The Girls I've Been(34)

“We try to keep him safe.” Does she understand what I’m saying? What I’m asking?

“I understand,” she says, turning back to watch him lolling about in the pool, kicking his feet like a little kid.

“You do?”

She nods, still keeping her eyes on him. “You and I . . . we’re more alike than you know,” she says, and then she doesn’t say any more. Her pinky brushes up against mine on the yellow cushions and hooks around it. Not a promise, but an entwining of her and me and this knowledge between us. A twisting of something much deeper than a vow, something that has rooted in me, poised to bloom.

I know it’s love, but in that moment before the careful unfurling, it’s simpler to pretend I don’t.

But I’ve never been good at conning myself. Even when I want to.





— 31 —


11:21 a.m. (129 minutes captive)

1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys

Plan #1: Scrapped

Plan #2: In progress



I pull Iris’s hair out of her face and the line of fire as she throws up, one hand pressed low on her belly as tears leak out of the corners of her eyes. When she straightens, her lower lip trembles and she wipes at her eyes with her knuckles. Her eye makeup hardly smears through those sad historical dramas with the corsets and the cliffs and the pacing along the cliffs she likes to watch, and it doesn’t now. I’d be impressed if I wasn’t so worried.

“I’m fine,” she says. “It just hurts.” But then she leans against the desk, her entire body curling into itself. “I wish I had some water,” she adds in a smaller voice. And then she straightens, like her bones were broken glass for just a moment and now they’re steel again. “Vodka isn’t ideal for rinsing out your mouth.”

“Not unless you’re getting ready for a bender,” Wes agrees, and she smiles shakily at him.

She sets the trash can in the corner, then goes over to sit next to Wes on the floor across the room. I stay near the desk, because I’m not sure I’m welcome. I am sure this isn’t done. Her questions. My revelations.

But if the two robbers are distracted by the welding machine and getting into the safe-deposit vault, we’ve probably bought ourselves enough time for SWAT to show up and actually do something.

The problem with probably is that it’s probably. I can’t gamble our lives on the Feds down in Sacramento being fast enough to get here in time. Middle-of-nowhere towns like Clear Creek aren’t anyone’s priority.

The only sure thing I have here is me. So I can either trust the Feds, which goes against everything I’ve been taught . . . or I can trust myself. And what can I say? I’ve never really respected authority. I’m more likely to come to Jesus than trust the FBI, and neither seems likely, all things considered. I’ll never buckle under the authority of a deity or a parent or a government agency again.

“Is this why you two broke up?” Iris asks suddenly.

I know I have a totally spooked look on my face, because Wes’s expression is a mirror of mine right now.

“You told me you were the one that fucked it up,” she says to me. “I thought you meant you cheated or something.”

“I kind of implied that so you wouldn’t figure out the truth,” I say, because honesty. It’s the policy here.

“So me wondering if you’re a cheater is better than me knowing the truth.”

“It’s called a secret identity for a reason,” I say. “No one’s supposed to know.”

“Wes knows.”

“She didn’t tell me,” Wes says. “I figured it out.”

“Well, now I feel silly that I didn’t,” Iris says.

“Don’t. It took me three years, a forest fire, and her pulling one fucking insane blackmail scheme for me to find out,” Wes says.

“It was not insane. And if you keep talking about it, we’re going to have to talk about it,” I warn him.

But to my surprise, he shrugs. “Who cares? Look where we are. You think I don’t remember? I wasn’t that high. I know she’s seen my shoulders.”

“Oh, Wes,” Iris says, but he shrugs again. Red stains his cheeks.

“We don’t have to—” I start to say, because I want to protect him. I want to protect her. I don’t know if I can do both. I know I can’t protect myself. Can I protect them from me? What does that mean? What would it look like?

Me, gone, far away from them.

“What else are we going to do?” Wes asks. “You’re putting it all out there. I might as well, too. What do you say, Iris? We may be dead any minute. Truth for Truth?”

Iris smooths out the skirt of her dress. “Truth for Truth,” she agrees.

They look at me, expectant.

“Fine,” I say. “Truth for Truth.”





— 32 —


    Truth for Truth




One of the first things I discover about Iris is that if you dare her to do something, she’ll do it—unless it harms a person or animal. But she does not count herself in the person or animal categories. She is heedless and gleeful and has the self-preservation instincts of a moth drawn to dares and flames.