The Girls I've Been

by Tess Sharpe

  But I’m not numb enough to not wait quietly until she’s left the room so I can undress. I slip the thumb drive from the pocket of my sandy jeans, tucking it behind the stack of toilet paper where she won’t look for it. Then the clothes go in the bag like she asked.

  When I get out of the shower and into my robe, she’s gone. So is the bag of my clothes. For a minute, I wonder if she’s left me here. If she’s finally decided it was better to just save herself, instead of both of us.

  Can I blame her? I had the same thought on the beach.

  But then the hotel room door swings open, and there she is again. The relief has my knees turning watery, and I want to cling to her like I’ve never clung to anyone in my life, but I can’t.

  “It’s okay. You don’t have to apologize,” she says, and I realize that’s what’s spilling from my mouth. I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.

  “I screwed it all up. Our whole plan—”

  “You got what we needed. It’s okay that things got messy.”

  The sound I let out is hysterical, because she sounds so much like Mom right then.

  “There are some new clothes in the bedroom. Go sleep. I’ll take care of everything else.”

  “But—”

  “The only way this works is if you let me be the adult,” she says, in that matter-of-fact, no-bullshit way of hers, but still, it has me reeling.

  “I’m not a kid,” I say softly, and the truth of it is this cankerous weight between us.

  “Now you get to be one. And that means that I’m in charge, not you.”

  “You sound like Mom,” I say, because I’m hurt and raw, and I want her to sprout the same kind of wound.

  “I’m not her,” she says, so calmly that I know my barb failed to pierce. Then she says my name. My real one. Softly, like she wants it to be a comfort.

  It’s not.

  “Please don’t call me that.”

  There’s an understanding in her face that I want to run from. “What should I call you?”

  I have no idea. I’m not her. I’m not Ashley, either. I’m no one. I’m everyone. All of them, mixed together like liquor in a cocktail shaker. I just jerk my head, hopeless, and then I say, “I’ll go to bed.”

  She leaves the door open half a foot, like she needs to keep an eye on me, and I lie down on the bed.

  Blood had swirled over my (Ashley’s?) glitter-painted toes in the shower. Pink sudsy water, and God, I don’t think I’ll ever look at pink and think happy again. It’d taken the three scrubs she had demanded to get the water to run clear.

  Is he dead by now? Did he bleed to death out there in the sand? Am I a murderer?

  I turn over in the bed, away from the door, so I can stare at the wall.

  Why did she come back? She could’ve run. She didn’t sign up for this. She was just trying to get her kid sister free.

  But I’m not a kid, I’ve never been a kid, and I never will be, will I? Not now.

  It’s all different. The risks . . . They’re the kind even Mom wouldn’t want to take on.

  Act 2: Safety

  There’s a sharp rap on the door, and when she gets up to answer it, I take advantage of her distraction. I slip out of bed and sit in the armchair in my room instead, because it has a better view of the other room. Water drips down my back, trickling cold against skin that’s still half numb. I’m done being quiet and talked about but never included. I found a way tonight, when none of them could. Didn’t that earn me a place at the table?

  “Yvonne, thank you for coming,” she says.

  “Amelia, this is not what we talked about.”

  I jerk a little at the sound of this stranger using my sister’s real name, because it’s against the rules. And that’s when it hits me: There aren’t any more rules.

  I didn’t just break them. I broke free of them. I want to hold the realization in my hands, squeeze it until I crush it, until it’s embedded in the raw skin on my fingers and becomes a part of me that can’t be cut out.

  “I’m sorry,” she says, and her voice cracks.

  “Oh, Amelia.” The woman reaches out and squeezes Amelia’s shoulder before moving briskly into the hotel room. Her razor-sharp bob swings with each step and her suit is impeccable, even though she probably got the call long past midnight. But a good lawyer is ready at all times, and that’s who this woman has to be. Amelia would’ve covered all the bases when engaging the FBI. She would’ve found the best. A shark to fight for us.

  “I can make this work. Unless you’ve changed your mind, considering . . .” She trails off. Amelia looks down at her feet before shaking her head tightly.

  “We make them stick to the original deal.”

  “All right. I understand,” Yvonne says. “Then we’re clear: We don’t leave this room without the original terms we agreed upon, signed and official.”

  “Agreed.”

  “She’s had a tail on me since day one,” Yvonne says. “So she’s waiting in the lobby.”

  “Of course she is.”

  “There are at least three undercover agents positioned downstairs. Who knows how many she put on the other floors.”

  “She’s such a drama queen,” Amelia mutters.

  “I’ll call her up, if you’re ready.”

  She nods.

  The click of the phone, then: “This is room 206. Can you please send my guest up? Thank you.” She shoots Amelia a reassuring smile. “It will be fine. You have what they want.”

  Amelia nods, but it’s shaky, and it makes me worried. But when there’s a knock at the door a few minutes later, her shoulders square, and suddenly she’s all swagger and strength again in a single breath.

  “Good evening, Agent North,” says Yvonne. “I’m Ms. Striker; I represent the Deveraux sisters. Would you like some coffee?”

  “I’m fine,” says the woman, coming in. She has short blond hair and a somber face. “Lawyering up, Amelia?”

  “Do you have it?” Amelia asks, her face as blank as the agent’s.

  “He was where you said he’d be, if you were wondering,” Agent North says. “Well, kind of. He’d dragged himself a good fifty feet down the beach, trying to find help. She did a number on him, your little sister.”

  Amelia’s mouth twitches.

  “Neither of my clients have any knowledge of what you’re speaking of,” Yvonne says smoothly.

  “Sure,” Agent North drawls sarcastically.

  “My client—”

  She holds her hand up. “This isn’t what we talked about.”

  “I don’t care,” Amelia says. “It’s your mess now.”

  “You’re such a piece of work,” Agent North says disgustedly. “Do you at least have the hard drives?”

  “Do you have the immunity agreement?”

  “Amelia . . .”

  Amelia’s up out of her chair and walking toward the door so fast, it has the woman’s eyes widening. “Out, then.”

  “You were supposed to get your sister out next week when they went on vacation. If things had gone according to plan, she would’ve had a fingerprint kit and we’d be able to move in on his entire operation after a thorough vetting. Now I’ve got Raymond Keane in the hospital and the only other person around that night was your sister. That does not look good.”

  “If you would like to know the details of my evening, I’m happy to provide them,” Amelia says.

  “Sure, enlighten me,” Agent North drawls.

  “I got a call from my sister last night asking me to pick her up. Raymond and our mother had been fighting, and when my sister tried to stop him, he hit her. Again. So I came and got her. She was waiting for me in the foyer of the house. I did not go farther inside. And if you are audacious enough to make me say this in front of lawyers or a judge or even any of those other pesky agent friends of yours? I
will say the same thing. Along with some other choice secrets of yours and maybe some of your higher-ups’ secrets, too.”

  “And if we question your sister?”

  “We had a deal, Marjorie. You get Raymond and Abby and the proof to lock them away, and I get my sister.”

  “I don’t see the hard drives,” Agent North says.

  “You won’t see the rest until I have the deal in front of me,” Yvonne says.

  There’s a beat. A moment of showdown where someone’s gotta blink.

  It’s Agent North. She bends down, pulls a sheaf of paper out of her briefcase, and hands it to Yvonne.

  “Show her one,” Yvonne says, turning to the papers, settling her glasses on her nose.

  Amelia gets up, goes over to the safe, keys in the number, and pulls out one of the hard drives and a laptop. She plugs it in and boots it up, then clicks on the folder. “This one has all the video,” she says. “Raymond likes to have video.”

  “Fuck,” Agent North breathes as she watches. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

  Amelia closes the laptop as she leans forward. “Not until Yvonne tells me that agreement is solid.”

  “I could just take her in right now,” Agent North says, and there’s a note of threat in her voice I don’t like. “I have cause.”

  “You touch my sister and you will not make it out of this room alive,” Amelia says, with such flat sincerity it sends a warm jolt of something—I don’t know it then, but it’s security—through me.

  “Amelia,” Yvonne warns. “Agent North, she didn’t—”

  “Yes she did,” the agent says. “She meant every word.”

  “Yes, I did,” Amelia says. The two of them stare at each other. I can see it through the gap in the door. It crackles, whatever’s between them.

  “I want to talk alone,” Agent North says.

  I don’t think Amelia will agree, but to my surprise, she nods.

  “Amelia, I strongly advise—” Yvonne starts to say, but she’s cut off with a firm smile.

  “Can you just give us a minute?” she asks her. “You can finish reading the agreement in the back room.”

  Yvonne gets up, and her heels click out of the room.

  I watch the two of them through the crack in the door. Amelia’s head is bent, her mouth tense. She’s rubbing the pad of her thumb against her pointer and middle finger, back and forth, back and forth. It’s what she does when she’s nervous. This tic we share somehow roots me to her in a way I never could have imagined.

  “I can’t believe you,” Agent North hisses, all professionalism melting off her. “You extracted her yourself? The plan—”

  “Went to shit,” Amelia finishes. “I’m sorry the murderous psychopath parenting my sister didn’t adhere to your schedule.”

  “I can’t believe you’re getting snippy with me now. Now. Of all times. This is such a fuck-up,” she mutters. “I sold them on an open-and-shut case. It’s not anymore.”

  “Not my problem,” Amelia says.

  “The trial’s going to be harder now. If we had her participation—”

  “No,” Amelia says.

  “The marshals are excellent at their jobs—”

  Amelia lunges to her feet, crossing the room fast, out of my sight, and I hear the soft rustle that can’t be a punch but has to be some sort of touch, because the agent lets out a breath that is not quiet.

  My eyes flick down. I feel like I’m invading all of a sudden. My cheeks heat up when I realize I must be. But I still tilt my head to see the two of them.

  They’re standing close, and the agent’s rubbing her wrist like she’s wrenched it from Amelia’s grip.

  “The marshals can be bought off or conned. I can’t be. You know what I’ve done to get to this point. Do you really want to fuck with me when I have what I’ve spent six years trying to get? I finally got her away, and she’s not leaving my side ever again. She is my sister, and she’s had to . . .” She stops. She shudders, like she can’t even say it. I understand, because I can barely think about it.

  “No witness protection,” Amelia continues. “No marshals, no safe houses, no trials or names. We had a deal. No testifying, no mention of her part in this, no participation—in exchange for the hard drives. You’re going to stick with it. Or you won’t get them.”

  “I can just take them,” she says softly, like she’s breaking it to her.

  Amelia smiles, and I see the cruelty in her for the first time. “You know me, Marjorie. Do you really think I’m above pinning you to the ground while my sister smashes the drives into so many pieces there’s no hope of fixing them?”

  Agent North gazes up at my sister like she’s the moon and North is seeing her for the first time.

  No. Wait. I lean forward, trying to catch her expression, to read the secrets in her fully. She’s not looking at Amelia like she’s seeing her for the first time.

  She’s drinking her in like it’s the last time.

  “She almost got killed getting you what you wanted.” Amelia says it like a condemnation, and the agent bristles at it.

  “She did not have to—”

  “Fuck you,” Amelia interrupts, so fiercely that it makes North jerk back. “Fuck you and your federal bullshit that allowed a little girl to be driven to this, because your people were so bad at infiltrating Keane’s organization they got four agents killed in two years of undercover ops. You needed us. I made a deal that risked her because my kid sister was more competent than your agents. You’ll walk away with his hard drives and a big chunk of his operation gutted and whatever promotion they throw at you, but she’ll be in danger until he dies.”

  “Whose fault is that?” North asks. “Hers. She took insane risks. I had a clean extraction plan for her. If she’d just—”

  “Stop. She’s not an asset. She’s not some criminal informant you turned over the course of years and a cleaned-up coke habit. She’s twelve. She’s a fucking kid.”

  There’s a long silence where North stares at her as if she’s trying to weigh the worth of saying something. I slip back into the shadows; it’s like I know the words that come next will slice me raw.

  The truth usually does.

  “Did you see what she did to him?” Agent North asks. “No tricks,” she says, as Amelia just frowns. “I just . . . Did you see how she left things?”

  She still says nothing. My sister trusts no one. Even this woman, who looks at my sister like there’s torn-out chapters in Amelia’s life story that are all about her.

  “Because if you didn’t see,” Agent North continues, hushed now. “Maybe you haven’t realized . . .” And then she holds out her phone, showing her.

  I won’t lie, it flashes through me, the worry. Is this it? Will she turn away now?

  But it fades as fast as it comes, because my sister laughs instead of reacting like I think and the agent wants. “Are you seriously trying to make me feel bad she smashed his face in?”

  “And the rest?”

  Amelia doesn’t miss a beat. “How the hell else was she supposed to get you your precious hard drives? Did you expect a twelve-year-old to drag an unconscious man up the beach to the house and then all the way upstairs to his safe?”

  “If she’d waited for the extraction, she would’ve had a kit.”

  “But she couldn’t and she didn’t, yet she still got you what you needed. So the deal holds.”

  There’s the kind of pause that has so much tension, I’m gritting my teeth against it.

  “She’s not normal,” Agent North says slowly. “What she did . . . how she left . . . Can’t you see that? She could’ve called you before . . .”

  “If she had called me before, Raymond Keane wouldn’t be alive right now,” Amelia says. “He’d be gator food. All of him.”

  “Stop saying shit like that!”
North’s distress bleeds into her voice and her pretty green eyes.

  “Stop implying my sister is dangerous.”

  “Isn’t she?”

  “My sister,” Amelia says, just as slow, but twice as dangerous, “is a victim of domestic violence and sexual abuse at the hands of the men our mother brought around her. And she has been psychologically abused by the only parent she’s ever known. It is my job to give her the safety and space and whatever else she needs to become a survivor. So if you continue with your victim-blaming bullshit when she let that fucker live after he spent the better part of two years terrorizing and beating her, I swear to God, you’re gonna go back to your higher-ups with nothing. I’ll take the files to the DEA and ATF instead, and you’ll be left on the sidelines. Or maybe I’ll just cut all you Feds out completely. Put it on the dark web for the highest bidder.”

  Agent North takes a deep breath. She’s steeling herself to fight more, to accuse me of liking it next, probably, or that it wasn’t the first time. She’d be right about the last thing and wrong about the first.

  But instead of arguing, Agent North deflates. “God, Amy,” she says, the nickname falling off her lips with an ease that comes only from familiarity. “I—”

  “No,” Amelia interrupts, chin up, arms crossed, so damn defensive. Every shield is up, and the way she’s telegraphing it tells me she isn’t aware she’s doing it, that this woman tripped her up once before, and she can’t let it happen again. “Just give me what we agreed on.”

  “The original deal holds,” North says after a long moment when they stare at each other, hungry in a way that makes me want to look away, because it’s not faked. There’s no artifice . . . no calculation or prettiness. Neither of them wants to show it, but they do, because it’s all raw and a pulpy mess.

  “Yvonne, you can come back in here,” Amelia calls.

  “It’s all like we agreed,” Yvonne tells her.

  “Let me have it, then.”

  Silence as she reads through it. The minutes tick by. “Does anyone have a pen?” Then: “The code to the safe is 0192.”