Compromised (7 page)

P
urpose
: Find Aunt Sarah.

I look at my purpose and wonder if Dad would lie about somebody like a long-lost aunt. He's many things: a con man, crook, thief, and at the best of times a businessman with less-than-ethical practices. But he's never lied to me. Plus, why would he invent an aunt at the last minute?

The material list bugs me. The box. I have to get Mom's box. My stomach tightens. I hate thinking about that box and Mom's things all stored away. Dad taught me to never look back. Even though he did. Prime example? The box. I watched as they piled the last of that frozen dirt on her grave. She's buried.

Gone.

And now I have to go start digging things up again. I've never been into forensics.

I get the Citifare schedule from the Kids Place rec room. The last bus home leaves downtown Reno at 10:45
P.M
., and Kids Place last rounds are at eleven
P.M
. The only way to get out of Kids Place and gain some time is to take the first bus in the morning, at 5:45
A.M
.

I wait until Kids Place has a shift change—at three
A.M
. I listen to Shelly's soft snore and Jess's deep breathing. The only time Nicole never makes a sound is when she sleeps. It's like her body shuts down after being on “play” all day. That's a problem, though, because it's impossible to tell if she's asleep or not. It's sometimes hard to tell if she's alive.

I check Nicole's pills one more time. Habit. I exhale—all there.

At four
A.M
. I leave, doing that pillow thing everybody does in the movies so that people think there's actually a human body. Given more time, I could definitely have come up with something better.

I walk through the dark streets, avoiding lights and cars, dodging in and out of shadows. I've done this walk about ten times in my head. Today I can't afford to get lost.

The RTC Citicenter isn't that far, but it feels a lot farther in the dark. And I can't shake the feeling somebody's
following me. It can't be Beulah. Her suits make too much noise. I hear a twig snap behind me and spin around to an empty street.

I'm definitely paranoid.

But paranoia is actually a necessity—a normal human defense mechanism designed to protect us from harm. It becomes problematic, though, when the paranoia evolves into a constant delusional state in which the person truly believes, and reacts to the belief, that some harm will come to him or her at all times. Considering the fact that this is the first time I've been on the lam, so to speak, by myself, I don't think my paranoia is delusional. Just precaution.

Downtown's practically empty. All the drunken gamblers have probably already gone home. I watch some old grandmas feed the nickel slots, bloodshot eyes, hoping for the big win. Shocks of sprayed blue hair stick to glistening foreheads. It makes me sad to watch them like that. Reno can be a pretty sad place.

I make my way to the bus station and sit down on a bench outside. I have forty minutes to go. A guy who smells like pee sits next to me, moons of dirt under long fingernails; matted, greasy hair; a gaunt face caked with grime. He shivers and talks to himself. I move to the edge
of the bench and watch, embarrassed for him.

When I take a closer look, I realize he's not much older than me.

Now the place is crowded with casino workers who just got off the night shift. The bus finally comes, and I rush on with the jostling crowd. I keep my head down, avoiding eye contact with everybody. When we get to my stop, at 6:10 A.M., I clamber off and turn around in time to see a thin figure slip out of the dim light of a streetlamp into the shadows. I shiver and rub my hands up and down my arms, heading toward home. This morning everything seems too dark—too cold.

When I look back at the streetlamp, the figure is gone.

Paranoia.

Now I'm getting into the certifiable wacko paranoia stuff.

I run down the block, white puffs of breath trailing behind me. So much for global warming. It's really cold for November.

The neighborhood looks the same. I run up to the address stone and pull it up out of the half-frozen ground. The key is gone.

Way flawed planning. I didn't count on having to break into the stupid house. I circle around, looking for an open window. Finally, the laundry room window cracks open when I push, but I can't pull myself up. I plop down and rest my head on the frosted ground trying to think of what to do next.

My stomach burns, and I dig through my backpack for Pepto-Bismol.

“Breaking and entering? That's a felony.” A shadow emerges.

My heart lodges in my throat and I scramble to my feet.

“What're you doing?” she asks.

“God, I just about had a heart attack. You…God.” I lean against the side of the house, trying to catch my breath.

“So,” she repeats, “what're you doing?”

“Nothing.”

“Nothing looks like it's pretty important to me.” Nicole stands in the slanted moonlight, a bag slung over her shoulder.

I turn back to the house and jump up, trying to get a hold of the windowsill.

“This doesn't look good, and it would be terrible if the police came, wouldn't it?” Nicole takes out her cell phone. “Plus it'll be light soon.”

“Go ahead. Call. I don't care,” I say.

Nicole pauses, then puts the phone away. “Where are you going?”

“Nowhere,” I say.

“I guess I'll go nowhere with you.”

“You can't.”

“Why not?”

“I just have stuff I've gotta do.”

“You met the Nicholsons, huh? They're a real piece of work.”

I jump up again, my fingers slipping off the windowsill. “What do you know about them?” I ask, dropping to the ground.

“Just that they're nutcases you definitely don't want to live with. And if I call Kids Place right now, it won't be long before they come for you and send you off with Cherry and Don. Nice guy, isn't he? Real nice.”

“Okay.” I motion to the house. “I need to get inside.”

“What's in it for me?”

I shrug. “I don't know.”

Nicole cups her hands and heaves me up. I squeeze through the window and tumble onto the floor where the clothes drier used to be, banging my elbow. “Damn,” I mutter. I had forgotten it was repossessed with the rest of our stuff.

I run upstairs and grab a couple of warm sweaters and jackets. In the junk drawer in the kitchen, I find a fuzzy twenty-dollar bill. I double-check to make sure it's not one of the counterfeits. Nope. It's real.

Twenty bucks. Whoopee.

Finally, I go to Dad's closet. The shoe box is tucked behind some of his old high-school yearbooks. The edges are bent in, the top tattered; an old rubber band keeps the lid on.

I shove it in my backpack and make one last sweep of the house, packing the half-empty bottle of Pepto-Bismol. I'm not a half-empty kind of person, but it just stands to reason that if you start with a full bottle and use the contents, soon the full bottle will become half empty because every time you use it, you empty some more out. The opposite goes for a glass—an empty glass filled halfway with milk is half full, not half empty, because it began empty.

I stare at the Pepto-Bismol and wonder why I have these stupid debates in my head. Better in my head than out loud, I guess.

I take one last look at the house and realize I won't miss it all that much, with its catalog furniture and polished-wood banisters. It's a house—a place where Dad and I crashed for a couple of years. No family pictures are up. I don't even remember the last time I saw a picture of me—except for my school pictures. Dad's not the video-cam-toting kind of dad. He has other priorities. And let's face it, I don't have lots of cool moments to film, anyway.

When I return, Nicole is sitting on her duffel smoking. In a weird way, she looks relaxed. Her eyes actually have some light.

I toss her a coat. “I thought you could use it.”

“I don't need your fucking charity.”

“I don't need your company—minus the expletive.”

“God, you're such a geek,” Nicole says.

We walk in silence.

“Where to?” she asks.

“I go my way; you go yours.”

“And if your way is my way?”

“I doubt that.”

She takes out her cell phone.

“I need to work some things out.” I eye her phone. I highly doubt she has Kids Place on speed dial. She probably doesn't even have any minutes.

“So?”

“I don't even know where I'm going.”

“Wherever I'm going,” she says.

“I don't have any money, Nicole. It's not like this is going to be a first-class trip. So why don't you just go back to Kids Place?”

“With your clothes,” She looks me up and down. “You expect me to believe that you don't have any money?”

I pull out the crumpled twenty-dollar bill. “That's all I've got.”

“Yeah, right.” Nicole shakes her head.

“Oh yeah. I forgot. I have a million buried underneath the neighbor's award-winning rosebushes.” I roll my eyes and walk past her, trying to get as much distance between us as I can. Plus I'm not going to fork out the cash to pay for another bus ride, now that the important stuff is taken care of.

“You going to California or something?”

I shake my head. “Downtown. I need to sort some things out.”

Nicole laughs. “Turn around then. Downtown is that way.”

I look down the street and back toward where Nicole is pointing. “Oh. Yeah.”

She whistles. “You're ass-backwards at directions, huh?”

I shake my head. “Just tired.” I walk past her.

Nicole follows. We walk in silence for over an hour, the soles of our shoes slapping the cold pavement. My feet ache and toes feel numb. I wiggle them in my shoes to get some warmth going. Another flaw in my experiment: running away in Rocket Dogs. God, I hate the fact this is a one-time kind of experiment. I know already I'd be a much better runaway the second go.

I look at Nicole's shoes. They aren't any better. I guess she didn't learn from her earlier experiments on the streets.

I tighten the straps on my backpack. It feels like the shoe box of Mom's stuff—her memories and who-knows-what-else Dad has kept of her—weighs me down even more. God, I hope I don't find a lock of hair or something creepy like that.

I stop when we reach a neighborhood park and sit on the damp swings. The sun has crept from behind the
mountains, though its light brings no warmth. They must know I'm gone. And Nicole. And they'll be looking for us.

The fact that there are two of us now irritates me. Nicole's dead weight. Not planned. Not part of my materials list. I sigh.

She sits next to me on the swings. The cracked plastic seat creaks. For once, she's quiet. Maybe her mouth doesn't work until the sun is high in the sky. I laugh to myself thinking of the “solar mouth” concept. That would suck during summer up in Alaska.

I pull out the box and sift through the contents. I wipe a layer of dust off a picture of Dad, Mom, and me. I was probably two years old. We look happy in the picture. We look like a family.

There are other pictures, some letters, paycheck stubs, papers, and shoved at the bottom of the box, a locket on a chain. I open the locket and stare at the faded photo. Two girls hug each other. You can tell they're sisters: gray eyes, curly hair, and the same dimples. They're about my age in the picture—fifteen years old or so. They look like me.

I look like them.

Dad always says I look like Mom. I hold the locket in my hand and rub off some of the tarnish.

Aunt Sarah. He wasn't lying.

I look closer. Is Aunt Sarah dead, too? Does suicide run in the family? If I bring this “proof of relative” to Kids Place, will they try to find her? I think about the piles of files on Beulah's desk, and all those kids she has to process through the system. She hardly has time to pee, much less go on some wild aunt chase.

If I show up at Aunt Sarah's door with this locket to prove I'm her niece, will she take me in?

I sigh.

“You really don't know where you're going, do you?”

For just a second, I forget that Nicole is sitting next to me. She's a new variable. Maybe not, though. Maybe she'll just stay in Reno. I don't know. I put the locket on. “I'm going to the library.”

“T
he library? You run away to go to the library?”

“And I suppose you have a better place to go?”

Nicole shrugs.

We walk to the downtown library, but it doesn't open until ten o'clock, so I sit on one of the benches outside, trying to pound some feeling back into my toes. Nicole sits next to me and pulls out a cigarette, blowing a stream of smoke into the air. I move away.

“What?”

I shrug. “Secondhand smoke. It's been classified by the EPA as a known cause of cancer in humans. And I don't fancy going bald and throwing up my intestines because you choose to cut your life short.”

Nicole rolls her eyes. “Have you ever done anything fun?”

“Waiting for a premature, painful death isn't fun.”

“Yeah. Like you really live now. Whoopee. One fucking Discovery special after another. I just don't know how you contain yourself.”

In Maryland Dad and I didn't have cable, so he jimmied something to hook up to Mrs. Carlotta's dish. Everything was fuzzy except for Das Erste, some German news channel, and Science Channel, the British version of Discovery. Dad had to work every afternoon, so I'd come home from first grade and watch TV. I had stopped playing in leaves and chasing boys for my ribbons. I remember I'd time myself, trying to get home as fast as I could after school—the faster the better. I loved these shows.

There was one about making time machines. When Dad got home, I told him that all I needed was a jar, atoms, a worm hole, negative energy, and to travel at the speed of light. And we could change things.

That's when Dad bought me a bicycle and unplugged our connection to Mrs. Carlotta's dish.

I spent years trying to take back those five minutes. And since then, I've learned that everybody looks into the past every second of every day. It takes eight minutes for sunlight to reach the earth.

But seeing into the past isn't the same as traveling there.

 

“Yeah. You're a model of fun living a life at the Reno bus station,” I say, biting down on my lower lip to stop from mentioning pill bottles and suicide attempts.

Nicole blows a puff of smoke in my face and snuffs out the cigarette.

Thankfully, the library doors open, so I go into the library and find a corner table where I have space to sort through the box. I pull out all the papers and organize the letters from the most recent date to the oldest date.

Nicole sits next to me and picks at her hangnails, peering over my shoulder.

“Do you have to do that?” I ask.

“What?”

“Hover.”

“I'm not hovering.”

“Yes, you are. Go read a magazine or something.”

She yawns. “Boring.”

“Then just move a foot back, please.”

“Touchy,” she says.

All the letters are addressed to Mom but none have the return address stickers on them. They've all fallen off. I can see where the envelope is darker there. She must've used those freebie address stickers you get from charities.
Dad and I had one of those businesses once. We posed as a foundation for homeless cats. I asked Dad why we didn't pose as a foundation for homeless people, and he said people are nicer to animals. Anyway, we printed out cheesy address labels, asking for donations, and we didn't do too bad.

The stationery is brittle and yellowed by time. I gently open the letters and read each word. Weather, health, school, blah blah blah. For all Aunt Sarah writes, she doesn't say a whole lot. I wonder if I have a cousin. Or two. I wonder what Mom wrote Aunt Sarah. Did she write about me? Dad? What would Mom have said?

I smell the paper. Strange. Letters. I don't think I've ever gotten one. A real letter. In a way I'm lucky Mom and Aunt Sarah didn't get swept away by the world of the internet.

I open the last letter. A pressed flower falls from the pages—its delicate reddish petals like rice paper in my fingers.

“Can I see?” Nicole holds out her hand.

“Be careful.”

Nicole holds the flower in the palm of her hand. “That's cool. Sending a flower in a letter.” She hands it back to me. “Kind of like something you'd see in the movies.”

I nod. It is. I hold the faded flower in my hand, then carefully tuck it back in the envelope. A piece of Sarah's
home? It's a puzzle. Everything about Mom and her life is that way. Dad never talks about her. We buried everything with her that day in the cemetery—her memory, her past, her entire existence.

But she had a sister.

She
has
a sister. And it makes me feel sad to think that Mom might have had three people who loved her so much but still swallowed it all away.

In with the other papers in the box, there're four paycheck stubs—all dated more recently than any of the letters—one with a note on the back. “Hope this helps. More on the way. Sarah.” They're from some restaurant in Boise, and have the name Sarah Jones printed on them. Great. She married some guy with the last name of Jones. That's real helpful.

I can't make out the first word of the restaurant on the stubs, but it's Something Grill. Its address is faded, too, but I can read Main Street. I go to the media lab and look for restaurants on Main Street in Boise, Idaho. There are nine restaurants with Grill as part of their name.

Okay. Somebody there has to know her. Who she was. Maybe they have an old manager who remembers all the people who passed through—even someone with as generic a name as Sarah Jones.

I consider calling all of them but change my mind. I'd probably end up talking to some gum-chomping waitress fresh out of high school. Pass. Things are usually better done in person.

Nicole taps on my shoulder. “What are we gonna do now?”

“I'm
going to Boise, Idaho. I think,” I say.

It's a start.

In Mr. Hunter's class we're going to start unknowns after we're done with the science of food. Aunt Sarah is about as big an unknown as there is. If I can find her, I can do anything.

I print out the MapQuest directions and tuck them under my shirt, clicking off the computer. I pay for my copies and ask the librarian which way Boise is.

“Northeast,” he says.

Like that's a lot of help. “So I walk out these doors and take a right,” I say jokingly. “School scavenger hunt.”

“Left, then left,” he says with a furrowed brow. “Highway Eighty east. Why,” he starts to say when he's distracted by some girl spilling coffee all over a computer keyboard. I didn't know librarians said
those
words.

I escape toward the entrance. I'm leaving. I'm not going to look back. Dad died the moment he signed those papers.
He's as dead as Mom. But maybe Mom's stupid box has answers.

“You walk fast.” Nicole trots to keep up, practically toppling over the new-releases display.

I push through the doors out into the bright afternoon sunlight, Nicole on my heels. I look at the clock before leaving: one thirty.

Crap.

I didn't realize we'd spent so much time there.

“Boise, huh? Cool. I've always wanted to go there,” Nicole says.

“Whatever,” I say.

“Why wouldn't I want to go there? Maybe it's a great place to visit.” We leave the library. She pulls out another cigarette and curls the edges of her mouth up. But her eyes never smile. “Road trip!” she says.

I leave the building. “Left, then left,” I mutter. “Eighty east. I need to go east.” I glare at her. “
I
, singular. Good-bye. Have a good afternoon at the bus station.” My stomach growls.

I turn my back to the mountains and walk east along the river. After an hour or so, I turn around. “I know you're there. Quit stalking.”

She catches up. “Good. It was hard to be stealth. I was
trying to be like Hill when he staked out JFK airport and stole five million dollars. I need to work on that. Stealth, you know.”

I sit down and rub my foot, tuning out Nicole's voice. I don't know why I'm so tired. My head hurts and my stomach roars.

“Hey!” Nicole taps my shoulder. “To run away, we actually need to, um,
run
.”

I glare at her and we walk down Fourth Street—probably the dodgiest street in the entire state—following it until we get to The Nugget. My feet are pounding, like the bones are poking through the soles of my shoes. After another hour of walking, Nicole stops and sits on a curb. “I'm tired. Are you planning on walking all the way to Boise?”

“You have a better plan?” I hope so.

“Take a bus.”

“Do you have any idea how far twenty bucks will get us?” I ask.

Nicole shakes her head. “Not far.”

“That's why I walk. This is emergency funding.”

“Well, fuck. Is Boise far?”

I stare at her. “It's in Idaho. Yes. It's far.”

“How far is that?”

“Have you ever had a geography class?” I snap.

Nicole raises her eyebrow. “You're such a snob. Sorry, Jeopardy, if I'm not exactly sure where we're heading. I didn't get my map and briefing notes. At least I know where to find fucking downtown.”

She has a point. “So you have a better idea.”

She taps her temple. “I just
might
have a brain in here. We hitch.”

“We?”

“I'm coming along.” She crosses her arms and stares at a patrol car pulling up. The chill of late afternoon has set in.

“Why? Why do you want to go?”

“I don't ask you why you need to go to Boise. So you don't ask me.”

“I don't get it. Why would you even bother coming along? We're nothing alike.”

“Except for the fact our parents are shit so we're orphans?”

“Dad's not shit. It's complicated,” I say lamely.

Nicole pulls out a cigarette and lights up. “Yeah. Real complicated.”

God, I wish she'd just go away. Like I really need to spend the most important trip of my life on suicide watch.
Been there. Done that. Blew it.

“Trust me,” she says. “I'm better company than the Nicholsons—unless you're into late-night Bible readings with Donovan so he can cleanse you of your sins.”

My stomach lurches.

“Hitching alone is dangerous—especially for girls, you know. Not to disrespect that feminism shit.” Nicole puffs out O-shaped rings..

Running away has a lot more variables than I accounted for when I wrote out the plan. In fact, “Find Aunt Sarah” barely touched on the technicalities of the actual running-away part. And I never imagined Nicole as the biggest variable in the whole thing. I sigh. “Okay. We stick together. But only until Boise. Then we each go where we need to go. Separately.”

She nods. “Tomorrow we'll get a ride. Better earlier in the day. Safer.”

“What's wrong with hitching now?”

“We have about one hour, tops, left of light.”

“So?”

“So vampires come out at night. Jesus, Jeopardy. Night is bad, okay? That's when the crazies come.”

“So you've done this before?”

She shrugs. “Nope.”

“Then how do you know?”

“You're supposed to be the smart one? Common sense.” She sighs. “You've got a lot to learn, Jeops.”

“Okay. So where do we spend the night?”

I follow Nicole through the labyrinth of streets in downtown Sparks until she slips into an alley where she points out an abandoned warehouse. “This'll do. Let's go hang out at Victoria Square, though, until it gets dark.”

We wander around the streets, looking in the shop windows. It almost feels like we're on vacation. When we see the sprinkle of stars through the casino-light haze, we head back to the warehouse.

We duck inside and set some loose boards up over the entrance, leaving a slight opening. “I don't like the dark so much,” she says.

“Me, neither,” I admit. It's early. Only seven o'clock or so. But the night is black with a sliver of a new moon. I sigh. It's going to be a long one.

Nicole flicks on her watch light and we make our way to the far corner, where she sets up some cardboard boxes for us to hide behind.

I'm kind of glad she's here.