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

I said, holding back the prickly, jumpy feeling that set my insides rolling.

“I hear you’re leaving. How come you didn’t mention it?”

I didn’t need a heavy discussion. My body was about to burst open if I didn’t get out of there. “Only told Robin today.”

“I thought we were friends. You could’ve shared it with me, Anna.”

Before I could stop myself, the hateful words spewed from my lips. “Then I guess we’re not really friends.”

I might as well have punched her in the face. She stumbled backwards, her fake-tanned cheeks sinking inwards. “You can be a nasty heartless bitch, Anna,” she said, then slammed out of the room.

But I couldn’t think about Sabrina right then. I had to stay focused on Birdie. What had happened to her at the Flatts’ place. What I’d done to cause it all.

Once I got in my car I ran a couple of red lights and almost sideswiped a truck, so I was in a real state when I got to Linda Martin’s office. Eyelids swollen from crying, head buzzing in confusion, breath coming in raspy gulps. I sat opposite her trying not to look at the stupid posters plastered on the wall behind her. The only thing I could focus on was her T-shirt. Another Gap clearance special. Navy with white polka dots that danced in front of my eyes.

“So tell me something I don’t know already, Anna. I’m fully aware that too many kids in foster care are highly over-medicated. Don’t you think we’ve tried to do something about it?”

I blinked and looked up at her.

“Huh? What’s that?”

“The drugs. The over-medication. You told me you witnessed Lester and Patti Flatt giving Birdie a cocktail of prescription drugs.”

I snapped back into the present and remembered why I was there. I’d had a breakthrough. Something that brought me closer to Birdie. “Yes – I finally remembered the place with the flowered wallpaper. Lester Flatt, the mall cop and Patti, his wife. They dosed her up for a week or more so she could barely stand upright, let alone get out of bed.”

Linda rolled a pencil back and forth across her desk, scrutinizing its motion. “First, I already told you last time you talked about the Flatts. According to our records, Birdie wasn’t at that particular placement. Second. Wherever you witnessed this – and it must’ve been somewhere else – it’s nothing new, Anna. Statistics tell us at least one in four kids in foster care is taking psychotropic medication. Half of kids in residential care or group homes are prescribed these drugs. Sometimes multiple drugs with serious side effects. All of us front-liners have tried at some time in our career to get the matter taken to the highest level, but no matter what we do, there’s always some total shit of a doctor happy to prescribe even red label drugs with only a five-minute consultation. Sometimes to kids as young as six. It’s easier on the foster parents than trying behavioral therapy, and from the doctors’ perspective, it gets those troublesome patients out of their hair more quickly. That’s the sad truth.”

“But I’m only concerned with Birdie. It might help us find out what happened to her.”

Linda checked over her notes. “Anna. For the last time, there’s no record of Birdie even being there with you. She ran away from the group home before you were placed at the Flatts’ house. We do know for sure that you were placed there and they gave you drugs. Many drugs that messed up your memory of that particular time.”

“But I remember every detail. I had a black eye. Birdie’s friend hit me and I told on Birdie. That’s why they drugged her.”

Linda looked at me as if I was talking gibberish. “Anna, it’s natural you feel some sense of guilt about Birdie. She was your twin sister after all.”

I tried to hold back the urge to smack her smug face and kept my voice low and steady. “But I distinctly remember smoking weed. Patti gave it to me.”

Linda folded her arms and bowed her head. Some major revelation was coming. I could hear her brain ticking, as she considered the most merciful way to frame her response. She looked up again and waited for a moment, absently rubbing the tip of her chin. Measuring my expression.

“Sadly, it was way worse than that, Anna. You were a severely traumatized kid. Removed from your family, bounced around from one home to the other. You lost Birdie, the only person close to you. That means you already had a high risk of developing mental and emotional disorders. You were given much more dangerous drugs that put you over the top.”

I had to stop her. Tell her she was wrong. It was Birdie, not me who was drugged into oblivion. “You’re all mixed up. Those notes are lies.”

“Anna, you were injured physically, mentally and emotionally when you left there. And then – there’s something much more important I need to remind you about…”

I stiffened up. Clasped my hands over my ears and shook my head. “Not now – please, not now.”

“Okay,” she crooned in a soft voice that sounded like air hissing through a crack in a window. A voice meant to pacify me, but instead drove me into a silent frenzy.

“I’ve always told you, you’re welcome to go through the notes. But perhaps it’s time for you to sit down again with a therapist. A trained psychologist or psychiatrist will help you deal with the tough details about your sister. To help you finally come to terms with the truth.”

I placed both palms on her desk and tried to steady my voice. “I don’t need a damn shrink. I just need to get the facts straight.” My mind was racing, grasping onto ideas before they disappeared. “Oh, and there’s something else. A guy who works for you. Peter Karrass. He’s been hanging around the riverbank with some of my underage hooker students. He picked one up in his car. Then