Sneak Thief Read online

  Her house wasn’t anywhere near as fine as the Orrs’, but I felt more easeful, as if it wouldn’t be such a tragedy if something got spilled. The arms of the sofa were worn, a puff of batting peeping out from one of the cushions. The table was covered in cut-out pictures that looked like they’d been shellacked on. That reminded me of my treasure map—which was still back at the RV. I regretted leaving it, but couldn’t help feeling that sending the sheriff to my stash to fetch it might stir up a whole new wasps’ nest.

  “I’ve cleared out Travis’s room for you, tried to soften things a bit.” Mabel brought me to a shut door, which she opened.

  She hadn’t pulled down all the monster-truck posters papering the walls or the collection of photos on the closet door—mostly of her teenage son and his special girl, unless I missed my guess. But there was a vase of flowers on top of the dresser—I reckoned that hadn’t belonged to Travis—and a yellow-green patchwork quilt on the bed. The pillow had the word Dream stitched across it.

  “Think you’ll be all right in here?” Mabel asked. “The dresser’s emptied out, so you can use it any way you please.”

  “It’s real good,” I told her. I’d never had my own room before, and for sure no one had ever cut flowers for me. Trying to think of some way to show her how fine it was, I set the rainbow rock and Jimmy’s book—my book now, I reckoned—on top of the dresser.

  “I’m glad.” She seemed to mean that. Clearing her throat, she said, “I was hoping to finish up a certain garden project before supper. Feel like giving me a hand?”

  “That’s why I’m here,” I told her.

  “Aw, honey. No, it’s not.” She set her hand on my cheek, which made me feel a little foolish and a little nice all at once.

  As for her words, I didn’t know what to make of them.

  * * *

  —

  “So, we’ve got seedlings here,” Mabel said, holding up a tray of small plants, each with its own cubby. “And we’ve got pots and dirt over here.” Seated on the ground beside me, she pointed to a bucket of dirt and a stack of plastic pots. “The seedlings grow fast, so it won’t be long before their roots get too crowded—which can be bad. Gardeners call it being root-bound. We need to transplant them so they have room to breathe.”

  “Transplant. Got it,” I said.

  She smiled. “The trays are meant so you can pop the seedlings right out, like this.” She showed me. “Then you take one of the pots, sprinkle in a little soil, then the seedling, then tuck it in.” After she made her demonstration, she held up her hands. “If you spend much time here, you’ll have permanent dirt under your nails.”

  I shrugged. “That don’t trouble me.”

  Passing the seedlings my way, she said, “Give it a try?”

  So I did. And after a time or two, I got the trick of it. The main thing was not to stick the seedlings in so deep they got in over their heads.

  “Do you have a favorite subject in school?” Mabel asked while we worked.

  “I don’t—I’m homeschooled.” It made me mad, how easy Nina’s lie came.

  “Oh?”

  It took some real will to admit, “No. That’s just something I say. I don’t go to school.”

  She reached for a small shovel and broke up some chunks in the potting soil. “How long has it been since you went?”

  I thought it over. “Couple of years.”

  “Did you like any subjects back then?”

  I popped a seedling from its tray. It was a scraggly one. “I reckon…No, no subjects. We went on field trips sometimes. I liked that.” Real gingerly, I set the runt into its new pot. “This one time we drove to a place where they take in hurt animals. The cow was the best. Her eyebulbs were poked out, but she’d take greens from your hands, and didn’t bite you or nothing.”

  “You did better than me. If I saw a cow with its eyes poked out, I’d probably burst into tears,” Mabel confided.

  I shook my head. “They weren’t poked out recent. Besides, she seemed to forget all about it. I guess that can happen sometimes.” I finished tamping the dirt in around the seedling. “She was a good girl. I do like cows.”

  As I set the potted plant aside, I said, “Jimmy said you might have more rules for me.” She gave me a funny look, so I added, “I only mention it because I don’t want to rile you by mistake.”

  “Hmm. Rules.” Mabel wiped her cheek with a dirt-covered hand, leaving a smear. “I think my big rule is that we be honest with each other. You’ve done really good with that so far.”

  “Yeah, I don’t know why. I’m a pretty big liar.” I thought on how that might have sounded. “I mean, I do lie—I did lie—aw, dingnation, I don’t know what I’m trying to say.”

  “It’s okay. I think I understand.” She reached for a fresh tray of seedlings. We were making some real good progress. “What about you? Do you have any rules for me?”

  I wasn’t expecting that. “Huh?”

  “Maybe”—she seemed to give it a think—“you don’t like yelling. Or you might prefer that I don’t go into your room when you’re not there. Things like that.”

  “Oh.” I chewed on the question, having never made up any rules before. I transplanted three more plants before I finally said, “I’d like it if you didn’t poke fun at me.”

  She put down her plant and sat up real straight right then. “Belle, you have my word. I hope we will laugh together—a lot. But I will never, ever poke fun at you.”

  I hung my head down and shut my eyes tight. Let me tell you, I felt those words. After a minute, I picked myself up and said, “You have my word, I will be the honestest girl you ever knew. Honest to you, I mean.” It seemed a danger to make such claims for everyone else.

  “Very honestly put,” Mabel noted. “I think I’m ready to call it a day. Will you help me up?”

  As I was shifting around, trying to figure out how best to help her, I asked, “When’s the baby gonna be born?”

  “A little over three months. I’ve still got a ways to go.” She grabbed onto my arm. “I didn’t have nearly so much trouble getting around when I was pregnant with Travis.”

  “I expect you was probably a lot younger then.” I gripped under her elbow and heaved.

  She laughed. “You’re right, I— Oooh!” Her hand whipped around and groped for her back. “Ow! Ow!”

  “Are you all right? Did I—” Had I just broken a pregnant lady?

  “I’m fine. I get twinges now and then. All this extra weight up front!”

  But I wasn’t listening anymore. Something queer had caught my eye.

  It was akin to a tail. Or a little flag, pale red and rippling. And it stuck to Mabel right at the place where she’d seized up.

  “Ssst! Ssst!” She doubled over. “Dangit!”

  The tail flashed dark red, then paled again. I didn’t know what it was, but it surely didn’t belong there. I grabbed it and pulled. The thing came off clean, a-wiggling in my hand. Real quick, I stuffed it in my pocket so I could go back to helping Mabel.

  “Oh.” She righted herself all at once. “Oh! That’s better. Wow! That’s nice! It usually doesn’t pass quite so quickly.”

  I offered her a hand to steady herself with, but she was doing fine on her own.

  “You must have the magic touch,” Mabel told me.

  She’d meant it as a joke, but as I felt that thing still squirming away in my pocket, I couldn’t help wondering if there might be some truth to it.

  “Right, yeah,” I muttered. “Magic.”

  Mabel asked me to excuse her so she could attend to some pregnant-lady business. I grabbed the chance to run off to my new room. And though I did take a second to marvel how I had my own door to close and my own private room to sit in, my real aim was to get a look at that thing in my pocket.

  I do confess, as so
meone who prided myself on my grit, even I was sweating cold. What was this thing? Was it dangerous? I couldn’t help recalling a movie I saw on Sheena’s TV, where these wormy aliens came down from space and crawled into people’s ears and ate holes in their brains.

  I drew it out real careful, hoping it was some kind of flummery leech. It was still wiggling, but no, it didn’t seem to be a creature, precisely. There wasn’t any face to speak of, nor any sign to show which way was up.

  “You ain’t gonna slither into my ear, are you?” I asked.

  As I held it in my palm, it didn’t try to get away or bite, though I did notice a slight aching in my skin underneath it.

  Just now, it was the pale red color I’d seen at first and last—not the sharp, dark red it had been when Mabel’s twinge flared up. I wondered at that, but couldn’t make much sense of it.

  But the most curious thing—the one that’s hardest to put in words—was the way it felt. It wasn’t…dense. Not the way most things you handle are. More like the notion of a thing, it felt something like a tickle of air. Or the warmth coming off a stovetop, where it seems to have a certain touch sensation to it, even though it’s really just the heat.

  Mabel’s words came back to me then: magic touch. The longer I stared at the thing, the harder it was to believe it was quite…natural.

  After a time, I heard Mabel rattling around in the kitchen. Closing my hand around the whatsit, I went out to ask her if she might have a spare jar. She seemed pleased for the request and offered me not one, but five jars of various sizes. I took the second-smallest one and thanked her. Then I went back to my room, put the thing in the jar, and sealed it in.

  It went right on a-rippling.

  * * *

  —

  That night, Mabel and I watched the Rural News Network’s Daily Sum-Up, which wasn’t as terrible as I’d imagined.

  “Not too shabby, Kip,” Mabel muttered, smiling a little.

  “Huh?” I asked.

  She blinked. “Oh. The man that owns the RNN, that’s my first husband, Kip Tromp, Travis’s dad. I was just thinking he’s done all right for himself. It’s nice.”

  “Did he used to be a slimy miscreant?” Nina sometimes said that about Sheena’s ex-husband.

  Mabel’s lips twitched. “No, not slimy. I think he just…had to leave for a while so he could find his way home.”

  I was glad that made sense to her, because it sounded like gibberish to me.

  After the Sum-Up, we clicked off the television and headed to bed.

  “Oh, Belle!” Mabel turned away from her door and back toward me. “I didn’t even think! Are you used to being tucked in?”

  I couldn’t help myself. I laughed so hard and so long that tears sprang up in my eyes and rolled down my cheeks. The fit went on for a good while before I finally managed, “Nina? Tuck me in? No, ma’am! I can’t say I’m used to that!”

  “Ah.” She didn’t seem to know what to say to my outburst. “All right, then. I just didn’t want you to feel neglected.”

  The word neglected rang like a sharp bell in the space between us, leaving an uneasy echo in the air. I knew that was how things were between me and Nina. How could I help knowing?

  Finally, I said, “You ain’t made me feel neglected, Mabel. Not a whit. Good night.”

  She gave a smile, though its edges twitched down just a little. “Sweet dreams, Belle.”

  * * *

  —

  I went to sleep in my own room, in a bed that didn’t double as a dinette. Beside my head, on a little table, the whatsit wriggled in its jar.

  My dreams were full of Baron Ramey and his con-man friend. They laughed and twisted my arms and stuffed my pockets with old people’s money. All the while, Nina sat on the dinette bed smoking cigarettes, one after the other. Twenty-some whatsits stood out from her chest, wriggling like faceless snakes.

  When the sun broke through the blinds, waking me at daybust, I wasn’t feeling so good.

  * * *

  —

  Over breakfast, which was fancy eggs on top of English muffins with sop, I said to Mabel, “How would it be if I worked in the garden this afternoon, instead of this morning?”

  She waved a hand. “That’s no trouble.”

  I took a bite and mumbled through my food, “I thought I might go into town.”

  For just a sliver of a second, she froze. “Everything all right?”

  “Oh, sure. Just”—look at me, being all honest—“bad dreams.”

  Mabel reached for the juice pitcher. “Want to talk about them?”

  I shook my head. After a quiet minute passed, I asked, “Do I have to?”

  “No. I’m just, um, a little concerned.” She shrugged. “Maybe I don’t need to be. But you look so chewed up this morning, plus you say you had bad dreams. With you wanting to go into town, I thought you might—”

  “—Be fixin’ to steal something?” I offered.

  “—Be struggling,” she finished.

  “I don’t know why I want to go into town,” I said. “I just do.”

  Just then, in the eye of my mind, I saw myself walking into town. I was wearing my first daddy’s big, baggy jacket, even though the day was hot. The stores lining Main Street were open, their doors thrown wide. From inside the shops, there came a whispering. It was the voices of all the things that wanted me to steal them.

  Maybe I didn’t know why I wanted to go to town, but my loco did.

  I put my head in my hands. I hate this. And after a second or two, another fretful thought: I’m going to juvie, for sure.

  “Belle, can I tell you something about me?” Mabel asked.

  “What?” I confess I wasn’t lively with interest.

  “I used to have a loco, too.”

  I looked up at her. “Naw.”

  She nodded earnestly. “Mine was about food. I’d eat and eat and eat, and then throw it all up.”

  I couldn’t help glancing at the fancy food on the table. “How come?”

  She leaned back in her chair and gave a half shrug. “It’s funny. I don’t really know. I mean, at the time, I thought it was because I was afraid to get fat. But now, looking back, that doesn’t really explain it.” She pressed her lips into a flat line. “I did it because I did it. I had a sickness. Like someone who has a cold can’t help sneezing, I couldn’t help throwing up.”

  “But you don’t do it now,” I ventured.

  “No.”

  “So you beat your loco!”

  She took a deep breath and blew it out before she replied, “No. I never could beat it—”

  “But—”

  “But something did.”

  “Something, but you don’t know what?” I was confused. And vexed. Whatever had helped her, I wanted it, too. Needed it desperate-like, so I wouldn’t go to juvie. So the Orrs would like me. So—

  “Something, but I can’t say what. It’s hard.” Mabel looked out the window, thought for a time, then turned back to me. “Did you ever hear a voice in your head, maybe when something bad had happened, and it spoke to you, or it helped you—”

  She had my full attention now, by godfrey. “Like a voice that tells you to run away from something bad?”

  She nodded real slow. “Like that, yeah.”

  “I might know what you mean,” I told her. “That’s what beat your loco? The voice in your head?”

  “But it’s not just any voice. Definitely not my voice.” She seemed to cast about for more words, but couldn’t find them. “Do you—do you know what I mean?”

  Most surely I did.

  It was the Voice that told me to run from Baron that morning. The one that knew things I couldn’t possibly know, and sometimes saved me with its smarts. “You mean the knowing Voice.”

  Mabel hugged her own
round belly.

  “Yes, that’s it.” Her whisper carried a shade of wonderment. “The knowing Voice.”

  * * *

  —

  After some more gabbing, Mabel and I agreed it might be best if I didn’t go to town right then. She did say she thought it would be good for me to get out and have a little fun, though. So we piled into her truck, and she dropped me off at Desiree’s house.

  On the way out Mabel’s door, I’d grabbed my whatsit jar.

  * * *

  —

  Desiree flung open her front door, grabbed me by both shoulders, and cried, “I am SO glad to see you!” giving me a solid shake with every word.

  For some reason, I had a notion she was glad to see me.

  You know that made me smile some.

  “Wait until you see!” Today her yellow hair swept wildly around her face. She wore an orange vest over her clothes. NOAA, it read. When she caught me looking at it, she said, “Oh! My dad got this for me at a government-surplus auction. Isn’t it cool?”

  Cool was not the first word that sprang to my mind, but I nodded right along. She made it hard not to.

  “But that’s not what I want to show you! Look!” She strode into the living room, snatched a piece of paper off the table, and held it up so I could see. Smile for the camera! it said, and showed a picture of a horse with its face in the camera lens, its teeth bared in a silly grin.

  I looked at it for a time. “Uh, I don’t know what to make of that.”

  “Okay!” She took a big gasp of air. “So! The RNN is branching out to other kinds of shows besides news, and one of their ideas is a new reality show called Horse Dentist.”

  “Horse…Dentist,” I repeated.

  “Yes! And they need a couple folks to help soothe the horses while the dentist works on them—which is about the best training I can think of to become a horse witch! Right? I mean, if I can calm horses around a dentist, I won’t have any trouble convincing them to ride through thunderstorms and such!”