The Girls I've Been

by Tess Sharpe

  Deputy Reynolds: Someone mentioned the bank on the scanner earlier, but no alarms have gone off. Let me check . . . Here it is. The bank manager was in a car accident on the way to work. They took him to the hospital. You think Nora’s pranking you?

  O’Malley: She wouldn’t. I’m heading over.

  Deputy Reynolds: I’ll meet you. Don’t go in until I show up, okay?

  [Silence]

  Deputy Reynolds: Okay?

  [End of call]

  — 4 —

  9:19 a.m. (7 minutes captive)

  They’re arguing. Red and Gray Cap. Red’s freaking as the guard lies there on his back, bleeding into the carpet. Thank God he only got shot in the arm. He’ll probably be okay. For now. But someone needs to put pressure on his wound, and they’re just ignoring him.

  “I told you this was a bad idea. You said no one would get hurt. That we’d just get Frayn into the basement to open the—”

  “Quiet,” Gray Cap growls, casting a glance toward us.

  I keep my head down, but I’m listening to every word.

  They’ve got to be talking about safe-deposit boxes. That’s what’s in the basement. Those things are gold mines of secrets. People love stashing stuff in there that they don’t want anyone else to know about. But if the bank manager is the only person who can access the basement where the boxes are kept . . .

  That’s why they need him. And if he isn’t here?

  Boom goes their plan.

  No wonder they’re panicking hard enough to shoot. Someone might’ve heard the gunshot, but the bank is the only thing left in this once-full strip mall. And even if no one heard it . . . my text to Lee went through. Any minute, she’s going to bring the wrath of O’Malley Private Investigations down on these guys. She’ll probably rope in the sheriff’s department. They’re not great, but they’ll bring guns.

  More guns aren’t always good, though. In most situations, more guns make everything worse. And cops always make things worse. But it’s a risk I had to take to let Lee know something was wrong.

  “Lock the doors and go watch the parking lot,” Gray Cap orders. Red Cap scurries to obey, like he’s grateful for something to do.

  He’s gonna be the weak link here. The mark, if I need one. My mind’s skipping like flat rocks on a still pond, trying to make a plan.

  “You,” Gray Cap barks. Wes stiffens. His chest’s still practically in my face, and I can feel his muscles flex as I realize Gray Cap’s talking to him. “You’re husky. Drag him away from the windows.”

  Wes glances down at me, just a one-second glance before he stands up, and the look on his face tells me not to worry.

  Which, of course, sends me into a freaking tailspin. What’s he going to do? He better just follow the guy’s directions.

  Gray Cap’s gun and attention are on Wes as he moves toward the security guard, and it makes my skin crawl. My hand twists in Iris’s, and she squeezes, trying to reassure me, but there’s none of that here.

  Wes bends, hesitating as he tries to figure out the best way to move the guard without hurting him more. He hefts him up in one movement. Wes is tall and strong, and sometimes that helps him, but here, right now, it makes him the biggest threat in this entire bank to those men, and my teeth dig into my lower lip as he turns to look at Gray Cap.

  “Where do you want him?”

  “Over there.” The man gestures with the gun toward the little lobby area, where the kid’s still hiding under the table.

  My stomach drops, because Wes hesitates. That gun in Gray Cap’s hand snaps back to him so fast, Iris sucks in a soft breath next to me.

  “Was I not clear?” Gray Cap asks, and there it is. The anger in his voice. I’ve been waiting for it. Poised on a knife’s edge until I heard it.

  There’s nothing like an angry man with a gun. I learned that early.

  “Sorry, man, this is gonna hurt.” Wes shifts the guard up, his face twisting as the man lets out a punch of a sound, all pain and fear. Wes handles him as gently as he can—I can see how careful he’s being; Wes is always careful—but more blood spills down the man’s arm as Wes places him down in the lobby area, away from the glass doors.

  Gray Cap grabs one of the heavy posts that holds a sign advertising mortgage loans, tears the sign part off, and threads the metal pole through the handles of the bank’s door, making it hard to flee and harder to breach.

  This is getting worse by the minute. We don’t have police in Clear Creek; we’re too small and rural. We just have the sheriff and his six-deputy team, two of whom are part-time, and the closest SWAT team is . . . God, I don’t even know. Sacramento, maybe? Hundreds of miles away through the mountains.

  “All of you, get over there in the waiting area.” Gray Cap gestures to where the guard and the kid are. We obey, and the teller joins us, her face still wet with tears as she stares down at the guard. Iris whips off her cardigan and presses it against the guard’s shoulder, and then the teller seems to snap out of it, taking over for her with a shaky nod.

  “It’s gonna be okay, Hank,” she tells the guard. His mouth twists in pain as she tries to stop the blood.

  “Are you okay?” I ask the kid. Her eyes are wide and glassy. She jerks her head quickly.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Wes tells her.

  “Quiet, all of you. I want your phones, purses, keys, and wallets, everything in a pile, right there.” Gray Cap points with the gun to the lobby table.

  I place my phone and wallet on the table, Wes following my lead.

  Iris sets her wicker-basket purse carefully next to our stuff, the red Bakelite cherries attached to the handle shaking at the movement. She glances at me as she sits back down, a gleam in her eye, and my stomach jolts as I realize what’s missing on the table: She still has her silver lighter. I saw her pocket it in the parking lot. And it’s still there, tucked in the folds of her vintage dress. The skirt is full, falling over Iris’s second-poofiest crinoline, and the dress is tailored so well that the pocket’s hidden in the sharp folds of cotton.

  They don’t make clothes like this anymore, Nora. She’d said that the first time we met, when she was spinning in that red skirt of hers with the gold swirls. It had flared out around her like magic, like she was the flick of flame before an inferno, and I hadn’t been able to breathe around how much I wanted her to be something in my future.

  Just like right now. She’s my present and my future, with our only weapon tucked into deceptive layers of cotton and tulle. She’s already thinking this through to freedom, and it’s the spark of hope I need.

  I nod the slightest bit to let her know I get it. One edge of her mouth quirks up so her dimple flashes, just for a second.

  Asset #1: Lighter

  — 5 —

  The Iris of It All

  When I met her, I didn’t fall for Iris Moulton like a ton of bricks.

  No, I actually tripped over her, like she was a ton of bricks.

  One weekend last year, I’d been running some files downtown for Lee, and I wasn’t looking where I was going. Next thing I know, I’m falling ass over ankles, the papers are everywhere, and this girl, this freckled brunette who looks like she’s cosplaying a Hitchcock movie, is tangled up with me.

  It was the perfect meet-cute, except when you’re a girl who likes other girls, there’s this little additional dance, because what if she doesn’t? So you’re not looking for red flags like a girl does with a guy—you’re looking for rainbow ones.

  I thought we were going to be friends. And we were, at first. But I told myself that’s all we could be. After everything with Wes . . . I told myself I couldn’t. Not until I figured out how to explain everything in a way that didn’t ruin everything. And I was pretty sure that was impossible, so basically, I was looking at a life of celibacy and misery and hiding.

  Then there was Iris, w
ith her poofy fifties sundresses and her wicker purse shaped like a frog and that fixation on fire that would be creepy if you didn’t know she wanted to be an arson investigator.

  It took months. She slow-rolled a kind of subtle romantic warfare I didn’t even see coming, and then one day, I was on a date with her before I even realized what was happening. It was a whole Mr. Darcy/Elizabeth Bennet I was in the middle before I knew I’d begun sort of thing, where I was Darcy and she was Elizabeth, and I do not have the gravitas or snobbery to pull a Darcy, let me tell you. But apparently, I had the Darcy cluelessness, because we were halfway through dinner before I realized it was maybe a date. Partly because I kept telling myself it couldn’t be a date.

  And I wasn’t completely sure until she turned to me on our way home, halfway through the crosswalk on the empty street, and just stopped. Her hand slipped around my waist and her hip brushed against mine like she belonged there, and it felt like she did, in every vital part of me. The last thing I saw before her lips met mine was the WALK light illuminated in her eyes, and she kissed me like I was prickly, like I was already understood, like I was worth it.

  It had been sparkly. I hadn’t even realized you could feel sparkly. I thought it was strictly a sequin-and-glitter-and-precious-gemstone thing, but then all of a sudden Iris Moulton kissed me and proved me wrong, and it was just sparkles lighting up my darkness everywhere.

  I didn’t fall for Iris like a ton of bricks.

  I fell like I was a star and she was the end of the world. A cataclysmic crash of two people, never to be the same. Never getting back up.

  Not unless we were doing it together.

  — 6 —

  9:24 a.m. (12 minutes captive)

  1 lighter, no plan

  “What’s this?”

  Gray Cap’s pulled the bank bag from Iris’s purse. He unzips it, inspects the thick wad of cash, and then looks at her.

  “It’s money we raised for the animal shelter,” I say quickly. His attention slides from her to me, and the relief knocks inside my ribs like that silly, ornate bee door knocker Lee put on our front door. “We had a fundraiser. Take it. There’s almost three thousand dollars.”

  He laughs, and it’s a sound I know, just like the gun is a sight I know. It’s curling in its cruelty and condescension. Designed to snake around me and make me feel even smaller than the gun does.

  But I’m past the fear now. It’s not gone, but it’s not useful. I can only do useful right now.

  “Handing over the big bucks, huh?”

  The more he talks, the more I learn. So I should keep him talking. “It’s what we’ve got.”

  He tosses the open bag on the table, and the money skitters out, fanning across the polished surface. “It’s not what I want.”

  Then he grabs the table, dragging it—and all our phones—away from us.

  What do you want? That’s the question, right? My mom used to tell me: Give a person what they want, you’ll have them in the palm of your hand. That goes double or maybe even triple for bank robbers whose plan has gone kablooey.

  They want the bank manager. They can’t have him. So that means they need what the bank manager would have given them.

  Access to the safe-deposit boxes.

  How do I give them that? Do I need to give them that? Or do I just need them to think I can give them that?

  A plan is flitting in my brain like a bug around a porch light, but I’m not sure where all the pieces fall yet. I need more. More information. More clues. More time to understand the dynamic between these two.

  But I’m not going to get it. Red Cap lets out a noise from the door, startled and worried.

  “Someone’s coming,” he calls from his lookout spot. “Woman.”

  Gray Cap’s focus whips from us to the door.

  It’s like the seven of us tense as a unit when the sound of the door rattling fills the dead-quiet bank. The sound echoes off the walls and then stops. Agonizing seconds tick by.

  “She’s heading back to her car.”

  “Keep out of sight,” Gray Cap snaps.

  It’s a breath-holding moment, and just when they’re about to let it out . . .

  Feedback lances through the parking lot. You can hear it clear inside the bank before her voice booms through the walls, magnified by the megaphone:

  “I’m talking to the person who’s got the gun inside the bank. My name is Lee. In a few seconds, the phone in there’s gonna start ringing. That’ll be me calling. Pick up, we can figure out a solution to this problem you’ve found yourself in. Don’t pick up? Well, that’s a choice you can make. I don’t think you want to make that choice, though.”

  As soon as she stops talking, I start counting.

  Ten. Nine. Eight.

  Red Cap scrambles away from the door, peering out the window instead.

  Seven. Six. Five.

  Gray Cap rounds on us, the wounded guard, the scared teller, the older lady, the three teenagers pissed off at each other, and the kid.

  Four. Three. Two.

  His gun’s rising. Mouth’s opening. Anger’s coming. The dangerous kind.

  One.

  The phone behind the teller’s booth starts to ring.

  Go Time.

  — 7 —

  The Sister in Question

  I should elaborate on my sister here. Because yes, she is the type of woman who comes equipped with a megaphone. Also a shotgun that shoots beanbag rounds instead of bullets, and the kind of fist that feels like it’s full of goddamn lead even when we’re just sparring.

  Lee’s almost twenty years older than me, so she’d gotten out before I was even born, ditching Mom a few years before then. We’re not full sisters, but we’re bound together by the same crooked set of con-artist genetics.

  She was a kid during a time where Mom wasn’t grifting. Lee’s dad, he’d been a completely regular guy, but he died. And that’s how Mom got into running cons: to keep the lifestyle she was used to.

  It all unraveled pretty fast. When they fell, they fell from a damn tall height, so the crash was all the worse. And when they rose again, what Mom did to rise like that . . . Well, Lee doesn’t talk about that time. Not when she’s sober, at least.

  I wonder if she thinks I’ll judge her. I don’t know how she thinks I could. She knows what I’ve had to do to survive.

  Broken girls, both of us, growing up into women with cracks plastered rough over where smooth should be.

  Me, I was born into the con. Came into the world with a lie on my lips and the ability to smile and dazzle, just like my mother. Charm, people call it. Useful is what it is. To see into the heart of someone and adjust accordingly, instantaneously, to mirror that heart? It’s not a gift or a curse. It’s just a tool.

  I’ve never known a time when Mom wasn’t working someone. Or what it’s like to have a dad who loves you, even briefly. And I’ve never known a life outside of lying.

  But I remember the first day I met Lee. I was six, and she was . . . strong. In the way she moved, how she dressed, the look she shot Mom when she started making excuses about my not going to school . . .

  I’d never seen anyone who could shut Mom up. Mom was the one who bewitched people.

  Lee didn’t need to bewitch. She commanded.

  I’d never felt more instantly connected to a person in my life. I didn’t love her immediately. I was already too wary for that. But I recognized something in her, something I wanted to be but couldn’t even articulate yet: free.

  I didn’t know then that she walked away from that day with a plan forming. The idea that I was out there under Mom’s thumb gnawed at her. And Lee, she’s the type that gnaws right back. It would take six years for her to execute her plan fully. But when she’s got a mission, Lee’s scary-focused. And getting me away from Mom was her mission.

  Now? Gettin
g me out of the bank is her mission. But I’m not twelve anymore, and she’s not alone this time.

  She’s got me.

  — 8 —

  9:28 a.m. (16 minutes captive)

  1 lighter, no plan

  Gray Cap’s gun is steady, but his eyes aren’t. They’re darting back and forth, from the seven of us to the ringing phone, then to Red Cap’s position near the door. He can’t decide where to pour his anger.

  I can see the moment it clicks. His focus zeroes in on the teller to our left, the shotgun swinging to point at her. “Did you hit the alarm?”

  I’m jammed between Iris and Wes like Nora-meat in a sandwich, so when Wes tenses and Iris’s breath hitches, I don’t just hear it and feel it, I’m practically absorbing their stress through my skin. Because they both know if Lee’s outside, it’s because I sounded the (metaphorical) alarm.

  “No, no, I didn’t!” the teller insists.

  He steps forward again, into the little lobby we’re crowded in, and we can’t shrink away fast enough because there’s nowhere to hide.

  “Is she in a patrol car?” Gray Cap asks Red, who’s still flattened against the wall, peering out the sliver of window available to him.

  He shakes his head. “Silver truck. She’s dressed normal.”

  “Gun?”

  Several. But Lee won’t pull them out unless she has to.

  “Can’t see one.”

  Gray Cap is just itching to shoot someone. I can see it in every line of his face. I know that look.

  The phone keeps ringing. My sister’s outside, a wall and who knows how many feet away. Lee’s been my sense of safety forever, and I want her like I’m little again. Like I wanted her that night when everything went to hell.

  I have to remind myself I’m older now. Almost a grown woman, with my shit-kicker boots and my choppy hair, and all the damage wrought on me scarred into strength. I hate the whole “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” saying. It’s bullshit. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you is worse. Sometimes what kills you is preferable. Sometimes what doesn’t kill you messes you up so bad it’s always a fight to make it through what you’re left with.