Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (3 page)

A
sking her dad about an oil spill at Possession Point got Jenn nowhere. Asking her mom offered much the same result. Her dad was deep into his yearly preparations for Seattle BrewFest, so the only answer he gave to her questions was to grunt, “Hon, do I look like I got time for a discussion on ancient history right now?” as he wrestled with a huge glass jug of amber ale in his brewing shed. Her mom was deep into her daily reading of the Bible, so her reply had to do with God’s speaking to mortal man through natural disasters. When Jenn tried to argue that an oil spill at Possession Point was hardly a
natural
disaster, Kate’s response of “You just look at all the tornadoes hitting the Midwest this year, Jennifer, and ask yourself if God’s displeasure isn’t evident when houses get blown to bits and semis get tossed in the air” told Jenn that any conversation with her mom was going to be less flavored with facts and more flavored with her mom’s interpretation of whatever part of the Old Testament she and her church friends were in the midst of studying. What Jenn knew from all this was that if she wanted to discover the truth about any long-ago oil spills, she was probably going to have to do it on her own.

School was the best place for this, since she had nothing at home to help her do any delving. So when lunch rolled around the next school day, she took off for the library’s computers.

She was a dolt with technology. It would have helped to have a computer at home, but that was out of the question since food took priority over modern conveniences of a technological nature. She knew how to get onto the Internet, naturally. She knew about search engines as well. But as for the extreme fine-tuning she needed to find
exactly
what she was looking for . . . ? That required a defter hand than hers. She needed an assistant. Squat Cooper was her man.

She scored him just where she figured he’d be, at a library study carrel doing his homework. Why eat lunch when one could do math? He was scribbling away on some obscure problem, and as usual, he was totally oblivious to what was going on around him. He didn’t look up when Jenn tapped him on the shoulder. He didn’t look up when she said his name. She finally resorted to wetly licking the back of his neck and making
yum, yum, yum
sounds. He leapt to his feet and cried, “
What
the heck?” with his ruddy face going ruddier and his hand wiping at the sopping spots Jenn had left.

“I need your help, Studboy,” she told him.

“Doing what? Passing germs?” He slapped at his neck. He was cute as a puppy and just as open and friendly. Jenn had known him since kindergarten.

“Ha. You loved it and you’re dying for more.” She wagged her tongue at him.

“Bleagh. In your dreams.”

“
Exactly
where I want you nightly.” She closed his math book, and when he started to protest, she said, “You’re getting an A, you’re always getting an A, you’ll always
be
getting an A. I need your brain. Since it’s attached to your body, you got to come with me.”

He sighed but followed her. He said, “It was kindergarten, wasn’t it?”

“What was?”

“When I let you share my milk that one time. We used the same straw. You jumped to conclusions about what that meant and you’ve been deluded ever since.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning I’m not yours for the asking.”

“Yes, you are. You try to hide it and who can blame you since I’m so hot, but I’ve known everything about you since second grade. Quit trying to fight it. See this, my friend?” She held up her little finger.

“What about it?”

“You’re wrapped.”

He snorted but smiled. “So what d’you want?”

She sat him next to her at the computer. Just as she thought, Squat had things sorted out in a matter of mouse clicks that zipped them back through time to exactly what Annie Taylor had claimed. There
had
been an oil spill. It had happened at night, and it had washed up on and polluted all of Possession Point. The heaviest kind of oil there was, the bilge oil had left its traces upon everything it touched, and there were plenty of pictures to make this point. Seventeen years in the past, it had happened. Annie Taylor hadn’t been too far off in her timeline.

“Yuck,” was Squat’s remark when they came upon the pictures of drenched seabirds, belly-up crabs, and filthy shores. “So why d’you want to know about this? You writing a paper or something?”

“Nah. There’s a babester moved into that old trailer by my house? She was talking about it. Nera’s probably a mutant seal because of it is what she says.
Or
she’s a new species.”

“A new species because of an oil spill? A mutant? Not hardly,” Squat said. “Crabs with two heads? Shrimp shaped like porcupines? Fish with eyes on their tails? There’s your mutants. A black seal, though? I don’t think so. And even if she is a mutation, so what? I mean, she’s healthy, right?”

“It’s to do with her dissertation. I mean
Annie’s
dissertation, not the seal’s. Anyway, I didn’t even know there
was
an oil spill and I got curious.”

“Oh. Whatever. C’n I go back to calculus now?”

“Only if you can tear yourself away from my company.”

He rolled his eyes. “I’ll manage.” He went back to his study carrel.

Jenn turned to the computer. She continued to read and she searched out more pictures. She found additional ones by following a few links. In a moment she was looking at a Possession Point two years before the time of her birth. The house was there, the bait shack was fairly new, and the trailer that Annie Taylor was occupying was there as well, in good condition with a neatly planted garden in front of it. The picture was a before-the-spill shot. After-the-spill consisted of a tarlike goop clinging to driftwood, rocks, and the beach itself.

It was odd that no one ever talked about the spill, Jenn thought. But then, it had happened long ago and there were no remaining signs of it that she’d ever seen at Possession Point, so why
would
anyone talk about it? Still, it seemed to Jenn that Annie Taylor had her work cut out for her if she was going to make something of the spill and of Nera for her dissertation. As for Jenn, she had to agree with Squat. Nera might have been as black as a lump of coal, but that was the only thing different about her.

Of course, that difference was the key to her value to Whidbey Island in general and the village of Langley in particular. The citizens, shopkeepers, and souvenir hawkers weren’t going to want someone messing with their Nera. The magical yearly return of a coal black seal was one thing. The magical yearly return of a mutant was another. When it came to Nera, Annie Taylor was going to have to mind her p’s and q’s, because no one was going to let her mess with that seal or that seal’s reputation for being half magic and three-quarters homing pigeon.

Whispering conversation from near the door interrupted Jenn’s flow of thoughts. She glanced in that direction and felt her mood sour immediately because South Whidbey High School’s answer to Love Eternal was entering the library, hand in hand, heads together in earnest conversation. They were the island’s own version of Bella and Edward without the blood and the fangs. Jenn could even have managed to put up with them had the boy not once been one of her good friends and had the girl not been . . . well, who she was.

Becca King was someone Jenn had loathed from the first instant they’d come into contact with each other on the ferry coming across from Mukilteo to the island last September. Derric Mathieson, on the other hand, was someone Jenn had been pals with since, as an eight-year-old, he’d been adopted out of an orphanage in Uganda by a family on the island. Why they were a couple was a mystery to Jenn. Derric was tall, athletic, and terrific-looking, from his gorgeously and deliberately shaved head to his perfect toes. Becca was . . . Well, okay, she’d lost the blubber she’d been carrying when she’d first landed on the island and Jenn had dubbed her SmartAss FatBroad. But the rest of her was exactly the same: hideously dyed dark brown hair, thick rimmed glasses out of another century, shapeless clothes, and so much makeup that, if the circus wasn’t going to be her next stop, she needed to rethink her destination. Derric and Becca were living proof that opposites attracted. All they had in common was brain power, and
that
they had in mountains.

They sat at one of the library tables, across from each other but still conversing quietly. They seemed even more intensely focused on each other than usual, and when Derric’s whispered “No, that’s just the point. It does bother me. And it would bother any other guy, and it
would
bother you if the tables were turned. Why don’t you get that, Becca?” came across the room, it caught Jenn’s attention in a way that only a hint of great gossip ever could. Was there—gasp!—trouble in paradise? She could only hope. If there were potholes in true love’s road, she wanted to be the first to know about them.

Unfortunately, Becca’s response didn’t give her much to go on. She said quietly, “It doesn’t
mean
anything and it never could. Why don’t you get that?”

“How am I
supposed
to get it?” He shoved back from the table.

“Derric, you said we could talk about this.” Becca reached for his arm and closed her hand over his chocolate skin. He was meant to cover her hand with his, Jenn figured, but he wasn’t about to do that. He was totally pissed.

“Every talk we have ends in the exact same place,” he said fiercely. “‘It doesn’t mean anything.’”

“Because it
doesn’t
.”

What doesn’t? Jenn wanted to yell. What, what, what for crying out loud? But before she could get an answer to this or even imagine one, Derric had shaken Becca’s hand from his arm and had stormed out of the library, the walking cast he wore no impediment to him. The door hit back against the wall so hard that even Squat looked up from his math.

For her part, Becca stared after him. Slowly she removed from her ear an earphone that she always wore, in class and out. She got away with this for reasons Jenn hadn’t ever been able to figure out. It was like the creepoid put a spell on people. Whatever she wanted, she always,
always
ended up getting.

Jenn couldn’t resist, so she didn’t try. She rose from her position at the computer and sauntered over to the FatBroad’s table. She was thinking, Bet he breaks up with her butt by the end of the week.

Becca turned her head slowly and looked at her, “As if that’ll change anything in your life,” she said.

Jenn stopped in her tracks and examined the other girl. “What’s with you,” she demanded.

“Nothing you’d ever understand,” Becca told her.

B
ecca King knew that Jenn McDaniels hated her because of Derric. There were probably other reasons—beyond her inclination to be generally snarky just for the heck of it—but Derric was the main one. He’d taken a terrible fall in Saratoga Woods not long after Becca’s arrival on Whidbey Island, and his time in the hospital after that had offered Becca the chance to get to know him. From the first instant she’d seen him on the ferry coming from Mukilteo over to Whidbey Island, she’d felt drawn to the African boy. That he’d also felt drawn to her was still what it had been from the first: something of a miracle to Becca.

She hadn’t thought of Jenn McDaniels and her place in Derric’s life as she’d got to know him and maybe this had been a bad thing. But the truth was that with Derric she’d felt safe, treasured, understood, and accepted in a way that her appearance alone should have made impossible. Fat cow, dyed hair, thick glasses, eye makeup like an aging rock star on drugs . . . It was all part of who she had to be on this Washington island. None of it was part of who she really was.

Somehow Derric had managed to see that, to see the
her
beneath the
her
she was forced to present to the world. When he’d recovered from his injuries and left the hospital, he’d sought her out. He’d made her life livable in this place where she’d been left by her mother in the early autumn.

Now in midwinter, they’d grown close. But Becca could only let him into her world just so far. It was for his own safety, but he didn’t know that and to tell him . . . ? The worm can
that
would open was so full that both of them would be overcome by its contents, and that would sink their relationship. Which, of course, would please Jenn McDaniels from the top of her head to her running shoes.

Jenn’s thoughts had become as plain as broadcasts over the school’s PA system once Becca had removed the AUD box earphone from her ear. In the past four months, she’d grown a bit in her ability to pick up others’ random thoughts when the AUD box wasn’t blocking them with static, and these whispers—as she’d learned to call them—were helping her find her way in this place. In Jenn’s case, the whispers had allowed Becca to know from the first that the girl was determined to be her enemy. They’d locked horns on the ferry that evening of Becca’s arrival, and Becca’s interest in Derric had only made things worse. When Derric returned that interest . . . Well, that was it. She and Jenn McDaniels were oil and water. As females, they were made of the same
stuff
, but there it ended.

Becca knew she probably shouldn’t have given the other girl any indication that she’d read her thoughts, but at the moment she was just too miserable about Derric to care. He was being unreasonable, he didn’t understand, he was making a demand she couldn’t hope to fulfill, he couldn’t see the truth, he didn’t want to know why she couldn’t tell him everything he wanted to know. . . . And all the rest, she thought wryly.

Jenn shot her a drop-dead-now look and stalked out of the library. On her way, she stopped to have a word with Squat Cooper, and for some reason she decided an exchange of spit with poor Squat was in order because she kissed him squarely on the mouth when he looked up. He didn’t exactly push her to the floor, but he said, “Hey, wha’ the heck?” when she was finished with him.

She said, “Later, Studboy. And I want some tongue next time,” and she laughed when he went red to his hairline.

Becca knew what Jenn was up to: I got
my
man. She also knew it was a total lie. But that didn’t matter at the moment because the moment was really about all the things that she couldn’t tell Derric.

• • •

JENN HAD LEFT
her computer on, still fixed to whatever Web site she’d been perusing when Becca and Derric had come into the library. Becca sat to use it, but out of curiosity she traced back through what Jenn had been studying first: an oil slick at Possession Point long ago. Whatever, Becca thought. Maybe Jenn was a budding environmentalist.

At any rate, Becca herself had a bigger issue than an oil slick from history, and his name was Jeff Corrie. He was the reason she was on Whidbey Island. She and her mother were on the run from him. There wasn’t a day that Becca didn’t expect her stepfather to pop out of a bush as she got off the bus near her hiding place, and she’d been checking once a week to see if he was still walking around San Diego as a very free man. So far that had proved to be the case.

She did her usual search. It had to be time, she thought, for the disappearance of Jeff’s partner Connor to be
noticed
by someone. No way was Jeff Corrie
not
involved in Connor’s vanishing act.

The first part proved true. At long last, someone in Connor’s family had begun making noises about the fact that Jeff Corrie’s partner in a San Diego investment house appeared to be missing. Not returning phone calls, not answering e-mails, no updates to his Facebook page, mail left languishing in his mailbox, newspapers piled up, no one opening the door when the doorbell was rung . . . Becca found this information by surfing through the latest editions of San Diego’s main newspaper. But
still
no one’s eye had fastened on Jeff Corrie as a person of interest in this matter. He claimed to be as much in the dark as everyone else about Connor’s whereabouts.

Fat chance, thought Becca. She’d read Jeff’s whispers just before she and her mom had fled, and every one of them said he’d had a hand in getting rid of Connor. Those same whispers also said that Jeff Corrie was more than willing to turn his attention to Becca and her mother if they didn’t play their cards right. So they played their cards all the way up to Washington, getting away from the man. Becca’s mom, Laurel, was still playing them in Nelson, British Columbia, where she’d been heading once Becca herself was on the ferry to Whidbey Island.

Only . . . absolutely nothing had worked out as they’d planned, and now Becca was looking over her shoulder morning, noon, and night as she waited for Jeff Corrie to show his face yet another time on Whidbey Island. He’d tracked her here once because of a cell phone, because of Derric’s fall, and because of the police. He’d gotten nowhere, and he’d left, but that didn’t mean he’d given up. It wasn’t his way.

But for now, he had issues of his own in San Diego, which was fine with Becca. Let him stay there and try to answer questions about where Connor was. He’d run out of lies eventually. He’d face arrest and trial and prison and then Becca and her mom would finally be safe. Until then, though, she was on Whidbey Island, waiting for Laurel to return from British Columbia. She’d come back when it was safe to do so. Becca told herself that with every day that passed.

These were only some of the facts that Derric Mathieson wanted to know about Becca and her life. She couldn’t blame him, but she also couldn’t tell him. This was partly to keep him safe. But it was also partly because his dad was the under sheriff of Island County.

• • •

AFTER SCHOOL BECCA
was wretched. She’d had one more class with Derric before the end of the day and she’d said before it started, “Let’s not fight, okay?” She’d slid her fingers into his hand so that they could walk together as they always did. But he’d not taken her fingers and his only comment in reply was, “Whatever, Becca,” before he ducked into class. There, he kept his gaze fixed on the teacher, and he’d taken so many notes that Becca figured he was writing everything word for word.

At the end of class, he was gone before she had a chance to say anything else to him. When she left the room, she saw him at the end of the corridor. He’d been stopped by one of the school cheerleaders for a conversation that involved smiles and laughter, so Becca walked off.
Wretched
didn’t do justice to how she felt.

She decided not to take the school bus home to her hideaway in the woods. It was up the highway on the route to the next town, but she knew she could get there on one of the public island buses later in the day and that would be fine. At the moment she just needed to be away from all things related to South Whidbey High School, and she knew where to go for the break she wanted.

It was a very long walk on a very cold day, but Becca figured she could survive it. She’d already survived three snowfalls and countless rain- and windstorms since she’d been in the woods. A walk from Maxwelton Road to Clyde Street wasn’t going to kill her.

It took more than an hour of hills and forests and fields, and by the end of the trip in the icy cold, Becca was so chilled that her bones were aching, and she promised herself that she’d bring her bike to school the next time she decided she needed to see the woman who lived above the beach called Sandy Point. When she reached the gray house overlooking the water, she rang the bell with fingers that had long ago gone numb.

Diana Kinsale’s pickup truck was in the driveway, but the bell in the house didn’t rouse her dogs nor did Becca herself when she went to the far side of the place and inspected their kennel.

It was empty. But as Becca looked around, joyful barking floated up from the distant water, and soon enough Becca caught sight of Diana throwing tennis balls for her dogs to retrieve. She was far off down the beach toward the end of the point, but Becca knew her by her mannish clothes and by her gait. And by her dogs, for there were five of them, and one of them was an elegant and silent black poodle called Oscar. He wasn’t chasing the balls. Diana would say that Oscar believed ball chasing lacked dignity.

Becca made her way down toward the beach. It fronted a community of cottages, most of them vacant for the winter, a few with curls of smoke rising like silver scarves into the icy air. She curved through a few dunes where sea grasses lay dormant in the February weather, and when she finally came out onto the beach itself, she saw Diana Kinsale hurling one of the tennis balls and all the dogs save Oscar hurtling after it.

On their way back to Diana, though, they caught sight of Becca. She knelt and held out her arms to them. They stormed her, all nuzzling cold noses and dog breath. She laughed and cried, “Stop! No treats! Ach! Get ’em
off
me!” even though she loved the welcome they gave her.

She heard footsteps, then, and she looked up to see that Diana Kinsale had joined them. She wore a baseball cap over her short gray hair, and from her ears gold studs flashed in the fading afternoon light. She had on a thick parka, gloves, and knee-high fisherman’s boots. What she said was, “Ah, Becca. There you are. I
thought
the dogs were expecting someone.”