The Thieves: Stealing Bethany

Chapter 1

Monday, September 15th 9:35 a.m. PST, 26 days to deadline

            You know how if you say a word over and over again it eventually loses all meaning and just becomes a string of nonsense syllables? I had a theory that the same thing might happen if you stared at something long enough. I’d been testing it out on Turner for the past twenty minutes of history class. So far, it wasn’t working. He was still a whole person, with tanned, smooth arms, dirty blonde hair that curled at the ends, an adorable freckle on the back of his neck, and Hanna Wilson’s hand in his.

            Her intrusion into his personal space was the problem. No matter how hard I tried to unfocus my eyes and take all of him in at once, my gaze kept shifting to her pale, dainty hand clasped in his. Who the hell is pale in Santa Monica anyway? It was totally unnatural.

            If I was being honest with myself, it wasn’t her lack of melanin that concerned me. It was the fact that up until two days ago, I was the one holding Turner’s hand. Although, not in school because PDA was gross.

Was that the problem? Did he dump me because I wasn’t affectionate enough? I’d just never seen the point of hanging all over a guy in public. When other girls did it, it looked like they were marking their territory, using their bodies to claim what was theirs. It all seemed so caveman to me.

Everyone knew we were Turner and Bethany, Bethany and Turner; we didn’t have to grope each other in public to prove it.

            Except now we weren’t.

            One year, two months, and six days of being Turner Eigleman’s girlfriend. Two days of being Bethany Meyer: The Girl Who Got Dumped By Text Message. Not that anyone knew that. It was pathetic enough I’d gotten dumped in the first place—there was no way I was letting the details get out.

            I finally tore my eyes away from his back, pulling my phone out of my bag. I thumbed to the message that I couldn’t bring myself to delete and stared at it for the umpteenth time.

Turner: B, I don’t know how to say this so I’m just going to say it. I don’t want to do this anymore. It’s been amazing, but it’s time to move on. I’ve had so much fun but we both knew this wouldn’t last forever. Hope we can still be friends ;)

            That fucking winky face. Atrocious break up skills notwithstanding, Turner was a good guy. When he said he hoped we could still be friends, I knew he genuinely meant it. But in what parallel universe bizarro world did he possibly think an appropriate conclusion to a break up text—a thing which shouldn’t exist in the first place, by the way—was a winky face? What could it mean?

            I desperately wanted to confront him about it, demand an explanation. But, for some reason, I couldn’t bring myself to talk to him. It had taken me three hours of sitting on my bed, staring at my phone before I’d even been able to muster a response to his text. I’d managed one letter—k.

            Double pathetic, I know. What kind of person doesn’t protest a break up? Demand answers? I’m sure to Turner it seemed like I was totally nonchalant about it and just didn’t care about him enough to fight, but that wasn’t it.

The truth was I’d never felt good enough for Turner. He was the embodiment of perfection—gorgeous, popular, nice, smart, president of the junior class, captain of the tennis team. I was so depressingly average in every way compared to him.

When he’d asked me out the summer before last, I’d thought it was a joke at first. He was the grade above me and ran in a completely different crowd. The only reason we interacted at all was because our parents belonged to the same country club. I’d been hitting balls on the tennis court by myself one day, bored as usual, when one of my wild swings sent the ball into his court—literally. I’d gone to chase it down, but he grabbed it first. Instead of just tossing it back to me, he’d walked over, placed it in my hand, and said, “Here you go Bethany.” I’d been so shocked he even knew my name that I’d just gaped at him like a total idiot.