The Blonde of the Joke Read online

  “I have Physics,” I said. “And so do you, come to think of it.”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Francie said. “I’m not going to argue with you! Come on.”

  I wavered for a split second, but let’s be real: of course I went with her. Everyone else skipped class all the time; I figured I could do it once without Ms. Tinker even noticing. And Francie had, like, this power over me. So I stepped through the door and followed her into a musty, dark stairwell.

  “I can’t believe I found this,” Francie said. She lit a cigarette and handed me one.

  “No thanks,” I said.

  “I thought it was just going to be a broom closet or something, but false! It turns out to be, like, some kind of secret passage! Truly insane.”

  “I swear to God I never saw that door before,” I said.

  “Really? That’s weird. Sometimes you have to be looking, I guess.” She was standing only inches away from me, and I could feel the heat from her cherry on my face. It lit her up, all orange and spooky in the dark of the barely illuminated stairwell.

  “Come on,” Francie said.

  We walked down mildewy concrete stairs, deep into the bowels of the school, me trailing my fingers along the cinder block walls the whole way. I read somewhere that you can find your way out of any maze by keeping a hand pressed against the wall as you walk. Even though our path was a straight line, I thought it was better to be on the safe side. Then, finally, the stairs ended, and we continued on, down a narrow, subterranean corridor, our way lit only by weak, caged-in sconces on the walls. Francie bounced ahead of me, totally unworried about the possibility that we were most likely heading straight into the lair of a serial killer or, at best, the pervy janitor.

  I tried to figure out exactly where we were relative to the rest of the school—tried to imagine what was going on above our heads—but it was too confusing. I couldn’t orient myself. We were just getting more and more removed from everything real. And then Francie stopped, waiting for me, and when I caught up, I saw that we’d come to a dead end—the passageway ended in a steel ladder bolted to the wall, which led to a trapdoor in the ceiling.

  Francie gave a deep curtsy. “My most awesome discovery ever,” she crowed.

  “Where does it go?” I asked.

  “Just see!” she said.

  “You go first,” I told her.

  “Ha,” she said. “Trust me—it’s not scary. But fine.” And she scrambled up the ladder, undid the latch in the trapdoor, and disappeared above me. I took a deep breath and followed.

  I poked my head out on the other side, into what seemed to be a tiny supply closet. Francie was perched on a plastic milk crate. She had her high heels dangling from her toes.

  “Um, it’s a closet,” I said, pulling myself out of the trapdoor. “Awesome.” I didn’t see what was so great about a closet.

  Francie just winked and opened the door, and light flooded our closet, leaving me momentarily blinded. When my eyes finally adjusted, all I saw was green grass and blue sky. I laughed in surprise. The passage had led us straight out of the school. We were in the supply shed at the far end of the football field.

  “No more sneaking past security guards or any of that crap,” Francie said. She was making fun of me, sort of, knowing that I had never snuck past a school security guard in my life. “Three steps and we’re off school property. Free! Seriously, could anything be better?”

  I laughed again. “It’s pretty awesome,” I said. Francie took my hand, and we left the shed, careful not to let the door latch behind us. We made our way through the trees into the park behind the school, and down past the bike path, to the hidden creek, where we settled in on the pebbly bank. This time I accepted Francie’s offer of a cigarette. She sat next to me, puffing thoughtfully, and she gave me a serious look. “So I want to show you something really important,” she said. “I’ve been waiting till I thought you were ready. And I think you’re ready now. You did such an awesome job at Nordstrom the other day. It’s time.”

  “Um, okay,” I said.

  “Okay,” said Francie. “First off, you have to promise that you’ll never reveal what I’m about to tell you. Promise?”

  “Duh,” I said. With Francie I’d learned it was often just better to go with the flow and figure things out later. Trying to get a straight explanation out of her before she was ready was usually more trouble than it was worth.

  “I promise,” I said. Francie reached over and took my hand and squeezed it, looking me straight in the eye.

  “Even if they torture you,” Francie said. “Like, especially in the face of torture. Promise?”

  I couldn’t not roll my eyes. “Okay already!” I said.

  “Good,” she said.

  Francie tugged on her left earlobe. She tugged on her right earlobe. She wiggled her nose twice like the lady from Bewitched, except it was more of an up-and-down bunny twitch than a witchy back-and-forth.

  I stared at her, waiting for her to tell me what she was going to tell me. She didn’t say anything.

  “Well?” I finally asked. “Don’t get me all excited and then kill me with suspense or anything.”

  Francie tugged on her left earlobe. She tugged on her right earlobe. She wiggled her nose again. “Got it?” she asked.

  “Um, no,” I said.

  “It’s the Sign,” she said. “I’m showing you the Sign.”

  “You mean that stuff you were doing?”

  “Yes,” Francie said. “Try it.”

  I tugged on my earlobes, copying her as she did it along with me: left, then right, then wiggled my nose. I felt like a fool.

  “You got it,” Francie said.

  “I got it, but I don’t get it,” I said.

  “What’s not to get?”

  “What’s the point of it?” I asked. “I mean, why are you showing me this?”

  “It’s, like, if you’re ever in trouble,” Francie said. “Like, if things get desperate. Like, if you’re about to be caught. You make the signal, and hopefully someone will recognize it and help you out.”

  “Who’s going to recognize?” I asked.

  “Another member of our sisterhood,” she said. “There are more of us than you know, Val. More of us than I know, either. It’s, like, all ancient and everything. It goes so far beyond you and me. A sisterhood. It’s been around for thousands of years—as long as anyone’s been stealing. They used this sign in the open-air markets of ancient Mesopotamia. So now I’m passing it on to you. You’re a member of the club.”

  “Uh-huh,” I said.

  “No, seriously,” Francie said.

  It was hard not to look skeptical. “So who, like, told you about it?” I asked.

  “I can’t reveal,” Francie replied, with a mysterious shrug.

  Of course, it was all totally idiotic. The Sign itself seemed like something that a five-year-old made up on the playground, and the idea that there was some centuries-old network of shoplifters stretching back to ancient Mesopotamia was even more dumb. If anyone else had told me any of this stuff, I would have laughed out loud.

  But this was Francie. A girl who could find doorways where they’d never been before. A girl who had been known to reverse gravity. A girl who could make anything—anything—disappear.

  She had proven herself to be a master of the unlikely. Why start doubting her now?

  “Got it now?” she asked.

  Instead of answering, I tugged at my earlobes and twitched my nose.

  “Perfecto,” Francie said.

  We stood, and as we dusted our butts off, there was a giant gust of wind, and leaves began to fall. We stood there, on the edge of the creek, looking up as red autumn leaves flew around us in an unexpected cyclone.

  “Let’s go to the mall,” Francie said.

  “Now?”

  “Yeah, we’re already out. Why not?”

  I thought it over. There were still four periods left in the day; I had a quiz in Geometry.

 
“Okay,” I said. “Let’s go.”

  Chapter Five

  “Do you believe in God?” Francie asked one day in her bedroom.

  “Yes,” I said. “Do you?”

  “No,” said Francie. “Well, not really. Maybe a little. So do you, like, read the Bible and stuff?”

  “No,” I said. “But I went to Sunday school when I was little.”

  “So you know about Samson and Delilah, then.”

  “Maybe?” I said. “It sounds familiar, but I’m not sure.”

  “I read the Bible over the summer and it was totally boring,” Francie said. “But Samson and Delilah was one good part of it. It’s, like, about this superhero named Samson and his bitchy girlfriend, Delilah.”

  “Oh, wait. Is he the one with the ponytail?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Francie said. “A long beautiful ponytail, like three feet long, and very shiny. And he had these superpowers, superstrength and whatnot. But then one night when he’s asleep, the bitch Delilah sneaks up to him with a pair of, like, shears and chops off all his hair.” Francie punctuated herself by scissoring her fingers through the air maniacally, snip-snip-snip.

  “Why’d she do that?” I asked.

  “I forget.” Francie shrugged. “The devil probably. Anyway, then the next day he goes on this mission where he has to, like, hold up a temple while it’s collapsing. Or something like that; I’m just going on memory. Whatever. Normally it would have been no problem for him because he was just that strong. But it turned out that all his powers were in his hair. Without the ponytail he was just some regular dude. So the temple collapses on him and he dies.”

  “What a bitch. I hope Delilah was sorry.”

  “Probably not,” Francie said. “They never are. It’s a crazy story, though, right? And it teaches such an important lesson.”

  “What’s the lesson?”

  “Appearances count,” said Francie. “Even in Bible times, it was so important to have good hair.”

  “He probably looked better without the ponytail,” I pointed out.

  “Maybe they were more in style in those days,” Francie said. “Like in the nineties.”

  I looked down at myself, at my jeans, not too baggy and not too tight, and my blue zip-up hoodie. I twirled a limp strand of hair around my finger. I looked over at Francie.

  “Cut my hair,” I said.

  “I really don’t think that was the point of the story!” Francie laughed. “Unless you want to be crushed in a tragic collapsing-temple accident.”

  “I’m sick of it,” I said. I thrust forward a lock of my limp brown hair. “It just, like, hangs there.”

  “Okay,” Francie said. “Let’s do it, Samson. You could hardly be less superstrong than you already are.” She picked a pair of scissors up off her desk and led me to the bathroom, where I sat on the edge of the bathtub. Francie draped a towel over my shoulders. “I’ve never really cut hair before, but it can’t be too hard, right?”

  “I’m sure it’s easy,” I said.

  “How do you want it to look?” Francie asked.

  “Different,” I said.

  And Francie took the scissors and just went to town, her tongue poking from her mouth as hair started flying everywhere. I’d been growing it out since elementary school, but I wasn’t very sorry to see it go. It was the old me.

  “No, don’t look!” she yelped when she was done and I made a move to the mirror. “I have to put some product in it.”

  She dumped some sticky crap in her palms, rubbed them together, and then gunked it around on my head. “Okay, now you can look,” she said. Around us, the bathroom was completely covered in scraps of dark hair.

  Appearances count. The Bible teaches us this. Although I believe in God, I don’t put much stock in the Bible; it’s just way too long. But appearances do count. Look at poor Samson and that bitch Delilah. A different hairdo and everything would have swung the other way.

  The next day, I showed up at school in a tight white shift dress that stopped six inches above my knees and a pair of white go-go boots borrowed from Francie. My hair was gone; now it was just a spiky, dark crown at my skull. It looked great.

  Everyone stared at me when I walked into Physics. All heads turned at once. “Slut,” I heard Shana Miller cough under her breath. That was Shana Miller for you. Ms. Tinker pushed her glasses up on her nose and regarded me for a brief moment. “Valerie,” she said. “You’re late. See me after class.”

  Francie was sitting at her desk already, grinning from ear to ear.

  I’d thought it would feel different. To look like this, to dress like this. To be this person. I had thought I would feel powerful. Unstoppable, like Francie. Instead, I was embarrassed. Who did I think I was?

  Appearances definitely count, but I also had to wonder if Francie had missed the point of Samson and Delilah. Because, to me, the real question was exactly the question that she had glossed over. The question I asked Francie—the one she blew off—cuts right to the point of everything: Why’d Delilah do it?

  Chapter Six

  You take a seashell. You take a tube of lip gloss and a prissy silk scarf like an English teacher would wear. You take a mountain, and a cloud, and a molten pebble from the core of the world. Francie said this was how we were going to do it. Because the entire planet Earth is pretty fucking big. You have to start small and take a chunk at a time.

  That was Francie’s theory, at least.

  Francie claimed that she had been shoplifting for at least as long as she could remember, and even though I didn’t quite believe her, the thing is that it almost would have made more sense for it to be true. Maybe she had been born with a popped antitheft sensor in one hand and a rubber band in the other. Because when it came to stealing, Francie was amazing, I am telling you. Amazing. Like that first day at the mall, at Wet Seal, when she’d stolen the red dress: one minute it was in her hand and then it was in my purse, in my size and everything. An offering of friendship. All she had to do was want something and it was hers. She had wanted not just the dress but, for whatever reason, me.

  Well, Francie wanted everything. By everything I mean every single thing. Sometimes it seemed like there was a clandestine line of ascendancy, like Francie knew she was waiting in the wings to rule an oblivious world. Francie had a sparkle in her eye that suggested she had a secret, and the secret was that you couldn’t even begin to imagine her destiny. A girl-queen in exile.

  “I have a plan,” she told me one day in November, a few weeks after she had showed me the Sign. We were standing by the glass elevator on the mezzanine level, looking down over early Christmas shoppers milling around the wide pavilion below us. The glowing signs and kiosks were laid out like a set of instructions to be followed, and Francie leaned out on tiptoe, palms facedown against the guardrail. She turned to me with a mischievous slant of the eyebrow and said, “All this is going to be ours.” The tiny silver lima bean around her neck quivered at the hollow of her clavicle. Breath in, breath out. I thought I saw a spark.

  Start with a shitty plastic charm bracelet. Have a plan. “Why stop at stupid, tacky Montgomery Shoppingtowne?” Francie wanted to know. “Between the two of us, we can do it. We clean this place out first, then expand the operation. It already belongs to us, anyway. We just need to claim it.” With Francie’s voice hoarse from cigarettes, it was always hard to tell how serious she was. Of course, by then I had learned that questions like that were basically immaterial.

  “We’ll clean this place out,” I said, going along with her. “Then move on to the Smithsonian.”

  So Francie and I went to the mall every day after school. We held our little black bags close to our hips and closer to our fingers, always looking out for that one thing that caught our eye. “It’s easy,” she explained to me when I asked her for her secrets. “Just pretend you’re the sun. Too hot to look at. Anyone looks at you too long—burn ’em. Remember that and you’ll never get caught.”

  It wasn’t exactly that e
asy. There were tools and techniques. There were strategies she taught me—strategies in which I will never lose my expertise. Rubber bands, bottle openers, booster bags, decoys. Angles to be worked out. You had to know the blind spots. But, according to Francie, not one of those specifics was nearly as important as what she called “the becoming.”

  “The becoming” was what you told yourself before the hit. It was reminding yourself that it all belonged to you, and that you were doing nothing wrong. It was leaving your own body and letting something fearless and hungry inhabit it instead. In Francie’s case, it was donning a spooky, blinding camouflage. It was channeling the sun. Too hot to look at. That was just Francie. For me, it turned out, it was something entirely different.

  Francie knew that the closer it got to Christmas, the less anyone at the mall had time to worry about a couple of teenage girls. Around the holiday, according to her, you could really go crazy. So we ditched seventh period on Friday afternoon the week before Thanksgiving and caught the bus down Georgia Avenue to the mall.

  I still hadn’t stolen anything big. Up till then it had been all trinkets for me; junky crap that no one would care about if they caught me. And even when it came to that stuff, I was so unsmooth that I couldn’t figure out why Francie thought I would make a suitable accomplice. Just the intention of stealing anything made me edgy: eyes darting, mouth twitching, movements all jerky, totally suspicious-looking. It was a miracle I hadn’t been busted.

  For some reason, Francie believed in me despite my complete amateurishness. She believed that I had something special and had decided that it was time for me to take it to the next level. To steal big, earn my stripes. Thanksgiving being the perfect time for it. I wasn’t sure how I felt about the idea. Okay, I did know how I felt about it. Not good.

  “It’s all about the becoming,” she explained for the trillionth time on the bus ride over. “You get that down and you’ll be able to steal anything at all. You’ll be fine, I promise. I can always tell.”