The Mimosa Effect 2

My room-mate thinks I’m in a funk over some guy. Which is, I guess, technically true, but not the way she thinks.

I could say that he stole something from me, but that would be bending the truth a bit too far. It’s not like they knew I was there, never mind that I got there first.

For thieves, they weren’t exactly stealthy. They roared in on a pair of motorcycles, for one. Souped up Honda dirt bikes, by the sound of it. The kind of bikes kids buy after saving up for a couple of years flipping burgers and stocking shelves. They were giggling like little girls, egging each other on into the dark unknown of the old warehouse’s main floor. Broke my concentration. The tumblers might have been old and rusted, but they still tumbled. I was on the last number when they blundered in, whispering too loud, cracking dumb-ass jokes. Like they were showing off for some invisible audience.

I don’t know how long the safe had been there, but I was pretty sure no one else knew about it, or it would have been broken into long ago. There was a bunch of crap piled over and around it, but nothing that couldn’t be moved by the judicious application of leverage.

They were both bigger than me, jocks by the look of it. I made myself scarce, gritting my teeth and counting the seconds until they’d had their fill of fun and left me in peace.

They went right for it, the bastards, like they’d known it was there all along. The safe was half as big as the tallest one, a hulking ugly metal box, streaked with rust and grime and water damage. I didn’t wait to see if they knew what to do with it. I closed my eyes, flexed my fingers, and did that thing I do so well. There was a thud, followed by muffled swearing. Not the way it should have worked at all. I opened my eyes to see the shorter one bending over his friend, shaking his shoulders. I tried again, but nothing happened – nothing, that is, except the one thing I couldn’t possibly have expected.

The kid checked to make sure that his buddy was still breathing, shrugged like this kind of thing happened all the time, and turned back to the safe. There was enough light from outside that I could see his face, under the backwards-turned ball cap, scrunched up in concentration. He stuck his ear to the safe wall, and after a few deft twirls of the dial, there was a click – loud in the silence – and he was pulling the safe door open. My door. My safe. And to make matters worse, his friend was already stirring. Like the kid’s presence was somehow cancelling mine out.

They took what was in the safe, and I never even got to see it, to see if it was what it was rumoured to be. They had their backs to me the whole time. When I got there – after they’d left, laughing and high-fiving, the shorter kid ribbing his buddy mercilessly about his supposed fainting spell (“That’s supposed to be my job” – whatever that means) – the safe was empty. I would have followed them, if my beat-up old twelve-speed had any chance of catching up with their motorbikes. As it is, I got to ride home alone in fuming silence, empty-handed, and leave my room-mate to puzzle over my storm-cloud mood for the rest of the day.

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