I only take what they won’t miss. Things no one can accuse me of taking, like the spoons from their kitchen drawers, baby pictures from photo albums, or one sock from a matching set. I take them because no one’s going to think a fourteen-year-old girl would steal that.

I have rules though. Don’t steal from friends. Never take anything that’s worth money. Don’t take so much from one person that they notice.

The first time I stole something was when I was nine. My mom dropped me off at her friend’s elderly mother’s house.

This old lady lived out all alone in the country. You know the areas without sidewalks. It’s just dust and dirt out on the side of the road. The house looked a million years old and if I tilted my head slightly to the right it stood up straight. Just like other houses do.

This old lady was supposed to watch me for the day, but the reality of it was that I ended up watching her. My mom did this often back then. When the law tells you not to leave your child home alone there’s nothing you can do except loophole the fuck out of that.

So instead of letting me sit around minding my own business I cared for a lady too old to even know my name. She shitted herself twice within several hours and I’d have to change her. I fed her mac and cheese everyday for four months before she died. I wasn’t there when she keeled over but I was with her the afternoon before she passed.

It was the day I stole the coaster. A clear glass one circular in shape with dried flowers pressed on the inside. One part of the outside was chipped, but I still took it.

And that’s how it started. A glass, flower pressed coaster. After that I started stealing belts, shoes, empty DVD cases.

I don’t need a babysitter anymore, but my habit never died. I still steal from restaurants, offices, acquaintances, and public spaces.

Sometimes I steal from the library. Not books, but the pens, staplers, mouse pads, and one time a couch pillow. I enjoy being there. It’s the one place you can stay all day and no one makes you pay. I wonder why my mom didn’t just send me here everyday.

What kid wouldn’t want to sit around a library stacked to the rim with books, computers, couches, and adults who mind their own business?

I come to love it so much that I stop stealing from them and start stealing for them. A part of me likes to imagine myself as a sort of gatekeeper to this place. I show up right when it opens, I leave only after they’ve closed.

I stay so long that I notice people. The homeless people who sit outside on the steps, unemployed adults wearing formal attire as if they’ll be hired any second, and families with small children.

Most of the time I go there and I sit on a comfy chair as I watch these parents read to their kids. They play with the library toys. Several of which I donated to the library without their knowledge. I just walk in and drop them down as I go through the library.

It’s one of the days I’m trying to discretely leave a hungry hippos board game and some realtor pens that I notice a girl acting suspiciously as she hurries about the library.

She kept walking from one end of the library to the other, passing between young adult fiction and civil war history. I watch her from the couches and chairs at the center of the room. No one else notices her running back and forth between the two with a notebook tucked under her arms. They don’t pay her any attention because she smiles at them when they turn to her and she makes a show of appearing to be “researching,” but I know better. I know the fake nicety because it’s my way of snuffing out suspicion.

I follow her into the civil war section. She notices me right away and picks up a volume at random from an encyclopedia collection.

I browse the books for a bit, noting the dust. That is until I reach one clear of a dust coating. She turns her head my direction as I pull the book off the shelf.

The second I pull the book out, all the pages slip to the floor. It makes the same sound as air passing through a barely cracked window. I bend down to pick them all up, but then she’s there helping me. Except she looks extremely frustrated and I wonder if she’s about to blame the book falling apart on me.

“You’re the girl who keeps stealing stuff for the library.”

I pause as her words hit me. She doesn’t sound threatening, just observant.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I reply.

As curious as this all makes me I don’t admit to it. I just stay crouched next to her as we gather up the papers.

I’m picking up a page when I notice the title in the header of the paper is some teenage romcom title I’ve seen before in the young adults section.

When I glance over at the girl I’m furious.

“Are you the one tearing up the books?”

“What books? The books here? No.”

That’s all she says to me as she turns all her attention on me. She has a smile on her face while she says this.

“Have you ever found a damaged book here?” She asks me.

“No, but there’ a lot of books here so I wouldn’t be surprised if you’d done it and gotten away with it.” I reply curtly.

“Well I’m not,” she bites back.

She grabs the other loose papers out of my hands. She sighs as she shuffles through them, muttering about needing to put it back in order.

I watch as she starts to lay them out right there on the tile.

“What are you doing with these pages then?” I follow up.

She’s half listening as she replies, “Huh?”

“If you aren’t destroying the books then what are you doing?”

She flips open the notebook and starts to run her finger down the page of a long list. The writing inside is neat and slanted. Everything is writing in colorful types of ink. When she shuts her notebook the colors in the real world suddenly seem a bit blander, especially in the darkest spot of the history section.

“I’m fixing the books,” she finally responds as she finishes up her reorganizing.

“Fixing them?” I repeat.

“Yeah, the endings are lame, so I pick better ones for it, ones that make sense. Or I just rip it out and leave it empty.”

“You change the endings?”

“Isn’t that what I just said?” she gives a dry response.

“Okay, geez, you don’t need to be an asshole about it.” I hold up my hands in a sort of surrender as she puts the pages back in the empty cover of the book and slips it onto the shelf.

“Why are you here every day?” She asks.

“Uh, because it’s summer I guess? Wait I don’t think I even got your name.”

She leans against the shelf and slides down to sit.

“Helen.”

“Like the one from Troy?”

I copy her and sit directly across from her, leaning on the opposite shelf.

“Fuck off.”

“Jesus you’re such an asshole.”

“I’m named after my grandma, not some book character. I don’t even likeGreek myths.”

“Yeah, I agree. I don’t like the poetry,” I add.

“It’s not really poetry, they just wrote it like that because it’s a classic. They want it to be fancy.”

She rolls her eyes as she says this to me.

I shrug.

“Heh, you’re dumb. How old are you?”

My face scrunches in disgust as she smirks at me.

“I’m fourteen. How old are you?” I ask her.

“Seventy five.”

“Oh come on.” I bang my head on the back of the shelf in annoyance.

“Okay fine I’m sixteen,” she laughs, “calm down.”

“Is your name really even Helen?”

“Yes. What’s yours?”

“Vanessa,” I hesitate, “but everyone calls me Nessie.”

Helen chokes, “Nessie? Like the Loch Ness monster?”

“Shut up, yes.”

Helen laughs, but it’s more like she’s snorting and choking all at once. It’s almost like the sounds the pigs at the fair make.

She slowly winds down from the hilarity, taking in big breathes. She wipes imaginary tears from her eyes as her shoulders continue to quake.

“Why do you do it?”

“Do what?” she says, hints of laughter still in her voice.

“Fix the books,” I ask again, but less certain.

I’m afraid she’ll choose to leave instead of answer to it.

She stops laughing completely and keeps her eyes on me. She’s not just looking at me to see me; I can feel her gauging me. She watches my expressions and my body language. I squirm, shifting until my knees are pulled under my chin.

“You know for a thief you certainly are a scaredy-cat.”

I make a face at her as she sits across from me staring with the blankness of those white gas station coffee cups. She sighs as I feel my jaw twitch, locked in place.

“Listen,” she tells me, “If I tell you, then you can’t laugh. You can’t think it’s stupid and I want to know why you steal stuff for the library.”

The lights overhead dim as half of them are shut off.

“Well the library is about to close,” I start to stand up, but her hand tugs on my wrist, “If we just stay here real quiet no one will even know we’re here.”

I yank my wrist away, “I don’t do things like that. Just because I steal stuff doesn't mean I’m cool with anything, okay?”

She scoffs, “Fine okay, let’s get coffee then. There’s that local one a few blocks from here.”

I follow her out, passing janitors and the last of the librarians. They wave us out and tell us to have a good night. I pick up my backpack and she grabs her messenger bag. Our feet echo on the tile floor as our shadows stretch out across the tile. As we leave I wonder whom else in this library besides Helen and I have been acting like the guardians of this place.

In the coffee shop Helen orders a vanilla latte and I get an herbal tea. It’s quiet and I feel awkward sitting with her when we aren’t at the library. It feels wrong to be here with her, but a stronger part of me wants to know why she does it. I want to know if our motives are the same. Although I guess it’s not altogether unfamiliar since the coffee shop with the bookstore attached. One of those big corporations that sell over priced paper and ink, but don’t really care about the books. Helen is eyeing the cookbook section when I decide to break the silence.

I clear my nerves from my throat, “So why do you cut up books?”

A barista puts our drinks on the table, Helen waits for them to leave before she starts talking.

“I hate books. My parents didn’t want TV in our home. They thought—no they think it’s going to rot my brain. So what did they have me do? Read. All day. Nothing else. If I wanted to go out it could only be for half an hour. So now I extract my revenge.”

I sit there listening to Helen tell me about her overbearing parents and all the different literatures she’s read from science fiction to travel guide books. She asks me about why I started stealing and I tell her.

“That’s fucking hilarious,” she tells me, finishing off her latte but not actually laughing.

I watch her Adam’s apple bob as she throws her head back to down it.

I don’t know why I say it but I feel compelled, “do you wanna try it with me?”

She contemplates it a moment, “Sure, I’ve always wanted to steal stuff. Maybe you can make me brave.”

When I take her, Helen insists we do the post office for her first “heist” as she refers to it now.

We walk in and she’s wearing shades, a trench coat and a ball cap.

I pull her back out just as she’s nearing me.

“What the fuck are you wearing?” I whisper at her lowly.

She shrugs me off, “Jesus can you chill we’re just going to steal like envelopes right?”

I roll my eyes at her, “yeah but if you look like that they’re going to think you’re trying to steal.”

“I am trying to steal from them. I don’t want them catching me on camera.”

“Helen,” I exclaim, “you look suspicious.”

“Calm down, Nessie.”

Helen rolls her eyes and takes the glasses off.

I grab the cap off her head and she yelps in pain, but I know she’s just being dramatic. Helen tries to snatch it back, but I hold it out of her reach.

“Fine,” Helen surrenders, “I’ll take off the trench coat and the sunglasses, but the hat stays. It’s part of my outfit.”

I give her back the hat begrudgingly. She smirks at me and pulls the cap over her head.

Inside the post office, people are standing in line with grimaces.

Helen follows me as I move to stand in line. She stands there fidgeting before she gets fed up, leaning in to whisper in my ear. Her hand on my shoulder, gripping me gently as I smell sugar on her lips.

“Why’d you get in line?”

I don’t answer right away. I can feel her breath tickle my ear slightly. I turn to face her, allowing her hand to fall from my shoulder. This way there’s distance.

“Because you can’t just take something and leave. They’ll notice.”

“So you’re going to pretend to buy something than leave? I don’t get it.”

I don’t answer her. I just turn back around and wait. The line moves slowly at first, but the closer we get to the counter the faster each customer seems to get done. Then suddenly it’s our turn.

“I’m here to pick up a mail key.” I use my most polite voice as the woman helps me out.

The mail lady walks to the back as she goes to get my key.

Helen stands watching, her arm right up against mine. It makes my armpits feel sweaty and itchy. I sidestep to get some distance, but Helen moves in closer again. I bump her to shove her away, but she just bumps me back.

“Stop it,” I mutter after a second.

Helen smirks down at me, humored by my own lack of hilarity.

“What are we taking?” She leans down a bit to whispering it into my ear.

I ignore the feeling in my chest when she leans her nose into my hair. Instead I eye the counter. I take note of the bell, the stray envelopes, a donations box, and some stamps.

“Take anything you want,” I tell her with a shrug, “honestly I’d never steal from a place like this.”

Helen tilts her lips in confusion. She looks at the treasures before her. When she reaches out she rings the bell. The lady comes back as Helen pulls it closer to her, rolling her eyes and sighing.

“Please don’t ring the bell if you don’t need assistance,” she yanks it back from Helen, pulling it behind the counter.

Helen gives the lady an apologetic smile, but her eyes are cold. It comes across as more of a mocking glance.

The woman hands me the key and I thank her before grabbing Helen by the arm and pull us out of the mail office. I wonder if Helen is mad. She allows me to keep tugging her as we head down the street.

When I turn back she’s peeling stamps and gingerly sticking them onto my hair.

“What the fuck dude?” I shout at her.

She laughs and just keeps trying to put more of them in my hair.

Helen starts to hang out with me way more. She brings books to our table and cuts out pages right in the open. I like to watch her do it. She just takes the exacto knife and slices the pages right out of their place. She puts the book down and picks up some other cut out text. Today she’s putting the Peter Pan inside of The Lord of the Flies. She says he belongs there. I’ve never read either so I have no room to disagree.

“When I finish with this one,” she says while stitching the pages together, “You can read it. This way it’ll be way better.”

I just nod along with her.

“Where do you get your books from?” I ask her.

Helen doesn’t respond to me immediately. She never does when she’s editing books.

“Thrift shops or used bookstores,” she finally answers.

I eye her tattered copy of The Lord of the Flies. It’s an old school copy with crease lines all over the cover and spine.

“You wanna go to the bookstore?”

Helen looks up at me carefully.

“I thought you didn’t steal big stuff?”

She’s right. In all honesty, I’d steal anything for Helen. Maybe so she’ll like me more, but I don’t say that.

“We don’t have to if you’re chicken,” I shrug nonchalant.

Helen slams down her exacto knife before squaring her shoulders at me.

“Let’s do it now then,” she challenges.

We go back to the coffee shop we first sat in together. I feel sentimental as we take our coffees and walk into the bookstore attached to the coffee shop.

Helen’s practically vibrating beside me as we walk into the self-help section of the shelves. She’s giddy with excitement and I look her over with concern.

“What’s wrong with you,” I ask her.

She smiles even bigger, “I get to see the master in action. A real thief.”

I feel a little proud hearing her say that, but I quickly clear those feelings.

“Well you’re drawing too much attention,” I tell her, “You have to be calm about this.”

Helen sighs and tilts her head back against the shelf.

“You always say that to me,” she whispers softly, “Am I doing better?”

My whole heart heats up seeing her like that, but I just nod as if I don’t care.

“What books do you want?” I change the subject.

Helen gives it a thought before responding.

“Moby Dick and Sailing for Dummies,” she replies confidently.

I nod, “just one of each?”

She puts her hand to her ear, “Roger that.”

I roll my eyes at her as she snorts with laughter.

“Just follow my lead and act like you don’t know a dang thing.” I tell her.

Helen mimics me before I turn to the shelves and focus.

We wonder around the store. Both of us picking up different types of books and browsing the backs. We talk about random things as if we’re nothing more than two high school girls wasting away our summer time. Except we aren’t here to just here to kill time. We’re here to kill to pick our next victims to undergo Helen’s exacto knife. It’s not just us laughing about the book summaries or rating the sentimentality on the dedications. It’s about using that as a cover to hide the fact that I’ve slipped two thick books into my pants.

When we walk out the front doors Helen whole body is quivering as she laughs.

“God,” she groans, “I was so fucking nervous the alarms would go off or some shit.”

I squint at her stupidity, “They’re books, not this week’s latest Apple phone.”

She just snorts even louder with laughter as she skips down the street.

As the weather starts to get colder, Helen stops coming to the library as often. School starts in a week and she hasn’t been here the middle of July. I figure she’s busy with family trips or back to school shopping.

I leave the library early to pick up some tampons for my house.

I’m walking towards the cash register with my tampons in hand when I see her. She’s with a group of girls all around her age. They’re standing in the makeup section of the store.

I stay back behind the spinning display cases, watching.

Helen is laughing with them, but it’s not the laugh I know, the one that makes her look ugly. No, this laugh is pretty and small. It’s timid and I wonder if all this time she’s been pretending with me or with them.

One of the taller girls nudges Helen, who says nothing as she reaches forward and starts to pocket several types of nail polish.

I freeze in my spot as I watch her move from nail polish to concealer to lipsticks. All these things I’ve never seen her wear in her life. She just keeps going and she does it so casually I can’t help but feel a bit proud.

Until I remember she’s not the only one in on the heist she’s committing.

The other girls stand to the side giggling and whispering. Their gimmick draws attention to Helen who pretends to not care.

If it had been me I know she’d have glared me into silence. She would hit me upside the head or tell me to shut up, but she does none of this. I watch as she just lets them laugh her into getting caught.

I spot the cashier craning his neck to see past the aisles blocking Helen from view. Another store associate comes around and makes eye contact with the cashier. The cashier tilts his head towards the girls and I watch fate move in on Helen.

She doesn’t look up or check her surroundings even once. I don’t think she even cares if she’s caught. When she turns towards me I watch her notice me. She’s not just looking at me, she’s assessing me. It feels as if only Helen and I exist.

“Excuse me,” the store associate demands.

She’s standing behind Helen with her arms crossed and her face unapologetic.

The other girls Helen came with have scattered off somewhere, probably to run away.

Helen won’t look away from me. She keeps her eyes on me even as the store worker continues talking to her.

“I’m going to need you to show me what’s in your pockets.”

It’s more of a command than a request.

Not the store clerk, but the look in Helen’s eyes. Even as she stands before me needing me to rescue her she refuses to ask and instead commands me. Her jaw locked in place and her eyes glowering at me to do something.

So I do the only thing I can. I lunge forward, take her hand, and run.

We’re out automatic doors and across the street without a damn regard for traffic.

I turn to check if Helen is still there, even if her hand is in mine, I have to see her face to confirm it. I turn and she starts to laugh. The ugly one that makes her sound absolutely evil. I watch as her jacket flops around. Nail polish flying out of her pockets, shattering on the concrete like mini bombs. The concealers cracking and powdering onto the road. We take off down the street hand in hand and we don’t stop until I realize I ran out with free tampons.