Broken Wings 2 - Midnight Flight Andrews, C. (books for students to read TXT) 📖

But the basement floor was bone dry and actually looked as if it had recently been swept and vacuumed. I didn't see any spiderwebs either. I lifted the lighter a little higher and the darkness retreated a bit more. I could make out a short stairway at the far end. I didn't see into every dark corner yet, but I didn't think anyone was there.

I walked down a bit farther and held the light high enough so I could find the floor grate Gia had spoken about. I didn't, but I thought I did hear voices, so I turned quickly and retreated.

I approached the desk and found the switch for the lamp. To my joy, it lit, and with that illumination I could clearly see the whole room. Except for this little bit of furniture, there was nothing and, I concluded, releasing the hot breath I had bottled up in my lungs, no one in the basement.

I gazed at the desk and saw an envelope. The envelope wasn't addressed, but when I picked it up, I realized something was in it. I took out the paper and unfolded it. This was a letter and it began with Dear Mom and Dad.. .

I sat on the chair and began to read the letter.

First, I want to tell you I'm all right. It was very, very hard at first. Dr. Foreman made it seem as if this was going to be a fun place with strict rules, but nevertheless, not an unpleasant experience. She and I had awonderful talk when I first arrived. She explained how her first concern would always be my well-​being, but she wanted me to understand that sometimes, she would appear very cruel and unreasonable to me. She compared herself to a dentist.

“I've got to drill away the rot in you,” she said, “the decay that's poisoning the healthy part of you.”

I thought that was very reasonable and I promised her I would always try to see things from her point of view. We got started on a good note.

Here at her school, she has older girls to assist her. She told me those girls were former students. At first, I couldn 't believe it. She had given them so much responsibility. How could they have been in enough trouble to be sent here and then become trusted assistants?

Dr. Foreman said that when I improved, I would probably make for a great assistant, who she calls buddies because they help the new students. They acted tough and hard, but I knew they were only trying to help me.

Anyway, I have another reason for writing this letter. Dr. Foreman has gotten me to understand that I can't improve until I admit to my problems and weaknesses. She says girls like me have to go through a process not unlike the process alcoholics experience. We have to stand up and confess first. We have to say, “I am an alcoholic.”

Of course, I'm not an alcoholic. I have to say I'm a liar and a deceitful person. So, first, let me say that. I have lied and deceived you both many times. I'm sorry about it, but I'm most sorry for what I did right before I was sent here. I know it was a horrible thing to do to make Tamatha sick by putting that insect poison in her food. I was so angry, but that didn 't justify it. AsDr. Foreman says, I have got to learn how to channel my anger into other, more productive activities and learn how to talk about the things that bother me. I can tell you I worked hard at hiding everything and it wasn't your fault that you never knew half the terrible things I had done. You didn 't deserve to have a daughter like me.

Thanks to Dr. Foreman and her treatments, I can now do all that she suggested I should do. I'm ashamed, of course, and I'm sorry, too. We don't promise things here. Promises are like soap bubbles. They look really beautiful, but when you touch them, they pop and fall to earth and are gone. Dr. Foreman says, “They're not worth the air they're written on.” She has a wonderful way of putting things sometimes.

So I won't make promises about the future and how I will behave. I'll just do the right thing.

I don't want you to believe that all this has happened overnight. It took a long time and I had to do many, many things that I know would be unpleasant to anyone else, especially some of my so-​called friends. Dr. Foreman has shown me how none of them were really my friends.

There is only one other girl here at the moment. Dr. Foreman says the new girl and I are sort of between scheduling periods, and new girls will be arriving soon. Dr. Foreman just doesn 't take anyone that people want to send here. She spends a lot of time analyzing and thinking about the girl and her problems first.

This other girl who is here is a lot like me in so many ways, but she is very unhappy and still very angry at the world and everyone in it. She hates me for being happyabout anything. She calls me Pollyannaish and says my eyes are blinded by stars. She's very intelligent, but very bitter.

Dr. Foreman decided recently that she was not a good influence on me and we, therefore, had to be separated. She gave me a new place to stay. At first, it was a very lonely place and then, one day, a man, an Indian man who is in charge of the ranch animals and farming, told me that the world is really inside you and not outside you. His name is Natani and I did not understand what he meant, of course.

But he showed me how to look inside myself and find the world I needed. That's really where I go now. In the beginning, I was there