We started out as petty thieves. We picked up the mulch-worthy crabapples from neighbors’ lawns. We poured water into the vodka bottles in the basement. We took swipes of our brothers’ deodorant to cover up our sour smells because it had a better scent than anything the pharmacy had to offer us young ladies.

We fished the tubes of lipstick out of our teachers’ purses. They all wore the same brand: CoverGirl TruShine. In a town with so few options, why were they ignoring the other brands in the drugstore aisle? Surely some teacher with some popularity had spread the word that TruShine was the best product, and all of the other teachers had trucked over to the Walgreens or the CVS to smear samples on the thumb edge of their hands.

When our parents were watching movies or failing to listen to each other in arguments, we tucked out the backdoors. We set up shell games on the street with the lipstick. We’d uncap the tubes, and spin out the shades.

Mrs. Ball wore muted Powderpink Shine and applied hers til the waxy stick ended in a flat plateau. Mrs. Pullman wore Blushberry Shine and rounded off the tip of her tube. Finally we flashed Ms. Withers’ whore-y, bright crimson Valentine Shine with the perfectly maintained diagonal. Cosmo had told us this shape of lipstick proved that Ms. Withers was the moody, daring role model we all hoped she was, riding around town with the young shop teacher, his hands rough and smelling of oil, his eyes full of promises and splinters.

We’d cap the tubes and lay them down on our piece of cardboard outside the Circle K. Our hands would move fast, sliding the tubes around each other. “Powderpink Blushberry Valentine!” we’d call like we were conjuring something. Cash had been laid down. How our parents never heard about the con-girls shuffling lipstick outside the Circle K, we didn’t know, and thanked the Good Lord above out loud, but in each of our minds we thought, “Someday they’ll hear and they’ll need to confront us, and would that be so bad?”