Geek Girl by Cindy C Bennett Page A

back to simply having the few chores my mother gave me. Did I ever tell you I was adopted?”
    I look at her, surprised.
    “No, you didn’t.” I look down at the lopsided mess that I’d imagined presenting to Trevor as a scarf when finished. I think I’ll present it to the trash can instead.
    “My own parents were killed in a car accident when I was only thirteen, such a critical age for a young girl.” Her eyes never leave her gnarled hands, which keep gracefully twisting the yarn into an afghan.
    “I was angry,” she continues. “That’s why I acted out so much. My adoptive mother and father had never had children, and I was not easy for them. But they always loved me, no matter what I did.” Her faded blue eyes come up to mine. “My biggest regret in life is that I treated them so poorly when they were only trying to do right by me. Thank heavens they lived long enough for me to straighten up and thank them, to give them back some of the love they had so profusely given me.”
    She looks back down at the work she is performing.
    “My other regret is that I didn’t have a sister.”
    “She’s not my sister.” I know I sound petulant, but I can’t imagine ever being grateful to have the cheerleader in my life.
    “She’s the closest thing you have,” she says as she leans down to pull a new skein of yarn from her bag.
    I’m silent, thinking about her words. I think of all the families I’ve been through and wonder how many of them had had sincerely good intentions that I’ve thrown away.
    “Tell me about your parents,” she says, and I know instinctively that she’s speaking of my biological parents and not my foster parents. I have never told anyone the whole truth, only partial truths and only to serve my own purposes. I know that I can tell Mrs. Green and that she’ll never breathe a word I say to anyone else, that there’s a chance she won’t remember most of what I say.
    She patiently waits, and whether I tell her or not, she won’t judge me. I set my crocheting down, look around to make sure no one is near and lean closer to her.
    “I wish my parents had died in a car accident. That would have been so much better than the reality of them.” She looks up at me, brows raised curiously. I shrug. “My dad had custody of me when he and my mother divorced because she didn’t want me. I was really young, probably only two or three.
    “Until I was six, my dad used me as his personal punching bag. He didn’t ever enroll me in school, and so no one knew. When I was six, he got his gun out and commanded me to stand in the corner so that he could shoot me. I was afraid of him, and young enough to not know I could refuse, so I did it. It was a game to him. He was shooting all around me, wanting to scare me, which it did like you can’t imagine. Someone heard and called the police. He died when the police came and shot him because he wouldn’t put his gun down.” I take a deep breath. Even after all these years, the memory terrifies me.
    “So I went to live with my mom, who couldn’t much be bothered with me since she was trying to survive her violently abusive new husband. I think she would have put up with him forever, because he mostly left me alone, only sometimes beating me. Until the day he came to visit me in the night.” I stop, shuddering at the remembrance. I have to remind myself that he’s gone now, that he’ll never hurt me again.
    “It was only once, but she heard my crying even though he had my mouth covered. She walked in, stopping him. The next day, she stabbed him until he died while he was passed out drunk.” I shrug. “Now she’s in prison.”
    I glance up, and Mrs. Green’s eyes are on me, full of empathy.
    “You’ve had a rough go of it, haven’t you?”
    I smile at her simple description of the hell that is my history.
    “Could be worse, I guess.”
    “It always can, can’t it? Though that seems to be bad enough,” she says, clucking and patting me on the