The Girls I've Been

by Tess Sharpe

  “Get in the corner.”

  Wes plants himself in front of us in the corner as we obey, and Gray Cap’s mouth twitches at the show of protectiveness.

  “Go through it,” he orders, and for a second I’m confused, but then Red Cap steps inside.

  I watch as he searches the room and goes through the desk, tries to yank at the fake cabinets on the back wall that are sealed shut.

  “Goddamn it,” he says. “Nothing.”

  That’s when I realize they’re not trying to weapon-proof the room. They’re looking for something.

  Give the mark something they want. First step of a con. It builds trust. Find out what they want and provide it.

  Red Cap stalks out of the room and Gray Cap’s about to follow, so I tilt forward, trying to catch a glimpse of the hall, but it’s no use. I can’t see a thing.

  “There’s gotta be a toolbox somewhere,” Red Cap mutters as the door closes behind them, and then there’s just the sound of whatever they’re using to block the door being dragged back into place.

  I hurry over to the door and press my ear to it. Then: not voices, but sirens.

  Sheriff’s here. Things are moving too fast. I need time and I don’t have it. I have to make some assumptions.

  Assumption #1: The men out there aren’t just here for money, they’re here for something that only the manager has access to: the safe-deposit boxes. You need keys to get into those. Maybe even to access the vault they’re in.

  Assumption #2: They’re trying to break into the manager’s office because they need keys.

  The sirens are off now, but I can hear the distant sound of the bank phones ringing in the front. They’re trying to make contact again. Clock’s run out. Time to move, Nora. Make a damn plan.

  “Casey.” I turn toward where she’s sitting in the corner, slumped over and cried out. “I want you to tell me everything you know about your dad.”

  “My dad . . . What do you mean?”

  “You said your mom dropped you off. Are they divorced?”

  “Yeah, for three years now.”

  “Do you like your dad?”

  She frowns at me like it’s a ridiculous question, which tells me a lot. “Of course. I love him.”

  “Is he worried about money? Who wanted the divorce, him or your mom?”

  “Why does that matter?”

  Iris shoots me a look, then smiles reassuringly at Casey. “Honey, the guys out there? They’re here for your dad. And they aren’t trying to get into the cash drawers or the safe. That’s . . . well, it’s weird. So if you know anything, overheard anything, we don’t want to get your dad in trouble. We just want to figure out what those guys want. The sooner they get what they want, the sooner we can go home.”

  “Are we going to get home?” she asks, and she tries not to let the tears escape, but they do, and when she wipes them away, I give her the grace of pretending not to notice. She’s trying hard to be brave.

  Kids like her, they’re not trained for bank robberies.

  Kids like her, they’re trained for school shootings.

  Run. Hide. Fight.

  We all know the drill. We’ve all thought about it. We have to.

  Who will you be, if it comes down to it? No shame in running. No judgment in hiding. Nothing but fear in fighting.

  But here and now, there’s nowhere to run. No place to hide. So really, is there a choice?

  Be a viper, baby. Always be ready to bite back. That’s how I was raised. But you never know if you can do it until it happens to you.

  “Yes, we are getting home,” Iris says, and it sounds like she means it even though she’s just hoping. “But we need to work together. Is there anything you can think of?”

  “Dad was in Gamblers Anonymous, but he stopped going. That’s when my mom filed for divorce.”

  “Has anyone stopped by his place while you were there?” I ask. “Men looking for money? Has your dad gotten hurt lately? Any bruises? Broken bones?” Was this some sort of loan shark thing gone wrong? Is that why they aren’t wearing masks?

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Are there any nights he’s gone?”

  “I only see him three times a week,” Casey says. “But . . . we used to do Tuesday through Thursday, and now we do weekend through Monday. I know he asked for the change, because my mom was upset about losing our weekends. She told my aunt that he’d probably found a new poker game.”

  I frown, something twisting in my brain, and when I look up at Wes, I see his eyebrows are scrunched up, too.

  “Doesn’t your dad run his poker game on Thursday?” I ask Wes.

  Wes nods. “When my mom stays in Chico for the opera board meeting. He says it’s just friends, but you know him.”

  “Oh yeah, I know him.” It trips out of my mouth, all vile and disgusted because I can’t help myself. Mayor Prentiss hates my guts, and the feeling is very mutual. He first hated me because Wes wasn’t supposed to be dating a girl with short hair who owns more flannel than his son. It was Not Done. The horror! When we broke up, I know he thought he’d won the battle I started with him, but he’s always been bad at predicting Wes’s goodness; he couldn’t do a thing when we stayed friends. “How much money do you think is getting tossed around those games?”

  “I have no idea. It’s been years since I’ve been in the house during a game.”

  “Sorry,” I mutter, because this is a wound I don’t like prodding, but here I am, jabbing it. “You’ve seen the guys who show up at the games, though, right?”

  He nods.

  “Anyone like Red or Gray Cap ever show up?”

  “No way.”

  “What about a bank manager?”

  “Yeah, probably, if they knew someone and had the buy-in,” Wes says. “What are you thinking?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “The robbers know Casey’s dad from somewhere. If he’s a gambler, maybe he was blabbing somewhere.”

  “There are casinos,” Wes reminds me.

  “He wouldn’t want to be seen,” I say. “It broke up his marriage.” I glance apologetically at Casey, but she just keeps watching me. “He’s still respected in the community. He’s trying to keep his problem quiet. A private game with the mayor . . . That has prestige and a kind of social cover that public slot machines don’t have.”

  “So you think he’s in debt to someone at my dad’s poker game and they’ve sent thugs to rob him?” Wes asks.

  “No,” I say. “It’s just . . . they asked Lee for the manager, and now they want a toolbox.”

  “Which means they didn’t plan on needing tools,” Iris says. “They thought the manager would be here to give them access.”

  “They need something in his office,” I say. “Keys to downstairs, I’m thinking? His office is still locked because he had to go pick up the other teller. Olivia, the teller who’s here, must not have a key. So they’ll have to break in . . .”

  “I don’t get how that helps us,” Casey says.

  “If we know what they want, we can give it to them,” Wes says. “It builds trust. It might buy us time.”

  He’s echoing words I’ve told him, but his voice is as dead as his eyes, and he really is never going to let me live this down, is he? I pray that I live long enough to change that, but as I look up at the ceiling, trying to figure out how to pull this off, I’m starting to wonder if that’s even close to possible.

  My gaze snags on the air vent. In this old brick building, it’s one of the big ones.

  Big enough to fit into.

  The manager’s office is three doors down and across from this one. I saw the placard earlier. I’d have to be quiet. And quick.

  There’s a crashing sound through the door, and suddenly the constant telephone ringing stops. And then I hear Red Cap call my sister a name
I will not repeat here.

  My fingers curl into fists and I try not to wince when my nails press into my skin too hard. I keep my nails a little long, because sometimes you don’t have any weapons but you.

  I look back up at the air vent.

  It’s a bad idea.

  It’s a terrible beginning of a truly horrible plan.

  But it’s the only one I’ve got.

  Iris sits down next to Casey on the floor and starts talking to her about school, trying to distract her from the thumping coming from outside. It’s not working, but it’s an effort.

  I move across the room, right underneath the air vent, looking up at it.

  “What are you doing?” Wes asks quietly, following me.

  I point up at the vent. “Think you can boost me into there?”

  “We can’t get out that way.”

  “I don’t want to get out. I want to get in.”

  His eyes widen. “Into the manager’s office?”

  “They want in, right? Red Cap was looking for tools, because if they start shooting the door, the police will come in. So if I open the door from the inside . . .”

  “It’s dangerous.” He steps back, his arms folding, the universal sign of stubbornness, and then he does that twist of his lips that I’m so familiar with, the Wes sign of stubbornness. “You can’t.”

  “Wes, think for a second,” I say in a low voice. “Who does he remind you of?”

  I don’t need to clarify that it’s Gray Cap I mean, not Red Cap, who’s bumbling and reactive and we’ve both noticed.

  Gray Cap’s not bumbling.

  Gray Cap’s cruel. Wes and I both know cruel. I hate how well we know it. Wish that it was just one of us. Wish it was just me, but it’s not.

  There’s a scar curved on the back of my hip, a crooked horseshoe of sorts, and it doesn’t match the knot of damaged tissue on Wes’s shoulder. But the first time he saw it, before we were even teenagers, he placed a hand over it and asked me, Who kicked you? I knew what it meant, the urgency in his voice, that he knew the shape a boot heel makes on skin so easily. And the only answer I could give in the prickle of understanding between us was to place my palm over the scar on his shoulder, the one that streaked across it in an odd, square pucker like a belt buckle, and ask, Who hit you?

  This we share. Scars and knowledge and broken safety that was never really there in the first place, because we were born to bad apples.

  The difference is, he grew far from the fruit that tree bore, while I’m rotten at the core, even if I’m good at hiding it.

  “They just want what they came for,” Wes says, like he wants it to be true. “If they get it . . .”

  “They’re not wearing masks,” I say, and this time, unlike with Iris, I don’t push it away. His chest hitches with the breath he takes in, because he knows. He knows what I’m going to say next.

  I say it anyway. I need to make it real. Their job has gone wrong. They’ve already shot one person. We need to make a move.

  “They are going to kill some of us,” I say as quietly as possible, and he doesn’t blink and I don’t waver. “It’s the only solid negotiation tactic they have. And you saw him in the lobby.”

  “He almost shot the teller.”

  “The one in red is stupid. But the other one . . .”

  “He likes it.”

  Relief snaps open inside me like a trapdoor. Wes understands.

  He may not have had a slew of bad men in his life like mine, but Wes has had to live with his for seventeen years, and the sheer endurance it takes to survive that brings skills, too.

  There won’t be any heroes today. Just survivors. And I’ll need him and Iris on board if we’re going to survive.

  “We need to be useful,” I continue. “If you’re useful, they don’t shoot you first. If you’re useful, they listen to you.”

  “If you’re useful, their focus is on you.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Fuck, Nora.”

  He’s stepping back, like I’m some toxic mold whose spores are reaching out, grabby for him. It’s like the day he found out all over again, and they must be showing in my face and the light in my eyes: the girls I work so hard to keep hidden. But I need them now, all of them, with their crooked knowledge and their boot-heel scars and their Frankenstein hearts.

  It’s how we get through this.

  “Trust me.”

  “You’re asking me to trust a version of you I don’t know,” he says, and God, I hate how he just cuts to the truth sometimes. But I can, too.

  “You know this version, you just don’t like her. You can trust me or not, but you do know who I am, Wes. You’re the only person who does. Because I laid every single secret down on the table for you to examine with a magnifying glass.”

  “Only because I found out.”

  “We are not getting into this fight again!” I hiss. “Are you going to boost me up into the vent or not?”

  “Yes,” he hisses back. “Of course I am!”

  “Then why are you being an ass?”

  “Because I’m so fucking pissed at you for lying to my face! Repeatedly!”

  “Well . . . too bad!” And in the time it takes me to breathe and try to come up with a good comeback, I just deflate, and then so does he.

  “Fuck, Nora,” he says again, and his eyes beg me to understand. “They’re gonna kill us.”

  “Maybe not, if we can stay one step ahead.”

  “You can’t stay a step ahead of a guy with a gun, Nora.”

  I don’t say anything.

  Because I have, once before.

  It was different then.

  I was different.

  But I did it.

  Now I have to do it again.

  — 13 —

  The Making of the Franken-Friends (aka The Destruction of WesandNora)

  Let me get one thing clear, right here, right now: Wes and I didn’t break up because I had a big gay epiphany. Partly because I’m not gay.

  We didn’t break up because I had a big bisexual epiphany, either. Even though I am bi. But we both knew that before Wes and I even got together.

  We broke up because I lied. Not about my sexuality or my feelings. But about pretty much everything else, down to my name. And he found out himself—I didn’t even cave and tell him, which would’ve been better, in his eyes . . . and worse in mine. But there was no going back after he found out. It destroyed our relationship in one gutting swoop of a day. It almost destroyed what tatters of our friendship were left after my lies punched through our sweet little world.

  When Lee facilitated my escape five years ago, her side of the con and her sacrifices kept me clean legally, but I almost messed it all up. That meant there were consequences. I had to play my own game on top of the complicated chess match Lee was playing without Mom knowing.

  I lost things and found others, only to lose them, too.

  My sister buried her history years ago. She made a new name, a whole new identity to wrap herself in, far from Mom’s reach or knowledge. She settled in a town where no one would think to look for her, and no one in Clear Creek was the wiser when she introduced herself as Lee O’Malley. She dyed her blond hair brunette faithfully, so no roots ever showed, and set up her office in town. She made “friends” with the deputies at the sheriff’s department, and she never, ever slept without a knife in easy reach, because some traits you can dye away and some names you can forge fresh, but you can’t hide from your true self and the lessons you learned in the dark of night.

  Before she brought me home, Lee cut my blond hair that Mom had always insisted I keep long. As she dyed my hair and eyebrows brown over the motel room sink, she told me about the two-bedroom house she had on the outskirts of town, and my new room and my new school and my new backstory. By the time we walked ou
t of that room and headed to the place I’d learn to feel like and call home, I’d shed the girl I’d been as easy as my hair . . . and Nora O’Malley was born in a flash and a few words . . . and she was supposed to be here to stay.

  So I told myself that the girls I’d been before didn’t matter.

  I learned the hard way that I was wrong.

  — 14 —

  9:59 a.m. (47 minutes captive)

  1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors

  Plan: Almost there

  “Hey, you two.” Iris snaps her fingers behind us, and we both whirl. She’s staring intently, her hands on her hips, her skirt swaying in annoyance because she’s tapping her foot. “Why are you arguing?”

  “We’re not,” Wes says immediately.

  “You’re mad at us,” Iris says. “Are we seriously going to do this now?”

  “I’m trying not to,” Wes grits out.

  But Iris steps closer, so Casey can’t hear. “What is with you?” she hisses in a low voice to him. “You told me you were completely over Nora. I would’ve never tried anything if . . . You were going to ask Amanda out! I had a first-date outfit planned for you. So either you changed your mind or you’ve gone insane and gotten all bigoted on me, and I swear to God, Wes . . .”

  He goes white. “Fuck, no. It’s not— I am over Nora.” He looks at me. “I am completely over you,” he says, and it’s not vicious and it doesn’t have any hurt buried under it. It’s just . . . a statement. A fact. Something we both know. It still makes me vaguely sad, in that faded way, like a scar you press too hard on and the damaged tissue remembers the wound fresh, but just for a second, and then it’s gone.

  “And if we get the hell out of here alive, I am going to ask Amanda out,” Wes declares. “I’m not mad about that.”

  “If you’re just mad we kept it from you, I don’t owe you a beat-by-beat account of my love life,” Iris says. “You know I’m not out to my mom yet. I have my reasons for keeping stuff under the radar.”

  “I’m not mad at you, Iris,” Wes says. “You’re right, your reasons are yours. I’m sorry I was a jerk. I shouldn’t have been. You don’t deserve that.” He takes a deep breath, his chest rising. “But I get to be mad at her,” he continues. “For my sake and your sake. Not just because she lied to my face when I told her I thought you liked her.” He glares at me and I turn red, because I had been a total ass when he’d suggested it. “I get to be mad for you because she’s put you in the same place I was once.” His voice cracks as he stares at me, practically drilling a hole in my head with his eyes.