Free THIEF: Part 1 by Kimberly Malone

Chapter One
     
                  “Klepto bitch.”
                  The girl in the seat across from mine stares me down, but I make sure to keep my temper in check.  Punching some waspy volunteer on my first day isn’t going to help my formerly squeaky-clean record.
                  Okay, it wasn’t like my record was really all that clean: I just never got caught.  Until a couple months ago.
                  I shut my eyes while the girl fake-whispers to her friends, all of them giggling and shooting glances.  One of them is wearing a Ralph Lauren Polo, bright red.  The collar looks pressed.  Everyone on this shuttle looks like they have butlers and chambermaids to dress them, and I’m stuck in this wrinkled neon yellow T-shirt that reads, “HI, I’M NEW!”  Literally—it’s emblazoned across my tits.
                  “Stereo system,” one of the girls hisses.
                  “No, an iPad.”
                  Another guesses, “A whole crate of iPads.”
                  Wrong, wrong, and I wish, but also wrong.   It’s almost funny, listening to a bunch of high schoolers judge me.  Look, I want to tell them, life isn’t as simple as you think.  Just wait till graduation.
                  The shuttle hits another pot hole.  The driver looks ancient.  I hate admitting this to myself, but he’s the kind of guy I liked to target in my early days: barely-there glaze across his eyes, probably a war vet with injured knees who can’t chase me down, even if he did know what was going on.  I’d usually do the whole bump-into-and-apologize act, making off with the billfold.  Old men have stupidly shallow pockets.
                  By the time we pull up to the ranch—a mile and a half from the main road—I’ve got a nice swipe of sweat across my chest, the edges of my bra showing through the fabric.  My hair is stuck around my neck.  Suddenly, I can’t remember if I wore deodorant today or not.
                  “Have a nice day, folks,” the shuttle driver whistles, and everyone pats him on the back and thanks him personally.  Turns out, his name is Irv.  I don’t like knowing his name; it just intensifies my guilt about how he’s exactly the kind of guy I’d pickpocket on the street.  When I was really into it—swiping a wallet or two, sometimes a whole purse, every day—I usually just grabbed the cash, then brought the wallet to a nearby cafe and turned it in.  “Found this on the ground,” I’d say sweetly.  “Didn’t know if one of your customers left it here.”
                  I never checked the ID, never took credit cards: if it had a name, I wouldn’t touch it.  Names make you remember the targets are humans.
                  At least I got that going for me, I think.  At least I’m not a monster.
                  The girls from the shuttle cross the dirt road, heading for the lodge.  Figures.  They’re probably the volunteer-for-the-summer types, just getting a few hours to slap on their college applications.   I watch their perfect ponytails swing with every step.  For a second, I forget I’m almost twenty-one; I feel more like fourteen, awkward and sweaty, watching the popular girls roam the halls.
                  “Hey.  You here for community?”
                  I snap out of it.  “Uh…yeah,” I answer, turning.  A muscular, kind of butch woman in a tracksuit is staring at me.  “Erin St. James.”
                  She nods, crosses my name off her clipboard, and hitches a thumb towards another dirt road.  “Let’s go.  I’ll train you for a few hours, then cut you loose after lunch.”
                  I look back at the lodge wistfully.  It’s a sprawling log cabin, with a golf course stretched behind it and private stables next to it.