"I can't believe we're doing this." I whispered.

Jay stood before me with a wily smile on his face. We had mobilized in front of the house of my crush, preparing to execute the master plan for Operation Behind Blue Eyes. Only three days before, Jay had found out that Joey lived in the vicinity of one of our friends, Bea. We had initially intended to walk by and survey his living quarters, but now we were engaged in delinquent behavior, as we plotted to pilfer his property.

"Do you want me to get it for you or not?" he asked me. He knew the answer to that. I shook my head vigorously up and down; I wanted it so badly that I was stooping to swiping it just to have something that belonged to Joey in my hands. I watched Jay as he snatched the treasure and slipped it into his pockets. As my knees shook and my palms sweat, I scouted the area and looked into Joey's Venetian blinds from behind his shrubs, praying that there were no witnesses to our thievery. No, the coast is clear, I assured myself. Now that the deed had been done, it was time to make our getaway.

I winked at Jay and motioned in the direction of Bea's house. He knew what I meant. As inconspicuously as possible, we advanced toward our hideout. Once we had turned the corner from the scene of the crime, Jay and I were renegades - two light-fingered Louies running from the law.

Through neatly raked piles of golden browns and auburns and past curious strangers who were wondering what these two teenagers could be fleeing from, we finally made it to Bea's doorstep about a minute later. By the door was Bea, anxiously waiting for our arrival. She was our accomplice who had been in on our mischief from the beginning, but at the last minute, she backed out. (She'd said that she would rather go down for harboring fugitives than for committing the felony herself.) As soon as we entered the house, Bea slammed the door shut and locked it.

"So did you get it?" she interrogated us. As my cheeks flushed with a bright cherry hue and pangs of regret swept over my countenance, I nodded.

"Well, are you going to let me see it?" Wary of the frequent reconnaisance missions masterminded by little sister, we first verified the absence of any eyewitnesses who could testify to the perpetration of our malefaction. Then, Jay slid his guilty fingers into his Levis and pulled the object out. The cracked, tattletale gray surfaces of the thingamajig revealed that it must have been an antique. The typically jagged edges of the object must have been smoothed and weathered by the forces of nature. Since it was so brittle, Jay delicately handled the purloined piece, as he placed it before Bea's face. Her jaw dropped in a breathless wonder, as her eyes inspected the object. (She refused to touch it for fear that the fuzz would be able to trace the fingerprints back to her.)

"I can't believe you've finally got it, Molee," she eventually forced from her mouth. "Imagine everything you went through to get this." With that comment, an overwhelming sense of pride poured over me, touched with a bit of relief from our tour de force.

"You know what?" I inquired rhetorically. "I went through way too much trouble for this. I have to show it off to someone."

Bea suddenly shot a disapproving look at me and said, "Fine, but you know that I'm going to deny that I had anything to do with this, right?"

The next morning at school, I gathered some friends - Daniela, Beth, and Charline - to recount the adventure Jay and I had embarked upon the day before.

"Well, what is it?" Daniela asked in response to my vague description of the object. They all huddled over my hand and waited. As Jay and Bea looked on, I unclenched my fist, and my fingers peeled away to reveal my tiny prize from Joey's yard. My friends stood still, in shock. After a few seconds, Daniela finally slapped my arm.

"You wasted my time for a piece of mulch," she hollered. "A piece of mulch!" I said nothing, but taunted her further with my broad steel grin. At last, her own lips curled into a smile. Beth and Charline rolled their eyes at our caper at first, but soon began laughing along.

Suddenly then, the vice principal's voice boomed from the intercom and warned, "Less than five minutes until first period." So off I ventured to math class, with a smirk on my face and a wood chip in my hand, ready to confront the challenges of algebra and trigonometry. I realized that since I had risked life and liberty by stealing Joey's mulch, I had enough confidence to take on Pythagoras, Pascal, and the world.