“Time to go, guys,” I say breezily, but inside my stomach is Jell-O. I can’t help feeling oddly guilty about our encounter, like we were conspiring together. And it feels … exciting. Like he trusts me to keep this secret for him. Like we shared something that nobody else knows about. Not even Mikaela.
The three of us walk as far as the atrium with the screaming kids and exhausted-looking Santa. Cody says, “Well, I’m off like your prom dress,” and splits for the nearest exit.
“Yeah, nice talking to you for five seconds.” Mikaela rolls her eyes and stomps toward the Bath and Body store. Before following her I glance back at Cody, strolling right past a security guard like he’s wearing a halo. He looks back at me for a second and winks.
By the time we’ve bought bath stuff for Mikaela’s mom and a desk set for my dad, my head is pounding.
“Christmas shopping sucks, huh.” Mikaela gives my shoulders a sympathetic squeeze as we flee the mall and walk back through the packed parking lot to my car.
Despite my headache, I smile a little to myself.
The next morning, I don’t feel quite so much like a happy little co-conspirator anymore. The more I think about it, the more I don’t like what Cody did. It’s not so much the stealing, but the fact that he’s put me in an awkward position where I’m expected to keep his secret for him.
Even more than that, I feel unexpectedly jealous. I keep thinking about how, when he swiped the 8 Ball, Cody thought of Mikaela first. It’s an awful feeling, because I know it’s completely unfair.
I’m supposed to give Mikaela a ride to school, and, when I pick her up, it’s hard to even meet her eyes. After she slides into the car, I clench my hands around the wheel and gun it out of the apartment parking lot, almost peeling out as I turn onto Main Street.
“Jeez Louise, what the hell is the matter with you?” Mikaela clutches at the oh-god handle, staring at me like I’ve gone completely nuts.
“Sorry.” I ease my foot on the gas pedal. If Cody’s asking me to keep this a secret, that means he trusts me. Sees me as a friend; maybe more. But Mikaela’s my friend, too, and I’m being pretty harsh about something she doesn’t even know about.
“If you keep driving like that … ” Mikaela finally lets go and rests her hands in her lap. She gazes steadily at me. “Oh, I get it. Did something happen?”
“No,” I say, but I don’t sound very convincing.
“Is it your aunt?”
“No!” I lower my voice. “No, it’s not that.”
“Yeesh, okay. You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want. It’s cool.” She turns her head and stares out the window.
After a few minutes of tense silence, I relent. “You’ll probably think I’m just being stupid. Did you know Cody stole something from Fresh?”
“God, not again,” Mikaela says. She looks back over at me and smiles a little. “And it’s bugging you, isn’t it? You’re so cute.”
“Well, yeah, it’s bugging me a little.” I remember the casual way he did it, how he didn’t even look at what he was doing, just hid the 8 Ball away in his pocket in one smooth gesture. It should have been obvious that he’d done it before. “Cassie used to steal stuff, but never anything big. Nail polish, eyebrow pencils. That kind of thing. I just hate being put in that position. I kept worrying he’d get caught.”
“Ah, he’s an old pro,” she says sarcastically. “I wouldn’t worry about it. Just think of it as part of his mystique.” Mikaela looks at me intently for a moment. “Did you ever steal anything?”
My ears get hot under her stare, and I focus on the road. “I—no. I guess I was too much of a chicken to ever try it. Cassie always wanted me to steal makeup with her, but I couldn’t do it.”
“Yeah, I really can’t picture you doing that,” Mikaela says. “Anyway, I probably wouldn’t have as much respect for you if you were the shoplifting type.”
I can’t help wondering if that means she has less respect for Cody because he steals stuff. I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t care if the shoe were on the other foot. He’s actually pretty tolerant of people’s weird little habits, like Becca’s tendency to be hyper or David’s constant drawing in his sketchbook. It’s conformity he can’t seem to deal with.
“Like I was telling Cody the other day,” she continues, tapping her dark-red fingernails on the dashboard to the beat of the radio, “you’re just a totally sincere person. I don’t think you could be dishonest even if you wanted to. The only illicit thrill you get is driving us around unsupervised.”
“And there’s still two more weeks until I’m law-abiding,” I put in. “My birthday’s on the 20th.”
“Ooh, you’re such a rule-breaker.” She smiles. “Come on; it’s a good thing. You being nice is a good thing.”
“Huh.” I’m not sure how I feel about that assessment. “I guess.”
“Seriously, you’re not like most of the other people we hang out with at school. It’s one of the reasons I like you.”
I’m flattered, but I feel weird at the same time. Am I the token goody-goody friend? I try to change the subject.
“So Cody does this on a regular basis?”
“Yeah.” Mikaela says it sourly, like she’s sick of talking about it already. “He’s just lucky he didn’t get caught this time.”
“This time? What happened before?”
“Oh, he ended up owing a big fine because he tried to steal an iPod.” She makes a derisive noise. “What an asshole.”
“That’s … major.” I’m trying to picture him getting caught, but my mind’s eye keeps replacing it with an image of him reaching out, brushing my hair back, that secret smile on his face.
“Not really. His mommy and daddy paid for it. They always bail him out. They must be in total denial.”
“You make him sound like a petty criminal.” I turn into the driveway of the school parking lot, swerving around a group of students congregating on the sidewalk.
“No, but he seems to attract trouble. Like on purpose. It’s like he wants attention or something. I don’t know. Last year his parents found out he’d been ditching school a lot and told him to clean up his act, but it just turned him into the cheerful bundle of joy you see today.”
“Oh.” He said his mom was a Martha Stewart clone, but I wonder if he’s exaggerating. His parents are probably perfectly normal. I could see him being annoyed by that factor alone.
“And then over the summer he got drunk one night and got caught out in public by a cop, reeking of rum and peeing in an alley.”
“Where’d he get rum?” All too easily, I imagine Cody shoplifting from a liquor store, slipping a bottle into his pocket as effortlessly as the 8 Ball.
“He stole it out of his parents’ liquor cabinet. They never notice.”
“That’s weird.”
“Yeah, well, you’d understand if you met his parents.” She leaves it at that, since I’ve just pulled into a parking space. The bell rings as we walk past the art building, so I wave and head to my French class.
I feel a little better after talking to Mikaela. Even so, I can’t help feeling a tiny bit guilty about what I didn’t tell her. I didn’t tell her about the almost-underhearing incident. And I didn’t tell her about how Cody smiled at me, touched me.
I didn’t tell her how he makes me feel. I wonder if I should have.
Thursday, the last day of classes before Winter Break, Mikaela is absent. She left early to visit her brother for a couple of days, despite what she’d said about not wanting to spend time at her dad’s over the holidays.
I sit with David, Becca, and Cody at lunch. David opens up a little and talks about a painting he’s working on, showing us a few drawings in his sketchbook. Becca goes on and on about music and clubbing and veganism and how her parents went “batshit” when they saw her tongue piercing. I space out after a while. I wonder how Auntie Mina is going to cope with Christmas this year. I hope she doesn’t have to spend the holidays alone with Uncle Randall.