Her heart was racing as she blew her dark curls back with an exasperated exhale and wiped her tanned, freckled, sweaty hands on the denim material of her blue jeans. "Why does my room always have to look like the aftermath of a natural disaster in order for me to finally clean it?" she thought, aggressively running her fingers through her hair.
Squatting down onto all fours she picked up any last remainder of trash or bits and bobs on the floor, when her hand brushed against something unfamiliar under bed. She tentatively reached underneath to the spot where her eyes cannot see and pulled out a box. Exhaling her breath in a sigh of relief, she fondly placed her hand on top of the lid of the shoebox and smiled as pleasant memories rushed through her head.
Unable to contain her joy any longer after finding her precious box, she lifts open the lid as the small smile on her face stretches wider. All of these items the shoebox contains seem meaningless to the normal eye, but to her they were all cherished. The shoebox contained each item she has ever stolen since she was the tender age of four.
Reaching into the shoebox, she brushes her hand along the hard plastic of a black stapler. The stapler that started it all. She remembered her first day of kindergarten as if it was a movie she had watched a dozen times. Her mother wiped away her tears and attempted not to crumble to the red, yellow, and blue carpet as her youngest daughter let go of her freckled hand and spun in circles taking in every ounce of beauty and color inside the classroom in wonder. And that was when her eyes found the stapler that resided on Mrs. Newman's desk. With wild ideas and creative thoughts of this new invention, she pondered how it worked and stared excitedly as she saw her new teacher use the contraption to connect multiple pieces of paper together. How fascinating it was for her!
After asking her mother that afternoon how a stapler works, her mother told her. The only sentence that remained in her mind was, "They are for a big person, sweetheart. They can hurt you really bad if you aren't careful." Then and there she decided that she must possess that object, and that object in particular.
She pondered for the entirety of the week about whether or not to take Mrs. Newman's stapler. However, each time her eyes would fall upon it with longing, her fingers began to each. So that weekend she created a plan.
On Monday, as she and her fellow kindergarteners lined up against the wall in single file for an exciting journey to recess, Mrs. Newman asked the small children to put their "quiet fingers," which was a peace sign on the right hand, raised to the sky, and the index finger on the left hand over the lips in a shushing gesture.
Instead, the eager child hand simply shot up into the air as she nearly screamed, "Mrs. Newman!" The teacher turned to her.The little girl afraid of being scolded for not using her inside voice when the older children were down the hall learning continued more quietly with a guilty expression, "I left my water bottle in the classroom. I get really thirsty. Can I go get it? I will be super fast," she said the words tumbling in a ridiculous stream.
The teacher thinly smiled and her eyes raised up near the hairline of her short brown hair. "I do not know. Can you?" she asked.
Remembering her father's lesson on manners, she replied, "May I?" Then as an afterthought said, "Please?" The teacher nodded her head in the direction of the classroom door. And so she ran as fast as her little legs would carry her, nearly tripping over her shoelaces in the process since her mother always said that double knots looked messy.
She shut the door behind her and headed straight in the direction of the stabler. She could feel the power of the stapler as she cradled it in her small hands. A moment of guilt flashed through her mind, but as quickly as it came she threw it away; and shoved the stapler to the bottom of the biggest zipper of her light blue backpack that hung in the cubbies. It's a rightful home.
Carefully, she placed the stapler back into the shoe box and gazed at all of the other items. Inside the box there was her brother's old baseball cap that he forgot about when he switched teams. She was never the athletic one in the family, so a baseball cap seemed ideal to take. A boarding ticket to Italy from a trip that her parents went on without her. An old white bra from her friend Sara that she took out of pure jealousy that the other girls twelve-year-old chest was more developed than hers; the bra still does not fit her. Then later, she took both pairs of her immigrant grandmother's chanclas that she sneakily took in the middle of the night in hopes of never falling victim to the flying shoe smacking her on the side of the head again. Finally, her godmother's pink bottle of diet pills that she easily decided when she learned that her godmother was mentally ill and struggled with body dysmorphia and obsessive thoughts around food and the number on the scale. There was once a moment years ago when she had considered giving everything back to its previous owner, but every meaningless object in the shoebox held meaning to her. Besides, she would be dead before she returned diet pills to her recovering godmother.
She tilted her head in an almost cartoon-like fashion. Something did not seem right. She did not have anything of her sister's. Elena had always been the one whom she envied and adored the most, so why did she own nothing of hers inside her shoebox.
"This won't do," she said aloud with a shake of her hand.
She silently walked down the hall and peered around the corner of the wall leading into the living room. It was there that she spotted her sister laying on the brown couch, eyes distracted by the television. Darting back in the direction of the sibling's bedroom, she carefully opened the door to Elena's bedroom, careful to avoid the creak of the door's hinge and walked inside.
With her heart rate increasing, she welcomed back the feeling of euphoria and the itch of her fingers. It has been so long since she has stolen something. Now, it was time to join her blissful territory again.
Her hand jerks forward in a frenzy as she rips for her sister's favorite knitted cream sweater off the hook. She hesitated before the door before yanking it wide open, producing the horrible creaking sound from the door frame. Shit.
She dashed back into her room and without haste shuts the door and inhales the scent of the sweater. White gardenia. Elena's favorite scent. She never allowed her younger sister to wear that perfume scent, because it was her scent.
Chuckling to herself, she began to attempt to fold the precious sweater as neatly as she could, when footsteps could be heard approaching her bedroom door. First quiet and soft, then loud and angry. Quickly, she shoved the sweater into the shoebox, shoved it back underneath her bed, and stood up and feigned innocence.
With wild eyes and dark blond hair afright, Elena threw her sister's door open with an air of pure fury radiating from her.
"Please. Can you tell me why my door is open? I said that you were not allowed in there! Did you go in there? Get that stupid look off of you face and answer me!"
