by Tess Sharpe
“He found out,” she whispers. “My dad. And he’s always been um, protective? Controlling? For our own good, of course.” She stares up at the ceiling, blinking furiously. I recognize it in her: the fight against what’s ingrained in you through fear and what you’re starting to learn is truth now that you’re free. It spins in my head: We’re more alike than you know, we’re more alike than you know, she’d told me. I don’t think I heard. But I know now. We’re both girls whose bones got forged from secrets instead of steel. No wonder we snapped together like magnets. We are made of the same stuff, somehow.
“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.
“Raymond, can we just talk about this, please. Just give me a second. I really don’t know what money you’re talking about—” She’s trying to talk sense into him, but there’s no talking sense into a man who’s always seen you as less-than.
“You’re the only one who could’ve taken it. I’ve checked out everyone else. If you don’t tell me the truth . . .” His hand doesn’t rear back, but instead, it pushes forward.
And that’s when the shadows shift, and I see he’s got a gun pointed at her.
I don’t know what to do. I can’t think. I can’t move. The fear wraps around me and squeezes until my bones feel like they’re splintering, and it almost carries me away.
I almost run.
But instead, I move toward him, toward my mother, my twisted constant, toward the gun I know is loaded. It’s the bravest thing I’ve ever done. Also the stupidest. In a second, that gun’s on me, and now he’s got even more leverage against her.
Mom’s sobbing, mascara down her cheeks, knees bruised and scraped. He must’ve sent her sprawling, and my fists clench even as I stand as still as I can, trying to get his wild eyes to focus on me.
“What are you doing?” I don’t sound like myself. My voice is breathy. High. Am I breathing too hard? Everything feels sped up and too slow at the same time. I wonder if this is what a panic attack is like. I’m not supposed to get those. She tells me I have to be strong.
“Get out,” he snarls. “This is between me and your mother.”
But I don’t go. She’s not even looking at me. She’s slumped on that floor with her bloody knees, and she looks so much like a child that for a second, I feel like the adult.
I’m not. I’m scared shitless. But in that second, I make a decision.
If she can’t con her way out of this, with her manipulation and power and the way she twists people around her gold-banded fingers like it’s nothing, then I will.
“She didn’t take your money,” I say, and now he’s completely turned toward me, so she’s at his back
. Move! I think, but she doesn’t. It’s like she’s given up.
But I can’t.
“I took it.”
I didn’t. I have no idea what money he’s talking about. But I don’t care. Anything to get him away from her.
“Bullshit.”
It’s a miracle, but I keep my face bored as I shrug. “Fine. Don’t believe me. I guess I’ll keep the cash. It was eighty-seven thousand dollars, right?” It’s foolish to throw out a number, but it’s the one I overheard him saying into the phone earlier. And I need something to really clinch it after such a gamble.
So I do the thing you should never, ever do.
I turn my back on him and the gun.
“Don’t walk away from me, young lady!”
Relief twines in me. Oh thank God I was right.
His voice slurs just enough to tell me he’s still the careening kind of drunk. He’s sloppy slow when he’s like this. I just need to get him away from her.
I look over my shoulder. “I thought you wanted your money.”
I tremble as I walk away, out of the office, down the hall.
But he follows.
— 51 —
Transcript: Lee Ann O’Malley + Clear Creek Deputies
August 8, 12:17 p.m.
Deputy Reynolds: Butte County deputies left their station about five minutes ago. If we can just keep everything calm until they—
O’Malley: It won’t stay calm.
Deputy Reynolds: You don’t know that.
O’Malley: Something’s coming.
Deputy Reynolds: What’s that in your hand? Is that what you were hiding earlier?
O’Malley: Nora gave the little girl a message for me.
Deputy Reynolds: And you didn’t think to show it to me until now?! What does this even mean—He has an ace up his sleeve?
O’Malley: I don’t know, Jess. That’s what I’m trying to figure out.
Deputy Reynolds: I can’t believe you.
O’Malley: I’m telling you now.
Deputy Reynolds: Smoke. Shit! Smoke!
O’Malley: What? Oh my God!
Deputy Reynolds: Hey! Hey! Fire! Get on the radio.
[Scuffling noises]
Deputy Reynolds: Holy shit, Lee!
O’Malley: My kids are in there!
[Scuffling]
O’Malley: Let me go, Jessie. Let me go!
Deputy Reynolds: You’re not running into a burning building! Are you— Oof!
[Yelling]
Deputy Reynolds: Lee! Lee!
[End of transcript]
— 52 —
12:16 p.m. (184 minutes captive)
1 lighter, 3 bottles of vodka, 1 pair of scissors, 2 safe-deposit keys, 1 hunting knife, 1 chemical bomb, 1 giant fire starter, the contents of Iris’s purse
Plan #1: Scrapped
Plan #2: On hold
Plan #3: Stab
Plan #4: Get gun. Get Iris and Wes. Get out.
Plan #5: Iris’s plan: Boom!
At first, it works exactly like Iris says it will. She lights the fuse and the flame travels up to the garbage-can fire starter. It flares up. The sanitizer-soaked toilet paper fills the room with so much acrid black smoke, I’m choking underneath the handkerchief. I bang on the door. Fifteen or twenty heart-stopping, hard-to-breathe seconds later, I hear him start to move whatever’s blocking the door away.
Iris picks up the bottle bomb and shakes it vigorously. The plastic starts to swell under her hands, the chemicals building up the pressure, but she still holds on.
The door swings open, the smoke billows out, and Red Cap starts coughing. Iris chucks the bottle right at the sound, there’s a yell, a fitz-ing sound, and then bam! It explodes, in a forced projectile zing, spraying more smoke.
His scream is hellish—nails on a chalkboard have nothing on it—but I don’t let it stop me. I plunge forward into the smoke; it’s still pouring out of the bathroom, and Red Cap is on the floor, three feet down the hall, and it’s bad. It looks like it got him right in the stomach, and his hands aren’t just bloody; they’re raw, like the skin’s been stripped from them.
Where’s the gun? On him? He had the shotgun last time I saw him. Is it on the floor? Smoke pulses out behind me, and I cough. My eyes water, trying to wash away the feeling, and I turn to find Iris.
All I see is smoke and flame. Shit. Shit. The fire’s leapt from the fire barrel to the ceiling.
“Iris!” I run forward through the chaos and smack into her. She sags against me, coughing violently.
“The ceiling tiles!” she gasps out. “They’re old. Asbestos, maybe. I didn’t think—”
“Go!”
I push her forward, still searching for the gun on the ground. Where is it? It’s gotta be on him.
“Go!” I say again, even as I bend down on the ground next to Red Cap’s moaning body. His jacket’s zipped up tight. He’s gotta have the pistol tucked inside . . .
Iris’s little gasp and the thump is the only warning I get. I glance up and see him through the smoke, bloody and angry. Then the butt of the shotgun is zooming toward my face, and I think with sudden, belated clarity: I should’ve gone first.
— 53 —
Raymond: How I Did It (In Four Acts)
Act 2: Bang
Five Years Ago
I have nowhere to go. If Raymond starts thinking it through, he’s going to realize there’s no way I could’ve taken whatever money he’s mad about. So I just keep moving, my mind latching on to the only thing I can: my just-in-case box. I don’t want to be here, having to use it.
Oh God, am I going to have to use it?
“Where are we going?” he asks sharply as I lead him farther away from Mom, through the kitchen and toward the back door that leads to the deck, with stairs down to the beach.
It’s one of the hardest things to do, to just keep moving, my hand turning on the doorknob like he doesn’t have a gun on me. Something’s building inside, this kind of reckless scream that can’t come out. He’ll know then.
“I buried it—duh,” I say, and I am never rude. The girls are not supposed to be rude. Perfect daughters don’t edge into that kind of real territory.
But I’m not perfect, am I? Or maybe I’m perfect at this.
I cross the deck and take the sand-coated steps carefully. He keeps following. That’s good. I need to keep moving him away from her.
“Where?” he asks me when we get onto the beach, struggling through the sand. The wind whips at my double braids, unpinned and unkempt for once. Ashley has gone wild; he just doesn’t know it yet.
I point down the beach to the docks.
“Under the dock.”
“I’m punishing you for this,” he tells me. “Come on. Let’s go get it.”
He grabs me underneath my arm—What is it about men and that spot, that painful spot that they just seem to know to grab and drag you by? Is there a class, or are they just born knowing it?—and tugs me down the beach. He’s talking now, angry and distracted, about how he thought I was a good girl, how I was so tough, how disappointed he was, he gave me everything I wanted, why would I do this?
I don’t answer, and he doesn’t notice because he’s not really talking to me, just like he never sees me. He sees a target.
I see a target, too.
We get to the dock and he bends down, frowning at the space between the sand and wood. He won’t be able to fit.
“I’ll get it,” I say, like it’s an imposition. I’m finding myself here in the sand . . . in this moment. He can’t see it, I’m too scared to admit it, but there it is. There I am.
I wiggle underneath the dock, the sand tickling my stomach where my shirt hikes up, and I feel safe under here. He can’t follow me.
But the storm’s brewi
ng, and for better or worse, I am the kind of girl who comes prepared.
“Hurry up,” Raymond says, his voice echoing through the wooden slats.
I push forward on my elbows, heart hammering in my ears. I wish I could just stay under the dock forever, but then my searching fingers brush up against the hard edge of a box buried in the sand, and I know I can’t.
I dig it out with my hands—it’s harder than I thought; I used a spade to sink it in there—and sweat crawls down my chest and drips onto the sand before I finally wrench it out.
I flip the box open, praying it won’t creak, and thank God it doesn’t. I take it out, every muscle in my arm tense in an effort to keep my hand from shaking.
Use it. You have to.
I slither out from underneath the dock, box in my hands, and I scramble to my feet and away from him as soon as I’m in the open air again.
“Give it to me,” he says, pointing to the box. The gun’s in his belt instead of his hand . . . He’s that assured. “No games.”
“No games,” I agree. And I am perfect then. Perfect in my delivery, in my never-wavering voice. My entire life has led up to this moment, and I am the picture of fearful promise, my mother’s pretty protégé: Don’t blink—smile, and sell it.
He reaches out for the box.
I move forward, like I’m going to give it to him.
Use it.
But at the last second, I drop the box and shoot him.
You had to.
— 54 —
Transcript: Lee Ann O’Malley + Clear Creek Deputies
August 8, 12:25 p.m.
Deputy Reynolds: I can’t believe you hit me.
O’Malley: Get me out of these cuffs. I swear to God, Jessie . . .
Deputy Reynolds: Stop threatening me. Sheriff Adams already wants to charge you for assaulting a deputy.