Life After Theft

“But why—?”

“Dude, riptide. Move on!” Kimberlee snapped, scowling.

“Fine. Uh, what color of flowers did you have at your funeral?”

She bit her bottom lip. “I don’t know,” she admitted. Score one for me. “I didn’t go. I was so busy trying to figure out what the hell was going on that I didn’t really start going anywhere until about two weeks after the funeral.”

“Convenient,” I scoffed.

“What else do you want?” she said. “I drowned in a riptide, I went to Whitestone, I was seventeen, my dad’s a judge, my mom’s a CFO, I’m an only child. Good enough?”

“I guess,” I muttered, turning back to the screen and typing the rest of her name.

“S-c,” Kimberlee corrected from behind me.

“Get over there!” I said, pointing to the opposite side of the room. “You are not allowed to see this!”

“Fine!” she said, sulking away.

I pressed Enter, fully prepared to bask in the proof of my own brilliance.

But the first page of more than 4,000 results popped up on my screen.

Teen Dies in Tragic Accident. Local Judge Mourns the Death of His Only Child. Prominent Prep School Suffers Tragic Loss. Teen’s Body Found on Private Beach. Missing Seventeen-Year-Old Confirmed Dead.

I skimmed the articles, my jaw dropping as the details swirled in front of my face, complete with a number of photographs that were unmistakably Kimberlee. Not the least of which was one of her in her freaking coffin.

“I—I could have read this last year,” I said, scrambling for an excuse—totally not ready to accept this.

“Eventually you’re going to have to stop trying to talk yourself out of this and believe me. Besides,” she said, turning to face me now. “Who tries to convince themselves they’re insane instead of accepting the fairly rational explanation of someone being a ghost? Maybe you really are a nut job. Like a hypochondriac, but for craziness.”

I’m agnostic, but that moment was the first time in memory I wished I did believe in a god. Then I would have someone to beg to deliver me from this demented undead. “Whatever,” I mumbled, clicking through website after website, skimming each for mere seconds before scrolling to the next one. It was possible, wasn’t it? That my brain had unconsciously stored the details of something I’d read and “forgotten,” then used that info to spit out a made-up person? Now I was really starting to sound crazy. About being crazy. I was double crazy.

“Your email,” I said, coming up with one last test. “You have a Yahoo or Gmail account or something?”

“I did,” Kimberlee said, clearly not following my stream of logic.

“Okay, tell me your username and password. There’s no way I could know that, so if it works it would prove that you’re not some figment of my imagination.” Cool, calm, logical. I can do this.

“Not a chance,” Kimberlee said.

“Why not?”

“I don’t want you cyberspying on me!”

“It’s not cyberspying—it’s proving your story.”

“My email is private. Don’t go there.”

I hesitated. “Facebook?”

She snorted. “That’s hardly better.” After a moment of hesitation: “How about my MySpace page? I didn’t use it for, like, years before I died, but it’s still there and definitely mine.”

I nodded. “That’ll work. What is it?”

After a few moments’ thought she rattled off her MySpace username and I found the page. Not surprisingly, it was pink and seizure-inducingly sparkly.

And covered with pictures of a definitely alive Kimberlee from junior high school. She looked a little different but it was definitely her. I squinted at a couple of group shots and recognized Langdon, the guy who had almost squished me to a pulp today. “Hey!” I said, pointing. “That’s Langdon.”

Kimberlee rolled her eyes. “So?”

I turned back to the computer and took a deep breath. “Okay,” I said, “this is definitely Kimberlee Schaffer’s MySpace page. What’s the password? And none of this guessing stuff. You nail it the first try, or I ignore you for the rest of my life.”

“Fine,” Kimberlee said, leaning forward with a predatory look in her eye, “but I get a part in this deal, too. If the password works you believe me, one hundred percent. No more made-up-person stuff. Deal?”

I swallowed hard. “Deal.”

“UMMM,” I SAID SLOWLY AS I stared at the screen.

“What?” Kimberlee said, tension spiking her voice about two octaves. “It didn’t work? You typed it wrong, then—do it again!”

“You have over three thousand new messages.”

“Oh,” Kimberlee said. Then she straightened casually, as though she hadn’t been on the verge of hysteria an instant ago. “Well, dying makes you popular.”

I stared at Kimberlee as if seeing her for the first time. All the ghosts in movies were see-through and white and did that glowing thing. And they floated. Kimberlee looked solid and walked right on the ground like anyone else. The lights made her hair shine a little, but she definitely wasn’t glowing. “Can I touch you?” I asked curiously.

She put her hands on her hips and pushed her chest out. “I admit, I haven’t gotten any action in a while.”

“Not like that,” I protested, mortified. “I mean in terms of, uh, physics. Can I touch your arm, or will I go right through?”

Kimberlee studied her arm quizzically. “Everyone else goes right through. Course, none of them can see or hear me either. You can try.” She held out her arm.

I lifted my hand for a second before wussing out and turning back to my computer. “I don’t want to.”

“Come on,” she said. “If you don’t, I will.”

I felt something cold pass through my shoulder and a massive chill shot down my spine. “Okay,” I said when I could talk again. “That was the creepiest thing that’s ever happened to me. And after today, that’s really saying something.”

But when I turned to her, she looked disappointed.

“What?”

She gave me a one-shouldered shrug. “I—I hoped you’d be different, that’s all.”

“Sorry,” I muttered. Not that I could help it. “So,” I said, feeling suddenly very awkward. “You’re a ghost, huh?”

“Nothing gets past you, does it?” she said, rolling her eyes. “Are you going to help me now, or what?”

“Uh . . .”

Her perfectly plucked eyebrows furrowed. “Look,” she began hesitantly, “you can see me. And hear me. So you’re the only one who can help me. You have to say yes.”

I sighed. “What do you need help with?”

“My unfinished business.”

“Your what?”

“In books and movies people become ghosts when they have unfinished business. That must be why I’m still here.”

“Did someone tell you that? Did you have some, I don’t know, angel, I guess, tell you what you need to do?”

She shook her head. “Uh-uh. I just woke up in the middle of the school and I was dead. I’m guessing on the rest.”

“What’s your unfinished business?”

She twisted a ring around on her finger. “I kind of stole some stuff when I was alive and I think I need to return it.”

“That’s it? No unrequited love? Revenge unrealized?”

“Nope.”

“And you want me to return it so you can be on your merry way?”

“That’s the plan. It’s the only thing I can think of. I had a great life. Pretty much everyone loved me—except the people who wanted to be me—and I had everything I ever wanted.”

“Which forced you into a life of crime?” I have never under- stood rich people stealing.

“Whatever. Will you help me?”

I laid my arms on the desk and let my head rest against them. “I return a couple a things for you and you leave me alone?” I asked, more to the carpet than her.

“Yes.”

“Forever?”

“I promise.” She laughed. “I’d pinky swear, but, you know.”

I did know—and I didn’t want to do that again.

I was kinda starting to miss just being crazy.

“Jeff?”

I looked over at her. Her smirk was gone. So was her pout.

“Please?” she asked, her tone completely genuine.

I’m such a pushover. “Fine. I’ll do it.”

She squealed and clasped her hands together. “Thank you thank you thank you!” and then in the same breath, “We gotta go to the cave.”

“The cave?”

“It’s where the stuff is.”

“You’re in Santa Monica and you hid stuff in a cave?”

“It’s on my parents’ private beach. I found it when I was, like, ten. It’s been my secret place ever since.”

“Okay,” I said. “We can go tomorrow.”

“Why can’t we go today?”

I dug around in my backpack and held up a copy of Les Misérables, and not the abridged version. “Because I have a hundred pages of this to read tonight. Not to mention calculus homework and a history outline everyone else has already been working on for a week.” The thought of all the homework I’d had heaped on me today was almost enough to make my ghost problem seem small.

Almost.

“Unlike some people, I still have a life,” I muttered.

Kimberlee’s lips pressed into a straight line and before I could apologize, she spun on her heel and disappeared through my bedroom door.

When Kimberlee popped up silently beside my locker the next morning, I tried to apologize for my harsh comment. “I was stressed,” I said quietly, hoping no one was close enough to catch me talking to myself. Again. “I should have kept my mouth shut.”

“Whatever,” she said, not meeting my eyes as I slammed my locker shut. “I just want to get this over with.”

I had almost reached the stairs that would take me up to Bleekman’s room when a flash of red grabbed my eye. I tuned Kimberlee out and my eyes tracked the redhead.

Finally, something good about Whitestone.

Fingers snapped in front of my face. “Hello? Focus!”

Kimberlee. It was a testament to the sheer hotness of the other girl that I had, for ten seconds, managed to forget Kimberlee entirely.

Hot Girl was standing less than twenty feet away, digging through her locker with her back to me. I was trying to figure out a nonlame way to approach her when she stopped and turned. I glanced away, afraid she’d been able to sense my eyes burning a hole in her back. Maybe a few inches below her back. After what I hoped was a safe amount of time, I glanced in her direction again. It took me a few seconds to find her.

Hugging a guy in a letter jacket.

I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the two of them. It was like a car wreck—you don’t really want to see the guy all mangled inside, but you can’t look away. And it wasn’t some third-string nobody—this guy was majorly ripped and could probably break my neck with two fingers. Maybe one. It took me a second to realize that he wasn’t very tall—but what’s a little height when you’ve got shoulders like steel girders? The redhead leaned against the lockers next to him and smiled.

I knew that kind of smile. It was a special smile reserved for special people. Like, boyfriend people.

Damn.

But really, why wouldn’t she be taken? She was totally gorgeous and—considering she was at Whitestone—almost certainly rich. Girls like that don’t just wander around single.

“Enjoy your little trip down fantasy lane, loverboy?” Kimberlee was leaning against my locker looking totally bored.

Oh yeah.

But I couldn’t help glancing back at the hot girl again.

“Trust me; leave that one alone,” Kimberlee said, following my gaze. “She was this total slut as a freshman, but she doesn’t really date now. Probably not even into guys anymore.”

I looked over at Kimberlee with my best duh face and flicked my head in her direction. “Human tractor over there?”

“Wait, wait,” she said, laughing. “Him? Mikhail?”

She would think this was funny.

“You’re barking up the wrong tree. Mikhail is—” Her mouth snapped shut and her eyes took on this funny look. She sighed melodramatically. “I must be wrong. After all, just because he was dating someone a few months ago doesn’t mean they’re still together. I’m so out of the loop.” She sighed again.

Was she being sarcastic? I felt like I’d missed something, but couldn’t imagine what.

“You really better stay away from her now,” Kimberlee continued. “Mikhail could break you in half without even trying.”

“Just tell me her name,” I whispered.

“Why?” Kimberlee shot back. “So I can help you keep ‘having a life’?” So much for her whatever.

“I’m helping you,” I reminded her.

“Fine,” she said, sounding way more pissy than I thought my request could possibly justify. “It’s Serafina. Serafina Hewitt. I’ll meet you outside of Keller’s class at three fifteen sharp so we can go to the cave. Back out and you’ll be sorry.” She shot a finger gun at me and walked through the wall of lockers.

AS SHE’D PROMISED, KIMBERLEE WAS waiting for me after school, just inside the front doors. “Finally,” she muttered.

I pushed open the door and instinctively held it a few seconds to let Kimberlee out. She snickered as she walked by. “Holding the door for your imaginary friend?”

“That’s only an insult to yourself.”

She tossed her hair. “Whatever. Where’s your car?” she asked.

I grinned. I couldn’t help it. A black BMW Z4 con- vertible was my mom’s idea of a good, sensible car. Something about them lasting forever? I turned to Kimberlee. “This way.”

I headed to the farthest end of the lot, where almost no one parked. The spaces on both sides of my Z4 were empty. That was worth the walk.

Kimberlee stroked her fingers along the black hood as though she could actually feel something. “I saw this yesterday when I followed you home,” she said, as if following people home was completely normal. “Daddy’s?”

I put my shades on as I pressed the unlock button on my keychain. “Nope. She’s all mine. Kimberlee, meet Halle.”

“Halle?”

It’s not that I’m embarrassed that I named my car, but, well, it’s kind of personal.

Kimberlee stood outside the door. After almost thirty seconds I rolled down the window. “You coming?”

“I thought you were going to open the door for me.”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to do stuff like that for my imaginary friend.”

She rolled her eyes. “Fine.” She slipped through the door and settled in the seat.

I stared at her, everything I’d learned in physics screaming that this made no sense. “Why don’t you fall through the bottom of the car?” I finally asked.

“I don’t know,” she said testily. “Why don’t you?”

I shook my head and put the key in the ignition.

“Should I put on my seat belt?”

“Can you?”

That shut her up.

“Come on, why Halle?”

Okay, not completely. “Not telling you.”

“Spill!”

I didn’t have the stamina for another battle of wills with Kimberlee. “I named her after Halle Berry. She played Storm in the X-Men movies.”

“You’re such a nerd. Why her?”

I could feel my face getting hot. “Well, you know . . . ’cause she’s hot. And black. And my car is hot, and black.”

Kimberlee smirked. “So you want to ride her all over town?”

“What? No, it’s a compliment! Like naming a boat! I just—it’s just a stupid . . . Forget I said anything. Can we just drop it now?”

“Whatever you say, Grand Wizard.”

I shook my head and started the car. She was just baiting me. Again. How did I keep walking into her traps?

“You drive like my grandma,” Kimberlee said after a few minutes of inching along.

“You think that’s an insult? Try harder.” I knew what this car could do. The first week I got it I took a trip to Vegas and made it from Phoenix to the Hoover Dam in just over two hours. My car is fast. And I admit, I roared into school moving pretty quick yesterday, but then I realized the kids here all drive like they’re on crack. Seriously. So after a near miss with a red Miata, I’d decided that slower was better.

At least until I got out of the parking lot.

Kimberlee pointed me down several streets, each wider and more stately than the last, until I pulled up in front of a huge white mansion.

“Whoa, sweet.” Our house was supernice, but this was the kind of house you see on the home-design shows my mom watches. The feature homes.

“Turn down that little road over there. It’ll take you to the beach,” Kimberlee said, clearly not impressed.

“Are you sure nobody’s going to arrest me for being here?” Because I was most definitely not sure.

“Nah. There’s a gate. I’ll tell you the code.”

I pulled onto the drive on the right side of the house and stopped next to a keypad.

“Eight-six-four-two-two, star.”

I punched in the numbers, then my finger hovered over the star. I closed my eyes and pushed, expecting flashing lights and cops with their guns drawn. I could almost hear the megaphone. Step out of your car with your hands up! But all I actually heard was the quiet whir of the gate sliding open. So far, so good.

The road sloped sharply before ending in a ten-space parking lot in front of a gorgeous white beach, surrounded on both sides by tall cliffs. “Whoa!” I said as I climbed out of my car, feeling more like I was on a movie set than what was essentially someone’s backyard.

Kimberlee glared at the foamy green waves. “You’ll excuse me if I don’t share your enthusiasm.”

“Why? ’Cause you died here?”

“Let’s just get to the cave.”

“You’re reading my mind.”

She stayed a few feet ahead of me as we trekked across the sand.

She didn’t leave footprints.

“This whole ghost thing is still freaking me out,” I said, my eyes fixed on her feet.

“Yeah,” she said without looking back. “Took me about a month to really get a handle on it, too.”

Great.

When we reached what looked like the face of a mini- cliff, she took two running steps and jumped, then basically floated into the cave.

I was stuck ten feet below. “You suck,” I shouted.

“Wimp. There are handholds all the way up. That’s how I did it when I was alive.”

I found a ledge for my foot and stepped up to reach for one with my arms. In a few seconds I had four limbs on little ledges and was sure I looked like a bug clinging to the wall for dear life—all of three feet above a sandy beach. I looked up to Kimberlee for help. She was staring out at the sea. A gust of wind made her skirt flutter suddenly, giving me an eyeful. I froze, lost my balance, and slid down the rock. Or, more accurately, fell sprawling into the sand.

“Perv,” Kimberlee said with a sinister laugh that made me remember that wind couldn’t touch her clothes. Only Kimberlee had any effect on Kimberlee’s clothes.

“Don’t do that again,” I said darkly. At least not while I’m clinging to the side of a cliff. Without looking at Kimberlee I started to climb again, more carefully this time. It took me about three tries and at least ten minutes, but I made it. I peered back down at the beach. The climb looked a lot shorter from up top. “Okay,” I said as I scrambled to my feet. “Where’s the stuff?”

She tilted her head to the back of the cave. I turned and blinked, letting my eyes adjust to the darkness. When they finally did, my jaw dropped.

There must have been a hundred boxes stacked in the back of the cave, which was way deeper than I’d expected. “A few things? A few things! Are you insane?” My voice echoed through the cave, repeating my words back to me.

“Jeff . . .” Her voice was uncharacteristically quiet.

“This is ridiculous. You lied to me.”

“I did not.”

“No one in their right mind would ever classify this as ‘a few things.’ You lied to get me up here and hoped you could just flutter your eyes and it would be all better. Well, it’s not.” I backed away from the massive pile of boxes. “I’m not doing this.”

“Jeff . . .”

“I should call the cops,” I said as I backed away. No way could I return all this stuff on my own, not in any reasonable amount of time. “I’ll bet they could—”

“No!” Kimberlee shouted, running after me. “They’d just confiscate it all. Then I’d be stuck here forever! Jeff, please.”

“No. I’m leaving,” I said, as much to myself as to Kimberlee, “and I am not coming back.” I looked over the edge and tried to find the handholds I had used climbing up. It’s only ten feet. Just jump! I let myself down as far as I could while holding on to the ledge, then tried to fall slowly. My feet hit the sand a moment before my ass did. My tailbone stung, but at least I was out of the klepto cave. I looked over at my car and forced myself to walk calmly instead of running—which would probably make me fall and look like an idiot.

Again.

Kimberlee was right beside me. “They’re organized,” she pleaded. “It’ll be easy. A bag for each person. The boxes are sorted by category. A couple of trips and we’ll be done.”

By category? “A couple of trips? A couple of trips? Maybe if I had a semi. That,” I said pointing up at the cave, “is a lot of stuff, Kimberlee. You have a problem.”

“Had.”

“What?”

She shrugged. “Can’t do it anymore, can I?” She laughed shakily for a few seconds before falling silent.

“Real funny,” I scoffed. I ducked into my car and slammed the door before she could say anything else. As I drove I stared at Kimberlee in the rearview mirror until the road curved and cut her out of sight. As soon as I got out of her cul-de-sac, I stomped my foot on the gas and drove home as fast as I dared.

How the hell was I going to get out of this?

When I got to the house, Mom was gone, but Tina—our housekeeper—was washing down countertops and a good smell was coming from the oven.

“Ah, Jeff, there you are,” Tina said. “Your mother is at a taping and your father is on a conference call. You know, the ones your mother keeps telling him to stop taking. I have to take off as soon as I pull the muffins out of the oven. Healthy ones—don’t tell your father. Tell him they are cupcakes and he will eat them.” Tina had only been with us for two weeks, but she was already determined to make my dad into a health-food junkie—clandestinely, of course, though her methods were hardly James Bond.

I slumped down on the counter and let my backpack slip to the floor.

“You look awful.”

Thanks, Tina.

“Bad day?”

Actually, Tina, it was swell. I saw this girl—of course, she’s totally untouchable, for me, anyway. Oh, and there’s this other girl—she’s untouchable, too, for everyone! But she’s all mine, whether I want her or not.

“Just long,” I said with a shrug. “Lots of homework.”

She reached up and patted my head in a way that was comforting in spite of the awkward grandmotherliness of it. “You’ll get it all done. You’re a smart boy.”

“Thanks,” I said, smiling a little. “I better go upstairs and get to work.”

But rather than start on my homework, I fired up my Xbox. After what I’d just seen, I deserved to chill out a little. I played GTA for about an hour and imagined everything my car ran into was Kimberlee, or one of her boxes of stolen stuff. I kept looking over my shoulder, expecting to see her or hear one of her smart-ass comments, but all I heard was the cathartic symphony of gunfire and people screaming.

Why was this whole ghost thing happening to me? Kimberlee said I was the first person to see her—ever. Nothing in my life was all that special. I certainly wasn’t special.

Maybe it was something about Santa Monica. In the three weeks since we’d moved here my life had turned upside down. My mom was on TV, my dad was a retired workaholic who couldn’t keep his fingers out of the old business, and I had a ghost. And a housekeeper. A year ago, any of those things would have sounded like a joke. Getting them all at once—well, who could blame me if I needed some time to adjust? But last time I checked, seeing ghosts wasn’t a symptom of homesickness or stress.