Nothing to Lose Read Free Page A

While they worked, I looked around to make sure that the gull was gone for good.
    That’s when I saw someone dash around the far corner of the office tower, carrying
my
backpack.

I pounded down the pavement after the thief, yelling, “Hey! Hey!”
    The person with my backpack glanced over his shoulder at me. He had a hat jammed down over his head and a scarf pulled up over the lower part of his face. His dirty jeans flapped around his scrawny legs as he ran. His thin jacket looked more suited to a sunny spring afternoon than to a cold November morning. When he looked back at me, his eyes were big, and for a moment, I even thought he
was
going to stop. But instead he poured on the speed.
    â€œHey!” I shouted again. “That’s mine!”
    A homeless man curled up in a sleeping bag over a subway grate raised his head, looked around, and then lowered his head again, uninterested in my personal drama.
    The thief rounded a corner up ahead. I raced after him, determined to reclaim my backpack. It held my wallet, with all of my ID and money, my extra sweater (handmade, robin’s-egg blue—get it?—brought back from England for me by my mother), and a whole lot of Billy’s stuff. Oh, and three dead birds.
    I rounded the corner a few seconds after the thief and found the streets completely deserted. No cars. No buses. No pedestrians. And no thief.
    When I rejoined Billy and Morgan and breathlessly told them what had happened, Billy’s expression was more stricken than mine had probably been.
    â€œTell me they didn’t take
everything
,” he said.
    â€œHe stole my backpack, Billy,” I said, as patiently as I could. “He didn’t empty it first.”
    â€œYou mean he got all the banding equipment?” he said, as if this were the most precious thing I had been carrying.
    I nodded.
    Morgan positively beamed.
    Â 

    Â 
    Morgan was wrong when she said I could go home and sleep until noon. I had plans. Plans that I had made the night before while my mother dashed from the basement washing machine to her bedroom on the second floor, where she was packing for a business trip.
    My mother is a lawyer. She had been invited to speak at a national conference on youth and crime. For a lawyer, being invited to speak at a national conference is a
very big deal
, especially if it’s your first invitation and if you want to make a good impression. Being a Type-A perfectionist, she hadn’t merely prepared, she had
over-
prepared. But, as of last night, she was still convinced that she wasn’t ready. She was also convinced that she hadn’t packed the exact right clothes to (a) deliver her presentation, (b) be seen at the rest of the two-day conference, and (c) represent her law firm at the formal dinner that was scheduled to close the conference on Monday night. But that’s my mom for you. She’s good—actually, excellent—at what she does, but she always thinks she could be doing more—a
lot
more.
    She was on her way upstairs with an armful of clean clothes and a small suitcase when the phone rang.
    â€œI’ll get it,” I said.
    She hovered on the stairs until I told her it was for me. I waited until she had scurried up to her room before I said, “Hi, Nick.” My greeting came out sounding less than welcoming.
    â€œYou’re mad at me,” Nick said. “I can tell. Sorry, Robyn. I kept meaning to call, but I’ve been—” I heard a sigh on the other end of the phone. “I was going to say that I’ve been busy, but that’s no excuse. I should have called sooner. I’m sorry, okay?
Really
sorry.”
    The words came out in a rush, as if he were trying to tell me everything before I hung up on him.
    â€œWhat do you say, Robyn? Do you forgive me?”
    â€œI’ve been calling you,” I said. I’d called him every day for the past week. “But I can never get ahold of you.