Shimmy Bang Sparkle(22)
. . . we were anything but ordinary.
It was, as Saturday mornings went, pretty much status quo . . . aside from the fact that every single muscle in my body ached. I opened the pantry and took out a bag of gummy cherries from the bottom shelf, which was very clearly marked with a sign that said STELLA’S. Above my shelf was Ruth’s, which featured strange things like gluten-free, non-GMO, vegan black bean crackers, and something that called itself hemp protein but was in fact a sandy, gritty powder created by the vegan cousin of Satan himself. Once, I’d been making myself a smoothie and thought maybe I should get some extra protein in there. What resulted was an entire day of sucking hemp grit out of my teeth and sending frowny emoji texts to Ruth.
Above Ruth’s shelf was Roxie’s, jammed all the way to the tippy top with every conceivable salty snack food. Every flavor of Goldfish. White cheddar popcorn. Macadamia nuts. Pretzel sticks. Rosemary and olive oil Triscuits. Enough peanut-butter-and-cheese crackers to see an army through a war.
I kicked off my Converse, feeling the tight warmth that was still pulsing through the inside of both thighs, and headed for the couch. I shifted Roxie’s feet onto the coffee table and flopped down next to her. On the screen, a big, burly guy in a tiny tank top was trying to maneuver a couch through a slightly-too-small doorframe. “Smells like man!” Roxie said, resting her head on my shoulder. “And looks like man!”
I jammed four gummy cherries in my mouth and touched my throat. It was tender under the pressure of my fingers. A hickey. A hickey? I hadn’t had a hickey since I was sixteen with a mouth full of braces.
But Roxie was on it, as ever. “A gentle brush with a toothbrush followed by a little ice. I swear. Works every time.” She raised the remote in a modified Scout’s honor move, and then she turned up the volume on the TV. With my mouth full of gummy goodness, I walked over to the safe in the corner, disguised as a side table. I opened it up and took out my notebook, going backward and forward and backward again over our plan.
Everybody thought we were dog sitters. Everybody thought we really were good girls. Everybody thought we were best friends. All true.
But we were also known as the Shimmy Shimmy Bangs. We were the Lady Robin Hoods of the American Southwest. And we were going to do one last jewel heist. The biggest of them all. The North Star.
It would be our final job, the biggest payoff, and it would set the three of us up forever. No more risks, no more worry. Whatever we dreamed would be ours.
We knew what we were doing, and we had each other’s backs. But the plan was a tricky one. And so I pushed aside my thoughts of Nick to focus on the plan, while on TV a lady swung a sledgehammer into some drywall and bellowed, “I am woman! Hear me roarrrrrrrrr!”
We hadn’t started with jewels; we’d started with a pair of secondhand bifocals when we were twelve years old.
Ruth, Roxie, and I grew up in a suburb of Denver called Aurora, the sort of place that always felt like it was not quite anything at all. Not quite suburb, not quite city. Not quite dangerous, not quite safe. Not quite good, not quite bad. In the afternoons after school, our parents would pack us off to the ice rink. We didn’t have particularly happy homes. Roxie’s looked normal, but when we’d be there for sleepovers, we’d hear her parents fighting when they thought we were asleep. Ruth had been adopted into a family that seemed to treat her like a visitor; she called her parents Sally and Michael instead of Mom and Dad. My mom was sick a lot, and my dad did his best to take care of me. Ruth, Roxie, and I couldn’t always be sure about things at home, but we could always be sure about each other.
The ice rink was where we were happiest. There, we’d free-skate for hours in rented skates mended with duct tape, like glamorous bowling shoes, with tattered laces. The day it happened, we were in sixth grade; it was a cold afternoon, and the streets were blue with chemical ice melter. We were sitting rink-side, on one of the worn old wooden benches, catching our breath and drinking boxes of apple juice that Roxie’s mom had packed for us. On the far side of the rink, a clump of older boys skated together. Bullies, all three of them.
On our end of the rink, the new boy from our class tottered onto the ice. Gus was pudgy and kind, and he always had a little smudge of snot on his sleeve from his constantly running nose. He’d had trouble making new friends, and he wore glasses so thick that the lenses made his eyes look two sizes too big for his windburned face. Clearly, it was his first time on skates. With his arms out like a mummy, he was so focused on staying upright that he managed to get himself turned around and began to slide along with outstretched arms against the free-skate current.
And the bullies were skating right toward him. Two of them linked arms and sped up, getting ready to clothesline him.
“Uh-oh,” Ruth said softly next to me.
Roxie put her hand to her mouth and grimaced.
And I watched in utter horror with my straw pinned between my teeth as the bullies sent him flying, and he landed flat on his back with a horrible whump. The chatter of the rink went silent, leaving only the tinny and faraway sound of the radio playing over the PA system. The bullies’ laughs ricocheted around the rink, no longer boyish giggles but something sinister and vengeful. They circled him once, then again. Like wolves. The biggest of the boys gave him a kick on his side, the teeth of the skate tearing into his parka. One of the supervisors blew his whistle and began to skate over to help, but in the scuffle Gus curled up in a ball and lost his glasses. Before the supervisor could step in, one of the bullies crushed Gus’s beloved glasses with two stomps of his hockey skates, then sprinted away.