Cheap silverware.

Fake porcelain dishes.

Rings and earrings that looked like they came from one of those child jewelry stores.

Raven groaned at the amount of time she had wasted. She didn't know why she even came to raid Ms. Wolfe's house again. Last time she only found items that wouldn't sell well in a pawn shop. Sure the silverware looked shiny, but it was obviously from the dollar store. The porcelain dishes on display in the china cabinet? She'd seen a dog-bowl worth more money than those plates. She did, however, pocket a pair of silver bird earrings to keep for herself.

Her nerves had shot through the roof when she slid through the window of the house ten minutes ago. The initial moment of the whole breaking-and-entering thing always sent her on high alert. Her eyes would trace over every nook and crevice, searching for any sign of life as she tiptoed through the first room.

She despised the anxiety she felt for the first few minutes of the break-in. It made her careless and weak, two things she didn't need getting in her way. Once she could control her breathing, calm her racing heart, and wipe her brow, she was golden.

Raven tiptoed through the dark house even though Ms. Wolfe wasn't home. A thief's habits were the hardest to break. She crept into the kitchen, her stomach growling with anticipation. Wolfe always kept her fridge stocked with the best deli meats in the city. Raven swore her mouth watered as she gripped the handle and pulled the fridge door open.

She was greeted instead with rows, rows and some more rows of bottled drinks ranging from red to blue. There wasn't a single sliver of meat anywhere in the fridge. Did Wolfe acquire a new obsession with Powerade?

Raven darted to the cabinets, desperate to find something that would fill the gaping hole in her stomach. But when she opened each door, all she could find were canisters upon canisters of protein shakes. She dropped her arms to her sides in defeat. What the hell? Not even a package of crackers?

Wolfe was on a liquid diet at the worst possible time. Perhaps she felt guilty of all the animals she'd eaten, or maybe she realized that her heavy weight left her huffing and puffing from just trying to find the remote control. Whatever the reason, Raven didn't really care. She shrugged her shoulders and left the kitchen, placing herself in front of the window that looked out onto Fable Street, her favorite neighborhood to sack.

Fable Street was a quaint little neighborhood, set apart from the city that never seemed to sleep. She hated pick-pocketing the tourist crowds there. She always felt like eyes were on her, watching her every move. It was like they all saw through her and the wig she wore as a disguise. A street camera had caught her on video once and she never went back there to steal again. She snickered when she thought of the name that the news crew of Channel 5 had deemed her with after they witnessed her leaving the jewelry store on the corner of Eighth and Sycamore.

Goldilocks.

Raven gave them credit. It was catchy, and it fit the crimes. It especially fit the wig which was incredibly itchy. She reached up and tried to scratch through the blonde locks, but ended up having to tap her head to make the itch vanish.

Peering through the cracks in the blinds, Raven scanned the row of houses, searching for the next place she would attempt to scour. A few houses had their lights on. Some were dark, but still had cars parked in the driveway.

Raven thought she was out of luck until she spied a house she had never set foot in. An SUV had its lights on, shining onto the house as it slowly backed out of the driveway. Raven's eyes searched over the windows to find that every one of them was black.

Bingo.

She spun on her heel and hurried back to the window she had entered through. Just thirty seconds later, she was pulling herself over the top of Wolfe's fence and landing on the other side. She turned her head left and right, scanning for cars and people who might be watching. But she was a shadow in the night with her black leggings, tennis shoes, and jacket.

When the coast was clear, she ran across the street, her feet barely making a sound, the blonde locks she wore waving behind her like a cape. She stood in front of the house for only a moment as she double checked for zero signs of life from within.

Go time.

She scaled the fence with ease and tried for the easiest option first - the back door. She almost couldn't believe it when the doorknob twisted. Who didn't lock the door when they left their house? It was almost like they were inviting her in. Idiots.

That initial feeling of anxiety swept over her again, smothering her with restless heartbeats and ragged breaths. Come on, get a grip. No matter how much she reprimanded herself, it never seemed to help. If she could only be patient, wait a few minutes, then it would pass when she was comfortable.

The back door led into the kitchen, making the hole in her stomach grow even larger. A pile of mail sat on cool gray countertop, making her ever so curious.. She picked up the envelope on top and read the name listed.

The Behr Family.

Raven quickly slapped her hand over her mouth to keep from letting her laughter echo through the house. No one was home, but you could never be too careful. The Behr's? Really? Out of all the last names in the world, Goldilocks, the infamous thief of Fable Street, was robbing the Behrs.

Please tell me there's three Behrs. She looked at a few photos stuck on the fridge by colorful magnets. There was a picture of a man and woman with their arms wrapped around each other with their feet in the sand, and another of a small boy smiling one of those over-done full teeth and gum smiles. At the bottom of the boy's picture was a caption that read: Carson, Age 6.

The humor of the situation made the nerves she was feeling disappear and scatter on the wind like they never existed. She dropped the letter back onto the counter and made her way to the fridge, unable to resist temptation any longer.

The first thing that caught her eye when she opened the door was a six pack of pudding. She gasped and yanked it from the shelf and tore the box open, the individual containers falling onto the tiled floor by accident.

She stood still for a moment, trying to control the saliva that filled her mouth, to smother the temptation to fall to her knees and devour the pudding cups like an animal. She would much rather eat the noodle surprise she'd eaten at school lunch the day before, but she couldn't stand the ache anymore. Desperate times called for desperate measures.

She dropped to the floor and scooped them up in her arms. Tearing the top off of the first one, her tongue dove into the chocolate version of heaven. She moaned, yes, actually moaned, as the taste filled her mouth. Pudding may be cheap, but damn, it tasted good.

"This is just right," she whispered, mocking the fairy tale she'd heard as a child. "Oh my God, this hits the spot."

She threw the empty container to the ground and ripped open a new one, not caring to find a trash can and dispose of the evidence. She would be embarrassed to admit it one day, but the pudding took over.

She devoured every cup of pudding until each one was empty, and regretted it the instant her belly felt too full. As she glanced at the empty cups scattered on the floor, her stomach roiled. Even the thought of the chocolate made her face feel clammy and her throat freeze up.

Raven tore her eyes away from the pudding litter and held her hand to her stomach. If she didn't sit down, it was all going to come back up and it sure as hell wasn't going to taste as good the second time around.

She shuddered before stumbling into the small dining room adjacent to the kitchen. Sighing at the sight of a chair, she threw herself into it, ignoring the creak of the wood that echoed through the room.

The churning of her stomach subsided as she settled into the chair, letting herself relax for the first time in hours. The creaking continued with each movement she made, but she just figured it was an old chair. Nothing ever went wrong during her thieving anyways. Bringing her feet up onto the table, she leaned the chair back, balancing it on its hind legs.

Before she knew what was happening, the chair was tilting. Its back collided with the floor, the wood cracking and snapping from the impact and her added weight. Raven knocked her head on the tile. She groaned as she rolled off of the chair to assess the damage.

The chair was in shambles. The back had completely broken off from the seat and laid in pieces on the floor. From pudding cups to a broken chair, Raven was doing a knock up job, her best work yet. Why were things suddenly going wrong? With her luck, there was probably someone in the house that had heard the commotion.

"Hello?" a male voice reached her ears.

Raven rolled her eyes up towards the ceiling. Are you kidding me?

Someone hated her. She'd never had a break-in go wrong before, but on this night it seemed that she was doomed to fail - all the cards set against her. It was like the clouds opened up and reaped their vengeance on her after all her years of stealing.

"Who's down there?" the voice called again, but closer.

If she got out of the house without being caught, she swore she would change her ways. She would find another way to eat, another way to pay the bills that her drunken mother wouldn't pay. She would change, she promised, if she was just given a chance.

Raven scrambled on the floor as the sound of footsteps crept to her ears. She searched for the door she came from and found it, but the footfalls were coming closer and closer-there wasn't time to bolt for it. She turned in a circle, her eyes scanning, like a miracle exit would appear in front of her.

Instead she found a closet door. She yanked it open and stuffed herself inside, burying her shoulders between the hanging winter coats. The door was one of those with the pointless gaps cut horizontally across the wood. She never understood the reasoning for them. The only purpose she could think of was so that if someone was hiding behind the door, they could see out. And that was exactly what Raven did.

She leaned her face as close as she could without touching the door and looked through one of the cracks. A few breaths later and the owner of the mystery voice entered the kitchen with a bat in his hands. Her heart jumped up to her throat, quivering, making her whole body shake. What would he do if he found her? Pummel her to death with the bat? Oh, God.

He held the bat above his head, ready to drive it into someone's head if they tried to sneak attack him. When he saw the pudding cup mess she had left on the floor, he brought his arms down, confusion sweeping over his brow. She had to admit, a pudding massacre was a pretty random thing to stumble upon.

"What the hell?" he asked himself. "Someone ate all of my pudding." He lowered himself to the floor, resting in a crouch as he picked up one of the empty cups. Turning it in his hand, he studied it as if it might tell him who did it.

He dropped the cup back to the floor and stood straight, the moon shining through the window casting his face in a glow. As Raven stared at his face, she realized she recognized his eyes and his moppy chestnut hair. He was the same boy as the picture on the fridge - only he obviously wasn't six anymore.

Carson, if she remembered the name correctly, raised his bat again and stepped over the mess. He walked around the counter and straight into the open dining room. He was so close. Just a few more steps and he would be a hand's reach away, if the door wasn't separating them.

His eyes connected with the broken chair on the ground.

"And a broken chair?" he asked in disbelief. He turned over his shoulder quickly, ready to attack whoever might be sneaking up behind him, but no one was there of course. Raven was still trapped in the stuffy closet.

"I know you're still here," Carson called, turning in a circle with his bat at the ready. "Show yourself and maybe we won't press charges."

Yeah, right. She snorted at the ridiculousness of his comment, forgetting that she was supposed to be in stealth mode. Carson stilled, his eyes locking onto the closet door. She swore his irises burnt straight into hers.

The chocolate pudding was going to end up all over the closet. She was going to be caught, and arrested while covered in pudding vomit. Her mug shot would be pasted on every corner of the city and everyone would point and laugh at the infamous, skilled thief whose last crime was eating a six pack of pudding and breaking a chair.

No. I'm not going down without a fight. I'll go in kicking and screaming if I have to.

Carson tiptoed to the door with caution, his eyes wide, his hand shaking as he reached for the doorknob. The second it turned, Raven threw everything she could into a kick that Chuck Norris would be proud of.

The door slammed into Carson, knocking him backwards. He yelled in shock as he tripped over the broken chair pieces and fell to the floor. Raven wasn't about to check to see if he was okay. She dug her feet into the tile and sprinted forward, leaping over the chair and Carson with one big bound.

She ran right through the pudding cup mess, scattering them even more across the kitchen floor. Her hand was on the doorknob of the back door. All she had to do was yank it open and she was home free, but then Carson had to go and try to talk to her, making her second guess herself.

"Goldilocks?" he asked, making her freeze. "Are you really her?"

Raven spun back over her shoulder, her hand still grasping the doorknob. One wrong move from him and she was out the door.

"I'm no impostor," she replied, holding her chin high.

Carson rose from the floor, leaving his bat on the ground. The fact that he didn't find her intimidating enough to hold the bat, kind of insulted her. Just because she was a girl didn't mean that she couldn't kick some serious butt.

"Then what are you doing stealing people's pudding and breaking chairs?" he asked, almost comically. The nerve. "From the stories I've heard, she could infiltrate a bank without leaving any evidence. She could dive in through the ceiling of a museum Mission Impossible style."

Raven took mental notes. Both she'd never done, but they were fabulous ideas. Now only if she could somehow compromise the cameras.

"I had a bad night, okay?" she replied. "Now, if you'll excuse me..."

"Wait!" he called as she opened the door. Looking over her shoulder she saw him round the counters in the kitchen, inching closer to her. "What's your real name?"

Raven threw back her head and laughed. "Why would I tell you?"

"I said I wasn't going to press charges. You may have kicked the door into me like you were Jet Li or something, but you showed yourself like I asked."

"True," she said nodding her head. "Thank you for that."

A smile curled at his lips, almost making her want to smile back at him. Did he really think that she was going to tell him?

"Well, Carson," she said, delighted by the confused gleam in his eye. He must have been wondering how she knew his name. She'd never tell her secrets. "This has been lovely, but it's time for me to get going."

But she didn't see the water bowl when she entered the Behr house. She didn't even know she had knocked it over when she was running. Maybe if she knew, she wouldn't have turned to sprint. Maybe she wouldn't have flown backwards. Maybe she wouldn't have hit her temple on the corner of the counter. Then she wouldn't have blacked out on the kitchen floor in the home of a boy she'd just tried to steal from.

Could things get any worse?