We were fast with our hands. We’d rotate in Rosy Shine and Mauve Shine, that looked so much like Powderpink Shine. We’d shake our heads sadly when the mark picked the wrong shade every time. “Just tell me how you do it,” Bobby’s father asked us, but we knew, if we didn’t tell him, he’d come back with a theory, and empty his wallet again.

It wasn’t long before we started picking up other people’s orders at the fast food chain. One of us would order a soft drink and we’d sit with our backs turned to the people in line. We’d wait to watch a harried mother pass us to settle her children in before the food was up, and when that number was called, and the mother was still pulling off her children’s coats and digging up one more booster seat, three of us would file out, and one would go smile sweetly at the young pimpled boy who went to school in the next town over, and wrap her neatly manicured fingers slowly around the top of the bag, and say, in a voice so breathy it would blow through the boy’s twitchy dreams, “Thank you,” and meet us outside where we’d walk to the forest preserve and eat the bits of chicken and plain hamburgers ordered for the kids and the fish fillet sandwich the mother had fooled herself into thinking was a favor to her health.

Our schoolwork was sliding. We had been the smart girls, but we’d started getting pretty and thievish. We used our smarts to find workarounds instead. If we only had time to write two pages of a five-page research paper, we printed out the pages we had, and then stapled them to three blank pages, and ripped those pages off, leaving a jagged triangle of paper. We’d slide this paper into the middle of the pile, and by the next day or the next week when the teacher had sorted through the papers, and she told us she was so sorry, but it appeared some of the pages of our report had been lost, could we please reprint them and turn them in ASAP, and we said we’d bring them the next day. Shanna kept saying, “So we bought some time. What’s the big deal?” “Stole.  Stole that time,” I reminded her.

We started cutting class, and trolling other neighborhoods. We watched people’s routines. We noticed people loading their cars with suitcases. We counted family members leaving the house. We had a pattern down. Janna checked all the windows. Eve checked all the doors. Cathy looked for spare keys, and I sat out front ready to call out if I saw something suspicious. We never went in without an escape route. There was always an alley or some woods behind the house that we could disappear in.