Free How to Lead a Life of Crime by Kirsten Miller Page A

first floor, the guests began examining my physique and picking my brain. I suspect a few of them wanted to pry open my mouth and have a good look at my teeth. Or make me drop my trousers, turn my head, and cough. I kept my pants on, but they still seemed to walk away satisfied. When they began to pair off to compare notes, I grabbed a bottle from the bar and headed straight for the exit. Now that I think about it, there’s got to be plenty of security at the academy. Mandel must have let me leave because he figured I’d be back. But if he was really smart, he’d have stopped me. His cameras probably caught me with a bottle in my hand, but nobody saw the contraband tucked into the waistband of my fancy new pants.
    I pull out the course catalog and flip through its pages for the third time tonight. Mandel says the catalogs can’t leave the academy. But I think he’s being a little too cautious. No one would ever take this shit seriously. I mean, who’s gonna believe that the prestigious Mandel Academy offers classes on assassination techniques? (Wish I had a pencil handy. I’d circle the hell outa that one.) So despite my sticky fingers, his secrets are probably safe. Too bad. I was hoping I’d be able to skip all this BS and persuade Mandel to make a trade. His catalog for my dad’s ass. But there’s no way he’ll go for it. I guess I’ll have to learn how to skim credit cards and clean crime scenes after all. But at least I’ll be able to make it through high school without touching Moby-Dick. I cackle and close one eye so the words on the catalog’s pages stop squirming. There isn’t a single art class listed. No literature, either. No sex education. Nothing useless. It’s all business all the time at the fabulous Mandel Academy. No wonder the alumni have the personalities of cyborgs.
    The more I read, the more nauseous I get. Finally I have to put the catalog down and wash the vomit back with a glug of Scotch. I’m cold. Starting to drift off, but my eyes pop open. A little boy is standing a few yards away, snapping my picture with the camera on his crappy phone.
    “Hey, what time is it?” I shout.
    The kid jumps about three feet in the air. He probably thought I was dead.
    “What time?” I repeat. “Look at your goddamn phone.”
    “Eight,” he squeaks, and runs away.
    “That’s what I thought.” My eyes flutter shut again.
    I left military school seven months ago, but there’s an alarm in my head that still goes off at eight every evening. That’s when they turned on the Wi-Fi for an hour. You were supposed to cram all of your Internet research into sixty short minutes. I could have slept through every class and still been named the school’s valedictorian. So I used the time to talk to Jude.
    He was always there when I logged on—even on weekends when he must have had better things to do. We chatted about stupid stuff. Boxing and girls and dirty southern slang I’d picked up from my fellow cadets. Never once did he give me any reason to suspect that he had something planned. Then the night before I went AWOL, I found a message in my in-box. He’d sent it just before two o’clock that afternoon. You’re coming home soon, it said. I know something. He won’t hurt you or Mom again.
    My fingers couldn’t type fast enough. Don’t do anything! Swear you won’t!
    I hit send and waited for a response. I was still waiting when the lights went out. Sometimes I imagine my message floating around cyberspace for the rest of eternity.
    • • •
    The next morning, I left for my daily cross-country jog with sixty-five dollars and three sets of clothing hidden under my tracksuit. I hopped the fence at the mile mark and waded through part of the Okefenokee Swamp until I hit the highway.
    An old lady at the bus stop let me borrow her phone. A maid answered at my parents’ house. I asked for Jude and hung up when she started to cry.
    I didn’t come to New York first. I went to Connecticut instead.