Rivals

Maggie was amazed at how easy it was to hide in plain sight. You'd think a girl in a rumpled plaid field hockey skirt with a look of desperate villainy in her eye would stick out on the street, and that every person she passed would turn and point and scream, "There she is!" But in fact all she had to do was spend five minutes shoplifting at the Gap. She put her hair up under a baseball cap and threw a lightweight hoodie and a backpack over her jersey and suddenly she was invisible, or close enough. No one gave her a second look. No one shouted for the police.

Even when she walked into the bank building, right past the security guard.

As she surveyed the red marble lobby of the bank - the rank of ATMs on her left, the four teller windows on her right, people streaming in and out, carrying out their business, living their happy safe normal lives - she told herself over and over again that this was going to be the last time, the last bad thing she would ever do.

She had spent most of the day psyching herself up for this. Convincing herself she had no choice. There were some things, after all, that you couldn't just steal. She needed to find a place to stay, for at least one more night. She needed a car. Sure, you could steal a car, but she didn't know how to hotwire one and carjacking seemed too risky. It would be too easy to hurt somebody that way.

She needed money. She told herself if she could get some money together then she could leave town. Drive off into the sunset. Find some place where nobody knew who she was and start life over. Do it right this time.

But first, she needed money. She'd chosen the bank for a pretty simple reason. If you were going to get in trouble for a robbery, it seemed to make sense to rob the place where all the money was.

This would only take a minute, she told herself. And then she would be free.

She waited until one of the teller lines emptied out. Then she headed over to the window and smiled at the woman behind the bulletproof glass. The teller was maybe forty-five years old, pretty in a commonplace way. She had a mole on the side of her nose. Maggie couldn't stop staring at it.

"What can we do for you today, miss?" the teller asked.

Maggie pulled off her baseball cap and dropped it on the floor. Then she unzipped her hoodie and let the teller see her jersey, with the team logo and her number on the front. "Do you know what this means?" she asked.

The teller screamed. Which Maggie guess meant that yes, she did.

A second later an alarm started going off, a bell ringing in the back of the bank. More people screamed. All around Maggie people started running, heading for the revolving door behind her. She figured that was for the best. The teller tried to duck under her counter. Maggie punched the bulletproof glass window that separated them and it cracked in half. She punched it again and one piece fell away to thunk on the floor behind the window. Then she reached over across the counter and dragged the teller back up to her feet.

"Just give me some money," Maggie said, "and I'll go away. Nobody needs to get hurt, okay?"

There was a dull impact on the back of her neck. Maggie spun around and saw the security guard standing there. He had a wooden baton in his hand, and he was pulling it back for another swing.

"Seriously?" Maggie asked. "That's the best you've got?"

The baton came whirling around toward her face. Maggie had plenty of time to grab it as it came around. She flipped it in her hand and then jabbed the guard in the stomach with its rubberized grip. His face went pale and he slumped to the floor, gasping to get his breath back.

He would be fine, she told herself. She hadn't hit him hard enough to damage anything vital. She turned back to the teller, who was pulling a long metal drawer out of her counter. "I'm so sorry," the teller said. "I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me."

"It's not your fault they didn't give him a gun," Maggie said. "What are you sorry for?"

"I - I just started my shift, and they only." She stopped talking.

Maggie raised an eyebrow. "Yes?"

"I think I might be sick," the teller said. She definitely looked a little green.

"Look," Maggie said, "you're not going to get hurt, as long as you give me the money. I don't have any reason to hurt you."

"It's the beginning of my shift," the teller said again, slowly, "and they only bring out cash as we need it. It's all controlled downstairs, in the vault."

Maggie frowned. "I'm not getting the point, here. Help me out."

The teller held up the metal drawer. There were a couple of twenties in there, and a handful of fives and ones. The slot for ten dollar bills was completely empty. It looked like there was less than a hundred dollars there. That wouldn't get Maggie very far at all.

"People don't do cash transactions like they used to," the teller explained. "Most people go to the ATM for withdrawals, and when they make a deposit I send it downstairs right away."

"Down to the vault."

The teller nodded.

"Which I'm guessing is locked. Okay," Maggie sighed, "who has the key? Or the combination, or whatever?"

"The branch manager. But he."

Maggie waited patiently for the teller to start again.

"He ran out of here as soon as I screamed," the teller finished.

Maggie turned around and looked for a way to get down to the vault. There was a stairwell leading off the lobby, with a red velvet rope strung across it. A pair of security cameras watched the stairs and anyone approaching them, but Maggie wasn't afraid of cameras. She looked down at the security guard on the floor and saw him slowly recovering. His right hand was reaching shakily for his baton. She kicked it away from him, into a corner of the lobby, and jumped over the velvet rope.

This was only supposed to have taken a minute. If she took too long getting into the vault, the police would surround the bank and she'd have to deal with them on her way out. Well, she thought, as she ran down the stairs, I've come this far.

There was no point in turning back.