8

THE LOCKER BANDIT

THAT MORNING, Esther brewed her coffee with Red Bull instead of water. “I wish to enter the fourth dimension,” she explained to Eugene. He screwed up his face as she sipped her chemical concoction while sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor. Laid out on a picnic blanket before her was the swag she intended to smuggle and sell that week, everything she had baked the night before: a dozen double chocolate fudge brownies, peppermint shortbread, two dozen cookies, two dozen Rice Krispies Treats, and one entire caramel tart. She wrapped each piece individually and stuffed everything she could carry into her backpack.

Late last year, an inexplicable spike in adolescent obesity (despite the changes in the cafeteria) had led to rumors among the faculty that Cakenberg was dealing sugary treats to the student population. Esther couldn’t afford to get caught; getting caught would mean suspension, and suspension would mean the end of her little business. In the last year, she’d made a decent profit—not enough, yet, to get her to college, get her out, but a couple thousand dollars, enough for an emergency fund.

When the batch was ready to be smuggled, she went upstairs and dressed as Eleanor Roosevelt. Three strands of pearls at her neck, hair pinned off her face in curls, legs encased in sheer hose, sensible brown shoes fit for wartime. Esther liked to dress as powerful women—it made her feel powerful in turn, like stepping into their skin. One needed to feel formidable on the first day of school. Who better to go into battle than Eleanor Roosevelt? (Well, Genghis Khan, maybe, but the goal was to survive the day with dignity, not rape and murder the entire student population and take over their lockers through sheer brute force to ensure that all subsequent generations of seniors shared her DNA. Eleanor seemed the safer option.)

On the ride to school, Eugene seemed quieter than usual, which meant that Eugene wasn’t speaking at all. Whenever they stopped at traffic lights, he would press his thumb deep into the raw burn on his palm, though he never flinched with pain. Sometimes he slipped into a shadow that was inside his own head, where not even the brightest light could reach. Esther didn’t know how to help him, so she simply put her hand on his forearm as he drove and hoped that would be enough to communicate how much she loved him.

They picked Heph up on the way to school, and she drifted down to the car from her house, tall and gangly and ghostlike as ever.

“How did your adventure with Jonah go?” she signed.

“I no longer fear lobsters,” Esther said.

Hephzibah’s eyes widened. “It worked? That’s fantastic!”

“Don’t get too excited. I’m not doing it again.”

“Why not?”

“Because it’s too dangerous, tempting fate like that.”

Hephzibah gave a disapproving glance, but Esther looked away from her before she could sign something too sensible and/or inspirational about facing her fears.

As Eugene turned the familiar corners that would take them closer and closer to the school grounds, Esther began to sweat. It always happened like this. Every school day. First the sweating, then the fidgeting, then the hammering heart and the hand that closed around her throat and choked her words before they could get out of her mouth. Esther pictured herself as she knew her classmates saw her: ugly and imperfect and too weird to be allowed. Red hair, unbrushed, falling in wild tendrils past her hips because the length of it made her feel safe and she was too scared to get it cut. Skin flushed with freckles, not the cute smattering on the cheeks that some people had, but dots so thick and dark they made her look diseased. Hand-sewn clothes, the stitches as flawed and lacking as she was.

To try and calm herself, Esther unfolded and read the note Rosemary had written for her. The same one she wrote at the beginning of every school year.

To Whom It May Concern:

Please excuse Esther from participating in any and all class discussions, presentations, and sports activities. Please do not call on her or single her out in class, read her work in front of other students, or go out of your way to acknowledge her existence in general.

Warm regards,

Rosemary Solar

Esther held the note tightly and took a deep breath. One more year of people staring. One more year of people laughing. One more year of desperately trying to disappear.

When she got to school, she went to her locker before first period to store her baked goods so she wouldn’t have to walk around all day smelling like a vanilla-scented criminal.

“You sneaky son of a bitch,” she muttered when she opened it.

There, sitting solitary in the middle of her securely padlocked locker, was a single raspberry Fruit Roll-Up.