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

pretty, clean things. Four months of sleeping on motel carpets leaves a layer of sleaze and grime that can’t be removed using threadbare motel towels and cheap soap.

At first, I started with a squirt of Narcisco Rodriguez hand cream, the black one with the hint of sandalwood and musk. I rubbed it on my chapped hands, imagining that one day, when I had money, I’d bathe in the perfume, then rub the cream all over my body. Having money meant being clean and fragrant. Meant sleeping under crisp white cotton sheets instead of a stained towel or old sweater. Rows of lipsticks gleamed in open display cases, and I was just considering how to transfer a few into my pocket when someone yanked my hood down. I almost jumped a foot into the air and whirled around, expecting the grim face of some mean store cop.

“You still couldn’t jack a raindrop in a thunderstorm,” said Birdie, grinning, her mouth glossy with scarlet lipstick. Dressed in a tiny suede bolero jacket and form-fitting jeans, she glowed. I’d never seen her so beautiful. “And what’s with your hair? It looks like a plate of leftover spaghetti.”

“I like my curls,” I muttered, twirling the ends of one around my finger. “Easy to look after. And the bathrooms are lousy where I’m living.”

“Where’s that?”

I shrugged. “Still at the motel. You know. Hiding out.”

“You’re sleeping on floors?”

“Yeah.”

She took a pen from her Louis Vuitton purse and scrawled something on a piece of paper. “Here’s my address. You can come in the afternoon, around three, when Loni isn’t there and get cleaned up. I’ll lend you some clothes.”

I stuffed the address in my pocket. “You still working for Earl?”

She shrugged and chewed at her index finger, flaking off the tangerine polish. “Kind of. Except now I got myself a regular. A special boyfriend. He’s loaded and he’s crazy about me. And I’m clean – off the junk and all that. It’s been three months now.”

The cosmetician glared at us, her heavily penciled brows knit into a frown. Birdie shot a screw you look at her and pulled out her wallet, fat with bills. I watched in awe as she peeled a few off and slapped them on the counter. “We’ll take the biggest Narcisco Rodriguez gift box. And you can wrap it for my sister.”

The deflated woman disappeared behind the counter and busied herself with pink paper and black ribbon.

“Does he know how old you are?”

“Doesn’t care. Says he loves me for my spirit. And I make him happy. He’s going to leave his wife. She’s frigid. A real witch. He promised. Just as soon as he gets the balls to tell her.”

“Sounds like something from a lame soap opera.”

She flipped a wing of her hair to the side and looked away as if she wished she hadn’t told me. “I know it sounds cheesy, but he’s different. He says he wants me to have his babies because he knows they’ll be beautiful.”

Her eyes were glassy – her expression trancelike. As if she was poised on a cliff edge above a turquoise ocean, gazing towards a sun-tinged horizon and the happy place where dreams finally come true. For Birdie this fantasy of luxury, a family and babies of her own was so real nothing else mattered.

I moved around to face her. Make her see sense. “You must be high or something. How could you have a baby? You’re still a kid. You don’t even know what it takes to be a mother. We never had a real mother.”

She finally looked at me, her tear-filled eyes furious and defiant. “What do you know about what I want? What did you ever know?”

I staggered backwards, her words knocking the breath from me. She was so wrong. I’d always had her back – always put her needs first when we were kids. Then Loni came along and trampled over the life we’d built and the memories we’d shared. Broke the bonds that held us together.

“Your package, miss,” said the sales clerk, breaking the tension between us. She presented the pretty wrapped package to Birdie who shook her head.

“Jeez, can’t you see she’s the one who needs it?” Birdie said, her voice raspy and sharp. “Oh and keep the change. Get yourself a donut and coffee.”

She swept away from me in a cloud of perfume. I clutched the beautiful package, my head filled with the certainty that she was heading for another massive betrayal. Then I thought of supper and wondered how much I could get on the street for this extravagant gift my sister had just sprung on me. I decided instead to return it the next day, when another sales clerk was around. I’d had the presence of mind to grab the receipt just as Birdie flounced off in a huff.

A couple of weeks later I looked Birdie’s place up. Her directions led me to a concrete and glass downtown tower block with a security system and real plants on stone tables in the front lobby. Pretty good for a fifteen-year-old high school dropout, I thought as I schlepped my plastic bag of dirty clothes across the polished marble tiles towards the elevator.

That same morning I’d just made it down the motel’s rear fire escape as a pair of social workers in beige trench coats and shades descended like enemy agents to scour the rooms along our hallway checking for runaways like me who’d slipped through the cracks in the system.

My options were running thin. Soon I’d have to go back to sleeping in the mall or even check out the homeless shelters, though they usually asked way too many questions and all for the dubious pleasure of sleeping on a sleazy mattress recently vacated by some old drunk with a leaky bladder and night sweats. No way I’d ever stoop to that.

Birdie met me at the door of her apartment wearing a fluffy pink housecoat, her hair wrapped in a towel.

“You stink like a toilet,” she said,