Free Compromised by Heidi Ayarbe Page B

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.
    â€œYou 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.”

CHAPTER TWELVE
    â€œT he library? You run away to go to the library?”
    â€œAnd 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.
    â€œWhat?”
    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?”
    â€œWaiting for a premature, painful death isn’t fun.”
    â€œYeah. 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.
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    â€œYeah. 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.
    â€œDo you have to do that?” I ask.
    â€œWhat?”
    â€œHover.”
    â€œI’m not hovering.”
    â€œYes, you are. Go read a magazine or something.”
    She yawns. “Boring.”
    â€œThen just move a foot back, please.”
    â€œTouchy,” she says.
    All the letters are