Then she got all red in the face like she was gonna burst out laughing.
“
It’s a poster of the Muppets!
He’s, like, obsessed with the Muppets!” She was laughing so hard she could barely speak.
“You’re kidding!” I said. “Kermit and Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, like, right over his bed?” We were all howling.
“Yes!
Framed!
” Jennifer said, trying to swallow her soda. This actually made me kind of like David more than I already did. I mean, just as a friend. But he really was one of the funniest people in our class.
“He told me he watches
The Muppet Show
every night,” Jennifer continued. “Beaker and Dr. Bunsen Honeydew are his favorites!” More howling.
“Was he embarrassed at all?” Julie yelped, wiping the laughter tears from the corners of her eyes.
“No!” Jennifer said. “I couldn’t believe it!” Then Jennifer started making the
beep-beep
sounds that Beaker the Muppet makes and we kept laughing for a while until I got stomach cramps.
“Have you guys told anyone about Bloomingdale’s?” Jennifer said. The blonde lady cop popped into my mind. Shit, just when I was starting to relax. I hadn’t even been back to the Lexington Avenue subway stop, let alone anywhere near Bloomingdale’s. Would I really never go back there for the rest of my life? I imagined the scene of my return:
I would get just one foot into the revolving door to B-WAY. Instantly, deafening alarms would go off, a giant searchlight would shine in my face, blinding me, and I’d barely be able to make out a silhouette of the blonde lady cop, dressed in a police uniform this time, with a team of mean-looking policemen behind her. The blonde lady cop would point at me angrily and shout through a giant bullhorn:
“Julie Howe of One Fifteen Central Park West! You signed documents saying that you would never, ever return to Bloomingdale’s for the rest of your life! You have violated that contract!”
Then I’d see my parents and Aunt Marty and some other relatives standing in the corner looking ashamed and disappointed in me. Maybe my mother would even be crying. And then all the cops would swarm around me, slap handcuffs on me, and lock me up forever in that little mug-shot fitting room in the basement.
“What about you, Julie?” Jennifer was saying to me, shaking me out of my fantasy. “Were you listening?”
“Oh, um. I don’t know,” I said. “What?”
“I asked if you guys told anyone about Bloomie’s,” she repeated.
“No, I haven’t,” I said, looking at my watch. Three o’clock. “Oh shit! I almost forgot! I have a rehearsal with my new scene partner, Demaris, at three thirty! I gotta go!” We slurped down the rest of our sodas and headed for the subway.
The next Sunday, Mom and I were both in the kitchen in the late afternoon. She was emptying my hamper into the washing machine and I was at the counter getting a snack. I could see her eyeing my shirts. Three new shirts I’d
gotten
from Macy’s. They were all the same—long-sleeved with shoulder pads, in magenta, green, and black.
“New shirts?” she said.
“Uh-huh,” I said, not looking at her. I took a bite of a pretzel.
“Where’d you get them?”
Oh God,
I thought,
she knows
. I never should have put them all in the laundry at once. My heart started to race and I inhaled silently.
“The flea market on Greene Street,” I lied, acting like it was no big deal that she was questioning me. I pretended not to see the funny look on her face. Was lying a normal part of being a teenager, or was something wrong with me? When would I stop lying? And if I never did stop, what kind of person would I grow up to be?
I could only imagine she was thinking that these three shirts had “department store” written all over them. I wondered if she noticed the tiny rips where those white plastic things had been.
“You got these brand-new shirts at the flea market?” She paused. “Julie . . . is there something you’re not telling me?”
For a few seconds, I just looked at her, stunned. I didn’t know what to say.
“You look like the cat who ate the canary,” she said.
“Um.” I swallowed. “Can we go talk in my room?” I felt my voice get shaky. Mom put down the shirts and followed me. I didn’t actually know if I was ready to confess. If I did, I hoped that would mean I’d really stop stealing once and for all. But of course, I couldn’t be sure. The walk to my room was really quiet and serious like we were soldiers in line. Mom closed my door. I couldn’t think of a time we had ever talked in my room with the door closed. I wondered if I should tell her about Bloomingdale’s. No, that would just shock her. We sat down on my twin bed.
“I got those shirts at Macy’s,” I said. The tears started, and I didn’t try to stop them. “But I didn’t pay for them.” We were sitting facing each other, but I could only look down at my lap.
I braced myself for the yelling to start, but then she said quietly, “You stole them?”
“Yeah.”
“When?”
“Last weekend. I was with some other girls from school.” I told her that everyone I knew at school did it. Even some boys. But I didn’t mention Julie. That would have been a betrayal, I thought. I didn’t tell Mom that I did it practically every weekend, that I thought I was a klepto. Or that I couldn’t go back to Bloomingdale’s for the rest of my life.
“Is this the first time you’ve done it?” she asked. I took another deep breath. Oh God. I wanted to lie again so badly.
Yes, Mom,
I wanted to say.
This was the first time. It was a dare. Some kids at school dared us. I swear I’ll never do it again, I promise.
“No. I’ve done it a bunch of times.”
“Mm-hmm,” she said. She didn’t ask me how many times was “a bunch.” Did she know that “a bunch” meant so many times I couldn’t even count? Maybe thousands of dollars by now?
“Do you want to tell me more?” she said, like she didn’t know what else to say.
I shrugged. “Are you gonna tell Dad?”
She thought for a second. “No. Not if you don’t want me to.” Why was she being so cool?
“Are you gonna punish me?” I said.
“I think you know what you’ve done is wrong. What if you had gotten caught, Julie? Do you realize what could happen?” Her face looked really worried, and she shifted a little on my bed.
“Yes.” I blew my nose and continued to look down in my lap.
Oh boy, did I.
There was no way I was going to tell her about Bloomingdale’s. Was not telling the same as lying? Mom took a deep breath.
Suddenly I thought about how when I was little and I had a bad dream, Mom preferred that I scream for her from my bed instead of coming to get her. The time I just showed up at the side of her bed in my feety pajamas, holding my teddy with no mouth, she nearly hit the ceiling. So she told me just scream
“Mom-my!”
as loud as I could when I had a bad dream. Then she’d come in my room half asleep in her white nightgown smelling powdery and like Mom-sleep-smell—a smell I loved—and she’d pull back my covers, get in bed with me, and say, “Tell me all about your dream. It’s only a dream.” She’d say, “I’m listening, I just have to keep my eyes closed.” And I’d tell her about how I dreamed I was falling, or some shadowy gray man with no face was chasing me, or I was stuck in a fire, or whatever. When I woke up in the morning, I’d be alone in my bed but I wouldn’t feel scared anymore.
“Do you talk to Joyce about this?” Mom was saying. “I know that’s private, what you talk to Joyce about, but—”
“Yes, I do.”
Then we were silent for a few moments.
“Please don’t tell Ellie, either,” I said. “She won’t understand. She’ll just make fun of me.”
“It’ll be our secret. Will you promise me you won’t do it again?” she said.
“Okay,” I said.
“Okay, what?”
“Okay, I promise.”
“You can talk to me, you know. I know you think I’m some kind of ogre,” she continued. “But if you need to, you can talk to me.” She lifted my head so that I had to look at her. She smiled at me, but it was too hard to smile back. Then she got up and returned to the kitchen, closing my door behind her.
No, don’t go, Mom,
I was thinking, but I couldn’t say it out loud.
Stay here. Stay here with me on my bed. Let’s get under the covers and I’ll tell you about my bad dreams.
Why didn’t she yell at me and punish me? I was so ashamed; I deserved to be punished for all the awful things I had done. All the stealing. All the lying. All the pretending.
16
Only a Misdemeanor or Something
The next day at school I was totally dreading telling Julie about the talk I had with my mom. Like she’d think I was such a goody-goody for confessing. But I had to tell her this was it, once and for all—I wasn’t going to steal anymore. Maybe I would tell her that I just decided to stop, but not ’cause I promised my mom. I had to wait to talk to Julie until homeroom, which I knew would be good timing ’cause homeroom was really noisy with everybody talking and being loud. Sometimes music students practiced there even though they were supposed to wait until music class. All morning I felt nervous, waiting for homeroom. Josh Heller smiled at me in the hallway, but I was so distracted I didn’t even get excited. I got a ninety-seven on the quiz in Voice and Diction, and I had a pretty good acting class with Mrs. Zeig, but I still felt depressed.
“Hi!” Julie said, at the door to homeroom. She adjusted her Chocolate Soup bag over her shoulder and seemed out of breath from running up the stairs. She noticed my face. “Are you okay?”
“Um. I told my mom,” I said, just flat out like that.
“What?” Julie said like she was shocked, but knew exactly what I was talking about. She stuck her arm in mine and pulled me to the back of the classroom where there were two empty seats. In front of us, this kid Tyrone was loudly playing scales on his trumpet.
“She asked me about some shirts I got at Macy’s,” I said, sitting and noticing a heart that was carved in the desk. “And we ended up in my room having a talk. Julie, I never saw my mother so serious, oh my God!”
“Really,” Julie said quietly, watching me closely.
“But the weird thing was she didn’t even yell or punish me. I couldn’t believe it. I kept waiting for her to start screaming, but instead she just, like, asked me questions and she had this really
concerned
look on her face.” I shuddered, remembering it. “I wanted to lie and tell her some girls dared us, but I just couldn’t.”
“Us?” Julie asked.
“Don’t worry, I never mentioned your name. She doesn’t know who I was with.”
Julie sighed and then was quiet for a second. “Wow, she didn’t yell?” she said, letting her bag drop to the floor. “Here!” she shouted over the noise when Mr. Werner called her name for attendance.
“Nope,” I said. “I couldn’t believe it, either.”
“Maybe your mom is cooler than you think,” she said brightly.
“Well, I wouldn’t exactly call it ‘cool,’ ” I said. “I mean, she seemed really worried about me, and angry—and actually, it makes me kind of worried, too.”
“C’mon, Jule, there’s nothing to worry about—that’s just moms for ya, they worry! It’ll probably never come up again.”
I swallowed hard. “Actually,” I said. “I’m gonna stop.”
Julie started laughing. “Seriously? ’Cause your mom found a couple of shirts?”
“Yeah, that, and ’cause we could get caught again,” I said, lowering my voice even though everybody around us was chatting away.
Julie had a look of disbelief on her face. “Julie, I told you Bloomingdale’s was totally abnormal! I bet the odds of that happening again are like . . . like the chance of getting hit by lightning twice!”
“What? Are you saying we’ll never get caught again?” I tried to keep my voice down, but I felt it catching in my throat.
“Probably not, no!” Julie sounded defensive.
“How do you know that? I mean, like, I don’t see how you can predict that!”
“’Cause we’re good!” Julie said like, how could I forget?
“All right,” I said, kind of sharply. “But I’ve really been giving this a lot of thought. Let’s just say we
did
get caught again. I mean, I know we’re only fifteen so the consequences wouldn’t be so—”
“Exactly!” Julie interrupted. “Why are you getting so—” “But what if they didn’t let us graduate high school or something? What if we couldn’t go to college?” I said.
Julie just looked at me, stunned. “Oh, Jesus. You have
way
too active an imagination!”
“It could happen,” I said solemnly.
“No it couldn’t! That’s crazy! For stealing a pair of jeans or a couple of shirts? It’s, like, only a misdemeanor or something; it’s not even a felony—”
“Oh my God, listen to what you’re saying!” I said. “You sound like a criminal! I don’t even know what those words mean!”
“Have you ever heard of a fifteen-year-old going to jail?” Julie wanted to know, like she was some big authority on teenage crimes.
“No, but I have heard of reform school!” I said.
“That’s only on, like,
Happy Days
and
Diff’rent Strokes
, or whatever. There’s really no such thing as reform school—”
“Are you high?” I said, trying to whisper again. “
Of course
there’s such a thing as—”
“All I’m saying,” Julie said, “is that you’re not gonna
not
be able to graduate or go to college! That’s just impossible!”
I felt so frustrated, like someone was holding a pillow over my mouth, refusing to let me speak. It didn’t seem to matter what I had to say. Julie would find a way to disagree. I looked away, trying to calm down.
“What?” Julie said, sounding pissed. “What are you getting so upset about?”
“What am I—? What about you? Why are you so pissed? You’re acting like, like—”
“Like what?” Julie said.
“Like you’re so offended, or something—”