Compromised by Heidi Ayarbe Read Free Book Online Page A

stomach still hurts, though. The oatmeal tastes like sawdust. I choke it down with overfluorinated water, counting the minutes before I can go back to the roomfor a swig of Pepto before school. I look at the Triad’s empty seats and feel the oatmeal work its way back up my system.
    But they don’t load us onto the buses. We listen to the phones ring in the offices and watch as the buses idle in the parking lot.
    Rose returns after what seems like an eternity. She stands at the front of the cafeteria, hands on heavy hips. “Kelly, Jared, and Wyatt all have blistered tongues and lips—second-degree burns. And their fingers have burns on them as well. This was a serious, brutal attack, and none of us are leaving this room until someone tells me who did this.”
    Beulah stands behind Rose in a skirt that sticks to her nylons, making a fizzly sound whenever she moves and tries to unstick the skirt. Major static cling. The skirt is that salmon color you see old ladies wearing at retirement centers in Florida.
    â€œI’m waiting,” Rose says, shifting her weight.
    We search one anothers’ faces for the truth. Even the new boy looks bright-eyed. Maybe they warned him. Maybe he’s been waiting for something bad to happen to him, only to be relieved to see it happened to someone else.
    Before Rose can say anything else, I stand up. “I did.”
    Silence.
    Nobody congratulates me.
    Why would they?
    You can’t congratulate cruelty.
    They send everybody off to school and Rose yanks me into her office. I don’t even hear what she says. It’s like I’m in some kind of bell jar, Rose’s words all muted and soft. Phone calls. Reports. Anger management. Therapy. Consequences.
    â€œThere will be consequences,” she says, her words ringing clear as her pudgy hand squeezes my shoulder.
    I sigh and feel relieved that I’ve confessed. I wonder if that’s how Dad feels. Like all these years of running are done. Behind him. He’s free.
    â€œYou of all people,” she says. “Why would you do such a thing?”
    It seemed so clear before. It made sense. I wanted me back, but what I did to the Triad doesn’t change anything. It just changes me. So I can’t get me back. She’s gone.
    In the end, my dad’s still in jail and I’ll be shipped off with an unknown to who-knows-where. Unless Dad stops being so vague about that mystery relative.
    End of experiment.

CHAPTER EIGHT
    A fter a day of talking to counselors and meetings with lots of other random people, they all decide that my punishment is to become a pseudo-indentured servant for Kids Place as well as take anger management classes. That and I’ve been banned from the Halloween social this weekend. Whoopee.
    The plus of orphanages? There’re no parents to press charges.
    The Triad returns with bandaged tongues and swollen lips. At dinner they stand up in front of everybody and Rose pulls me to face them. She wants to make an example of me so others will be shamed into being good. “Do you have anything to say?” she asks.
    â€œRepent!” I can hear my dad’s voice at those tent revivals. Maybe I spent too much time listening to his sermons instead of counting the cash.
    You know, lots of people think blind people have a heightened sense of sound, touch, taste, and smell. But we’re all born with the same “sensory” capacities, so to speak. A blind person seemingly has heightened other senses because a blind person uses them more.
    I wonder if Dad’s conscience is turned off. Maybe he was born conscience-impaired, and mine is heightened because I use mine for both of us. It doesn’t matter much.
    I stare at the Triad—weeping blisters caked with shiny salve.
    â€œWell?” Rose nudges me half a step closer. In her thousand-page manual of rules and regulations for Kids Place, she doesn’t once touch on the rules of survival. She