Compromised

by Heidi Ayarbe

  I feel my jaw tense. Who are they to tell me who I’ll pray to? I’ll pray to a freaking McDonald’s arch if I want. I open my mouth to protest and look over at Beulah.

  This is an argument I can’t win.

  I have no choices. My family made theirs and left me with none. Nice.

  Donovan goes on and on about devotion and God and prayer. I listen when he starts talking about tithing and duty to church.

  Cherry nods enthusiastically.

  Maybe they’re part of a freak cult and are looking for virgin sacrifices. That’s why they want me. It’s not likely Beulah will buy into my theory.

  For being so God-fearing, Donovan doesn’t seem to worry about staring at my chest. I want to tell him that as much as he stares, they’re not going to grow any bigger. I know. I’ve tried.

  I look at Beulah. She has pasted a grin on her face from her box of expressions. “We wanted to place you, Maya, before…” She pauses and takes out a damp handkerchief. “We just think it’s better to get you into a nice family home as soon as possible to avoid any further, um, incidents.”

  I clench my jaw. So I just sped up the process by standing up for myself. Maybe the wallflower thing would’ve been a better way to go. It always worked for me before. But things are different now.

  “It says here your full name is Amaya Terese Sorenson.” Cherry looks at my file. “What an interesting name.”

  I nod. They stare at me.

  “What kind of name is that?” Cherry asks.

  “It’s Basque.”

  “Basque, huh? What kind of people are those?” Donovan asks suspiciously. He’s probably one of those camouflage-wearing militia guys—you know, the kind who’ll have a ham radio in his garage to report suspicious ethnic activities to his grand wizard. He apparently hasn’t ever eaten lamb stew at Louis’s Basque Corner.

  “Honey, you know the Basque people! We saw on Discovery they live in the mountains over in Europe.” Cherry claps. “I never realized Sorenson was a Basque name.”

  God, she makes us sound like cavemen.

  Actually, my last name is Aguirre. But that was about six last names and Social Security cards ago. Another great way for Dad to make a buck. He’d read the obituaries, then kind of reassign Social Security numbers for those who needed them. It was a popular business in New Mexico. Dad always said it was his way of opening up the borders—being a cultural attaché between the United States and Latin America. I always thought of it as recycling lives—administrative reincarnation, so to speak.

  “So it looks like we’re your family now. You can be relieved you’ve been placed in such a loving home. With role models that you can look up to.” Donovan leers.

  As much as I hate it, he has a point. Dad’s a federal prisoner who signed me away as if I were a piece of real estate. Knowing Dad, he would’ve liked to auction me on eBay, sell me to the highest bidder. But that’s probably illegal.

  Whatever.

  Dad’d be the one to find the loophole to pull it off.

  No one says anything. The windows bulge from the silence.

  Beulah titters nervously and hands out stale cookies with Hawaiian Punch. “It’ll just take some time to get to know each other.” She turns to me. “The Nicholsons have received countless children into their home. We are so grateful,” she coos. She lowers her voice and turns to me. “You have no family, Maya. And these people want to make you part of theirs.”

  No family. That again.

  The other day when I asked about Aunt Sarah, Beulah told me that Dad had been lying. “Aunt Sarah doesn’t exist,” she said. “We looked.”

  This is not how I imagined things going. Dad wasn’t supposed to sign those papers. He was supposed to fight for me; get a lawyer; make us a family again. I’d stay at Kids Place until the state came to some kind of settlement and he’d have litter duty or something. Whatever those white-collar criminals get. Even Martha Stewart got to go home and plant potatoes. Okay. After nine months in jail. But still, nine months is nothing. Anybody can hold out for nine months.

  “What about contact with my dad? Can I talk to him?” I’m sure I’ll want to. Sometime. When the anger goes away.

  I wonder if it will go away.

  It never has for my mom.

  But he’s all I’ve had all these years. It’s not as easy as signing a piece of paper for me.

  Donovan shakes his head. “Now that I’m your interim guardian, I think it would be best for you not to see him.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Your dad is in federal prison. Outside Elko.”

  No more Carson City minimum security jail for Dad.

  My stomach flip-flops. It’s okay not to talk to him when I don’t want to, but when somebody else mandates that, it’s not.

  Donovan continues, “You need to be steered away from those kinds of people—away from the influence of such a sinful man.”

  And into the arms of the creepiest family in Reno.

  Jess wasn’t kidding about foster homes. No wonder Nicole runs away.

  “He’s my dad,” I finally manage to say. So he signed a piece of paper. Maybe he was forced to. Maybe. I think of a hypothesis that would work with that scenario. There are too many maybes, but none of them take me where I need to go. I feel like I’m hitting dead ends in my lab rat maze.

  I scan the faces sitting at the table and can feel the gastric fluids bubbling in my intestines. It’s as if they all got together and decided that there was a right kind of dad, and mine wasn’t it.

  “Evolve!” I want to shout. But Cherry probably thinks she comes from a rib and the word evolution is blasphemous.

  “Right now, your father is just another man in prison.” He does that annoying quote thing with his fingers when he says “father.” Donovan has cold eyes. Cherry blushes again.

  I cross my arms and look away.

  He mutters something under his breath, then half smiles. “So we’ll be back on Wednesday to take you home.” They get up and embrace Beulah. I’m afraid they’ll wrinkle her, but she springs back, her suit as pressed as before.

  They move toward me, but I shove my hands into my pockets and turn away.

  I fight back tears. October drizzle blurs the window-pane. I watch as they pile into a two-tone station wagon plastered with bumper stickers: a glowing Guadalupe; WHO WOULD JESUS BOMB?; THIS fiSH WON’T FRY. WILL YOU?; ARE YOU FOLLOWING JESUS THIS CLOSE?; and, my personal favorite, DARWIN IS DEAD. JESUS IS ALIVE. WHICH ONE DO YOU TRUST WITH YOUR ETERNAL SOUL?

  It’s Monday. I have two days.

  I lay my head in my arms and cry.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Purpose: Find Aunt Sarah.

  Hypothesis: If I can find Aunt Sarah, I can avoid being sent to the Holy Rollers’ house.

  Materials: Mom’s box, a backpack, any cash I can find in the house that I might’ve missed, a couple changes of clothes, Pepto-Bismol, food, water, me

  Procedure:

  1) Get a Citifare Bus schedule

  2) Sneak out of Kids Place

  3) Take the bus and get to our old house

  4) Look for the spare key under the address stone in the garden and get into the house

  5) Get Mom’s box

  6) Pack a backpack of things

  7) Search the box for clues to find Aunt Sarah

  8) Never look back

  Variables: Time: I have two days. So I need to go. Today. Dad: Does Aunt Sarah really exist or is she a figment of his con-man imagination? Box: Will it have any clues as to where I can find Aunt Sarah?

  Constants: Me, Dad’s word

  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 dou
bt 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.