"Five-Finger Discount"
Nobody saw her. That was what Taylor kept telling herself as she walked through the store, occasionally picking up an item and glancing speculatively at it before putting it down with a practiced shrug of disdain. She knew that there wasn't a salesperson anywhere within twenty feet of her when she slipped the blouse into her purse, and she couldn't see a camera anywhere. Nobody knew she did it. She was going to get away with it.
She made her way gradually toward the front of the store, wending her way through the clothing racks with a gradual motion that (she hoped) didn't betray her eagerness to get the hell out. She already had the plan in her head. Go out the front (no security scanners, but she'd already removed the tag just in case) and walk smoothly but swiftly to the escalator, then down two floors and around the corner to the south exit. From there she could be on the bus and back home in an hour, with plenty of time to stash the shirt before her parents got home. She'd have to change in the bathroom at school if she wanted to wear it-between not giving her an allowance and not letting her get a job until graduation even though she was technically a grown-up and didn't have to get their permission (as Taylor reminded them practically every week...) Taylor's parents had a pretty good idea of everything she bought.
Still, it would be worth it. The blouse would perfectly complement the eye shadow she'd tucked away into her bra a couple of weeks ago, and it would go amazingly well with the skirt she'd 'tried on' in the dressing room yesterday and wore out underneath her regular clothes. Taylor admitted that technically, she was probably bending a few moral codes by shoplifting an entire wardrobe, but really it was Mom and Dad's fault for trying to keep her under their thumb all the time. 'Don't go out late!' 'Don't skip class!' 'You already have a job, it's school!' 'Gotta keep those grades up if you want to get into a good college!' If the only way she had to express herself was through stealing, then didn't that just make this her art form?
Taylor neared the front of the store, trying hard not to let any of her contempt for the store's security systems show on her face. No scanners, no gates, checkout counters in each department instead of at the exit...she had no idea how this place stayed in business. She would have to come back for more stuff at this rate; it was a bit of a haul to come out here instead of her usual mall trip, but she'd never seen a place that was this easy to boost from. She could-
Taylor stopped dead at the front. She turned around, swiveling so precisely that it looked like a military maneuver. Then she walked straight back into the store, marching at a quick walk through one department after another until she found herself at the very back. She took a quick turn into an area marked 'Employees Only', then walked past the break room with a purposeful stare on her face that belied her complete and utter confusion about what the hell she had just decided to do.
It all seemed to happen so quickly. One second she was inches away from the wide open front exit, and the next she suddenly knew that nothing could possibly be more important than turning around and going back the way she came. She didn't know where she was going or why, but she felt an irresistible, unquestionable, somehow perfectly logical compulsion to make her way to the rear of the building and go into an area she didn't even know was there. It all made such perfect sense to her...on a level that had nothing to do with actually understanding anything. She was doing what she needed to do, and she was going to keep doing what she needed to do. Taylor stopped at a door marked 'Security Office' and gave it three quick, respectful taps.
After a moment, she heard a woman's voice on the other side say, "Come in." Taylor opened the door to reveal a small office lit by buzzing fluorescent lights, with a large desk dominating the room. A woman in her forties with strawberry blonde hair that was shellacked into place with hairspray, and a little too much cherry-red lipstick on her lips sat behind it, chewing gum and reading a weightlifting magazine. She had her feet up next to a nameplate that read, 'Miranda Wyrzykowski - Head of Security'. She gave Taylor a slightly quizzical look and gestured to a chair on the other side of the desk.
Taylor closed the door behind her, set her purse on the desk and sat down in the chair. "I tried to steal a blouse, ma'am," she said, blurting out the words before she could stop herself. She couldn't understand why she said it any more than she could understand any of her other actions, but they all seemed so perfectly natural that she couldn't imagine doing anything else. Of course she needed to go and report her attempted theft to Security. Of course she needed to sit politely and wait for Ms. Wyrzykowski to take her feet off the desk and rifle through Taylor's belongings. It all made sense, in a way that didn't bear any resemblance to any of the ways that anything had ever made sense to her before in her life.
Ms. Wyrzykowski pulled out the blouse and gave it a quick glance. Then she gave a much longer, more appraising look at Taylor. "You seem like a sweet kid," she said, in a voice that suggested more than a few cigarette breaks in her employment history. "What are you, seventeen, eighteen?"
"Eighteen, ma'am," Taylor said respectfully, keeping her eyes slightly lowered. She felt inexplicably like it would be rude to do anything as challenging as stare Ms. Wyrzykowski right in the face, and somehow that reconciled itself perfectly with her history of shouting, glaring, slamming doors and other means of communicating with the rest of the authority figures in her life.
Ms. Wyrzykowski sighed. "Jeez," she said, fishing her gum out of her mouth and sticking it in an ashtray that already held more than a few such discards. "Only eighteen and you're already screwing up your life, kid. This blouse is twenty bucks. Twenty, you can earn that picking up cans out of the garbage." She spoke in a thick Bronx accent, turning 'your' into 'yer' and 'twenty' into 'twenny' and 'out of' into 'oudda'.
"And for twenty bucks, you're going to what, get a five hundred dollar fine? A disorderly conviction on your record? Probably give your parents a damn heart attack, too." Taylor's heart lurched into her throat at the thought of her mom and dad finding out she'd been shoplifting. She didn't know if it was possible to get grounded and kicked out of the house at the same time, but her dad might give it a try.
"So tell me, kid," Ms. Wyrzykowski said, balling up the blouse and tossing it in a clothing bin, "why did you do it?" On any other day, Taylor might have found something funny about the way that Ms. Wyrzykowski's accent made 'whydjadoit' out of 'why did you do it', but nothing seemed funny right now. And even if it did, she could no more imagine laughing at Ms. Wyrzykowski than she could imagine flying. Or getting up without permission.
"I wanted the blouse, ma'am," Taylor replied, quietly astonished at the meekness in her voice. "And I thought I could get away with it." She waited to hear if she had anything else to offer-a plea of hardship, a confession of wanting to shock and horrify her domineering parents, any of the dozens of other justifications she wove for herself after one of her little 'free shopping trips'...but there was nothing. It seemed that once she was compelled to tell the truth, it really did come down to just that. She wanted it and she thought she could get away with taking it. Taylor squirmed uncomfortably in the privacy of her head.
Ms. Wyrzykowski shot her a smug, preening grin of triumph. "Yeah, that's what a lot of people say," she chuckled, with a badly-applied tone of false modesty. "You kids, you're all the same, looking for store detectives and hidden cameras and those whatchamadingies, RFID tags. I'm too lazy for all that crap, though. I just cast a
