Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (9 page)

Derric looked at Becca and raised an eyebrow. His expression said, So here’s your chance. Gonna tell the
truth
? I don’t think so.

Of course, he was right.

D
erric wasn’t surprised when Becca got out of the Langley Clinic as fast as she could. The last thing she wanted to talk to
him
about was where she was hiding out, so there was no way she was going to have a conversation with his mom about it. He almost wanted to laugh at how fast she beat her retreat when Rhonda asked her question. Course, his mom hadn’t meant
hiding
as in really hiding. But the fact that she didn’t know how close she was to the truth of what was up with Becca was part of what made her question so funny.

He had to come up with an explanation for Becca’s showing up at the clinic, though. There was no way Rhonda was going to let that dog doze. Since she had one last patient to see, he had time to cook something up. So when she let loose with her typical grilling, he was ready for her.

Becca had stopped by to ask him a question about a project they were working on in their Western Civ class, he explained to his mom. She’d been given Extra Underpants Schuman for a partner.

“Oh dear,” was Rhonda’s reply. She knew Tod Schuman. Everyone knew him. Everyone also knew why he had the nickname. “That’s not going to be easy for her. You didn’t want to. . . ?”

“We were assigned,” he lied.

When they arrived home, he went straight to his bedroom. His dad wasn’t back from work yet, and his mom went directly to the kitchen to start dinner. He had a few minutes, then, when he was off her radar. He intended to use that time to find a place to hide the letters to his sister.

His preference would have been in the basement, squirreled away among his childhood stuff. But the route to the basement was through the kitchen, and he couldn’t risk his mom asking why he was heading down there. Besides, she’d also make a big deal about him trying to go down the old wooden stairs with a cast on his leg. It would be “Let me do that for you, sweetie. I don’t want you to fall. What d’you want down there? I’ll get it in a flash,” and that was the last thing he needed.

In his room, though, there weren’t a lot of options. Closet? Possibly. Drawers? No way. His mom was always putting clean clothes in the dresser. Under the bed? Maybe not because of the vacuum. In the ancient beanbag chair? Well . . . It was so old it had been repaired three times, and the last repair involved about four feet of duct tape. Beneath this patch, the chair had split along its seams, and his mom was after him to throw the thing out.

But he liked to lounge there with his headphones on and his music cranked. It was his
space
, he told his mother. It was ugly but comfortable and he
liked
it, he told her. So, to respect him, she never touched it.

In short, it was perfect for hiding the letters. He peeled back the duct tape. Then he quickly removed the letters from his backpack. They were stored in an old Star Wars lunch box that Derric had found in the basement years ago. It had belonged to Dave Mathieson’s older son and had languished forever up on a shelf along with Little League mitts, baseball bats, cleats, and dusty athletic trophies. He’d scored it in order to protect the letters from the elements so that he could hide them in the woods. Once he had them in the beanbag chair, though, the question was what to do with the lunch box.

He was considering this when his cell phone alerted him to a text. The text was from Courtney:
Pick u up7? xxx
What the hell . . . ? he wondered. Did they have a date and he’d forgotten? That would be radically uncool. Becca showing up with his letters to Rejoice had thrown him, sure. But he didn’t think he’d been thrown enough to forget a date with Courtney.

He sorted through his mind for what was up before he replied since he didn’t want to come off like a dolt. School night so it couldn’t be a date as in a date. Were they supposed to be studying together? Could be, for sure. What else was there? Basketball game? Not right now. Club meeting? They weren’t in any club together. But the idea of clubs jogged his memory. It wasn’t a club, it was Courtney’s Bible study group. She’d been after him from their first date to give her prayer group and her Bible study group a try. She did Bible study once a week, and three times now she’d asked him to join her. He’d given her an excuse each time, avoiding the moment when he was going to have to tell her directly that he wasn’t a Bible kind of person. For she was a Bible kind of person, and Bible-reading, prayer-circling, and church-going were the only subjects on which they didn’t see eye to eye.

He texted her back.
2 much 2 do. Math sucks. Nx time? Xxxxxxx

It took nearly ten minutes for her to reply. Her
oK
spoke volumes. She wasn’t happy.

He texted her again.
Sorry. Miss u big time, babe.

Another wait, but only two minutes this time.
M2. Cuz after the meeting . . . ;).

He knew what that meant: After Bible study they’d stop somewhere. They’d park in one of the thousand and one places on the south end of the island where you could hide in the darkness with no one the wiser that you were even there. No matter the cold outside of the car, they’d warm each other soon enough.

She was tempting him. Just thinking about doing anything with Courtney got him going. But the Bible part of it . . . ? Could he really sit there and talk about the Bible while all along knowing that afterward he and Courtney were going to get it on with each other? He
supposed
he could. But if that was the case, why didn’t he jump at the opportunity she was giving him? He wanted to, didn’t he? He wanted to be in the dark with her, right? She let him do some things, but not others. He touched here but not there. He kissed this but not that. Her legs were smooth and her stomach was tight and her breasts were soft and
why
the hell didn’t he just do what anyone else in his position would do? Read the Bible, go to the prayer circle, get on his knees and pretend to ask Jesus-God-Buddha-Whoever for world peace or whatever it was that the prayer circle prayed for because then Courtney would maybe in the darkness in the back of her car . . . She
would
, wouldn’t she? Or would she?

Derric groaned. He dropped down onto his bed and he shoved the Star Wars lunch box beneath it. Courtney Baker had him turned every which way and she kept him turned every which way until the only thing he could think of was the hot pressure building between his legs.

He sputtered out a weak laugh at himself. At
least
Courtney managed to keep him from thinking about Becca King. He owed her that. She was one hell of a diversion.

He rolled onto his side and reached for his cell phone.
Naked
he texted her.

!!!
was her reply.

???
was his next text.

In a moment she sent a picture instead of words. A total nipple shot. She was out of her mind. He unzipped, lowered his jeans and jockeys, took a picture . . . but then he didn’t send it. Instead, he texted,
luv u crazy got 2 go
. Then he deleted the shot he’d taken and he spent a few minutes staring at the one she’d sent.

It was like she was more than one person. She was the Courtney everyone saw in school: the Bible study Courtney, the prayer-circle Courtney, the friendly bubbly Courtney with a smile on her face and a happy greeting for everyone she knew. But she was also the Courtney who knew of an overgrown driveway on Surface Road that led into the woods to an abandoned house and who parked her car there and turned to him and said, “You are the hottest guy at school,” and when he kissed her, she kissed him back. And when he touched her, she touched him back. And she slid her hands across his bare chest and teased the flesh at the top of his jeans.

She’d said to him at the very first before they’d done anything, “Are you and Becca King over? I’m asking ’cause no way do I invade some other girl’s turf, but
if
you’re over, I’d like a chance.”

Stupidly, he’d said, “A chance for what?”

She’d smiled and said, “A chance with
you
.”

He’d opened his mouth to reply, but nothing had come out. Courtney Baker? A chance? Him? All he could manage was “Why?”

“Because you’re special and you totally don’t know it. I’d sort of like to kiss you, if that’s okay.”

Had it been okay? He didn’t remember. She wasn’t like anyone he’d ever known.

So, dude, why not
go
tonight? he asked himself. Spend an hour reading the Old Testament or whatever, and then . . . then . . .
What
the hell was he avoiding? When the hell had he become so lame?

That was the question of the hour, he thought sourly. He had a feeling the answer was that insufferable know-it-all called Becca King.

I
t didn’t take long for Becca to figure out that handing over those letters to Derric had been a very dumb idea. If she’d thought she was going to remind him of his roots in Uganda—of who he really was, she’d told herself—she’d been wildly wrong. She did accomplish something, though. Where before he’d been coolly polite to her, now she didn’t exist for him.

The fact that she was condemned to working with Extra Underpants Schuman on a critical project in her Western Civ class made everything worse. She could at
least
have had an A to look forward to in her life. But with Extra Underpants hanging around her neck like a dead German shepherd, there was no possibility of anything other than a C. And
that
, only if she was lucky. And
that
, only if she could talk him into being something more than a certified idiot.

When he showed her his completed part of their report, her spirits tanked. She eased the AUD box earphone from her ear in the hope she might pick up from his whispers some reason why he was such a dope.
She’d better because no one . . . only way . . . talk her into it because if I . . .
only told her that he expected her to buy the garbage he was putting together. It was all from Wikipedia and Askme.com, she saw: a jumble of information that he’d scored about a tribe in the Amazon, First Nations in Canada, and the Maoris in New Zealand. He’d applied it every which way to their assignment. When she read it, she wanted to put her fist through his head.

She said, “We’re supposed to be creating our
own
primitive culture, Tod. I guess we can start with this and throw some ideas back and forth, but—”

Tod grabbed the papers. “Hey, I worked my butt off on that,” he declared.
Don’t make me . . . if I . . . you’ll be way sorry, toadbutt . . .

As if, she thought. But what she said was, “It looks like cut and paste from the Net. You’re not even putting it into your own words.”

“So?”

“So Mr. Keith
said
—”

“Keith’s a buttwipe.”
Find out why as soon as
 . . .

“—he’s going to be checking the Internet. So if we use this . . . Look, it’s not that hard. We c’n do it together if you want instead of dividing the work up. I mean, I c’n help with the primitive culture and you c’n help with the European one.”

“You took the easier part of the assignment anyway,” he sneered. “If I’d’a known you’d do that, I would’ve chose another partner.”

Chosen,
she thought. He couldn’t even speak correct English. She said, “So we’ll trade, then.”

“No way! I already worked on this.”
The other part . . . not fair . . . this is the only way . . . stupid . . . the rest of them already . . .
He snatched up the papers. “All
right
, I’ll fix the stupid thing,” he hissed. “Geez. I
knew
I should have picked someone else.”

“It has to be original,” she reminded him.

“Just shut your fat mouth,” was his reply.

So things weren’t good. And when she next saw his paperwork, things weren’t better. It
looked
different but ninety minutes on the Internet at South Whidbey Commons were enough to prove that all he’d done was retype the original, mix it up a bit, and add adjectives and adverbs liberally.

She sighed, gave it up, and Googled
Jeff Corrie
. He’d lawyered up, she saw. Connor’s vacant condo had finally been searched, dusted for fingerprints, examined for signs of violence, the whole nine yards. So had Jeff’s house. So had his car. The police thought Jeff had information, but Jeff wasn’t talking. He also wasn’t leaving San Diego. She was still safe.

Under other circumstances that would have made her feel marginally better. But with Derric’s anger hanging over her head and Extra Underpants Schuman’s incompetence driving her nuts, it didn’t do a lot to lift her spirits to know her stepfather wasn’t coming after her, at least for now.

She left South Whidbey Commons and trudged in the direction of the bus stop. She hadn’t made it there when a pickup truck pulled over to the curb, a window lowered, and Diana Kinsale leaned over the passenger seat. She gave Becca one of her long, knowing looks. She said, “Get in, my dear,” and she spoke with such compassion that Becca did as she asked without question.

“Blue?” Diana said to her. For once, she was driving alone, without the dogs who were her regular companions.

“Bummed.” Becca found she didn’t want to go into it, though. Diana was a friend, but to unspool the story of Derric’s letters, of Courtney Baker, of Extra Underpants Schuman . . . The very thought of doing that made her just want to take a nap instead.

Diana said, “I bet what you need is a pick-me-up.”

“I sure as heck need something.”

She thought Diana meant a latte from one of the several coffeehouses in town. But instead of pulling into a parking space, Diana drove them out of the village and onto the highway.

• • •

THEY ENDED UP
on the other side of the island, northwest of Langley, on a patch of farmland that overlooked a huge scythe-shaped body of water called Useless Bay. There, Diana drove under an old wooden arch spanning a gravel driveway.
HEART’S DESIRE
had been carved into this arch so long ago that lichen filled in most of the letters.

The lane they were on curved around a long, enormous unpainted chicken coop and ended between a huge red barn and a yellow farmhouse with a porch wrapping all the way around it. The house stood on a rise of land in the middle of a lawn. It overlooked the bay and, in the distance, a sprinkling of cottages along the shore.

The pick-me-up was inside the house, and she was called Sharla Mann. She operated a single-chair beauty salon in her mudroom, a stick-thin woman with two round spots of bright pink blusher on her cheeks and worn-down Uggs, fleece pants, and two hooded sweatshirts on her body. She looked like someone without an ounce of joy inside her, Becca thought, and the only whispers she could catch from Sharla were
know what he wants but I
, which didn’t tell her a thing about the woman.

Sharla had been in the process of sweeping the floor of hair clippings. She took one look at Becca and said, “Girl, who the hell did that to your hair? People’ve gone to prison for less. Sit down and lemme take a look at you.”

Becca knew instantly, then, what Diana’s pick-me-up was destined to be. But the problem was her hair was
supposed
to stay ugly. The rest of her was supposed to stay ugly as well, from her phony glasses with their out-of-fashion frames to her overly made-up face to her ill-fitting clothes to her dirty tennis shoes with their broken laces. For her altered appearance was crucial to her mom’s plan for their escape from Jeff Corrie, and it had saved her once. It was intended to save her again.

Diana put a hand on her shoulder. She gazed directly into Becca’s eyes. “It will be a good thing, you’ll see,” she said. “All things pass.”

There was that lifting she always felt at Diana’s touch. It compelled Becca to say, “Okay.”

“Can you take Becca back to her original color?” Diana asked Sharla. “It’s grown out a bit. Can you match it?”

“I c’n come close,” Sharla told her. “But only if she swears not to mess with it again. You ready to swear, Miss Becca?”

“I guess,” Becca said. But what she wondered was how she was ever going to pay for what Sharla Mann was about to do.

• • •

IN THE WORLD
of fantasy, Becca would have emerged from Sharla’s ministrations like the ugly duckling grown up into the swan. That didn’t happen. But Sharla did work enough magic on her that her former hair color of blonde-streaked light brown was back in place and the cut of her hair made it cup her head and allowed it to fall airily around her face.

“Now that’s a haircut,” Sharla said as she stepped back from it. “A trim every six weeks will keep it nice.”

Becca had no idea how to pay for this haircut, not to mention the dye job. The thought of coming up with the money to keep the style in shape every six weeks . . . No way. Before she could bring this up, though, Sharla turned to Diana and said, “You next, lady. You want the regular?”

“Shorter I think,” Diana said. She ran her hands through her hair, which was short and choppy and salt-and-pepper colored, and it came to Becca that this look was intentional whereas she’d always thought Diana chopped it off herself.

“You sure?” Sharla was saying to her as Diana climbed in the chair. “But not too short, huh?”

Sharla and Diana exchanged a look in the mirror and it seemed to Becca that they were saying something to each other that she didn’t understand. Diana’s reply was, “We’ll go supershort later.”

“That’s what I like to hear,” Sharla said.

Diana glanced at Becca and said she ought to have a look around Heart’s Desire because the views were wonderful. Becca said okay, but felt reluctant. Something was going on beneath the placid surface of Diana’s exterior. She wanted to know what it was, but she had a feeling that now wasn’t the time she was going to learn it.

She went outside.

• • •

DUSK HAD FALLEN.
She saw that while she’d been inside the house, someone else had arrived at Heart’s Desire, for a large, white open-bed truck was parked next to the enormous chicken coop and lights from within the building cast a glow on the ground from a partially opened door.

On the truck’s door, Becca saw that
THORNDYKE LAWN, MAINTENANCE, AND HONEY-DO
were painted to form a medallion. When she looked past purpose-built storage cabinets to the bed of the vehicle, she saw a jumble of all sorts of equipment.

A man’s voice said, “Who might you be?”

She turned to see that a tall older guy was watching her as he polished very thick and very unfashionable glasses on the tail of his flannel shirt. Becca recognized him. She’d seen him conducting the seal meeting inside South Whidbey Commons on the night she’d scored a ride home from Seth. Like then, he wore a baseball cap over lots of hair that sprouted from beneath it like straw from a scarecrow.

“What’s ‘honey-do’ mean?” she asked him.

He looked from her to the door of his truck. “‘Honey do this, honey do that.’ I’m the honey that gets called to do it. It’s my business. Ivar Thorndyke: lawn man, garden man, handyman.” He put his glasses back on. “That’s my answer. What’s yours?”

“To what?”

“To who the hell you are and what the hell you’re doing peering into my truck.”

“Sharla cut my hair. She colored it, too.” Which, of course, brought to her mind the subject of money. She said impulsively to Ivar, “D’you need an assistant? I’m good at all kinds of stuff and I need a job.”

Ivar put his baseball cap back on and examined her. She caught
pretty little thing . . . could be . . . wrong to be here now
coming from him, none of which Becca could interpret very well. He said, “Assistant, huh? What kinda work you do?”

“Anything,” she said. “And I’m excellent at learning stuff.”

“You’re a little young to be working, aren’t you?”

“I’m fifteen.”

“No way.”

“Yes way.”

“And at what point am I gonna learn your name?”

She strode to him and held out her hand. “Becca King,” she said. “I could take care of your tools and clean them and oil them and put them away. I could work with you when you’re doing the handyman stuff. Like you tell me what you need and I hand it to you. I could work for you weekends. After school, too. I don’t live far from here and I could ride my bike over.”

Just like
 . . .
reminds me
 . . .
when Steph wanted that damn horse
 . . .

Ivar said, “Not a bad idea if I needed someone, which I don’t. Winter’s sparse around here when it comes to work. Too bad you didn’t come by last summer because I was overrun then. Autumn, too. But now? Thin pickings.” He grabbed up an armload of tools and headed into the chicken coop.

Becca wasn’t about to be defeated so easily. She grabbed up some tools and followed him. There were no chickens living in the coop, but she figured there must have been hundreds at one time because the place was like a vault. It had been altered at some point to a combination of shop, storage unit, and collection center for a billion rusty farm implements, with an off-season hothouse at the far end where grow lights shone down on a few dozen spindly plants.

Ivar dumped his tools on a workbench and strode to this hothouse area. There he squatted and examined his plants. Becca joined them. She saw at once they were pot plants, and she did the math quickly. He had forty. Whoa, she thought. Forty was more than he could smoke, and that meant only one thing.

Ivar glanced at her and seemed to read her expression because he said, “Think you’ve dropped into a drug den, I bet.”

“Not really.”

“Work on the poker face, girl. What’d you say your name is?”

“Becca King.”

“Well, Becca King, you got to work on looking like you’re thinking something other than you’re thinking. I’m not a drug dealer. Least not in the normal sense. This is . . . let’s call it a sideline. It’s medical marijuana. I use it and so do some other folks. They buy it from me for a real good price, which saves them a trip over town to find it.”