The Schwarzschild Radius (5 page)

Rachel thought about this one.

Yes, I told them. You are loved and welcome here.

I never forget your help. I have HIV test last week. It come negative today. So glad.

That’s great. Great news.

Men don’t want condom. Insist no condom.

Rachel didn’t write anything.

And ten, fifteen men a day. I don’t like to give you my problem.

As God is my witness, I’ll get you out of there.

God bless you, sis. We have five minutes. Tell me again about New York.

New York?

How beautiful life in New York.

Rachel put her face in her hands.

It’s a beautiful and peaceful place where you can be anything you want to be. And the city is most beautiful at night when you can see millions of lights. When you come here, we’ll go shopping in the mall and see the movie stars in Times Square.

That sound heaven. I go back now or they catch me.

When will I see you?

I try come back tomorrow. I love you.

Why would Olivia have hidden this from her? What else was she hiding? Rachel lay in bed unable to get Brother Horace’s words out of her mind.

Stone ho
.

he next morning, Rachel confronted her parents.

“How could you have kept it a secret from me all these years?” said Rachel. “It tore me apart when she had to go back to a whorehouse and I stayed here in my warm safe bed. This explains a lot.”

“She was already adopted when we found Olivia,” said Ed Wallen.

“We would have never separated them,” said her mother. “We were told her sister had already been adopted by a rich European family. What were we supposed to do?”

“You could have told me. Did you tell Olivia that she had a twin sister?”

“Why tell her about someone who wasn’t part of her life and who she would probably never meet?” said her mother.

“Well, they did meet―how?”

“Online. Bookface, whatever,” said her father.

“So this is going on for four months and what―I’m not part of this family?”

“We didn’t want to upset you,” said her mother.

“You didn’t want me to side with Olivia.”

“Even if we were willing to take her in…”

“Take her in? Is that how you put it?”

“Calm down,” said her father. “It’s not as easy as it was when we adopted your sister. Once immigration found out that she’s a prostitute, they’d probably deny her entry. I made that phone call to an attorney.”

“She’s an underage sex slave. People get asylum in this country for a lot less than that. Did you ask that question?”

“Even if we could get her entry―I’m an accountant, not a commando. How was I supposed to get her out of there?”

“Did you even try before giving up? Your sixteen-year-old daughter has more fight than you. Do you know what that poor girl is doing right now?”

“Enough, Rachel! Right now I have to deal with getting my own daughter back―your sister.”

“We can’t deal with these two things at once,” said her mother. “I just want my baby back.” She had that bug-eyed look that was beyond reason or persuasion. Rachel left the room before saying something she’d regret.

Rachel slammed the door of her room and had to steady herself on the edge of the bunk bed. She was starting Columbia in four days and her world was collapsing. Anger was now her best friend as it had been so often.

In times of great strife, Rachel found refuge in The Box. She took it down from the top shelf of her closet and removed a key from her drawer to open it. Inside was the sum total of Rachel Amanda Wallen’s worldly accomplishments. There was her valedictory speech from Northport Middle School, the medal for writing, the medal for social sciences awarded for her essay on the philosopher kings in modern society. There was a medal given to her by the town of East Northport for saving a seventy-year-old man by administering the Heimlich maneuver in a Burger King when she was twelve. There was the rosary blessed by John Paul II.

Then there was the Intel Award.

The Intel was the Nobel Prize of high school. Each entry had to be an original piece of work in one of the sciences, and students from all over the country vied for one of the top forty slots that sent them to Washington D.C. for the selection of the final ten winners. Anyone who gets into the top forty was guaranteed admission to virtually any college in the United States. The top prize was a hundred thousand dollars.

She unfolded the letter notifying her that she was going to DC. If she ever won a real Nobel Prize, she didn’t think it would give her the same transcendent joy.

It is our pleasure to inform you that your entry, “Characterizing Human and Chimpanzee Sera Immune Reactivity Against V1/V2 Regions of the HIV Envelope Protein” has been selected for the Semifinalist round of the Intel Science Talent Search to be held in Washington DC…

Nothing, not even children, could ever give her this happiness.

She returned from D.C. with thirty thousand dollars––sixth place nationwide. With this money and the fourteen thousand dollar scholarship, Rachel had enough to get her through the first year-and-a-half at Columbia.

But heaven had not yet finished pouring forth its blessings. She had completed her Intel project under the mentorship of Dr. Nandagopal Singh, the Nobel laureate and director of the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. She opened the envelope with the recommendation she had sent to every Ivy League university in the country. They all accepted her.

Dear Sir:

For the past eighteen months, Ms. Rachel Wallen has conducted research under my mentorship at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. The subject of her research was the characterizing of human and chimpanzee sera immune reactivity against V1/V2 regions of the HIV envelope protein, a subject of formidable complexity. I found her grasp of theory and laboratory technique to be remarkable for an investigator of her age. I was particularly impressed with her ability to think originally in the design of her experiments. She also possesses the one quality I hold above all others in this field: tenacity. She is a consummate scientist in every sense.

Yours truly,

Dr. Nandagopal Singh, Director,

Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center

It would take more than tenacity to get her two sisters back. And she was going to get them back.

irsten Schrodinger’s battered image was sent across the world to her admirers. She had entertained them well and they had paid well. She was on her knees chained to a concrete wall. The Webmaster now presented her for the next round of torment.

“We’ll begin the bidding.”

Twenty-thousand.

Twenty-five.

Thirty-five.

Forty.

“Come gentlemen. This is a blonde, blue-eyed fifteen-year-old. A rare find from Minnesota. Let your imaginations run free. Think of the possibilities. Let me offer a few suggestions…”

The bidding resumed.

“Sold to Client Number One for sixty-three thousand. A fine purchase. Please submit in detail the procedure I am to follow.” An email instantly arrived. Client Number One was prepared. The Webmaster decrypted the email and quickly read it. He was impressed with the depravity of the request.

“I’ll have to purchase a few items to perform this, sir. Please log in tomorrow at the same time and we’ll have a private session. The three of us.”