Compromised (8 page)

R
ats scratch and scuffle in the walls. Paws patter across my toes, and a thick tail slides over my ankles. I shudder. “The rats are the least of our worries,” whispers Nicole. “Listen.”

We huddle closer together. Someone stands outside the loose boards Nicole placed in front of the doorway. It reeks like decomposed bodies. I choke back the acid that works its way up my throat and wish I had easy access to my Pepto-Bismol.

“Home sweet home,” a thick voice slurs. Heavy boots break down the boards—a dim light filters into the warehouse. “What's up with the boards here?”

“What a fucking dump,” says another.

“You want the Holiday Inn, asshole?”

Four figures stumble into the warehouse. They work their way to a pile of cardboard boxes in the far corner, sitting between the door and us.

Nicole's fingers encircle my wrist and squeeze. I hardly notice the legs and feelers that crawl up my pant leg. The four guys light up and pass around something that pops and crackles in the silent warehouse.

The dim light that burns casts weird shadows on the walls. Dark clothes drape thin frames; matted greasy hair is tucked behind pierced ears. Hollow laughs echo in the warehouse.

I never believed in monsters before.

“Shit,” Nicole moves closer to me. “I didn't notice their stuff there.”

The warehouse is big. It isn't like they need the whole area. But I know we're in trouble. I can feel it in my gut. Instinct—as basic as it is—is the strongest thing we've got going for us. That “feeling” that spreads through my body is telling me to run, hide, do anything I can to get away.

“Crack,” Nicole whispers.

“Crack? As in crack cocaine?” I ask.

“Jesus, Jeopardy, yes. This isn't some after-school special. Those guys are jacked up high. Bad news.”

“How do you know?”

“Smell it. Listen to the sound. And watch them. They could blast off, and we're fucked if they do.”

Her hands are clammy on my wrist. She digs her fingernails into me, and I bite my lip to keep from shouting out.

“What do we do?” I ask.

Nicole scoots closer to me and we hunch down. She's actually trembling.

“What's your problem?” I whisper.

“Fucking junkies,” Nicole whispers, and rubs her arms. “They do anything for a hit.”

I try to make out her expression in the gray light but see only shadows. One takes out a syringe and shoves it into his arm. Two start to fight and throw each other against the wall. The last lies on the ground convulsing in his vomit.

Nicole and I wait for dawn—the obsidian night turning Nevada purple. Soon the warehouse will fill with light streaming through its cracks. And they will see us. But now they don't move, and I worry the one with seizures is dead. He hasn't moved for hours.

Nicole nods to me and we slip out of the warehouse into the cold November air. The only sound is our feet pounding
the pavement. Sirens blare in the distance. I just follow Nicole, not knowing which way we're running or if we'll ever get away from the warehouse and this neighborhood.

We don't stop until we collapse. I catch up to Nicole and hold my side. My lungs burn, and I gasp for breath. “H-how did you know what they were doing?”

Nicole shrugs. “It's not like something I've studied for my SATs: Topic: Identifying crack cocaine in an abandoned warehouse.”

I stare at her.

“Let's just say my mom taught me well.”

I open my mouth.

“Drop it, Jeopardy.”

I sit down and lean my head on my knees. “Do you, umm?” I start to ask, but then feel really parochial.

Nicole sits on the curb pinching her side. “Nope. Fucking users.” She walks away from me.

“But they said—” I stutter. Shelly had told me Nicole got kicked out of her last family because she stole pills. “What about the pharms?” I ask, grabbing her elbow.

Nicole pushes my hand off her arm. “It's not like doing real drugs or anything. Shit, they're all advertised just as much as cough drops.”

I raise my eyebrows.

“So Nadia had a prescription. She was a user just like anybody else. She and Martin got pretty freaked out when I took a few pills from her bottles and brought me straight back to Kids Place. They were ‘antidrugs.' But I don't see the difference between her and me.”

“Maybe she
needed
them.” I think about the prescription bottle Nicole had at Kids Place. But she never took the pills. I don't get it.

“Maybe
I
needed them, Jeopardy. Whatever.” Nicole scowls.

“But you don't take them,” I blurt out.

Nicole stares at me. “I told you to stop going through my shit.”

“So why do you have them? Why don't you take them?” I ask.

“I don't need them.”

“So what did you do with them?” I ask. “Did you bring them?” I look at her bag. Why would anybody want a whole bottle of pills?

I know the answer and it makes me mad. I don't want to do this again.

“Jesus, Jeops, can you lay off the inquisition here? Plus, I don't think this is best place to give you the D.A.R.E. talk. Let's go find a Denny's or something.”

We drag ourselves toward Highway 80 and find a strip of restaurants. A small casino-restaurant's parking lot is filled with eighteen-wheelers. Chunky silverware scrapes across ceramic plates. Endless cups of steaming coffee are being served. The restaurant buzzes with heavy predawn voices.

We scoot into a booth, and I shake my pant leg hoping I haven't become some kind of bug-infested human petri dish.

“You've got that twenty bucks, right?” Nicole asks.

“Eighteen ninety-five,” I say. “Photocopies at the library.”

She pulls out a wadded-up five-dollar bill. “Twenty-three ninety-five.”

I stare at the crumpled bills and change.

“How far is it?” Nicole asks. “To Boise?”

I pull out the MapQuest map. “Uff. Four hundred twenty-three miles,” I say. “More or less.” And I have zero sense of direction, but I'm not about to tell Nicole even though she's probably already figured that one out.

She shrugs. “How much is that per mile? How much can we spend?”

“Over five cents a mile,” I say.

“And it's worth it?”

“What?”

“Going where we're going?”

“I don't know.” I'm chasing a ghost. I'm chasing hope. And I don't believe in either.

The waitress brings the truckers sitting across from us piles of steaming pancakes with thick pats of butter melting down the sides.

“A nickel a mile?”

“Yeah.” I sigh. My stomach growls.

“Fuck it,” Nicole says. “Let's order pancakes.”

“I
just want to know why you have the bottle,” I say, and pour a spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. “If you don't take your medicine.”

We're quiet. It's like the question hangs in the air. “Insurance,” Nicole finally says. “Always have backup, right? Plan B. And that bottle can get us out of a tight spot—” She shifts her gaze from me when she says that.

“Insurance,” I mutter, and down my second dose of Pepto. That's one way of putting it.

“You've got yourself a pretty little habit there, Jeops.” Nicole points to the pink goo that drips down the side of the bottle. She smiles.

“Pepto-Bismol? Pepto-Bismol isn't a habit. It's not an
illicit drug that people make in their garages out of laundry detergent. It's…it's Pepto-Bismol.”

She's grinning now. “Aw, c'mon. What's the diff between pharms and your Pepto? Tomorrow it'll be on the DEA's most dangerous drug list. Who knows? You're still an addict.”

“I happen to have chronic gastritis, okay?” I say, and take another swig. “And if we're going to do this runaway thing together, it's good to put all the variables on the table.”

“Variables on the table?” Nicole slurps more coffee. “Okay, Brainzilla, let's get this straight: We're using each other.”

“Okay, then. What do you add to any of this?” I ask. “How can
I
possibly have use for you?”

“Someone here has to have common sense.”

“And that is common sense?” I point to her wrists. “Not eating is common sense? Suicide is common sense?” It's like she never even read the note I had written. Wasted words.

Her eyes turn black. “Fuck you, Jeops.” She shovels handfuls of sugar, Sweet'n Low, and grape jelly into her backpack.

“Don't take them all.” I slump down in the booth.

“Trust me. You'll be grateful for this later on.”

My head spins from the seven cups of coffee Nicole insisted I drink. “We have to be alert,” she said. I don't think a caffeine buzz is equivalent to alert. I lean back in the booth. Major gastric suicide.

“You'll remember this breakfast,” Nicole says.

“How will I forget?” I unbutton my jeans. We've been eating for about three hours.

“You girls need anything else?” The waitress snaps on a piece of gum, pushing greasy bangs off her forehead. A thick layer of foundation covers up acne. She eyes the empty sugar and jelly baskets and motions to the clock. “Our pancake special ends at ten thirty.” She snaps her gum. “Shouldn't you girls be in school now, anyway?”

It's ten nineteen. I've been a runaway for more than twenty-four hours and still haven't gotten out of Reno.

“And what's with the luggage?” she asks.

Nicole looks up casually. “Honors classes. Big books.”

I shove my backpack under the table. My cheeks burn. Nicole kicks me and mouths, “Be cool, Jeopardy.”

Yeah. Cool.

The waitress nods and clears our plates. “I'll bring your bill, then.” I watch as she heads back to the kitchen.

“We've gotta split,” Nicole says. “We shouldn't have
brought our packs in with us.”

“She's just going to get our bill. No big deal.” My stomach feels like I swallowed wet cement. Five pancakes. Seven cups of coffee. I fumble for my last spoonful of Pepto-Bismol. “We're in a casino-restaurant. This is the least likely place anybody's going to care about two teens with overpacked schoolbags,” I say. “We're chameleons—just a little entry-level cell manipulation, changing our melanocyte cells, so to speak. We're blending.” I just want to sit for about seven hours until I can digest the concrete ball in my stomach.

Nicole arches her eyebrows and shakes her head. “Just don't
talk
when the waitress comes back with our bill. Cut the science shit, okay?”

Some man with a button-down shirt and standard casino tie comes to the table holding the bill in his hands. “It looks like you girls really enjoyed our all-you-can-eat special.”

I open my mouth and snap it shut when I feel Nicole's heel grinding into my foot. I bite my lip to keep from yelping.

Nicole glares at me.

“Are you on vacation or something? You look like you're packed and ready to go somewhere.”

Nicole smiles. “Like we said. Honors classes. Lots of books. Lots of homework.”

How lame does that sound? Taking a look around the restaurant, I can see that maybe we're not blending. Nobody else our age sits around the tables. It's filled with truckers and middle-aged people with bloodshot eyes and stringy hair. We even stick out in a roadside diner—the literal melting pot of America. We might as well have posted “hungry runaways” on our foreheads.

I try to think of something to say, but my tongue feels sticky. I down a glass of water and cross my legs. God, I wish I had gone to the bathroom earlier.

A couple of security guards walk toward our table. The manager nods at them and smiles. “Why don't we just call your folks now? Time to go home, girls.” He looks proud. His good deed of the day: Returning the two damsels to their rightful owners.

Nicole stands up and I follow. She says, “Sure. Maybe we can just use your phone?”

“Definitely,” he says. “My office is right this way.”

Nicole grabs my arm and pushes past him. We rush out of the restaurant into the smoky casino lounge, zigzagging between the slot machines, out a side door.

“Run!” she hollers.

We run away from the highway toward the underpass. I look back and see the security guards standing in the parking lot—arms crossed in front of their steroid-enhanced chests. They hardly followed us. They probably don't get paid enough to chase after a couple of runaways.

When we stop, I kneel over and throw up.

“What a waste,” says Nicole. “Don't piss and moan when you get hungry. That was our meal of the day. Maybe week,” she mutters.

I just want to sleep—to be somewhere else. Somewhere where I can invent a new name, new family history, and reason why my dad and I moved there. And then I'll blend. Nobody will notice me for a year or so except for the nerdy science teacher. Then we'll leave again. There's something oddly comforting about how Dad and I live.

Lived.

I take in a deep breath of air and wipe off my chin. Dad and I always do things alone. Did. Alone.

Nicole slumps next to me, tapping her forefinger on a clove cigarette pack; its crinkly outer paper slips off.

I grab it from the gutter and stick it in my pocket, glaring at her. I can feel the acid burbling in my stomach lining. I
watch as she twirls a cigarette in her fingers, then taps
rat-a-tat-tat, rat-a-tat-tat
on the stupid box some more.

Sit still, I scream in my head. Just. Sit. Still. This is all wrong. She's not part of the purpose or procedure—just an erratic variable that messes everything up.

I lean on my backpack. Heavy trucks thunder on the highway above. I stare at the graffiti on the overpass. “Candice is a pretty popular girl.”

“And flexible from the looks of it.” We crane our necks to the side. “Holy shit. Way flexible.” Nicole whistles.

I stand up and walk back to Highway 80, stopping at the first gas station we find to use the bathroom.

Nicole shakes her head. “What a waste of a good meal, Jeopardy.”

I take a long look at Nicole. Her hair looks limp; dark rings circle her eyes. She hugs herself with thin arms. I put my hand to my hair and realize that it will take two bottles of conditioner to get through the knots. But I don't really have the time to worry about conditioner.

We are runaways. But that's not anything new to me, I realize.

I've been a runaway my entire life.