. Now get out of here. You’re drawing attention to
us.”

I took a deep breath, hopped out of the SUV,
and dragged the box out behind me. And as I bumped the door shut
with my hip, Cal pulled away from the curb, leaving me naked,
exposed, transparent, as if my private thoughts were scrawled
across my forehead in permanent marker. Everything about me
screamed: I am a liar. I am a criminal. Don’t trust me.

Still…

I stepped through the automatic doors and
slowly proceeded to the returns counter, where I waited in line
behind a plump young woman returning a defective vacuum cleaner.
From her shopping cart, her baby goo-gooed and ga-gaed at me,
which, I must say, made me feel like a total creeper. I mean, what
kind of poor excuse for a human being would even consider doing
what I was preparing to do anyway?

The good thing about the wait, though, was
that it gave me an opportunity to size up the returns clerk. And
even though the guy was no sweet, old grandma, he looked pleasant
enough and sort of dopey, which almost always worked to my
advantage. I could only hope my experience with him would be
painless, lucrative, and exceedingly brief. Because honest to God,
I felt like I was about to hurl.

“Hello. How may I help you?” the returns guy
asked, as I stepped up to the plate.

“Hi…uh…I need to return this,” I sputtered,
sliding the box across the counter.

“Do you have the sales receipt?”

“Oh, yes,” I lied. “Hold on.” I patted my
hips, like the nonexistent paper was just going to pop out of my
pocket and save the day. “Shoot,” I said, frowning. “I must’ve left
it at home. Is that a problem?”

The guy was unreadable. Honestly, I couldn’t
tell if he was buying my feeble acting job, or he was onto me. “It
would be better if you had it,” he said flatly. “But sometimes we
can make exceptions—in certain cases.”

“That’d be great!” I gushed, like I assumed
my
case would qualify.

“What’s the problem with this, um, Blu-ray
disc player?” he asked.