You Changed My Life (4 page)

On my tenth birthday, when the teacher gave me a trip to the hallway disguised as a present, I came across a piece of paper worth a fortune. It had been well hidden under a pink and white handkerchief inside a girl's duffle coat. When I touched it, it was thicker than a bill and bigger than a movie ticket, but I couldn't figure out what I'd found. I pulled my hand out of the pocket. A photograph. It was a photo of the coat's owner, but not just a simple portrait. We call it an American shot: from the waist up. And the girl was naked.

I admit it: if I was ahead of my age for stealing, I wasn't when it came to girls. But still, I immediately saw the advantage to what I'd found.

“Vanessa, dear Vanessa, I think I've got something that belongs to you . . .”

While pretending to pinch my nipples:

“Looks like something's growing, huh?”

“Abdel, give me back the photo right now.”

“Oh no, it's much too pretty. I'm keeping it.”

“Give it back, or . . .”

“Or what? You'll tell the principal? I'm sure he'd love to see it, too.”

“What do you want?”

“Five francs.”

“Okay. I'll bring them for you tomorrow.”

Our transaction continued for a few more days. Five francs wasn't enough: I asked for more and more. It was a game, I was having a blast, but Vanessa—a bad loser—figured out how to bring it to an end. One evening, on my way back home, my parents grabbed my hand.

“Abdel, we're going to the
poste
.”

“To the post office, you mean?”

“No, not the post office. We've been called down to the police station. What have you done?”

“Uh, honestly . . . I don't know . . .”

I knew exactly, but I was thinking of something much more embarrassing than my small-time racket. When the policeman explained the reason for the invitation, I practically sighed with relief.

“Mr. Sellou, your son Abdel Yamine has been accused of extortion of funds.”

Those words were too complicated for Belkacem. By the way, they were for me, too, until he pronounced the name Vanessa. I left with the promise of returning the snapshot to its owner the next day. My parents never understood what had happened. They followed me home without a word and never asked any questions. I never got punished, not at home or at school.

Years later, I found out that the school principal had gone to jail. Among other crimes, he'd dipped into the school coffers. Stealing from children—really, you just don't do that.

Every morning, I ate breakfast on the way to school. The deliv
erymen set down their crates in front of the still-closed stores and went happily on their way. A plastic sheet was tightly wrapped around each crate. It only took a simple swipe of a fingernail to help oneself. A box of Saint-Michel cookies here, a can of OJ there. I didn't see the harm: everything was there on the same sidewalk, and at my fingertips once again. And honestly, what's one less box of cookies . . . I shared with Mahmoud, Nassim, Ayoub, Macodou, Bokary. I was friends with all the kids from the Beaugrenelle projects and that didn't include any Edward, or John, or Louis. Not because we didn't want anything to do with them, but because they preferred to leave us alone. Anyway, I was more of a solitary leader. It was
whoever likes me can follow
, and when I looked back, I saw that there weren't too many who did.

We hung out on the slab, that concrete space between the towers, just above the shopping center—our playground. We were good-looking, dressed in the latest trends with the right brand names. The Chevignon jacket, the Levi's jeans cut out on the side with the Burberry scarf showing through the slit. The three-stripe Adidas windbreaker (back in style these days, by the way). The Lacoste polo shirt that I was always attached to. Even today, I love the little crocodile on the shirt pocket.

The first time I got caught in a Go Sport store, I had already cleaned it out many times before. There's nothing simpler: I'd go in, I'd choose the clothes I liked; in the dressing room, I'd put them on one over the other and go back out the same way, incognito. Just a little heavier than when I went in. I'm talking about a time when security guards and surveillance systems didn't exist. The jackets hung on hangers with handwritten price tags attached to the buttons. Then one day, supposedly unbreakable antitheft devices showed up. A simple paper clip was enough to unlock them—you just had to come up with the idea, and I was never at a loss for those, just like I was never at a loss for time.

Early on, I stopped going with my parents on their Sunday outings to the Tuileries, the Jardin des Plantes, or the Vincennes zoo. On Sunday afternoon, I'd doze in front of
Starsky & Hutch
until Yacine or Nordine or Brahim came by to pick me up. We went down to the slab, sort of looked for something to do—a new idea to put into practice.

The shopping center was closed on the Lord's Day. Not convenient for purchases. Then again . . . what was stopping
us from going in? That metal door there, it leads into the store, doesn't it? After all, what do we risk?

Nothing
.

I could prove it.

In the Go Sport store, next to the dressing rooms, there's a door with a little sign over it. It says “Emergency Exit” in white letters on a green background. When a seller has to go and get something that isn't on the shelf, he goes through that door and comes back with the piece of clothing in question. I figured out two things from seeing this: first, that behind that door was all of the stock, and second, that the stockroom offered an exit onto the street. Even that idiot Inspector Gadget could have figured this out by himself.

So the issue here is right in front of us: it's a metal door like the ones I've seen at the movie theater exits. Perfectly smooth on the inside, with no visible handle because it has no lock, it's opened from the inside by pushing down on a large, horizontal metal bar. This way, in case of fire, even if dozens of people rush toward it at the same time, they just need to push for it to give way. Go, go, Gadget, chisel: I unblock the opening and wedge my foot in the crack, Yacine pulls hard on the door, and we slip into Ali Baba's cavern.

But wait a minute, what kind of door did we just come through? I've never seen one like this. Whatever, we're not here to see the sights. I tuck the chisel into my jacket pocket, and we start checking out what's available. Most of it is still folded and wrapped up in plastic, which makes it hard to tell if we like it and if it's the right size. Yacine gets lucky.

“Abdel! Check out these pants! Super cool!”

I raise my eyes toward my friend standing in front of me. The jeans do look cool. The German shepherd baring its teeth right behind him, not so much. My eyes move up the length of its leash, hanging from a wrist almost as hairy as the dog. I keep going and reach a square head topped with a cap. SECURITY. So there's no doubt.

The guard grabs Yacine by the collar.

“This way, both of you.”

“But sir, we didn't do anything!”

“Shut up!”

He leads us out of the storeroom by a little door on the shopping center side this time, and locks us in the employee bathroom. Click, clack—it's locked from the outside! I laugh hysterically.

“Yacine, did you see that? They're way smart! They planned to use the toilets as a holding cell for thieves caught in the act. Is that space optimization or what?!”

“Stop laughing, we're really screwed.”

“No we aren't, and why? We didn't take anything!”

“Because we didn't have time. And we still broke in.”

“Who broke in? You? Did you bust that door, Yacine? Of course not, and neither did I! The door was open, and we just walked in!”

With these words, I lift the toilet lid and drop in the chisel.

A few minutes later, the guard comes back with two cops. We give them our version of the story. Not stupid, but unable to prove anything whatsoever, the guard lets the cops go and takes us back out the way we came in.

“FYI, guys, this door is an alarm. When you walk through it, it triggers a red light in the surveillance room.”

I pretend to be awestruck in the presence of this new miracle of technology.

“Wow, that's great. That thing must be very useful.”

“Very.”

The metal door slams behind us. We go back and find the others on the slab, dying laughing.

My biggest job, in terms of volume, was before I was ten. I swiped a go-kart at the Train Bleu toy store in the Beaugrenelle shopping center. A real electric car—you could even sit in it! I can still see myself, balancing that bad boy on my head, racing down the steps with the manager on my heels.

“Stop, thief, stop!”

The thing was worth a fortune.