The Edge of Nowhere (10 page)

There wasn’t much to do. Since Becca was a freshman, she got one elective and the rest were classes she had to take. As her elective, she chose Yearbook. It seemed like a safe bet.

Ms. Primavera banged away and finished up by hitting
print.
She’d get the schedule from the printer, she told them, and in the meantime . . . She opened her lowest desk drawer and brought out a jar of jelly beans. She said, “Welcome to South Whidbey High, Becca. Help yourself,” and she disappeared out the door of her office.

Becca took a handful of the candy and shoved the beans into her jacket pocket. She put one in her mouth.

Tatiana Primavera returned. She had the schedule in hand along with a slip of paper with a locker number on it. She said to Debbie, “You c’n leave her with me now. I’ll see to it she gets where she needs to go.”

Debbie told Becca she’d pick her up after school but not in the parking lot. After today, she’d have to ride her bike because the hours were different to get Josh and Chloe to and from school. Today, however, she’d come for her and she’d wait across the road where the water treatment plant was.

Becca could tell that being in the building was difficult for Debbie now. The power she’d felt was diminished.

Before Debbie left, Tatiana said to her, “See you next week. I think,” and Debbie seemed to know what this meant. She didn’t appear to like it, though, because she shrugged and said, “Whatever, girl. I hope you know what you’re doing.” There was something left unsaid between them, but hints as to what it might be were blocked by the AUD box.

When Debbie was gone, Tatiana said, “Let’s get you going.” She looked at a wall clock, said, “Eastern Civilization,” and headed out of the office.

At the front desk, she stopped to speak with the girl Hayley, motioning Becca over to join them. “New student,” she said to Hayley. “Becca King, this is Hayley Cartwright.”

Hayley smiled. She was pretty in an old-fashioned way, with straw-colored hair cut in a neat bob. She had ruler-straight bangs, frameless glasses, and large blue eyes. When she stood up to grab something from the top of a cabinet, Becca could see that she was tall.

She handed over a calendar of sorts and told Becca it was the athletic schedule. “Welcome to the home of the Falcons, Becca.” She said this in a friendly enough way, but sadness came off her, then faded quickly, like something she knew she had to hide.

Tatiana said, “Nice girl,” as she shooed Becca out of the office. “Let’s get you to class.”

Tatiana hummed as she walked. She wore stiletto heels, which made her taller and made her ample breasts bounce. They also made her the first person Becca had seen on Whidbey Island who wasn’t wearing sensible shoes.

They went across a large room that Tatiana said was the “old commons.” It had a bank of windows on one side and a wall of bulletin boards on the other, and in between was a scattering of tables. At one side of this room they climbed a stairway, and at the top the classrooms began. Tatiana ushered Becca to one of the doors and flung it open. She tilted her head, meaning Becca was supposed to go in first.

Becca did so, acutely aware of all eyes turning in her direction. At once, she dropped her gaze to the floor so she wouldn’t have to meet the stares because she knew exactly how she looked, which was bad, very bad, extra bad from the top of her dyed head to the tip of her tennis-shoed toes. She had an enormous urge to look up and say to the class, “I’m prettier than this. Really.”

Becca felt the other students’ interest like mice scurrying around her ankles. They were extremely happy to have the diversion. She glanced warily at the teacher to see if he was why.

His name was Mr. Powder. He shot one look at Becca and another at Tatiana. His expression said that he hated them both, but it also said that he hated anything having to do with South Whidbey High School. He was going to be a lousy teacher.

Tatiana handed over Becca’s schedule, which Mr. Powder signed. He looked at the class in front of him and said to Becca, “Take that seat over there. Class, this is”—he referred to the schedule before he handed it back—“Becca King. Thank you, Ms. Primavera.”

He’d said that last part because Tatiana hadn’t left the room yet and he wanted her to, that much was obvious. But she was looking around and she said, “Good. Take the seat next to Derric. Derric, will you show Becca around the campus today so she can find her classes?”

Becca looked up, absolutely horrified. There
had
to be more than one Derric, she thought. The first Derric had looked too old to be a freshman.

But it was the same Derric from the ferry, she saw, the very same Derric from in front of Carol Quinn’s house, the Derric who was Josh Grieder’s Big Brother and who would probably be hanging around the Cliff Motel.

“Some things are written in the stars, hon,” Becca’s grandmother would have said about all this.

Becca’s response would have been, “
What
things?”—a question she wanted desperately to have answered as she crossed the room to take the vacant seat next to this boy.

EIGHT

F
or Becca, it was the oddest sensation. For the first time since that terrible moment in the kitchen in San Diego when she’d heard Jeff Corrie’s whispers and she’d known what he’d done, she felt safe. Sitting next to this boy to whom she’d barely spoken, she felt
perfectly
safe, and she didn’t know why.

She couldn’t stop herself from shooting glances at Derric’s arm. It was bare, it rested on the side of his desk, and it was roped with muscle. An athlete, she decided.

Her feeling of safety didn’t last long. The classroom door crashed open as Becca was opening her notebook. A girl entered and Becca recognized her with an internal
uh-oh
. It was the girl from the ferry, the girl who had tried to cheat the cashier.

At the front of the room, Mr. Powder took one look at her and said, “That’s your second tardy, Jenn. One more and it’s detention. Got it?”

Jenn didn’t answer him because she’d seen Becca, and what came out of her was a galloping horse of astoundingly dirty whispers, audible even over the AUD box. She said to Becca, “You’re in my seat.”

Mr. Powder said, “So tomorrow try being on time. Do something really amazing: Try being early. Go to the back.”

Becca dropped her gaze. She looked at her notebook, which was crisp and new, and she could feel how much Jenn wanted to snatch it from her and rip off its cover. But instead, she stomped to the back of the room and flung herself into her seat. So much for safety, Becca thought. Obviously, she’d made an instant enemy out of this girl.

Next to her, Becca sensed Derric moving, and she glanced at him quickly. She saw him make the A-OK sign with his fingers. They were long and sensitive looking and the sign they were making was intended for her.
Don’t worry about it
, his fingers were telling her, as if he knew what she was feeling.

Mr. Powder resumed his lecture. No one wanted to listen and who could blame them? He was boring, sounding the way cold oatmeal tasted. When the bell finally rang at the end of the class, Becca felt as if she’d been in the room for more than a week.

As the students began to leave, Derric spoke to her. He was over six feet tall, and he towered above her so he leaned toward her to say with a grin, “I’d tell you it’s not always this bad, but it is. What’s your next class?”

She looked at her schedule. “Physical Science,” she said.

“Come on, then. I’ll show you where it is.”

LUNCH CAME AFTER
second period, at eleven o’clock in the morning. Derric had told her to wait by the classroom door and he’d come for her and show her what the situation was in the new commons, so she stood outside the classroom and tried to look inconspicuous. But when he showed up, Jenn was with him, as if she’d heard his promise to show Becca where lunch was and had decided upon the best way to give her indigestion.

Jenn was shooting her looks that recommended she drop dead as soon as possible, and Becca heard her say, “I can’t believe you’re supposed to have
lunch
with her, too.” She added a swear word that made her face shrivel when she said it. Becca felt Derric fend off the word, like someone holding up his hands against a rotten tomato, but he didn’t say anything.

South Whidbey High School, Becca found, wasn’t at all like the school she’d been supposed to attend in San Diego. There, two thousand five hundred students were enrolled, and they had to eat in shifts. Here, it seemed that the whole student body ate together, with about six hundred kids in a sprawl from a rec room that was the new commons, opening into another rec room called the old commons. She trailed Derric and Jenn to it, and she recognized it from earlier in the day. She raised the volume on the AUD box to block the secondary noise of hundreds of whispers.

Derric turned once to make sure she was following. Jenn turned him back, deliberately. Becca wondered if Jenn was trying to say the boy was her property. She wanted to tell her to go ahead and claim him. As long as she looked like a walking trash heap in makeup, there wasn’t much chance he’d be interested in her.

Nearly every girl they passed said hi to Derric. A lot of the boys did, too. Only the boys didn’t called him Derric. They said Nyombe or Big Math or Der. All of this seemed very odd to Becca because if Derric was a freshman, everyone was supposed to ignore him.

They got into the food line, Jenn placing herself firmly between Becca and Derric. When it was her turn to get something, Becca knew she had to be careful. Debbie hadn’t given her money for lunch—not that she’d expected it—and she had to use what she had as sparingly as she could. So she bought only a PBJ and ignored Jenn when she said, “Want to check my
money
, chick?” as they reached the cash register. But the remark was nothing more than throwaway nastiness because Jenn herself, as things turned out, had brought her own lunch from home. She’d only gone through the line in the first place to stay with Derric, it seemed.

As they were making their way to a table, the sense that everyone liked Derric altered. A boy leaned far back from his seat the second Derric walked behind him. He did it fast and hard so his body crashed into Derric’s tray. He meant to knock it to the floor and spill the food, but Derric was too fast. He dodged easily. Still, the boy rose in a rush and said, “Hey, watch the hell
out
, asshole.”

Becca recognized this boy from his spotty face and the ski cap rolled into a beanie on his head. He’d been with Jenn on the ferry, challenging her to cheat the cashier. He was sitting with a group of boys similarly dressed, with similar attitudes. Everything about them marked them as stoners. They slouched and smirked and waited for Derric to react.

Jenn said, “Grip yourself, Dylan,” and shoved the boy out of the way.

“Oooh,” Dylan said, “Big Der lets a
girl
protect him.”

There was one of those silences in the immediate area as kids waited for what would happen next. Becca could feel the tension whip through Derric’s body as he considered how best to react. It wasn’t tough to see he could take the other boy down with his little finger. Dylan was as skinny as the handle of a shovel. He tried to hide this with baggy clothes, but he had the wrists of a ten-year-old.

“Hey, I let girls do my homework, too,” Derric said. “You should try it, too, if you c’n find one willing.”

“
That’ll
happen when it rains frogs,” Jenn remarked.

Dylan’s eyes narrowed as his tablemates laughed.

Derric walked off. Jenn followed. Becca brought up the rear. She heard Dylan tell his friends what they could do to themselves as he sat down again, his neck red with fury.

DURING THE REST
of the day, as Derric showed her where her other classes were, Becca learned more about him. His full name, she discovered was Derric Nyombe Mathieson. She learned that he was from Uganda and that he’d been adopted as an eight-year-old by an island family. He revealed that he was sixteen years old and the reason he was only a freshman was that he’d not been able to speak English when he’d come to this country. He also added with an appealing honesty that he’d not been able to read or write or do math in
any
language at that point, which contributed to his problems. So his mom had taken a year off work to homeschool him, and then it was a matter of his catching up with everyone else.