Compromised

by Heidi Ayarbe

  The fact that there are two of us now irritates me. Nicole’s dead weight. Not planned. Not part of my materials list. I sigh.

  She sits next to me on the swings. The cracked plastic seat creaks. For once, she’s quiet. Maybe her mouth doesn’t work until the sun is high in the sky. I laugh to myself thinking of the “solar mouth” concept. That would suck during summer up in Alaska.

  I pull out the box and sift through the contents. I wipe a layer of dust off a picture of Dad, Mom, and me. I was probably two years old. We look happy in the picture. We look like a family.

  There are other pictures, some letters, paycheck stubs, papers, and shoved at the bottom of the box, a locket on a chain. I open the locket and stare at the faded photo. Two girls hug each other. You can tell they’re sisters: gray eyes, curly hair, and the same dimples. They’re about my age in the picture—fifteen years old or so. They look like me.

  I look like them.

  Dad always says I look like Mom. I hold the locket in my hand and rub off some of the tarnish.

  Aunt Sarah. He wasn’t lying.

  I look closer. Is Aunt Sarah dead, too? Does suicide run in the family? If I bring this “proof of relative” to Kids Place, will they try to find her? I think about the piles of files on Beulah’s desk, and all those kids she has to process through the system. She hardly has time to pee, much less go on some wild aunt chase.

  If I show up at Aunt Sarah’s door with this locket to prove I’m her niece, will she take me in?

  I sigh.

  “You really don’t know where you’re going, do you?”

  For just a second, I forget that Nicole is sitting next to me. She’s a new variable. Maybe not, though. Maybe she’ll just stay in Reno. I don’t know. I put the locket on. “I’m going to the library.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  “The library? You run away to go to the library?”

  “And I suppose you have a better place to go?”

  Nicole shrugs.

  We walk to the downtown library, but it doesn’t open until ten o’clock, so I sit on one of the benches outside, trying to pound some feeling back into my toes. Nicole sits next to me and pulls out a cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke into the air. I move away.

  “What?”

  I shrug. “Secondhand smoke. It’s been classified by the EPA as a known cause of cancer in humans. And I don’t fancy going bald and throwing up my intestines because you choose to cut your life short.”

  Nicole rolls her eyes. “Have you ever done anything fun?”

  “Waiting for a premature, painful death isn’t fun.”

  “Yeah. Like you really live now. Whoopee. One fucking Discovery special after another. I just don’t know how you contain yourself.”

  In Maryland Dad and I didn’t have cable, so he jimmied something to hook up to Mrs. Carlotta’s dish. Everything was fuzzy except for Das Erste, some German news channel, and Science Channel, the British version of Discovery. Dad had to work every afternoon, so I’d come home from first grade and watch TV. I had stopped playing in leaves and chasing boys for my ribbons. I remember I’d time myself, trying to get home as fast as I could after school—the faster the better. I loved these shows.

  There was one about making time machines. When Dad got home, I told him that all I needed was a jar, atoms, a worm hole, negative energy, and to travel at the speed of light. And we could change things.

  That’s when Dad bought me a bicycle and unplugged our connection to Mrs. Carlotta’s dish.

  I spent years trying to take back those five minutes. And since then, I’ve learned that everybody looks into the past every second of every day. It takes eight minutes for sunlight to reach the earth.

  But seeing into the past isn’t the same as traveling there.

  “Yeah. You’re a model of fun living a life at the Reno bus station,” I say, biting down on my lower lip to stop from mentioning pill bottles and suicide attempts.

  Nicole blows a puff of smoke in my face and snuffs out the cigarette.

  Thankfully, the library doors open, so I go into the library and find a corner table where I have space to sort through the box. I pull out all the papers and organize the letters from the most recent date to the oldest date.

  Nicole sits next to me and picks at her hangnails, peering over my shoulder.

  “Do you have to do that?” I ask.

  “What?”

  “Hover.”

  “I’m not hovering.”

  “Yes, you are. Go read a magazine or something.”

  She yawns. “Boring.”

  “Then just move a foot back, please.”

  “Touchy,” she says.

  All the letters are addressed to Mom but none have the return address stickers on them. They’ve all fallen off. I can see where the envelope is darker there. She must’ve used those freebie address stickers you get from charities. Dad and I had one of those businesses once. We posed as a foundation for homeless cats. I asked Dad why we didn’t pose as a foundation for homeless people, and he said people are nicer to animals. Anyway, we printed out cheesy address labels, asking for donations, and we didn’t do too bad.

  The stationery is brittle and yellowed by time. I gently open the letters and read each word. Weather, health, school, blah blah blah. For all Aunt Sarah writes, she doesn’t say a whole lot. I wonder if I have a cousin. Or two. I wonder what Mom wrote Aunt Sarah. Did she write about me? Dad? What would Mom have said?

  I smell the paper. Strange. Letters. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten one. A real letter. In a way I’m lucky Mom and Aunt Sarah didn’t get swept away by the world of the internet.

  I open the last letter. A pressed flower falls from the pages—its delicate reddish petals like rice paper in my fingers.

  “Can I see?” Nicole holds out her hand.

  “Be careful.”

  Nicole holds the flower in the palm of her hand. “That’s cool. Sending a flower in a letter.” She hands it back to me. “Kind of like something you’d see in the movies.”

  I nod. It is. I hold the faded flower in my hand, then carefully tuck it back in the envelope. A piece of Sarah’s home? It’s a puzzle. Everything about Mom and her life is that way. Dad never talks about her. We buried everything with her that day in the cemetery—her memory, her past, her entire existence.

  But she had a sister.

  She has a sister. And it makes me feel sad to think that Mom might have had three people who loved her so much but still swallowed it all away.

  In with the other papers in the box, there’re four paycheck stubs—all dated more recently than any of the letters—one with a note on the back. “Hope this helps. More on the way. Sarah.” They’re from some restaurant in Boise, and have the name Sarah Jones printed on them. Great. She married some guy with the last name of Jones. That’s real helpful.

  I can’t make out the first word of the restaurant on the stubs, but it’s Something Grill. Its address is faded, too, but I can read Main Street. I go to the media lab and look for restaurants on Main Street in Boise, Idaho. There are nine restaurants with Grill as part of their name.

  Okay. Somebody there has to know her. Who she was. Maybe they have an old manager who remembers all the people who passed through—even someone with as generic a name as Sarah Jones.

  I consider calling all of them but change my mind. I’d probably end up talking to some gum-chomping waitress fresh out of high school. Pass. Things are usually better done in person.

  Nicole taps on my shoulder. “What are we gonna do now?”

  “I’m going to Boise, Idaho. I think,” I say.

  It’s a start.

  In Mr. Hunter’s class we’re going to start unknowns after we’re done with the science of food. Aunt Sarah is about as big an unknown as there is. If I can find her, I can do anything.

  I print out the MapQuest directions and tuck them under my shirt, clicking off the computer. I pay for my copies and ask the librarian which way Boise is.
r />   “Northeast,” he says.

  Like that’s a lot of help. “So I walk out these doors and take a right,” I say jokingly. “School scavenger hunt.”

  “Left, then left,” he says with a furrowed brow. “Highway Eighty east. Why,” he starts to say when he’s distracted by some girl spilling coffee all over a computer keyboard. I didn’t know librarians said those words.

  I escape toward the entrance. I’m leaving. I’m not going to look back. Dad died the moment he signed those papers. He’s as dead as Mom. But maybe Mom’s stupid box has answers.

  “You walk fast.” Nicole trots to keep up, practically toppling over the new-releases display.

  I push through the doors out into the bright afternoon sunlight, Nicole on my heels. I look at the clock before leaving: one thirty.

  Crap.

  I didn’t realize we’d spent so much time there.

  “Boise, huh? Cool. I’ve always wanted to go there,” Nicole says.

  “Whatever,” I say.

  “Why wouldn’t I want to go there? Maybe it’s a great place to visit.” We leave the library. She pulls out another cigarette and curls the edges of her mouth up. But her eyes never smile. “Road trip!” she says.

  I leave the building. “Left, then left,” I mutter. “Eighty east. I need to go east.” I glare at her. “I, singular. Good-bye. Have a good afternoon at the bus station.” My stomach growls.

  I turn my back to the mountains and walk east along the river. After an hour or so, I turn around. “I know you’re there. Quit stalking.”

  She catches up. “Good. It was hard to be stealth. I was trying to be like Hill when he staked out JFK airport and stole five million dollars. I need to work on that. Stealth, you know.”

  I sit down and rub my foot, tuning out Nicole’s voice. I don’t know why I’m so tired. My head hurts and my stomach roars.

  “Hey!” Nicole taps my shoulder. “To run away, we actually need to, um, run.”

  I glare at her and we walk down Fourth Street—probably the dodgiest street in the entire state—following it until we get to The Nugget. My feet are pounding, like the bones are poking through the soles of my shoes. After another hour of walking, Nicole stops and sits on a curb. “I’m tired. Are you planning on walking all the way to Boise?”

  “You have a better plan?” I hope so.

  “Take a bus.”

  “Do you have any idea how far twenty bucks will get us?” I ask.

  Nicole shakes her head. “Not far.”

  “That’s why I walk. This is emergency funding.”

  “Well, fuck. Is Boise far?”

  I stare at her. “It’s in Idaho. Yes. It’s far.”

  “How far is that?”

  “Have you ever had a geography class?” I snap.

  Nicole raises her eyebrow. “You’re such a snob. Sorry, Jeopardy, if I’m not exactly sure where we’re heading. I didn’t get my map and briefing notes. At least I know where to find fucking downtown.”

  She has a point. “So you have a better idea.”

  She taps her temple. “I just might have a brain in here. We hitch.”

  “We?”

  “I’m coming along.” She crosses her arms and stares at a patrol car pulling up. The chill of late afternoon has set in.

  “Why? Why do you want to go?”

  “I don’t ask you why you need to go to Boise. So you don’t ask me.”

  “I don’t get it. Why would you even bother coming along? We’re nothing alike.”

  “Except for the fact our parents are shit so we’re orphans?”

  “Dad’s not shit. It’s complicated,” I say lamely.

  Nicole pulls out a cigarette and lights up. “Yeah. Real complicated.”

  God, I wish she’d just go away. Like I really need to spend the most important trip of my life on suicide watch. Been there. Done that. Blew it.

  “Trust me,” she says. “I’m better company than the Nicholsons—unless you’re into late-night Bible readings with Donovan so he can cleanse you of your sins.”

  My stomach lurches.

  “Hitching alone is dangerous—especially for girls, you know. Not to disrespect that feminism shit.” Nicole puffs out O-shaped rings..

  Running away has a lot more variables than I accounted for when I wrote out the plan. In fact, “Find Aunt Sarah” barely touched on the technicalities of the actual running-away part. And I never imagined Nicole as the biggest variable in the whole thing. I sigh. “Okay. We stick together. But only until Boise. Then we each go where we need to go. Separately.”

  She nods. “Tomorrow we’ll get a ride. Better earlier in the day. Safer.”

  “What’s wrong with hitching now?”

  “We have about one hour, tops, left of light.”

  “So?”

  “So vampires come out at night. Jesus, Jeopardy. Night is bad, okay? That’s when the crazies come.”

  “So you’ve done this before?”

  She shrugs. “Nope.”

  “Then how do you know?”

  “You’re supposed to be the smart one? Common sense.” She sighs. “You’ve got a lot to learn, Jeops.”

  “Okay. So where do we spend the night?”

  I follow Nicole through the labyrinth of streets in downtown Sparks until she slips into an alley where she points out an abandoned warehouse. “This’ll do. Let’s go hang out at Victoria Square, though, until it gets dark.”

  We wander around the streets, looking in the shop windows. It almost feels like we’re on vacation. When we see the sprinkle of stars through the casino-light haze, we head back to the warehouse.

  We duck inside and set some loose boards up over the entrance, leaving a slight opening. “I don’t like the dark so much,” she says.

  “Me, neither,” I admit. It’s early. Only seven o’clock or so. But the night is black with a sliver of a new moon. I sigh. It’s going to be a long one.

  Nicole flicks on her watch light and we make our way to the far corner, where she sets up some cardboard boxes for us to hide behind.

  I’m kind of glad she’s here.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Rats scratch and scuffle in the walls. Paws patter across my toes, and a thick tail slides over my ankles. I shudder. “The rats are the least of our worries,” whispers Nicole. “Listen.”

  We huddle closer together. Someone stands outside the loose boards Nicole placed in front of the doorway. It reeks like decomposed bodies. I choke back the acid that works its way up my throat and wish I had easy access to my Pepto-Bismol.

  “Home sweet home,” a thick voice slurs. Heavy boots break down the boards—a dim light filters into the warehouse. “What’s up with the boards here?”

  “What a fucking dump,” says another.

  “You want the Holiday Inn, asshole?”

  Four figures stumble into the warehouse. They work their way to a pile of cardboard boxes in the far corner, sitting between the door and us.

  Nicole’s fingers encircle my wrist and squeeze. I hardly notice the legs and feelers that crawl up my pant leg. The four guys light up and pass around something that pops and crackles in the silent warehouse.

  The dim light that burns casts weird shadows on the walls. Dark clothes drape thin frames; matted greasy hair is tucked behind pierced ears. Hollow laughs echo in the warehouse.

  I never believed in monsters before.

  “Shit,” Nicole moves closer to me. “I didn’t notice their stuff there.”

  The warehouse is big. It isn’t like they need the whole area. But I know we’re in trouble. I can feel it in my gut. Instinct—as basic as it is—is the strongest thing we’ve got going for us. That “feeling” that spreads through my body is telling me to run, hide, do anything I can to get away.

  “Crack,” Nicole whispers.

  “Crack? As in crack cocaine?” I ask.

  “Jesus, Jeopardy, yes. This isn’t some after-school special. Those guys are jacked up high. Bad news.”
r />   “How do you know?”

  “Smell it. Listen to the sound. And watch them. They could blast off, and we’re fucked if they do.”

  Her hands are clammy on my wrist. She digs her fingernails into me, and I bite my lip to keep from shouting out.

  “What do we do?” I ask.

  Nicole scoots closer to me and we hunch down. She’s actually trembling.

  “What’s your problem?” I whisper.

  “Fucking junkies,” Nicole whispers, and rubs her arms. “They do anything for a hit.”

  I try to make out her expression in the gray light but see only shadows. One takes out a syringe and shoves it into his arm. Two start to fight and throw each other against the wall. The last lies on the ground convulsing in his vomit.

  Nicole and I wait for dawn—the obsidian night turning Nevada purple. Soon the warehouse will fill with light streaming through its cracks. And they will see us. But now they don’t move, and I worry the one with seizures is dead. He hasn’t moved for hours.

  Nicole nods to me and we slip out of the warehouse into the cold November air. The only sound is our feet pounding the pavement. Sirens blare in the distance. I just follow Nicole, not knowing which way we’re running or if we’ll ever get away from the warehouse and this neighborhood.

  We don’t stop until we collapse. I catch up to Nicole and hold my side. My lungs burn, and I gasp for breath. “H-how did you know what they were doing?”

  Nicole shrugs. “It’s not like something I’ve studied for my SATs: Topic: Identifying crack cocaine in an abandoned warehouse.”

  I stare at her.

  “Let’s just say my mom taught me well.”

  I open my mouth.

  “Drop it, Jeopardy.”

  I sit down and lean my head on my knees. “Do you, umm?” I start to ask, but then feel really parochial.

  Nicole sits on the curb pinching her side. “Nope. Fucking users.” She walks away from me.

  “But they said—” I stutter. Shelly had told me Nicole got kicked out of her last family because she stole pills. “What about the pharms?” I ask, grabbing her elbow.

  Nicole pushes my hand off her arm. “It’s not like doing real drugs or anything. Shit, they’re all advertised just as much as cough drops.”