The Girls I've Been

by Tess Sharpe

  I hang my head, staring at my feet. The feeling inside me isn’t resignation or hurt. It’s a kind of click that locks away any hope forever.

  She doesn’t want her husband to kill me. But she also doesn’t want to be on his bad side.

  Can’t have both, Abby.

  “What are you doing here?” she asks again, and this time, the question is real, there’s true confusion behind it.

  I lean forward, and my eyes are wet and my mouth is vulnerable when I finally look up again. Her eyebrows scrunch, that flash of anger gone, replaced by the concern that I know is almost real.

  “Do me a favor.” And I wait a beat, so she can hover on hope just a little longer. So it hurts when I deliver the words to crush her. “And actually think for once. You taught me everything you knew. Everything.”

  I want to lick my lips. They’re dry, but it’s a sign of nerves. “You’ve been trying to piece together what happened that night and right after. And this whole time you’ve been asking yourself: What would Natalie do? But that’s not the right question.”

  She swallows. Her throat bobs a little—weakness. My eyes flick, and she knows I’ve seen. Her mouth flattens. Mommy’s angry.

  So I go in for the kill.

  “What would you have done?” I ask her. “If he’d been a mark, and not the love of your life? What would you have done, with all your tricks and sparkle, if your mother let a man put his hands on you? Not in the name of the con. Not for money. Not for any of the things that you taught me were important. No. You did it for the love of an abusive man who tried to kill you and wants to kill me. So don’t ask yourself what Natalie would’ve done. Ask what Abby would have done. What would the woman who raised me to bite back do?”

  She shudders, and God, I want to be the kind of person who smiles. I want to be that hard. I want to feel triumphant.

  But I’m just sad.

  I’m just trying to survive. Her. Him. Myself, whoever that is.

  “What would you have done?” I ask her again.

  And this time, she finally gives me the answer.

  “I would have made a plan and allies. And I would have found my way out of it.”

  I can see it clicking together in her head; dominoes falling down, leading her farther into the tunnel I dug with bare hands.

  “Keep going.”

  “I would have gotten a weapon . . . made my move whenever the opening presented itself. I would have run and never looked back. I would have done whatever it took.”

  “And that’s just what I did,” I say. “Whatever it took.”

  It’s there, the hint at more, and then the goose bumps prickle across her skin, telling me I’m digging in exactly where I need to.

  I’ve played this out in my head a hundred times on the plane ride over, in the hotel room bathroom, on the drive to the prison. I had a script of how it’d go, and she’s playing her part. Now we’re at the moment.

  Don’t falter now, Nora. Home stretch, then home. Back to them.

  Please let me get back to them.

  “What’s the most important thing, Abby?” I let my voice go high. I ask the question whose answer she drilled into me with each different name and hairstyle and personality. I mimic her right to her face, wearing her damn face, and those goose bumps across her skin spread down to her neck.

  “Always have leverage,” she whispers.

  I smile. It is cruel this time, because I have reached the moment when I have to be.

  “What did you do?” she asks, and I am finally ready to tell. The secret I’ve kept so close, for so long.

  “Alongside the hard drives in his safe, there was a thumb drive. It was encrypted differently than the others. I handed the big stuff over to the FBI so they could put him away and I’d get the protection I needed. They didn’t need to know about the thumb drive.”

  “You kept it.”

  I push forward. “It took me years to learn enough to break through the encryption. But I did. And what I found . . .” I just smile then. What I found is nothing to smile about—it’s fucking wretched, a sick treasure trove of sordid secrets and dirty deeds—but it’s also the reason I’m going to win.

  How I’m going to protect everyone.

  “He really did deal in the dirtiest kind of information, didn’t he? Kindred spirits, the two of you.” I stare her down and I resist throwing in a hair twirl, because I’m afraid she’ll lunge at me.

  She’s never put her hands on me—never needed to. There was always a bigger threat to sacrifice some part of me—my self, my body, my innocence, my safety—to them . . . her marks and the love of her life who turned her into one instead.

  But it’s just us now. No marks. No Raymond.

  There’s nothing but the truth between us, and it’s never been this way before. It’s always been lies and slippery dodges. But she can’t hide anymore.

  And I’ve chosen not to.

  “You have his blackmail file?”

  “It was a mess when I got it open. Barely organized. But I took care of that. Color-coded it. You know, red for politicians, blue for dirty cops, green for drug dealers, et cetera.”

  “Natalie . . .” she says, and there is warning in her voice. There is a shred of motherly concern that I can’t be sure is fact or fiction, because at this point, what of her is fact and what is fiction? “You need to run. Far and fast.”

  “No.”

  “Baby, he is up for an appeal next year. It’s an uphill battle, but he’s got the best lawyers.”

  “And you’re cheering him on,” I say, and she can’t look at me. She’s got six years left on her sentence, and if he’s free by the time she’s out, that’ll make things even sweeter for her. They’ll fight and they’ll fuck and scream and throw things and make up, all in the span of twenty-four hours, and the cycle will turn and turn until one day, something breaks it and I won’t be there to tilt the ground to save her anymore. He’ll kill her. That’s the only way it ends. She knows it. I know it. But she can’t stop. And I had to let go.

  I’ve known about the appeal since the start of the summer. Lee and I had a fight about it. She’d wanted to run then and there. I wanted to wait and see. No. That’s not exactly true. I want to wait and fight. That’s who I’ve become.

  That’s who loving and losing and then making Wes family has made me. That’s who loving and keeping Iris has made me. Maybe not hopeful, but determined.

  “Natalie, he will kill you.”

  “And you’ll help him, won’t you?” I ask, looking at her dead-on, wishing it was different. “When it comes down to it, you’ll do whatever he asks.”

  She looks away. Her shrunken chest rises and falls in deep breaths. I can see her collarbone jutting out from under the khaki scrubs. She’s thinner in here. And not in the cultivated gym-rat way she’d been when I was a kid. In a the food’s shit, sleep’s shit, everything’s shit kind of way.

  “Baby,” she says, her voice breaking, and it’s the answer, even if she doesn’t want it to be. A woman torn, that’s my mother’s constant state. Teetering between her daughters and her man, between good and bad, true and fake, love and hurt. She is all blurry lines and bad ideas, and too drawn to danger. I hate how much I see myself in her, even now.

  But her loyalties are not with me, no matter how much I wish they were. And my loyalties are not with her, no matter how much she wishes I’d fall back into her hold.

  “I have to survive. I’m in here a long time because of what you did.”

  I let out a laugh. “You’re in here because of what you did. You let him put shell companies in your name and laundered money through them. And you refused to turn on him even after he pointed a gun at you.”

  “You always antagonized him—”

  “Bullshit.” I bark it, and I sound so much like Lee, I think it startles her. She fli
nches in her seat. “You can’t con me anymore,” I tell her. “You have nothing left to teach me. How does it feel to realize that I didn’t only outsmart you, but I outgrew you . . . at twelve?”

  “I’m so damn proud I can hardly stand it,” she snaps, and it’s this bolt of truth between us, shearing our anger in half. “You are everything I wanted you to be. Everything I raised you to be, and everything you have to be. But you won’t be anything if you don’t run. You’ll just be dead.”

  “Fuck you.” And I want to snarl it, but it comes out in a sob. She’s just said everything I’ve ever wanted to hear from her, but it doesn’t mean shit anymore, because she’s going to go to him. She’s going to tell him everything I said, and if he gets out . . .

  That’s it. That’s it.

  “You and I are the same,” she says. “You should be able to understand why I do what I do. You and I, we survive. No matter what life throws at us. We find a way. I know you’ll find a way. Just like I did.”

  “Life didn’t throw this shit at me, you did. You made me like this. You brought him into our life. You brought all of them into our life. We aren’t the same. I would never do what you did.”

  “But you did,” she says. “You chose yourself, baby. You left me behind, with the Feds coming in. I would never have done that to you.”

  “Yeah, you just let me get beaten in the name of love and molested in the name of the con.”

  Her chains scrape against the ring on the table. I’ve never said those words out loud. Not to her, at least. I’ve said them to my therapist and . . . well, that’s it. Just Margaret. Lee knows because it happened to her, too, Wes read between the lines of all the stories, and Iris I told in the way girls sometimes tell each other. But those words, that bare truth, they are hard to say just like that . . . out loud, and I was taught to be quiet. It’s harsh, and I was taught to soften my words. It hurts. Me and her.

  “As soon as I realized—” Her recovery is so damn swift, like she’s had it ready this entire time.

  “Stop,” I say. I order it, because I’m afraid if she continues, it’ll spill out of me: the stories Lee told me, about the con that came before the sweetheart con. I can’t. They’re not my stories. And I think I might kill her if the words exist in this room between us, and I can’t, I can’t. (Some of me wants to, for Lee, for myself.)

  “You know what I did to get us out of Washington,” she hisses.

  “Too little, too late.”

  “That’s—” Her mouth flattens, her lips nearly disappear. My skin crawls, terrible little shivers up my spine. She’s angry. Not remorseful. Not guilty. No, just pissed that I even brought it up.

  I want Iris’s hand in mine, squeezing tight. I can almost feel it, I want it so bad. I nearly close my eyes, imagining it. But I steel myself instead.

  “I came here to deliver a message,” I say. “I want you to tell Raymond something for me.”

  She raises an eyebrow, expectant.

  “If anything happens to me, there aren’t just people who will make sure certain items on the thumb drive go to the FBI. I wrote an entire program that’ll trigger if I die. All that blackmail material he spent so much time gathering and dealing in will flood the market, and it’ll look like he’s the one selling it. Do you think he’ll survive long in or outside of prison then? Do you think you will?”

  Her lips pinch at the question. She may be proud of me for outsmarting them, but she hates me for it, too. It’s why she’s in here: She did too good a job raising her baby girls into vipers. She didn’t think we’d turn around and bite her, even though she gave us no choice.

  But Abby doesn’t know how to be when she isn’t the center of my universe. She doesn’t know how to exist when the axis of my world—and of everyone else in her net—isn’t tilted in her favor. I’ve yanked the ground back toward me, and now she’s the one who’s off balance.

  “Mutually assured destruction, Abby. If he sends someone to kill me, worst-case scenario, he dies via toothbrush shank before the appeal even happens. Best-case scenario, he gets out on appeal and all the people whose secrets leaked will come for him. Because I’ve had years of freedom going through all the files on that drive, tracking down every twisted thread and person involved in every dirty secret. There’s a lot of powerful people doing a lot of bad things on that thumb drive. I know about Dallas. And I know about Yreka.”

  “What happened in Yreka?” she asks, which is so damn sloppy of her, because it tells me she knows about Dallas. About fucking Dallas, and what he set up there. My stomach flips. I have got to get out of here before I lose all composure. I’ve done what I’ve come for.

  “You’ll have to ask him. He has a choice to make. It’s very simple: I die, he dies. I live, he gets to.”

  “He won’t let you keep all that dirt,” she says. “The FBI having it is one thing—they can’t use it the way you . . .” She fades off. Shakes her head. “He’ll come for you, no matter what. You need to go. Far away. You need to change. Become another girl. I know you can do it, baby. You were always a natural at slipping into someone else. You can hide from him.” Her voice, it’s like it was that night, when she begged him. She’s begging me now. It seems like it’s for me, but I know; it’s for him.

  I’ve scared her, shaken her with how I’ve grown and sharpened into something she can’t quite grip.

  “I don’t want to hide.”

  “This isn’t about what you want!”

  “But it is,” I say, and there’s the truth, the one I’ve created for myself. “This is absolutely about what I want. Because I have the leverage. I was smarter than you then. I’m the better con artist now. I’ll be out there, armed with everything you’ve taught me and everything I taught myself on top of it. And if he ever gets free and is stupid enough to come for me himself? The pieces I cut off him, I won’t give back this time.” She sucks in a breath, but I stay still and strong. She’s not normal. I can hear North’s voice in my head. I can see that realization on my mother’s face.

  And maybe I’m not. But maybe I don’t want to be.

  “This isn’t a game you should play.” She shakes her head. “You’re good at hiding, baby. But you’re no good at fighting.”

  “You have no idea what I’m good at.” I get up, and just like the last time I left her, it is easy.

  It is necessary.

  I’m at the door, and the guard steps forward to open it for me, when it bursts out of her: “Natalie!”

  I look back. One last look. One last time. Because either way, if I win or if he does, I don’t come back. This is it. I need her to know.

  “That’s not my name anymore,” I tell her.

  And then I’m gone.

  — 69 —

  Nora: Sister, Survivor, ?

  I’m strong until I get through the metal detectors and out into the lobby with the rickety chairs. I sink into one, and my face is wet, but the guard up front doesn’t pay me any mind. She’s used to it.

  I cry. I let myself flat-out ugly-sob in the prison visitor lobby like I’m in a bad movie about teens overcoming adversity. But I’m not overcoming anything; I’m just plain overcome.

  Finally, I pull it together. Kind of. And I look toward the doors and the parking lot. I have to get to the airport and be home before Lee gets back.

  The thought fills me. Home. I scrub at my cheeks and take a deep breath, but it’s a shudder and shake in my lungs.

  Girls like me, we prepare for the storm.

  When I was twelve, I made a choice. Her or me. Him or me. Survive or slaughter.

  Abby might be right; he might still come for me, even if it signs his death warrant along with mine. But I am done running and hiding.

  I’ll fight if I have to.

  He ever comes for me, he won’t just find scared, panicky Ashley who thought fast but couldn’t shoot straight. He’ll
find all the girls I’ve been. Rebecca taught me how to lie. Samantha taught me how to hide. Haley taught me how to fight. Katie taught me fear. Ashley taught me survival.

  Nora put all their lessons into practice.

  Deep breath.

  Rebecca. My name is Rebecca.

  Get up.

  Samantha. My name is Samantha.

  Wipe away the tears.

  Haley. My name is Haley.

  Shoulders back.

  Katie. My name is Katie.

  One foot in front of the other.

  Ashley. My name is Ashley.

  Push the doors open.

  Nora.

  I walk into the light.

  My name is Nora.

  Resources

  Much of The Girls I’ve Been is centered on the journey through surviving abuse. If you’re struggling, know that you’re not alone, and if you’re in an abusive situation, know that it’s not your fault, no matter what anyone tells you. The hotlines below can help.

  National Domestic Violence Hotline

  1-800-799-SAFE (7233)

  TTY: 1-800-787-3224

  Online chat available at thehotline.org

  National Dating Abuse Hotline

  Call 1-866-331-9474

  Text LOVEIS to 1-866-331-9474

  Online chat available at loveisrespect.org

  National Sexual Assault Hotline

  1-800-656-HOPE (4673)

  rainn.org

  National Child Abuse Hotline

  1-800-4-A-Child (422-4453)

  childhelp.org

  Women of Color Network

  1-844-962-6462

  wocninc.org

  National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center

  1-855-649-7299

  niwrc.org

  Casa de Esperanza

  Línea de apoyo bilingüe de 24 horas/24-hour crisis line: 1-651-772-1611

  casadeesperanza.org

  Deaf Abused Women’s Network (DAWN)