Thieves Among Us

The Muzak seemed louder by the cash register than it was throughout the rest of the store. Clara felt as though her cheeks had been tattooed red, and her blood was circulating quickly in complete mortification. She felt like she was eleven again, buying her first training bra with her mother, or whispering to the nurse she had to borrow a sanitary napkin. Her racing blood pounded in her ears, orchestrating a cacophony in her mind, an inherent blend of “I’LL-be -BOOM-BOOM-in-EVERY-lovely-summer’s-BOOM-BOOM,” the Muzak’s volume fluxuating between deafeningly loud and a taut whisper.

Clara cringed as Fauna helped her load their meager items onto the belt and they watched in awkward silence as the two packets rolled slowly towards the cashier. Though humiliated, Clara was relieved they were alone – she would never recover if Noah or Harvey were there with them, watching her embarrassment. The cashier nonchalantly scanned the packets, curiously looking at the two girls before dropping them in a bag, hiding them from sight.

As the cashier drawled out a price and Clara fumbled with the clasp on her wallet, no longer her sole possession in the world. As she handed the woman a few wrinkled bills, Clara knew she and Fauna would never talk about buying Clara underwear at some town’s discount store because she left town too quickly to pack her own belongings.

They walked out together, the incriminating packages wedged deeply and out of sight in Clara’s purse. The awkward tension was almost palpable and Clara would have given anything for it to disappear. As they passed an ancient Rent-a-Cop, Clara sneaked a look at Fauna only to find Fauna doing the same. Caught in the act, the pair started laughing hysterically, their wish to vanish the tension granted.

It was getting easier to talk to Fauna. After the awkward humiliation of buying cheap underwear together, it was as if some kind of wall broke down. They had been trying to find clothes for Clara now, trekking from used store to used store disguised as “vintage,” laughing over XXXL sweatpants and florescent ponchos.

Hours later, however, they had found nothing but sad castoffs and mothballs. They were at the last store, their last chance shoved between an all-night laundromat and balding wig store. They found this store, knowing it was the last, and swearing they would find something. The sun was well on its way to the horizon, and both felt a tinge of anxiety from staying in the small town for so long, knowing their time was running out.

As Fauna lightly shoved the door open, a tiny bell fell off, grazing Clara’s ear as it plummeted down. The woman at the counter looked up and sprinted towards the door, her large feet catching themselves in her long skirt. She was rather odd and smiled a quick apology as she grabbed a chair and stood on it, reattaching the bell to a chain. The store was a Mecca of florals and stripes, sequins and knits, all in a building small enough to be a bedroom. It was cluttered with brightly stuffed racks with seemingly no organization. Tinny music skipped in the background as Fauna rushed to the nearest stack of clothing.

“It looks like a grandmother’s closet exploded,” Clara said quietly, holding a floor-length skirt up to her waist.

“It’s perfect!” Fauna gasped, grabbing dresses by the handful. It wasn’t long before Clara realized that this store was paradise to Fauna, as reverent as a religious epiphany and exhilarating as a twenty-first birthday. In a mere ten minutes, Fauna had already piled what looked to be half the store in her arms, waddling around to find more treasures. She shoved handful after handful of clothes to Clara and led the way to the back of the shop, where faded floral bedsheets and mismatched sequined fabrics blocked it off from the rest of the world. Fauna immediately backed into the floral sheets, slowly hidden by pale violets. Clara apprehensively peeled the fraying blankets apart, sequins falling to the ground.

They talked through the curtains, if first only to complain about an ill-fitting blouse or to praise a perfect dress. But it was becoming easier to talk to Fauna with each perfect dress she gave Clara, and it didn’t come as a surprise when their conversation became decidedly more personal.

At first it was mostly about her old life, but when Fauna suddenly asked her exactly how she knew Noah, Clara told her. She told her how they met in preschool under the pretense that he was a spy for Communists and it was her patriotic duty to destroy him. As they switched their rejected clothes, hoping to find more treasures, Clara told her about the years of friendship through grade school, up until high school when things became awkward after a bad argument. They were putting the rejected clothes back as Clara told her about running away to Montgomery Montgomery’s Marvelous Traveling Circus, only to find Noah conversing with an eccentric old woman in a bedazzled jumpsuit on the train ride there. They piled their finds on the cashier’s desk as Clara finished the story – she was minutes away from the circus when she blew up at Noah and ran off again, planning to hide out in the town until the circus left, only to take a job as a bank teller and leaving only when Noah pointed a gun at her and they ran away from the police.

Clara finished just as the old woman finished ringing them up, the mountain of clothing adding up to a ridiculously small sum. They were quiet as they left, dodging the falling bell, mismatched bags around their arms.

“So what about you?” Clara finally asked as they walked through the streets. “What made you wake up one morning and decide to be the only girl in the biggest group of bank robbers since Bonnie and Clyde?”

Fauna smiled, but Clara didn’t quite understand it. It wasn’t a joyful smile, but it wasn’t sad. It wasn’t surprised or suspecting or like any smile Clara had seen before. It was mysterious, a mask, and yet Clara knew that Fauna wasn’t going to hide anything in her answer.

She was going to reveal everything.

“We met him at the circus – all of us, Will and Heath and Harvey and me. I was stuck at the kissing booth and the boys were busy shoveling elephant dung every day. It was miserable, moving around ever few weeks, our every lives controlled by some narcoleptic control freak acting as ringmaster. We all ate together and spent our time together – Noah never talked about you, or about anything, really.

“Heath was really too young to be there, but he and Will are brothers, and there’s nowhere else for him to go. That old woman you saw with Noah on the train is Ilsa, our recruiter, and Heath would stay with her in the costume caravan. But one day, the ringmaster was in a terrible mood and Heath ran into him, causing his pocket watch to fall in a puddle. He hit Heath in a terrible rage, and that was that. Will snapped and hit him back, and they started fighting each other – if he hadn’t had suddenly fallen asleep, I’m sure they would have killed each other. But he fell asleep and everyone in the circus started freaking out because we all knew Heath and Will would be dead once the ringmaster woke up. The five of us decided to run away. We stayed with a farmer for awhile, and he gave us the van, but it didn’t take us too long to realize there was only one way to get money. We don’t rob banks out of greed or for glamour or infamy – it’s out of complete necessity. We have no other family and nowhere to go. We’ve kept it up for so long that every police station in the country has our wanted fliers, and we can’t stop running.”

“That explains the cops at the theater,” Clara joked weakly. The van was in sight now, the size of a quarter, sitting patiently in the parking lot of a gas station. The girls were quiet for a bit longer, then begun to fill the air with mindless chatter as they got closer to the van. It was an odd sort of bond, beginning with cheap underwear and ending with personal secrets. Clara couldn’t help but smile as the van got larger, happy to find an ally in this new world of strangers.

That is, until they reached the van, only to find vomit covering the back wheel and the doors wide open. The boys all sat, their legs dangling over the open doors.

“Heath’s sick,” Will said quietly, and Clara stopped smiling.