1Seventh period French was an absolute nightmare. Every one of those idiots were yelling and laughing, pretending they weren't dumb as a post. Caitlin was dejectedly staring off into space, admiring the picture of last year's prom queen that had been put up on the board.
'And so another wasted day slowly draws to a close,' she thought. 'And I have to spend another wasted period with these flaming losers. Oh, I can just hear Dad now, "Not EVERYONE is as smart as you think you are, Caitlin." Yeah, right. But not EVERYONE should be dumber than a sponge.'
The despondent dreary days of her life had been taking a toll on Caitlin lately. She had heard that the junior year was to be one of stress, nonstop, but she had never anticipated nearly breaking every day from it and all her free time gone. Granted, she ended up obtaining a few minutes of relaxation by blowing off homework every once in a while, an act that never turned out very well. As well, her favorite class was becoming most irritating. All in all, her year had not been turning out very well at all what with lack of caring friends, a crumbling family, too much work and not enough play, a lot of stress. So she had stolen something.
Her first act of thievery had taken place early in the year. In an attempt to alleviate her rage at her family she had gone for a walk, a long, angry walk. And along the way she happened to come across a bike in her way. Stepping over it, she continued on only to be stopped by a, "Hey, don't touch my bike!"
She turned and spied a small boy on the shaded porch. "Excuse me?"
"My bike. You were gonna steal it."
"I was so not." And she walked away. However, Caitlin did posses an anger problem, much like her father, and the simmering anger that she had managed to drown out came to a boil. Walking about a half a block away she stopped and sat on the ground glaring off into the sun. Resting there a few minutes she turned back the way she had come and walked about half the distance until she could see the bike. The boy was no where in sight. She walked up to it slower. The kid was still no where to be seen. Crossing the street, she sat down on the sidewalk and examined the house.
Soon afterwards, the boy and his mother came out.
"John, put your bike away now! We're about to go out!"
"Okay, okay, Mom. Let me just get my stuff."
"Fine. But we'll be waiting in the car."
The garage door opened and a car backed out, driven by a man. The woman climbed in as the boy went in the door and came out a minute later. By then, his dad was yelling at him to hurry up, they were going to be late, so he just picked up his bike and put it near the door. Then he got in the car and the three of them drove off.
Caitlin waited across the street for a while, looking at the yard and debating. Then she walked down the street, crossed it, and came back up to the house, stopping in front of it and sitting on the sidewalk. She remained that way for nearly a half hour and, when no one came out of the house or any of the other houses, she walked up to the bike, picked it up, and started walking it down the street. The house was only about four away from an adjacent block and she turned on it, went left at the end into an open yard, and dumped the bike behind some overgrown weeds. Leaving the yard, she continued down the street, very much so satisfied, turning down street after street, until she finally came to her house again. She opened the door. Her sister and dad were screaming at each other. But the act had made her feel so good that she didn't care and instead retreated to her room and started reading Hamlet.
After that, Caitlin didn't go down that street again for some while but she did see several signs up reporting a missing bike. Every time she saw one she'd chuckle and imagine the kid getting yelled at for leaving his bike out when he should have put it inside. She figured that the people living in the house where she had dumped it would report it, eventually, or the kid would learn a valuable life-lesson. Either way, she was feeling better than she had in weeks.
So that was why, about three weeks later when her brother came home complaining that these kids from down the street had stolen something from him, she stole again.
She had known these people for nearly ten years, remembered meeting the girl when she was talking with her friend Kim on the phone outside wearing overalls. She knew the mother liked lighthouses, that the father had died in a wiring incident, that the boy was messed up. She had been nice to them, as nice as her nature allowed, but she didn't much like them nor the fact that they weren't always nice to her brother and that the mother had given her sister a really bad babysitting job that she had often helped out with. And she knew the house, knew the bedrooms, the hours, and that all of them often went out with the mother's newest boyfriends.
So she watched the house for a few days until she saw all of them pile into the old, gray van that the woman had just bought. She waited a little bit and then opened the garage door, walked in, closed it, and went in the house through the unlocked laundry room door.
She crossed the computer-crowded room to go into the boy's dirty room, finding all manner of objects. She went through the place, picking up a few items that weren't broken, but never found her brother's toy. Then she went back into the front room and found it, broken, of course. But, on the counter, she found several coins and a wallet. Taking a twenty out of it, she grabbed most of the coins, fed the two dogs that looked half starved, thought better of it, and took their bowls with her. She opened the front door, left the bowls on the stoop, locked the door, and walked on down the block. Once again, she walked back and forth, block to block, before heading home, crossing the ditch behind her house, hopping the fence, and coming in from the back. She stuffed the small toys in her closet and pocketed the twenty. A few days later when her mom went to the store, she came with and brought her brother a toy. She left it in his room.
Now Caitlin knew right from wrong and knew that stealing was one of those "wrong" things. In fact, she had already learned her lesson: never get caught or tell anyone thus being why she had told everyone she had mooched the money to buy her brother a new toy. And, even better, the neighbors down the street had been informed that Clayton had stolen Nick's toy and so had paid for it when they learned that he had also broken it. And so, it had all turned out well. But, as time went on and the nine weeks tests came around and she didn't do as well as she would have liked, the stress came back and her thoughts turned to the one action that made her feel in charge: stealing. Almost out of habit she began swiping things from her sister and mother's room, not daring to touch her father's since she had once taken a dollar from his wallet and he had given her such a whopping. Then, she would see toys left out in yards and, for no reason, take them. Days later they were appear hidden in trees and bushes about the neighborhood, many people just throwing them away. But the satisfaction was slowly leaking out of the actions; she was getting tired of taking what anyone could. She was getting tired of school, her family, and all the accumulated stress. Overall, she was getting tired of people. And that misanthropy triggered a new chain of thievery.
For years, some kids had been vandalizing her family mail box, puttying the lid closed, hitting it so it was deformed, or knocking it down, just because they were on the corner house. Then, having to take the bus home, she overheard some people saying that it had been Terry's little brother. Terry had been a friend to her sister and the vandalizing had seriously pissed off her father. But she wasn't some petty vandal. No, she wanted to take something from them, maybe scare them a bit. Coupled with a bad day and her father taking his frustrations out on her (her, who was possibly his only ally in the house so what sense did it make to alienate her?), she set out that night.
As it turned out, the crack wasn't as hard as she had expected since the family, a rather poor one, had left all the windows open. And the brothers and sister had invited their friends over to smoke in the garage so several of the house lights were on. As well, the parents, often out, were gone, so it was all too easy. Caitlin was in the house and wrinkling up her nose at the rancid smell in seconds.
There was nothing that caught her eye at first and, on second thoughts, she wanted to cause some damage, so she took the television to the farthest corner of the house, the blaring music from the garage hinting that no one would hear her anyway, and dropped it on the floor. She waited; there was nothing. Then she went back into the kitchen and started dropping the few glasses and plates they had on the floor. Still, it wasn't much since the house was a complete pigsty but it was something. So, she methodically went through the house listening to the garage and trashed it. Finally, amidst Terry's smoke-filled room, she found a salvageable CD player and took it, walking from the house and leaving the door slightly ajar. It being nearly two in the morning, no one was about and she crawled through her bedroom window into her room, stuffing her smoke-smelling clothes into the bottom of her laundry basket, fetching the air freshener, spraying it, and keeping her window open a little.
Then, about a week and a half later, the neighborhood newsletter came out, and she read the report with a smile, keeping a copy of the newsletter that she had swiped from a house down the street. To her, it was the first major accomplishment of an otherwise fruitless year.
End heist
Notes: Okay, so there's no funny but what did ya'll think? I tried to develop each plan in a way that had the fewest holes but in a way that also reflected the careless and degenerate quality of the people she had stolen from. But maybe I should have gone further into her school and friends. It is my attempt not to be a sympathetic narrator but, regardless, I think it can be easily discerned on whose side I'm on. Whatever. Feedback, s'il vous plait. Yeah, behold my awesome French. Au revoir! - Keebs \^-^/