pregnant ladies, ending up with poison ivy in a personal area after she’d had to duck into the woods to pee.
At the end of August, Nonie announced that she was going to visit her sister on Nantucket for two weeks. “I’m gonna fall off the wagon. Fried clams . . . lobster rolls . . . ice-cream cones . . . ugh, summer’s just a disaster!” she lamented. Jo, who was familiar with her friend’s taste for Halloween candy in the fall, Christmas cookies in the winter, and Cadbury Easter eggs when spring arrived, elected to keep her mouth shut. “Maybe you could type up the exercises for me. Oh, no, wait!” Nonie grabbed Jo’s hands. “I know what! You can do a video!”
“What? No I can’t. I don’t have a camera.”
“Doesn’t the school have equipment?”
“I’ll ask.”
The next afternoon, Jo approached the tech teacher, whose name was Mr. Genova, to inquire about borrowing a camera. “No can do,” he said, glaring at her as if she’d asked to borrow a hundred dollars from him personally. “Equipment doesn’t leave school grounds.”
“I could do the exercises in the gym,” Jo said, and Mr. Genova showed her a sign-up sheet, and a waiting list, and a waiting list for the waiting list, and told her that he didn’t think a substitute teacher should be allowed to jump the line. “He said ‘substitute teacher’ like it was ‘child molester,’ ” Jo reported to Nonie, who tapped her tongue on the roof of her mouth, looking thoughtful. “Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she finally said. “Is that room locked at night?”
Jo didn’t know for sure, but she couldn’t imagine that the school would leave expensive equipment just lying around. “Do you have keys?”
Jo saw where this was going. “I do, but, Nonie . . .” Nonie held up her hand. “No ‘buts.’ No excuses. Isn’t that what you say?”
“Yes, I tell you that when you’re trying to cheat on your lunges, not when you’re telling me to steal stuff.”
“Not steal. Borrow. Big difference.” She raised her voice. “Hey, Missy, want to help us pull off a heist?”
“Don’t answer that,” Jo shouted, just as her daughter called from the living room, “What are we heisting?”
“You see that? Your daughter can help you! I’ll do your hair and makeup.”
“Nonie, I know that you think this is a game, but I could lose my job.”
“You won’t need that job.” Nonie’s eyes sparkled wickedly, and her smile was as pleased as Jo had ever seen it. “We’re going to make you . . .”—she spread her arms wide, like she was writing words on the sky—“. . . a star!”
* * *
“I can’t believe you talked me into this,” Jo whispered the next morning. She and Nonie, dressed in black, were walking—creeping—toward the high school’s entrance. It was five a.m. on Saturday. Their plan was to take the equipment, film the workout routine that morning (“Magic hour!” Nonie said brightly), and have everything back in place by eight a.m. Jo held her breath as she eased the key into the lock. The door swung open. Lights did not flash; sirens did not blare. She exhaled a little, turned, and beckoned for Nonie, who was waiting behind the wheel. Nonie put the car in Park and ran across the lot, breasts bouncing enticingly.
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Jo whispered as she hurried to the second floor with Nonie at her heels. They both had flashlights. Nonie even had a black face mask, which her son Drew wore when he was skiing. “If anyone stops you, just say you left your purse in the classroom.” That was Jo’s plan, and it would work . . . unless, of course, anyone saw her leaving the technology center with what she assumed were thousands of dollars of equipment. She unlocked the tech center’s door. The students’ desks were empty. The teacher’s desk was bare. “In here?” Nonie asked, waving her flashlight at a wall of locked cupboards. Nonie tugged one of the handles and made a face when the door was locked. She walked to the teacher’s desk and pulled the top drawer open, and there, between a staple remover and a large pink eraser, was a small silver key on a tag labeled “equipment.” “Here!” Jo shoved the key in the lock, opened the cabinet door, and hunted until she’d found the equipment Missy had told them to collect: a camera, a boom, a microphone, and a power pack. Jo handed