“What are you doing, Wendy?” Pete hisses at me from the kitchen. “Guys, come on, let’s go!”
“Just wait,” I answer. “Hughie, shine the flashlight right here for me?”
“I’m going to get Belle,” Matt whispers, and I hear his footsteps running up the stairs two at a time. But I don’t take my eyes off the panel.
“Hughie, the flashlight, now,” I say angrily. My fingernail breaks; I try another finger instead. “Almost got it.”
Matt is dragging Belle down the stairs.
“We’re getting out of here,” Pete says, but I shake my head. Just one more twist and I’ll have done it.
“Got it!” I shout triumphantly, forgetting to keep my voice low.
“Got what?” Belle says as Pete shushes me.
“The alarm. It’s off,” I say, grinning. Only now do I notice that my heart is pounding, my skin covered in a slick of sweat. I explain to them about the kill switch.
“Way to go, Wendy,” Hughie says, clapping me on the back. “You sure saved my ass.”
I grin. “No problem.”
“Big deal,” Belle scoffs. “The poor little rich girl probably only knows how because her parents have the same one.”
“Well, then thank goodness we’ve got the rich chick with us tonight,” Matt says, laughing.
“All right, guys, keep it down,” Pete says. “Let’s get this thing done already.” He heads back to the kitchen, and Belle heads back up the stairs. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see rings glittering on her fingers that weren’t there when we walked in the door.
Now my heartbeat is steady and strong, my breath deep and smooth. I feel like I’m balancing on a surfboard, having just conquered a monster wave. I follow Hughie up the stairs.
I’ve never been inside such a big house. On the walls are paintings I’d expect to see in a museum. An enormous crystal chandelier hangs down over the center of the stairs, twinkling in the moonlight. I bet it would be beautiful with the lights on, but we don’t exactly want to draw the neighbors’ attention.
“How much time do we have?” I whisper to Hughie.
He shrugs. “All the time in the world, thanks to you.” He begins skipping up the stairs, his feet bouncing up and down on the thick cream-colored carpet. “Come on!”
At the top of the stairs is a long hallway. I hear Belle laughing in one of the bedrooms. “Jackpot!” she shouts, and I wonder what she’s found.
Hughie opens a closed door, revealing a king-size four-poster bed, covered in a plush comforter and the fluffiest pillows I’ve ever seen. It’s the kind of bed you see in a movie about princes and princesses hundreds of years ago. The kind of bed that belongs in a castle.
And suddenly, I want nothing so much as to jump on that gorgeous, perfect bed. I rush past Hughie and leap onto the bed and begin bouncing up and down. I kick off my sandals; the comforter is satin underneath my feet, and after a few jumps I slip, tumbling down onto the pillows.
“You okay?” Hughie asks from the doorway.
I pop right back up. The bed smells like expensive perfume. “You gotta try this,” I say, and Hughie joins me, bouncing on the bed. I feel about eight years old. I can’t remember the last time I had so much fun.
Belle comes in, layers of gorgeous clothing draped over the T-shirt and shorts she wore to ride over here. She looks like a little kid playing dress-up. “What are you guys doing?”
Pete pokes his head in the door in time to see me answer Belle’s question. “Working on our balance,” I say, spinning in a circle on my next jump. “It’ll come in really handy on the waves tomorrow.”
For some reason, this sends Hughie into a fit of laughter, and he collapses into a giggling lump on the bed.
“We’re getting ready to leave,” Belle says finally. She’s trying to look like she’s above all this silliness, but it’s obvious from the way she wears her new clothes that she’s enjoying this just as much as we are. I attempt a pirouette off the bed, but I trip and land sloppily at her feet, laughing. I can see that Belle’s struggling not to laugh, too.
I glance back at the bed before we leave the room behind; it’s a mess. The beautiful comforter is covered in sand; the pillows are tossed haphazardly on the floor. Ever since I was a little girl, I made my bed every single morning. My parents had to beg and bribe my brothers to make their beds before school, but they never had to remind me to make mine. It feels strange to leave such a mess behind.
I follow Pete, Belle, and Hughie down the stairs and out the front door, where Matt is waiting with our bikes in the darkness. He stuffs our lost into backpacks the boys slip on. To my surprise, Belle climbs onto Matt’s handlebars, her new clothes billowing in the wind, and Pete pulls me onto his own.
We speed away silently, riding more slowly than we rode coming here, weighed down by all of our booty. Before we turn the corner off of Brentway, I glance back at the enormous house we just raided. It’s so full of beautiful things that I wonder if the owners will even notice what’s missing.
As the bicycle moves forward in the cool night air, I forget it alclass="underline" how awful it feels to miss my brothers, to watch my parents’ clothes turn gray, to lie to Fiona; how much it hurt when Belle told me she and Pete were a couple, how my stomach twisted when he carried her board in from the beach for her this morning, when she leaned against him as he rode his bicycle here tonight.
Instead I just close my eyes and let the wind rustle through my hair.
13
Tonight, the wind off the ocean licks the flames of the beach bonfire until I think the blaze will rise all the way up the cliffs and set fire to the houses at the top, starting with Pete’s house directly above, then traveling along the reeds to the garage. I almost laugh, thinking about the bonfire we had after graduation, the one for which we had to get special permission from the local parks department.
Hughie and Matt show up with cases of beer; there must have been some cash lying around the house on Brentway, or maybe they swiped a forgotten credit card.
On the other side of the fire, Belle slouches, talking to some boys whose names I don’t yet know, a necklace she stole twinkling around her neck in the firelight. I can tell it’s not actually a nice piece of jewelry, probably won’t be worth much money when they try to pawn it along with everything else they stole. But the necklace looks really pretty on her—it suits her, somehow, even though she’s wearing it with an oversize sweatshirt and flip-flops. She’s so short that the sweatshirt fits her like a minidress. It’s probably Pete’s shirt, or at least it probably used to be.
Shivering, I step closer to the fire. From behind me, Matt hands me a beer.
“A toast to the criminal of the hour,” he says, clinking his own bottle against mine.
“Ha ha,” I say, taking a swig. “Very funny.”
“What’s funny?” Matt answers. “You saved our asses back there. We owe you big-time now, Newport.”
“Well, I’ll take my payment in free beer and surf lessons, thank you very much.”
Matt grins. He has tan lines around his eyes just like Pete’s, from squinting in the sun. I think he must be my age, and I wonder if he ever thinks about the fact that under different circumstances he might have graduated high school this spring.
“Aren’t you cold?” I ask. He’s wearing board shorts and a T-shirt. I’m wearing jeans and a sweater and am still covered with goose bumps.
“Nah, cold doesn’t bother me. I head out there in January in nothing but shorts,” he says, gesturing toward the waves. “If you’re cold, I can run up and get you a blanket or something,” Matt offers, but I shake my head.
I lower myself onto the sand, and he sits down beside me. This could be an opportunity to ask him about John and Michael, but I know I’ll have to tread carefully.