The Secret Sister by M. DeLuca (leveled readers txt) 📗

sobering thought drove me back to the group home on Ardis Street. I parked outside and tried to picture Birdie sitting on the front steps, hands dug into the pockets of her hoodie, hunched over a cigarette. She started smoking when we came back to the group home after leaving Rosa’s place.

After the murders.

Her hands shook so badly she could barely brush her hair or clean her teeth. Maybe it was the stabbing – the sight of all that blood spattered across the wall. Some pimply loser kid offered her a drag of his Marlboro and she never looked back. The smoking calmed her down. We were only twelve and she was already on a pack a day by the time she was thirteen. It was the smoking that got her involved with the bad kids. The step out back was the domain of stoners, dope heads and budding criminals.

Loni was the first one to take a shine to Birdie. She was sixteen, the daughter of an alcoholic father and meth addict mother. She was also a chronic shoplifter who spent the day cruising drugstores stealing flu medication, toothpaste, razors, shampoo, soap and other small items. Once she’d collected enough, she’d head out into the seedier parts of Hennepin to sell them and make enough to buy her daily weed. The first time we went out with her was the beginning of the end between Birdie and me.

I was hunched up in the corner of my bed reading. Birdie rushed in, eyes sparkling, arms flapping.

“Loni wants us to come shopping with her.”

“I’m busy.”

“She says she needs me. I’m a star actor. And she’s really popular. She doesn’t even have to ask us, but she did. She chose us.”

“To do what?”

Birdie shrugged. “Who cares? It’s better than staying in. And she promised me lipgloss.”

I went grudgingly. Mainly to protect Birdie who was so gullible she’d do anything for attention.

Birdie brought me to Loni as if taking me into the presence of a visiting queen. A huddle of older kids stood around the step outside, slouching and smoking. At the center was Loni. An imposing figure with a spiky red buzz cut, flinty garnet eyes that gleamed from a hollow-cheeked face, and a barbed wire bracelet tattooed around her wrist. I’d thought I was tough, but Loni towered over us with her sinewy, muscular body. Rumor had it she could bench press almost two hundred pounds. Nobody messed with her in the group home. She was at the top of the pecking order.

Birdie pushed me forward. “This is my sister, Anna.”

I took a deep breath. My stomach turned a somersault. “We’re not stealing anything,” I squeaked.

“Did I just hear some little lowlife back talk me?” said Loni, pulling herself up to full height and looking at me with such disdain I felt my insides shrink.

Despite my defiance, she dragged us both to a shabby strip mall. Drugstores and convenience stores next to pawnshops and instant cash stores. Loni said we’d hit the drugstore first, and our job was to cause a diversion by dropping something, asking a lot of questions or crying so loudly the clerk would leave the cash desk.

“They won’t suspect skinny little white girls like you,” she said, jamming her red spikes into a green, knitted cap.

I was about to open my mouth to tell her that actually we weren’t sure if we were totally white because Dennis told us we came from a big mixed-up set of folk from some small town in the north of the state, but Birdie nudged my shoulder hard and I shut up. After two stores, Loni told me to wait outside.

She pinned me up against the wall with one hand, her face so close I could see the pimples on her chin. “Your sister’s cool, but your sourpuss face is gonna rile them up in there. Park your skinny ass out here and don’t move unless I tell you to.”

I stood out in the cold, seething. I’d promised not to let go of Birdie and now here we were, hanging out with shoplifters. Accessories to a crime. And no one gave a damn about where we were. No mom meeting us from school in her SUV. No milk and cookies waiting back home on the kitchen table. Nobody reminding us to get our homework done or be home early from a friend’s house.

The other kids at school always complained about how their parents pissed them off with all their questions and interference. I wanted to scream at them – tell them how lonely it is to know that no living person has you on their mind. No mother, father, brother, grandma, grandpa. Nobody. Only Birdie. We had each other and that was that.

When Birdie burst out of the front door of the store, red-eyed and swollen-cheeked after a successful sobbing session, I was so mad I grabbed her arm to drag her away before Loni came out.

“The cops are gonna catch you and then what? You’ll be in juvie.”

But she dug in her heels and refused to budge.

It was the first time she’d ever disobeyed me.

I yanked her arm, my heart bursting at how light and skinny it felt. She shrieked and pulled back, so I wound up and slapped her face so hard her head snapped sideways. She slumped against the wall, a frail bag of bones, hand plastered to the side of her cheek. I froze. I knew I’d gone too far.

“I didn’t mean it, Birdie, I swear,” I screamed, at the sight of the red, raised welt swelling across her cheek.

“I hate you, you bitch,” she shrieked, lunging at me and smacking her skinny hands against my chest. “Nobody likes you. You spoil everything. You’re evil and jealous and pissed off all the time.”

Her fingers were hard and bony like bird claws scrabbling across my skin. Passers-by glanced sideways at us, then averted their eyes and rushed by. That’s when Loni swooped out and waded in between us.

“Cut it