Life After Theft (4 page)

“Nah. There’s a gate. I’ll tell you the code.”

I pulled onto the drive on the right side of the house and stopped next to a keypad.

“Eight-six-four-two-two, star.”

I punched in the numbers, then my finger hovered over the star. I closed my eyes and pushed, expecting flashing lights and cops with their guns drawn. I could almost hear the megaphone.
Step out of your car with your hands up!
But all I actually heard was the quiet whir of the gate sliding open.
So far, so good
.

The road sloped sharply before ending in a ten-space parking lot in front of a gorgeous white beach, surrounded on both sides by tall cliffs. “Whoa!” I said as I climbed out of my car, feeling more like I was on a movie set than what was essentially someone’s backyard.

Kimberlee glared at the foamy green waves. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your enthusiasm.”

“Why? ’Cause you died here?”

“Let’s just get to the cave.”

“You’re reading my mind.”

She stayed a few feet ahead of me as we trekked across the sand.

She didn’t leave footprints.

“This whole ghost thing is still freaking me out,” I said, my eyes fixed on her feet.

“Yeah,” she said without looking back. “Took me about a month to really get a handle on it, too.”

Great
.

When we reached what looked like the face of a minicliff, she took two running steps and jumped, then basically floated into the cave.

I was stuck ten feet below. “You suck,” I shouted.

“Wimp. There are handholds all the way up. That’s how I did it when I was alive.”

I found a ledge for my foot and stepped up to reach for one with my arms. In a few seconds I had four limbs on little ledges and was sure I looked like a bug clinging to the wall for dear life—all of three feet above a sandy beach. I looked up to Kimberlee for help. She was staring out at the sea. A gust of wind made her skirt flutter suddenly, giving me an eyeful. I froze, lost my balance, and slid down the rock. Or, more accurately, fell sprawling into the sand.

“Perv,” Kimberlee said with a sinister laugh that made me remember that wind couldn’t touch her clothes. Only Kimberlee had any effect on Kimberlee’s clothes.

“Don’t do that again,” I said darkly.
At least not while I’m clinging to the side of a cliff
. Without looking at Kimberlee I started to climb again, more carefully this time. It took me about three tries and at least ten minutes, but I made it. I peered back down at the beach. The climb looked a lot shorter from up top. “Okay,” I said as I scrambled to my feet. “Where’s the stuff?”

She tilted her head to the back of the cave. I turned and blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. When they finally did, my jaw dropped.

There must have been a hundred boxes stacked in the back of the cave, which was way deeper than I’d expected. “A few things? A
few
things! Are you insane?” My voice echoed through the cave, repeating my words back to me.

“Jeff . . .” Her voice was uncharacteristically quiet.

“This is ridiculous. You lied to me.”

“I did not.”

“No one in their right mind would ever classify this as ‘a few things.’ You lied to get me up here and hoped you could just flutter your eyes and it would be all better. Well, it’s not.” I backed away from the massive pile of boxes. “I’m not doing this.”

“Jeff . . .”

“I should call the cops,” I said as I backed away. No way could I return all this stuff on my own, not in any reasonable amount of time. “I’ll bet they could—”

“No!” Kimberlee shouted, running after me. “They’d just confiscate it all. Then I’d be stuck here forever! Jeff, please.”

“No. I’m leaving,” I said, as much to myself as to Kimberlee, “and I am
not
coming back.” I looked over the edge and tried to find the handholds I had used climbing up.
It’s only ten feet
.
Just jump!
I let myself down as far as I could while holding on to the ledge, then tried to fall slowly. My feet hit the sand a moment before my ass did. My tailbone stung, but at least I was out of the klepto cave. I looked over at my car and forced myself to walk calmly instead of running—which would probably make me fall and look like an idiot.

Again.

Kimberlee was right beside me. “They’re organized,” she pleaded. “It’ll be easy. A bag for each person. The boxes are sorted by category. A couple of trips and we’ll be done.”

By category?
“A couple of trips? A
couple
of trips? Maybe if I had a semi. That,” I said pointing up at the cave, “is a lot of stuff, Kimberlee. You have a problem.”

“Had.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “Can’t do it anymore, can I?” She laughed shakily for a few seconds before falling silent.

“Real funny,” I scoffed. I ducked into my car and slammed the door before she could say anything else. As I drove I stared at Kimberlee in the rearview mirror until the road curved and cut her out of sight. As soon as I got out of her cul-de-sac, I stomped my foot on the gas and drove home as fast as I dared.

How the hell was I going to get out of this?

When I got to the house, Mom was gone, but Tina—our housekeeper—was washing down countertops and a good smell was coming from the oven.

“Ah, Jeff, there you are,” Tina said. “Your mother is at a taping and your father is on a conference call. You know, the ones your mother keeps telling him to stop taking. I have to take off as soon as I pull the muffins out of the oven. Healthy ones—don’t tell your father. Tell him they are cupcakes and he will eat them.” Tina had only been with us for two weeks, but she was already determined to make my dad into a health-food junkie—clandestinely, of course, though her methods were hardly James Bond.

I slumped down on the counter and let my backpack slip to the floor.

“You look awful.”

Thanks
,
Tina
.

“Bad day?”

Actually, Tina, it was swell. I saw this girl—of course, she’s totally untouchable, for me, anyway. Oh, and there’s this other girl—she’s untouchable, too, for everyone! But she’s all mine, whether I want her or not
.

“Just long,” I said with a shrug. “Lots of homework.”

She reached up and patted my head in a way that was comforting in spite of the awkward grandmotherliness of it. “You’ll get it all done. You’re a smart boy.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling a little. “I better go upstairs and get to work.”

But rather than start on my homework, I fired up my Xbox. After what I’d just seen, I deserved to chill out a little. I played GTA for about an hour and imagined everything my car ran into was Kimberlee, or one of her boxes of stolen stuff. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see her or hear one of her smart-ass comments, but all I heard was the cathartic symphony of gunfire and people screaming.

Why was this whole ghost thing happening to
me
? Kimberlee said I was the first person to see her—ever. Nothing in my life was all that special.
I
certainly wasn’t special.

Maybe it was something about Santa Monica. In the three weeks since we’d moved here my life had turned upside down. My mom was on TV, my dad was a retired workaholic who couldn’t keep his fingers out of the old business, and I had a ghost. And a housekeeper. A year ago, any of those things would have sounded like a joke. Getting them all at once—well, who could blame me if I needed some time to adjust? But last time I checked, seeing ghosts wasn’t a symptom of homesickness or stress.

I did have to give Santa Monica points for the redhead I’d spotted at school, though.
Serafina
, Kimberlee had said. Man, she was gorgeous. But I couldn’t even think about her for more than a few seconds before coming back to the same humongous problem that suddenly overshadowed every aspect of my life.

Kimberlee.

I wondered if Santa Monica had any good exorcists.

“JEFF? JEFF?”

“I’m up, Mom.”

“Open your eyes, Jeff.”

I rubbed my face with my hands and squinted with one eye.

“Holy hell!” I shouted as Kimberlee came into focus. I jerked away from her and pulled my blankets around me. “Get out of my room!”

“Why?” she asked, noting the death grip I had on my bedding. “Naked under there?”

“Yes. Now leave!”

She scrunched up her nose. “Ew, gross. I was totally kidding.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’m not naked. But I’m just in my boxers.”

Kimberlee shrugged. “Nothing I haven’t seen before.” She grabbed for the end of my comforter.

I gripped the blanket tighter and tried to scoot out of reach. When her hand passed right through the comforter and my face went white, she laughed like it was the most hilarious thing in the world.

“You’re such a freak,” she said, studying me with her arms crossed over her chest.

“
You
wanted to see my underwear.”

“I showed you mine. It’s your turn.”

“Turn around so I can put some jeans on.”

She spun with her arms over her head like a ballerina.

“Ready?” she asked as soon as I jerked my zipper up.

“Yeah, sure.”

She turned back and looked me up and down. “Sexy. A little skinny, though.”

“Like it matters to you.”

“Hey, I like a little eye candy as much as the next undead.”

“Are you here to beg and plead with me to help you again?” I walked into my bathroom and grabbed my toothbrush. “’Cause if you are, you can forget about it.”

She laughed mirthlessly; a laugh that embodied the word
sinister
. It made my skin crawl. “Beg and plead? Who do you think I am? I don’t beg and plead; I threaten. After today, you agree to help me, or I’ll do some real haunting.”

I spat and tried to sound braver than that laugh made me feel. “What, yell ‘Boo!’ in my face? That’ll convince me.”

“That stuff’s for amateurs. I’ll just sit and watch you in the shower.”

“I could get used to that,” I said.
Eventually
.

She chuckled, making the hairs on my neck stand on end. “I wasn’t finished. I’ll sit my ass in the middle of your lunch at school—
bon appétit
, accompany you on dates and freak out whoever is with you, and then yell and scream all night until you go insane from sleep deprivation. It’s easy.”

Crap
. “That’s not fair.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Do you think it’s fair that I sit here all day, every day with no one to talk to and no way to help myself?” she shouted. “To be stuck in a world I don’t belong to and where I can’t do anything?” Her face stayed angry for a few seconds, then crumpled into despair.

There’s a reason girls always win arguments with me. Tears are like Kryptonite. “Don’t cry, Kimberlee,” I said with a sigh.

“You would cry, t-t-too,” she wailed, “if you only had one person in the whole world who you could talk to.”

I could feel my will crumbling as I walked over and slumped down onto my bed.

Kimberlee stayed by my bathroom doorway.

I cleared my throat and patted the spot beside me. “Okay,” I said as she slowly sat. “If I help you, and I do mean
if
, there’ve got to be a few rules.”

She sniffed but nodded.

“Rule number the first is, no coming into my room until I’m dressed. Got it?”

She took a deep breath and swiped her sleeve across her face, wiping away her sad expression along with any traces of tears. “Fine. What else?”

There was only one other person I’d seen turn tears off that quickly. Like an
on/off
switch. My mom. The
actress
. “None of that . . . other stuff you talked about,” I said, starting to feel like a total sucker.

Kimberlee just shrugged. “No problem. Any other demands?”

“I’ll . . . make up more rules as we go along.” Now I was just pissed at her fake breakdown.

“’Kay,” she said, suddenly very businesslike. “Go shower or you’ll be late.”

“All right, but you stay out here. No peeking, no popping through the shower wall, no nothing.”

“Like I’d want to,” she muttered.

I hurried into the bathroom and showered as fast as I could. It was true that I didn’t want to be late, but the main reason was so Kimberlee wouldn’t change her mind and decide to come play a little peek-a-boo. I got out and jumped into my uniform half-wet; at least I was covered. I pulled out my electric razor and turned it on.

“Stop!
Stop!
” Kimberlee melted through the wall with her hands over her eyes. “Put the razor down. Do you really shave?” she asked, peeking through her fingers.

I pointed to the razor with my best
duh
look.

“No, I mean do you
have
to shave? You get stubble and everything?”

“Yeah.”

“Lemme see.” She leaned close and studied the fringe of hair on my chin and around my mouth. “That’s sexy; you can’t get rid of that.”

“But the dress code says no facial hair.”

“Oh, please. They won’t bust you for stubble.”

“Why would I want stubble?”

“Girls love stubble. If you can grow it, it shows you’re more virile.”

I rolled my eyes. “Do you even know what that word means?”

“Capable of performing sexually as a male,” she said proudly. “I looked it up.”

I looked at my chin in the mirror and my thoughts flashed to Serafina. That wrestler guy yesterday probably had a little stubble, too. “Virile. You know, I’m feeling virile.”

“Whatever—do your hair.”

I took a comb and parted my hair, then brushed it back with my fingers.

“You’re kidding me.”

“What? It’s the messy look.”

“I know the messy look, Jeff, and that is not it. Do you have any gel?”

Last straw
. “Listen, I am not changing my hair. If you want me to help you, you take me the way I am or no deal.”

Kimberlee folded her arms across her chest. “Whatever,” she said. “But if no girl will touch you, don’t say I didn’t try.”

It took fifteen minutes of coaching before Kimberlee was satisfied. I wasn’t convinced. I had poky spears on one side with a flattened patch on the other, and bits of crunchy bangs were hanging down over one eye. “I look like an idiot.”