Being Me (9 page)

   SHE HUGS ME FOR NO REASON SOMETIMES.

I think about the PSHE lesson a bit more. Then, as I get nearer home, I start thinking about my mum.

It’s Saturday and I get up early. The kitchen’s a mess. There’s a burnt out candle on the fridge and red wax all down the side. I clear it up, bin two empty bottles of vodka then go out into the garden. I’m practising twist-and-shoot when Mum hollers me. I check my watch. 11.32am. I’ve been training for three hours. I do my drag-the-ball-back, flick-it, bounce-it-on-my-knee-and-flick-it-to-the-other-foot trick for Mum.

Mum shouts, ‘I’m making you some lunch. Fish and parsley sauce!’

I give her the thumbs up, not because I’m hungry but because it’s ages since she’s cooked me anything.

After thirty minutes, I switch to half volley shots. The first time I try one, the ball bounces up faster than I expect. I miskick it and it balloons up. I hear it hit a kitchen window behind the shrubs.

Boosh! The window smashes.

Mum storms out. She weaves round the shrubs towards me and I can tell she’s been necking vodka. She’s got a plate in her hand, full of steaming food. She tries to chuck it at me. It lands on the grass about a metre away from her.

‘Salmon in parsley sauce, with petals of glass! You know how long that took me? You’re the devil’s child! I should have had an abortion!’

‘Fuck you!’ I reply.

I rush inside and throw on some clothes then run back out. I can’t believe what my mum has just said. It’s everything I thought she ever thought of me. I wipe away enough tears so I can see the screen of my phone. Four messages from MC. I wasn’t going to do this again, but I’ve changed my mind. I text Mikaela.

Forty minutes later, me and Mikaela are on the bus and I’m a world away from my mum.

‘What’s up?’ Mikaela asks when she plonks herself down next to me.

I shake my head. I’m too upset to talk.

‘Suit yourself.’

I don’t say anything to Mikaela for a long time. We’re on the back seat. Mikaela looks out of the window. The sun is blazing through Mikaela’s Afro. She’s lip-synching to a song on her headphones. I nudge her and she hands me an ear piece. We get a hand dance going and soon we’re rocking and everyone on the bus is smiling except some old fart who starts tutting (which makes it even better).

My mum texts me.

So sorry. Can you ring me?

I text her back.

Nt now mum am w frends.

I hope she gets the friends bit. She’s never been my friend.

The main square in town is full of jugglers and dancers and a big crowd’s out in the sun enjoying it. MC has been here all morning and says it’s pickpocket heaven. Me and Cakes know what to do. MC goes through it for Mikaela. As she explains our routine (one of us barges into someone “accidentally”, the other one lifts their purse or wallet. They pass it to the third person, who takes off), I see Mikaela’s cheek start its twitch. When MC has finished, I say, ‘Cakes bumps, MC picks, I walk with. Watch and learn from the experts, right, MC?’

‘Yup,’ says MC. She does her double-jointed fingers trick for Mikaela, moving the fingers of her right hand so they revolve in strange and unnatural ways. As she does this she rolls her eyes into her head so you can only see the whites. It’s MC’s party trick, and just like she intended, it spooks Mikaela.

‘This feels so wrong,’ Mikaela whispers to me as we’re walking.

MC hears her. ‘The best fun always is,’ she says.

‘What about all the CCTV?’

‘Lazy bastards what watch them are all asleep.’ MC puts her hand out. Mikaela looks around nervously as we say our slogan.

‘A rob for one is a rob for all!’

It isn’t long before we spot someone. A woman with two toddlers pushing a buggy. Her open handbag is slung across the buggy handles. The toddlers are pulling her this way and that. We’re about to crowd her when this guy in a track suit runs up with two ice creams and thrusts them at the kids. His hands go on the buggy handles and the woman scoops up her handbag and closes it. We look for someone else.

MC Banshee spots a man standing on some steps, opposite a hotel talking into his phone. She says she can see the bulge of his wallet in his inside jacket pocket. Cakes leads, pretending to be arguing with a boyfriend on her phone. At the last second she stumbles into the man, using her weight to wobble him. MC is in his jacket in a flash as he’s trying to untangle himself from Cakes. MC palms me the wallet. I’m down the street as Cakes and MC are still apologising to the business guy. He swats them away while keeping up his conversation on his phone. Mikaela’s with me. We run down a side street, take the stone steps down onto a canal bank and half walk, half run under a bridge. I take out the wallet. It’s bulging. I unzip it. A huge bundle of notes. In three currencies. My heart is hammering my rib cage as I count them. Two hundred in English pounds. Two hundred and fifty in Euros, and ten twenty dollar USA notes. Plus four credit cards.

MC and Cakes come running up. MC’s annoyed that we’ve opened the wallet before she caught up with us. She grabs it off us.

Ten minutes later, we’re in a Fruit Slurp Bar, sipping smoothies. Mikaela is drooling over a Coconut and Mango Medley. MC grabs her in a hold that is part head lock, part friendly neck massage and says: ‘So Mikaela, does it “feel so wrong” now?’

Mikaela smiles. And for the first time ever, I see a glint of pure evil rise in her eyes. I think,
ohmygod I’ve created a monster.

Cakes says we should stop robbing for the day cos we’ve got so much already. I agree, but MC says let’s do Kendals. It’s a massive department store on the rich side of the city centre and it could have been designed by shoplifters – full of lifts, stairs and escalators, eight exits, rubbish cameras and bored staff. Plus it’s stuffed with the most expensive brands on earth. It has a restaurant at the top where you get a free cream cake if you have a receipt above ten pounds. We finish our smoothies and pour out into Market Street, heading for Kendals.

There’s a silver statue guy in the middle of the street with a crowd around him. He’s frozen on one leg in a sitting angle that means he should fall down but he doesn’t. He’s got a stiff scarf around his neck sticking out sideways like he’s piloting an open-top airplane except we can’t see the plane. People walk round him, staring. Nobody can figure out how he stays in the position he’s in. There’s gasps when he moves a hand to thank someone who drops money in his bowler hat on the ground. Cakes drops him a pound. He nods then freezes again.

Further up, there’s a beat box kid in a back-to-front cap, four break dancers doing rubbish moves on lino and an artist copying a photo of Mona Lisa onto the pavement. After Mona Lisa we come across the white faced, statue-on-a-box-in-a-white-bed-sheet guy we saw on the bus. He’s rubbish compared with the airplane guy. I giggle with Cakes. MC Banshee whispers to Mikaela, then saunters up to him. I can tell from MC’s swagger she’s going to do something. Mikaela’s right behind her.

Me and Cakes are chewing pretzels, hanging back.

Suddenly MC rushes at him and pushes him off his box. Mikaela ducks down and scoops coins out of his money plate. They both leg it, laughing. The statue man hitches up his bed-sheet and gives chase but he trips up and goes sprawling. The crowd laughs at him. Me and Cakes walk past. Our pretzels are rammed right into the back of our mouths so we don’t laugh. He’s swearing in a foreign language.

Mikaela agrees to be the turnstile in Kendals. We sail up and down the escalators and stairs for a bit, to show her the ropes.

Perfume is tough in Kendals because the perfume stalls all have their own commissioned sellers watching eagle-eyed as you go past. All the women on the perfume stalls have pouty lips and botox eyebrows. Mrs Richards would be appalled. We spray a few testers on each other till they get jumpy with us, thinking we’re timewasters. It’s great seeing their faces when MC Banshee says, ‘Do you take European money?’

Then she buys an expensive small bottle of perfume in the store with a roll of Euros. She opens the packaging there and then and starts spraying all of us with it. Suddenly the perfume sellers love us. We waltz away from their plastic, pouty smiles.

The fifth floor sells electronic goods. Cakes wants an iPod. We could buy it, but she wants to lift it.

Cakes and Mikaela go up to one end of the counter. The shop assistant takes out the tray of iPods. That’s the cue for me and MC to saunter up to the other end. Cakes tries a bit of hair twirling and batting of her eyes but it doesn’t distract the shop assistant. MC does a loud ‘excuse me’. The shop assistant is torn. He looks over at MC then he looks back at Cakes. Cakes has already taken an iPod from the tray when he turned to look over at MC. Cakes sticks her bottom lip out and frowns like she’s saying she doesn’t like any of the iPods. The assistant shoves the tray back under the glass without counting the iPods, and scoots over to MC Banshee and me.

MC does good Geek and she asks lots of questions about digital radios. I look around as MC is chatting this rubbish to see if there are any store detectives following Cakes and Mikaela, who are on the move towards the stairs. If there are, I’ll text them to dump the stuff in the toilets. It all looks good though, just grannies and granddads gawping at big screen TVs and a few Anoraks on Playstation consoles. I nudge MC. She makes excuses to the assistant and we take a couple of escalators down, making sure no-one’s trailing us. Then we meet up with Cakes and Mikaela in Kitchenware.

Cakes looks calm. Mikaela’s eyes are swishing like windscreen wipers.

Anyone followed you?’ asks MC.

They shake their heads.

‘Anyone watching us now?’ MC scratches her cheek as she says this, turns and picks up a frying pan. She examines it, glancing around in the pan’s reflection for cameras and people.

‘Who’s she?’ MC says, under her breath.

There’s an old biddy in pearls and a fur coat, looking at sieves.

‘I seen her before,’ says Mikaela, ‘I think she’s shoplifting herself actually. She’s really shifty.’

MC Banshee pauses. We glance over. Sure enough, the old biddy drops an egg timer into her pocket.

MC Banshee’s eyes are screaming with laughter, but she gets it under control.

‘Let’s do this,’ she says.

Both me and MC make to take the iPod off Mikaela. That way if they are onto us they can’t be sure who has it. From a distance it just looks like three girls in a huddle, greeting one another. I’ve got it but MC peels away from Mikaela and takes the escalator for the Dior exit. She’s doing the show run. It flushes out anybody who’s been following us. We wait. Nothing happens. I examine a couple of pans. Mikaela peels off. Then Cakes. I’m on my own. Ninety seconds later, I take the stairs for the Hermes scarves exit. The iPod is snug in the back of my trouser waistband.

There’s something about that moment before you go through an exit door when you’re shoplifting that is the biggest thrill. You’ve checked the tag is off. No scruffy guys in jeans are waiting at the Exit doors. No Uniforms are lurking. Still, your senses tingle. It’s the moment. You can always, at this point, back down, retrace your steps, pretend you’ve forgotten something and go back, dump the goods. Or you can panic and suddenly make a run for it. That might blow your cover, but if they’re on to you, it might give you an edge. Decisions. You’re in the zone. Maybe they’ve installed a new security system this day, or got some new theft alert stuff hidden in what you’re robbing. A shoplifter, like a striker, has to keep her head, accept the pressure, but never forget the goal. Shoot. Score. Lift.

I’m through the detector panels and no alarm. I’m three steps away from the double Exit doors. They swing either way. Yet something’s not right. It’s the old lady with pearls. She’s coming up fast. Why is she wearing a fur coat on a hot day? Maybe she’s rich and wants to show off. She’s got stubble.
Stubble?
I put a sprint on but she charges me to the floor. I kick her off me, helped by a shopping couple who think she’s an old lady who’s tripped over. I’m through the double doors. I glance back. Her wig’s off now. Crew cut haircut. It’s a man. Jeez. I step it up. I’m outside, running across the store’s front. Then
bang!

It’s the white-face statue man. He holds onto me like his life depends on it. I kick at him but his white sheet tangles my legs. Now the bloke in pearls has caught up and wallops me from the side. I’m down and they’re sitting on me. I wriggle but they’ve got me down good. I try and lose the iPod from my waistband as they drag me to my feet, but I can’t reach it. The crew cut has been joined by one of his mates with a walkie-talkie. They say thanks to the statue man who is kicking me in the ribs. He spits on me. They thank him again and show they understand by miming thumping me and spitting on me, then wave him away. He spits on me one last time.

I’m allowed to my feet. They’ve got me tight by the arms and haul me back towards the store. I see Mikaela. She’s standing on the pavement by the corner of the store, hand over her mouth. MC’s right behind her, leaning on Cakes. They’re all watching. Why don’t they help me?