The Girls I've Been(12)

“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 out 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.