Compromised (25 page)

“I
've been to a synagogue, Lutheran and Methodist churches, even a Mormon temple. But they wouldn't let me in the temple, so I sat outside and looked at it,” I say.

Nicole stares out the window. The hospital called the shelter to tell us she has woken up. And they let me skip class and volunteer work to come see her. Billie even gave me a ride.

“And the Catholic church. It's pretty nice with its stained-glass windows.” I went to mass at St. Mary's. People shuffled into the pews wearing elegant clothes. I tried to pray.

“I go in those places, though, and don't feel it. I don't feel this holy presence or like I'm more protected or loved there. I wish I could have Klon's faith.”

Nicole pulls the blanket up, shivering. Her silence is deafening—louder than any of her nonstop monologues. I want to shake the words out of her—the stories, the mob facts, anything.

“You know I've come every day for the last couple of weeks. If your coma brain could remember as well as your conscious brain, you'd already know all about the rise and fall of monarchies. Sorry I bored you with social studies homework. They're going to send you to Willow Springs—some kind of institution. When you get out of here.” I sigh. “You can't just give up.”

It's like Nicole's still in a coma—her bloodshot eyes scanning the room. She looks disappointed, like she wishes she had died.

And I'm afraid for her—afraid that being stuck in a room between four white walls, she'll give up. She'll die.

I read Aunt Sarah's letters to Nicole. “I know there's something we're missing here. Something we haven't seen.” I carefully pick at the return address label under the lip of the box, but it's stuck, and I'm afraid of messing it up. “Something's here. Something obvious,” I say.

When I leave, I say, “We'll get there, okay?”

But she just turns her back to me.

I go to the library with my box of things. I reread the
letters from Aunt Sarah to Mom. Then I pull out a dried flower, staring at it. A piece of her home. I run my fingers across the faded petals and pull down a book on state symbols.

And I find it. Indian paintbrush—the state flower of Wyoming.

I borrow a magnifying glass and look at the return address stuck under the rim of the box and can make out “J—s-n—le, W-.”

Jackson Hole, Wyoming.

 

The phone rings. And rings. On the sixth ring I'm going to hang up when she answers. “Hello?” she says, out of breath.

My throat closes up again.

“Hello?” she repeats.

“Hi,” I rasp. “Um, can I please speak to Sarah Jones?”

“Speaking.”

My hand trembles as it cradles the receiver. “Are you, um, Michelle's sister?”

“Who is this?”

“My name is Maya. Maya Aguirre,” I say.

I listen as she gasps and drops the telephone, then
scrambles to pick it up. The seconds tick by.

“Hello? Maya?” she says just as my money runs out. How irritating. She probably doesn't know how hard it is to get the cash to call.

I have found her. Auntie Em. I think about my purpose, hypothesis, procedure.

I realize I don't care about making hypotheses or procedures anymore. I can't predict what people will do, but I can control what I do. So I cradle the phone in my hand and call back collect.

“Will you accept the charges?”

“Yes,” I hear her voice. I wish I could say it sounds like Mom. But I hardly remember anything about Mom. And I realize now that I want somebody to fill in the blanks.

“Um, it's expensive. Collect calls,” I say.

“You're not calling from Papua New Guinea, are you?” she asks.

“Nah,” I say. “Just Boise, Idaho.”

“Then I think I can foot the bill.”

And we talk.

 

I go to the hospital and sit by Nicole. When it's time to go, I say, “Nicole, they're going to release you later this week.”

She turns to me and looks me in the eyes.

“They're going to send you to Willow Springs. Instead of being property of Nevada, you now belong to Idaho. Do you really want that?” I ask. “So what if he's not real? You can still go to all these places.” I pull out her postcards. “We can go. Together.”

The hospital has forced Nicole to wear gloves because she's bitten her fingernails so low they bleed all the time. Since they have her on suicide watch, she's not even allowed to eat her food with a fork. But she hardly eats. It's as if she has decided to stop; stop eating; stop speaking; stop being.

I pause. “You know, I have a plan.” And I do.

The plastic bag of postcards slips from Nicole's fingers and thunks on the floor. She stares down at it, then turns her back to me. “Nothing has ever been real,” she says, “except for these.” She points to her scars.

I pick up the postcards and throw them on her bedside table. I want to shake her. She can't be like the rest
of them. She can't give up.

“I've found her,” I say. “She's real. There's more than those.” I motion to her scars.

Nicole turns to me, eyes blazing.

I unclasp my chain and place the locket in her hand. “Good exists, Nicole. It does. It has to.” I think about Klon and who he was. I have to find him. I have to find his mom, too. She has to know.

Good. There would be no balance if there were no good. The universe wouldn't make sense if there were no good. “Klon was good. He was the best.”

Nicole stares at the necklace in the palm of her hand, studying the faces in the faded photograph. She shakes her head. “You'd never get it—not ever.”

“Maybe not,” I say. “But I want to try.”

She turns back into the Nicole I knew in Kids Place. She has shut off. “Fuck off,” she finally says. “I'm not your social-studies humanitarian project anymore. Go find someone else to save.” She throws the necklace down, the locket flipping open. We both look at the faded photograph. Auntie Em.

Aunt Sarah.

Would she take both of us?

O
ne hundred and eleven dollars. From Boise to Jackson Hole. Each. And it goes about three hundred miles out of the way because it's some kind of weird B route. I sigh. Where am I going to get the money to pay for the trip? And I don't think Aunt Sarah would just fork out two hundred–plus dollars for bus tickets. I wouldn't—especially knowing where I'm coming from.

I slip back into my scientific mind so I can find a purpose—a way to get the money. And I actually have a good plan. A plan that's easy enough to execute but will pretty much screw over, I calculate, about twenty high schoolers. And then I will be a con. I will be my dad.

I think about him. What would he do? Anything to
keep me off the streets. Anything to keep me safe.

What will I do?

“May I ask who's calling?”

“Maya,” I say, and wait for “Dancing Queen.” This time, though, “Chiquitica” floods the phone line. I wonder if the Nevada prison system gets a discount on ABBA elevator music.

“Maya?”

“Dad?”

“Maya, baby.” He sighs. I picture him with a white-knuckled grip on the telephone. He chokes out the words, “How are you? Where are you? Oh my God. Are you okay? They've looked. And I thought I'd lost—” He can't talk fast enough.

“I'm okay,” I say. “Kind of.” I hold on to the phone and wish I could be with him.

“Okay.”

Silence. We've never been big on long conversations.

“You know, Dad, there's this South American bird that seems like a real MRSA.”

“Mersah?” he asks.

“Yeah. Flesh-eating bacteria.” Does nobody know what that is?

“Of course.” Dad laughs.

“Anyway, he has like two to twelve wives in his harem. Just kind of messing around on the South American pampas.”

“Ouch,” Dad says. “More loony than anything, I'd say.”

I smile. It's good to hear his voice. “Anyway, it seems like he sucks at being a dad. I mean with all those wives and breeding and stuff. But he's actually the one who incubates the eggs after his wives leave him high and dry. And then he raises the birds. All alone.”

Silence.

“I guess,” I finally say, “I guess sometimes you've just got to look beyond the surface.”

Silence.

I have to breathe in deep so I won't lose it.

“We okay?” Dad asks.

“Yeah,” I say.

“What are you going to do?” he asks.

I pause. “Give Aunt Sarah a try.”

“You found her?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank God,” he says. “Thank God.”

We're quiet and I finally say, “It's okay.”

He whispers into the phone. “That's my girl.”

Then the line goes dead.

 

It takes me a few days to get the nerve up to call and ask her.

“Can I pick you up?” she asks. “I mean I can take a bus to meet you. We both can. Mike just had LASIK eye surgery, so he can't drive. And they, uh, well I can't drive for a while until I finish my community service. It's not as bad as you think.” She sounds nervous. “I honestly didn't see the mayor's cat or mailbox or, well, I spilled my Jivin' Juice cranberry smoothie. But normally I'm a good driver. Really good.”

I laugh.

So does she.

I didn't expect that. That she'd come all the way to Boise and pick me up. With her husband. And then we'll be stuck in a bus for who knows how many hours not knowing how to fill the silence.

But I have so many questions. And it doesn't sound like she's the quiet type.

“Um. Okay,” I say. “But I don't think I'll be alone. My
friend, she um—” I don't finish the sentence because I don't know how.

After a silence she says, “Your friend is welcome here.”

I can hear that there's more to that sentence that she's not saying. I want to say we're a package deal, but that would probably freak her out. It's good to ease into these things.

“Where are you staying?” she finally asks. “We can leave this afternoon—evening. We can be there in a day. Or less. I've gotta get the bus schedule. I have to call Mike. We can get this organized and done today. Today. If”—she pauses—“if that's okay?”

There's a pause.

“I—we,” she corrects, “look forward to having you here. I've missed you.” I can hear the urgency in her voice, like she doesn't expect to see me at all. Maybe she's worried I'm like Dad. Maybe she's afraid I'll slip away.

“Okay,” I say. “If it's no trouble.”

“Not at all!” I half expect her to jump through the phone. “When can we come?”

“What day is it?” I ask.

“December twenty-first.”

“Maybe the twenty-third. I've got some things to
arrange. We can meet at the bus terminal.” I think it's better she doesn't see the shelter and where I am now. It's better to start off with a clean slate in neutral territory.

“Anytime. Anywhere,” she says.

 

I walk down the white corridor, my footsteps echoing in the hallway. Willow Springs Mental Hospital for Adolescents isn't far from the shelter. There's a yellow waiting room, but the rest of the place is white. Sanitarium white.

Well, better than mint green, I guess.

When I walk in the door, it takes me a second to get used to the pine smell that's supposed to cover up the odd mix of urine and cigarette smoke. There's a sickly looking Christmas tree in the lobby with homemade ornaments and clumps of cheap tinsel.

Nicole sits in her room, staring out the window. She's become a shell. She hasn't said anything to me since they transferred her. Or to anyone.

I sit down and start to read aloud from my history book—for one of my homework assignments. I'm working hard to finish the second quarter of tenth grade.

“Nic,” I say. “Christmas is almost here.”

Silence.

“You know, I'm not too big on the whole holiday, but I don't want to…” I sigh. “I don't want to be alone. I used to think that I liked alone, but I don't. And you've just kinda checked out.”

Silence.

“I miss you,” I say. “Things are going to be okay now. I know they will.”

Nicole shrugs.

“You don't deserve what happened to you. You didn't deserve those cigarette burns and bad families.”

Nicole pulls out a folded-up picture and shows it to me—the one Klon took from the book at the restaurant.

I've wondered where that picture went. She looks at it and crumples it up, throwing it in the trash.

I pick it up and iron out the creases. “Stop this. Just stop it.”

Nicole turns her back to me.

“You deserve better, Nic. Klon wasn't your fault. Neither was your sister.”

Nicole turns to me and shakes her head and rubs her skinny arms with gloved hands. She looks more skeletal every day.

“It wasn't your fault. And Klon—it was mine. I was
supposed to be the strong one that day. I was supposed to stand up to you, and I didn't because I was scared. I was scared that what happened to you in the system would happen to me. That's why I didn't go to the police; that's why I didn't fight with you about it.”

Nicole unravels a string from her bedspread, curling the dirty white thread around her finger.

“I've told Billie at the shelter about Klondike. They found his body at the morgue and are trying to find his mom. I don't think it'll be too hard.”

Nicole raises an eyebrow.

I nod. “They have this thing called CODIS—Combined DNA Index System—and Nevada has lots of data. They take DNA samples from the families of missing persons and put them into a database. Then they just have to take a sample from Klon and get a match. It's a good thing. We'll find his mom.”

Nicole turns to me. “He's not a fucking science experiment.”

I swallow. “I know. But this is the way he can go back home.”

“Where they threw him out like trash,” Nicole hisses.

“But I wrote her a letter, see. I wrote about how good he
was. About Tourette's. About how wrong she was.” I sigh. “I know where he comes from doesn't matter. His real name. Where he was born. How old he was. We knew him, Nicole. We knew who he was. And he was good. He was
real
. But it meant something to him—to be where he could find his family, his God.” I sigh. “I'm just trying to make things right for him. Because I don't know what else to do.”

Nicole sits on her bed and folds her legs up to her chest. Her hospital-issue sweat suit looks more like a tent. Some kid walks by and says, “Hey, Helen Keller. You gonna come to session?”

Nicole doesn't even flip him off. She just sits, staring out the square of a window.

She gnaws on her lower lip. “Well, you got what you needed. You found your family—your precious aunt Sarah.”

I shake my head. “She's not the family I found. Okay? We have to do this together.”

Silence.

“Theme of the day,” I say. “Your pick.”

Nicole looks at me with her bloodshot eyes. She shakes her head.

“Your turn,” I urge. After a long silence, I finally say,
“Okay. What's the place you've wanted to go to most? For as long as you can remember?”

Nicole taps her gloved fingers on the windowsill. “Home,” she whispers.

“Home,” I repeat. “Let's go.”

But she doesn't say anything. Nothing. She stares out the window and I sit in the crushing silence of her white room. After a while, she takes out a crumpled piece of paper—smudged with words. My words.

“I can't read it,” she says. “I can't see worth shit.”

It's the paper from her prescription bottle at Kids Place. I've dreamed of saying those words my whole life—to make a difference. And now I'm afraid they're just smudges on a page. Meaningless.

I breathe in deep. “It's this stupid Einstein quote I read a few years ago. And I wrote it to you because I wished I could've written it to my mom. I, um. It's—” I hand the paper back to her and say the words that have danced around my head all these years. “‘There are two ways to live your life—one is as though nothing is a miracle, the other is as though everything is a miracle.'”

Nicole turns away.

“I think,” I say, “I think that's what Klon meant when he
talked about people doing what they should—the everyday stuff.”

“Klon's miracles,” Nicole whispers.

“They could be ours, too,” I say.

“Group time.” Some guy with wire-rimmed glasses pokes his head in Nicole's door. “Sorry,” he says to me. “Visiting hours are over.”

I zip my coat up. “I'll be back tomorrow.”

She has already turned away.