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

marched in holding Birdie by the arm. Birdie mouthed I’m fucked to me and I jerked upright, spilling the last of the cookies on the floor.

“Shit,” I said, reaching to catch them.

“Sit,” snapped Marian, pushing Birdie towards the couch and reaching into her black briefcase for her notebook. She flipped through it and directed her pale blue eyes onto me. “Why aren’t you at school?”

“I’m sick,” I said, wondering how the irises of her eyes could be almost the same color as the whites. It gave her face a weird, zombie look.

“Well at least you aren’t out committing felonies like your sister. I guess that’s something in your favor.” She bustled around the place, looking for staff, finally spotting Tammie, hunched over the pile of books at the kitchen table. She marched over leaving Birdie and me alone.

“Pass me one of them macadamia cookies,” said Birdie. “I’m starving.”

“Those,” I said. “And they’ve been on the floor.”

“Don’t care.” She reached for them. “Haven’t eaten since yesterday lunch.”

“Where’d she find you?”

“At the mall. I went with Loni and Duane. Loni jacked some lipgloss in the drug store. Cameras caught her. I wasn’t doing nothing.”

“Anything,” I said, taking a cookie and chewing it slowly.

“’Scuse me. Anything,” she said, sticking her face into mine. “It was an ugly color anyway. Some black color. Squid Ink they called it.”

I pushed her away. “You stink. Why don’t you go take a shower?”

“Bathroom’s gross. I found pubic hairs on the tub.”

“Clean it.”

She shrugged and I tried to concentrate on the TV again.

Nikki and Victor were getting dressed for a big dinner dance. Victor zipped up Nikki’s red satin dress and kissed the back of her neck.

“Horny old perv,” said Birdie, reaching for another cookie.

“He’s what you call suave or distinguished. Doesn’t matter that he’s old. He’s got money and nice clothes and he smells nice. Unlike you.”

“Yech. You can keep him. I like them young and smooth. Old ones are too hairy.”

“What do you know about that?”

She nibbled round the edge of a cookie. “Enough. I kissed Duane and Loni told me about the old ones.”

“What does she know?”

“They pay her to do things. You’d puke if you knew so I’m not gonna tell you.”

I was just about to twist her arm back until she told me, when Marian stormed back in.

“Go upstairs and pack your stuff. I’m taking you out of here. Supervision’s too slack for minors like you.”

Birdie sat back on the couch, mouth filled with cookie, tears flooding her eyes. “I like it here. I have friends.”

Marian’s eyes flared, her lips pressed together and she threw back her shoulders. “You call them friends. Taking you on shoplifting trips, feeding you drugs. It’s in your best interests that you’re removed from their destructive peer influence.”

I hated it when Birdie blubbered. Her nose got all snotty, strings of saliva dripped from her mouth and her face turned red and puffy. She looked way worse because she’d plucked all her eyebrows off. Me, I just sat there mute and still, a frozen lump of ice where my heart once was. I didn’t care about anything. Even Birdie had turned away from me since she met Loni. But I felt a faint tremor of hope. Maybe this move could be a chance to win her back – to rip her away from Loni. I touched her arm.

“She’s right. We have to go,” I whispered. “You can call Loni and Duane from wherever we end up.”

Her thin body still shuddering, she allowed me to lead her up to our room and help her pack our usual garbage bags. Marian patted my head and said, “You’re a calm and positive influence, Anna. I see a bright future for a girl like you.”

I smiled and said nothing.

Marian drove us to a small bungalow on a street about half a mile away from the mall. A foster home run by Donna Inglewood, a single mom in her mid-thirties, gaunt-faced and squinty with a cascade of curly black hair and a headful of manic ambition that would eventually send her to jail.

But Donna introduced me to the real wonders of the mall.

It was a seamless transition from the soap operas I gorged on at the group home. A perfumed world of plenty where everyone smiled as they strolled up and down the gleaming hallways, their eyes filled with the promise of bigger, better and nicer things to buy. I learned that the mall promised everything. Magic, plenty and perfection. Time was erased here. Poverty wiped out. My edginess gone.

Too bad Donna never had enough money to satisfy her shopping habit and Dayton’s just happened to be crawling with undercover security the day she decided to lift a pair of diamond earrings that turned out to be cubic zirconias.

I finally left the safety of my car and entered the mall, but felt no urge to buy more clothes. Thoughts of Donna had dampened my enthusiasm and my closet was full to bursting, the overflow spread to the guest room. Instead I lingered at a jewelry store, picking up a pair of overpriced turquoise earrings and a sleek Scandinavian watch. I followed up with a couple of weightless silk scarves and a pale beige handbag from another store. Soon I was on a roll again, memories of Birdie, Donna, and Carla gradually receding from my mind with the thrill of each new purchase.

Two doors up from there was Essentique Salon. Hair, makeup and nails all in one sparkling beauty palace. Suddenly the idea of a mani-pedi was the most appealing idea in the world, so I grabbed a smoothie from a nearby health food bar then surrendered myself to the sharp chemical cocktail of shampoo, nail polish and hair spray.

As I leaned back and set the massage chair to full back rolling and gliding motion, I vowed to treat myself more often. My mind had been racing lately, buzzing like a fly from one strand of thought to another, and since the wedding I’d