The Oatmeal Conspiracy by Rachel Hwang (read e books online free .txt) 📕

One afternoon, the playbill for a musical that had driven my father to tears, was discovered missing from its place among the vacation memorabilia on the mantel. None from our family would dare move something so iconic. It simply had to have been an outside job. We had a serious family discussion after that, and decided that no thief, even a good one, could be any great aficionado of Rogers and Hammerstein.

“The fellow must have a serious motive,” Grandfather concluded. “Well, or else be a complete lunatic.”

“I cannot say which frightens me most,” my mother said.

“Could be a woman,” my sister added. “I didn’t think men were ever quite so clever.”

But while the slippery thief continued to elude us, his feats became more and more fantastic, although no more logical. And things continued to vanish.
Spoons began to disappear from right under our manila countertops, one by one, to the point at which we were forced to eat our oatmeal in shifts, grandparents, parents, then children last. It was terrible, waking unable to immediately settle angry stomachs. It did cause a few hard feelings between the generations.

Less than a week later it was my father’s bedroom slippers. I remember him bounding into the kitchen, plaid flannel robe flapping around his ankles.

“This is too much,” he huffed, indicating his seldomly seen bare feet. “This is simply too much.”

“What makes people like that think they’re okay?” my brother Billy asked. He seemed upset by this crime in particular, although I suspected it was more likely the disappearance of the bottle of vodka from under his bed.

Before the appearance of our kleptomaniac, despite our number, we had never had any serious theft problems before. Having a crook of our very own changed things. Ironically, we simply grew more trusting of one another.

Oh Sisley, I knew you wouldn’t have taken my hat without asking.

That dirty thug was likely the one making off with our milk last month.

I bet that sly bastard was the one who eloped with Cousin Jamie’s fiancée, two weeks before the wedding.

What’s next? We all asked one another. The tablecloth from under our supper? The socks from under our shoes? The mud from under our lawn?
Not far off the mark. The canary was found flying loose the next day. Her cage was nowhere to be found, stolen from right under our matching, prominent noses.

Groups of family members huddled around the breakfast table, taking turns pointing fingers. The neighbor’s boy? That homeless man from two streets over? The teenage girl who wears much too little? She comes from a bad family. Bad parenting, poor girl. And we’d all solemnly shake our heads.

In a unanimous vote, the family appointed bony aunt Birdie to spend the nights out on the porch, standing guard. She never had anything better to do anyway. If I were a bandit, masked or not, the sight of that sharp chinned woman cradling a rifle in her skinny arms would be enough to set me on the straight and narrow.

All to no avail. It was all so perfectly orchestrated, in an uncanny sort of way. It was perhaps some grand sport, our possessions merely pieces in one large-scale game of Jenga.

But I somehow always assumed I’d be the one to finally catch the crook. Absently, I’d stroke the household’s substantial cat, Chuck, and imagine my encounter with the alleged thief. Obviously, this person would be masked, mustachioed, lean and lanky.

On my way back from a midnight bathroom break, I discover him making off with the latest batch of our treasures. I drop my glass of water, a thud of thick glass on thin carpet. The thief turns, slowly, because he knows I won’t give him away. Saluting me, Thank you, he says. Or, I’m sorry, he says. A plume of vibrant smoke. Then he scampers up the chimney like Santa Claus in reverse.

“You’re far too fanciful,” my sister decided. “And stop using gender specific pronouns.”

Publication Date: 01-29-2010

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