I’m really glad that school is out. Do you know what I mean? I mean, have you ever had to face many pop quizzes, most of them unexpected, solving math riddles, reading three different books in the genre of “old literature,” and dealing with bullies and just overall idiots? I’m pretty sure you’ve been through that. I’ve been through that.

Anyway, I was walking home from school. It wasn’t hard. I know the way home by heart. My backpack, actually, was in charge of me. I had to take everything I had from school and bring it back home, so it was my backpack that was the heaviest thing to carry. Also, the hot day didn’t help. The sun was literally shining on my backpack, which was on my already stressed back.

One of my classmates, a girl, was walking home with me. She lives in my same apartment complex. Her name is Bethany. I’ve never got to know her very well. Everyone says I have a crush on her, but I don’t. I’m just not a kind of liar. 

Through the shining sun and the pain of my backpack, Bethany asked, “Can I carry your things for you?” I told her she could. I gave her practically everything. Now she had the backpack in charge of her, with the sun shining on her, and she was the one facing the pain. “Are you okay?” I asked her, but she just smiled and said nothing.

I knew how she felt. I smiled too and continued walking down the lane, where she gave me back my backpack and said, “See you next school year.” It was necessary for her to say such things. We never hung out together.

“Have a nice summer,” I said, waving goodbye. I was walking near the apartment where we lived. It was Apartment number 705.

Our apartment complex is called Hidden Bush. To be honest, I didn’t know why it was called Hidden Bush for a while, but now I know. It was because there are bushes behind the sign for Hidden Bush, and since the bushes are behind the sign, they’re kind of hidden. So that makes sense. But one day construction vehicles might build another building next to Hidden Bush and destroy the bushes behind the sign. Who knows?

I opened the door to Apartment 705. It was a mess in there. I mean, a mess. The flower pots were broken. The tables were turned upside down. Dishes and plates were broken in little chips all around the floor. And a lot of things were missing. My bird, Niffles, wasn’t in his cage. A lot of CDs from the credenza were missing. The TV was missing. So was the stereo, the couch, and as I found out later, all of our beds.

My older sisters Jessica and Sam were panicking, pacing nervously in circles around the room. They kept saying, “Oh my!” and “This can’t be” many times. When they finally noticed me, they said, “Timmy!”

“What the heck is going on?”

“We’ve been robbed!”

At first, when somebody gets robbed, they always ask this question: “Who robbed our house?”

“I don’t know!” said Sam. “But whoever it is should be put in the electric chair!”

I thought of the robber in the electric chair. I pictured him in a black leather jacket with a mask and a beanie, and then being put in the chair and being electrocuted to death. It made me laugh, but now was no time to do so.

“What’s been stolen?” I asked.

“Well,” said Jessica, and she started counting them on her fingers. So far she had nine things. I almost felt like fainting.

“What about upstairs?” I gave them a thought.

We all raced upstairs. We checked our bedroom and to our horror, our three beds were all missing. Mom’s jewelry box from the bathroom was missing. Also, believe it or not, we searched for a while but couldn’t find our dad’s deodorant. 

“Who would steal deodorant?” I asked.

“That’s a good question,” said Jessica. “A dummy.”

“A nerd,” said Sam. “A total nimrod.”

We all started to laugh, even though our house was half demolished. “You know,” said Sam, “My best friend’s house was also robbed last week.”

“Your best friend, Hailey?” said Jessica. Her smile started fading away.

“Yeah, Hailey’s place,” said Sam. “On this same complex. And a few months ago, Max’s place was robbed.”

“Max’s place was robbed?” I asked, starting to get worried. Max is one grade older than Sam. I’ve only seen him once. He always smells like snazzy cologne.

“Hailey’s moving next week,” said Sam, acting like what she was saying was no big deal at all. “She says her parents are tired of the lousy apartment complexes doing nothing about robbed houses. They’re interested in houses in Oklahoma.”

“Oklahoma?” Jessica now looked like she was going to faint.

“Yeah, I guess,” said Sam, shrugging her shoulders.

“Um, guys,” I said, trying to change the subject, “are we going to call the police?” I was trying to act cool, but in my mind, I couldn’t figure out why Max’s and now Hailey’s places were both robbed. What was with the robbed apartments on this complex?

I started to wonder if Bethany had anything to do with this, but I erased her from my mind quickly.

“Yes, let’s call the police,” said Jessica, also wanting to get away from Sam’s news.

I went to the place where the telephone usually was. It was missing. “Dang it!” I said. “They stole that too!” Luckily, after searching for a while, Jessica remembered there was always an extra telephone in our parents’ room. Our parents’ bedroom was a wreck. The nightstand was missing, but we soon found the telephone. “Who should talk?” I asked.

“I’m the oldest,” said Sam, who was always saying she had the most privileges in the house. She’s old enough to go out on dates with boys. “So I should talk to them.”

She spoke to the cops, explaining what had happened perfectly. She made it sound like nothing bad had happened that afternoon after I came home from school.

She put down the phone. “They’re sending over a special cop.”

“Who’s the special cop?” I asked.

“Didn’t say,” said Sam. “But I’m pretty sure he’s not going to be special at all.”

“You should watch your mouth,” said Jessica, “Because you don’t go around saying things like that about cops.”

“Okay,” said Sam. She was not ready to pick a fight.

The cop showed up in a few minutes. He was tall and had an awful mullet for a haircut, but Sam acted like it was the best look a boy could ever have. Sam is very dreamy. She’s looking for boys to date every single day she can.

“Name?” he asked, grabbing a notepad and a pencil to write things down.

“Sam, Jessica, and Timmy,” sang Sam, pointing to each of us. She stretched out my name “Timmy”. She was in love with the cop already.

“Last name?”

“Twostroke,” said Sam, still speaking in the singsong voice.

“What’s been stolen?” 

“Well,” said Sam, but Jessica started to interfere. I said nothing. Jessica counted everything on her fingers, and when she got to ten she started again, with finger one being eleven. She finished with twelve, the stolen telephone.

“That’s a lot of stuff,” said the cop. “I wonder what kind of rebel would do such a thing.” Now he was looking at Sam. Sam was staring at him with a smile on her face. The cop looked disturbed and said, “Um, I’ll try to locate this guy. I don’t know the identity, but…but…”

Sam still gave him that look in his eye. “But what?” she smiled.

“But I’ve heard that he has stolen from two other apartments in the Hidden Bush complex.”

After that, he stuffed the notepad and pencil into his pocket and walked out of the house. There was nothing he could do for us now, and he looked like he wanted to get away from Sam as soon as possible.

The first thing Jessica said when the cop left was, “Okay, Samantha, you do not talk to a cop like that. He could be too rudely disturbed by you and lose his job.”

Sam looked embarrassed. “Oh.”

I took Jessica’s side. “You don’t do that to a policeman,” I said, and that was all I said at that time. I was too hurt by life to say anything else.

Later that evening, mom came home from work. She was wearing her new tan jacket, and if you ask me I’m not too crazy about it. She likes it, though. Anyways, she came inside carrying bags full of groceries. She looked like she was going to drop them any second. As she saw the mess around the entire house, and us using mops and dusters to clean it up, she gasped, but still didn’t drop her groceries. Instead, she set them down. She put her hands on her hips. “Timothy Twostroke!” she said, furiously, pointing to me. “Just look at the mess you’ve caused!”

“But…but…”

“No buts! You will be sent to your room as of now.”

Jessica chimed in. “Better do it, Timmy,” she said.

“Otherwise mom will be too shocked,” said Sam.

“Otherwise what?” said mom, still in the demanding voice. “You’re obviously hiding something from me. What is this all about?”

“Well…” I said, “...Just send me to my room. It’s a long story.”

While I walked upstairs, I heard Jessica and Sam taking turns explaining the story of mom. When I got to my room, I was still curious to find out what mom would all say about this. I grabbed a half-consumed glass of orange juice from my dresser, emptied the liquid into my bathroom’s toilet, and put my ear to the glass, which I put against the door. Perfect! Now I could hear what they were saying.

“Oh, I simply cannot believe this is happening,” said mom, sounding worried. “Those CDs were my favorite! Why, I oughta…”

“Forget the CDs, mom.” I think that was Jessica’s voice.

“Yeah,” said Sam, or at least I think. “I mean, all of our beds were stolen.”

“Who cares about the beds?” mom said. “We’ll work that out. But those CDS…”

Now I was confused. Why did mom have so much passion for those CDS? They were just some simple CDs that played chill jazz music. I didn’t know my mother treasured them so much.

“Like I said, mom,” said Sam, “Forget about the CDs. I mean, our TV is gone, so is our stereo, and Niffles…”

“Niffles?” said mom, acting like she had never heard about him at all. “Oh, then I’m glad he was stolen. I got him before you were born. You see, it was at a Christmas gift exchange that we all gave gifts to each other, and I got the disgusting bird…”

“Disgusting?” said Jessica, sounding hurt. “How could you say things like that to your own kids?”

I heard Jessica climbing up the stairs furiously, and then slamming the door to her room.

Now Sam was left. I was still using my glass to hear. Sam said, “Listen, mom, why can’t you just be calm about those CDs, and try to feel different about everything else?”

“I can’t,” said mom. “I loved those CDs more than anything.”

“Even more than your kids?”

“Uh…um…” mom didn’t say anything after that. Sam said, “Well then, if you don’t like your kids, you can always disown us. We don’t mean anything to you anymore.” She marched up to her room and once again, slammed the door. I heard her screaming and cursing.

To be honest, I felt like it, too.

We slept on the hard floor that night. Even though all of our backs were itchy and sore, there was no way of changing mom’s opinion.