The Edge of the Light

by Elizabeth George

  “Have not!” Jenn said. “Seventh grade. It was stupid. I gave it up.”

  Cynthia said, “I did cigarettes for about five minutes in fifth grade. Down behind the Dog House in Seawall Park. Me and two girls from the Christian school.”

  “Figures,” Squat said, under his breath.

  Cynthia glanced at him. He looked impassive. He also looked completely unimpressed that the captain of the soccer team, a girl who had a scholarship to University of Virginia to play soccer, was telling Jenn she was a good center midfielder.

  Cynthia said, “So d’you want to?”

  Jenn had forgotten Cynthia’s offer. “Want to what?”

  “Train with me. I’ve been doing this for a long time. You’re running is good, but what else’re you doing to get ready?”

  “Nothing.”

  “So . . . ?”

  Jenn felt a kick under the table. She knew it was Squat. She shot him a what’s-with-you look and said to Cynthia, “What about Lexie? I thought you trained with her.”

  “She’ll still be there.” Cynthia grinned. “Abuse motivates me.”

  Squat guffawed. Cynthia glanced his way. He said, “Got a picture in my mind if you know what I mean. Sorry.”

  Hayley said, “Isn’t your sandwich calling you, Squat?”

  “Something is,” Derric added.

  Jenn said to Cynthia, “I dunno. I sort of like training on my own.”

  Cynthia looked at them all, then cast a longer look at Jenn. She said, “Okay, then,” as she pushed away from the table. Jenn thought that was it and she would walk off to join Lexie, but she didn’t do that at once. Instead she leaned over Becca’s shoulder, took a final carrot stick, said to Becca, “I owe you,” and then to Jenn, “If you change your mind, let me know. It’s not catching.”

  “What?”

  “Being like me and Lexie.”

  Although Jenn grew hot and knew that color was climbing her neck and attacking her ears, she said, “Huh? Don’t get what you’re talking about.”

  Cynthia nodded and cast a glance at Squat before she said to Jenn, “Sure you do.” She popped the carrot stick into her mouth and walked away.

  At first there was a little silence at the table. Squat was the one to break it. He said, “Good decision, Jenn.”

  Hayley said, “She’s a nice girl, Squat.”

  “I didn’t say she wasn’t nice,” he countered. “But if she and the other dyke made it any more obvious they’d be doing it on the table over there.”

  Jenn rose at that. She grabbed up her lunch bag. “You’re disgusting,” she told Squat. Before he could answer, she swung around and stalked away.

  • • •

  THE LAST THING she expected was that he would follow her, but that was what Squat did. She was at her locker when he came up behind her and said abruptly, “Look. I got nothing against them.”

  She swung around. “Got nothing against who?”

  “You know. They can be what they want to be. I don’t care.” His gaze darted around, as if he and Jenn were spies afraid of being caught red-handed with information they needed to pass on. “But if you start hanging with them, it looks like you’re like them. So guys are going to wonder, and you need to ask yourself if that’s what you want.”

  Jenn shut her locker with a little too much force. “I get it. You mean I might not get a date to the senior prom if I train with Cynthia Richardson. Ohhhh, that breaks my heart in two.” She leaned into him so they were nose to nose. “Like I actually care?” she demanded. “You are all over the place, Squat, and every place you’re all over is, like, completely wrong.”

  Squat didn’t back off as she’d intended. Instead he said, “Sure, Jenn. If that’s what you say. I just wanted to give you some advice. We been friends since—”

  “Yeah. Right. Preschool. Got it. So you get this: If I want to train with the school’s most out-there lesbians, I will. And if that means I end up with cooties and no one wants to have lunch with me, then that’s how it all plays out. I guess you’ll be one of them, huh?”

  “One of who?”

  “One of the people who decides my cooties are catching. Wow, Squat, stick around me and I might turn you trans!”

  “Hey. I’m not saying—”

  “I know what you’re saying. Give it up. And I think it’s time you trotted off to class.”

  Becca and Derric were coming toward her then, and Jenn figured it was going to be more of the same. She scowled, hoping to drive them off. No luck there because Derric pulled his smart phone from his pocket, frowned down at the screen, and made an adjustment to it that stopped its quacking. Becca came to join Jenn.

  She’d apparently seen the action between Jenn and Squat because she said, “What’s going on with Squat?”

  “General asshole-ness.”

  “About Cynthia Richardson, I bet.”

  “She freaks him out. I’m surprised he didn’t have a can of Raid to spray on her.”

  Becca made an adjustment to her iPod thingy. After a moment, she said, “I dunno, Jenn. It might be a good idea.”

  Jenn said, “What?” assuming Becca was agreeing with Squat.

  But Becca said, “Training with her. If she wants to help you . . . She’s got an athletic scholarship, right? She’s been playing soccer since . . . when?”

  “Probably since she was in her playpen.”

  “Then why not? What did Squat say?”

  “The old what-will-the-guys-think.”

  “Really? Who cares? This’s more important than what a bunch of A-holes think.”

  “Who’s an A-hole?” Derric had come to join them. He was shoving his smart phone back into his jeans. He gave Becca a look that communicated something because she said, “Again?”

  Jenn said, “Your mom bugging you?”

  “Not his mom,” Becca said.

  “Ohhhh, that girl from Uganda? You better watch out, girlfriend,” she said to Becca. “She’s hot for him. You better handle it.”

  “They’re going to arm wrestle for me,” Derric said. “I want Becca to win, so we’ve been practicing.”

  Becca laughed. Derric dropped his arm around her shoulders. He told her he’d walk her to class if she was ready. Turned out that she was, but she said to Jenn before walking off, “Think about it, okay?”

  Jenn nodded. She watched the two of them walk off together. Ten feet away and Becca’s arm was around Derric’s waist, and they disappeared around the corner. Jenn thought, seeing them, about what it would be like to have someone the way that Becca and Derric had each other.

  • • •

  SHE WAS WAITING in the shelter for the free island bus when her day got worse. A horn honked behind her. She turned, thinking that Cynthia Richardson was going to offer her a ride home again and that she was going to have to turn her down. But it was her mom in the decrepit Whidbey Island taxi. Kate McDaniels had pulled to the side of the road. She’d just dropped someone at the language school over on Langley Road, she said. She could give Jenn a ride home.

  Jenn was reluctant. The drive was long. Plenty of time for her mom to engage her on the topic of Jenn’s being baptized in Deer Lake, which Kate wanted to happen just as soon as the weather made it possible for someone to be dunked without getting hypothermia. Seeing her, though, Jenn could hardly say she’d rather wait for the bus, since she wouldn’t rather wait for the bus.

  She climbed into the vehicle. She said, “Thanks. It was going to take forever.”

  “Happy to be of service,” Kate replied. She patted Jenn’s hand, said “Seat belt,” and waited. As Jenn hooked it up, Kate fondly smoothed Jenn’s hair. As she did this, Squat and his mom pulled out of the parking lot in the family SUV. Squat was behind the wheel. It was late for him to still be at school, Jenn thought. He’d probably been massaging his brain with trigo
nometry in the library.

  Kate said, “That’s Fergus Cooper, isn’t it? He’s turning into a handsome young man. Goodness, though, doesn’t time fly? He’s driving!”

  “Looks that way.”

  “Why don’t we see more of him, Jennie?” her mom asked. “You and he used to be such pals. I can remember—”

  “We pal around at school,” Jenn cut in. “He’s busy otherwise. He’s in Honors Everything. Got to maintain the GPA.”

  “You even had play dates,” Kate said wistfully.

  “We can’t exactly do that when we’re sixteen.”

  “No, no. Of course not.” Kate pulled into the road and they followed the Coopers’ SUV toward the highway, where it would turn in the direction of Double Bluff Beach, and they would turn in the opposite direction. “Still . . . I remember him being a lovely boy. Polite, well raised . . . Is he a Christian, Jenn?”

  “No clue,” Jenn said. “He’s probably heathen. Or maybe pagan. He could be Wiccan.”

  “Don’t make fun,” her mother said. “Christianity is our path to heaven. And God’s commandments were created to get us there.” She paused, as if considering something. Then she said, “Fornication is part of the sixth commandment, Jennie. It says adultery but fornication is included. You know that, don’t you?”

  Jenn turned to stare at her mother: upright in her seat, hands at ten and two o’clock on the wheel, gaze firmly on the road lest a deer dart out or a suicidal rabbit take the plunge. She said, “Yeah. Thanks. I know.”

  “And so is touching yourself. You’ve not been touching yourself, have you?”

  Jenn gritted her teeth. Most of the time she could listen to her mom and translate it to blah blah blah in her head. But at the end of this day, which had seemed to pull her every which way, this was not one of those times.

  “Whatever,” was her final response.

  She wished that she had waited for the bus.

  12

  When Seth drove into Coupeville after being given Steph Vanderslip’s approval on the work they’d done to his grandfather’s house, he had Becca and Prynne with him. They were on their way to Penn Cove Care to tell Grand how things were going to be set up, with the home health care aides seeing to his basic needs and Prynne and Becca there in the house to reassure him that he wouldn’t be solely in the hands of strangers.

  They also needed to make sure Grand knew that he had to do maximum work in physical therapy and he had to keep making efforts to get his language skills back once they got him home. Otherwise, they’d be into another fight with Aunt Brenda about assisted living.

  At Penn Cove Care, they got out into a dazzling day. The air was frigid because there were no clouds, but they had a crystalline view of Mount Baker to the east, with its snowcapped volcanic sides reaching up into a pure blue sky. The air was sharp with scents from Penn Cove: salt water, seaweed, and shellfish. It was mussel season. The seagulls swooping down near the town’s long pier seemed to be anticipating this.

  Prynne looped a shopping bag over her arm, purchases that she and Seth had made at Good Cheer Thrift store and in the children’s section of the bookshop on First Street in Langley. What they’d bought comprised goodies for Ralph, and part of the reason they’d come to Coupeville was to explain them to him.

  Inside Penn Cove Care, they trooped to Ralph’s room. Finding it empty, Seth led them to the physical therapy wing. But he wasn’t there, either. Seth’s first thought was a scary one: that Grand had suffered another stroke.

  “Let’s check at reception,” Prynne suggested “Maybe they’ve taken a bunch of people on an outing or something.”

  It turned out that Ralph was on an outing, all right. But he was the only patient taking part in it. At reception they learned from a bespectacled woman with a very large mole on the side of her nose that “Mr. Darrow’s daughter has taken him down to Freeland to have a look at The Cedars.”

  Seth knew exactly what The Cedars was: assisted living. “But the house’s is approved,” he said. “That lady Steph, she came to look it over. She said it was fine. She said it was safe.” Seth could hear his panic, and he knew his companions heard it, too, because he felt Prynne link her hand with his. Becca’s breathing became deep and steady.

  The receptionist said, “Well, there appears to be some sort of miscommunication among you.”

  “Is she taking him there to check him in or something?” Seth demanded.

  “As far as I know it’s merely a visit so that he can see what it’s like. If you’d like to wait . . . ? They’ve been gone for an hour and they’ll probably return before this hour’s up.”

  The last thing Seth wanted to do was wait. He trusted his aunt like he trusted a rattlesnake. He had to get to the car.

  Prynne and Becca followed him. He punched his dad’s phone number into his cell phone, and when Rich answered with, “What’s up, Seth?” the words tumbled out so fast that Rich had to tell him to slow down, to start over, to make himself clear. Once Seth had done so, his father’s reply was reassuring. “I’m on it,” he said. “Let me handle this, Seth. I’ll be in touch.”

  Seth knew that his dad would head directly to Freeland, where The Cedars occupied a piece of prime real estate overlooking Holmes Harbor, a huge body of water shaped like a toe-dancer’s leg kicking its way south toward Mutiny Bay. He also knew that his dad considered him something of a hothead and thought that this situation called for cooler heads prevailing. But there was no way that he was going to back off. He told Prynne and Becca to get in the car, because they were going to The Cedars.

  Freeland wasn’t nearby. Far closer to the village of Langley than it was to Coupeville, it stood at the big toe of the dancer’s foot. They had to charge south down the island’s only highway to get there, passing through forest and winter-bare farmland, wetlands, and lakes. When they got to the town, Seth pressed through it and onto the road that surged up the harbor on the west side of the water. He opened up the speed here, and because of this, he nearly missed the turn through the wrought iron gates that would take them onto the grounds of The Cedars.

  They piled out of the car the second Seth had it parked. No time to look for a suitable space, he just left it in the portico of The Cedars’ main building, a hospital-like affair on three levels, behind which the waters of Holmes Harbor placidly gleamed. He charged inside with Prynne and Becca fast on his heels.

  He’d already seen his aunt’s Lexus. It was hard to miss, since she’d parked the thing overlapping two visitors’ spaces so no one could mar its perfect paint job. Also in the visitors’ parking was his father’s pickup.

  Inside, the place was all silence, hardwood floors, carefully arranged furniture, the strong scent of lavender, and a fireplace in which a phony fire flickered. Seth dimly heard someone say, “May I help you?” but he didn’t need help. For the first thing he saw was a glass-windowed conference room and within that room sat his aunt, his dad, his grandfather in a wheelchair, and some lady in a business suit talking to all of them.

  Seth burst in on them. He heard “. . . a compromise because a fight over guardianship can’t be what you want.” It was the business suit lady speaking. She started when Seth broke into the room. She said, “I beg your—”

  Rich said sharply, “I told you I’d handle this, Seth.”

  Seth said, “She’s not packing him into this place. He’s not a discard. He’s a human being.”

  Aunt Brenda said, “How dare you even suggest—”

  “You think we don’t know what you got in mind? You’re pretty stupid, Aunt Brenda.”

  Rich stood. “You need to leave.”

  “Not without Grand.” Seth went to his grandfather’s wheelchair. Grand was slumped to one side and his good fist was clenched in a frozen position. “You guys are going to give him another stroke. I’m taking him outa here.”

  Brenda stood, too. “He h
asn’t been discharged from Penn Cove Care. You’re not taking him anywhere.”

  “Stop me,” Seth said. “Call the cops.”

  He went to Ralph and released the brake on the wheelchair. His father said to him, “Don’t make this worse.”

  Seth said, “You think he likes sitting here while you guys argue over him like he’s a prize steer or something? I don’t think so. Come on, Grand.” Seth wheeled him from the room.

  He took Ralph over to the fireplace. He knew his grandfather scorned false fires, but it seemed more soothing than putting him anywhere near the conference room, from which raised voices could easily be heard.

  Becca and Prynne joined him on the hearth, where he seated himself to face his grandfather. Becca, he saw, had removed her earbud. He figured the whole deal had upset her and she pretty much didn’t want to hear what was going to be said next. He couldn’t blame her.

  He said, “Here’s what’s happening, Grand. We’ve fixed your house so you can go home, this lady from the hospital checked it out, and Dad’s hiring two health care people to be with you. But not alone, okay? Prynne’ll will be with you daytimes, Becca will be with you afternoon and nighttimes, and me and Prynne or Dad will be with you on weekends. No one’s putting you in assisted living.”

  Ralph’s head righted itself, but his fist did not unclench. Seth put his hand over that tight ball of bones and flesh, and he felt Becca move closer to Grand.

  She said to Ralph, “That okay with you, Grand? Or d’you think”—and to Seth, “I gotta ask him this, okay?”—and back to Grand, “or d’you think you might do better here?”

  “No way,” Seth said to her. And to his grandfather, “You got to keep up with the physical therapy and you got to do stuff to get better with language. These health guys, they’ll take you to your appointments and we got some stuff to help you out with language, too. But here’s what’s happening. You probably already figured it out, but I’ll say it anyway. Aunt Brenda wants to get control: of you, of your land, of where you live, of everything. Me and Dad? We’re fighting her, but you got to fight her, too.”