Confessions of a Kleptomaniac

  Vomit burns at the back of my throat as I nod.

  Benny motions for me to follow him as he heads for the register near the front door.

  I follow him with my adrenaline soaring. What am I going to do? My parents are going to kick me to the street if they find out. Do I have time to empty out everything from my pocket?

  As I’m squeezing past Grey, he reaches out and discreetly but quickly tugs my jacket off my waist.

  “What are you doing?” I whisper as he puts on the oversized grey jacket like it’s his own.

  Before Grey can answer me, Benny twists around with a stern look on his face. “Luna, I need to see you now, please.”

  Nodding, I hurry away from Grey, but I can feel his eyes boring a hole into the side of my head. Once we make it up front to the register, Benny instructs me to empty out my pockets, and I do what he asks, taking out my cell phone, a pack of gum, and a ten-dollar bill.

  Puzzlement etches his face as he sorts through my stuff then looks down at my waist, his confusion deepening.

  I hold my breath, waiting for him to say something.

  “I’m so sorry, Luna,” he says, running his hand over his bald head. “I thought maybe . . . You know what, never mind. I think I’m losing my mind in my old age.”

  “It’s okay.” I feel so sick with guilt my stomach burns.

  I hurry and pay for the paper plates and cups then bolt out the door and back to my car. By the time I turn on the engine, my heart is pounding so hard I swear it’s going to give out on me, and my guilt is choking me.

  I’m the worst person that’s ever existed. I really am. And now Grey knows that. Even my closest friends don’t know I’ve been shoplifting for years. Not because I need stuff, but because for some messed up reason it gives me a sense of control.

  I consider waiting until Grey comes out of the store to get my jacket back. I could ask him why he did what he did—why he helped me out—and if he has plans of telling anyone what happened. But when I see him exit the store with my jacket on, I chicken out and hide in my car.

  “This is so messed up. What the hell am I going to do?” I crank up the music. “Breathing Underwater” by Metric blasting through the speakers as I let out a deafening scream that swallows up the answer.

  Flames blaze against the walls, melting the paint and wallpaper away. Smoke funnels the air so thickly I can’t see straight. I gasp for air as I roll out of bed and get down on all fours. The floor is hot against my palms as I crawl in the direction of my bedroom door.

  “Mommy!” I cry as I blindly try to find my way out of my room. “Mommy, help me!”

  The bright fire crackles as it sweeps across the room, singeing the floor, the ceiling, everywhere. My eyes burn against the brightness, and my skin feels like melting wax.

  “Mommy!” I shout, turning in the opposite direction as the fire blocks my path.

  So much smoke. I can’t breathe.

  No one’s coming for me because I’m a bad girl. No one helps bad girls. My mom’s words echo in my head, and I realize in horror that it must be true. No one’s going to rescue me. The fire is going to kill me.

  I fall flat on the floor as smoke circles around me. I gasp for air, but with every breath, my lungs feel smaller, like they’re shrinking.

  “I can’t breathe . . .” I choke out as my eyelids drift shut.

  Pain, so much pain. Just let me die.

  Suddenly, I’m lifted from the floor.

  “Hang on, Luna. I’m going to get you out of here.” The voice is so familiar, so comforting.

  I open my eyes as I’m carried away and search through the smoke, trying to see their face, but all I see is smoke and flames.

  Everywhere.

  My eyes snap open, and I bolt upright in bed, dripping with sweat. It takes me a second to process that my room isn’t on fire, that I’m safe. Then I flop back down in my bed and stare up at my ceiling. I haven’t dreamt about the fire in a while. My bet is that the sudden recurrence has to do with the fire my mom made me light in the backyard.

  I hate that the nightmares have resurfaced. I don’t like being reminded of that night almost fourteen years ago when I thought I was going to die until a fireman carried me out of the house. Or, at least that’s what my parents tell me. I’m not so sure. Whenever I dream about what happened, it feels like I knew the person who rescued me. I have no clue why my parents would lie about something like that, though.

  I try to go back to sleep, but my mind is too wired, and I end up staying awake until the sun rises. It’s fall break, so I don’t have school for an entire week. I hate when we get long breaks because it means staying home with my mom. She won’t let me out of the house, so I have no choice except to spend time with her, cooking, cleaning, and listening to her lectures on why I need to be a better person and how disappointed she is that she even has to tell me this, that I should just know. She won’t let me have my phone, either, so I lose all communication with my friends. Thankfully, I managed to send them a text before I handed the phone over, so at least they know what’s up.

  Toward the weekend, she brings out the photos of her sister, Aunt Ashlynn, during her rebellious days. In most of them, she looks around the same age as I am and resembles a younger version of my mom. She has freckles on her nose like I do, and for some crazy reason, I find comfort that I share a trait with the rebel of our extended family.

  “See these, Luna?” My mom sits down beside me on the sofa and starts flipping through the photo album, scrutinizing each page. “Look at how she’s dressed. Look at the people she’s hanging out with. Don’t they look horrible? Doesn’t she look miserable?”

  I nod, but I don’t agree at all. If you ask me, Aunt Ashlynn looks pretty damn happy in most of the photos, smiling and laughing with people I assume are her friends. I wonder if she’s still happy now or happier even.

  “What happened to her?” I stare at a photo of her on the beach with a group of friends. She’s wearing cutoffs and a bikini top, her head thrown back in laughter. She looks so happy, so carefree, like she’s saying to hell with her parents and their rules.

  My mom’s jaw ticks as she slams the album shut. “How would I know? I haven’t spoken to her for almost fourteen years.”

  “Don’t you ever miss her, though?” I ask. “And wonder where she is? If she’s okay?”

  “No one misses Ashlynn. No one misses those who choose to go against their family’s values.” She rises to her feet then shoves the album back onto the shelf beside the mantle. “I’m going to go cook dinner. Go work on your homework until it’s time to set the table.”

  “But I already did my homework.”

  “Well, do extra credit, then,” she snaps then leaves the room.

  I steal the album off the shelf, take it to my room, and spend the rest of the night pretending to do my homework while I flip through the album some more. I’ve never had a chance to look at it alone. Usually, it’s a punishment tool for my mom. Being by myself with plenty of time to absorb each moment captured in the photos, I get a sense of peace looking through it.

  Right before I put the album back on the shelf, I remove the photo of my aunt Ashlynn at the beach and hide it under my mattress. As I fall asleep, I vow to myself that one day I’ll get over my fear of my parents and live my life the way that I want to. Be as happy as Aunt Ashlynn was in the photos.

  The next day, I attend church with my family then return home and help my dad clean out the garage. We don’t talk. My father and I rarely do. I used to think it was because he was a man of few words, but when he’s around other adults, he can be quite chatty.

  The lengthy, dragged-out week gives me plenty of time to overanalyze what’s going to happen with Grey when school starts up again. What is he going to say to me about what happened? Maybe I’ll luck out, and he won’t say anything at all.

  By the time Monday rolls around, I’m forced to face the inevitable. I have to go to school and face Grey, and I’ll be wearing an ou
tfit pre-selected by my mom when I do.

  When the sun comes up, she bursts into my room and picks out a pair of tan slacks two sizes too big for me along with a cardigan that buttons up to the neck. She even searches my bag to make sure I’m not trying to sneak any clothes with me.

  “Remember to come straight home after school,” my mom reminds me as I grab the car keys from the wall hook. “And I don’t want you leave the campus until school gets out, even for lunch. I’ll be checking your phone to make sure you don’t. And I’ve called the principal, as well, to let him know you’re not allowed off campus.”

  I grind my teeth until my jaw aches.

  “You did this to yourself.” She stops stirring the pot to yank on my sleeves and unroll them. “I don’t even want to know how you got ahold of clothes like that, but I’m guessing it’s from those friends of yours.”

  She often puts the blame on my friends whenever I do something wrong, as if I’ve fallen in with the wrong crowd. But I’ve been friends with the same people since elementary school, and she knows this.

  “It wasn’t my friends.” I get a granola bar and a bottle of juice to take with me, so I don’t have to stick around and eat breakfast with her. “I bought those clothes myself.”

  “That makes it worse.” She crosses her arms and stares me down. “That means you made bad choices on your own, that you’re the bad person. You can’t blame that on anyone else.”

  “I don’t since I’m my own person,” I mutter quietly enough that she can’t hear me.

  “What did you say?” she asks as she reaches into the pocket of her apron.

  “I said I’m going to be late for school if I don’t get going.”

  “Fine.” She withdraws her hand from her pocket, and her fingers are enclosed around my phone. “I’m only giving you this back so we can keep an eye on you. If it wasn’t for that, I wouldn’t let you have it.”

  “Thanks.” I snatch the phone from her and make an escape for the door.

  “Remember who you are, Luna!” she shouts.

  She’s said the same thing to me every day for the last five years. I want to tell her that I don’t know who I am, but I’m definitely not the daughter she wants. Like always, though, I remain silent and nod before I close the front door.

  Once I climb into the car, I text Wynter, one of my best friends on the planet, has been since second grade. We were the first two members of our group of five friends. It all started with us, a bottle of nail polish, and Wynter coaxing me into rebelling for the day. Although, it didn’t take that much effort on her part.

  “We can use fingernail polish remover before you go home,” she said as she painted my nails a bright pink shade as we sat under the slide at our school playground.

  I was awestruck by the color. It was the first time I’d ever felt pretty in my life. “This is fun. And it looks so pretty. Like princess-worthy pretty.”

  “It’s totally princess worthy,” she said with a huge grin on her face.

  I smiled, but then my happiness faltered. “I just wish my clothes matched.”

  “One day they will,” she promised me.

  And she made good on that promise the day I turned seventeen, and she bought me a new wardrobe, which now is nothing but ashes.

  Me: Can u bring me some clothes please?

  Wynter: Oh, my God! She gave u your phone back!

  Me: Yep. But only so she could keep track of me.

  Wynter: She’s so crazy. And FYI, I was already planning on bringing u some clothes.

  Me: Ur the best. I feel so bad that u gave me all those nice clothes and now they’re gone. It was such a waste.

  Wynter: It’s not your fault your parents are cray-cray.

  Me: I know, but I wish they weren’t. Their punishments aren’t even in the realms of normalcy.

  Wynter: Ur telling me. Remember that one time they made you write I Will Not Color On My Walls a thousand times?

  Me: That one was pretty bad . . . I hated that u were there and had to see me do it.

  Wynter: I felt so bad for you. And it never made any sense to me. I mean, they made you write it on the wall and then paint over it. I was like, seriously, wth? Why would u have her write on the wall about not writing on the wall?

  Me: I never understood it, either. But I still don’t think it’s as bad as burning an entire wardrobe. And now she’s got that stupid tracking app on my phone.

  Wynter: Ari’s on that. Give him a few days, and I’m sure he’ll have some kind of way that we can get around it.

  I smile for the first time in three days.

  Ari is one of my close friends, has been since sixth grade when his family first moved to Ridgefield. Since his family didn’t grow up here, a lot of people treated him as an outsider. My friends and I, being outsiders ourselves, took him in and showed him the inner workings of our middle school.

  I actually have four people I consider my best friends. Together, we make up a group of five very different people who somehow work together. Ari is our computer genius who’s really into school and getting good grades. Whenever we have a computer crisis, he’s there to hack into whatever we need him to do. He once even changed Wynter’s math grade from a D to a C so she’d pass Algebra.

  Me: Tell him that he’s the bestest, bestest.

  Wynter: I thought I was the bestest, bestest. :(

  Me: No, you’re the bestest, bestest, bestest. But don’t tell the others.

  Wynter: It’s our little secret. ;)

  I set the phone on the console and back the car onto the road. The drive to school takes me about ten minutes. After parking the car, I grab my bag, get out, and take a seat on a bench in the campus yard with my bag on my lap, trying to hide my clothes as best as I can. As I’m digging through my bag for a stick of gum, I come across a few items I stole a couple of weeks ago. Usually, I hide everything in a loose floorboard in my closet, but mom knocked on the door while I was emptying my pockets, and I panicked and stuffed them into my bag.

  I pull out one of the items and frown. A ceramic statue of a goose? I hate geese. I really do. They’re so mean and noisy. So why of all things did I jack this statue? I don’t even need it. What kind of person does that make me?

  A terrible one who hates geese for no reason other than they’re noisy and mean.

  “Dude, what’s up with the creepy-ass bird?” Beckett asks as he squints at the hand-sized statue in my hand.

  He’s what most people call the preppy, rich kid of our group. They think he’s shallow and spoiled because his parents give him everything. That’s just the surface of Beckett, though. There’s way more going on underneath his nice clothes and good looks.

  “It’s a present for my Gran’s b-day,” I lie, too afraid to tell him the truth.

  He slides onto the bench beside me. “I hate to break it to you, Lu, but your present sucks balls. It’s seriously going to give your Gran fucking nightmares about the thing coming to life and eating her face off.”

  “Okay, first off, gross, and second, you know I suck at picking out presents.” Not wanting to talk about the bird anymore, I stuff it into my bag. Out of sight, out of mind, right? Nope. Not even close. To distract myself from my terribleness, I skim the crowd forming in front of our school. “Where’s Wynter?”

  He slumps back in the seat, his mood deflating. “She didn’t come out of her house this morning when I stopped to pick her up, and she hasn’t answered any of my texts.”

  “Are you two still fighting?” I ask, pulling out my phone.

  He props his foot up on his knee and rakes his fingers through his messy blond hair. “We were never fighting. We just had a mild disagreement.” When I elevate my brows at him, his lips quirk. “What? It wasn’t a fight? We didn’t even yell at each other.”

  “Yeah, because she threw her drink in your face and then left your house before you could yell at her. If she’d stuck around, then you two definitely would’ve started yelling.” I swipe my finger across the s
creen of my phone.

  Me: Where r u at?

  Wynter: By my locker, waiting for you with some killa clothes.

  Me: Awesome. But just an FYI, I’m with Beckett. He seems upset because you blew him off this morning.

  Wynter: He totally deserves it. He called me a drama queen and a spoiled brat in front of the entire school, and he didn’t even apologize!

  I sigh. Wynter is so about the drama, has been ever since we first met. Wynter and Beckett, however, didn’t used to fight. Back in second grade, Beckett used to have a crush on Wynter and would follow her around like a lovesick puppy. Thankfully, he stopped doing that around fourth grade when he decided he wanted just to be friends.

  Me: He just told me to say he was sorry.

  “I didn’t even do anything that I need to say sorry for,” Beckett says as he reads the message from over my shoulder.

  “You called her a spoiled brat. You know she hates that, Beck,” I shoo him away from my phone.

  “But she is a drama queen and a spoiled brat. So am I. She should just own it.” He bounces his knee up and down, growing frustrated. “She always acts like a princess in front of everyone when she’s drunk. And I’m not going to just sit there and put up with her drama.”

  I push to my feet. “I know you’re trying to look out for her, but maybe next time, you should try taking her aside and talking to her about stuff instead of yelling at her in front of everyone.”

  “Maybe there won’t be a next time,” he says. “Maybe I’ll finally say to hell with her shit and stop apologizing for stuff I don’t need to be apologizing for.”

  “You know you’re not going to do that. She may be a pain in the ass, but she’s still your friend.”

  “I guess so. I just wish she’d be nicer to me and quit freakin’ out over the tiniest things.”

  “She’s nice when she’s sober, just like you’re more serious when you are.” I sling the handle of my bag over my shoulder. “I’m headed inside. You coming?”

  He shakes his head, staring at the parking lot. “I’m waiting for Ari. I’ll catch up you with ya later, though.”

  Waiting for Ari is code for he’s avoiding Wynter for a while and will probably have a guy bitch-fest with Ari. Poor Ari. He’s too nice, and he won’t say anything to Beckett, even if he doesn’t want to listen to him complain.