Wild Bird

  It was Meadow who came to my rescue. First she offered to sell my stuff on Craigslist, and when I’d sold off everything she thought I could get anything for—including my Jack Wills hoodie—she said, “I think it’s time for a little S’n’R.”

  “S’n’R?”

  She lowered her voice. “The fine art of Steal-and-Return.”

  “Steal-and-Return? What’s that?”

  She laughed. “You steal, I return.”

  She explained that it was complicated because without a receipt you usually get store credit when you return something, which you then have to use to buy something else, which you then return with the receipt, and, depending on the store, you can wind up with another store credit because your receipt said you used store credit to buy what you’re returning, but at some stores you can cash out.

  Like I said, complicated. And it involved shoplifting, which I was new to at this point and made me crazy nervous. But I was nearing the end of seventh grade and Meadow was finishing eighth, which meant she’d be at the high school in a few months while I’d be stuck in middle school for a whole year alone. I knew I had to do something.

  I took a deep breath. “Okay…how do we do this?”

  She started me off with a tour through Walmart. We acted like we were browsing shelves, while she filled me in on surveillance cameras and how to shield what I was doing from them. I’d had no idea they were even up there, because they didn’t look like cameras. They looked like big smoky Pokéballs hanging from the ceiling, but they were actually dangling eyeballs, watching our every move.

  “Don’t look at them!” Meadow said through her teeth.

  It was hard not to, now that I knew they were there. And now that I did know, I was totally creeped out. Who was watching? Was it a whole bank of cops looking at monitors in some back room? Or was it just one creeper with a Big Gulp and a mountain of junk food? Were people watching us right now? Could they tell we were up to something? Was everything being recorded?

  “Never look right at them,” Meadow whispered, guiding me along. “Just scan the area where you’re going from a distance, then remember where they are and stay cool. Cool is the key. Lose it and you’re locked up.”

  “But we’re minors, right? They can’t lock us up!”

  She gave me a sharp look. “You don’t ever want to have to play that card, and you do not want to wind up in juvie.” She pulled me along. “So focus. What you’re after is small, high-value items.”

  I could figure out what that meant, but it sounded so strange coming out of her. Like she had a PhD in shoplifting. So I squinted at her and said, “What?”

  “You know, like makeup? High-end earbuds? Anything that costs a lot but is small enough to slip into a pocket. Obviously, the bigger the price tag, the better.”

  Obviously.

  She steered me around a little more, giving me tips and ideas on what to say if I got caught. “Oh, I’m so sorry! My hands were full and I forgot I put that there!” Stuff like that. “And be contrite!” she told me.

  “Contrite?”

  “You know, apologize. Be sorry. Act innocent!” She grabbed my arm and led me to the door. “Come on—let’s get out of here.”

  “We’re not taking anything?” I whispered.

  “Are you kidding? The way you’ve been acting? It’s waaaaaay too hot in here right now.”

  The next day, she took me to a drugstore near school. “Why here?” I asked. I was whispering even though we were clear across the street from the store.

  “Less cameras, and I’ve had good luck returning stuff here.”

  We stayed across the street for a few minutes while she gave me more instructions. Then she sent me off by myself. “You’ll be way less conspicuous by yourself,” she said. “Don’t be nervous. Just do what I said. You’ll be fine.”

  So I went inside, got a handbasket, and hung it on my arm, just like she’d instructed.

  I felt like a dorky Red Riding Hood.

  I walked the aisles casually, adding stuff to the basket—a loaf of bread, a L’Oréal lipstick, a box of caramel popcorn, a can of iced tea. When I put the iced tea in the basket, I palmed the lipstick back out of the basket, rounded the aisle corner, and slipped the tube into my pocket. I shopped around a little more, then went to wait in the register line.

  When it was my turn, I smiled at the clerk and said hello as I put the basket on the counter.

  The clerk was older than my mom, with tight curly hair. She welcomed me in a bored voice and didn’t even look at me, just started ringing things up.

  “Oh, no,” I said, digging through my jeans pockets.

  She’d already scanned the bread, but she stopped when she saw that I had one measly dollar in my hand.

  I gave her a desperate look. “I left my money at home!”

  She canceled the sale and put the basket aside. “Next!”

  I left the store, sweat popping, heart pounding. I started across the street, hearing Meadow’s voice loop in my brain: Do not look back, stay cool. Do not look back, stay cool. Do not look back, stay cool.

  I made it halfway across the street.

  Nobody was shouting at me to stop.

  Do not look back, stay cool. Do not look back, stay cool.

  I was almost across the street.

  Nobody was clamping a hand on my shoulder.

  Do not look back, stay cool. Do not look back, stay cool.

  I reached the other side and finally risked looking back.

  Nobody.

  Suddenly there was this rush. This really strong electric high. Every cell in my body tingled. I was flying!

  “Look at you.” Meadow laughed as she ushered me down the street. “I have never seen you smile this big.”

  I slipped her the lipstick.

  “Nice,” she said with an approving grin.

  I was on top of the world, totally hooked.

  That summer, I got to be a pro at lifting. Not just stuff Meadow could return to keep me in weed, either. I got stuff for me, too. Candy bars, nail polish, makeup, clothes…By the time I was in eighth grade, it didn’t even faze me anymore. Lots of times I did it just because I could.

  And then the day before my eighth-grade spring break, Anabella came to my room and said, “I owe you an apology.”

  She was a sophomore now and hardly even acknowledged my existence, let alone spoke to me when Mom didn’t make her. So an apology? My brain could almost not translate.

  “Huh?” I said, looking up from my phone.

  She came in a step farther, stared at the floor, and frowned. “Remember last year how you told me that that Jack Wills hoodie was Meadow’s and I basically called you a liar?”

  “Uh, yea-ah.”

  “I was wrong. I’m sorry.”

  My head was spinning. This made no sense. “Why are you bringing this up now?” I asked. “It’s been over a year.”

  She shrugged. Still looking down. “I see her in it all the time at school.”

  Before I could think, I was saying, “You do?” Then I tried to cover up by laughing out, “It’s gotta be pretty thrashed by now.”

  “No, it still looks good.” Suddenly her phone was in my face, with a picture of Meadow wearing my Jack Wills hoodie.

  What went screaming through my brain was She said she sold it on Craigslist for twenty bucks! She gave me three measly joints for it! But I managed to nod and stay cool. “Yup. That’s it.”

  She was studying me now. “So, you know, I’m sorry I treated you like that.”

  “No big,” I said, hoping she couldn’t see the steam coming off me.

  She started to go, then turned back. “I’d like to start over with you someday. I don’t like that we hate each other.”

  “Oh, so you hate me? Is that what you’re saying?” I went back to browsing my phone. “So nice to know.”

  “Wren, look. I’m not—”

  “Just leave.”

  She did.

  I sat on my bed thinki
ng about Meadow. I tried to come up with ways she could have my hoodie without having lied to me. Like: she sold it, then saw it at Goodwill and bought it. But I was grabbing at shadows. She knew I loved that hoodie. She would have told me!

  And then the paint I’d brushed over other things started cracking.

  I was always the one who lifted, she was always the one who returned. “It’s complicated,” she’d explained again when I’d offered to do the whole thing myself. “You don’t want them to get suspicious.”

  But it never really made sense. Suspicious of what? It’s not like we always used the same store. We had a rotation system going! And wasn’t it more suspicious if the same person returned things? And why was she always telling me what to steal? Like, down to the brand name!

  Everything was fine as long as I didn’t ask questions. But the times I did, it felt like I was in gym trying to shoot a hoop with someone’s arms out, blocking. Out! Up! Out! Every time I asked something, I got swatted down.

  So I quit trying to make the shot. What did I care, anyway? What I passed off to Meadow somehow got turned into weed, and that was what mattered. I kept doing my part, she kept doing hers. It had gotten me through the torture of middle school, right?

  But seeing Meadow in my hoodie, knowing she had lied…it tweaked me.

  Really tweaked me.

  And she’d been wearing it all year? It was almost spring break and I’d never seen her in it, which told me she didn’t want me to know she had it.

  So the paint was cracked.

  Cracked and peeling.

  But something else was starting to bother me.

  Why had Anabella taken the picture? She’d used it like proof. But why did her apology need proof? She could just have said she was sorry and that would have been enough.

  But she’d come in with the picture ready.

  She’d really wanted me to see.

  I sat in my room and thought.

  And sat.

  And thought.

  And finally I just knew.

  Anabella wasn’t apologizing.

  This was classic two-faced, phony Anabella—she’d come in to narc on Meadow. I actually growled at the doorway where she’d been. I hated her.

  But as much as I wanted to chalk the whole scene up to Anabella being the most despicable sister on earth, I couldn’t ignore the awful, gut-burning feeling that Meadow had spent almost a year taking me for a ride.

  The first day of spring break, I just showed up at her house.

  “Meadow!” her dad bellowed from the door. “Your friend’s here!” He smiled as he stepped aside, letting me in. “How’s it goin’? It’s been a while.”

  He’d put on weight since the last time I’d seen him. There was a full-on roll coming over the waistband of his shorts, and his face looked puffy beneath the stubble.

  “Good,” I said. “You?”

  “Hangin’ in there.” He looked around. “Excuse the mess. It’s been a little…” His voice drifted off, then came back full force. “Meadow!”

  “I know the way,” I said with a laugh, and pointed to the stairs with a question mark on my face.

  “Sure, sure, of course. She’s probably got the earbuds in again.”

  At the top of the stairs, I turned left to Meadow’s wing. Her parents had a bedroom around the stairwell and down the other hall, but Meadow said that they slept in the downstairs TV room, so she was pretty fearless about smoking weed in her bedroom. “They’re on their own cloud,” she told me the first time I spent the night. And it was true. They never, ever checked on her. It was like she had the whole upstairs to herself.

  I listened outside Meadow’s door for a minute and could hear the tinny buzz of headphone music. I tapped just so I could say I’d knocked, turned the knob, and peeked inside.

  She was on her back on her bed, earbuds in, eyes shut. The room was a disaster. I hardly recognized it. No way I could sleep on a pad on the floor like I used to.

  I slipped inside and closed the door. There was evidence everywhere: nail polish, sunglasses, jewelry, clothes…I crept around the room collecting all of it in a cloth-lined wicker basket that was supposed to be used for organizing. Then I spotted my Jack Wills hoodie lying in a heap by her bed and quit tiptoeing. I was mad.

  “Hey!” Meadow cried, sitting up. “What are you doing?”

  I shoved the basket at her. “Here! Label that Wren’s Stuff!” I picked up my hoodie and put it on. “You liar.”

  “Aw, maaaan,” she said, looking down.

  “This is why you never invite me over anymore! This is why you never want to Facetime. This is why you want to be the one to cash in. You don’t actually do it! You liar.”

  “It’s not like that. It’s…complicated.”

  “I’m done falling for that, Meadow. It’s really simple—you’re a liar.”

  “Look. I had trouble returning stuff. They’re tight about it now. I didn’t tell you because I didn’t want you to feel bad.”

  “You really think I’m stupid, don’t you? Well, I’m not! The only thing I was stupid about was trusting you! But I totally get it now. You never had to buy on the street! Your parents never moved their stash! You’ve been pinching from them this whole time!”

  She switched into battle mode. “Yeah, well, you know what?” she said, standing up. “You never even offered to pay! You—”

  “You were getting it for free!”

  “I taught you how to pinch from your parents, and you never even thought to offer me any of it!”

  “You get twice what I do for allowance!”

  “You went out and bought hundred-dollar hoodies! Like I could afford to do that?”

  “If it bugged you, why didn’t you say something?”

  She was glaring at me now. “You never even said thank you!”

  That stunned me. “Thank you?” It had never crossed my mind to thank her. Maybe because I thought hanging out in the bathroom getting high was doing her a favor? But that hadn’t been the case since early in sixth grade.

  “I thought you seeing how much the stuff actually costs might give you some appreciation! But no. Never once did you thank me. For anything!”

  I went at her a different way. “I thought you liked hanging out with me!”

  “What do I get out of it? I do all the work and you get all the pleasure!”

  “Pleasure? What?”

  She snorted and sat back down on her bed. “In case you haven’t noticed, I’m the brains, you’re the leech.” She waved at the door. “Go. And good luck scoring on your own.”

  She was dismissing me?

  “I am not going to let you turn this around! You’re the worm here. You’ve been lying to me for a year!”

  She lay down and started to put her earbuds in. “Yeah. And you’ve been leeching for about three.”

  I stormed out of there. Meadow was a complete liar and the worst friend ever! I didn’t need her! Who needed her? Our friendship was a habit, was all. A bad, empty habit. I was done. D-o-n-e, done!

  Which was easy that first week.

  And harder the next.

  I tried making new friends, tried living clean.

  By summer she was back in my life.

  It feels like we’ve been hiking with the tarp stretcher for at least four hours, but when I look at the sun and divide up the sky again, I calculate that it’s only been about two.

  Two sweaty, miserable, dusty hours across the desert.

  We’ve traded sides and high-low positions a couple of times to relieve aching hands and arms. My bandanna’s now wrapped around my stretcher handle to keep the hot spots that were raging at me from turning into actual blisters. I’ve been quiet and mad while the other Coyotes have been talking. They chitchat about school, complain about haters, joke about guys. And Mia and Shalayne bust out hip-hop lyrics like their tongues are tap-dancing.

  I march on, head down. What is wrong with them? Don’t they know we’re prisoners? That we’re just a chain
gang, being forced to lug a ridiculous pile of junk through the desert?

  “Terrain” seems to be Dvorka’s favorite word today. She’s called back stuff about rocky terrain, mountain terrain, rugged terrain, and desert terrain….I’m sick to death of it. So now when she pipes up about the floral terrain, I grumble, “The only trr-ain I want to hear about is one that’ll give me a ride out of here.”

  Mia—who’s working the back end of the tarp stretcher with me—hears and tosses me a grin. “Choo-choo.”

  And then suddenly we’re logjammed, with Hannah and Shalayne stopping dead in their tracks. I snap, “What the—” but then I see the carpet of yellow flowers ahead. It’s the size of a football field. I blink, sure it’s a mirage.

  “Springtime in the desert,” Michelle says behind us. “There’s nothing like it.”

  I look at her. “But…?”

  She laughs. “A little rain goes a long way when the land is parched.” She nudges her head up, telling us to keep moving. “Sometimes it doesn’t take much for what’s dormant to bloom.”

  She says this carefully. Like she’s putting words on one of those justice scales, balancing them. And in the back of my mind, I get that I’m supposed to feel the weight of what she’s saying, but I ignore it. What I need is the lift I’m getting from seeing this field of bright, beautiful flowers.

  Next to me, Mia seems to be feeling it too. “Wow,” she says under her breath.

  “You haven’t seen this before?” I ask.

  She shakes her head. “This is a first.”

  As we move closer, I ask, “We’re walking through it?”

  “We’re heading for that canyon over there,” Dvorka calls from up front.

  And that’s when I actually look around. I’ve been so busy looking down, being lost in my own head, hating on Dvorka for being so chirpy about terrain, that I haven’t noticed much but the ache in my arms and the sweat, sticking dirty shirt to hot skin, beneath my pack. But now I see that, even without the flowers, things are different. There’s a rise of smooth sandstone on the left, another on the right, and the walls have wavy stripes of oranges and whites that remind me of saltwater taffy.