Life After Theft (13 page)

“Not a problem,” I whispered to the empty space.

I WENT TO THE CAVE BY MYSELF
that afternoon; Kimberlee hadn’t shown her face since our bathroom run-in with Khail. It was the first time I’d been there alone. Annoying or not, Kimberlee’s yapping had made the beach feel more . . .
alive
. Now it was too quiet and more than a little creepy. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a seagull swooped low and let out a piercing caw. Today it was easy to imagine someone dying here. It felt lonely and empty. I wondered how much time Kimberlee had spent down here by herself when she was alive, and if she had felt lonely and empty too.

I climbed into the cave and blinked in the darkness. The never-ending boxes stared back. As I gathered a bunch of bags from a box simply marked
Whitestone
, I was nearly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of my task.

I couldn’t keep doing things this way. We’d scarcely begun and I’d already been caught once. No one was going to believe I had to piss that much, and eventually someone was going to realize I was doing something sneaky.

But what else was I supposed to do? I’d agreed to help and even if I didn’t have the threat of a crazy ghost hanging over me, I had to admit, it was kind of nice giving stuff back to people. It made them happy.

Well, except Sera.

And Khail.

But even he seemed pleased to actually have his stuff back. A hat and silk boxers. Now
that
was a story I wished I knew.

Still, at this rate, I was going to graduate from
college
before I got everything done.

When I got home I poked my head through the garage door and checked for any signs of life before speed-walking through the kitchen, my arms loaded with stolen stuff, and hurrying up the stairs to my room. I managed to only drop two bags while I tried to get my bedroom door open. I swore under my breath and kicked them into my room, hoping they didn’t contain anything too fragile.

Kimberlee was sitting on one of the ginormous beanbags I got for Christmas. I tell you, it’s the weirdest thing to see someone sitting in a beanbag without making a dent. At all. And why didn’t she just sink right through it? Or right through my floor, for that matter? The physics of Kimberlee’s ghostliness continued to elude me. But then, what about Kimberlee
did
make sense? Ever?

My knee-jerk reaction was to demand an explanation, or maybe give her a sarcastic greeting after being ditched all day, but I remembered the way she’d sobbed in the bathroom and settled for a quiet “Hi” instead. I stashed the stuff in a corner of my closet and closed the door before turning to face her. “You okay?”

“Yeah, of course,” Kimberlee said, sounding completely emotionless.

I was silent, waiting for her to say . . . I don’t know. Something. “So,” I finally blurted, “crazy day, huh?”

She just raised one eyebrow and shrugged.

I sat down on the bed and began unlacing my Docs. “Come on. You don’t get to have a scene like that with Khail, disappear for the whole afternoon, and then just shrug. What’s up with you and Khail?”

“Nothing,” Kimberlee said flatly. “There is absolutely nothing between us.”

“Well, not anymore. But—”

“There wasn’t anything between us in life, either.”

“Oh please. He hates you; you hate him—unless you want to claim you hated everyone in life then there is def—”

“I don’t hate him,” Kimberlee said. Her voice still had that eerie, flat tone. “I just can’t stand to be around him.”

Oh
. Now I got it. “You
liked
him?”

She swallowed. Answer enough.

“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “So you liked him and then you died. Is that it?”

“Basically.”

Basically my ass
. “So why does he hate
you
?”

“Because I’m a bitch,” she said simply, as though it were the most obvious answer in the world.

“Come on,” I said, trying to look her in the eyes. “You have no one to talk to except me and I can’t tell anyone in the world about you.”

“Except Khail.”

I bit back a sharp retort. “Except Khail, who I hope to never speak to again lest I die young. So spill.”

“I liked him, I tried to get with him, he rejected me, and I . . .” She rolled her eyes and I couldn’t tell if it was because she didn’t believe what she was saying, or because she couldn’t believe she was saying it. “I reacted badly.”

“What do you mean, badly?”

“I was mean to him. I kinda held some stuff over his head; I picked on his sister,” she snapped. “I am a spiteful, terrible person, okay? There, I said it. Happy?”

“What did you hold over his head?”

She shook her head. “No way. I’ve learned my lesson—it’s his business, not mine. Just . . . I was a bitch; end of story.”

“Okay.” Then the rest of her admission sank in. “You picked on his sister?” I said, too loudly.

Kimberlee slid back against my pillows with an irritated sigh. “It’s ancient history; would you just leave it alone?”

“I can’t leave it alone when it keeps coming back and slapping me in the face. Today, almost literally. Is there anything else you’d like to tell me while you’re in confessional mode? Like why
do
all the kids at my lunch table hate you? What did you do to them? Did you pick on them, too?”

“No!” Kimberlee said, getting pissed. Somehow pissed was better than sad. Less scary. “I was the queen of the school. In case you are unfamiliar with the pecking order, that means I was that person that everyone either adored or hated because they were jealous out of their minds. That is
not
my fault.”

“Jealousy? That explains
everything
,” I said sarcastically. “Who
did
like you?”

“Langdon!”

“Oh good, Langdon the asshole. I’m so proud of you.”

“And Neil,” she continued almost desperately. “Kyndra liked me too. We kinda ran the school, okay?”

“With an iron fist, maybe? I’m starting to think you were just a bully with sticky fingers.”

“I was not a bully!” Kimberlee protested.

“Oh yeah? I find that a little hard to believe from someone who admits she was mean to someone she
liked
. How did you treat people you
didn’t
like?”

“Screw you!” Kimberlee said, standing on my bed. “You have no idea what it’s like to be me!”

“That’s because half the time you won’t tell me anything, and the other half you’re lying!” I yelled back, not considering until the words were out of my mouth that my dad, at least, was almost certainly home. If I made it through this ghost ordeal without getting thrown in a padded room, I was going to be seriously proud of myself.

Kimberlee glared at me for a second and then sank
through
my bed and out of my room via the floor. Despite everything that had happened in the last couple weeks, my hands started to shake at the creepiness of that moment. I managed about two and a half calming breaths before my phone rang, making my heart go erratic all over again.

And seeing Sera’s name on the caller ID may have sped it up even more than that.

“Hey,” I said, hoping my voice wasn’t shaky.

“Hi. My parents are driving me nuts. You want to do something tonight? Preferably outside of my house?”

“I’m fine; thanks for asking. And how are you?”

She started to laugh and the stress of the last few hours seemed to melt away. “Sorry,” she said. “Long day. Long week, really. I wish I got to see you more.”

“Me too,” I said, the sad truth of those words sinking right into my bones.

“So can we please, please, please do something tonight?”

I loved how she asked like I would even dream about saying no. “Well, since you said please. Did you have anything in mind?”

“Something completely brainless,” she replied. “How about we actually go to a movie this time?”

“Sounds good to me. What’s playing?”

“Does it matter?” Sera asked in a tone of voice that suddenly made me feel very anxious to leave.

“No, no, it doesn’t,” I replied. “When can we go?”

“In an hour?” she suggested.

“Half,” I replied with a grin.

“You’re on.”

I laughed as my mom knocked softly and popped her head through my doorway. “You have a guest,” she said, in a weird-ass cheerful tone that made me suspect she had heard me yelling at Kimberlee. My poor mom.

“I’ll be down in a sec, Mom,” I said, but she opened the door farther, revealing Khail’s steely gaze. His shoulders were as wide as my doorway.

Just to add to the weirdness, Kimberlee was standing behind him with her arms folded over her chest. I suspected they had “run into” each other in the front yard. My mouth went dry and I think my throat may have started closing up. “Hey, listen,” I said to Sera, the words pouring out of my mouth. “On second thought, let’s go in an hour. I’ll pick you up, okay?”

As soon as she made some kind of positive response, I hung up with a quick “Bye.”

“Hey, Khail,” I said, trying—unsuccessfully, I might add—not to let my voice crack.

My mom departed and Khail let the door swing shut behind him, pushing it until the latch clicked. Probably just wanted to beat me up in private. Understandable.

Neither he nor Kimberlee spoke, resulting in a moment of silence, like at a funeral. In this case,
my
funeral.

“I want to see the cave,” Khail finally said in a surprisingly quiet voice.

“The cave?”

Khail pointed a meaty finger at me. “You said there was a cave,” he said, his tone full of accusation.

“Oh, Kimberlee’s cave. Yeah, sure, of course.” Like I was going to say no? “Uh . . . let’s go now.” I walked past him and opened the door—it felt more like opening the gate to a cage—and led my little entourage down the stairs, Khail clomping along resolutely and Kimberlee noiselessly pouting.

I threw off something about the mall to my mom and headed out to the garage. As the door was rising I asked, “You want to, um, ride with me or . . . ?” I let the sentence hang in the air.

“I’ll follow,” Khail said, heading toward a jacked-up, chrome-wheeled, neon-tricked truck parked on the curb. Seemed fitting.

I backed Halle out and headed toward Kimberlee’s house.

“This is not a good idea,” Kimberlee said, her voice panicky. “Besides, who the hell said you could bring him on my property?”

“You gonna call the cops?”

Kimberlee crossed her arms over her chest and stopped talking.

Khail’s truck was close behind me as we made our way through the gate and down to the small parking lot. Both Kimberlee and Khail were silent while I led the way to the cave and scaled the wall—quite impressively, in my opinion. The practice was paying off.

Khail, on the other hand, climbed up at least as effectively as I had, and it was his first try.
Jocks. Meh
.

I gestured as if introducing Khail to the rows and rows of boxes. Strange how the cave still looked exactly the same despite having cleaned out almost eight boxes.

“Are you serious?” Khail asked.

“Uh . . .” I had no idea what he was asking.

“All these boxes are full of stuff that Kimberlee stole?”

“Yeah.”

“Sera was right,” he said quietly. “She told me Kimberlee stole her cheer skirt and shoes and bet that she was behind this big theft thing at the school a while back. I didn’t believe her. I mean, I believed that Kimberlee stole Sera’s stuff—Sera wouldn’t just flat-out lie to me like that—but I didn’t think Kimberlee would be involved in something this big.” He turned to me now. “Someone must have helped her.”

“As far as I can tell, no.”

Khail whistled. “Damn, she really
was
messed up.”

I kind of coughed and looked away.

“What?”

I shrugged and pointed my thumb in Kimberlee’s direction.

“She’s here?”

“She has nothing else to do and just follows me around most of the time.”

“Don’t worry about making me sound like a loser or anything,” Kimberlee said caustically. “I was just leaving.” And before I could stop her, she walked to the edge of the cave and jumped gracefully down and out of sight.

“Okay,
now
she’s gone,” I said.

Khail had his fists on his hips, staring—as far as I could tell—at the rocks against the wall instead of the mounds of stolen stuff.

I wouldn’t want to look at them either.

“I still don’t know what to think,” he said quietly. “You have all the right answers. Things you shouldn’t know—hell, this whole cave should be proof enough. But . . .”

“I know,” I said when he didn’t continue. “It’s completely unbelievable.” I shrugged. “I still sometimes think I’m going to wake up soon. Possibly in an insane asylum somewhere.”

“It’s so much stuff!”

I nodded miserably.

“Man, you need help.”

I sputtered for a few second. “Oh, come on. I’m
not
the one who stole it; I told you that. I—”

“I didn’t mean it that way,” Khail said, interrupting me. “I mean you’re never going to get all this stuff returned on your own.”

I remembered the truck that was sitting out in the parking lot. That was one big-ass truck.

Don’t get ahead of yourself
. I hazarded the question. “Is that an offer?”

His eyes darted toward me, then back to the boxes. “Maybe.” He picked his way carefully to the back of the cave and I could see him counting silently as he estimated how many boxes there were. I already knew the answer. A hundred and thirty-seven. I’d counted them about ten times. “She’ll go away as soon as all this stuff is returned, right?”

I nodded. “That’s the idea.”

He walked back over to me and stood close. “How much do you like my sister?”

I swallowed. “A lot.”

“Enough to do whatever it takes to get Kimberlee’s ghost out of her life?”

As if that wasn’t what I wanted too. “Absolutely.”

“Okay. Meet me at Perennial Park at noon tomorrow. I’ll bring the truck, and I’ll see if I can get together a bunch of guys. We’ll take half—” He paused, looked back at the boxes, and qualified his statement. “We’ll take a chunk of this stuff back on Monday.” Then he turned and began lowering himself down the edge of the cliff.