Life After Theft
Page 34

As soon as she made some kind of positive response, I hung up with a quick “Bye.”
“Hey, Khail,” I said, trying—unsuccessfully, I might add—not to let my voice crack.
My mom departed and Khail let the door swing shut behind him, pushing it until the latch clicked. Probably just wanted to beat me up in private. Understandable.
Neither he nor Kimberlee spoke, resulting in a moment of silence, like at a funeral. In this case, my funeral.
“I want to see the cave,” Khail finally said in a surprisingly quiet voice.
“The cave?”
Khail pointed a meaty finger at me. “You said there was a cave,” he said, his tone full of accusation.
“Oh, Kimberlee’s cave. Yeah, sure, of course.” Like I was going to say no? “Uh . . . let’s go now.” I walked past him and opened the door—it felt more like opening the gate to a cage—and led my little entourage down the stairs, Khail clomping along resolutely and Kimberlee noiselessly pouting.
I threw off something about the mall to my mom and headed out to the garage. As the door was rising I asked, “You want to, um, ride with me or . . . ?” I let the sentence hang in the air.
“I’ll follow,” Khail said, heading toward a jacked-up, chrome-wheeled, neon-tricked truck parked on the curb. Seemed fitting.
I backed Halle out and headed toward Kimberlee’s house.
“This is not a good idea,” Kimberlee said, her voice panicky. “Besides, who the hell said you could bring him on my property?”
“You gonna call the cops?”
Kimberlee crossed her arms over her chest and stopped talking.
Khail’s truck was close behind me as we made our way through the gate and down to the small parking lot. Both Kimberlee and Khail were silent while I led the way to the cave and scaled the wall—quite impressively, in my opinion. The practice was paying off.
Khail, on the other hand, climbed up at least as effectively as I had, and it was his first try. Jocks. Meh.
I gestured as if introducing Khail to the rows and rows of boxes. Strange how the cave still looked exactly the same despite having cleaned out almost eight boxes.
“Are you serious?” Khail asked.
“Uh . . .” I had no idea what he was asking.
“All these boxes are full of stuff that Kimberlee stole?”
“Yeah.”
“Sera was right,” he said quietly. “She told me Kimberlee stole her cheer skirt and shoes and bet that she was behind this big theft thing at the school a while back. I didn’t believe her. I mean, I believed that Kimberlee stole Sera’s stuff—Sera wouldn’t just flat-out lie to me like that—but I didn’t think Kimberlee would be involved in something this big.” He turned to me now. “Someone must have helped her.”
“As far as I can tell, no.”
Khail whistled. “Damn, she really was messed up.”
I kind of coughed and looked away.
“What?”
I shrugged and pointed my thumb in Kimberlee’s direction.
“She’s here?”
“She has nothing else to do and just follows me around most of the time.”
“Don’t worry about making me sound like a loser or anything,” Kimberlee said caustically. “I was just leaving.” And before I could stop her, she walked to the edge of the cave and jumped gracefully down and out of sight.
“Okay, now she’s gone,” I said.
Khail had his fists on his hips, staring—as far as I could tell—at the rocks against the wall instead of the mounds of stolen stuff.
I wouldn’t want to look at them either.
“I still don’t know what to think,” he said quietly. “You have all the right answers. Things you shouldn’t know—hell, this whole cave should be proof enough. But . . .”
“I know,” I said when he didn’t continue. “It’s completely unbelievable.” I shrugged. “I still sometimes think I’m going to wake up soon. Possibly in an insane asylum somewhere.”
“It’s so much stuff!”
I nodded miserably.
“Man, you need help.”
I sputtered for a few second. “Oh, come on. I’m not the one who stole it; I told you that. I—”
“I didn’t mean it that way,” Khail said, interrupting me. “I mean you’re never going to get all this stuff returned on your own.”
I remembered the truck that was sitting out in the parking lot. That was one big-ass truck.
Don’t get ahead of yourself. I hazarded the question. “Is that an offer?”
His eyes darted toward me, then back to the boxes. “Maybe.” He picked his way carefully to the back of the cave and I could see him counting silently as he estimated how many boxes there were. I already knew the answer. A hundred and thirty-seven. I’d counted them about ten times. “She’ll go away as soon as all this stuff is returned, right?”
I nodded. “That’s the idea.”
He walked back over to me and stood close. “How much do you like my sister?”
I swallowed. “A lot.”
“Enough to do whatever it takes to get Kimberlee’s ghost out of her life?”
As if that wasn’t what I wanted too. “Absolutely.”
“Okay. Meet me at Perennial Park at noon tomorrow. I’ll bring the truck, and I’ll see if I can get together a bunch of guys. We’ll take half—” He paused, looked back at the boxes, and qualified his statement. “We’ll take a chunk of this stuff back on Monday.” Then he turned and began lowering himself down the edge of the cliff.