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

Only now do I understand the deep differences in the way we handled the grief that comes with the loss of a family – of being cast away and unwanted.

I closed up. Became numb and cold. Shut myself off to deal with the rejection.

But Birdie needed attention like a junkie craves a high. She’d do anything to get it, and most often it was something risky. Shoplifting, casual sex, drinking, toking up, selling her body to anyone who was interested. Too bad the drugs opened the door for all the other reckless behaviors that shaped her life after the age of fourteen.

That’s why I started to try and differentiate myself from Birdie after the Lester and Patti incident. She bleached her hair and flat-ironed it until it was silky blonde. I kept my natural black waves and let them grow wild. She wore blue contacts and plucked her eyebrows to a slim arch. I got into the habit of wearing granny glasses and burying myself in baggy hoodies. Other kids called me the hippie. I sprayed myself with patchouli oil and thought a lot about Dennis. He was my history, my only relic of the past, so I immersed myself into anything that reminded me of him. Old Grateful Dead music, books by Jack Kerouac and the beat poets, I combed thrift stores for tie-dyed T-shirts. One rainy Saturday I got the “D” tattoo behind my knee. A psychedelic D. I wanted to carve the memory of him into my body so that I too could claim I once had a family that cared for me. That’s also when Birdie got another kind of tattoo. Like the one Carla showed me after the stag party, just before I took her back to her mom’s house.

Guy finally showed up from the stag at four o’clock in the morning. I heard the hiss of frantic whispers and the sound of someone fumbling with the lock. He wasn’t alone. At that moment I vowed that if he was with a woman I’d cause such a scene he’d wish he’d stayed out the whole night. Guy had no idea how fast I could escalate – how many objects I could throw at him before he made it out of the door. I sped through the darkness of the bedroom into the kitchen and found some paunchy old guy in a windbreaker rifling through Guy’s pockets as he lay, limbs splayed across the couch. Grabbing a heavy silver candlestick I flicked on the light.

“Who the hell are you and what do you think you’re doing?”

The old guy pulled his hands away and held them up in surrender, his bloated face sagging with fear. “Ease off, lady. I’m just the cab driver. Your husband’s so loaded he threw up in my cab. Messed up my carpet. Now I gotta get it cleaned before I can work again.”

I lowered the candlestick. “How much?”

He ground his teeth together. I could tell he was wondering if he should risk hardballing me.

“Make it an even hundred and I won’t say another word.”

“Stay right there and don’t move,” I said, reaching into Guy’s pocket. He moaned and clutched at his stomach.

“I’d say that guy’s gonna toss his cookies right about now,” said the cabbie.

I lunged for the garbage can just in time to catch a projectile of vomit.

“I guess you’re thinking all men are pigs now,” said the cabbie as I wiped off Guy’s mouth with a kitchen towel. “And you’d be right. Shouldn’t tell you this but you might wanna ask him about that party he just came from. I’ve seen it all in my time, but these rich guys are something else. Messing round with kids. I have a granddaughter same age as some of those girls at that party and I tell you, I’d slit the throat of any guy that interfered with her, and that’s after I broke both his knees with a baseball bat.”

Guy’s wallet was empty except for his ID. I breathed a sigh of relief and nodded at the guy. “Wait here.”

I came back from the bedroom with a wad of bills. “Here’s three hundred. Thanks for your trouble.”

He flipped through the bills and looked up with a smile. “Mighty generous of you, lady. And don’t forget. You ask him about that party and then you tell him to stay the hell away from that house. I know that place and nothing good happens there.”

When the cab driver left, Guy stirred again, his face ashen. I turned him onto his side, spread a large bath towel under his head, covered him up with a blanket and left a big glass of water on the table beside him. I didn’t want him in my bed until he’d washed every vestige of that filthy house away.

He was still sleeping when I left for work the next day. I didn’t have the heart to wake him up before he’d slept the booze off. Besides, I had important business. I needed to get to school early so I could convince Robin that getting Carla into a teen support program might be the only way to extricate her from Rafferty’s clutches. It had to happen before he destroyed her like he’d done with so many others in his miserable career. That guy was a verminous creep who should’ve been stamped out long ago. Too bad he had friends in high places. Wealthy, influential customers who made sure the cops stayed away.

I could barely start the car. My hands were so sweaty I couldn’t grip the ignition key.

My mind raced, slipping from one event to another, then back and forth in time. I knocked my forehead against the steering wheel.

Take a deep breath. Slow down. Don’t think so much. Stay focused on just one beautiful thing.

Ruth Levine’s calming words slid across my messed-up mind like balm on dry skin.

Snap out of it. Control yourself before Carla becomes Birdie and the past sucks away the present.

Whenever that happened