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

grabbing the bag of clothes from me. “Strip off in the bathroom and I’ll wash everything before it pollutes the place.”

I couldn’t figure out why she was acting so civil to me. But I was glad to be back on semi-friendly terms with her. And where was her bodyguard, Loni the lioness?

The bathroom was clean and modern. Black granite and white cupboards. Through the open door I heard Birdie humming like she used to when we were kids playing in Dennis’s backyard. A wave of optimism washed over me. Suddenly my grim world seemed beautiful again, if only for that moment.

Whenever I felt that way I’d run over all the good things in my life as if I was flipping through the pages of a Sears catalogue. I was young, free for the time being, and still likely to graduate high school. The sun shone through the bathroom window and the prospect of a hot shower in a bathtub without a hair-encrusted scum line, was the most wonderful idea in the world.

I stepped inside the spotless shower enclosure, drew the ruched white curtain and stood under a steaming spout of water to wash off every trace of filth from my body. I scrubbed until my skin was raw and tingly. Fluffy, thick towels hung from hooks on the door. I guessed this was where Birdie entertained Earl’s important customers, including her new sugar daddy who was probably bankrolling the entire place. But I didn’t even care if some guy had wiped his ass on them. I was just happy to be clean.

I rooted through the cupboards looking for scented body lotion and found some lavender rosemary organic stuff that smelled okay. My head was buzzing now. After I left Birdie’s, where would I go? Maybe she’d let me stay with her. I was just about to shut the door when I spied a stack of small photographs shoved into a corner. Straightening up I listened for Birdie, but all I heard was the sound of water running in the kitchen. I grabbed the pictures and flipped through the fuzzy images.

The first few were of Birdie posing in pigtails and skimpy schoolgirl costumes. So her special guy liked them young – really young. She pouted, sucking a huge lollipop and spread her legs to reveal lacy panties, in another she flipped up her skirt to reveal her skinny bare bum. The last few featured a man. Only his dark hair and husky shoulders were visible since he never faced the camera. Someone had snapped a pic of Birdie on her knees in front of him, her head down between his legs. On another she lay across his lap while he brandished a leather whip. His head was cut out of the shot. Too bad. I’d hunt him down and scratch his evil eyes out if I found the bastard. But I couldn’t figure out who the hell took these pictures and why this guy would want them. Unless he got off looking at them afterwards. I shuddered at the thought of Birdie with this creep and suddenly I was really, really scared for her.

In the last photo he’d been careless and in his haste to mount a naked Birdie, he’d allowed his blurred face to drop into the frame. I slipped the photograph into the folds of the towel. Something told me it might come in handy later. For what, I had no clue at the time.

I emerged from the bathroom to the aroma of toast. A plateful of it next to jars of peanut butter and jelly. Birdie’s hair hung in soft tendrils around her bare face. She looked like a twelve-year-old kid who’d just plucked her eyebrows for the first time.

“Feast?” she said, a grin spreading across her face.

I settled myself onto the white leather stool at the breakfast bar and shoved a whole piece of toast into my mouth. “I am so sick of Twinkies from the Seven-Eleven,” I mumbled, my mouth stuffed with food. She pushed a massive glass of chilled orange juice towards me, which I gulped down and set to work on the next slice. Birdie nibbled at the corner of a piece of toast and stared at me.

“You need to pluck your eyebrows.”

“I like them this way. Nobody bugs me.”

“You mean guys?”

I nodded, helping myself to another slice. Wonder Bread had never tasted so good. “Some real sleazy types hang out at the motels.”

“You gotta get out of there. I told you,” she said, pouring coffee into two Hello Kitty cups.

“You always did like Hello Kitty.” I remembered her nose pressed up against the window of a souvenir store, her big, sad eyes lusting after a Hello Kitty cookie jar.

“Now I can buy things whenever I want,” she said, slugging back the black coffee. I helped myself to sugar and cream, not knowing when the next fresh cup would come along.

“Doesn’t come free, I guess.”

Her eyes narrowed as she fidgeted with the teaspoon. “Meaning what?”

“I mean what do you have to do to get all this?”

Her cheeks flushed. “None of your business.”

“Play naughty schoolgirl? Is that what you do?”

She stood up, spilling coffee across the counter. “Have you been snooping?”

“Didn’t take much effort to find your little porn collection.”

I expected an all-out screaming match but she was silent, pressing her lips together as she tore off loops of kitchen towel and mopped up the mess.

“You know the law would call this jerk a pedophile. And you’re only fifteen, so it’s statutory rape.”

She wiped and wiped until the paper towel disintegrated. “You don’t know anything. He loves me. He takes care of me.”

“That’s why he takes those pictures? Because he loves you or because you let him get off on sick schoolgirl fantasies?”

I shoved the plate away. I wasn’t hungry anymore. I looked around the place. At the pink, fluffy beanbag floor cushion, the candy pink and blue striped rug, the white futon stacked with rainbow pillows, the posters of Zac Efron, Leonardo DiCaprio, and