Life After Theft
Page 36

“So give ’em back. What do you need us for?”
“Come here,” Khail said, gesturing for us to follow him. We walked over to his truck and I noticed for the first time that there was a big green tarp in the back. Khail leaned over the edge of the truck bed and lifted a corner of the plastic, revealing a sea of bags. “This is only . . . maybe ten or fifteen percent of the stuff in that cave,” Khail said. “That’s why I need you. There’s something for practically everyone at Whitestone, including teachers.” He tossed the tarp back over the loot and looked out at the wrestlers. “So, you guys in or not?”
“This is the stuff from the big theft ring, isn’t it?” one of the smaller guys asked.
Khail nodded.
The guy shook his head. “I can’t have anything to do with this. Hennigan already had me on his list for that because I have shoplifting on my record from when I was in middle school. He’ll blame me. Hell, he’ll probably expel me.”
“That’s the risk,” Khail said, nodding. “And not just for you. You all know how obsessed Hennigan was. He still can’t talk about it without blowing a vessel. He won’t care who really stole this stuff. Any of us get caught and we’re dead meat.”
“So why bother?”
“It’s the right thing to do,” Khail said calmly, not missing a beat. “I was happy to get my stuff back—weren’t you?”
He looked around the circle as each wrestler eyed his bag of stuff.
“How do we know you didn’t steal it all in the first place?” asked one guy who I didn’t think looked nearly large enough to accuse Khail so directly.
“I have my faults, but I would never steal from my teammates, and I think you all know that,” Khail said, not looking offended at all.
“What about him?” the little guy piped up again. “I don’t even know him.”
I opened my mouth to defend myself, but Khail spoke over me. “Jeff just moved here. I think being four hundred miles away is a damn tight alibi.”
“Why don’t you take it to the cops?” asked another guy.
“You think the cops are going to give anything back to anyone?” Khail said coolly. “They’ll confiscate everything, label it as evidence, and no one will see it again.” He paused. “I want all this stuff to go back where it belongs. No one likes being stolen from.” He paused for a second, then cleared his throat. “So I’m in, whether you guys are or not. But anyone is free to walk away right now.” He pointed a finger at the group. “You’re all bound to secrecy about what I’ve told you so far; don’t get me wrong. I will make sure anyone who rats pays—even you, Vincent,” he said, looking at the only guy there bigger than himself. “But I won’t force anyone to join us. Me and Jeff’ll do it ourselves if we have to.” He stopped and looked across the semicircle of guys. “Who’s in?”
The guys looked back and forth at one another and then down at their bags of stuff. Finally the big guy—Vincent?—raised his chin. “I am.”
One of the shorter guys nodded. “Me too.”
A couple more guys echoed him and after about thirty seconds, everyone had agreed to join—even the guy with the shoplifting record. I felt a tangible weight float off my shoulders as I looked around at the team who had all just agreed to help me. Well, help Khail. Hell, I didn’t care; they were helping.
“Okay,” Khail said. “Anyone who spills gets jumped by the rest of the team and don’t think that doesn’t include you, Jeff.”
“What? I’m not telling!”
“Just setting the rules,” Khail said.
“So what are we going to do?” one skinny guy finally asked.
Khail turned to look at me and everyone else followed his lead.
I think I broke out in an instant sweat.
“Um.” I scratched at the back of my neck and hoped it wasn’t turning red. “I didn’t really have a ton of time to plan last night.” I suddenly hoped Khail didn’t know I’d been out on a date with his sister. And for the first time I wondered just how much she’d told him about me. Specifically, about what we’d been doing throughout the entire movie. My ears were starting to heat up at the thought. “But I thought if we loaded a ton of the stuff into the truck and labeled it well, we could probably just leave it in a huge pile in the gym.” I looked at Khail. “You know, start simple.”
“Like Christmas?” a guy piped up from the back.
“Sure, moron,” another shot back. “Maybe we should get a Christmas tree to top the whole thing off.”
The two guys started arguing, but Khail’s eyes lit up and a half grin formed on his face. “Guys, knock it off. That would be awesome, don’t you think?”
“What, a Christmas tree?” I asked. “But it’s January.”
“No, seriously, picture it. We have an assembly tomorrow for our Northridge match. That would give us all excuses to be out of class. So right before lunch, everybody walks into the gym and there’s a ten-foot-tall Christmas tree with piles of those bags underneath. The school would go crazy!”
The guys were starting to smile and talk and I leaned in a little closer to Khail. “The point isn’t to make anyone go crazy. I wanted to get this done with as little attention as possible.”
“Jeff,” Khail said seriously, “you’ve got over a hundred boxes of stolen shit to return. There is no way to do that without having anyone notice. I’m already starting to hear people talk about stuff that’s suddenly coming back and you’ve hardly returned anything. You don’t understand how big a deal this thief was. Kids being pulled from the school, police patrolling the parking lots. It was massive. Trust me, people will talk. If we do this—and it’s going to get noticed anyway . . .” He trailed off, then finished with a grin and a flourish. “We may as well do it with style.”