Things were very different two years ago. Jubilee Jenkins lived the life of social butterfly by day, petty thief by night. Though sometimes it was the other way around. She liked to be spontaneous.

College had just ended four months ago. And, not to be self-congratulatory or anything, but she was pretty impressed with herself for graduating in only three years, while making a living completely on her own without any financial support from her parents because, oh right, they were dead.

Granted, she realized that graduating early didn't necessarily mean she was that smart, since her grades were just barely passing. And it didn't mean she was particularly ambitious, either; just that she was too broke to afford another year of college. Also, the manner in which she made a living wasn't necessarily honorable or anything to boast about. But, she had to confess, she secretly found herself to be pretty clever.

She'd gotten into this whole thieving trade during the second year of college, when she was nineteen, a few months after her father was involved in a fatal car accident. Mom had passed two years before that. She was running on empty; mentally, emotionally, financially. Money had never been easy to come by even while mom was alive, but after she died it seemed to dwindle even more, and by the time her father was gone there was nothing left for her in the will besides the debts of her own college loans. Thankfully, she received some grants here and there, some compensation from insurance…but on the whole, once it went into the loans and her day to day living expenses in the city, she barely broke even.

It was one day, while she was standing in a drugstore aisle waiting for her prescription of antidepressants—which she had recently started taking—to be filled, and pondering over whether she could manage to pass the class that had really taken a hit during her grieving process, and over her failed midterm in another class, and whether she'd be able to scrounge up enough change to have some dinner tomorrow, and trying not to think about mom and dad…that something inside of her snapped.

Maybe it had something to do with the mother in the next aisle saying to her teenage daughter, "Get whatever lipstick you want, honey. I want you to feel beautiful for prom." Maybe it had to do with the song playing over the speakers, "I Miss You." Maybe it was just because she was irritable from hunger.

But, for whatever reason, she quickly and quietly snatched three packs of ramen off the shelf and stuffed it into her bag. No one was in the aisle with her. She walked through the adjoining aisle next—which was by now also empty—grabbed an eye shadow palette and three lipsticks on her way down it, and nonchalantly threw them in her bag.

Then she marched up to the pharmacy desk, plastered a smile on her face, paid for her meds, and walked out of the store. Nobody stopped her.

Back at her dorm, she poured the contents of her looting onto her desk and stared at them. What had she been thinking? She didn't even need lipstick.

"Sweet color!" remarked her roommate, Alyssa, over her shoulder. She came around to Jubilee's side and admired the makeup, picking up the eye shadow palette to evaluate its contents. "Oo, this is a good brand. I could use some new colors for the party I'm going to tonight…could I use some of this?"

"Do you want to buy it?" Jubilee heard herself say. "I never used it and don't really wear makeup anymore."

"Yeah!" exclaimed Alyssa happily. "I mean, if you don't want it. I've been needing to get something like this for ages! I'll buy that lipstick too. Hey, do you want to come with me to that party tonight?"

An intuition that Jubilee couldn't quite discern yet made her say, "Sure."

That night Alyssa, the sweet girl that she was, insisted on putting makeup on Jubilee and dolling her up in one of her own nicer dresses. They arrived at a large fraternity house with blaring music, dim lighting, and throngs of college students milling about with beers in their hands. Jubilee politely declined the many drinks that were thrust at her from various different boys.

"Hey, pretty lady," slurred a guy with glasses and straight blonde hair. Jubilee looked him up and down. He was kind of cute, and heavily intoxicated. A wallet peeked precariously out of his back pocket. He swayed before her, smiling a goofy but charming smile.

"Hey," she said, gazing up at him through long, curled lashes, courtesy of Alyssa's artistry.

"I'm Brian," he declared. "Wanna dance?"

"I'm Jubilee," she answered, putting her arms around his waist and leaning to the beat of the music. Her fingertips brushed the top of his wallet. "I'd love to."

"Julie?" he yelled over the music.

"Jubilee," she corrected, like she had so many times before.

"That's a pretty name," he said, pulling her close as the crowd pulsed around them and the music played. "What does it mean?"

Her smile became tight. "Nothing. It's just a name." She pulled the wallet out of his pocket, twirled, and stuck it in her purse.

Around her, college students laughed and whooped belligerently. Brian happily lingered by her side for the next hour. She let him kiss her before she disappeared.

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In hindsight, he was probably a pretty nice guy. A bit nerdy looking, and in no place to be at a frat party like that hitting up girls, but alcohol had made him courageous. He was probably the type of guy she would have bumped into at the campus library, apologized profusely for knocking over his books, and then asked out on a coffee date. That is, if she had been in a mentally and emotionally stable enough place to be interested in a relationship.

Instead, she had gone back to her dorm room alone, emptied Brian's wallet of its cash—one hundred and five dollars total—and then dropped it off the next morning before class in the campus lost and found office. No reason for the kid to lose his driver's license and school ID, she reasoned.

There were perks to going to college in a big city like Chicago. No one was likely to ever recognize her again. Especially if they were drunk enough the night before.

Her skill for pick pocketing and shoplifting evolved and became more refined through the next year and a half. By the time she graduated, she had a hoard of expensive brand-name makeup from department stores, high-end jewelry slipped off of rich girls, and even a few designer dresses and shoes smuggled out of closets. And she was making a killing on eBay.

The trick was that no one would ever suspect someone like her to be a criminal. How could they? Poor sweet Jubilee Jenkins, the orphan girl with long brown hair and innocent brown eyes. Criminals were big thuggish men with tattoos and alcohol on their breaths. Not her, the skinny good girl who never drank or did drugs.

And how people did love a charity case. Classmates who were trust fund babies kept inviting her into their circle, and the parties that she attended went from frat parties full of rich kids to penthouse suite get-togethers stuffed to the brim with Chicago's social elite. Alyssa had opened her eyes to the fact that, if you looked and dressed the part, you could sucker anybody. Some of the goodies she stole ended up being used specifically for this purpose. In some ways, it was almost like a business investment.

Brian was not the last guy she seduced and then subsequently pick pocketed. Though Jubilee never experienced a genuine, steady relationship—after all, it would be unwise to leave a trail by dating the guy you just stole from—she lacked no experience in men. Most of the time, the biggest money she brought in was from one-night stands. The key was to target guys who were so drunk that they were sure to black out and forget what had happened the next day.

Morality had become an ambiguous notion to her. Some people said that when you went to college, your morals took a turn because your parents weren't there everyday to keep you in check anymore. Well, it must have been true, because Jubilee no longer felt any moral obligation to anyone.

It was ironic because she had majored in ethics. Maybe that was why she was so good at flying under the radar—she must have exuded a nature that seemed to have a deep conviction in what was right and wrong. Her minor in psychology didn't hurt either. Her degree was pretty much perfectly suited to set her up as a con artist.

So, four months after graduation, she had found stability and even, dare she say it, some semblance of financial security. She was living in a modest studio apartment, paying monthly rent, and even had a decent used car. It was a hard-won success—during the summer after her second year of college, after she had to vacate the dorms, she couldn't afford housing and was homeless for a while. She slept in the park, showered at the gym, swiped things off of shelves and used Wi-Fi at the library to list her loot on eBay. At night she managed to doll herself up inside of Starbucks restrooms before hitting the club or party scene to find her next new intoxicated friend to prey on. She was fortunate that this only lasted for a summer—it would have been brutal to be homeless during the winter, and still attend college.

But that was in the past. Now she had "made it." She had established a name for herself in the nightlife scene, and by day she ran a successful online eBay shop that had five stars based on reviews. She attributed her success to the shallowness of humanity. It never ceased to amaze her how much money she could make from stealing and then selling things that really were useless in the grand scheme of things. Makeup, for example. Who would have thought that women would pay hundreds and hundreds of dollars for brand-name makeup? But Jubilee couldn't complain too much. It was the shallowness of humanity that was feeding her and keeping her alive.

The goody-two-shoes façade had started to slip by now. One could only hope to do what she did and associate with the crowd that she associated with for so long until someone convinced you to take a drink, or smoke a joint, or snort a line. Men and women alike would be completely unrelenting until she acquiesced to join in whatever pleasure-seeking frivolity they were engaged in; and after that they were like putty in her hands.

And so it was early one morning around 9AM, on a brisk fall day in Chicago, that Jubilee was driving back to her apartment from a penthouse party which had gone on until 6AM and resulted in most of its guests crashing on the many couches. She was utterly hung over, had forgotten her sunglasses, and was squinting against the excruciating sunlight to concentrate on the street signs despite a ruthless headache forming in her skull. In her purse, which sat on the seat beside her, lay a set of diamond earrings, three gold rings, and six hundred dollars cash. It was when she was crossing an intersection that it happened.

She had run a yellow light at full speed. At least, it was still yellow when she had seen it a hundred feet away and made the decision to go for it. Being hung over did not aid in her calculations or decision making skills. By the time she was charging through the intersection, a line of cars was already entering the lanes perpendicular from her. It was too late to slow down.

Panicking, she jerked the steering wheel to the left and swerved towards the curb. A steel traffic pole loomed before her. Her brain screamed at her to hit the brakes, but in a moment of fear and confusion, her foot stepped down on the gas pedal. Hard.

The car accelerated straight into the traffic pole. Everything seemed to slow down in the seconds before impact happened. She was dimly aware of the barrage of honking all around her. A police siren began to sound—traffic patrol had already been nearby. She wondered for a split second if the helplessness that she felt right now was how her father had felt, right before he died.

Then everything sped up and her car crashed into the pole, crumpling like tin foil. The entire world seemed to jolt and turn on its head. Her neck snapped forward, slamming her forehead into the steering wheel, and everything went black.

Twenty minutes later there were ambulances and medics on the scene, along with the traffic cops blocking off the area and directing cars into different streets. A few drivers who had been witnesses to the accident were still present for questioning. One of them had gotten out of his car and run over to the paramedics as soon as they arrived, breathing hard and looking wildly concerned.

"Oh good Lord!" he cried when he saw the body that was being pulled out of the wreckage and laid on a stretcher. "Is she—will she make it?"

The paramedic didn't look at the man. Instead, he heaved a heavy sigh and shook his head.

Jubilee Jenkins had been pronounced dead at the scene.