“I swear to God, if you get us arrested--”
“Sshh!”
Penny glares at me. I know she hates being hushed, but we’re standing next to one of my students’ living room windows at two in the morning, and I do not want to wake anybody up.
“Sorry,” I say quickly, so she’ll stop glaring, and then turn back to the task at hand: jimmying open this damn window.
She watches with her arms crossed, and raises an eyebrow when the window is open in under a minute. “You weren’t kidding when you said you were used to this, huh?” she whispers as she steps up on my interlaced fingers to crawl through the window. Her foot gets caught on the windowsill, and her back is dangerously close to the top of the window, and if she falls or makes a thudding noise, this whole thing could be over very quickly.
“Be careful!” I hiss, and she gingerly lowers herself into the house. I pull myself up and through with practiced grace (I try not to think about my first few attempts at this, which were risky to say the least, even after all that practice climbing through my own window) and when both my feet are flat on the floor, I shoot her a grin that she probably can’t see through my ski mask. “‘Course I’m used to this. I’ve been doing it for years.”
She just shakes her head. “I never thought I would hear a scheme crazier than Dad’s old habit on the holidays where he always forgot to buy our cousins gifts, so he would just bring some tags to the family party and re-label all the drunk aunties’ gifts as being from him instead--”
I laugh. “The best years were when they didn’t even notice.”
“But this? This is even crazier.” She looks around the dark living room, which is pleasantly furnished with expensive couches, glass knickknacks, and a coffee table piled with those books that are always $25 in the bookstore because they have big shiny pages with pictures. Penny gestures to a large red vase that’s sitting on the fireplace mantle with one of her gloved hands. “I mean, we could just steal that vase instead! Or some jewelry, or something. It’ll pay the rent faster.”
“You’re thinking like an amateur,” I whisper back. “They would obviously notice if this weirdly fancy vase disappeared, or if they “lost” a diamond necklace. Nobody ever suspects that you’d st--”
“Yeah, okay, I heard your pitch at home,” she mutters. “I’m just saying, it would be more efficient--”
“--but much more easily caught.”
She rolls her eyes. “Alright, fine. Let’s just keep going, I agreed to be your new accomplice, et cetera. Where does he keep it?”
I’ve been waiting for her to ask this. “This is part of my ingenious plan,” I explain as we wander into the kitchen, which has a huge island and an espresso machine. “I knew I was going to target him for three reasons. One, he lives here, in the richest part of town, so the money won’t be a problem. Two--”
“Are you seriously going to explain the details of your plan while we’re mid-execution of said plan--”
“Yes, now stop interrupting. Two, he hasn’t been turning in his homework on time and he stuffs all his papers in his backpack, not his binder, so he’s disorganized. Therefore, he loses stuff all the time and no one will ever think something’s awry if he loses one more thing. And three, his parents are super involved and will intervene if I ask them to. Which I did, and here’s the best part--”
“If you don’t just tell me wh--”
“Sshh! I’m almost done!” I take a quick breath, calming myself, and then continue. “A week ago I sent his mother an email telling her that he’s having trouble with his homework and she’ll have to do it with him. Then I assigned some textbook work two nights ago, which she would have helped him with, and parents hate doing homework in their kids’ rooms, so they probably did it around here, in the kitchen. And, because this boy isn’t very responsible, he probably just left it around here somewhere instead of putting it back wherever it goes.” I plant my hands on my hips, squinting around the dark kitchen. “Now the only question left is, where precisely did he put his textbook?”
Penny mumbles something about me being dramatic, which I elect to ignore. It’s her first textbook-stealing mission, after all; my old stealing buddy Jonathan was the perfect candidate, a fellow teacher at my same high school, and we used to help each other all the time with our respective heists. Then he got a new job in another state, and he moved away at the same time Penny got her PhD and moved in with me, and now here I am, stealing my students’ textbooks with my sister instead of him.
I’m not entirely bitter, though. It’s not often I can brag about my incredibly-well-thought-out textbook scheme.
I open cabinets as gently as possible, scanning with a well-trained eye for the book. “It’s green,” I remind Penny, “and an inch and a half thick.”
“I know what a textbook looks like,” she whispers back, lifting a pile of junk with less care than I’d like. Jonathan would never. “How much are you getting for this thing again?”
“One hundred and twenty-eight dollars,” I say, allowing myself a small, proud smile. “That’s what I told them at the beginning of the year.”
She snorts. “Can you imagine if we lost our textbooks? Dad would’ve had a conniption fit.”
“More like he would’ve forced us to shovel the neighbors’ driveways until we could pay for it ourselves.”
“True.” She moves aside a purse and then holds it up triumphantly. “Found it.”
“We’re not looking for a purse, Penny--”
“Oh, would you shut up, the book is clearly right there--”
“Wait--”
“See, look, it’s a big green b--”
“Shhh!”
Penny gives me a look that would normally make me back off, but she must see the panic in my eyes. “What?”
“Did you hear that?”
“No, what?”
“That noise.”
We both look up, and then I know we both hear it--the creak of a floorboard, the thud of a heavy foot. Penny’s eyes are wide.
“Be calm,” I whisper as my heart pounds at a mile a minute. “Don’t panic.” I grab the textbook and walk fast and quiet over to the window. “We just have to make a run for it. You first.”
Penny nods frantically and sticks her legs out the window, shimmying until she tumbles onto their side yard. It’s a little loud, but it’s also two in the morning, so hopefully nobody will notice.
There’s a loud creak, and I hear the footsteps coming down the stairs.
I clamber out after her, the textbook still tucked close to my chest, and my ankle shoots up in a burst of pain when I land on the ground. There’s no time, there’s no time, I’m still wincing over the lessening pain in my ankle and trying not to drop the book, but thank God Penny has the sense to close the window gently and grab the bar we used to open it.
“Let’s go,” she whispers, and we duck down and half-jog across the street, wearing black head to toe, and don’t stop running until we’re inside our car parked two streets away.
Penny breathes out like she’s been holding one single breath the whole night. “Well. That was stressful. Do you seriously do that all the time?”
“Not all the time,” I say. “Probably like... six or eight times a year.”
She shakes her head. “You are insane.”
“Insane, but I’ll be 128 dollars richer when he brings in that check to replace his lost textbook.” I wink at her and put the car into drive, heading for our small apartment on the other side of town, where I have a stash of textbooks that his will join, and from which his new, replacement book will come, and where I will stay because I have enough to pay my rent and order takeout when I don’t feel like making dinner, instead of having to choke down Penny’s cooking.
According to my detailed spreadsheets from prior years, it’ll be around ten days before he realizes he’s “lost” his book and asks me for a replacement and I tell him it’s going to be $128. I already can’t wait.