Once he’d started watching for opportunities, he’d run out of unlocked units pretty quickly. They popped up on occasion, especially during the summer when more people were moving in and out, but they weren’t common.
Still, he’d noticed something else during the downtime between open locks: a lot of people really didn’t try hard to scramble the numbers on their combination locks. His mom sold two kinds of padlocks in the office. The more expensive, sturdier version came with keys, but you could also buy a cheaper one with a four-digit combination. Once it was engaged, the owner had to spin the numbers to jumble them, but most people were too lazy for that, and Everett could just nudge them forward in a straight line until the lock opened.
Yesterday, he’d discovered an even more special kind of laziness: an actual sticky note with the combination written right on it. The bright-yellow paper had caught his eye, the corner poking out beneath the bottom of the roll-up door like a tiny flag designed to alert only him.
He’d tugged it out, and as soon as he’d seen the four digits, he’d taken a careful look around. Once he’d verified that the security camera on the side of the building pointed slightly away from him, he’d lined up the combination and popped open the lock. There hadn’t been time to explore, so he’d relocked it in the hopes of sneaking in tonight.
Anticipation fizzed through him even though he’d never found anything all that interesting in the previous spaces. What if it wasn’t curiosity that got him pumped up? What if he just liked being bad? Wasn’t that exactly who his father had been?
Shoving away thoughts of a father he barely remembered, Everett sniffed and put his earbuds in to distract himself with his ancient iPod. The truth was that he mostly just shifted things around in the units, shining a flashlight on random junk. He opened boxes to check for treasure, of course, but the best thing he’d discovered was a cool old car he’d been able to sit in.
Maybe he’d get bored and outgrow his evil criminal phase. Or else he’d need darker and darker thrills until he became a career criminal who ruined people’s lives forever, and when everyone discovered the truth, they’d say, What did you expect from a con man’s son?
“No,” he said before turning up his music louder. That wasn’t how these things worked. His dad had fled when he was only six, and if he’d taught Everett any bad habits, he couldn’t remember them now. In fact, what he did remember of his dad seemed fake. He’d been fun, he’d laughed a lot, he’d taken Everett to the park all the time. And then he’d run away and disappeared. How could those things go together?
Everett inched the volume up until his mind was too blanketed with music to let anything else through.
He wasn’t supposed to listen to his iPod while walking on the road, because his mom said a driver distracted by texting could race up behind him and he wouldn’t hear the engine. But she worried way too much, and Everett was already breaking rules, so why not one more?
With a quick glance over his shoulder, he removed one earbud just in case.
When he got home his mom was on her office phone, fingers clacking away at an ancient keyboard while she argued with someone about the late notice they’d received. She had to do a lot of that. Had to threaten people that their prized possessions would be sold if they didn’t pay. That was what happened on those antiquing shows, though that part wasn’t discussed much. “You got poor and couldn’t pay your bills, so we’re taking your things” wasn’t a selling point for a show.
His mom hated that part of her work. He knew she hated it. He knew she sometimes shifted things around so she could wait another month before calling the auctioneer. He’d heard her make phone calls, begging people to pay just one month of rent to stave off the eviction. And he’d once heard her crying in her bedroom after a confused old lady came in looking for her belongings a full year after her lease had lapsed.
Everett was never going to have a job like that. He was going to be a vet, probably. Or maybe a cop. He wanted to help people or animals or both. He didn’t remember much about his dad, but he remembered the many, many times the police had come around those first few years, and the comforting feeling of his mom telling him not to be scared, they were only trying to help.
Could he be a cop if he got caught in someone’s storage locker? He was pretty sure juvenile records were secret, but maybe they weren’t secret to the police.
He added that to his mental list of things to google when his mom wasn’t over his shoulder at the family desktop. He added another note to delete his history afterward.
She’d promised he could finally buy himself a phone when he turned thirteen if he saved up for it. He would. All his friends had phones already, and their grimaces of sympathy were so embarrassing.
After dropping his backpack on the floor by the computer, he went straight to his room and opened the window. Shadow immediately jumped down from the privacy fence that surrounded their tiny cement patio as Everett reached for the container of cat food he kept hidden beneath his bed.
“Good girl,” he whispered. She watched for him to come home now and was always waiting nearby. He spread some food across his windowsill, and she leapt up effortlessly to eat.
“Hey, Shadow,” he cooed, scratching between her ears as she purred and ate and rubbed into his hand all at once.
They couldn’t keep a pet here. It wasn’t allowed. But Shadow was definitely his, even if his mom didn’t know. He pressed his forehead to her warm body for a moment and let her pleased vibration shiver through him. Sometimes when he felt really lonely, he opened the window late at night and let Shadow curl up into a tiny warm circle between his feet on the bed.
If he got fleas, his mom would kill him.
“You won’t give me fleas, will you?”
She bumped her head against his hand in answer. Everett sighed and closed the window before his mom could finish her work and walk in. She always made a ridiculous show of asking about his day after school when all Everett wanted to do was listen to music and play video games and not talk about the boring seven hours he’d just survived. It wasn’t his fault they were out here at the edge of civilization with no one to talk to.
But no goofing off today. Today he had to be sure to finish his homework early. He dropped into the chair at the tiny desk in their living room and unzipped his backpack. A one-page history essay was due tomorrow. No big deal. He hated writing, but it wasn’t exactly difficult for him.
He quickly scrawled out half a page on early Kansas settlers, then closed his pen and stuffed the paper back into his folder. He could finish the last paragraph on the bus no problem. He got through the math he hadn’t completed during the bus ride home; then after a split-second glance at his science vocab, he checked it off, signed the paper, and left it out so his mom would see proof that he’d done something.
Finished.
Free.
Everett shifted the wobbly office chair slightly, wincing at the pained squeak. It was some old piece of shit his mom had salvaged when the corporate office had sent her a new one. Most of their furniture was salvaged, often from renters desperate to get rid of their old stuff. They were lucky to have it, she told him. He didn’t feel lucky.
Holding his breath, he shifted his squeaky chair one more time, then listened for the click of his mom’s nails on the keyboard.
Thirty seconds later he was logged in to Discord. Hey Mikey, he typed, then waited. And waited.
What up? his best friend finally responded.
You busy?
Yeah I’m on Twitch. When are you gonna upgrade that pos computer?