Compromised

by Heidi Ayarbe

  I raise my eyebrows.

  “So Nadia had a prescription. She was a user just like anybody else. She and Martin got pretty freaked out when I took a few pills from her bottles and brought me straight back to Kids Place. They were ‘antidrugs.’ But I don’t see the difference between her and me.”

  “Maybe she needed them.” I think about the prescription bottle Nicole had at Kids Place. But she never took the pills. I don’t get it.

  “Maybe I needed them, Jeopardy. Whatever.” Nicole scowls.

  “But you don’t take them,” I blurt out.

  Nicole stares at me. “I told you to stop going through my shit.”

  “So why do you have them? Why don’t you take them?” I ask.

  “I don’t need them.”

  “So what did you do with them?” I ask. “Did you bring them?” I look at her bag. Why would anybody want a whole bottle of pills?

  I know the answer and it makes me mad. I don’t want to do this again.

  “Jesus, Jeops, can you lay off the inquisition here? Plus, I don’t think this is best place to give you the D.A.R.E. talk. Let’s go find a Denny’s or something.”

  We drag ourselves toward Highway 80 and find a strip of restaurants. A small casino-restaurant’s parking lot is filled with eighteen-wheelers. Chunky silverware scrapes across ceramic plates. Endless cups of steaming coffee are being served. The restaurant buzzes with heavy predawn voices.

  We scoot into a booth, and I shake my pant leg hoping I haven’t become some kind of bug-infested human petri dish.

  “You’ve got that twenty bucks, right?” Nicole asks.

  “Eighteen ninety-five,” I say. “Photocopies at the library.”

  She pulls out a wadded-up five-dollar bill. “Twenty-three ninety-five.”

  I stare at the crumpled bills and change.

  “How far is it?” Nicole asks. “To Boise?”

  I pull out the MapQuest map. “Uff. Four hundred twenty-three miles,” I say. “More or less.” And I have zero sense of direction, but I’m not about to tell Nicole even though she’s probably already figured that one out.

  She shrugs. “How much is that per mile? How much can we spend?”

  “Over five cents a mile,” I say.

  “And it’s worth it?”

  “What?”

  “Going where we’re going?”

  “I don’t know.” I’m chasing a ghost. I’m chasing hope. And I don’t believe in either.

  The waitress brings the truckers sitting across from us piles of steaming pancakes with thick pats of butter melting down the sides.

  “A nickel a mile?”

  “Yeah.” I sigh. My stomach growls.

  “Fuck it,” Nicole says. “Let’s order pancakes.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “I just want to know why you have the bottle,” I say, and pour a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. “If you don’t take your medicine.”

  We’re quiet. It’s like the question hangs in the air. “Insurance,” Nicole finally says. “Always have backup, right? Plan B. And that bottle can get us out of a tight spot—” She shifts her gaze from me when she says that.

  “Insurance,” I mutter, and down my second dose of Pepto. That’s one way of putting it.

  “You’ve got yourself a pretty little habit there, Jeops.” Nicole points to the pink goo that drips down the side of the bottle. She smiles.

  “Pepto-Bismol? Pepto-Bismol isn’t a habit. It’s not an illicit drug that people make in their garages out of laundry detergent. It’s…it’s Pepto-Bismol.”

  She’s grinning now. “Aw, c’mon. What’s the diff between pharms and your Pepto? Tomorrow it’ll be on the DEA’s most dangerous drug list. Who knows? You’re still an addict.”

  “I happen to have chronic gastritis, okay?” I say, and take another swig. “And if we’re going to do this runaway thing together, it’s good to put all the variables on the table.”

  “Variables on the table?” Nicole slurps more coffee. “Okay, Brainzilla, let’s get this straight: We’re using each other.”

  “Okay, then. What do you add to any of this?” I ask. “How can I possibly have use for you?”

  “Someone here has to have common sense.”

  “And that is common sense?” I point to her wrists. “Not eating is common sense? Suicide is common sense?” It’s like she never even read the note I had written. Wasted words.

  Her eyes turn black. “Fuck you, Jeops.” She shovels handfuls of sugar, Sweet’n Low, and grape jelly into her backpack.

  “Don’t take them all.” I slump down in the booth.

  “Trust me. You’ll be grateful for this later on.”

  My head spins from the seven cups of coffee Nicole insisted I drink. “We have to be alert,” she said. I don’t think a caffeine buzz is equivalent to alert. I lean back in the booth. Major gastric suicide.

  “You’ll remember this breakfast,” Nicole says.

  “How will I forget?” I unbutton my jeans. We’ve been eating for about three hours.

  “You girls need anything else?” The waitress snaps on a piece of gum, pushing greasy bangs off her forehead. A thick layer of foundation covers up acne. She eyes the empty sugar and jelly baskets and motions to the clock. “Our pancake special ends at ten thirty.” She snaps her gum. “Shouldn’t you girls be in school now, anyway?”

  It’s ten nineteen. I’ve been a runaway for more than twenty-four hours and still haven’t gotten out of Reno.

  “And what’s with the luggage?” she asks.

  Nicole looks up casually. “Honors classes. Big books.”

  I shove my backpack under the table. My cheeks burn. Nicole kicks me and mouths, “Be cool, Jeopardy.”

  Yeah. Cool.

  The waitress nods and clears our plates. “I’ll bring your bill, then.” I watch as she heads back to the kitchen.

  “We’ve gotta split,” Nicole says. “We shouldn’t have brought our packs in with us.”

  “She’s just going to get our bill. No big deal.” My stomach feels like I swallowed wet cement. Five pancakes. Seven cups of coffee. I fumble for my last spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. “We’re in a casino-restaurant. This is the least likely place anybody’s going to care about two teens with overpacked schoolbags,” I say. “We’re chameleons—just a little entry-level cell manipulation, changing our melanocyte cells, so to speak. We’re blending.” I just want to sit for about seven hours until I can digest the concrete ball in my stomach.

  Nicole arches her eyebrows and shakes her head. “Just don’t talk when the waitress comes back with our bill. Cut the science shit, okay?”

  Some man with a button-down shirt and standard casino tie comes to the table holding the bill in his hands. “It looks like you girls really enjoyed our all-you-can-eat special.”

  I open my mouth and snap it shut when I feel Nicole’s heel grinding into my foot. I bite my lip to keep from yelping.

  Nicole glares at me.

  “Are you on vacation or something? You look like you’re packed and ready to go somewhere.”

  Nicole smiles. “Like we said. Honors classes. Lots of books. Lots of homework.”

  How lame does that sound? Taking a look around the restaurant, I can see that maybe we’re not blending. Nobody else our age sits around the tables. It’s filled with truckers and middle-aged people with bloodshot eyes and stringy hair. We even stick out in a roadside diner—the literal melting pot of America. We might as well have posted “hungry runaways” on our foreheads.

  I try to think of something to say, but my tongue feels sticky. I down a glass of water and cross my legs. God, I wish I had gone to the bathroom earlier.

  A couple of security guards walk toward our table. The manager nods at them and smiles. “Why don’t we just call your folks now? Time to go home, girls.” He looks proud. His good deed of the day: Returning the two damsels to their rightful owners.

  Nicole stands up and I follow. She says, “Sure. Maybe we can just use
your phone?”

  “Definitely,” he says. “My office is right this way.”

  Nicole grabs my arm and pushes past him. We rush out of the restaurant into the smoky casino lounge, zigzagging between the slot machines, out a side door.

  “Run!” she hollers.

  We run away from the highway toward the underpass. I look back and see the security guards standing in the parking lot—arms crossed in front of their steroid-enhanced chests. They hardly followed us. They probably don’t get paid enough to chase after a couple of runaways.

  When we stop, I kneel over and throw up.

  “What a waste,” says Nicole. “Don’t piss and moan when you get hungry. That was our meal of the day. Maybe week,” she mutters.

  I just want to sleep—to be somewhere else. Somewhere where I can invent a new name, new family history, and reason why my dad and I moved there. And then I’ll blend. Nobody will notice me for a year or so except for the nerdy science teacher. Then we’ll leave again. There’s something oddly comforting about how Dad and I live.

  Lived.

  I take in a deep breath of air and wipe off my chin. Dad and I always do things alone. Did. Alone.

  Nicole slumps next to me, tapping her forefinger on a clove cigarette pack; its crinkly outer paper slips off.

  I grab it from the gutter and stick it in my pocket, glaring at her. I can feel the acid burbling in my stomach lining. I watch as she twirls a cigarette in her fingers, then taps rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat on the stupid box some more.

  Sit still, I scream in my head. Just. Sit. Still. This is all wrong. She’s not part of the purpose or procedure—just an erratic variable that messes everything up.

  I lean on my backpack. Heavy trucks thunder on the highway above. I stare at the graffiti on the overpass. “Candice is a pretty popular girl.”

  “And flexible from the looks of it.” We crane our necks to the side. “Holy shit. Way flexible.” Nicole whistles.

  I stand up and walk back to Highway 80, stopping at the first gas station we find to use the bathroom.

  Nicole shakes her head. “What a waste of a good meal, Jeopardy.”

  I take a long look at Nicole. Her hair looks limp; dark rings circle her eyes. She hugs herself with thin arms. I put my hand to my hair and realize that it will take two bottles of conditioner to get through the knots. But I don’t really have the time to worry about conditioner.

  We are runaways. But that’s not anything new to me, I realize.

  I’ve been a runaway my entire life.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Nicole is still with me. I never really thought she’d actually go through with it—running away for real. It’s unlike her previous patterns of sticking around and waiting to be found. That’s the thing about humans—highly unpredictable variables.

  I have to construct a new hypothesis, change the materials and variables. And that irritates me, because even my purpose has to change.

  Purpose: Find Aunt Sarah. Convince her to take me in. And maybe Nicole?

  Hypothesis: If I show up to Aunt Sarah’s house, locket in hand that proves I’m her niece, with “the system’s” Spam, Aunt Sarah will invite us in for tea and call social services and send us on our way. (Why would she keep two runaways? What’s in it for her besides catching up with a niece she apparently didn’t care enough to send birthday cards to in the first place?)

  Materials: Box of Mom’s things (most importantly the paycheck stub for a “Grill” in downtown Boise, Idaho), Nicole, me

  Procedure:

  1) Get to Boise—somehow (This could use more detail, but I’m tired.)

  2) Find the restaurant

  3) Find Aunt Sarah

  4) Convince her to take me in

  5) Convince her to take Nicole in, too?

  6) Never look back

  Variables: Time: It’s getting cold. So we don’t have a lot. Walking takes too much time. Hitching: Who picks up hitchers? Isn’t it dangerous? Nicole: How do I know she won’t mess things up? Restaurant: Will it have the same manager? Owner? Will anyone know Aunt Sarah?

  Constant: Me

  Lately it seems I have more questions than answers. My variables pretty much suck.

  I sigh.

  I like the first hypothesis I constructed—the one with the new family and being invited to stay and all. That’s the hypothesis I want. That’s what I’ll do even if I have to dabble in a little data manipulation. At this stage in the procedure, things are getting pretty desperate.

  It’s all about looking at things objectively. I don’t have to care what happens to Nicole. She’s not part of it. She isn’t a variable that’s ever been part of the procedure.

  I turn to her. “I don’t want you coming with me. You go your way, I’ll go mine.”

  “You need me.”

  “I need you? So far I’ve spent the night in a rat-infested warehouse with some whacked-out druggies, almost got caught at a café because we ate pancakes for three hours, have my stomach in some kind of flaming inferno because you insisted that we need to drink all the coffee we can, have thrown up among other disagreeable bodily functions, and just feel downright rotten. You add nothing. Zero. I. Don’t. Need. You.” I hold out my hand. “Good-bye.”

  Nicole tsks and shakes my hand. “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “Fine.” I start to walk when Nicole whistles. I turn back. “What?”

  “You’re going the wrong way,” she says.

  “I am—” I look up. I’m heading toward the mountains. “Crap.” I walk past her. “Good-bye.”

  “Bye,” she says, and walks after me.

  I turn around. “Go away.”

  “Free country. I’ll go where I want.”

  I listen to her scuffle her feet behind me. She’s one of those walkers who don’t pick up their feet but drag them. She probably doesn’t even unlace her shoes to put them on. I hate that. It’s irritating. Scuffle. Scuffle.

  And she talks.

  Nonstop. To herself. To me. I don’t know. But I really wish she hadn’t had those cups of coffee. Then she sings. She must know the word to every top 40 single on the Billboard charts from the past fifteen years.

  Mom used to watch this old show, Name That Tune. If it were still on, we could go on it to make the money to get to Boise. Nicole’d rake in the cash.

  I stop to rest. It’s been a couple of hours and nobody’s picked me up yet. Probably because I haven’t got the courage to stick out my thumb. And Nicole’s right behind me. It’s like she knows I’m too scared to hitch on my own. I walk off the highway and sit on the embankment, leaning against my pack. My stomach growls.

  Nicole sits a few yards away, slurping down some grape jelly. I turn away and massage my stomach.

  Then I get up, walk to the highway, and stick out my thumb. Within seconds an SUV veers over to the side of the road, coming to a screeching halt, kicking up dust in my eyes. “Hey, Little Miss, you need a ride?”

  I look in the rear window and see a couple of guys leering at me. “We’ve got room,” they holler. One of them throws a beer can out the window. Another opens the passenger door of the car and throws up.

  “Come on.” The guy takes a step forward. “Don’t waste my time. You need a ride or not?”

  I shake my head. “No, thank you.”

  “No thank you?” He turns around. “Hey boys. This little lady doesn’t want a ride anymore? We’re not good enough for ya?” He walks toward me, and I walk back until I almost bowl over Nicole.

  She pushes me aside and pulls out her cell phone. “One more step, asshole, and I call nine-one-one.” I look over and see her phone is dead. Dear God, I say before I remember that I don’t believe in God.

  The guy steps forward. Nicole dials and puts the phone to her ear. “Yes. Um, about ten miles past the last exit on I-80,” she says.

  The guy turns pasty white.

  “C’mon, Mike. Let’s go,” one of them yells. “We need to get to the Old Bridge. Dude, if my ba
lls get any bluer—”

  The guy spits a glob of chew at me—it streams in the air and spatters all over my face. “Stupid bitch.” He jumps into the SUV; it leaves skid marks on the side of the road, pelting us with asphalt and stones.

  Nicole puts her cell phone away. Her hand is trembling.

  My heart thunders in my ears. When I can finally hear over the din, I whisper, “Um. Thanks.” Then I drag my sleeve across my face trying to wipe away the billions of germs that probably have landed on me and now are infesting my being: glandular fever, hepatitis B, swine influenza. I already can feel my lymph nodes swelling.

  “What a total MRSA,” I mutter.

  “Mersah?” Nicole asks, and hands me a couple of napkins.

  “Flesh-eating bacteria. Nothing. Thanks.” I take the napkins and try to control my voice. Then I pick up the cans they threw out on the side of the road and shove them into my backpack.

  “What’re you doing that for?”

  I shrug. “Habit. Um, ‘Keep America Clean.’”

  She rolls her eyes but comes forward and dabs off some more spit from the side of my head. “Nasty stuff,” she says.

  “Yeah.” I rub and rub, keeping my mind off anaerobic bacteria. I shiver.

  Nicole holds her hand out and touches my arm. “It’s okay.

  I exhale and rub my hands on my jeans, hoping she doesn’t notice how scared I am.

  “It’s dangerous alone,” she says.

  I nod.

  “Let me come along.”

  I look up at her. “What’s in it for you? Why don’t you just stay at Kids Place?”

  “Why do you need to know?”

  I pause. “Because it’s a long way. And it doesn’t make sense to me, okay? I don’t get the feeling that you like me all that much. And personally I think you’re pretty much the most irritating human being on the face of the planet.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m just being honest.”

  “Honest, huh?” Nicole asks. “That’s something you don’t get much.”

  I shrug. “I don’t have the energy to put on a front. So why? What’s in it for you?”