Run: 2026-02-16-01KHKAYYX4RFRZ9BKVWYX1AFWP

Night hung over the town, a velvet hush scented with rain and popcorn. Molly and Bill crouched behind a carnival trailer, their breaths fogging the air. Molly’s notebook wore creases from too many re-writes, doodles of capes and rubber ducks, a question mark where the plan should be. Bill wore a grin that looked more like a dare than a smile. They were thieves only in the sense that they believed luck could be rehearsed. Across the park, a children’s party hissed with balloons, cake, and tidy piles of presents that looked innocent as angels in wrapping paper. The plan lived in their heads like a paper dragon with a soggy tail, and they loved it anyway. Molly: Bill, tonight we become legends in the most ridiculous way possible. We don’t need blunt force, we need blunt cheerfulness. Bill: Leg-ends, she says. If we pull this off, I want a statue with a hat that squeaks every time someone touches it. Molly: We don’t pull it off. We pull off a mood. We drift in, we drift out, leaving everyone with a story about us that isn’t exactly true but sounds heroic. Bill: Heroic is good. Who doesn’t want to be the reason a kid believes crime can be charming and misunderstood? Molly: It’s not crime. It’s a prank with consequences, like your mom’s knitted sweaters, only more flammable with good intentions. Bill: I’ve never burned with good intentions before. Do we need a code word? Molly: The code word is “happiness.” If we say it, we remember we’re clowns with a budget and a bedtime curfew. Bill: Clowns with a budget and a bedtime curfew—that’s a party in a sentence. So what’s the actual plan, queen of whimsy? Molly: The plan is not to have a plan you could pin on a corkboard. It’s to be everywhere at once and nowhere at all, like a giggly rumor. Bill: A giggly rumor. I can work with that. The loot, though—the loot is just the obvious thing everyone wants to keep safe. Molly: The loot is harmless if you pretend it’s not real. We’ll treat the presents like shy rabbits in a garden and maybe persuade them to stay by telling them a bedtime story. Bill: A bedtime story for inanimate objects. My favorite kind of ethical dilemma. Molly: If someone asks what we’re doing, we tell them we’re conducting a social experiment in generosity and whimsy. Bill: And if they don’t buy it? Molly: Then we smile, shrug, and change the subject to cupcakes. Everyone loves cupcakes. Bill: Cupcakes save the day. So we wander in, we glitter the air with charm, we stroll out with a memory and a rumor. Molly: Exactly. No alarms, no alarms-signs, only the soft music of mischief and whatever the party DJ is pretending not to notice. Bill: I’m already feeling lighter. Like gravity took a vacation to a land where cake is law. Molly: Then let’s go audition our own legend. If we’re lucky, the presents will nap under the Christmas lights and wake up with stories about us to tell future burglars. Bill: Or at least to tell the kids at story time. Let’s do it. Molly: Tonight, we are not thieves so much as authors of a ridiculous, sparkling chapter. Bill: The best kind of chapter. Let’s begin.