Something Stolen

            Lily let out a huff of exasperation as her teammates fled the gym. Really, getting changed wasn’t that exciting. Besides, the new gym teacher let them go into the locker room to change with ten minutes before the bell. She highly doubted anyone would be late.

            That was why she usually stayed behind to help pick up the various pieces of sporting equipment they’d been using in class. Today it was dodge balls, which miraculously managed to find quite a few hiding places. By the time that was finished, almost everyone was standing at the door, ready to charge into the hallway as soon as they were dismissed.

            Quietly, she changed into her pencil skirt—dark grey—and her satiny blouse with its pearl buttons. Then she moved to the mirror and checked her makeup, slipping her hair free from its ponytail so that it fell to frame her face. She was about to turn away when she realized that her locket was missing.

            It was a family heirloom, something her mother only let her borrow on special occasions. The golden oval managed to be both elegant and casual enough to be worn at school. It also had a family crest stamped into the front that undoubtedly belonged to some ancestral branch of the Connor family.

            Confused, because it was unlike her to forget to put something on, she returned to the bench where her clothes had been folded. Her watch was there, as was her gym bag, but the locket was not.

            Frantically, she picked up her remaining things, checked under the bench, in the back of the locker, in her gym bag. It was nowhere to be found.

            A prickly sweat broke across her skin and her stomach twisted and lurched. Hands shaking, she stood up, casting frantic eyes around the now empty room. A panicky dread settled over her. Where could the locket be?

            Quickly, she made her way out of the locker room, heels clicking frantically across the entire expanse of the gym. She pushed through the throng standing in the doorway, glaring and using her elbows until she had reached the front.

            “Excuse me,” Lily said, turning to face her classmates. As luck would have it, the bell sounded to unleash them before she could say another word. The charging students rushed past her and she felt despair briefly catch her breath.

            “Mrs. Carlson,” she tried instead, turning to the short, grey-haired woman standing by the door. “Um, I lost my necklace. I, um, I think it might’ve been—.”

            “Was it in my office?” Mrs. Carlson asked, not looking up from her clipboard where she was recording the day’s participation points.

            “No, but—.”

            “If you don’t put your valuables in my office where I can lock the door and keep them safe, the school cannot be held responsible for your loss,” she cut in sharply. “I’m sorry Lily, but you should be more careful.”

            Dejected, she trudged off towards her locker, well aware of the fact that she would probably be late to class. She couldn’t find it in her to care, and Lily Connor was always on time.

            What’s Mom going to say? she thought. She’s always telling me to be careful. And I was careful. I made sure it was hidden from sight so no one would even know it was there to steal.

            When lunch came around an hour later, she hadn’t heard a single word her teacher had said in class. She had arrived late, but he hadn’t commented. He’d also refrained from calling on her for an answer, which seemed strange.

            “Hey Lils,” Mat said, falling into step beside her as she made her way to the lunch room. His arm slid around her waist automatically, effectively excluding his best friend, who fell in behind them. “You look kind of, I dunno, sick. Are you feeling okay?”

            “My necklace,” Lily answered, her voice catching slightly. “Um, the locket that’s been in my family for years, it’s gone.”

            “What?” he exclaimed, adequately shocked. “What happened? Did you lose it? Me and Jean, we can look for it if you want.”         

            “Huh?” Jean asked, lengthening his stride so he could hear what was going on. “What are we doing?”

            “Lily lost her necklace. We’re going to look for it,” Mat explained distractedly. “Where was the last place you saw it?”

            “I think someone stole it,” she said in a small voice. “It was in gym class and I didn’t put it in Mrs. Carlson’s office. I should have. I know better.”

            “I am not going into the girls’ locker room, Mat,” Jean frowned.

            “It’s stolen!” Lily snapped, spinning to face Jean. Her eyes flashed with anger and her hands were balled into fists. “That means someone took it. Why would it still be in the girls’ locker room if they took it?”

            “Whoa. Lily, calm down,” Mat said, catching her shoulder. Jean just stood there, eyes wide in shock. Then they narrowed and his jaw locked.

            “Calm down?!” Lily practically shrieked, turning on her boyfriend now. “Calm down? A priceless family heirloom has just been stolen and you want me to calm down? What am I going to tell my mother? How do I explain that I was careless and now it’s gone? Forever.”

            “Lily, we’ll work this out. It’s not the end of the world. I’m sure we can find it.”

            “No, Mat, we can not work this out! It’s gone!” A few people, hurrying to lunch in the almost empty hallway, shot surprised looks at the trio.

            “Don’t you think you’re overreacting a little?” Jean said softly after a beat of shocked silence. “Mat’s just trying to help.”

            “Go away, Jean,” she growled. “This isn’t about you.”

            “It’s not about Mat, either,” he argued, standing his ground. “You can’t take this out on him. He didn’t steal it.”

            “Well I’m so happy to see that Mat still has his faithful dog protecting him,” Lily snapped. “But I think he can stand up for himself if he needs to.”

            “You are out of line and you know it,” Jean said.

            “Jean, that’s enough,” Mat scowled. “Why don’t you just go to lunch?”

            “But Mat.”

            “Go!”

            Lily waited until Jean had left, his steps hurried and sullen, before turning back to Mat. She tried to soften her expression, to forget about what had happened, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t put the necklace aside.

            “What am I going to tell my mother?” she whispered, looking at him desperately. Her silver-blue eyes filled with unshed tears.

            “Um,” he swallowed, eying her warily. “You could tell her that the clasp broke and you’re having it fixed?”

            “I—I guess I’ll just tell her the truth,” Lily sighed dejectedly, staring down at the floor.

            When Lily got home, walking beside a chattering and oblivious Elliot, she was surprised at how silent everything was. Their father was still at work, but usually their mother was in the kitchen or the study, waiting to hear about how their day had been.

            “Where’s Mom?” Lily asked softly, looking around at the dark paneled walls and listening.

            “Weren’t you paying any attention?” Elliot chuckled. “I guess you had that presentation on your mind this morning.”

            “Elli,” she warned, giving him a look.

            “She had a business meeting. She won’t be back for a few days. The fridge is stocked and Dad’s still here,” he explained, annoyed.

            “Dad’s always here,” she sighed. Her father worked at an office in a decidedly lower position than their mother held. He also worked longer hours for less.

            “Don’t you start too,” Elliot complained. “I swear, every other day Mom’s going on about how, if he’d only tried harder, he’d have his promotion. It’s not like he can actually do anything more than he already does.”

            “Whatever, El. I have homework,” and Lily left her adopted brother standing in the entrance hall, staring after her. She hadn’t even lectured him on not having an extracurricular activity today. Which reminded him…

            “Lily,” he called, starting after her. “Don’t you have your Big Brothers, Big Sisters mentoring tonight?”

            “I’m calling in sick,” she answered, not turning or slowing.

            “Should I be worried?” he asked. His sister had been known to face a raging blizzard to participate in some of the most mundane and tedious activities he’d ever encountered. She hardly ever got sick, and when she did it usually didn’t slow her down that much.

            “No,” she snapped, and a few seconds later there was the sound of a door slamming.

~*~

            Jean let his breath out in a nervous whistle, and shifted uneasily. It was before school started, and still early enough that the hallway only held a few scattered, subdued groups of friends. It would probably be another fifteen minutes, at least, before Mat arrived.

            It had been two days since Lily had lost her necklace and she hadn’t even deigned to look at him since he’d challenged her. Mat was also turning a cold shoulder towards him. But that was going to change.

            Jean didn’t always hang out with Mat. Mat had a lot of after school activities and with a new girlfriend he was almost always somewhere else. They also didn’t share very many classes. Jean was not the kind of over achiever who signed up for advanced classes, even if his grades were good enough. Mat was. Mostly because he wanted to impress a certain Lily Connor.

            The point being, Jean had other friends, acquaintances really. And his acquaintances had acquaintances. So, basically, he had ears all over the school. With a few artfully asked questions, he had learned who had taken Lily’s necklace; one Alicia Winters.

            Yesterday, after school, he had confronted her. Without Mat, because Mat would have messed it up. It turned out that she had more similarities to a crow than her dark hair color. She had seen the necklace shining amongst Lily’s clothes, noticed the crest, and wanted it. She claimed that it was just because she wanted a rubbing of the engraving and a copy of the pictures for an art project she was working on, and, when he mentioned nonchalantly that Lily was about ready to call the police, had been more than willing to deliver the piece of jewelry into his hands that very morning.

            Now he just had to wait until Mat arrived, because there was no way he was going to hand the necklace over to Lily himself. He wasn’t even sure why he had worked so hard to get it. Lily was definitely not his favorite person. Alicia, in the maybe five minutes he’d talked to her, had more character than her. Lily was also nagging, overachieving, and a little unfair to his best friend. His best friend who was now barely talking to him because of her. He had no reason to do her any favors. Except that he knew what it was like to lose something important and valuable, and even better what it was like to disappoint a parent.

            “Mat,” he said, jolting out of his reverie as his friend stopped at the locker he’d been standing next to. “I need to talk to you.”         

            “Lily’s waiting for me over there,” Mat said sullenly, annoyed that Jean was persistent enough to wait next to his locker; a place he had to visit. Jean glanced over at where she stood, arms crossed, glaring.

            “Yeah, it’s about her,” he murmured. Catching Mat’s quick glance, he amended, “For her.”

            “I’m really not interested in discussing my girlfriend with you, okay?”

            “We’re not discussing her. I just, I want you to give her something.”

            “You can apologize to her yourself. Like a man,” Mat snapped.

            “No. It’s not an apology,” Jean began, closing his hand around the metal object in his pocket.

            “Well it should be,” his friend said, turning to go.

            “Wait, Mat, please,” he said quickly, catching his arm and pulling him back. In a low voice he continued. “I found her necklace. I have it. But I don’t want her to know it was me, okay. So you can just, I dunno, say you found it or something and give it to her.”

            “What?!” Mat exclaimed loudly. His eyes flicked over to his girlfriend before returning to Jean. “You have it? Don’t tell me you had it all along. Why didn’t you say something?”

            “I just got it today,” Jean said indignantly. “Now do you want it, or not?”

            “Yeah, sure. Sorry,” Mat mumbled, holding out his hand. Jean slipped it out of his pocket and dropped it into the outstretched palm, careful to stand in such a way that Lily couldn’t see what they were doing. “I’ll go give this to her.”

            Lily stood across the hall from her boyfriend, watching him talk to his best friend. Or ex-best friend. She wasn’t really sure if they were still talking after she’d had her argument with Jean. They certainly looked tense now.

            Sighing, she let her mind drift to the scene she’d been playing over and over in her head for the past few days. Today her mother got home. She had tried to call her the day she’d lost the necklace, but she’d been in a business meeting and Lily had taken that as a sign to wait until she got home.

            When her mother did get home, though, she knew what she would say. After Lily had explained herself, because her mother always kept quiet until the full explanation was out there. She knew quite well what Mrs. Connor’s reprimand would sound like, because it was the same things she’d been telling herself for the past few days. Over and over and over again.

            “How could you be so careless? You know that’s a priceless family heirloom. There isn’t another like it in the world, and you lost it. How did you lose it? By being an idiot. There’s a reason you’re supposed to give the gym teacher your valuables before going out to class. There’s a reason the school can’t be held responsible if you don’t, because it’s stupid to leave your things unattended. I never thought you were stupid, Lily.”

            “Hey, Lils,” Mat’s voice said, breaking her out of her depressed inner monologue. “I, uh, I have something for you.”

            “I don’t—.”

            “It’s exactly what you want, though,” he cut her off, holding his hand out eagerly. Slowly, to build suspense, she supposed, he uncurled his fingers. Resting in the palm of his hand, on a bed of shining golden chain, was a familiar oval, looking none the worse for its short absence.

            “Mat, how?” Lily gasped, reaching out carefully to take it. Was this for real?

            “I told the football team to keep their ears peeled for any news and one of them found it. I’m not sure how. They gave it to Jean and he didn’t think to ask.”

            “Ohmygod thank you!” she squealed, throwing herself into his arms. Over his shoulder she saw Jean, just turning away from where he’d been watching them.