Read Online Sisters of the Road by Barbara Wilson - Free Book Online Page B

times. And they were probably wondering what a nice girl like me was doing leaning against the wall of an abandoned downtown department store.
    I talked fast. “You don’t have to believe me, but I wish you would. Trish has been staying at my apartment because she’s pretty scared of something or someone. Late this afternoon she wrote me a note saying she’d be back in a little while. Well, she didn’t come back and I’m worried about her. I feel like she’s in trouble and I want to help her.”
    For the first time the girl seemed to listen. She cast a brief, anxious glance at her friends. “Ask Beth Linda, she knows Trish. Maybe she can help you,” she said rapidly through her stuffed-up nose.
    “Beth?” I looked helplessly over at the group. “Can you point her out? Will she talk to me?”
    “Beth’s not here. She’s a social worker. At the Rainbow Center over by the bus station, the place we go to get warm and eat and talk and stuff. They’re open late. Yeah, go see Beth. But don’t tell anyone I told you!”

12
    T HE RAINBOW CENTER WAS full of the same sort of kids I’d seen out on the street; some long-haired druggies and some punks with shaved heads and torn T-shirts. There were a lot of gay boys, some of them incredibly femme with red lipstick and bouffant hair. The main room of the converted office building was thick with cigarette smoke and rang with the sound of laughter and shouting; in one corner a video game pinged relentlessly.
    I felt my age immediately.
    “Hi,” said a woman in jeans and a sweater, coming up to me. “Need some help?”
    “Does Beth Linda work here?”
    “I’ll go get her.”
    After a few minutes a tall woman with solid fat packed around her big frame came into the room and asked what she could do for me. About thirty-seven or eight, she had short strawberry blond hair that dipped into her forthright green eyes. Freckles saved her from looking like she’d seen a little more of life than she wanted to.
    “My name’s Pam Nilsen. I’m looking for a girl named Trish. I’m… I’m worried about her.”
    She nodded. “C’mon in back. Coffee or tea?”
    She took me to a small office with a couple of ratty armchairs, bulging file cabinets and a desk that looked more like it was used for piling papers on than for working. Over the desk was a poster of a cat lolling on its back that said, “Take It Easy.” The walls didn’t keep out the sound of the kids.
    I had tea. She took her coffee strong and black, and with one of those papery excuses for a cigarette, a Carlton. She was wearing an oversize pink sweater with a cowl collar that came up to her double chin, polyester pants and fluffy pink bedroom slippers.
    “My feet swell at the end of the day,” she smiled, when she saw me looking at them. She leaned back in her chair.
    “Well, I’m not going to let you explain why you’re looking for her, and then give you the runaround. I’ll tell you right now that I don’t know where she is… I haven’t seen her for a few months. But I’d still like to know what she’s up to. I like the girl.”
    I told Beth the story, from picking Trish and Rosalie up to Trish’s note. I had to talk loudly to make myself heard above the uproar in the front room.
    Her freckled face was somber. “I can see why you’re worried. Especially with Rosalie dying, and all that stuff about the Green River killer. I didn’t know her unfortunately, but it’s scary. It could have happened to any of the kids.”
    Beth lit another cigarette. “All I can tell you is what I know about Trish. She dropped in here on and off for three months or so, last summer and fall. You know, we offer counseling and dinners and some medical and educational services, but it’s mainly just a place for kids to feel safe. Trish had had a drug problem and she’d been in a treatment program. She was off drugs when I met her and she was in a group for ex-druggies here. The hard thing about these kids is getting