Free Compromised by Heidi Ayarbe

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.
    â€œBreaking and entering? That’s a felony.” A shadow emerges.
    My heart lodges in my throat and I scramble to my feet.
    â€œWhat’re you doing?” she asks.
    â€œGod, I just about had a heart attack. You…God.” I lean against the side of the house, trying to catch my breath.
    â€œSo,” she repeats, “what’re you doing?”
    â€œNothing.”
    â€œNothing 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.
    â€œThis 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.”
    â€œGo ahead. Call. I don’t care,” I say.
    Nicole pauses, then puts the phone away. “Where are you going?”
    â€œNowhere,” I say.
    â€œI guess I’ll go nowhere with you.”
    â€œYou can’t.”
    â€œWhy not?”
    â€œI just have stuff I’ve gotta do.”
    â€œYou 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.
    â€œJust 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.”
    â€œOkay.” I motion to the house. “I need to get inside.”
    â€œWhat’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