The Boy Who Steals Houses, Page 2

  ‘Took it where?’ Sam’s voice is tight.

  And Avery says, ‘We could leave town,’ like it’s the easiest thing in the world.

  ‘In a stolen car? Are you insane?’

  ‘We’d ditch it tomorrow. Get another. I know cars. No big deal.’

  ‘That’s not part of our plan,’ Sam says.

  ‘Our plan sucks.’ Avery rocks on the bench. ‘It’s impossible. Let’s just drive away. You. And me. We.’ He smiles then, small but unguarded, like he really thinks Sam is going to go for this.

  Doesn’t he know Sam at all?

  Sam looks down at his hands, fisted and trembling. He’s furious at the hot tears pricking the back of his nose. He wills himself to be still, find that pocket of calm. ‘We made a plan.’ His voice shakes in an effort to stay level. ‘We’re going to earn money, get a house, fix ourselves up—’

  ‘I’m not even eighteen. And you’re a wanted criminal. There’s no way we’ll ever steal enough for a house of our own.’

  This is not what they talked about. This is not what they spent countless hours planning last year, lying on the trampoline in their aunt’s backyard because she’d locked them outside again.

  We’re going to live in our own house. We’re going to be OK.

  ‘No.’ But there are too many cracks in Sam’s voice. ‘No, we’re not stealing some car and we’re not leaving town and—’ He stops because it’s all crashing into him. How unrealistic his wishes are. How naive he’s being. He’s supposed to be the one with his head screwed on, but he’ll chase this dream until it cuts him to ribbons.

  It’s hard to breathe, but he’s not sure if that’s his bruised ribs or the agony of fighting with his brother.

  Avery’s voice grows shrill. ‘But if we stay the police will catch you! I can’t let them catch you. They’ll put you in p-prison and then – I can’t … you can’t—’ It ends in a frantic cry and Avery’s fingers rip at his hair and then suddenly he’s off the bench, knocking the fruit bowl as he goes.

  It splinters against the tiles like a gunshot.

  Someone’s going to hear.

  The shouts.

  The crashes.

  The brothers.

  Avery flinches away, knocking into a chair so hard it flies backwards and hits the wall, leaves an indent in the plaster. This is Avery. Unintentional chaos.

  Sam just watches, frozen, while Avery recoils from the mess, his tics exploding until he punches his own leg and gasps furiously for air. Sam tries to reach out, catch his brother’s arm and stroke it until he stops hurting himself and swaps to a calmer tic – like he did when they were kids – but Avery snaps away.

  ‘I’ll leave then.’ His thin chest moves in and out, too fast. ‘I’ll steal a car and drive away by myself. You c-can get caught if you want. I don’t care. I don’t care!’ He shoves Sam then, and Sam sucks in a sharp breath.

  ‘Don’t say that.’ Sam’s voice is barely a whisper.

  Avery storms towards the door, his limbs jerking like a puppet. He turns back with one last vicious glare – except there are tears in his eyes and his lip trembles. ‘I’ll leave you.’

  Don’t ever, ever say that.

  He slams the door on his way out.

  Sam stares at the chaos, the broken dish and the dent in the wall. The family will come back and never understand what happened here.

  Sam doesn’t understand.

  But he can’t stay here now.

  He’s already shouldering his backpack, the weight of a hundred stolen keys clinking their comforting song. He should run after Avery. Make him calm down, make sure he doesn’t hurt himself – make sure he doesn’t do anything stupid like try to leave. He didn’t mean it, right? They’re all each other has. Avery’s the only who sees Sammy Lou, the forgotten boy.

  I’ll leave you.

  Sam doesn’t take anything on his way out.

  That’s his secret failure.

  He doesn’t break into houses because he enjoys stealing. He stalks vacant windows and tricks locks and sleeps in stolen beds because he just wants to be home.

  Sam puts half a city’s distance between him and that house. He’d like to outrun the angry words cutting their displeasure into his back too, but those are harder to shake. And as if the night needs to get worse, the sky joins in the contest of Who Can Make Sammy Lou Cry The Most and rolls in fat clouds to pour on his shoulders.

  Sam gets soaked as the temperature plummets and the world forgets it’s on the cusp of summer. No, let’s have a winter rerun. Won’t that be fun?

  He ends up at a playground near the beachfront and climbs a kiddie-sized rope ladder to huddle under a plastic roof. It keeps most of the rain off. He wraps his arms over his head and shivers violently enough to rattle his teeth and send spasms of pain through his bruised chest.

  He should be in a house right now, warm and dry.

  He should not be envisioning Avery driving a thousand kilometres away.

  Avery will go back to his shifty friends’ house. Probably? No, no he will. Stop panicking. Stop sitting here feeling sick about not knowing if Avery’s in the rain or stealing a car or curled on someone’s battered sofa. It was a stupid threat. He could never just go.

  Sam rests his cheek on his scrunched-up knees and maybe he dozes or maybe he just crouches there in a chilled daze until the showers stop and dawn traces fingers through the sky. It’ll be a nice day – Saturday, right? That means homes will be full of people spending lazy mornings amongst their quilts, with promises of coffee and honeyed crumpets and a stroll on the beach. At least that’s what he pretends normal people do.

  Sam’s shirt clings to his skin like a damp hug and it’s an effort to uncurl himself and plan his next move. He tries to order his thoughts as he flexes his dead fingers. He could:

  (1) find a new house

  (2) steal clothes

  (3) get food, because when did he even eat last?

  (4) go find Avery and please please please make him understand he can’t really be alone.

  He’s a mess, is Avery Lou, and Sam’s the only one who knows him. Who cares. But looking for him will mean facing that he beat someone up so Avery wouldn’t lose his job and Avery hates violence and Sam should be in jail already and and and—

  Sam holds his head. His thoughts spin, dizzying. He feels genuinely ill right now. His nose won’t stop running.

  OK, focus. There is another option:

  (5) go back to Aunt Karen’s house. She might be in a good mood. It’s been a year since he ran away, and seeing Sam all ill and pathetic might melt her cold heart and she’ll take him back.

  Or she’ll call the police.

  Who is he kidding? This is Aunt Karen. If she sees him, she’ll go straight to the phone.

  So Sam picks the brave option: avoid everyone and find a new house. Which means walking the sodden streets as the sun rises and his nose impersonates a waterfall and his head fills with cotton wool. It’s hard enough to think let alone figure out which houses are empty. Stealing houses is an art. You don’t just blunder into the first one that looks quiet. He should have this part perfected, but this morning he feels so off.

  He looks for the dead giveaways: overflowing mailboxes; front lawns with tipped-over bins that have clearly been there for a while; uncut grass; overgrown flowerbeds; empty driveways; drawn curtains; spiderwebs clawing across doors; and that slick quietness that coats an empty house and whispers it’s OK to enter. The stillness is the hardest to explain, but he can feel it.

  Except right now all he feels are aching bones – bruises and fevers.

  He needs to get off the streets and lie down.

  He tries two houses.

  For the first, the back door is disagreeable to his makeshift lock picks, since, thanks to Avery, he’s still using paperclips – but he finds fresh m
ilk in the fridge and the garage still smells of car fumes.

  The second house is definitely a victim of longer-term abandonment. But a sticky note on the fridge reads ‘BUY PRESENT FOR PARTY ON SATURDAY’ in purple glitter pen. He can’t risk staying here.

  He could find a payphone and call Avery. Maybe they’ll just agree to forget how Avery thinks he doesn’t need Sam because it’s not true and it stings and—

  Embarrassingly, he thinks he might cry, so he forces himself to walk further, faster, his feet tapping out screw my life with every step. At least his clothes dry in the warm midday sun. Positives, right?

  He sneezes then and has to sit down in the gutter because he thinks he just dislocated a rib.

  Wow, he’s so healthy.

  A car trundles past while he waits for the dizzy spell to pass and, as his eyes follow it, he finds himself looking across the road at a house the colour of butter and sunflowers and summer days. It has a tired picket fence and rose bushes that resemble an angry jungle and the front lawn is full of kids’ toys and bikes and an upturned wading pool. The letterbox overflows with junk mail and the open-air carport is empty.

  Promising.

  Sam checks the street.

  Quiet.

  He peels himself out of the gutter and strolls into the yard like it’s the most natural thing in the world to break into a house in the middle of the day.

  He listens at the doors but it’s silent. Peering through the curtains shows a very lived-in house – he’s never seen so much washing piled on a sofa – but no sign of life. Well, the day can’t get any worse, so he picks the lock with a vague sense of desperation.

  Please be empty, please please please.

  The lock pops and Sam shuts the door and leans heavily on it, thinking of finding flu meds. He’s in a laundry with an industrial-sized washing machine and yet more clothes spilling from baskets. He picks his way to the doorframe and into a sprawling living area. It’s an open-plan room, with support poles instead of walls. The kitchen, dining area, and lounge are tangled together and swamped with a tornado of toys and clothes, books and chairs, Monopoly pieces and pencil cases, a broken science project and far too many left shoes. A sewing table sits near the front windows, bright fabric spilled on to the floor and boxes of lace and bobbins tumbled together.

  ‘Not at all overwhelming,’ Sam whispers, surveying macaroni crafts plastered over the fridge.

  He has to blink a few times just to figure out where to focus. He has no idea how to tell if this sort of house is inhabited. Check for fresh food?

  The fridge is empty except for a dubious-looking Tupperware container and a toy train.

  OK then.

  Still … that’s promising.

  He picks his way across the room and notices the front curtains are drawn. Another sign that the occupants are away.

  Then he sees a huge whiteboard hanging in the kitchen, horribly decorated with dolphin glitter stickers, and sporting messages like:

  DENTIST @ 3:40 JACK – DO !! NOT !! SKIP !! AGAIN !!

  PLS BUY MILK

  JACK NEVER CLEANS THE BATHROOM

  GRADY HAS CAR THURSDAYS

  US TEENS COME BACK FROM CAMPING ON SUNDAY (DON’T SAY WE DIDN’T GIVE YOU DETAILS, DAD)

  Sam shoulders sag with relief.

  Back on Sunday.

  The house is his.

  He rummages through a medicine kit in one of the cramped cupboards and helps himself to flu meds. Take that, you freaking streaming nose. He swallows the tablets dry and vaguely wonders if they’re drowsy-inducing.

  He takes his slow, aching bones upstairs to a second floor that is as chaotic as the first. But through the mess of art projects, bags, and enough Lego on the floor to be considered warfare – the house feels warm. Cosy. Lived in. Sam’s favourite type of house.

  By the way, Sam, you are a freak.

  He feels feverishly warm.

  A brief tour of the bedrooms concludes that this house is mainly populated by boys. Only one bedroom looks remotely feminine, with two identical white beds with floral bedspreads. A piece of duct tape runs down the middle of the floor to separate one side’s haphazard piles of books and swords made from sticks – from the other of pincushions and fabric and boxes of buttons.

  OK, so these people don’t believe in cupboards. They believe in obstacle courses.

  He has a new appreciation for only having one brother. Imagine a dozen Averys? No thank you.

  He picks through a closet and finds a fresh T-shirt, since he’s been using his to mop his streaming eyes and nose, and then he wanders into an office. He could pick any bed, obviously, but it’s tidier in here and somehow he ends up in a comfy armchair in a pool of sunshine. Once he’s curled up in a shirt that smells of eucalyptus washing powder, with his backpack dumped on the floor and the sun petting his hair, Sam finds he can’t get back up.

  He is so very, very tired.

  He curls into a ball as the flu meds kick in. Side effects probably … definitely … include … drowsiness.

  The sun is so warm on his cheek.

  He’ll just sit here for a minute and then—

  He’s seven years old, seatbelt cutting into his chest as the car speeds across the dark city.

  The strap is broken so his dad tied it down – tight, too tight. But if Sammy complains he’ll just get another slap. Instead, he chews his lip as they pull into a car park in front of a club that pulses a kaleidoscope of coloured lights and thundering beats.

  Avery hums softly to himself in the seat beside Sammy. He runs his favourite toy car over his face, eyes closed in a momentary bliss of sensation. He reaches over to run the car on Sammy’s face too, but Sammy shoves him back with a scowl.

  He knows Avery’s just sharing, but Sammy’s hungry. He hurts. He’s tired of being stuck in a car for days and days with Avery and his stupid toys.

  Sammy says, ‘Dad, he won’t stop touching me,’ before he really thinks about it. Then he goes still. Scared of a slap. Scared, even more, that Avery will get it.

  He should’ve stayed quiet.

  His dad shuts off the car and is on his phone, craning his neck to see the club. People stream out and in, wearing silly dresses. They must be cold. Sam’s cold. He can’t ask for his jacket because Avery was shivering earlier and Sam let him wear it.

  His dad half turns in the front seat, his eyes molasses pits in the dark car. He reaches back and snatches the toy off Avery.

  Avery gives a surprised yelp.

  A sick hole gnaws at Sam’s stomach. He didn’t mean … he just … He doesn’t want Avery to cry.

  ‘Grow up, Avery,’ their dad snaps. ‘You’re too old for this rubbish.’

  Avery’s mouth makes a perfect O and he flaps his hands in front of his face. Another thing he’s too old to be doing that makes their dad so annoyed.

  Their dad gives a disgusted growl and shoves open his door. He gets out, breathing smoke in the frosty night air, and then leans back in to look at his sons again.

  His voice is a warning growl. ‘I’ll be a few minutes. Sit here while I pick something up. If I hear a peep, you get hell, understand?’ He glances at his phone again. ‘After this we drive to your aunt’s and see if your mother has run off there.’

  Avery lurches half out of his seat, hands flapping wildly. ‘My car!’

  Their dad smacks his hand against the roof of the car and Avery shrinks back. ‘You get the toy back when you stop being such a brat.’ He slams the door, swearing.

  They watch him stride across the car park, shoving Avery’s toy car into his pocket and putting his phone back to his ear.

  Sammy glances sideways at Avery. He watches his brother’s chest going in and out so so fast.

  ‘I n-n-need need need—’ Avery breaks off, looking at Sammy with wild, wet eyes.

  H
e needs his car. It’s his special car. He always has it.

  Fix this, Sammy.

  ‘He’ll give it back,’ says Sammy. ‘Just be good. Just wait.’ Please please please.

  They’ve been driving for ever, since their mother took a packet of cigarettes and their dad’s wallet and stormed out of the caravan they were borrowing and didn’t come back.

  His dad has been angry ever since.

  Well, he’s always angry.

  ‘Just be good, Avery,’ Sammy repeats, desperate now – but Avery’s already popped open his door and slid out.

  This is not good.

  Sammy grabs for his own seatbelt, but it’s tied so tight. He can’t move. ‘Avery, don’t.’

  But Avery’s already trotting towards the pulsing lights and music, his tongue sticking out in determination. He hates loud things. Why’s he going in there? He doesn’t need his car that much, does he?

  Sammy doesn’t want to get hell when their dad comes back.

  He tugs harder at his belt and then kicks his legs, but he’s stuck.

  He sits there, handfuls of wild butterflies in his belly. He wants his mum and some honeyed toast and Avery snuggled up next to him in their trundle bed in the caravan, humming a little song and breaking off to kiss Sammy’s elbow because he hasn’t figured out brothers are supposed to fight and bite now that they’re seven and nine. Avery never figures anything out.

  But maybe it’ll be OK?

  Sammy’s trying to wriggle sideways out of the seatbelt straps when he hears the scream.

  Avery’s scream.

  He knows it anywhere because sometimes all Avery does is scream. Because his shirt itches, because his food is different, because something is wrong wrong wrong but he lost his words to explain.

  Sammy twists to stare out of his window at the club. His dad bursts out, followed by men in coloured shirts and gold chains and shiny shoes. Are they all laughing? Avery’s in a ball in the middle, rocking with his hands over his ears. No no no no – you don’t laugh when Avery’s like that. You have to hold him. You have to take him away till he calms down. Even Sammy knows this and he’s only seven.