The Edge of Nowhere (19 page)

She said to Becca, “You’ve got to stay away from Seth Darrow, darlin’. You just need to trust me on this. I
know
him. There are parts to Seth . . . You just need to stay away, okay?”

“Grammer!” It was Chloe at the door to the office. She saw Debbie and Becca in conversation and said, “Why’n’t you come for breakfast today, Becca? We had pancakes and sausage. Why’n’t you come?”

“It got too late,” Becca called. “I gotta get to school.”

“You’ll be late too if you don’t skedaddle,” Debbie said to her granddaughter. “Why’ve you still got your jammies on?”

“Josh hid my undies.”

“You tell your brother if he doesn’t hand over your undies, he’ll be wearing mine on top of his clothes.”

Chloe laughed and darted back inside the office. They heard her calling out her brother’s name as she went.

Debbie said to Becca, “I can get your cell phone back for you. I know the undersheriff fairly good.”

Becca knew that couldn’t happen. Debbie going after the phone would lead right back to Becca. A trail meant questions. Questions meant answers. She said, “You don’t need to bother. It was a throwaway with only about one minute left on it. I was going to dump it in the trash, and I probably just dropped it in all the excitement.”

“You want me to pick you up another?”

Becca shook her head. There was hardly any point. The phone she needed was the phone the cops had, which was the phone with her mother’s number on it. It was also the phone that she couldn’t allow near her at this point. Her eyes got blurry, but she blinked hard and fast. She said, “That’s really nice of you, but it’s okay. I don’t really know anyone to call.”

Debbie cocked her head. She said, “You know
me
, darlin’. What happened the other night . . . I’m really sorry.”

BECCA RODE TO
school as fast as she could. It was mostly level, so the going was easy, but she could still tell that she was getting better on the bike every day.

She was close to the first school on the route when she saw a flash of white to her left, across the road. It caught the corner of her eye, and she turned her head to see what it was, so buried in all the dark greens of the forest. Thus, she encountered the white deer. It was there for an instant, standing like a marble statue in the middle of a rutted driveway. Becca gasped at the sight and braked her bike. White deer. A buck. He was watching her.

Then he was gone, in a simple leap that effortlessly took him into the trees. So quick was he that Becca thought she might have imagined him. A bit of sunlight through the branches, perhaps. An old sheet hanging from a limb, maybe. On the other hand, she did
know
it had been the deer, and she recalled what Josh had told her about it. Seeing the white deer meant change was coming.

At South Whidbey High, she coasted into the parking lot. She heaved her backpack onto one shoulder and started for the six double doors that would put her next to the new commons.

A sheriff’s car passed her. She ducked her head. A cop coming to the school could have meant just about anything, but after what had happened to Derric, Becca knew a cop’s presence wasn’t going to be good.

She turned the AUD box off and pulled the earphone from her ear. The whispers, she figured, might help her know what was going on. They were everywhere, prompted by what the other students—along with Becca—had just seen.

Cops . . . someone’s in for it . . . out of it . . . do with Nyombe . . . homecoming dance . . . God he’s so hot . . . what I want is . . . Aaron’s got a bean . . . Courtney’s having a cow . . . I would’ve if he’d asked . . . don’t know his leg or . . . bummer . . . a chance with her now . . .

Becca pulled one of the six doors open. Inside, the spoken words and the whispers were pretty much the same. Six girls sat at one of the tables in the new commons, two of them crying. Four boys in letterman jackets walked by, talking earnestly to a coach. Students stood around gossiping, their expressions concerned. Then Tatiana Primavera walked by, heading in the direction of the administration office in her stilettos. She looked like someone with Important Things to do.

Then: “Were you there or what?”

Becca knew who was speaking before she turned to see Jenn McDaniels.

“Seth Darrow was there, so you had to’ve been, since him and you are so
tight
.”

Jenn had come into the new commons behind Becca. For a girl so petite, she managed to make herself seem like a force of nature ready to do what forces of nature do: explode, howl, destroy, flood. Becca heard the gutter words in Jenn’s whispers. She wondered how often Jenn said them aloud.

“He’s in a coma.” Jenn sneered, and added, “Make sure you tell Seth. Or did he tell
you
? Bet he’s
totally
happy now.”

Becca realized from this that Seth hadn’t said a word to the police or to anyone else about her presence in the woods. Diana Kinsale had also known she was there, but there was something about Diana that suggested she wasn’t going to betray Becca’s presence either. She said, “A coma? Derric? What’re you
talking
about?”

Jenn laughed harshly. “Oh like I don’t
know
what you’ve been after since you saw him.”

“Seth?”

“Don’t be stupid, fattie. And have you looked in a mirror lately? Like you
ever
could have a chance with Derric.”

Before Becca could answer, an earsplitting screech silenced everyone in the new commons and a voice came over the PA system. It said, “This is your principal, Mr. Vansandt,” and he announced that all the students were to proceed to the big theater for an assembly. It would start in ten minutes.

The students began moving from the new commons into the big corridor where the six double doors marked the entrance to the school. They didn’t go outside, but rather went left and were soon disappearing around a corner. Interestingly, though, Jenn McDaniels didn’t go with them. Rather, she headed past Becca in the other direction. She gave a hard push upon her shoulder, saying, “Ex
cuse
me, Fatbroad,” and she went the way Tatiana Primavera had gone.

INSIDE THE THEATER
, the students jostled each other to get to seats. Up on the stage, a lectern stood. There were chairs on either side of this, four on one side, three on the other.

Becca became part of the jumble of people, but her mind was completely on what Jenn had told her. She didn’t know what a coma meant exactly. She knew that people survived comas, but she also knew that sometimes they languished in comas for years and never came out of them at all. Or if they did come out of them, it was ten years later and they woke up to a different world.

She didn’t want this for Derric. She wanted him well and rejoicing, the way he kept telling himself to rejoice and the way his smile suggested to other people that he
was
rejoicing because they couldn’t feel the rest of him, which was sunlight but which was sadness as well.

Becca thought about Seth and what Jenn had said about him, how he’d be happy to hear about Derric in a coma. She also thought about the fact that Seth hadn’t mentioned her to anyone but especially he hadn’t told the cops that she’d been there and that she’d made the phone call to 911. Then her thoughts switched to Diana Kinsale, her dogs, Seth’s dog, and the
nothing
that came from Diana Kinsale when everyone else filled the air with whispers. And finally, because she couldn’t avoid it any longer, not with Derric now lying in a coma, she thought of that footprint at the top of the bluff. It wouldn’t have been there when the paramedics had finished with the site. Getting Derric up the bluff to the trail would have taken care of that. This meant that Becca was the only one who knew about that footprint unless Diana Kinsale had seen it as well.

But she couldn’t think of this. She wouldn’t
let
herself think of this.

She found a seat in the middle of a row. There, she ducked her head and dug in her backpack for her Eastern Civilization book. Mr. Powder had told them there was going to be a quiz, and even having one of his students in a coma in the hospital wouldn’t stop Mr. Powder from holding firm to
that
plan. So she could study. It would occupy her mind.

She didn’t get far. Someone tapped a microphone and said, “Is this on?” and she looked up to see Mr. Vansandt standing at the lectern.

He wasn’t alone. There were six other adults on the stage with him, and since they were staring ahead into the audience of students who suddenly fell silent, there were whispers although they were very brief. Becca caught
one of these little losers
and
look at me, Dave
and
what was he doing there
and
my job my job
and
lawsuits come from this kind of
and
don’t really care look at them
, but anyone could have been the owner of the whispers. One person, even, could have owned them all.

Mr. Vansandt asked them all to stand and pledge allegiance after which he made the grave announcement that everyone was expecting. He told them that one of their fellow Falcons had been badly injured in Saratoga Woods. Most of them knew him, he said. Derric Mathieson. He said that Derric was in intensive care at Whidbey General up in Coupeville. He was in a coma and he had a triple fracture of his leg, too.

At this, murmurs went around the room and a girl in the crowd wailed “Oh no!” dramatically. Becca focused hard on what was going on on the stage. Mr. Vansandt was talking about all doors being opened and extra counselors being brought on board and how they would be there for the entire week for any student who wanted to talk. He introduced them one by one. Tatiana Primavera was one of them, of course, but the other names were all new to Becca. She dismissed them as soon as she heard them because it was fairly clear that more was about to happen on the stage since the one person left to be introduced was a man in a deputy’s uniform.

The principal was concluding his remarks by telling everyone where each of the new counselors would be stationed that week. He added that a classroom would be open each lunch hour for group talk. Then he concluded by saying that Derric’s father would like to talk to them now about the part they could play in Derric’s recovery because, he added, “Derric is a Falcon and this is one Falcon who’s
going
to recover.”

It was at this point that the man in the sheriff’s clothes got up and went to the microphone. It was also the moment when Becca realized that Derric Mathieson’s adoptive family was white.

SIXTEEN

B
ecca recognized the man. The lights shining onto the lectern were brighter than the lights on the chairs set around it, so while he was still sitting among the others on the stage, she hadn’t given him any more attention than went with knowing he was someone from the sheriff’s office because of his uniform. But when he walked into the fuller light on the lectern, Becca saw that he was the man Derric had been with on the ferry.

His face was like something carved. Becca knew in an instant that he was the source of the
what was he doing there
that she’d heard jumbled among the other whispers inside the theater. What seemed to be coming from him now sounded like
please God . . . punish . . . I swear . . . not because . . . black black black . . .

His expression was so hard that it hushed the crowd of kids, especially those who were still reacting to the news about Derric’s injuries. The silence that fell over everyone made their whispers soar upward. Becca caught snatches of them only, disjointed words like
what’s with . . . scary . . . is there . . . ever . . . does he think . . . like dead? . . . coma . . . Derric Derric . . . something new . . .
Along with these whispers came a flutter of feelings, like birds high up near the ceiling among the lights. All of this made Becca look around her. What she noted gave her pause. For unlike her schools in California, there didn’t seem to be a single kid in the entire assembly who wasn’t white.