My Friend Louise

The first time I noticed it; we were in a bookstore. The smell of paper and plastic curled around us as we wandered through the aisles, fingers brushing against the spines of novels new and old. Louise hummed softly beside me; her lips curled into a knowing smile as she reached for a book—The Handmaid’s Tale—we had both read it at least four times. Flipping through its pages with casual ease, Louise carefully shelved the book, then, without hesitation, she slipped a small leather bookmark into the sleeve of her sweater.

It was nothing, really. A bookmark. A sliver of a thing, hardly worth mentioning. But it was the way she did it—so fluid, so practiced—that made my stomach twist into knots.

“You like that one?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady.

Louise grinned, tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear. “It’s a little overpriced for a scrap of leather, don’t you think?”

I should have said something then. Should have questioned her, confronted her. But Louise had always been the kind of person who made everything seem like a joke, sharp as a knife but never cruel. She was the type of girl who remembered the names of waiters, who stayed late to help clean up at parties, who once spent an entire afternoon helping an old man who had left his briefcase on the train. Louise was good. Sweet.

And yet, every time we were together, she stole something.

At first, it was small things. Hair ties, lip gloss, a pair of sunglasses left unattended on a café table. Objects of little significance. But the habit grew, stretching its fingers into the places I didn’t want to look. Loose cash from an open purse. A watch forgotten on a dressing room bench; once even a wedding ring. It wasn’t as though she didn’t have money—we both worked at the same Italian restaurant in the city, and our families were reasonably comfortable. I started keeping track, noting each theft like tally marks inside my head. Every time she emerged from a store with bulging sleeves, or left a shop in a seemingly innocent hurry, as though she had only come in to browse while she waited for her bus. It was a quiet kind of horror, one that settled in my bones, making my skin feel too tight around my body and my heart sink to my stomach.

I told myself she wasn’t hurting anyone; it’s not like she was robbing banks. But I’d still get clammy whenever I thought about it.

“Do you ever feel bad?” I asked one evening as we lay on my bedroom floor, staring up at the ceiling.

Louise turned her head, her dark eyes glinting in the dim light. “About what?”

I hesitated, it felt taboo to bring it up. “You know. Taking things.”

She sighed, stretching her arms above her head, a silver bracelet that I knew she would never buy jingled on her wrist. “I don’t plan it—it just happens. One moment my hands are empty, and the next there’s something tucked in my pocket like it belonged there all along.” She rolled onto her side, propping herself up on her elbow. “It’s not about the things, really. It’s about the moment. That second where the world tilts and everything is just… mine.” She held my gaze. “Do you ever feel like that?”

A shiver traced down my spine. “No,” I lied, tugging at the skin on my neck.

The truth was, I did. I felt it in the way my hands trembled when she slipped a necklace into her coat pocket. In the way my breath caught when she palmed a tube of lipstick at the drugstore. It was a part of me, too—that flicker of thrill, drowned out by a rush of wrongness.

One night, we walked home through the quiet streets, the air thick with the scent of rain. Louise laughed at something I said, nudging me with her shoulder, and for a moment, everything felt normal. Easy. But then, her hand brushed against mine, and I felt something cool and metallic press into my palm. A bracelet, delicate and gold, the price tag still dangling from its clasp.

I swallowed hard. “Louise—”

“Shh,” she murmured, her fingers curling over mine. “Just take it.”

And I did.

I told myself it was only once. That it didn’t mean anything. But the truth clawed at me, gnawed at the edges of my mind. I started avoiding mirrors, unable to look myself in the eye. At night, I lay awake, replaying every moment, every theft, every whispered justification.

And then, one day, she was gone.

It was strange, at first. The quiet in my head. The absence of her laughter, her voice, her touch. I wandered through the days like a ghost, waiting for her to return. But she didn’t.

Instead, I found myself standing in a store, fingers grazing the fabric of a dress I didn’t need. My heartbeat pounded in my ears. The air felt electric, charged. My hands trembled. My mouth was dry.

I could do it. Just this once. No one would know. No one would—

I snatched my hand away, almost tripping over my feet as I hastened out of the shop. The bell on the door chimed tauntingly behind me.

I pulled at the skin on my throat, wanting, needing more space to fill my lungs. The frantic thud of my heart was making my whole body pulse with panic. I had spent so long blaming Louise, so long pretending she was someone else. But there was no one else. There never had been.

Just me.

And all the things I had taken.

But it wasn’t just objects, was it? It was the parts of Louise I had let seep into me, the habits I had justified, the quiet shifts in morality that I had accepted. I wondered how much of her had truly disappeared and how much was simply living inside me now. Maybe that was the cruellest trick of all—people don’t just leave. They echo. They settle. They linger in the quiet moments, in the trembling of your hands, in the choices you pretend are still your own.