The Girls I've Been(67)

“He yelled. And he punched walls and stuff. But he never ever laid a hand on me,” she continues. “Until the day he found out.”

She flips the kiss timer’s hourglass. Five minutes. I glance down at the bottle, trying to control the mix of rage and revenge rocking inside me.

“He just slapped me,” she says, and I hate that she’s still trying to lessen it, and that I recognize that, too. “But he did it in front of my mom. I’ve never seen anyone move so fast. She got in front of me, and they yelled, and he stormed out. She called my aunt and uncle, and it was almost like they’d been waiting for it, because they were there to pick us up in two hours. I haven’t seen my father since.”

My hands are curled tight around the paper towels I’ve twisted into a long fuse.

“I don’t want to leave my mom alone,” Iris whispers.

“You won’t.”

“You don’t know that. This is so risky. This is dangerous.”

“This is survival,” I tell her.

She turns the pin. Four minutes. “We need to start,” she says.

“What do we do?”

It takes two turns of the kiss timer—two minutes left—but we get it done. We drag the garbage can full of sanitizer-soaked toilet paper into the biggest stall, carefully feeding the paper towel fuse inside and then laying the rest of it along the floor. Then Iris soaks the fuse with the rest of the vodka.

“There’s a handkerchief in my purse. Wet it down and get ready to tie it around your mouth,” she directs.

I do what she says, and then she wets down the hem of her skirt to hold in front of her face. She digs in the pocket and pulls out the lighter.

“We light the fuse, we let the room fill with smoke. Then we bang on the door to let him know we’re done. As soon as he opens it, I throw the bottle. It should hit him in the chest, and maybe, if we’re lucky, it’ll knock him down. Get his gun if you can. Then we get Wes and the rest of the hostages. Agreed?”

I walk it through my head once, and then I nod. “Agreed.”

She rubs her thumb against the bottom of the lighter, one eye on the heart pin, the other on the fuse. And then, abruptly, she fixes me with a look that rivets me in place.

“Who are you, really?” she asks me. “I don’t want to die not knowing your real name.”

Truth for Truth. Here we are.

But I can’t bring myself to speak that name, even here, thirty seconds before we set everything on fire.

But I can give her truth. My truths. The truths that have defined whoever I’ve become.

“I’m not her anymore. I’m not sure I ever was.”

“That’s not an answer,” she tells me, shrewd as ever.

“I am Lee’s sister,” I say. “I am Wes’s best friend.” I hate how my voice shakes, but I force myself to continue. I owe her this. “I am someone who survives. I am a liar and I’m a thief and I’m a con artist. And I hope I’m still the girl you’re in love with, because I am really, really in love with you.”

“Well, fuck, Nora,” she says, the sheen of tears in her eyes back. “Now we can’t die.”

My hands close over hers holding the lighter. “I told you: I’m someone who survives. We’re going to survive together.”

In her other hand, the last few grains of sand trickle out of the hourglass.

It’s time.





— 50 —


    Raymond: How I Did It (In Four Acts)



Act 1: Spin

Five Years Ago

The night it happens, it’s just us at home. Raymond dismissed everyone early for the day. A family day just for us, he tells Mom.

At first, she’s pleased. She’s trying to cater to him, squeezing lime slices down the thin necks of his Coronas, swishing her hair over her shoulder the way she does, but his mood gets darker and darker as he checks his phone. When she asks him what’s wrong, he mutters something about business and get me another beer.

I stay in the living room because I know what happens when I leave her alone with him when he’s like this. I ran away the first time, and it was not the last time. But I have nightmares the most about that first night. Nightmares where she doesn’t come upstairs to persuade me to forgive him . . . because he’s killed her.

I fail her again, because I fall asleep on the couch.

When I wake up, it’s dark outside. I’m covered with a blanket, and neither of them are in the living room. The TV’s on mute—some infomercial—and the light dances across the neat line of empty beer bottles on the coffee table.

Thud.

There’s a certain sound that a fist makes against flesh. A sound that, once you learn it, you can never forget.

I’m up off the couch, the blanket falling away, and I don’t know it yet, but that blanket is the last sweet thing my mother ever does for me. Raymond’s house—it was never ours, never home, never anything but a McCage disguised as a McMansion—is all cool tile and long hallways and no rugs. My feet are cold as I walk toward his study, each step echoing.

The door’s open a crack, and when I push it open, neither of them notices me. He’s got her on the ground and there’s blood already, there are tears, and she’s begging—she’s begging, and she never begs, even when he’s hitting me.