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

“I know exactly how he felt,” I said, panting to keep up. “Raskolnikov, I mean. I looked up the meaning of his name. It means schismatic, dissonant, dissenting. He feels separate. Apart from the common mass of humanity.”

Colby nodded. “Hmmh. Good.” He darted a sideways glance at me through the curtain of hair. “Who smacked you in the eye?”

“Just some inferior louse from the mediocre masses.”

“Well rats like that need to be exterminated.”

“Exactly what I was thinking. Only I wouldn’t feel the same guilt as Raskolnikov. I’d take extreme pleasure in squashing this particular parasite,” I said, picturing Loni’s painted face with a broken nose in its center.

The first time Colby held my hand, I thought I’d faint. He pulled me into the narrow corridor that led to the washrooms and pinned me against the wall right beside the coat lockers. My insides melted when he placed his palms on the wall, enclosing me in his shadow. When he bent over and placed a soft kiss on my sore eye I almost burst into tears. It had been a long, long time since someone was that gentle with me.

“You ever had sex?” he said, his breath warm on my cheek. He smelled of greasy hair and gum with a faint note of something sweet and spicy.

I shook my head, not daring to speak in case I made a fool of myself.

“Me neither,” he whispered into my ear. “But you’d be the first if I was going to. Would you let me?”

“Yeah, I would.” My voice was so hoarse he had to lean closer to hear me.

We stood there for a while, bodies trembling with the urge to touch and kiss each other, until he suddenly broke away. “Gotta go home. My old man’ll be pissed if I miss supper.”

I felt a twinge inside. Patti barely roused herself from the TV to make meals and usually expected Lester to bring in KFC, or Subway. Birdie and I waited for the leftovers, though Birdie had barely been home for supper since the incident at the fountain. Not that Lester or Patti noticed.

“Yeah, better get back.”

“See you in English class?”

“Sure,” I said, aware that we’d crossed a line and couldn’t step back even if we wanted to.

I checked my watch. I was due at Gord and Nancy’s in just over an hour. But something held me there, compelling me to stand in front of DB’s Comics’ window. Maybe I still believed Colby might walk out, head down, chewing a piece of hair, but the place was quiet. Only a few bedraggled looking kids sat round a trestle table playing Magic Cards, a game I’d never really understood even though Colby tried many times to explain it to me.

Time was short so I forced myself to move past DB’s and the tattoo parlor to Toonz, the music store.

I wondered if I’d see Carla there. Persuade her to come back to school. The electric blue sign flickered on and off and I was suddenly short of breath as if a weight was pressing on my chest. I had history there. Long-buried history that stopped me from pushing open the door and crossing the threshold.

I leaned forward trying to see beyond the posters to the long display cases stacked with CDs and videos. It hadn’t changed much in fifteen years. One wall featured death metal music and the usual posters of skulls and hollow-eyed clown bands. On the other side was reggae, hip-hop, R and B and rap. An eclectic mix, welcoming anyone and everyone with a taste for music.

It was there Colby and I had discovered Nick Drake, a brilliant but little-known British musician from the seventies whose brief rise to stardom was curbed by his debilitating depression. After a few years of obscurity, he took his own life at the age of twenty-seven. His music was a revelation to us with its rippling guitar sounds and gorgeous orchestrations, not to mention the singer’s soft, plaintive voice. The fact that there was no known video of him only added to his cachet. We were hooked and Toonz had rare copies of his few albums.

I remembered that I’d kept them when I left my apartment and made a mental note not to dispose of that suitcase until I’d removed them to someplace safe.

Now I saw a couple of customers rooting through the display cases. It was a miracle the place had kept open this long when most people were pirating music now.

Fifteen years ago we all knew there were secret screening booths at the back of the store where – for a few bucks and proof of ID – you could watch porn videos in private. But when the internet came along and all the porn was free, the owner moved on to other income sources.

I found out about all that much later.

But I couldn’t help wondering how the place was still going. Now that YouTube was here and CDs were on the way out.

This was a bad place in my history. I felt it deep in my bones. And like so many places, people and events from my past, I’d blocked some memories so entirely they’d almost been erased. Rachel Levine said it was one of the aftereffects of extreme trauma. Your life history becomes warped and twisted as you try to create and recreate the experiences that shaped you. And sometimes you’re not sure if you’re actually making up your own version of reality or whether it’s actually true.

It was a tough way to live, but at the time I managed to keep going.

The moment I opened the door the years slid back. That musty odor like mildewed book covers and sweaty laundry lurking behind the musky scent of patchouli incense sticks. I’d bought incense there to remind me of Dennis.

The owner was sitting behind the counter talking to someone. I hid behind a tall stack of Disney movies and peeked round to see him. Fingers of heat plucked at my neck