The Edge of Nowhere (8 page)

Becca didn’t know what to say. She realized that while Seth had told her Debbie would help her, he hadn’t said how this help was supposed to come, what it would look like, or whether she was supposed to ask for it herself.

Debbie was studying her with the sort of look mothers direct to their children. She said, “You don’t have a place to stay, huh? Couch surfing, are you? You run away from home?”

Becca’s fingers went for the AUD box at this, and she turned it off. If there were going to be whispers, she needed to know what they were.

. . . Come on now, girl . . .

Becca could feel how important her answer was going to be. She could sense Debbie’s need for truth. But she
couldn’t
tell Debbie the full truth, so she told a form of it, which was the best she could do.

“I’m meeting my mom here,” Becca said. “She dropped me off, but she’ll be back later.”

“Today?”

“I don’t know exactly when . . . I’m just supposed to wait for her.”

Having said this, Becca
did
wait, although what she waited for was Debbie’s reaction. She added, “I guess I’m looking for a place to stay,” she added. “Till she gets here.”

“How old are you, darlin’?” Debbie asked her.

Becca thought about lying, but rejected the idea. “I’ll be fifteen in February.”

“And your mom just dropped you in the middle of Langley?”

“Just to wait,” Becca said. “She’ll be back.”

“Fourteen years old?”

“Almost fifteen,” Becca said.

Debbie looked long and hard at her, but her face was altering. It was softening for some reason and she said, “Almost fifteen years old.” She put the SUV into gear and added in a contemplative voice, “Well, how about that.”

Becca didn’t know what Debbie meant, but the way she looked at it, she would probably find out.

SIX

D
ebbie drove them to the edge of town, to an old motel called the Cliff that Becca had actually passed without noticing on her way into Langley earlier that morning. It wasn’t much to look at, just a string of ten rooms with old-fashioned rusty metal porch chairs in front of them and dismal flowerbeds, most of them empty. The front of the motel was planted with Japanese maples, though, and these added lovely color to the place.

At first Becca thought that Debbie had driven her here to help her get a motel room. This worried her because while she had the money to pay for a motel room, she didn’t have the money to pay for it very long. But then Debbie said, “This is where I live,” and Becca altered her thinking to consider that Debbie was one of those poor people who had to live in motels because they’d lost every possession they had. But
then
Debbie got out of the SUV and led her toward the motel office, the only part of the business that had a second floor. She walked directly through the office and into the living room of an apartment behind it.

The old furniture inside reminded Becca of her great-grandmother’s house. It was that unappealing early-American style, done in maple with tufted cushions. These were leaking stuffing at some of their seams. There was a coffee table in front of a sofa, littered with copies of
National Geographic
and
Travel +Leisure
that gaped open and had pages torn from them. Some of these pages were on the floor, and others had been used to make collages. These hung on the walls as decoration along with pictures of children and adults. Members of Debbie’s family, Becca reasoned.

As Debbie continued into a kitchen, Becca said, “Are these your kids?”

Debbie said, “Kids and grandkids,” over her shoulder, and she added, “I’m starving. Let’s have something to eat before I have to pick up the Indians.”

In the kitchen, Debbie took hot dogs from a refrigerator and dumped them into a pan of water on the stove. She took buns and opened them into a baking pan and slapped this onto the stovetop as well. She lit another cigarette, took a hit off it, and coughed. Her cough was deep and chesty.

As the water heated, Debbie said to her, “You can stay here and wait for your mom.”

Becca said, “Gosh. That’s . . . I don’t have a lot of money.”

Debbie waved her off. “We’ll work something out.” Cigarette hanging from her mouth, she went back to the refrigerator and began to hand things over to Becca, who put them on the edge of an extremely cluttered table: mustard, ketchup, relish, chopped onion inside a Baggie, shredded cheddar cheese, cold chili in a can. Debbie continued talking. “I’m lucky to have the place,” she said, in a voice that told Becca important information was on its way. “I didn’t build it, but my dad did. I didn’t inherit it, thank God, which would have meant the ex would have had a stake in it. My dad’s still alive, up in Oak Harbor in one of those retirement communities. I’m running the place for him. We split the profits.”

Becca nodded and wondered what kind of profits there could be. The motel seemed fairly decrepit. With only the ten rooms, no one here was getting rich off the takings from tourists.

“Anyway,” Debbie said, flicking ash from her cigarette into the sink, “me and the grandbabies live here. They’re in first and third grade—Chloe and Josh—and they’re real good kids. You’ll like them.”

Debbie didn’t say where the kids’ mom and dad were, and Becca didn’t ask. For when Debbie had said the names of the children, what Becca had also heard was
no suffering for sins
, and she figured that the kids’ parents were the people who had probably done the sinning.

She directed her attention away from Debbie and onto the kitchen table. It was a mass of magazines, newspapers, and coloring books. It held a Lego set being built into the
Millennium Falcon
, as well as a pile of those connect-the-numbers kids’ games that she’d liked so well when she was little.

When the hot dogs were done, Debbie dumped the water from the pan. She used a yardstick to shove everything on the table as far to the wall as she could, and she handed over a dog in its bun along with a couple of paper towels that Becca saw were intended to be their plates and napkins. Debbie loaded her dog with the works: mayo, mustard, ketchup, onions, pickles, relish, cheese, and cold chili. She even threw on some green olives with pimentos. Becca used only mustard, wondering how Debbie was going to fit her hot dog into her mouth.

It didn’t turn out to be a problem as Debbie was a master in the eating of hot dogs. She could also chew and talk at the same time, and she was able to do this without showing the chewed-up food in her mouth, which took some skill. She said, “Here’s what we’re going to do, Becca. We’ll barter till your mom gets here. It’s a good thing to learn, anyway, if you and she are going to spend any time on Whidbey.”

“Okay,” Becca said slowly. She wasn’t sure what Debbie was talking about, but she found out soon enough.

“You can stay here at the motel in exchange for doing some work for me. I’ll pay you a bit, too, to keep things completely fair. The place needs some attention, and I can use your help. I’d also want you to babysit the kids now and then. Mostly Chloe, because Josh’s just signed on with a Big Brother from the high school. Think it’ll work?”

Becca nodded. “I’m pretty good at stuff. Like painting and things. And I can clean good. And I babysat all the time where I’m from.”

“Deal then.” Debbie held out her hand for a shake. She said, “We can renegotiate things when your mom gets here,” but she added this in a way that told Becca Debbie had concluded for some reason that Laurel probably wasn’t going to show up anytime soon.

When they’d finished their lunch, Debbie pushed away from the table, lit a cigarette, and told Becca she would show her her room. “Let’s grab your stuff from the car,” she said. “It’ll give you a chance to settle in before I get the kids. They’ll want to meet you.”

They went back through the office, where Debbie took a key from a holder shaped like an enormous fern frond. Nine other keys were hanging there, each of them on a completely different fob. The one Debbie held was numbered 444 as if the motel was a huge Las Vegas resort or something, and its fob was Las Vegas as well: a slot machine the size of a checkbook. As they went back outside, Debbie explained that her father had collected the key fobs during the old days when hotels and motels actually
had
keys and he had traveled for Boeing. He had a whole box of them as souvenirs, and when he built the motel, he decided to use a few. They had nothing to do with the order of the rooms, but what the heck. Since there were only ten, what difference did it make, huh?

Becca saw what she meant when they walked along the line of rooms that were numbered haphazardly to match the stolen fobs. Room 444 was third along the way, and its door was warped and tough to open. Debbie had to use a shoulder on it.

Becca saw that the room was very clean, which encouraged her to think well of the place. It was also very old and very simple, but for a girl who’d spent her first night on Whidbey Island inside a doghouse, it looked celestial. There were twin beds with a table and lamp between them, a dresser with a kneehole in it to tell people it could also be used as a desk, a straight-back chair, a clock, a television without a remote, and some paint-by-numbers art hanging on the walls.

The bathroom was what Becca wanted, though. She was used to bathing daily and washing her hair as often, and what she desired more than anything was a long soak in the tub. The towels, she saw, weren’t thick like those she was used to, but they were clean and white.

Behind her, Debbie said, “We need to talk about the rules. There’s only two. No boys for overnighters and no using. Okay?”

Becca could see that her agreement was going to be crucial to Debbie. She nodded and said, “I don’t know anyone for an overnighter, and I don’t use. You mean, drugs? I don’t use drugs.” Drugs were the last thing she would ever use, Becca thought. She had enough trouble with the whispers when she was perfectly straight. God only knew what would happen if she were ever stoned or lit up with something.

“Drugs, yeah,” Debbie said. “But I mean drinking too. Especially drinking. Above all, drinking. I know how kids are and I know it’s tough to say no. But you got to promise me or we can’t do business. We can’t do business if you lie to me, either. About anything. And I’ll know if you lie. I always do.”

“I promise,” Becca said. “No drinking, no drugs, no over-nighters, no lies.”

Then she brought up an issue that she knew was going to be a delicate one, especially considering what Debbie had just said to her about lying. She said, “I have to go to school, though. Mom’s going to take me when she gets here but I’m sort of worried ’cause it’s my first year, and I’m already a couple weeks late. I’m worried I’ll fall behind if Mom doesn’t show up fast.” This was three-quarters the truth and one-quarter a lie, and Becca supposed it was a good way to see if Debbie really could tell when someone lied to her.

Debbie looked at her long and hard. Becca heard
Reese . . . try to find . . . dear sweet baby . . .
in a whisper that got choked off the way whispers did when they hurt. Still, one sharp needle from them flew into the air and landed somewhere near Becca’s heart and although Becca didn’t know it, it was her flinching from the pain of that needle that helped Debbie make her decision.

She said, “I’ll get you into school. No trouble. Do you have anything with you? Transcripts or something?”

“I’ve got my records from middle school. But that’s all. I mean, I don’t have any other records, like a birth certificate or shots or anything.”

“Good enough,” Debbie said. “Nothing about school will be a problem.”

There was a sudden firmness to her voice that was different from the firmness with which she’d spoken about lying. It felt hard like a boulder. It felt smooth and unmoving like marble. This made Becca ask, “It won’t? Why not?” without thinking about her questions much.

Debbie smiled but it wasn’t a smile about anything other than vindication. She said, “Why won’t it be a problem, you mean? Because a few years ago, the registrar at the high school killed my daughter.”

DEBBIE SAID NOTHING
more on that subject, and when she left Becca alone in room 444, Becca was too intent upon having a bath to think very much about it. This bath was a real pleasure to her, and washing her hair in the shower afterward was practically ecstasy. When she was finished, she wiped the steam from the mirror and thought long and hard about Laurel’s instructions to her.

“Makeup. Lots of makeup, sweetheart. Particularly eye makeup. The point isn’t to make yourself gorgeous, and I’m sorry about that. The point is to make sure Jeff Corrie wouldn’t know you if you served him a cup of coffee somewhere.”

Becca didn’t want to, though. What teenage girl anywhere
wants
to make herself deliberately hideous? But the point wasn’t to capture some errant Prince Charming, and Becca
did
know this. She sighed and set about making herself into goth-meets-Dumpster. At least she wouldn’t smell bad, she thought.

She was just finishing when she heard laughing and a little boy’s shouts of fun and excitement coming from outside her bathroom window. “No fair! You kicked it way too hard!” he cried as another boy—a deeper voice this time—laughed and said, “Bro, if you can’t block that one, you are hurrrr-
ting
.”