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‘I knew it,’ she said again, and I let myself bask in the feeling. Brooke believed in me. My heart almost hurt from how good it felt to hear that.

10

The Stranger– Billy Joel

Brooke fell asleep quickly, curling up on the side of the bed closest to the window and throwing her arm over her face. I’d noticed that was how she liked to sleep, hiding her face from the world.

I laid on the other side of the bed, leaving as much space as was humanly possible between us, and tried to calm my still-racing heart.

I couldn’t help but run the night over and over in my head, replaying each of the wallets and how I’d lifted them, the men I’d stolen from, the woman with her wine glass and bored expression. I’d been nothing to them – either invisible or not worth paying close attention to – but I’d made sure they would remember what I’d done more than any boring lecture at the convention.

The power felt electric in my veins. They shouldn’t have ignored me.

Brooke snored softly from the other side of the bed.

She had looked so pretty and so much older than metonight. With red lipstick and her hair pulled back instead of loose around her shoulders, she could easily pass for someone in her early twenties. I liked her more like this – bare-faced and relaxed. This was the version of Brooke I had gotten to know, and I had a feeling it was the purest, most condensed version of her. She was different with me than she was at school. In a good way. Then again, I was different with her, too.

I tried to reason that sharing a bed wasn’t a big deal. It was probably something girls who were friends did all the time. It didn’t need to mean anything. It didn’t mean anything toBrooke.

I tried to extinguish the fiery feeling in my belly that wanted to flare bright. I wasn’t going to force myself on her, or convince myself that maybe she had feelings for me. She didn’t. And that was okay.

It was late before I fell asleep and Brooke had stopped snoring. The peaceful rise and fall of her shoulder, her skin pale in the moonlight, convinced me to let it all go and sleep too.

During the night we must have both moved, because when I woke up the next morning and opened my eyes, Brooke’s sleeping face was inches from my own. I startled back, terrified that my subconscious had done something inappropriate in my sleep.

As slowly as I dared, I rolled over and away from her, edging back to my side of the bed.

The bed was huge. This was ridiculous.

Slowly, my heartbeat returned to a normal rhythm, and I decided to get out of bed before Brooke woke up and noticed me being weird. When I was in the bathroom, I heard her moving around the room, and that was a relief. I wanted to let her sleep as long as she liked, but I couldn’t read very well in the dark – this fancy hotel had good blackout curtains, unlike the cheap motels we’d been staying in up until now.

Brooke was sitting in the armchair when I came out of the bathroom, her long legs stretched out in front of her.

‘Did you sleep well?’ she asked me with a smile.

‘Yeah,’ I lied, and smiled too. Brooke didn’t need to know the truth.

While I was getting dressed, Brooke got ready in the bathroom, then I packed up everything and left the pillowcase with the wallets hidden inside by the door, ready to dump them in a trash can when we left.

Brooke came out with a cagey expression on her face. I immediately tensed, wondering what high jinks she was planning next.

‘So,’ she started, ‘how would you feel about catching up with my cousin today?’

It took my brain a second to follow her thoughts – Brooke’s cousin, who lived in Denver, because she’d chosen to come here instead of going to college in Utah.

Reaching out to someone who knew either of us sat uneasily in my stomach. Maybe Brooke trusted her cousin wouldn’t turn us in, but I didn’t know her. What if she decided to join our road trip? I didn’t want that at all.

I sat down in the gray chair, and Brooke took the bed opposite me, reversing our positions from yesterday.

‘Do you know where she lives?’ I asked.

‘Yeah, kind of. Me and Julianne visited her last year.’

I chewed on my bottom lip, and Brooke watched me intensely.

‘Don’t do that,’ she said gently, reaching out to squeeze my knee. ‘You’ll hurt your lips.’

I stopped, startled, and stared at her. Brooke kept talking, apparently unaware of how much her casual touches affected me.