It's Complicated: A Zombie Romance Novel

Breaking In is Hard to Do

The first clue that I shouldn't have been doing this was that my key didn't work. The jerk had changed the locks on me. I mean, what did he expect us to steal, our own furniture? Nothing that had belonged to Grandma and Grandpa was left. My dad had cleared it all out before he died. Besides, none of it had been of any value. Grandpa had liked to collect things like fishing poles and broken off pencil erasers. Not things that fetched a high resale value at the garage sale we'd thrown to get rid of it all way back when. If David was still looking for that money, it was long gone.

I was certainly not committing a felony over my mom's tacky clown figurine collection. David could have those. They still gave me the creeps. No, the only thing in that house of value were my transcripts. I'd been hoping this would be an easy in and out, having a key to the building and all. But they had been thorough. Even the back door to the basement, the one my dad had said he was always going to fix but then never got around to, had a new lock.

I contemplated breaking a window to get in for like a second, but thought better of it. I mean, this was still kind of my house. And if the court ruled in Mom's favor, I didn't want it ruined by water damage because David wouldn't spring to fix the window. So I sat in the yard in full daylight wondering how to break in.

No one would think twice about me being there. I mean, all the neighbors knew that I lived here. Plus, its not trespassing to be in someone's back yard if that house belonged to your mom. Even if the right to own it was technically being argued in the courts.

Then it hit me. One time, back when I was really little and we were visiting Grandma and Grandpa before we lived here, there was an earthquake that locked us all out. Dad hadn't wanted to break a window either, so he'd climbed onto the balcony and gotten in through the sliding screen doors.

I used the back end of the open car port to leverage myself up and over the railing. That was much better by far than having to pull-up my way from the back yard onto the second story deck, something I was sure I'd never be able to accomplish in a million years. I had never passed the bar hang in gym, but maybe all the motivation I needed was having my life hanging in the balance.

Once on the balcony it was an easy thing to slide open the doors. The lock had been broken for years, just another thing Dad hadn't gotten around to fixing before he passed away on us. I would be in about out in two minutes, tops. I went through the kitchen into Mom's office were she kept her files. It took all of two seconds for me to find my transcripts and go back the way I came.

That's when I heard the sirens.

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