Life After Theft
Page 32

Or haunted.
“Where is she?” he asked.
I pointed off to my left where Kimberlee stood.
Khail’s gaze flicked to where I’d pointed and his eyes narrowed like he could will himself to see her. Finally he released the front of my shirt. “Tell her I hate her.”
“She can—”
“I want you to tell her.”
“He hates you,” I parroted obediently.
Instead of looking defiant, or bored, like I expected, Kimberlee stared at the ground, cowed.
“Tell her she has no idea how badly she messed things up and how glad I am that she’s dead.”
I repeated his words again.
When I was done Kimberlee’s head was so far down I couldn’t see her face anymore. After a few moments a sob wracked through her chest and she gasped against it. I swallowed hard; I’d only heard that sound a couple of times in my life—once from my mom, at her sister’s funeral.
“I didn’t do it,” Kimberlee choked out.
“She said she didn’t do it,” I whispered, wishing Khail could hear her himself. “I think she means it.” I wanted to mention the tears, that awful sound, but I had a feeling Kimberlee would kill me if I did.
But Khail didn’t look fazed at all. “She’s a liar,” he said, his voice like iced steel.
Kimberlee fled the bathroom without another word.
“This isn’t over,” Khail said. “I don’t want her”—he said it like it was a nasty word—“in Sera’s life, even as your invisible friend.” He hesitated. “Don’t tell Sera about this,” he warned. “Not a word.” Then he was gone, the door closing noisily behind him before I could even catch my breath.
“Not a problem,” I whispered to the empty space.
Sixteen
I WENT TO THE CAVE BY MYSELF that afternoon; Kimberlee hadn’t shown her face since our bathroom run-in with Khail. It was the first time I’d been there alone. Annoying or not, Kimberlee’s yapping had made the beach feel more . . . alive. Now it was too quiet and more than a little creepy. I nearly jumped out of my skin when a seagull swooped low and let out a piercing caw. Today it was easy to imagine someone dying here. It felt lonely and empty. I wondered how much time Kimberlee had spent down here by herself when she was alive, and if she had felt lonely and empty too.
I climbed into the cave and blinked in the darkness. The never-ending boxes stared back. As I gathered a bunch of bags from a box simply marked Whitestone, I was nearly overwhelmed by the hopelessness of my task.
I couldn’t keep doing things this way. We’d scarcely begun and I’d already been caught once. No one was going to believe I had to piss that much, and eventually someone was going to realize I was doing something sneaky.
But what else was I supposed to do? I’d agreed to help and even if I didn’t have the threat of a crazy ghost hanging over me, I had to admit, it was kind of nice giving stuff back to people. It made them happy.
Well, except Sera.
And Khail.
But even he seemed pleased to actually have his stuff back. A hat and silk boxers. Now that was a story I wished I knew.
Still, at this rate, I was going to graduate from college before I got everything done.
When I got home I poked my head through the garage door and checked for any signs of life before speed-walking through the kitchen, my arms loaded with stolen stuff, and hurrying up the stairs to my room. I managed to only drop two bags while I tried to get my bedroom door open. I swore under my breath and kicked them into my room, hoping they didn’t contain anything too fragile.
Kimberlee was sitting on one of the ginormous beanbags I got for Christmas. I tell you, it’s the weirdest thing to see someone sitting in a beanbag without making a dent. At all. And why didn’t she just sink right through it? Or right through my floor, for that matter? The physics of Kimberlee’s ghostliness continued to elude me. But then, what about Kimberlee did make sense? Ever?
My knee-jerk reaction was to demand an explanation, or maybe give her a sarcastic greeting after being ditched all day, but I remembered the way she’d sobbed in the bathroom and settled for a quiet “Hi” instead. I stashed the stuff in a corner of my closet and closed the door before turning to face her. “You okay?”
“Yeah, of course,” Kimberlee said, sounding completely emotionless.
I was silent, waiting for her to say . . . I don’t know. Something. “So,” I finally blurted, “crazy day, huh?”
She just raised one eyebrow and shrugged.
I sat down on the bed and began unlacing my Docs. “Come on. You don’t get to have a scene like that with Khail, disappear for the whole afternoon, and then just shrug. What’s up with you and Khail?”
“Nothing,” Kimberlee said flatly. “There is absolutely nothing between us.”
“Well, not anymore. But—”
“There wasn’t anything between us in life, either.”
“Oh please. He hates you; you hate him—unless you want to claim you hated everyone in life then there is def—”
“I don’t hate him,” Kimberlee said. Her voice still had that eerie, flat tone. “I just can’t stand to be around him.”
Oh. Now I got it. “You liked him?”
She swallowed. Answer enough.
“Okay,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “So you liked him and then you died. Is that it?”