Sinful Purity (Sinful Series) Read Free Page B

didn’t feed me or anything, but just because it was my curse to be awkward. I wasn’t even talented or coordinated enough to play on the basketball team, where I might have fit in. Kelly frequently alternated between teasing me unmercifully and assuring me that with my height and svelte frame, I would make a supremely perfect willowy supermodel.
    Kelly would say, “Promise me that when you’re out of this concentration camp and are a gorgeous, rich model living in New York or Paris, you’ll make me your assistant. So I can go to all the fabulous parties and meet exotic sexy guys.”
    “Keebler, you’re insane,” I’d squeal, secretly hoping that one day my life would live up to Kelly’s fantasies. Kelly hated being called Keebler, but I felt it was only fair after all the taunting I had endured. Besides, I thought it was more creative than her pet name for me. Kelly’s wild red hair and short stature reminded me of an elf—one of those shoe-cobbling elves, not the beautiful, mystical, woodland fairy–type elves. So it was that Keebler stuck, at least as long as she insisted on calling me String Bean.
    Kelly was always planning our new lives together, far from Mary Immaculate Queen. The dreams were always formulaic: we were beautiful, wealthy, and adventurous women. Highly sought-after commodities, she’d say.
    “We’ll spend our days unearthing lost cities, starring in rock videos, and posing for the covers of magazines, and we’ll spend our nights fighting off men,” she’d laugh.
    I knew how much Kelly loved guys. I imagined that I intended on doing a lot more “fighting off” than she did.
    Regardless of Kelly’s more zealous nature, we were a perfect match, and except for Brett’s occasional visits, we were all each other had. Kelly said that in a couple of years when she left, she wanted me to come with her. I told Kelly all about the Perkinses and their intent to come for me someday. I could tell she didn’t hold out as much hope as I did for the matter.
    “If the Perkinses want you so damn bad, then why haven’t they come and broken you out of this detention center?”
    “I don’t know all the details. Maybe they’re away on business,” I hissed.
    “Business that was so important it has taken almost ten years?”
    “Maybe they had an accident and are in a hospital overseas with extensive injuries.”
    “More like amnesia,” Kelly retorted.
    “Look, I don’t know the circumstances. But I know that my family had one hell of a reason to leave me here. Maybe it was for my own protection, to keep me safe.”
    “Well, String Bean, last time I checked, the witness protection program lets you not only take your whole family but even your pet. So unless your family decided that Bowser was more important than their daughter…”
    “Don’t you dare finish that sentence, Kelly,” I threatened.
    “Or what, your precious fictional family won’t let me talk to you anymore?”
    At that moment I lost it. I lunged at her with all my force, knocking her to the ground. I tore at her hair, hit her in the face, kicking and screaming while I sobbed uncontrollably. Two of the sisters pulled me off her. Another helped her to her feet. I could see the terror and anger though her scratched, bloodied face. But I didn’t care.
    My unnatural wailing continued for two more days broken only by the uncontrollable sobs. Kelly and I didn’t speak again for several days.
    One of the boys at the orphanage, Peter, goaded me. “We knew it was only a matter of time before you…snapped.” He followed me around the school, always just a few paces behind. “Mary Elizabeth, Mary Elizabeth, Lizzie. That’s right, Lizzie. Lizzie took an axe and gave her mother forty whacks. When she saw what she had done she gave her father forty-one. You know that’s why you’re here, right, Lizzie? Tell everyone, Lizzie. Tell them you’re a psycho.” Peter then broke into the theme from
Psycho
—“Eee! Eee! Eee!,” waving