A WEEK LATER, I DRIVE STRAIGHT TO BEACON Street Diner after work. It was Sophie’s idea to introduce Eli to the wonders of our favorite eating spot. But when I arrive, she and the rest of my friends are nowhere to be found.
I check my phone and find a text from Alyssa, saying she’ll be late, and another text from Dawson, saying he’s not coming. I sigh. He’s been withdrawing from us since the night at Zach’s house, choosing instead to hang out with work friends on his nights off. I almost dread the thought of school starting in a few weeks. He and Alyssa will have no choice but to see each other then, and if they don’t work things out, one of them will probably leave the circle entirely.
Shaking off the thought, I head to the diner’s tiny bathroom and exchange my Royal Smoothie T-shirt for a red lace-up tank top. When I come back out, I discover Eli loitering near the entrance.
“Did you notice the e is burned out in the sign outside?” he says when he sees me. “How have I never noticed this place before?”
“Maybe because you don’t usually hang out in bad neighborhoods.”
His eyebrows shoot up, and I realize my tone sounded more contemptuous than joking, which is how I meant it. I think. Since dinner at his house, I’ve been aware of our differences more than ever. He frequents Starbucks and pristine supermarkets, I frequent run-down diners in a sketchy part of town. His family is strong and whole; my family is messy and fractured. He’s wonderful and giving, and I’m . . . me. Sometimes these things are hard to overlook.
Eli lets the comment drop and we go to secure a booth. Sophie and Zach arrive soon after, and my weird mood starts to lift. I’m probably just hungry.
Alyssa doesn’t show up until after we all have our food. She squeezes in with Zach and Sophie and swipes a fry off my plate and a slice of pickle off Zach’s. Sophie pulls her own plate closer, guarding her chicken strips against roving hands.
“Sorry I took so long,” Alyssa says after she swallows. “We had an incident at the store today.”
I take a sip of Coke. “What kind of incident?”
“An idiot shoplifter.”
My glass collides with the edge of my plate, sloshing Coke everywhere. I grab a couple of napkins and start wiping it up, barely aware of what I’m doing.
“Are you okay?” Eli’s voice filters through the loud roaring in my ears.
I nod and keep soaking up the mess. When I asked what Alyssa meant, I was expecting her to go into another rant about her mother’s incompetence with social media or something. Not that.
Everyone’s talking at once, asking questions, and it takes everything in me to act normal and focus on the conversation.
“My mother noticed this guy lurking around the necklaces,” Alyssa is saying. “She was watching him, but then she had to take care of another customer. By the time she was done, the guy was gone and so was a seventy-dollar necklace.”
Sophie’s mouth twists in disgust. “How can anyone do that? And to a small business?”
Nausea swirls in my stomach. Most shoplifters don’t steal from mom-and-pop stores and small businesses—I never would—but it’s not like I can say that without sounding like I’m defending thievery.
The waitress appears and takes Alyssa’s order, then asks if I want another Coke. I shake my head. My appetite—even for liquid—has totally diminished.
“Does the store have security cameras?” Eli asks.
“Yeah, one, but it’s not very high-tech. It probably won’t give a clear enough image to identify him.” She droops in her seat, frowning. “New cameras would be way too expensive. We’ll just have to suck it up and take the loss, I guess.”
Everyone’s quiet for a moment, like they’re contemplating the injustice of it all, and then Zach says, “People are assholes.”
We all nod in agreement. Even me. There’s no disputing it—shoplifters are selfish, dishonorable jerks.
“You’re quiet tonight.”
I slap a mosquito off my arm and look at Eli, who’s barely visible in the dark. After the diner, we all went our separate ways—Alyssa to her house, Sophie and Zach to his house, and Eli and me to the small, grassy park near my apartment building. We’re sitting on wooden bench facing a swing set, which in the year or so since I moved here, I haven’t seen used more than a half dozen times. My neighborhood isn’t exactly family-centric.
“Am I?” I say, distracted. My mind is still stuck on what happened earlier, the look of disgust on my friends’ faces when Alyssa talked about the shoplifter. I keep imagining them aiming that same disgust at me, and how awful and vulnerable it would make me feel. And how much I’d deserve their disappointment.
“You want to talk about it?”
His words wrap around me like fingers, yanking me out of my own head. “No,” I reply, and then lean into him, pressing my lips to his. The park is quiet and dark, and aside from some flying insects and maybe a few squirrels, we’re completely alone.
At first he kisses me back, but after a minute he pulls away and grabs my hand, stopping its progression across the firm expanse of his chest. “Why do you do that?”
“What?”
“Whenever I try to get you to talk about something personal, you distract me. You’ve done it a few times now.”
I slide my hand out of his. “No, I don’t.” But even as I deny it, I know he’s right. Every time he tries to dig past the surface, I kiss him or make a joke or do whatever else I can think of to get back on the fun-and-simple track. I don’t even know why. Maybe because the closer we get, the more I realize the impossibility of keeping secrets from him forever. Someday, I’ll have to reveal all the shameful parts of myself, to my friends and to him, but just the thought of it makes my heart race. I’m not ready to ruin everyone’s image of me.
“I’ve told you everything about me,” Eli goes on, a trace of hurt in his tone. “Everything about my family too. But I hardly know anything about yours. You never talk about it with me. You haven’t even told me where your mother is and why you don’t live with her. That’s a pretty big thing to keep to yourself, isn’t it?”
I look away. How long has this been bothering him? I figured the reason he never pressured me for details about my family life was because he thought it was none of his business. But clearly he thinks that since he told me all about his family, I’m expected to return the favor. And maybe I am. I can only stay a closed book for so long.
Something buzzes in my ear. Another mosquito, probably. Annoyed, I brush it away and turn to face Eli again. He wants me to talk about it? Okay, I’ll talk about it. “My mother lives about a ninety-minute drive from here, in Sutton. She moved there at the beginning of last summer, a month or so after she was caught cheating with this guy named Gary, who was also married, by the way. Plus, he was one of my dad’s best friends. So yeah, when I was asked who I wanted to live with, I chose my father instead of my cheating mom and the man who helped destroy my family. My sister did too, but I guess spending a year away at college gave her a new perspective or something, because now she thinks we need to extend the old olive branch to our mother, who I haven’t seen or spoken to in a year. Like it’s just that simple.”
I pause to take a jagged breath. God, now I’m crying in front of Eli again. But this time, I’m not just some girl he barely knows sniveling in her car for reasons she won’t share. Now he knows me, or at least a big part of me. And instead of pulling away, like I half expected him to do when he got his first glimpse past the surface, he wraps me in his arms and holds me while I cry.
The next evening after work, I settle on my bed with my laptop. My deadline to complete the online theft education class is just a few days away, and I still haven’t finished it. I started it last week but could only handle an hour before shutting it off and watching a movie instead. There’s nothing more boring than a disembodied voice on the computer lecturing you about stealing and its impact on society. Just like I assumed, it’s nothing I don’t already know.
But tonight I’m going to finish it, finally, so I can get my certificate and send it to the diversion coordinator. Soon, this will all be over and life can return to normal. Obligations complete. No more theft class, no more community service hours.
No more Rita’s Reruns.
I ignore the twinge of sadness that comes with the thought of never working at the thrift store again and press play on the third course module: Why Do People Steal?
I sigh at the screen. Fergus, who’s curled into a ball at the end of the bed, lifts his head and yawns. This makes me yawn, and I think of all the things I could be doing right now. Like going to the lake for an evening swim with my friends, or watching a movie, or hanging out with Eli. Or kissing Eli. Even better.
But he’s off doing something with his friends, so tonight it’s just me and the guy from the video, who’s droning on about unhealthy thinking and behavior. I’m fiddling with my phone, only half paying attention, when the instructor takes on a deeper, more serious tone.
People who steal often feel like something has been taken from them. They feel deprived somehow, and stealing provides them with a sense of peace or relief. Life—for a moment, at least—is fair again.
The words pierce through my boredom. I look up from my phone.
For some people, shoplifting is a response to what they perceive as an unfair loss—a death in the family, a breakup, the loss of a job. It offers temporary control over a feeling of powerlessness. A person shoplifts for the same reasons someone else might drink, eat, or work too much—because it fills a void.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up, like someone is watching me. I put down my phone and hit pause on the video, the instructor’s words churning in my head. I think about how centered I feel when I take something, the sense of power and control it gives me. Like a wrong is being righted every time I pull it off without detection. Like the video said, it makes life seem fair again, if only for a few moments.
But I’ve always assumed my compulsion to steal came from some small, damaged part of me. An underlying defect in my nature that surfaced along with the anger I felt toward my mother for ripping our family apart. For hurting my father so deeply that he seemed to shrink overnight. For giving me up so easily, like a bag of old clothes that she no longer had any use for. That amount of anger needs some kind of outlet, and since drinking and overeating never appealed to me, shoplifting was the most viable choice at the time.
Does divorce count as an “unfair loss”? When I remember how we used to be—an average little family, whole and secure—it definitely feels like one. My mother was like anyone else’s. Maybe a little distracted at times, and moody more often than not, but she used to at least try. She was there every day. In the audience for Rachel’s dance recitals. Wandering around the school gym during my science fairs. Watching TV on the couch, her feet in Dad’s lap and a glass of wine in her hand.
But gradually, all of that stopped. She became distant, unable to focus on anything, even Rachel and me. She and Dad started spending evenings—and then entire nights—in separate rooms. It was like she was only sticking around out of obligation, because she had two girls who needed a mother. Eventually, not even that was a good enough reason.
She’d checked out of her marriage—out of her family—but at one point, she was in. All in.
So yeah, it’s a loss, and an incredibly unfair one. We didn’t deserve to be broken and scattered. She shouldn’t get to live happily ever after while we’re stuck back here, doing whatever it takes to fill the void she left behind.