The Stolen by Celia Thomson Page A

not tell anyone about your dream or what we spoke of,
” she hissed. “There are leaders, and there are
leaders,
Chloe King.”

Paul might be complacent and all best buddies with Alyec, but Amy wasn’t going to stand for it. If it were up to her stupid boyfriend, they would just sit back and do nothing until the world fell down. Which was exactly why she was skipping out of school early.
    She’d given a half-assed excuse to her teacher about feeling sick and hadn’t even bothered going to the nurse. Her brother’s car was parked in the area of the lot reserved for seniors, and it had cost her an arm and a leg to borrow it: a guaranteed okay on any future favor of his choice.
It’s not like he even needs it at Berkeley
. It was an ancient, all-black Chevy Malibu station wagon that he called the Batmobile. The Malibu was a pretty small car for its V6 though, so when she floored it, the car tore out of the school parking lot like a bat out of hell.
    Amy zoomed through the streets and parked several blocks away from Chloe’s house. She locked the car and went up to the front door, trying not to look aroundsuspiciously, trying to make it look like she had every right to be there, pulling out Chloe’s spare key and entering the house in the middle of the day when they both should have been in school.
    Mrs. King usually came home around seven, and Amy had every intention of being out of there in an hour. Maybe she’d even go back to school….
    On second thought, who did she think she was kidding?
    She had been planning this for several days and wore an appropriate outfit for breaking and entering (even if it was with a key): tight black jeans and a black tee, along with a black Emily sweatshirt whose hoodie had cat ears and sleeves that ended in gloves with claws. Perfect for a cat burglar. She had admired herself in the mirror for a while that morning. It was such a completely different look for her—all sleek and black. None of the crazy, bouncy, fringy, fluffy stuff she designed and wore. Her breasts stuck out a little bit; they almost looked as big as Chloe’s in this outfit. What she really needed was a pair of long black leather boots à la Emma Peel and maybe to dye her hair black, but Paul didn’t like it when she changed her hair color—he’d always liked the original shade.
    She carefully closed the door behind her and listened for a minute. If anyone was staking out the place, there was no sign: everything looked fairly normal in the King household. No furniture was overturned, nor was thereany other sign of violence. Just to be safe, however, Amy pushed herself up against the wall and slid toward the stairs, ducking when she got in front of windows, doing a crouching run up the staircase.
    Which resulted in a very non-cat-burglar trip on the top step and a flying fall that nearly smashed her chin against the bathroom door. Most of Amy’s life was spent trying to
get
noticed and stand out; this sneaking thing was entirely new to her. She pulled herself up into what she hoped looked like a shadow and tiptoed into Chloe’s room.
    Once again everything seemed normal, maybe a little dustier than usual but not noticeably changed. Chloe’s computer was properly shut down. Amy turned it on, using the special black gloves so she wouldn’t leave any fingerprints. She admired them while it booted up, then went online and logged onto Chloe’s e-mail—her friend had had the same password for years: adopTED.
    Aha.
    Chloe religiously purged her trash to keep her mailbox from going over its size limit, downloading and saving all of the particularly juicy letters in case her mother ever found her way on. She did
not,
however, empty her sent mail folder as often as she should—and was far too painstaking about adding names to her address book. After just a couple minutes of poking around, Amy found [email protected] and, searching Chloe’s