They walked out into the main mall.
“Am I going to watch you first?” Charlie asked hopefully.
Ms. Presto shook her head. “No point delaying the inevitable. Let’s go toward the Starbucks. There’s always a crowd there.”
And so Charlie started the first day of on-the-job training. She slid past people in narrow aisles with an “excuse me” and a touch on the arm. It worked in Sephora, and the Apple Store. Easier than she would have thought too, but not particularly precise. She did manage to lift a wallet from a guy, but all the forays into handbags resulted in her getting random things. A key ring. A lipstick. And once, a balled-up tissue.
After five lifts, Ms. Presto bought her a Frappuccino.
“Two things,” she said. “Once you got the thing, you put it in your pocket. What did you do after that?”
Charlie shrugged. “Walked away?”
“In the future,” Ms. Presto said, eyeing her seriously, “you’re going to take out a candy. Or some money. Whatever it is you want people to think you put your hand into your pocket for. Always keep something in there to pull out. Always. Otherwise, you’re giving them two things to notice. The lift itself and the hand coming out of the pocket empty.”
Even though no one had said anything to Charlie, her palms started to sweat at the thought that she’d made such an obvious mistake.
“Oh, and you don’t strike me as much of a hugger,” Ms. Presto said.
Charlie shrugged again. No one in her family was a hugger, except her grandmother, who she didn’t get to see much. Not even she and Posey hugged.
“Get used to touching people while you talk. Hand on their arm. Hand on their shoulder. Embrace them when you see them, and again when you leave. That way when you have to do it, you know how to make it seem natural.”
“Okay,” Charlie agreed, and took a long sip of her Frappuccino. This was the one piece of advice, no matter how wise, she knew she was not going to follow.
“Good, good.” Ms. Presto stood up. “I will wait for you in the Macy’s. I need to return those sneakers.”
“What am I going to be doing?” Charlie asked, already knowing she was going to hate the answer.
“You’re going to find the people you stole from and put their things back.” Ms. Presto gave her that rabbit-out-of-the-hat smile of hers and sauntered off, bag in hand, looking a lot heavier than it had at the beginning of their trip.
An hour later, Charlie had returned the keys and the wallet and had given up looking for anyone else. Rand was waiting for her outside Macy’s.
“I heard you were good,” he said when she got in. “Really good.”
“Yeah?” she asked.
He laughed. “Don’t let it go to your head, kid.” But he took her to the hamburger place where you could eat as many peanuts as you wanted and let her order whatever, so she knew Ms. Presto had given her high marks.
Charlie couldn’t help being pleased at the idea that she had a natural talent for pickpocketing, but what she loved best was burglary.
She loved being in spaces that belonged to other people. Walking across their carpets. Trying on their lives the way you could try on their clothes.
And it was easy, mostly. People in big, expensive houses had lots of doors, and most of the time she could find one that was open. Sometimes there was a key under the mat. Failing that, an unlatched window. She’d shimmy inside when there were no cars around. Very few people had alarm systems, and even fewer bothered to turn them on.
When Rand sent her into houses, he was usually looking for something specific. A huge sapphire ring. Antique napkin holders shaped like tiny filigree cobwebs. A signed first edition of The Maltese Falcon rumored to go for upward of a hundred grand. He fancied himself one of those heroic criminals in movies, the ones who never lowered themselves to stealing televisions.
But sometimes Charlie would bike across town and break into houses on her own.
When she was little, her dad had worked for a company that installed pools and hot tubs. Sometimes he’d bring her with him on those construction projects and she’d stare at the giant houses with their manicured lawns and their glistening pools, the bright blue of tropical seas in calendars.
Nowadays, when their father saw Posey and Charlie, it was to take them out for ice cream and act as though everything was fine, even though he was married again, his new wife was pregnant, and she clearly didn’t want anything to do with two daughters from his first marriage.
And her father wanted his smiling, happy daughters. Wanted roses in their cheeks and for them to giggle and chorus after a while, crocodile to his see you later, alligator, the way they had when they were little and certain they would always be loved. They had to play along, or he would get stiff and mean. If they were fussy or cranky, he’d ignore them completely.