The Girls I've Been(5)

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.