Josie Robs a Bank (and other stories)

By Gabrielle Reid

Survivors. Rebels. Thieves. From the award-winning creative mind of Gabrielle Reid (The Things We Can't Undo) comes a collection of flash fiction and short stories about resilience and growth. A teenage girl watches from above her body as doctors try to work out what caused her heart attack. A boy unwraps his sister's Christmas presents

• Language: English
• Publisher: Impressum
• Release date: Nov 30, 2021
• ISBN: 9781922588142

Gabrielle Reid

Gabrielle Reid is an Australian writer of young adult and adult fiction. Her first novel, The Things We Can't Undo, won the Australian Association of Family Therapist's 2019 Book Award. Originally from England, Gabrielle now writes on the unceded traditional lands of the Awabakal people in Lake Macquarie, NSW. She has a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Canberra and is a current PhD candidate at the University of Newcastle.

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Josie Robs a Bank

~ And Other Stories ~

Gabrielle Reid

Published by Impressum, NSW Australia

www.impressum.com.au

Gabrielle Reid ©2021

ISBN 978-1-922588-13-5 (paperback)

ISBN 978-1-922588-14-2 (epub)

This publication is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without prior written permission from the publisher.

An Invitation first published in Every Day Fiction October 2020. Josie Robs a Bank first published in Riddled With Arrows issue 2.1, April 2018. Christmas Eve first published in Page & Spine, December 2017. Shatter first published in Tincture Journal issue 12, Summer 2015. Two Reflections first published in Slink Chunk Press, December 2015. Fruit Breakfasts first published in The Story Shack. Walking on Water and Passing Through Fire first published in Gravel Magazine.

Some of these stories have been lightly edited since their first publications.

Cover design by Impressum

Text © Gabrielle Reid

Production layout by Impressum

Printed on demand by Ingram Group

Text, letter Description automatically generated

Contents

An Invitation

Josie Robs a Bank

Grace & Sobriety

Christmas Eve

Bovine Larceny

Shatter

Two Reflections

The View from Above

Terezin

Shadow

Fruit Breakfasts

Heart Disease

Walking on Water & Passing Through Fire

Acknowledgments

About the Author

Content Warnings

Please note: content warnings are available at the back of the book for readers who prefer them.

An Invitation

Music throbs through Alexis’s chest. Her hands are raised high amongst a mass of waving arms and the sickening sweetness of too many different brands of deodorant. The heat is overbearing, but Alexis doesn’t mind. She’s close enough to see each movement of Orlando’s lips as he belts out the lyrics the crowd knows so well. Alexis mouths along, her tongue touching the roof of her mouth to form the word ‘love’.

Orlando has the looks to match the fame, and just enough arrogance to make him even more sexy. His cheek dimples as the song ends. The vibrations that were fizzing through Alexis’s body stop while Orlando takes a break to address the crowd. She catches the eye of her best friend, Belle, over the shoulders of another girl.

Having fun? Belle mouths. Alexis nods. Her mum was wrong about concerts; this is worth every cent. Bodies of other fans hem the girls in and they press against the barrier, where a tattooed security guard eyes them warily. Alexis squeezes Belle’s wrist to get her attention and signs water. Belle frowns. But Alexis’s throat feels sticky, too dry, and her head is aching.

One more song, Belle pleads. She turns back to the stage without waiting for an answer, shouting and waving at something Orlando has said. Alexis looks up at the stage, a shrine where the music gods are worshipped, and for a split second, Orlando looks right into her eyes. His finger points, then curls back to himself. An invitation for her to join him.

It would be a dream. Sharing the same breathing space, touching his hand, close enough to see the lashes on his eyes and the sweat dampening his hair. The security guard opens a gate in the barrier for her, only her. She swallows and takes a step forward. She can hardly breathe for the nerves.

Orlando would talk to her. Alexis’s lip-reading would be off. She’d reply to the wrong question in her thick, awkward accent. The crowd would rage at the injustice of a deaf girl being awarded this incredible moment with a singer she can’t hear.

No. Screw them. She paid for her ticket; she loves the feel of his music in her bones and the sight of his beautiful face just as much as they do. Orlando chose her.

Maybe it was a charity thing. Maybe he can tell just by looking at her somehow, or maybe her mother gave his PR team a well-meaning heads up that she would be there. She won’t just be the lucky fan who Orlando picked, she’ll be the disability porn for them, the tragic poster child for hearing fans to feel even more admiration for their hero.

Alexis pushes Belle forward to take the invitation instead.

All eyes are on Belle. Including Alexis’s. Belle bounces as she tells Orlando her name and where they’re from. He wraps an arm across her shoulders to sing the next ballad. Alexis gives Belle a thumbs-up and a grin; in that moment, she’s genuinely happy for her friend. But on the way home, when an exhilarated Belle signs so fast even Alexis can barely follow, something inside creeps up to constrict her throat.

I’m tired, Alexis signs. She leans her head against the bus window. She closes her eyes so she doesn’t have to look at Belle. She closes her eyes to keep the tears firmly behind her lids. She closes her eyes and holds on to the moment Orlando’s gaze caught her own and his finger pointed in invitation.

She imagines some other scenario, being offered a lift to school by his driver when she stands at the bus stop in the rain. He’ll ask her name and she’ll answer shyly, then he’ll write her love letters until he learns to sign. No one will be watching until later, when she holds his arm at a red carpet event. Then she’ll carry herself with pride and dare the magazines to write about her. When his fans cry out with jealousy or whisper words of pity, she won’t care. She won’t hear them anyway.

Josie Robs a Bank

The third time I robbed the bank, I was Asian. Now I’m blonde, ’cause Gabi worries too much. Diversity’s great and blondes are way more common than Asians ’round these parts, but Gabi was worried about accidental racism. Maybe people would think I robbed the bank because I was Asian and not, you know, just ’cause I was desperate for money. Who really gives a fuck about the colour of my hair or the shape of my eyes under the balaclava?

The first time I robbed the bank, it was just an idea. All the world was darkness ’til God thought up light. Just an idea, the way everythin’ starts, big or small.

Josie robs a bank.

That’s it. That’s all we knew, and nobody thought about why, back then, not even Gabi. But it was enough and so I did it – I robbed the bank.

Don’t ask me about it. Don’t ask me how much money I took, or if I heard the sirens outside, or if I held the knife steady or with sweaty fingers. Don’t ask if I saw the look of terror on the pregnant teller’s face. Don’t ask if I saw her body tense. It might have been a contraction, or maybe just a reaction. Pregnant women, they seem to be everywhere ’round here, too.

But all that stuff came later. The first time, it was simple and I didn’t have to think. I just robbed the bank.

We had this pattern down, me and Gabi. A routine, sorta. First, I’d rob the bank, then I’d count the money and try not to think about the other people. You know, the ones who were there that day. I’d always end up thinkin’ about them even when I was tryin’ not to. Gabi reckons that’s a good thing – means I have a conscience, means I’m human. Anyway, I’d rob, I’d feel guilty, then I’d buy somethin’ with the money.

The first couple of times it was somethin’ I needed, you know, like rent and unpaid debts and a baby’s cot. I told you fuckin’ pregnant women. They’re everywhere. Sometimes I’d get cigarettes, ’cause that’s an addiction and who the hell are you to judge me? You’re probably addicted to somethin’ ‘socially acceptable’: TikTok or sugar or some shit like that.

But last time it was useless stuff. Luxuries; stuff that won’t last. I wanted rooms full of floral bouquets and a thousand movie tickets and my name in one of them star registries. Josie Woods, in constellation Pyxis. Gabi had to research that. She didn’t know all that much about stars and constellations, but she does now. She sat outside with a telescope one night and looked at Pyxis, even though it’s freezing in her part of the world right now.

Josie’s star. It was supposed to make you hate me. What kind of a bitch robs a bank and then buys flowers and a certificate from the fuckin’ international star registry? Holds a knife in the face of a pregnant woman, knocks an old guy to the ground? Blonde, or Asian, who gives a shit anymore ’cause it’s not about need, it’s about greed. Selfishness.

Or it was meant to be.

Then somehow, without even changing what I did, I wasn’t a bitch anymore. You weren’t meant to hate me. You were meant to love judge me and relate to me all at once. (Gabi wrote love there, but it was an accident. Subconsciously, her mind just went ahead and connected hate to love before her fingers stopped.) You were meant to think the robbery was fuckin’ awful, but wish you’d had the guts to do it all the same.

Gabi reckons it was a statement. A statement about self-loathing and futility. About reachin’ for the sky and wealth that only lasts ‘til the flowers die. They say God loves everythin’ He ever made and I reckon I’d believe that, ’cause Gabi keeps trying to hate me but she can’t. We need each other and no matter what she does, she always ends up loving me instead. I’d just keep doin’ it, robbing that bloody bank over and over til we got it right, but she’d find a way to understand me anyway.

A couple of times, they caught me. I punched a cop, once. It was after I bought the flowers, you know, when you were still s’posed to hate me. They got me and took me down to the cop shop. They pressed my fingers into ink that didn’t feel like anythin’, ’cause Gabi just decided I don’t need to know what ink feels like.

The cop asked me why I did it and shit, there’s been so many reasons I couldn’t remember if I wanted to feed my baby, or flood my brain with nicotine, or hold life in both hands. So I told him.

Gabi made me do it.

And that was it. Draft five. She tore it up and burned it, and wrote me this instead.

She put me in