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

Loni had an intense hate on for me. Jealous of my relationship with Birdie, she’d test Birdie’s loyalty any chance she got, forcing her to choose her or me. Eventually she drove a wedge between us that finally splintered any solidarity or love we’d ever shared.

Now the sight of a uniformed mall cop pacing around the fountain, talking into his handset, set my stomach rolling. I wanted to turn and run and I knew damn well why.

After the motel debacle they’d placed Birdie and me with Lester Flatt, a sleazy mall cop and his obese wife, Patti. I remembered him clear as day.

Lester was a pasty-faced asshole who strutted around the apartment whistling and polishing his gun. He’d stop once in a while, drop into a crouching position and whip the gun out, aiming it at one of us. We’d freeze, our hearts slamming against our ribs until he burst out laughing, revealing a row of mossy gray teeth.

“Put that freakin’ thing away, Lester,” yelled Patti from the living room. Patti had been a supermarket cashier until she supposedly injured her back lifting a heavy crate of canned tomatoes. When the workers’ comp ran out, they applied to be foster parents.

“They’ll take them kids away and then what? I’ll have to go out to work and you know how my back is.”

“Consider it done, my lovely,” he crooned, licking his lips, grinning at us and rubbing his crotch with the gun before he stuck it in the holster. “My weapon is now concealed, darlin’.”

A couple of weeks later we cut school early to hang out at the mall.

“Duane’s gonna get one of his friends to give Lester a scare,” said Birdie. I limped along behind her because my backpack was so heavy. I was carrying three books: Madame Bovary, Crime and Punishment and Great Expectations. Estella had become one of my personal heroines.

Beautiful and with a heart of glass.

Nobody could ruffle her icy composure. I’d even begun to cultivate a kind of haughty, superior stare that challenged anyone to try and mess with me. But it didn’t seem to work with Birdie.

“Christ’s sake. Did you hear me? Snap out of it, Anna. We’re gonna mess up creepy old Lester. Then afterwards, he’ll have the shakes so bad he won’t be able to hold his damn gun, let alone play with that shriveled up pecker of his.”

Birdie was manic. She’d ducked outside with Duane and Loni and probably sniffed glue because the sharp chemical stink was all over her. And they were acting so goofy, hopping up onto the fountain walls and walking like tightrope walkers. I cursed myself for not watching Birdie more closely. All the kids at the Capri Motel were doing it – glue, aerosols, hairspray – anything to take them out of the miserable hellhole they were stuck in. Me, I had my books. They were my fix. My escape. I thanked God for Dennis and the reading we did together.

So the three of them started going over a crazy plan to ambush Lester when he checked the men’s washroom on his rounds. They’d jump him, stick him a few times in his paunchy gut and leave him to bleed.

I was stone cold straight. Anyone with half a brain could spot the gaping holes in their wacko plan. “And what if he identifies you? I mean you do happen to live at his goddamn house. That means you’d have to kill him.”

Birdie ignored me and kept on babbling, her whole body twitching like she was having a seizure. “Then we’re gonna crush his nuts and snap that pathetic pencil dick of his.”

“Ew! Gross,” screamed Loni and Duane, doubling up with laughter.

“You junkies couldn’t jump a drunken bum lying in his own puke,” I snapped, surprised by the venom in my voice.

Birdie jerked upright, her eyes red and watery. “My own sister’s such a bitch,” she said, looking at me like I was a stranger. “Can you believe it?”

Loni made a quick move and smacked me across the side of my face with a closed fist. Stars flashed into the blackness, my teeth clunked together and my feet skittered underneath me as I tried to stay upright. Instead, I swayed and dropped to my knees.

“Now you’ve done it,” I heard Duane say.

“Yeah, knocked some sense into her thick skull,” said Loni. “Bitch had it coming to her. Thinks she’s better than us.”

Birdie was silent. I tried to look up through the circling fog in my head to see if she was still there. If she felt sorry for me. If she still cared. But I could only see the shifting shapes of the other deadbeats edging forward at the prospect of a fight. My eye throbbed, swelling like a ripe plum.

“Fuck off,” I heard Birdie say, waving her arms and sending the gawkers scurrying back to their perches. She was agitated, banging her foot against the wall and wiping her sleeve across her nose. “We can’t just leave her here. She’s all messed up. I’m gonna get her some ice.”

Loni’s voice pounded like a hammer in my sore head. “You go do that, you forget comin’ with me. We’re gonna get some good stuff over at Toonz.”

“What stuff?” said Birdie. I heard the hunger in her voice.

“My good buddy Earl’s there, he’s gonna give us smack and a free tattoo. Real good price.”

“You sure?”

“Cross my legs and hope to die,” said Loni.

I felt across my face to where a swollen lump was swallowing up the vision in one eye. I opened the other eye to see them rifling through my backpack. Birdie cast nervous glances back at me.

“My books,” I croaked, the effort sending a fresh wave of pain down the side of my face.

They’d already ripped them out of my backpack. Loni waved Madame Bovary up in the air. “Woohoo we got us one prissy little nerd here. Thinks she’s too good for us with all her fancy books. Teacher’s pet. Hey, Duane, maybe we can