The Blonde of the Joke (19 page)

Francie was stoic, but I knew what she was thinking. She was thinking that she knew her angles, knew that there was no way she could have been caught on camera. Mr. Grossman picked up a remote control, and rolled a tape on a monitor, and there she was. Francie in Bloomingdale’s, Francie in FYE, PacSun, Abercrombie, and the rest. The cameras had caught everything. Francie’s jaw went slack.

Through all of this, my hand had never left my pocket. The thing I held in there was icy and perfect. It was the thing I had been looking for. Even though I no longer had a use for it, I would not let them take it away from me.

“Let’s do a little arithmetic,” Mr. Grossman said. He had an old-fashioned adding machine on the conference table, and he began to total up Francie’s spoils, a piece at a time,
crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch-crunch.
He was making a big production out of it; it was probably the most fun he’d had in months.

“Daddy’s L’il Girl sweatpants…forty-nine fifty,” he said to himself as he entered the figure. He totaled it,
crunch,
and he raised his eyebrows and looked up at Francie. “You know, over five hundred is a felony,” he said.

“I’ve heard that,” Francie mumbled. “What are we at so far?”

“Three hundred fifty-nine fifty,” he said. I detected a note of glee in his voice. “And we’ve still got the whole other bag to go!”

I sat there patiently through it all. I didn’t have to stay. No one had seen me take the thing in my pocket, and Mr. Grossman didn’t seem to suspect. I figured I could leave anytime I wanted to. But I didn’t want to.

“H.R. Pufnstuf
DVD set,” Mr. Grossman was droning on. “Tinker Bell car ornament. Low-rise briefs. Someone’s got a boyfriend, I guess.” I half expected a petulant retort from Francie, but she no longer had it in her. Mr. Grossman kept on going with his tabulation, chuckling here and there at items that he found particularly silly. Finally he was done. I held my breath, waiting. “Four hundred ninety-eight dollars and thirty-one cents,” he sighed. “Right under the wire. Lucky for you, missy.”

Francie betrayed no relief. She didn’t move. Me, though—I started gathering up my things.

This was it. I have to say that I was disappointed. Francie had pulled out one last rip-off. She had won, fair and square; the only punishment she would face having her Polaroid
posted in the security office of Montgomery Shoppingtowne, an empty symbol of eternal banishment.

There was really nothing left to see, I figured.

“Can I leave?” I asked.

“I don’t know about that,” Mr. Grossman said. But I stood anyway, and turned to walk out. No one stopped me. Francie didn’t even look up. “We’re going to have to take your Polaroid, for the wall,” Mr. Grossman told her.

I was angry. I had always been angry. But there are worse things to be than angry.

As angry as I was, I wasn’t angry at Francie anymore. I was just sad at what I had to do next. I’m sure you can see why I had to do it. I had no choice. I turned back to Francie, who had still not moved.

I was almost all blackness now. I was almost gone. Mr. Grossman could no longer see me. Only Francie could see me. Francie could always see me. But she wasn’t looking.

I had only one thing left to do.

I took my hand from my pocket and flipped the thing I’d held onto the conference table. I looked back at her and saw her staring down at it, astonished recognition registering in her eyes. She looked up at me one more time, confused and amazed. She began to burn. She was brighter than I had ever seen her.

Then Mr. Grossman saw the thing, too. He reached down and looked at it, unimpressed. “Well, it’s worth at least three dollars,” he said. He laid it back on the table and punched in the last number. The green LED display rolled
over to $501.31. The tape crunched out one more number.

“This is the part of my job that I love,” Mr. Grossman said. He chuckled. “Sweetie, I think we’re going to have to take a little trip down to the station.”

Francie wasn’t listening. If Mr. Grossman had looked down at the table, he would have seen that the thing he’d just dropped there had disappeared. Francie had swallowed it. He didn’t notice. “Whatever,” Francie said, suddenly uncaring. She stood and patted her skirt down. She ran her fingers through her hair and even though it had been sprayed hard in place, it fell around her shoulders as she touched it and kept on falling until it was at her ankles and then was gone, leaving only a burning crown of thorny light at her bare, smooth skull. She turned to me.

“You can go now,” she said, without anger. Francie was past anger now. She was something past girl. Francie had completed the transformation she’d been working on since I’d met her; she was a different body now, an all-new person cobbled together from the trinkets she’d stolen over the course of a long and criminal year. Rhinestones where her eyes had been, a paperweight heart. A soul from Claire’s Boutique.

I hesitated. I had done what I had wanted to do. I didn’t regret it, but still. I wanted to kiss her good-bye. She turned away from me and back to Mr. Grossman, presenting her wrists. “Do you have to handcuff me?” she asked him. He just snorted.

“Francie,” I said. But I had been forgotten. Francie was so bright that I had to squint to see her now.

So I went. I walked out of the office, down the long corridor, and back up the stairs to resurface in a mall that I no longer recognized.
Fearless
, I could hear my brother saying.
You are, like, so fearless
. And he was right. I was not scared. I was not sad; I was not even curious to know what would happen next. I knew what would happen.

But the mall was no place for me anymore. Halogen track lights, fake trees, all that
stuff
everywhere. It was all useless to me now. I was headed for the bus—not the J-12, but a bus of my own, a bus that would rumble on beyond the creek and through the city, out past circles and circles of suburbs, and farther, to stop finally where the doors would hiss and swing open into the place that I would consider most perfect. A place I could not name or picture yet but one that I knew existed. I no longer owed my allegiance to Francie, or Jesse, or Liz, or Max, or anyone. I was loyal now only to where I was going: a kingdom of one, a boundless, uncluttered world where I could stand under open sky and stretch out my arms and touch nothing; a place where I belonged to no one and nothing belonged to me.

And though Francie would not be coming along, I owed her a debt of gratitude. She had led me to this place. She knew my ultimate destination. Maybe she’d known what she was doing all along.

Francie had wanted to be the sun. Well, Francie was going to live forever. She could go ahead and be the sun. There’s only room for one in any solar system anyway—and
talk about your lack of subtlety. It didn’t matter; I was something finer, more mysterious. Complicated. I had swallowed, like, this pill of nothingness. I had absence coursing through my veins.

I was a shadow, a shadow, a shadow.

W
ell? Are you laughing?

M
any thanks are in order:

To my agent, Cathy Hemming, for forcing me to set my sights higher and for making good on every impossible promise.

To my editor, Tara Weikum, for gentle guidance, invaluable criticism, boundless faith, and, most importantly, for getting the joke.

To Jocelyn Davies, for her enthusiasm—and for that check.

To Bob Berens, for being the world’s smartest reader.

To James Freedland, for focus.

To Alice Wetterlund, for makeup tips.

To the Blondes: Katie Van Wert, Emily Gould, Megan Rogers, Kristin Hagar, Nicole Cloutier, Chloe Honum, Erin McMonagle. For inspiration.

To Elise Broach and Natalie Standiford, for the gossip and advice.

To everyone at the Natural Resources Defense Council, especially Sandy Kolakowski and Milagro Suarez, for being good bosses and for saving the environment.

To my parents, for being patient for twenty-five years.

To Laird Adamson, for everything.

Jacket photo © 2009 by Hutch Axilrod/Getty Images

Jacket design by Torborg Davern