The Edge of Nowhere (9 page)

This had to be the grandson, Josh, Becca concluded, playing soccer with his Big Brother in the vacant lot next door. She flicked the window curtain back to see if she was correct. When she saw who was out there, though, she drew in a sharp breath. It was like they were fated, she thought. For the Big Brother was the boy from the ferry, the boy from the sheriff’s car outside of Carol Quinn’s house.

She dropped the curtain hastily. As she did so, a knock sounded on the door to her room.

“Becca?” Debbie Grieder shouted. “You in there, chick? Come here and meet my Chloe.”

Becca had no choice. It was, after all, part of the deal. She only hoped she could avoid seeing the dark-skinned boy another time, although she couldn’t have exactly said why she was so reluctant to be in his presence again.

Outside her room, Debbie was waiting with a little girl who was clutching her hand. She had enormous eyes the color of cornflowers. She was wearing overalls and bright pink rubber boots that matched the color of her Hello Kitty T-shirt.

“This’s Chloe,” Debbie said. “An’, Chloe, this is our new friend Becca.”

Chloe’s mouth was an O. Becca couldn’t blame her. Only facial tattoos would have made her look worse than the makeup did. Becca said to her, “Hey, there, Chloe. D’you like Barbie or Bratz?”

Chloe grinned and cried, “Barbie!”

“Me too,” Becca said. “Only I don’t have any Barbies with me. What about you?”

“Oh, I got lots of Barbies.”

“Could I visit them?”

Chloe looked at her grandmother. “Grammer . . . she could
look
at them, huh? But they got to stay in my room. C’n we take her to my room to see ’em?”

“Sounds good to me,” Debbie said. “But first she’s got to meet Josh, okay?”

Becca smiled but gritted her teeth behind her closed lips. No way to avoid it, it seemed. She was going to come face-to-face with the handsome black boy again.

She followed Debbie to the back of the motel, where in the vacant lot a maple tree showed leaves edged in crimson and wild green grass grew in profusion up to a bluff. This was thick with blackberries and with ocean spray bushes, purple fruit on one, creamy flowers on the other. In this area, the two boys were kicking a soccer ball, the taller boy laughing as he danced the ball gracefully toward a makeshift goal. The smaller boy was clinging to his waist and shouting, “Hey, no fair! You stole it from me!”

The dark boy tripped. Both boys stumbled. They fell onto the grass and laughed up at the sky.

“Hey, you guys,” Debbie called out. “Come meet Becca King.”

The older boy was the first to get up. He did so, still laughing, and he scooped the little boy under his arm like a football. He called out, “Ready to charge for a touchdown!” and his companion squealed till he set him down again.

He turned then. Becca steeled herself for whatever might happen. His eyes met hers, as dark as the nighttime of his skin. And there it was again. Something passed between them as one random thought struck another.

. . . if someone could only . . . rejoice . . .

Then the boy crossed the lawn. He said, “Happenin’, Chloe?” and touched the little girl’s head softly. Then he said to Becca, “I’m Derric. You just move to Whidbey?” as if he’d never seen her before this moment.

“Did,” Becca said, and felt like a fool. One word was all she could manage in reply?

He smiled. He had the whitest teeth Becca had ever seen. His skin was so smooth it looked painted on. Standing before him, Becca wanted to wipe the hideous makeup from her face. She wanted to lose twenty pounds. She wanted to say, “I’m actually strawberry blonde.” She also wanted to kick herself for wanting all this. How lame
was
she? she asked herself.

Derric said, “I think maybe I saw you coming over on the ferry?”

“I think I saw you too,” Becca replied.

“Well,” Debbie said, “that’s as good as married on Whidbey Island. Come on then, troops. Let’s have a snack.”

The word
snack
set Josh’s and Chloe’s feet in motion. Chloe yelled, “Popcorn!” Josh yelled, “S’mores!” and both of them tore toward the front of the motel. Their grandmother followed.

Derric and Becca brought up the rear. Derric walked at Becca’s side. He was very tall. He was like a dancer when he moved.

He said quietly, “I saw you at Carol Quinn’s last night. That
was
you, right?”

She ventured a quick glance his way. “Yeah. Why did you tell me to go?”

He was quiet for a moment. She glanced at him. He met her gaze and she saw him swallow. “I completely don’t know,” he replied.

SEVEN

B
ecca was ready for school more than an hour before she needed to leave. She’d washed her dog-scented clothes in the bathtub on the previous night, but because of the cold and the damp, they were still hanging wetly over the shower curtain rod when Debbie knocked on her door. Debbie saw them and said, “You don’t need to wash your own clothes, darlin’. I c’n throw them in with ours.”

Becca said, “Gosh. That wouldn’t be right,” because she had a feeling Chloe and Josh generated lots of laundry, especially Josh since during their snack the previous day he’d asked her if she wanted to slide down the bluff with him and Derric and look for dead crabs at the edge of the water. Debbie had mouthed “There aren’t any” in case Becca was worried about having to pick them up. Becca had said sure to Josh and the little boy had looked delighted. Still, it didn’t seem fair to throw her laundry in with theirs, no matter how much she played with the kids.

Debbie said, “Well, if you feel that way,” and Becca could tell she’d hurt her feelings somehow although she couldn’t quite figure out why. Debbie went on with, “There’s a Laundromat. It’s way the heck up hill, though, at the top of Second Street, almost out of town.”

“That’s okay. I need the exercise,” Becca said.

“Whatever you want.” Debbie stepped back out of room 444 and lit a cigarette. Becca knew she was doing so in order not to feel something, and she wondered if it had to do with Debbie’s daughter. She couldn’t have said exactly why this might be the case other than having caught a glimpse of a single picture of a teenage girl among the others hanging on Debbie’s wall. She looked the same age as Becca herself.

Josh and Chloe were outside in Debbie’s SUV. They would be dropped off first, since their school was on the way to Becca’s. Both of the schools sat on Maxwelton Road, which was not far from the Cliff Motel, and getting there involved a ride down a twisting road that was sided with forest: huge Douglas firs creating deep pockets of shadows that were crammed with ferns and shiny with the glistening leaves of salal.

As they passed a narrow driveway that disappeared into the undergrowth, Josh informed Becca that a white deer roamed the woods around here. Only the
luckiest
people ever saw it, he proclaimed. It was there in a flash and gone in a flash and
if
you saw it, it meant a Big Change was coming to your life.

Becca looked at Debbie. Debbie said to Josh, “‘You just keep thinking, Butch, that’s what you’re good at,’” and she rolled her eyes, telling Becca he was making things up. Becca liked this about him although what she couldn’t tell was whether he was making up the part about change coming to your life or the part about the white deer.

When the kids got dropped, Debbie waited till they’d disappeared into the front doors of the school. Then she waited some more as if worried they’d run off the minute she drove away. But her expression said more than worry was involved and Becca knew there’d be whispers coming off Debbie, which she would have heard had she not had the AUD box chugging away in her ear.

It was time, anyway, to mention the AUD box because from Becca’s experience, she knew that earphones and schools didn’t mix without an explanation. She was ready with one, and she gave it as Debbie drove out of the parking lot.

She had an auditory processing problem, she told Debbie, using the same lingo she’d heard Laurel use so many times to one school official or another. It had to do with eliminating secondary ambient sounds so that she could focus on one main sound. That was why she wore this device (here she showed it clipped onto her jeans, along with her earphone). She didn’t want anyone to think she was listening to music or something like that.

Debbie glanced over at her, giving Becca one of those looks that said she was evaluating the truth quotient in Becca’s words. She said, “Auditory processing problem, huh?”

“I can’t always tell where I should pay attention,” Becca told her. “This thing helps. It’s called an AUD box. A-U-D, not o-d-d. It masks the noise I’m not supposed to listen to.”

Debbie nodded, her gaze back on the road. “AUD box,” she said. “We’ll make sure they know about it.”

When they pulled into the parking lot of South Whidbey High School, classes were already in session. Debbie jerked the truck to a stop in a stall marked
ADMIN ONLY
and led Becca toward the school building. This resembled a bent shoe box with a brick extension tacked onto it. It was into the brick extension that Debbie took Becca.

To their left stood a birch desk. Behind it a student was doing service as a receptionist, and Debbie strode over to her and announced, “We need to see Ms. Ward, Hayley.”

Hayley said, “Ms. Ward?” with a glance at Becca. She shot her a smile, said, “Hi,” and then added, “Let me get her, Mrs. Grieder,” and she took off down a hall.

Becca watched her. She turned the AUD box way low and glanced at Debbie because Debbie seemed like an entirely different person inside this school, like someone getting ready for a battle. But instead of taking a weapon out of her jacket pocket, Debbie said firmly, “Give me those transcripts, darlin’.”

Becca had the transcripts in her backpack. She rustled for them and brought them out, slightly crumpled and definitely unofficial but the best thing Laurel had managed to come up with considering the time she had, always receiving reassurance from Carol Quinn that she would manage the rest when Becca arrived.

Debbie gave the transcripts a glance, then tossed a look at Becca. Hayley was coming toward them down the hall, a rabbity-looking woman following close behind her.

The woman said, “Hello, Debbie,” in a friendly way, although her expression reminded Becca of a dog that’s ready to be punished. “Hayley says you need to see me?”

It was power, Becca realized, that was flowing through Debbie. It had altered her completely. She had no soft parts left. Debbie said, “This is my niece, Becca King. She’ll be staying with me for a while. My sister wants her to be enrolled in school. C’n we get that handled? She’s got a bit of a hearing problem, too. Becca, show Ms. Ward the AUD box.”

Debbie handed over the meager transcripts that Becca had given her. Becca heard the flutter of terms flying back and forth between the two women:
records . . . nonsense . . . immunization . . . can’t expect . . . when will it . . . sister? . . . there’s no stopping . . .
It was a battle of wills without a word being spoken, and always between Debbie and Ms. Ward was the great unspoken of the death that had occurred.

Becca waited for something to happen. The atmosphere was tense; it seemed the very air would explode. Finally Ms. Ward said, “Lovely. Come with me,” and she took them along the hall to what looked like another reception room. This one had yet another birch desk with a name plaque on it reading Stephanie Ward, Registrar. Beyond it two small offices were peopled by the A–L counselor and the M–Z one.

Ms. Ward told them to have a seat and she took some paperwork out of her desk. She asked Becca how she’d liked living in San Luis Obispo, although her whisper was actually
God . . . what makeup
. For a moment Becca forgot what her question actually referred to, especially since what Ms. Ward was also thinking was
how the hell am I going to
as clearly as if she were screaming it.

Becca told her she liked San Luis Obispo well enough except that there’d been a lot of sun and she had to be careful about the sun since she was prone to sunburn.

Ms. Ward said, “Well you won’t have that problem here, will you? I hope you like rain.”

“Keeps a girl’s skin young,” Debbie said. The
girl
and
young
part seemed rather like poison darts.

Ms. Ward did some typing. There were various forms that needed to be filled in and signed, and Debbie sat there without moving until Ms. Ward had filled in each one. Becca had no idea what they were, but she had an inkling that what Debbie Grieder had said to her about being truthful wasn’t going to apply in this situation.

When it was all finished and Becca was as enrolled as Ms. Ward could make her, the registrar said, “Come and meet your counselor, Becca,” and took her to the A–L office where the name Tatiana Primavera was printed on a placard on the door, and a woman inside the office was speaking on the phone.

Becca was wondering what sort of name Tatiana Primavera was when Debbie, standing behind her, said quietly, “It’s really Sharon Prochaska.”

Becca said, “Huh?”

“That’s who she is. Sharon Prochaska. She changed her name when she came to the island. It’s something people do. Azure St. Cloud used to be Phyllis McDermott. Sage Sorrell was Susan Jones. You get the idea.”

Tatiana Primavera hung up the phone. She said, “Hey, Deb,” as Ms. Ward started to introduce them. She got up and shooed poor Ms. Ward out of her office, grabbing the file of information from her and saying to Debbie, “Who’ve we got here, then?” and to Becca, “A hearing problem, huh?” in reference to what Ms. Ward had evidently typed about the AUD box.

Becca explained the AUD box again, and she showed it to Tatiana Primavera. Tatiana told her to hand it over, and she listened through its earphone to make sure it wasn’t music. Becca watched her expression as she heard the static. She hoped the strangeness of it would see her through.

“Unusual,” was Ms. Primavera’s reaction, and she handed the AUD box back to Becca. She made a note, shoved it into the file, and swung her chair around to face her computer. She said, “Let’s get you set up, then.”