“I’ll tell them what a little whore you are!”
I didn’t even bother to reply. I was done shouting at her—done fighting with her. I turned and left the basement and went out to the barn. There, I got dressed and curled myself into a shivering ball in Nick’s sleeping bag, still clutching the knife. After all, whatever had attacked Gary might still be out there and it wasn’t like there was a lock on the barn door. But even facing the beast was better than a night in the box—I was never going in there again!
The events of the evening had been almost too much. I wished desperately that Nick was there to talk them over, to hold me and comfort me. But there was no one to warm me—no one to hold me tight and whisper that everything would be okay and that we would be together forever. No one to kiss me good night.
Nick was gone and I didn’t know if he was ever coming back.
TWENTY-TWO
The next day Nick wasn’t in school again and no one had heard from him. I was desperately unhappy. My breasts were still leaking, though not nearly as much. Some of the swelling seemed to have gone down too. It was like my body was slowly going back to normal even as my heart was breaking.
I wondered again what was wrong with me and why it had freaked Nick out so badly. Why had he left me when he had sworn we’d be together forever?
I was so preoccupied with these thoughts, I could barely pay any attention in class that day. In fact, the teacher had to call my name three times in fourth period before I even heard her voice. When I looked up dully, she directed me to go to the principal’s office.
I got up, wondering what I had done. Had Nancy called CPS on me, as she’d threatened to do? Was I going to be moved to another foster home? Wherever they sent me, it couldn’t be as bad as the Spauldings’ house, I decided.
When I got to the office, the principal ushered me back to his private office where a strange woman I had never seen before was sitting. Getting up and offering me a hand, she introduced herself as “Carrie Norris,” my new social worker.
“Are you here about Nick?” I asked hopefully. “Do you know where he is?”
She frowned.
“We can talk about your foster brother later. In fact, I have a feeling we’re going to be doing a lot of talking for a while. But for now, I want to discuss your foster parents, Gary and Nancy Spaulding.”
I stiffened in the straight-backed chair the principal had ushered me to before settling back behind his desk.
“What about them?” I asked, bracing myself for the worst. So Nancy had complained about me. I had no idea how she planned to pin the animal attack Gary had suffered on me, but knowing Nancy Spaulding, she would find a way.
The principal, Mr. Higgins, cleared his throat.
“Kira,” he said gently. “Do your foster parents ever…hurt you?”
This question was so unexpected I just stared at him for a moment. Did the Spauldings hurt me? Was this a trick question? I was afraid to answer and the two adults in the room seemed to know it.
“Look,” my new case worker said abruptly. “There’s no point beating around the bush like this.” She pulled a copy of the Wolverton Gazette out of her oversized purse and slapped it on the principal’s desk in front of me. “This just came out today,” she told me. “And I need to know if there’s any truth in it.”
I looked at the paper and my eyes must have gotten as wide as saucers because right there, on the front page of the Gazette in huge black print was the headline, Foster Home of Horror!
As soon as I could tear my gaze away from the headline, I quickly scanned the article. There it was, in black and white—a scathing exposé on Gary and Nancy Spaulding and exactly how they treated the foster kids they took in. Every salacious detail was there—the way they used us as servants to keep up their house and lawn, the way the forced us to take freezing cold showers in front of each other and sleep in the barn every night, the details of our non-existent dinners where we fought for scraps after the Spaulding family finished eating their meals.
And there were pictures to back everything up. I stared, wide-eyed, at the locks on the refrigerator and the pantry, a snapshot of the stalls we slept in with the pitiful foam pallets for “beds,” the horrible box—even the “show rooms” had been documented, the closets stuffed full of toys and clothes and books that were only pulled out when CPS came to visit.