SW01 - The Edge of Nowhere

by Elizabeth George

  Seth was staring at her. She was staring at Seth. What to do . . . what to do . . . was heavy in the air, and she knew why. It was because they both were thinking it, not just Seth. And to her what to do she was adding What to do to help Seth, who hadn’t hurt anyone. But someone had, and she thought she knew who.

  She said, “That kid Dylan has a pair of sandals like yours, Seth. Maybe other people do, too. I haven’t seen any but—”

  “He was in the woods that day,” Seth said.

  “Dylan? I wondered. Hayley said kids meet up at the big rock . . . Could the stoners have been on Meadow Loop Trail, too? Where Derric fell? Could Derric have been meeting one of them there?”

  “Dylan, you mean?” Seth rubbed the back of his neck. “Maybe. I don’t know. I mean Derric’s not a stoner, far as I know. Some of the athletes do drugs, but even they don’t hang with stoners.”

  “Do they buy from them, though?” Becca hated to think it. It didn’t seem possible. But Derric had been doing something that day in the woods and this had to be ranked among the possibilities.

  “Did he buy from Dylan, you mean? Did he owe him money, even?” Seth thought about this and blew out a breath. “Could be. But if that’s the case, he’s sure put on one hell of a performance as Mr. Straight. I dunno, Becca. It’s hard to believe and I don’t even like the guy.”

  “Were you on that trail, Seth? Can you remember?”

  “Meadow Loop Trail? Who knows? I was all over the woods that day. So were you. You were looking for Gus, too. Did you keep track of where you went? I didn’t. Why would I? Why would anyone? I mean, everybody and his brother and his sister and his dogs and his cats were in the woods that day. At least I had a reason to be there, but no one—”

  Becca held up her hand to stop him. She realized suddenly that his words and his whispers for the very first time were so identical that they melded together. It came to her that she’d made a step in understanding the power of whispers. When everything matched—words and whispers—she was on the path to people’s truths.

  But there was something Becca had learned from sitting in Jeff Corrie’s office once she’d passed around refreshments, and that was that sometimes what people understood to be the truth was only what they wanted to believe was the truth.

  The reality was that there was more truth out there, and she was going to find it. Finding it was the only way to help Seth and to free him from the burden of everyone’s suspicions about him.

  * * *

  THIRTY-SIX

  When the undersheriff showed up, Hayley was in her favorite class. This was AP U.S. History, and she was listening to her fellow students debating the moral and ethical issues connected with advancing upon the land of indigenous people.

  Ms. Stephany, the teacher, left for a moment. When she returned, her face was grave. She said, “Hayley, you’re wanted . . . I think you might need your things . . . ?”

  The tone of her voice made Hayley’s mind start whirling with possibilities, all of them having to do with her dad. She grabbed her backpack. Outside the classroom, she found Undersheriff Mathieson waiting.

  He looked as grave as Ms. Stephany had. He said as Hayley closed the classroom door, “You and I need to talk.”

  Hayley said, “Is something wrong?” although she didn’t really want an answer to her question.

  “It’s time for you to be completely frank with me about Saratoga Woods, Hayley. You haven’t told me the whole story and I want it now.”

  Hayley sagged against the wall. The relief she felt over not hearing something about her dad was so intense that she thought she was going to melt right there in front of the undersheriff. She understood then how scared she’d been, how long she’d been scared, and how scared they all were that her dad might hurt himself because of how his body wasn’t working.

  Undersheriff Mathieson grabbed Hayley’s arm and walked her down the corridor away from the classroom. He said to Hayley, “Very good. So you see there’s no point to lying to me, don’t you?”

  Very good? Hayley furrowed her brow. But then she understood. He was taking her reaction of sagging against the wall not as the relief of knowing her dad was okay but as an admission of guilt. She wasn’t sure what he thought she was guilty of, but the set of his face made her see him differently from how she’d always seen him in the past. Before he’d been Derric’s dad, the great guy who’d done things like drive them to Seattle to see an exhibition of Congolese art. Now . . . Hayley didn’t know who he was.

  “Am I going to have to bring your parents in on this, Hayley?” the undersheriff asked her, giving her arm a tug. “Or are you planning to answer me? I’ve spoken to the other kids who were on that list. I have their stories. Now I want yours. All of it this time.”

  At this, Hayley realized she hadn’t yet replied to anything he’d said. Still, she felt a tightness inside of her at his tug on her arm and at the thought that he’d even bother her parents about her presence in Saratoga Woods when they were already dealing with more than they could possibly handle. She felt the tightness within her morph into anger, and she decided then and there that she was not about to help this man. She said firmly, although her heart was slamming inside her chest, “There were lots of kids in the woods that day. Not everyone got put down on that list of yours.”

  He said, “I see,” but his lip curled in a nasty way and he added, “And was this Becca King I’ve been trying to find one of those kids?”

  Hayley said, “I barely know who Becca King is,” which was hardly an answer to his question.

  “She’s disappeared from the Cliff Motel,” he told her. “She’s also been out of school for weeks. What do you know about that?”

  “Not a single thing,” Hayley replied. “Since I didn’t notice her when she was here, I don’t think I’d notice if she was gone.” She saw at once that this was the wrong thing to say. The undersheriff took a step closer. She thought he might drag her to the dean’s office, then, or to the jail in Coupeville, in order to force her to tell him everything.

  He was so close she could see a patch of whiskers at the corner of his mouth that he missed when he’d shaved. She could smell his breath, and it wasn’t pleasant. He said, “You listen to me. You were in the woods and you’re the only person on the list who hasn’t explained what you were doing there. Now someone hurt my boy in that forest and I’m not leaving this school till I know who. So let’s get back to the question you haven’t answered and let’s hear the answer. Why were you there?”

  Hayley’s heart-slams got worse. My boy reverberated in her mind. Not my son, but my boy. Like my bike, my car, my refrigerator. She recalled Derric telling her how the undersheriff never referred to him as his son. He’d say “This is our boy, Derric” or “This is our Derric,” and what did it mean that he never used son in reference to him?

  She just snapped, then. “Why do you call him that?” she demanded. “Why do you say ‘my boy’? Why don’t you ever say he’s your son?”

  The undersheriff’s whole body stiffened. His mouth formed a line like a scar on his face. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  “I’m Derric’s friend. And no, I wasn’t meeting him there, if you still think I was. I was meeting Mrs. Kinsale. And why I was meeting her is none of your business unless you think we pushed him off the bluff together.”

  Hayley had never in her life talked to an adult like this, but she went on, believing that the upper hand was hers. She said, “You know, Sheriff Mathieson, there were stoners in the woods that day, too, and they all ran off before their names were taken. Why don’t you concentrate on them for a while, because you’re wasting your time hassling the kids who actually liked Derric.”

  “He doesn’t do drugs.”

  “Did I say he does? But he was there and they were there and people run into each other in the woods all the time. Have you even thought about that?”

  The undersheriff reached in his pocket. He brought out a small leather notebook and
a pen. He flipped the book open and gazed at Hayley meaningfully, and Hayley saw the trap that she’d just walked into.

  “Names,” he said.

  She didn’t really know. They’d all run off too fast, and she’d been caught up in talking to Seth. But she did have a piece of information that she could give Dave Mathieson to get him off her back. “Dylan Cooper,” she told Derric’s father. “I think he was there.”

  “Student here?” the undersheriff asked as he took down the name.

  “Yes. I guess so. I mean, yes.”

  But Hayley felt the misery of naming anyone. She didn’t know anything, after all. The only detail connecting Dylan Cooper to what had happened was a pair of sandals, and that information had come from Becca King. Hayley didn’t even know what it meant, whether it was important, or whether Becca had just thrown it out to muddy the waters. She thought Becca King had been there that day in Saratoga Woods, and she figured the girl had run off before the ambulance arrived. But why she’d done this . . . Hayley didn’t know. She only knew that doing so had kept Becca’s name away from any involvement with Derric’s fall.

  Undersheriff Mathieson was closing his leather notebook. He had a name now, but Hayley saw that he didn’t look triumphant about it. He looked miserable. He looked like someone living a bad dream. It was a dream of not knowing.

  The last thing she’d expected to feel was sympathy for the man, considering the way he’d been talking to her. But Hayley did feel it, then, just for an instant. She understood the bad dream of not knowing. Better than anything, she understood it.

  WHEN THE UNDERSHERIFF left her, Hayley started breathing normally again, but she was shaken. Not only by having the conversation with him, but by naming Dylan Cooper to him. Across the corridor was the girls’ restroom, and she headed for it. The door hit someone as she entered. It was someone who’d been standing behind it, listening to her entire conversation with Derric’s father.

  This turned out to be Jenn McDaniels. Who else? Hayley thought with resignation. Jenn had probably slithered into the restroom while the undersheriff had stood at the door to Ms. Stephany’s classroom waiting for Hayley to join him.

  She brushed past Jenn and went to the washbowls. She took off her glasses and turned on the water although she could see her hands were shaking.

  Jenn obviously saw this, too, because she said, “What’s the problem? You got Parkinson’s or something, Hayley?” She went behind Hayley and strolled over to one of the translucent windows. She cracked this open.

  Hayley splashed water on her face while behind her she heard the snick of a match being lit. She smelled the tobacco burning because the cold breeze from outside was blowing the smoke right back into the room instead of taking it away. Hayley kept splashing her face, ignoring the other girl.

  Jenn said, “Uh . . . I think you’re clean now, Hayley.”

  Hayley turned off the water. She grabbed some paper towels from the dispenser, and she dried her face. She put her glasses back on, which gave her a much better look at Jenn’s smirking face.

  “So,” Jenn said. “You and the undersheriff had quite the talk. Maybe you should be more careful when you start accusing people of stuff.”

  Hayley ignored her. She turned to walk out of the restroom, but Jenn was away from the window in a flash. She tossed her cigarette onto the tiles of the floor and let it lie there burning. She blocked Hayley’s path.

  Hayley said, “Excuse me?”

  “You’re not excused.”

  When Hayley tried to get by her, Jenn was a wall. Her small body was entirely muscle. Hayley realized that the other girl looked like something the wind could blow away, but she was a rock.

  Jenn said, “I never figured you for a snitch, Hayley. One word from me, and Dylan’s going to know all about what you told the undersheriff. So . . . you want to do something to stop me?”

  What Hayley wanted to do was to slap her silly. She wanted to punch her right in the face. But although she was taller than Jenn McDaniels, she knew she wasn’t a match for her. Jenn was as tough as uncooked beans, and she was just the kind of girl who itched in places only a brawl could scratch.

  She said, “Here’s what I’m figuring out about you, Jenn. You sort of like having Derric in that hospital bed. You sort of like feeling important to him, to his parents, to his recovery even. But the deal for you is that he has to stay in that coma for you to be important, doesn’t he? Because if he wakes up, you go back to being just Jenn McDaniels, the girl everyone tries to ignore because she’s such a pain in the butt.”

  Jenn’s face drew together like a fist. Hayley knew she’d hit her mark. But she hated herself for descending to the other girl’s level. That wasn’t who she was.

  “You,” Jenn said, “don’t know the first thing about me. Fact is, you don’t know the first thing about anyone, Derric included. You think him and you have some special relationship that’s all about Aff-rick-a, but here’s the deal: That’s just your excuse for getting your hands on him. You want to hook up and here’s the way. ‘Oh, Derric, tell me all about Uganda.’” Jenn clasped her hands beneath her chin and fluttered her eyelashes sarcastically.

  Hayley’s lips parted but at first she didn’t speak. The other girl’s ability to see things and twist them, to make something seem dirty when it was nothing of the kind . . . It was incredible. Hayley said to her, “Why’re you so hateful? How d’you think life’s going to work out for you, when all you do is look for every weakness in people so you can hurt them?”

  “I’d rather know who people are than let them pretend they’re someone else.”

  “I don’t pretend,” Hayley told her.

  “As if. Everyone pretends.”

  “No. They don’t. Your problem is that you make guesses about people. But that’s all they are: guesses.”

  “Yeah? Want to hear my guesses about you, then? Want to hear my guesses about Seth? Want to hear my guesses about Beck-kuh King?”

  “What I want is not to talk to you for another second.”

  “Good, ’cause all you have to do is listen,” Jenn sneered. “So listen to this. Becca King pushed Derric off that bluff, not Dylan Cooper. She came on to Derric. He said no. That’s when she shoved him. That’s what happened. This whole thing’s her fault, and I’m going to help the undersheriff find her.”

  “You make me sick,” Hayley said.

  Jenn nodded toward one of the stalls. “Well, there’s the toilet.”

  HAYLEY HAD TO admit that she hardly knew Becca. Most of the kids at South Whidbey High School she’d been around since preschool, but Becca King . . . What did she know about this girl? Nothing, really. But she knew someone who did.

  Early the next morning she drove directly to the Star Store. She banged on the door. She rattled the handle. She went back to banging until Seth appeared. He was carrying a mop over his shoulder like a rifle and when he saw who it was, he stopped dead. Hayley shook the door handle again and called out, “Seth, open up. I need to talk to you.”

  He put the mop to one side, but when he unlocked the door, he didn’t let her in. After their last encounter, he was wary of her and Hayley could understand this since she’d been going off mentally in all directions for months now.

  “Yeah?” Seth spoke in a way that was not unfriendly, but it certainly wasn’t the welcome mat. He didn’t act surprised to see her. He did act like someone waiting for the next weird outburst from her to come his way.

  It came to Hayley that she had a lot to apologize for, and the first thing she needed to say “I’m sorry” about was her failure to see how mismatched she and Seth had been from the first. She’d thought music would be enough to bind them because he was a brilliant musician and no one would ever be able to deny that. She’d thought his essential goodness would add to that. But music and Seth’s core decency hadn’t been enough, and she saw that now. But she couldn’t get into that at the moment, so she said, “I need to talk to you about Becca.”

  “W
hat about her?”

  “The undersheriff thinks she pushed Derric off the trail. Or at least he’s going to think that because Jenn McDaniels is going to tell him.”

  “Why the hell would Jenn do that?”

  “Why does Jenn do anything? All I know is that she’s convinced herself that Becca was trying to hook up with Derric and Derric wasn’t interested, so Becca shoved him off the trail. Course, she’s also convinced herself that just about everyone was trying to hook up with Derric. Except her, of course. She’s completely innocent of everything.”

  Seth seemed to consider all this carefully. He finally said, “No way. I was there. Me and Gus were there and . . .” But then his voice faded and Hayley could tell something had come to him.

  She said, “What?”

  “Nothing.” But he said the word too slowly. Nothing meant nothing I can tell you.

  She said, “Seth, Becca was there and you got separated from her, right? Everyone got separated from each other and—”

  “You were there that day, too,” Seth said. “Who’d you get separated from?”

  “Not from Derric. Seth, this isn’t about me and Derric. There is no me and Derric. We were always just friends and . . . We might have been kissing but it was just kissing and . . . Oh, that doesn’t matter now. What matters is Becca and what Jenn’s going to do.”

  “I don’t get why that’s so important to you.”

  “Because it’s wrong. Do you think Becca hurt Derric?”

  He shook his head. “She was acting all weird but—”

  “So she was there.”

  “Yeah. But we were looking for Gus.”

  “Together?”

  “No. Like you said, we got separated. I don’t know where she went. I don’t even know where I went. I was just trying to find the dog. So was she, far as I know. I can tell the undersheriff that if it comes to him thinking Becca did anything.”

  “But the problem would be, you don’t know for sure, right?”

  “Right.”