Compulsion Read Online Free PDF Page B

with the day.
    Any encounter with Mera is weird. We all used to be friends. She was always Black Orchid or Boodikka, depending on Mrs. Camacho’s tights supply.
    Then I just stopped calling.
    And so did she.
    So it was like we broke up. I remember the day we did: the day after Mera’s brothers had spray-painted CANNED LABOR FOUND HERE on the side of Luc’s house, littering the yard with empty Spic and Span spray bottles.
    Luc, Mera, and I spent that whole morning scrubbing off the ugly words until they faded into nothing. We had to get them washed off before Luc’s dad came home. I had seen Luc’s bruises when we were little. Mera and I had. We just pretended not to.
    When we finished, Mera left and returned with a paper plate of salami and cheese, the salami grease seeping through the flimsy plate. She looked from me to Luc.
    “Another day, Mera,” Luc said, tossing the last of the Spic and Span bottles into the plastic recycling bin.
    But that other day never came.
    Mera looks at me through the shop window, and my stomach sinks. Familiar barbs of pain work their way up the base of my neck. Maybe because of the sputtering light.
    Just as I shift the car into gear, Mera comes running out to me, flapping her arms.
    Fuck . The money. I roll down the window and hand her what I’ve got, keeping Kasey’s loan for me. It’s total shit having to explain to somebody your family can’t afford meat. Maybe we should just stick to eating tuna fish, mercury poisoning and all. Then we could win a sweet lawsuit about how Tasty Tuna made us grow extra ears or something. I look over at the discount food mart. I don’t think they extend credit for their generic-brand sodas and cans of tuna, though. “I thought my dad talked to your dad. About paying”—I clear my throat—“about paying the rest at the end of the month.”
    Mera pulls up her mask. “Whatever. I don’t give a rat’s ass about when you pay for the murder of these animals. But I need your help. That man needs sausages .”
    I shrug. “So?”
    “So? Sausages. ” She says it the way everybody in my family talked about my grandma having cancer —in that whispered, conspiratorial tone. Cancer . Mera’s heavy-mitted hand grasps my elbow. “The sausages are in the walk-in. In the back.” She shudders. “With all the other animal corpses. Help. Me.”
    I realize that the longer I wait for a logical explanation from a girl who grew up stuffing sausages in her garage, the longer it’ll take to leave, and I’ll never get anywhere on time. So I roll up the window and turn off the car, following Mera back into her dad’s shop.
    The man half smiles, half waves, and taps his foot impatiently. Mera says under her breath, “They’re in the back—in the boxes. Can you just get me some?”
    “Some? How much is some?”
    “Just take a box out, okay?” Mera smiles at the customer and turns to me. “I can’t go in there again today.”
    I nod and head toward the walk-in freezer, trying to ignore the tingling at the back of my neck. There’s nothing wrong. I’ll just get a box of sausages.
    A cold current of air circulates, recycling that butcher-shop smell of Clorox and raw cuts of dead animal flesh. I stare at the worn floor with rust-colored stains all over it, counting the square tiles in the hallway.
    Mera hollers. “Did you find them ? ”
    “Just a sec.” I pull my eyes from the tile and open the walk-in freezer door.
    I hear the rustle of her plastic suit, and Mera brushes by me. “Just hold the door, then,” she says working her way to the back of the walk-in. She mumbles, ducking under massive ribs and flanks of meat hanging on hooks. Legs, gray-colored hooves, and red-colored animal parts dangle from the ceiling. I step into the freezer, one foot in, one foot out. It’s like I’m always straddling, one foot in the place I’m supposed to be and the other in the place I want to be.
    Stuck.
    I try to ignore the tight feeling I’m getting in my