AN- Well here it is, the chapter that I hope most of you were waiting for.

The why.

Guest- This chapter will give you the why. And yes I do think that Flippy has removed himself from Giggles group. (Thank God!)

Chapter 21

As Lifty sat, looking at Shifty, his mind was far away, recalling what happened months ago.

The policemen hadn't done the things he feared.

No handcuffs.

No reading of rights.

He was a juvenile, as was Shifty, and they hadn't been mistreated. He'd been too frightened to tell them his name. They had to look in his wallet for identification.

And then they had called their foster parents.

Shifty hadn't spoken at all, either. But that silence had come from defiance, not fear.

Even now, after he had gone over it in his head hundreds of times, Lifty still wasn't quite sure how Shifty had talked him into it. But Shifty was always good at convincing people. He was very... persuasive, when he wanted to be.

Lifty's thoughts were abruptly brought back to present time.

"Didn't I tell you I could find you anywhere?" Shifty asked. "You didn't believe me Lifty. That was stupid of you, I never lie about stuff like that."

"No, but you do lie," Lifty murmured, anger beginning to rise within him.

This shouldn't be happening to him.

This whole ugly mess of months ago was supposed to be behind him.

Over and done with.

The judge had put them both on probation and released them back to their foster parents. Who had promptly looked for any living relatives who could take them on. An aunt came out of no-where who could only take in one of us. As I was younger I was chosen to go with my aunt, I was told to "take advantage of this new opportunity and get your life together."

And wasn't that what he was trying to do?

But how could he when the past was sitting, an evil grin on his face, right there in front of him?

"You lied about the ring," Lifty continued bravely. "You said that it was cheap costume jewelry. And it wasn't. Five thousand pounds isn't cheap costume jewelry, Shifty. We could have gone to jail for a long time. And you lied about me. You told everyone it was my idea. It wasn't. It was yours."

His twin said nothing, but continued to regard Lifty with that sly, wicked grin.

"Was that stupid musical chairs game downstairs your idea? Lifty demanded. "Did you talk Giggles into helping you do this? I know better than anyone how good you are at talking people into doing things for you."

Shifty's grin widened, he then replied, "Don't be stupid! I don't even know the rich girl who owns the house. And I don't want to. Who needs her? I did this all by myself." The voice lowered. "That's the way I prefer it now. Who needs people? They'll just turn on you anyway, especially when your're in trouble. Look how the whole town turned on us."

"It was our own fault, Shifty. We never should have..." Lifty swallowed past the lump in his throat. It was so hard to say out loud. "We never should have tried to steal that ring."

Saying the words, giving the terrible memory a voice, brought it all flooding back in a wash of shame. It played in his mind as if he were watching it on a TV.

He didn't want to watch.

He wouldn't.

Not again!

But he was powerless to erase the images once they began.

Unable to stop himself, he re-lived again every miserable, frightening moment of it.

It had been a Thursday night. The shopping center was crowded, but Shifty said that was an advantage, that it would be easier to slip out of the jewelry store unnoticed.

They had planned carefully. Shifty knew exactly where the security guard would take his break. No one replaced him during his absence. Lifty's job was to distract the salesclerk while his twin pocketed the ring from a tray on display. Shifty had heard it done in stories loads of times and it had always seemed to work.

But those were stories.

Not real life.

And it seemed to be working... at first.

Lifty dropped his bag and sent the content all over the expensive carpet. The salesclerk exclaimed in dismay over the mess and hurried over to help Lifty retrieve his belongings.

While Shifty pocketed the ring.

That part of it went smoothly.

But as the pair walked out the door, being very careful not to hurry or look in the least bit guilty, an alarm sounded throughout the building. The noise sounded to Lifty like a million clanging fire engines, a million ringing bells, a million cymbals meeting. It froze his feet to the floor and stopped his pulse.

Still for a moment he could still pretend that the screaming sound had nothing to do with his actions. Denial kept him from passing out or breaking into a frantic run down the corridor, away from the store.

But when the salesclerk came over, he grabbed each of them by the elbow and dragged them back inside of the store, reality kicked him in the stomach, and promptly took his breath away.

During the only second when they were alone after that, in a moment the salesclerk and manager were confirming in private outside of the locked office where Lifty and Shifty waited, Shifty had shrugged and said "The price tag must have had a code in it that set off the alarm. I guess I should have checked that part out. If I'd known, I could have dumped the price tag right there on the counter. Well, live and learn, right?"

Shifty hastily made up story about taking the ring "by mistake," a simple error that "anyone could have made," failed to impress the clerk or the manager and, later, the police. The manager silenced Shifty's excuses with one cold hard look. His expression remained stony and unrelenting as the three of them waited in silence for the shopping center security guard.

He didn't buy the story either, and immediately called the police.

They arrived minutes later. Then the nightmare really began.

Curious shoppers, seeing the police arrive, came into the shop to stare. Seeing the pair in the office, surrounded by uniformed law officers, they began whispering, shaking their heads.

Then came the humiliation of being marched through the shop, past the onlookers, and then down miles and miles of shopping center corridor to the front entrance.

Passing people who knew them at school, seeing them gasp in disbelief.

Until that moment, he had never wanted to die, had never even thought about it.

True he wasn't the most popular guy at school.

That's why he had Shifty who was the second half of their double act.

He had never wanted his life to end.

Until that night.

But the floor beneath his feet refused to open and swallow him up, although he prayed fiercely for it to do just that.

Lifty had thought that nothing could be worse than that torturous walk of shame.

But he was wrong.

The worse moment was when Lifty began to lie.

"It was Lifty's idea. He wanted that ring more than anything. He told me if I didn't get it for him, he'd make my life miserable."

And the more the lies that were stubbornly repeated, the more Lifty realised that Shifty was beginning to believe they were true. Shifty now believed every word coming from the same mouth that told Lifty, "We wont get caught, honest! I could do this in my sleep, it's so easy. Quit being such a chicken!"

Shifty was now blaming him.

When the actual truth was the exact opposite.

Not that it mattered whose idea it was, they were both guilty.

But the ring had been recovered, and because of their ages they didn't go to prison.

Their punishment had been of a different kind. In a small town, word travels fast. And it wasn't the kind of small town that tolerated criminals, no matter what their age.

The taunts didn't stop until Lifty was taken on by a long lost aunt, who only had room for one of the duo. And as Lifty was younger, she chose to take him.

"No one came for me," Shifty said, now interrupting Lifty's miserable memories. "I was apparently all my fault. I was older. I should have been more responsible. Because apparently eight minutes makes all the difference!"

"I'm sorry," Lifty said softly.

"Shut up! After you left me all alone, I had nobody, I was completely totally alone." The voice grew harsher, cold as ice. "The whole thing was your doing. You talked me into stealing that ring. And then you deserted me. I can never forgive you for that, Lifty."

"No... it wasn't like that, and you know it. Why have you forgotten the way it really was?"

"Liar, liar, liar! If your precious new friends knew what a liar you are, they'd never have spoken to you. They shouldn't have." Shifty's expression grew dark. "They should have known better than to make friends with someone like you. You'd just betray them, they way you betrayed me. Your own twin brother!"

Lifty sat up straighter. "My friends? What do you know about my friends?" His stomach become knotted with fresh fear.

Was that why they hadn't come for him?

Had Shifty done something to them?

"Shifty," he said evenly, leaning forward, "what have you done to my friends?"