Thieving Weasels - Billy Taylor Page 0,4

do something like this again, I’ll break your arm.”

“What did I do?” I asked as tears filled my eyes.

“Your teacher said you were the best student she’s ever had and wants to put you in a class for gifted students.”

“But that’s good, right?”

“No, it’s not good. Gifted students stand out. People remember them. Use your head, Sonny. Two years from now this lady could see your picture in the paper, and we could all wind up in jail.”

“I didn’t think about it that way.”

“Of course you didn’t. That’s what school does—it makes you stupid. From now on you get only Cs and Bs, and the only exceptional thing I want to hear about you is that you’re exceptionally average.”

“Okay.”

“Good. Now let’s get out of here before the National Honor Society tries throwing a car wash in the living room.”

I was thirteen years old when I finally had enough, although it wasn’t for the obvious reasons. Yes, I was sick of the lying, and the loneliness, and the constant moving around. Yes, I was sick of my mother, and my family, and the never-ending stream of disgusting apartments. Yes, I was sick of acting stupid, and conning my classmates, and throwing tests. I was sick of it all, but I would have kept on going because it was the only life I knew.

My mother always said ordinary people were stooges—chumps and goody-goodies who slaved away at crummy jobs, had no hope, and owed their souls to the credit card companies. She said we were above all that. We lived where we wanted, did what we wanted, and took what we wanted. We were free.

But were we really free? Between the lies, and scams, and never-ending fear of getting busted we put in as many hours as the next guy, except we had a lot less to show for our effort. Think about it. Here I was thirteen years old, and I’d never played Little League baseball. I’d never joined Boy Scouts. I’d never had a best friend, or slept on the same mattress for more than a couple of months. It was crazy. The only taste of real life I saw was in the empty apartments of the people I robbed. It was pathetic. I was pathetic, and I yearned for something better.

The opportunity came, like everything else in my life, through a jimmied window.

One of the most common residents in every apartment complex where Mom and I lived was the newly divorced dad. Growing up, I saw literally hundreds of them shuffling down hallways and carrying bags of Chinese takeout and convenience store beer. They rarely had anything worth stealing—alimony and child support took care of that—but I still enjoyed breaking into their apartments and pouring stale beer down the back of their TV sets. Yes, I knew this was a really mean thing to do, but I couldn’t help myself. There was something about these losers that made me so incredibly angry. It must have been because they had everything I wanted out of life—a real house, home-cooked meals, birthdays at Chuck E. Cheese—and threw it all away. It made absolutely no sense to me.

All that changed on the afternoon I slipped into some ex-husband’s apartment and came across what can only be described as a shrine to Wheaton Preparatory Academy. I’m not exaggerating when I say the entire place was covered, floor to ceiling, with every type of pennant, banner, and poster imaginable, as well as dozens of photos of football, baseball, and lacrosse teams. Creepy doesn’t begin to describe it, and right in the middle of this sea of crimson and blue—like it was the single greatest achievement in this poor schnook’s life—was his Wheaton diploma. In eight years of breaking into apartments I’d never seen anything like it.

My first impulse was to tear the place to shreds. Just yank every piece of Wheaton memorabilia off the walls and rip it into teeny-tiny pieces. Except I couldn’t. It would have been like cutting out the man’s heart.

Instead, I slipped out the window (without touching the TV, I might add) and headed straight to the library to find out about this Wheaton place. It was dark outside when I was finished, and my eyes burned from having read so much, but I was sure of two things:

1. I really wanted to go to Wheaton Academy.

2. I’d have to run away from my family to do it.

4

WE WERE THIRTY MILES SOUTH OF ALBANY WHEN THE STATE trooper’s lights appeared