Death of a Kleptomaniac Read online

  ALSO BY KRISTEN TRACY

  A Field Guide for Heartbreakers

  Sharks & Boys

  FOR SARA CROWE, MY AGENT AND FRIEND THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

  Copyright © 2012 by Kristen Tracy

  All rights reserved. Published by Hyperion, an imprint of Disney Book Group. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher. For information address Hyperion, 114 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 10011-5690.

  ISBN 978-1-4231-5462-4

  Visit www.un-requiredreading.com

  Contents

  Title Page

  Also by Kristen Tracy

  Copyright

  Epigraph

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine

  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty-one

  Twenty-two

  Twenty-three

  Twenty-four

  Twenty-five

  Twenty-six

  Acknowledgments

  Wednesday, October 2

  Because I am young, industrious, and mildly horny, I am capable of thinking multiple thoughts at the same time.

  Thought One: Right before I kiss a guy, I experience obvious epiphanies.

  Thought Two: I’m not cultured enough for Henry Shaw; he plays the saxophone.

  Thought Three: If I add one more guy to my Junior Year Crush List, I’ll reach unsustainable numbers before November.

  Thought Four: Excluding people who come from old money and the East Coast, I am a fairly cultured person.

  Thought Five: This is the first time I’ve ever listened to John Coltrane and known that I was listening to John Coltrane.

  Thought Six: Henry wants to kiss me. I want to kiss Henry. Do it.

  Thought Seven: Henry is dating Melka. Wait for Melka to return to the Czech Republic. I am not a relationship wrecker.

  Thought Eight: Kiss him. Kiss him.

  My mind never stops. As I sit on Henry Shaw’s well-vacuumed shag carpet, I run my hands through it, as if I’m petting a dog. Even though I’ve known Henry since fourth grade, this is the first time I’ve ever been in his room. It’s no typical guy cave. It’s clean, spacious, painted a neutral walnut color, well decorated, and I like his floor lamps. Backlit, Henry holds his saxophone with both hands and leans his head forward a little, cheeks inflated. How come I’ve never noticed the sexual nature of the saxophone before? Henry plays it with his whole body. And I feel the music come out of Henry with my whole body. When I close my eyes, I try to stop thinking. I spend too much time in my head. Henry and Melka. Henry and Melka. I won’t bust up a relationship. It’s not my style.

  Henry pulls the horn from his mouth and sets down the instrument in a stand beside his bed.

  “It’s soulful,” I say, hoping that a saxophone player will find that comment deep enough. Then I stop talking. Most of what I know about dating comes from cable television. And it’s a well-dramatized fact that speaking the wrong words during key romantic junctures can derail all progress.

  “Thanks,” Henry says.

  He looks sad as he sits down next to me on the carpet. We’re supposed to be studying in the kitchen. We’re not supposed to be alone in Henry’s bedroom with the door shut. This isn’t my normal. Kissing aside, I’ve only really made out with one guy, and it was in a car, because, due to my mildly horny predisposition, I try to avoid situations where I can become easily horizontal on surfaces that encourage coupling.

  “You’re so quiet,” I say. But he’s always quiet. I’m not saying anything beyond what our entire high school knows.

  “I’m thinking about Melka,” he says.

  “Oh, God.” I didn’t mean to say that out loud. As casually as I can, I grab my right wrist with my left hand and feel for my pulse. It’s a tactic I use to calm myself. It never occurred to me until this very moment that this might look weird.

  “So you’ve heard,” he says.

  I let go of my wrist and shake my head. I feel like he’s referring to a specific event. I stare into his face, into his eyes. They are so sad. He takes his glasses off so I can look directly at him. No glass barrier. Corny and inconvenient as it sounds, I’m getting lost in the eyes of Henry Shaw, an already-taken high school band geek. And on a school night! This is so impractical. I’m losing myself somewhere between Henry’s black pupils and hazel irises. It’s amazing that you can know someone for years and years and suddenly they can look so different, so sexy. He blinks and then I blink and then we both keep staring.

  He finally speaks. “I broke up with Melka.”

  I swallow. And continue to stare.

  “Oh,” I say. Sounding so sorry, even though I’m not.

  “It wasn’t going anywhere,” he says.

  We’re in high school. He was dating an exchange student. Where was he expecting it to go? But I don’t say that. I blink. I say something that I think he might want to hear. “It has to be going somewhere.”

  His face moves closer to mine, and when I sense his breath approaching my mouth, I close my eyes. At the beginning of summer I made a promise that I would not waste my junior year. Everything I did had to matter. Because high school is important. This, I’d decided, was the year I was going to make my mark.

  Henry laughs. I open my eyes.

  “You’re laughing at me?” I ask.

  “It’s your face,” he says.

  He’s laughing at my face?

  “You look cute when you close your eyes,” he says.

  I swat his leg pretty hard. I meant the strike to be flirtatious. But I hit him with a little too much enthusiasm.

  “Do you want to stop?” he asks.

  But we haven’t started, I think.

  “Do you want to stop?” I ask.

  He stands up, and my whole body floods with disappointment.

  “What kind of music do you like?” He walks to his desk, opens his laptop, and clicks through files.

  “I’m new to jazz,” I say.

  He turns around and wags his finger at me like he’s disappointed. “You’re missing out. You want to hear Lee Konitz?”

  I nod. Henry’s right. I suddenly feel like I’m missing out on everything. Why aren’t we making out right now? Why haven’t we been hooking up and listening to jazz from the very beginning? I guess fourth grade is a little young for that. When does a person even start playing the saxophone?

  “Maybe you want to hear Jackie McLean?”

  I nod again. “Both of them,” I say. No more missing out.

  While his back is to me, I lift a low-hanging sheet so I can peek under his bed. I glimpse a flash drive. A sock. Then I see a pair of keys strung together with a piece of yellow yarn. No dust. Henry is a clean guy. I reach under the bed and snag the keys. I settle the sheet back in place. I do this before he turns around. The keys slide easily into my front pocket and I’m excited in a different way.

  “You like this?” he asks.

  I nod again, and he sits down next to me. His thin body feels strong as he pulls me toward his lap. He runs his hands through my hair over and over again, and we just keep staring at each other. This is young love, I think. It’s not supposed to make sense. It’s supposed to unfold just like this in a bedroom where
you were never supposed to be.

  We lean toward each other until his lips touch my lips. After three gentle presses I feel his tongue. Four minutes ago I could never do this because Henry was dating Melka and he was not on my Crush List. Now I know what his tongue tastes like. He pulls away from my mouth, and my eyes pop open. Why did we stop kissing? We should never stop. We’re just looking at each other. Watching each other breathe. I keep my head tilted and lips relaxed, hoping he’ll lean forward and we’ll start again. And then he does. This time we aren’t as gentle. We kiss desperately. Like it’s a life-sustaining activity. My mind keeps trying to think. But I don’t want to think.

  Fast. Fast. Fast. His hands reach around my waist. They want to tug at my shirt. I can feel that they want to do that. But he doesn’t let his hands go anywhere under my clothes. His fingers crawl along my back. We kiss. We kiss. His mouth is on my neck. We begin falling backward into a horizontal position. Bad idea. Stay sitting up. But then the base of a brass floor lamp is next to my head.

  The sounds of songs I’ve never heard, instruments I can’t identify, float out of the speakers on Henry’s shelf. Then I hear his front door slam shut. Parents. The wall holding his band plaques shakes, and we fly apart. I lift myself until I’m on my knees, swooning from the best make-out session of my life.

  “I’m supposed to be in your kitchen!” I whisper, panicked and a little dazed.

  “You look so guilty,” Henry says. “It’s okay.”

  “Kitchen!” I whisper again, standing up, urgently making my way through the hallway, down the stairs. I need to prepare myself to say normal things to his mother. Or father. Or priest. Or whomever I encounter near the fake fruit bowl set out on the dining room table. I round the corner to the kitchen and am stunned to see somebody I know.

  “Melka!” I say. Her blond hair is swept into a messy ponytail. Her face is a diamond of petite and well-placed bones; she’s the tiniest girl at our school.

  “Molly Weller?” Melka says. The way she utters my name makes it sound like a criminal act.

  I don’t say anything else. I react internally. Henry gave his girlfriend-of-three-months keys to his house? Weird.

  “Dis? Dis? Is how you treat me?” Melka asks. Her eyes squint and tears gather in their corners. “You git wit Molly Weller?”

  When she speaks my name the second time, she sounds disgusted.

  “We were studying,” I lie. “I’ve got to go.”

  “Melka, why are you here?” Henry asks. He looks beyond uncomfortable. “We’re broken up.”

  I think he said that last bit of information for my benefit.

  “Yesterday,” Melka says. Her tears have intensified and turned toward sobbing.

  I know I said I was leaving, but I continue to stand there. Maybe out of shock. Or possibly curiosity. Could what just happened be nothing more than a rebound? Is Henry like that?

  “I left keys to my bike lock,” Melka says. “Maybe in your room.”

  Henry nods. “Okay. You can go look. I haven’t seen any keys. I’ll go with you.”

  “Bye!” I say, racing to leave. Ugh. This feels so weird. They broke up yesterday and I’m making out with him today? Again, that’s not my normal. I hurry down the sidewalk to my car. I pull open the door and sit. Through a lit window I see two figures. It’s easy to tell Melka apart from Henry. Melka wants him back. She keeps moving her super-slim figure closer and closer to him. I wonder what they’re saying. I wish I could know. He looks so stiff. Even from their silhouettes it’s pretty obvious that Henry doesn’t like Melka anymore. Henry likes me. And I like Henry.

  I mean, I think I do. What about Tate? We have our first date this weekend. I start my car. The year of making my mark is beginning to feel a little complicated. I can’t like two guys at the same time. Can I? I peel out of Henry’s driveway and turn on my headlights. As part of his annual car safety routine, my father recently replaced both bulbs, and I can tell. They illuminate the suburban roadway in front of me with two perfect cones of light. Henry or Tate? I notice the signal turning red just in time to ease to a comfortable stop. A woman with a backseat filled with grocery bags pulls up alongside me, and I smile at her. Melka will never find her keys. Why don’t I feel worse about taking them?

  The light turns green and I punch the accelerator. There is nothing wrong with liking two guys. I wanted Melka’s keys. So I took Melka’s keys. It happens. I have a big heart. I’m capable of liking lots of people. So what? And sometimes I take things. It’s not the worst thing in the world. One day I’ll stop. And one day I’ll know exactly whom I’m supposed to like. He’ll be standing underneath a perfect tree or something. I mean, the lighting will be exactly right and I’ll see what I’m supposed to see. He’ll be standing there and I will know. Know.

  And maybe that will be the same day I stop taking things. I’ll see something and I’ll want it. But then I’ll think, Oh, Molly, you don’t really want that. And I’ll be in love. Or maybe not love. Maybe just like. But I’ll at least feel certain about it. And I’ll feel fine about everything. One day. Something will happen, and, like magic, my life will be solved.

  Thursday, October 3

  I slam my locker with such force that a freshman standing nearby flinches. It’s not that Trigonometry went exceptionally badly; it’s that I’m not ready to navigate my lunch conversation with Ruthann Culpepper.

  Reluctantly, I thread my way through the throngs of people, keeping an eye out for Henry and Melka. Nowhere. They are nowhere today. Thank God. What would I say? What if Melka exploded in anger and wanted to fight me? Would I fight an exchange student in the hallway over Henry Shaw? No. Well. Maybe.

  Before I descend the stairs into the cafeteria I pause on the top step and look out into the segregated landscape. Last year, I didn’t care about my popularity, and I’d sit with my friend Sadie Dobyns at any table near the back. We laughed a lot and nothing mattered. Not school dances, or games, or cliques, or clubs. High school was ridiculous; a joke we didn’t care about. But this year is different. It all matters.

  I’m a Tigerette now. A member of our school’s nationally esteemed drill team. Over the summer I practiced my butt off and acquired dance moves, muscle definition, flexibility, and status. I’ve traded up. Better clothes. Better friends. Better parties. Better crush interests. Grades are slipping, but there’s still time to work on that.

  I spot Ruthann and Joy. They don’t wave. It’s not cool to wave. I learned that the first time we ate lunch and they got up to leave and I waved good-bye and Ruthann said, “It’s not like we’re going off to fight in a war half a world away.” And after Ruthann sauntered off, Joy added, in case I had an IQ languishing below seventy, “We never wave.”

  I join my new friends, placing my lunch sack between them at the table. Ruthann chomps on a salad heavily doused in grated carrots. Joy does the same. I debate whether or not to tell them about making out with Henry. I pull out my turkey sandwich, peel it from its wrapper, and mull over my options. If I tell Ruthann, she’ll want every tiny detail. She’ll dissect the make-out session until it feels sterile. Then, most likely, she’ll judge me. And, inevitably, she’ll overstep all boundaries and try to dictate whom I should invite to the Sweetheart Ball. Tate or Henry. She’ll want to decide for me. I bet she steers me toward Tate. She’s such a steerer. Ugh. Why does our high school even have a girls’-choice dance this early in the year?

  Ruthann eyes me knowingly and rakes her fork across her salad, revealing a tomato, which she quickly spears. “I can’t believe you didn’t call me. You’re such a tart.”

  A tart? Does she know about Henry, or is she randomly calling me a pastry? I take a bite of my sandwich and look confused.

  “You’re what I call a promiscuous woman,” Ruthann says. She smiles at me with her fork still in her mouth. It’s frightening.

  “Melka told everybody in homeroom,” Joy says. “It spread like gangrene.”

  I hold my head in my hands. “Does this mean
I’ve lost my chance with Tate?” I’ve been so careful with my Tate crush. Careful to catch his eye when I looked good. Always poised to say funny things when he was in earshot. “My budding romance, is it dead?”

  Ruthann laughs. She laughs. For the first time since I abandoned my best friend Sadie and climbed up a few rungs on the social ladder, I am deeply missing that forsaken connection. She may have been cynical about school, politics, religion, purebred dogs, and national holidays, but she was always so supportive of me.

  “These things happen,” Joy says. “That’s why I used the gangrene metaphor. Because it’s something terrible that just happens too.”

  “Please, let’s not compare my dating situation to gangrene,” I say.

  “I think Melka was hiding in the garage the whole time,” Ruthann says. “I think she’s a stalker. You need to start watching yourself.”

  “Melka won’t hurt me,” I say. But I’m not totally convinced of that.

  “Daughters of diplomats have nothing to lose,” Ruthann says. “Watch cable. They off people all the time.”

  “I don’t know about that, but Melka does feel dangerous,” Joy says.

  Joy nods in affirmation of her own comment, sending her bob bouncing around her face. Great. My closest friend at the moment—short, bouncy, sweet, blond Joy—thinks that Melka should be classified as a dangerous woman.

  “I can’t believe you swooped in and stole him like that. When did you even start liking Henry? Ever since I’ve known you you’ve been obsessed with Tate. Obsessed,” Joy hisses.

  “I know,” Ruthann says. “You’re such a thief. Who knew?”

  My heart begins to race. I don’t want to be called a thief. I don’t really think my problem is thievery. I didn’t steal Henry. And I feel bad when I do steal. The urge is unstoppable. Like a thirst. I know that this is weird. And I don’t have the words to explain this weirdness to anybody. Joy and Ruthann stare at me. It’s time to respond. I shrug. When did lunch turn into a deposition? “Henry is easy to like.”

  “That’s an understatement!” Ruthann says. “Look! They’re back together!”