Story I: Backgammon

If you cut a key the right way and learn to give it a good tap when you put it in a lock, you can open a dead bolt. It's called bumping.

Start at the beginning. What is bumping?

Mark’s stepdad worked at a box store and showed him how to use a key cutter to make a bump key and how you tap it right to make a dead bolt open. The whole high school was busting into each other’s houses.

Mark wanted to do “bump and runs,” in and out, leaving the key on the kitchen table or something, but for me bumping was a disease maybe like shoplifting. It was about sitting on their beds, looking in medicine cabinets, looking at pictures, going in their walk-ins. Feeling my heart pound. Everything about it.

Why do you think you liked it so much?

Don’t really know. It’s quiet. Sometimes I took my shoes off. [laughs] No, really. I took my shoes off.

It was electricity. I told Mark I didn’t want to do it anymore so I could do it alone.

You weren’t frightened to be in someone else’s home?

I found a Glock in a bedside table once. Loaded. 17 and one in the chamber. It was ready for business. I took the bullets out and lined them up on the nightstand t…