Trinkets (9 page)

“Designer bracelet.” I shrug, nonchalant.

“Why would you need to steal something? Aren’t you rich?” Moe asks.

“It’s none of your business,” I fire back.

Moe looks at Elodie. “She probably just forgot to lay down her daddy’s black AmEx. Either that or she’s claiming she stole something expensive so she can sound like a badass.”

Elodie and Moe exchange a smile, like they’re laughing at me.

“Fine,” I say. “Let’s prove it, then.”

Moe laughs. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Just what I said.” I glare at her.

Elodie looks back and forth between us.

“After class we go lift the best stuff we can,” I continue. “Then we meet afterward at Pizzicato and compare notes. May the best thief win.”

Just then Harold snorts again. This time he’s snored so loud he’s woken himself up.

“Where am I?” he asks, genuinely confused.

“You’re in Shoplifters Anonymous with a bunch of girls who are about to have some fun.” Then Moe glances at me. “Your friends hang out at Pizzicato. We should probably meet at the Roxy instead, so you won’t blow your cover.”

She has a point.

“Fine,” I say. “Roxy it is.”

Elodie looks at us, surprised. “I’m in.”

“You’re into what?” Shawn asks, passing by our table.

“Identifying with each other,” Moe says, smirking at us.

“We sure are,” I add.

“Indeedy,” Harold says, proud to be included. Who wouldn’t be?

I’m sitting in a leopard-print chair five feet away from a ginormous crucified Jesus. His feet dangle above a jukebox.

“Sweet Jesus,” I crack. The shiny Pepto walls are starting to make me loopy.

“I like how his crown of thorns is made of lights,” Elodie says, taking a bite of her Quentin Tarantuna, which is basically a tuna melt on rye with a ridiculous name. We share a Lord of the Fries, dripping in chili cheese. Calories don’t count if you’ve been shoplifting.

After she takes a big slurp of Dr Pepper, Moe points and asks me if I’m “buddies” with anyone here.

“Like who?” I say. The only people here are a Mohawked guy and a smattering of scrawny hipster twentysomethings sitting in the corner.

“I don’t know,” she responds. “I just wanted to be sure
you were saved the embarrassment of being affiliated with us,” Moe says.

“I never said I was embarrassed,” I snap.

“But aren’t you?” Elodie asks, curious.

“She obviously is.” Moe crams a fry into her mouth, then turns to me.

Whatever. Now I just want to win this infuriatingly dumb idea for a contest and leave. I yank out a red Betsey Johnson shirt and a strappy minidress. “Betsey Johnson. Admire and weep.”

Elodie fingers the red shirt with an impressed murmur as Moe reaches down and pulls out her bag, dumping a bunch of stuff all over the table.

Elodie inhales sharply. “Whoa.”

Moe holds up a bunch of cherry-flavored condoms. “Licorice, anyone?”

Elodie shoots her a look, and Moe shrugs. “I may need them to have sex.”

I hold up a pair of fuzzy pink handcuffs and raise an eyebrow.

“Oh. Those are for you,” Moe says to me. “You wear pink, right?”

“Actually, I do.” I smirk. “Thanks.”

Elodie asks, “Where did you get all this stuff?”

Moe shrugs. “Spartacus.”

“You went into
Spartacus
?” I have to admit, I’m impressed. And a little ooked out. It’s a sex shop crawling with leather daddies and porn lovers. One time Brady
dared me to go in there, but I couldn’t do it. Too much perv DNA on the premises.

“If you got caught there, they’d probably shanghai you and sell you into sex slavery,” I say with a sniff.

“I’m the last person they’d want to bust. They were too busy trying to stop a guy from putting his penis inside a blow-up doll.”

“Ew.”
Elodie looks traumatized.

“Where did
you
go?” I ask Elodie.

She looks embarrassed, then reaches to the seat next to her, pulling her overcoat onto the table.

“Here,” Elodie says, pulling a novel and a book of poems out of the pockets.

I pick up
The Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson
. “Didn’t Ms. Hoberman assign us some of her stuff a few months ago?”

Elodie nods. Then she pulls out a perfect little clutch. It’s chic and black, with a cute gold buckle. “I also went to Coach,” she says modestly.

“That’s, like, four hundred bucks!” I gasp. I can’t help it.

“I knew this girl was trouble,” Moe says, beaming.

“How’d you pull that off?” I ask.

She shrugs. “Perk of being a good girl. No one suspects you’ll do anything bad.”

As I stare at her, jaw dropped, Moe suddenly blurts out, “Oh, fuck.”

We turn to see what Moe’s staring at: a tall, pockmarked guy with wispy hair and a really creepy grimace
on his face. Even though he’s skinny, he’s muscular and strong-looking.

“It’s the blow-up doll guy!” Moe whispers.

“That’s him?” I’m actually kind of scared.

“Don’t look at him!” Moe hisses, and we whip back around.

“He tried to get me to go in the back of the store with him,” she says, looking freaked out. “He told me if I didn’t, he’d call the cops and tell them I was stealing.”

Elodie panics. “What?!”

“He’s coming over here!” Moe says. Elodie panics, grabbing my arm.

“Should we scream?” I’m actually worried I may lose my shit—

From Moe’s eyes, I can tell he’s about to appear right over my shoulder, and then suddenly she says, “Oh no.”

We gasp and spin around—only to see a little girl standing behind us.

Elodie deflates, trying to catch her breath. Moe keels over with laughter.

“You asshole!” I say. “He wasn’t coming over at all.”

Moe points. “Looks like he’s getting himself some pie.” The guy is sitting in a booth, placing an order with the waitress and looking pretty benign.

She starts laughing so hard, she drops half her sandwich on her lap.

“You’ve got Tarantuna on your pants,” Elodie says, pointing and giggling.

“So he didn’t really say that to you in the sex shop?” I can’t believe she would do that.

“Heck no,” she says. “I’ve never even seen that guy before.”

Elodie giggles even harder.

“And there was no blow-up doll,” Moe adds. “Well, it wasn’t inflated, anyway. But it was a pretty good story, right?”

I punch her in the arm, knocking over my milk shake and making a gross, disgusting mess, but I have to say that even though I wanted to kill her, I’m pretty sure I haven’t laughed that hard in six months.

Aunt B says to not judge a book by the cover, but I guess everybody does. Elodie was surprised when I told her I’d already read
Broken Soup
. Tabitha said she hadn’t read it, so Elodie gave her the copy. Hanging out at the Roxy with them was more fun than listening to Alex lay out a plan to TP some nerd’s house, but it wasn’t like super buddy-buddy or anything. Obviously, I didn’t tell them about Noah or even that I like to read while taking a bath. It’s none of their business. I guess if I were a book, my cover would be different from what’s on the inside too.