A Thousand Words

Micky Taylor, a community college student, finds a small notebook left by a classmate who nearly mows her down on his way into class before a math exam. He glares at her with the most distinctive hazel eyes. Micky intends to drop the notebook off at Lost and Found before leaving campus, but she is in such a rush that she forgets, and the notebook remains in her backpack. One night she spies it in her backpack while she and her friends are out to dinner, the same night they read about a rash of thefts from the campus crime website and tell stupid crook jokes. The abandoned notebook belongs to Ronald Downing, who had recorded some of the items he and his friends had stolen on campus. It takes him awhile to realize the notebook is missing. A budding artist, Micky later sketches Ron's face from memory as an assignment in art class. His hazel eyes and arrogant scowl haunt her. Ron and his cohorts continue to steal small electronics, computer laptops, and anything of value they can get their hands on. They slip unnoticed into the bookstore, classrooms, the library, and campus activities such as the emergency training day, service learning day, and an off campus broadcasting internship site. When Micky's friend Matt realizes his credit card may have been stolen from the fitness center, she becomes suspicious about the notebook, but her friend Cerita and brother Dan think she has an overactive imagination. Squelching her gut instinct, Micky does not act on her suspicions. Later on Dan urges her to wait until he can ascertain if one of his friends may be involved in the thefts, which have been chronicled by now in the school newspaper by one of Ron's accomplices. Jackson discreetly edits out certain details in his byline to protect the cohort of thieves.