The Edge of the Light

by Elizabeth George

  “That’s not what I meant.”

  “I know that. But it’s all I’ll say for now. Let’s get the dogs, shall we? It’s time they had a romp on the beach.”

  Diana went to the run and released the four other dogs. She picked up two well-chewed balls and handed them to Becca. She said, “All dogs come,” and they did just that.

  They made slow progress across the field next to Diana’s house. A well-used path led through the lush springtime grasses, beaten down by Diana and the dogs over years so that nothing now grew upon it. The dogs knew where it led, though, and they began to gambol like lambs. They were a joyful sight, yipping and leaping on their way to the beach at Sandy Point. Here the tides met, where the waters of Saratoga Passage and the waters of Possession Sound carved to a depth of six hundred feet, allowing space and depth for orcas and gray whales to dive.

  On their way, Becca told Diana about Mrs. Banks, about Derric and Rejoice, and about her thoughts on the quickening. She didn’t bring up Jenn. She felt she couldn’t yet, although she wasn’t quite sure why. Diana was silent as she spoke. Then she released a thought, Are the visions and the whisp—

  Becca blocked it at once. She felt a swirling of delight all over her body. She said, “I stopped you, Mrs. Kinsale! Before you finished the word whisper.”

  Diana said, “Excellent. You’ve been practicing.”

  “When I can.”

  “Do you think they relate, then?”

  “The visions and the whispers? Mr. Darrow’s do.”

  “What kind of understanding are they leading you toward?”

  “Doing something. Mrs. Kinsale, I got to do something. I think Mr. Darrow wants me to. He’s telling me the best he can. And then there’s Jenn. She . . . well, she asked me . . .”

  “What?” Diana said when Becca hesitated. They were across the field now and following the lane that would take them down to the beach. The dogs were far ahead of them, snuffling the sand, all except Oscar, who maintained his pace at Diana’s side.

  “If the quickening is about propelling events to a good conclusion . . . if that’s what I’m s’posed to do . . .”

  “When everything’s mastered, that’s what you’re supposed to do,” Diana said. “You’ve been given extraordinary power, Becca. I believe you’re beginning to see that. But to be hasty in a situation when the ramification of any action you take could be serious . . . ? This is something over which you absolutely must maintain control.”

  “Control over what?”

  “Impetuosity in the face of something you don’t yet clearly understand.”

  They were silent for several minutes after that. Becca gnawed on this. She felt like a dog frustrated to get to the marrow of the bone. She and Diana descended the rest of the way to the beach, where Becca took the two balls and began to hurl them south as the dogs tore in that direction in anticipation. She tried to take in the beauty that surrounded them: far to the east the Cascade Mountains still topped with snow, closer to Whidbey the soaring cliffs at the south end of Camano Island, a bald eagle riding a current of air, the extraordinary calm of the water on this day, the cumulous clouds lazing in the sky.

  “What if someone asks for action?” she finally said. “If I know a quickening is going to happen and someone asks me to do something, then what am I supposed to do? It’s not like I can walk away.”

  Diana leaned against a cottage’s three-foot-high stone wall, an inadequate bulwark against anything more than a casual high tide. She shivered although the breeze was mild on the beach and despite the heavy jacket she was wearing. Her complete lack of energy was apparent and it was deeply uncharacteristic of her. Once again Becca thought of normal. Normal was not who Diana had been for months.

  Diana said, “That’s a different issue, isn’t it? If someone asks for action, what is the visionary supposed to do? Has someone asked for an action?”

  “Like I said, Mr. Darrow.”

  “But not exactly. Is that right?”

  “He can’t ask directly. He can’t say all the words. But I’ve seen his memories in visions and they seem to relate to what he can say.”

  “And his whispers?”

  Becca knew this was the tricky part. She bought time by wresting the balls away from the dogs and hurling them again. The animals shot after them, splashing into the water and out again.

  “His whispers are broken up,” she admitted. “They’re like his words. It’s the whole language thing. But he seems so desperate.”

  “For you to do something?”

  “For me to understand something.”

  “Then doesn’t that tell you where to begin?”

  “With understanding?” And when Diana nodded, Becca said, “Can I act once I understand?”

  “You can act at any time,” Diana said. “But understanding why you’re acting and how you must act need to be in place if a quickening is to occur.”

  The visionary cannot be afraid, my dear. Diana had released another thought and Becca had allowed it because of the word visionary.

  “Afraid of what?” she asked.

  “Did you try to block that?”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  “It seemed related to what I said.”

  “Are you afraid, then? I ask this because you’re being hesitant with me about something, and that’s going to make our work more difficult. Hesitation is like indirection, and indirection is a half-measure, Becca. I believe you’ve been gifted in the way you’ve been gifted because you’re intended to take full measures.”

  “I came here because I wanted to ask you if Jenn could stay with you.” Becca told her the story, including in it the details of her conversation with Jenn and concluding with, “She needs a place to stay because her mom’s freaked out that Jenn works for lesbians, so she says Jenn has to be baptized into her church. Jenn says she needs a place to stay just to get away from her for a while and she asked me if she could come to Mr. Darrow’s. But see . . .”

  “Yes,” Diana said.

  “What?”

  “Of course she can stay with me, but only if she understands that she and her mother must try to reach some accord on all this. I would want her to work on that while she was with me. Do you think she’d be willing?”

  “I can ask her.”

  “Do that. But there’s something else, another solution to Jenn’s situation that you’ve not looked at in your haste to”—and here Diana smiled—“‘propel events to a safe, desired, and happy conclusion.’”

  “What? I don’t think I overlooked—”

  “Listen, dear. Because of how Jenn reacted when you spoke to her, and because of how you reacted to her reaction, you turned away from the true direction, which you already gave her—quite admirably, I must tell you—during your conversation. Can you see what it is?”

  Becca thought about this. She saw the truth in Mrs. Kinsale’s point about her own reaction to Jenn’s reaction. Jenn had reacted to Becca’s hesitation about her request, and in very short order, Jenn had rejected her. It was the rejection that Becca was reacting to and she was choosing an action based on that.

  She sighed. “This is very tough, Mrs. Kinsale.”

  “Believe me, no one can make this journey easy.”

  “You mean the quickening thing?”

  “I mean life. No one can make anyone’s life easier, at least not in the way that you’d like to do it. But you did give Jenn very good advice. Can you think what it is?”

  There was only one topic that Becca could come up with that might have fit the idea of having given advice. She said, “I told her to talk to someone in the club, the Gay Straight Alliance.”

  “There you have it. And although Jenn is upset with you now, you’ve made that the only option she has. Painful as it is for both of you at the moment, you propelled her. Congrat
ulations, my dear. You’ve taken a necessary step. A little ahead of schedule, it’s true. But you’ve taken it all the same.”

  32

  Jenn was in her English class, trying to appear fascinated with a presentation on the burning topic of various ways to create an introductory paragraph for an essay on Lady Macbeth, Macbeth, Macduff, Banquo, or the witches—your choice—when she was called to the office. She shoved her notebook and her text of the play into her backpack in the hope that she wouldn’t have to return to finish the period, and out she went. The call slip was from Mr. Vansandt. Getting sent for by the principal never meant anything good.

  She had to cool her heels for five minutes outside his office. She could hear him talking, and because no one was replying, she figured he was on the phone. When the door opened, it was Mr. Vansandt who did the opening. He beckoned Jenn inside his sanctum, told her to sit, and left the room. His office smelled of lilacs, the scent coming from one of those bottles with oil inside and incense-looking sticks popping out of it. This sat next to a picture on the principal’s desk. It was turned away from Jenn, but when she sneaked a peek at it, she saw it was of the principal and some kid in a U-Dub football jersey, presumably his son.

  “Here we are then,” Mr. Vansandt said as he re-entered the room. One of the two school counselors teetered in front of him. This was Tatiana Primavera, the A–L counselor. She’d long been known for her crippling footwear in the land of sandals-and-socks or hiking boots. She favored necklines that featured five inches of cleavage and made it a challenge to direct your eyes somewhere else.

  Because Jenn was an M-for-McDaniels, she and the counselor knew each other only by sight. Jenn didn’t understand what she was doing there. She also didn’t understand why—if a counselor was needed—her own counselor wasn’t entering the room along with the principal.

  Mr. Vansandt must have seen confusion on Jenn’s face because he said, “You’re not in trouble, Jenn. You know Ms. Primavera, don’t you?”

  Jenn knotted her eyebrows although she said, “Yeah. Sure.” She waited to hear why she’d been sent for.

  Mr. Vansandt said, “Why don’t we sit over here?” and indicated a round table in the corner of the office. “This isn’t an inquisition,” he added with a smile. “It’ll be more comfortable.”

  Jenn didn’t see how, since the chairs were identical to the chair she was sitting in, facing his desk. But she went along and crossed over to the table. She dumped her backpack next to a chair, plopped down, and waited. The other two sat at two angles from her. They all formed a triangle whose sides crossed the surface of the table.

  “You’re just finishing tenth grade,” Mr. Vansandt began. And when Jenn nodded, he said, “Been a good experience so far? South Whidbey High School and all the rest?”

  Jenn nodded again. Maybe this was part of his job, she thought, checking into the experience of each kid on campus, talking to three or four every day to make sure everything was okay. Could be this was an answer to the bullying that sometimes went on in schools. Mr. Vansandt would want to stay on top of that, nipping it in the bud wherever there was the potential for conflicts to bloom among students.

  He leaned forward and clasped his hands together. Ms. Primavera cocked her head of black curls and smiled in a way that looked like sympathy. Jenn felt a little churning in her stomach.

  “Let me ask you this, Jennifer,” Mr. Vansandt said. He was using a tone of voice that Jenn could only call delicate. “Has anything happened to you against your will while you’ve been at South Whidbey?”

  Jenn wanted to say that every test she’d taken was taken mostly against her will, but she decided that wasn’t what he meant. “Bullying, you mean?”

  “Not exactly.” Mr. Vansandt looked a little uncomfortable. Ms. Primavera looked placid, like a sleepy cat. She cleared her throat, but she didn’t speak. There was nothing for it but Mr. Vansandt to go on. “You’re a player on the soccer team. Isn’t that right? Varsity soccer even as a freshman?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I understand that you’re training pretty heavily for the All Island Girls’ Soccer team as well.”

  “It’s the best way to get noticed by college coaches,” Jenn said. “I mean, being on the team, not just training for it.”

  “And this is something important for you?”

  “I need a scholarship if I’m gonna go to college.”

  “Have a college picked out? U-Dub? Western? One of the private schools?”

  “I’ll end up going wherever I c’n get a scholarship.”

  “Grades looking good?”

  “Well . . . yeah . . . guess so.”

  “Three point one,” Mr. Vansandt said. “You’ll need to bring them up in the next two years.”

  “Sure. I want to.”

  This was so bizarre, Jenn thought. It felt more like making stabs at conversation, like something that would happen on a blind date . . . if she ever agreed to go on a blind date, which she never would.

  Then Mr. Vansandt clarified things a bit. He said, “You’ve been training with Cynthia Richardson and Lexie Olanov, I understand. How’s that working out?”

  “Good. Cynthia’s a great player. Our positions are different, but she’s been helping me with my moves.”

  “What about Lexie? She’s not a soccer player, from what I’ve learned.”

  From what I’ve learned rang a few alarm bells in Jenn’s head. Why was Mr. Vansandt checking into Lexie at all? And what did it matter who Jenn trained with? “Track and field,” Jenn said. “She’s been helping me build speed. She weight trains with us, too. She spots, mostly.”

  “Sounds like you’re fond of her.”

  A few more alarm balls went off. “I like her, sure.”

  “Cynthia, too?”

  Jenn looked from him to Ms. Primavera. The counselor’s face was unchanged, and her head was still cocked. Jenn thought she’d end up giving herself a stiff neck, and she wanted to reach across the table and right the counselor’s head before that happened.

  She said, “Yeah. Cynthia’s great.”

  “Good of her—and Lexie, of course—to help you out, then,” Mr. Vansandt said.

  Jenn said nothing. She nodded, though. Then she waited. Somewhere along the line, the principal was going to have to get to the point, if there was a point. Her armpits were getting a little sticky as she waited for it.

  Mr. Vansandt steepled his fingers. He, too, cocked his head. There was a lot of head-cocking going on. Jenn wondered it this was an adult thing, an unconscious movement that indicated something . . . only she didn’t know what that something was.

  Mr. Vansandt finally made things clear when he said, “I’ve had a phone call from your mom, Jenn. She has some concerns about your relationship with Cynthia and Lexie. Particularly with Lexie.”

  Jenn felt her face turning into stone. She didn’t reply.

  “Frankly your mother feels that you’re being coerced into a lesbian relationship,” Mr. Vansandt went on. The skin just above his shirt collar flushed. The red climbed his neck but went no farther. “She believes that you might have been talked into a sexual relationship in exchange for a job at G & G’s, over in Freeland. We know Lexie Olanov works there, so it seems that if you have been coerced in some way, Lexie might have been the person who’s done the coercing.”

  “No way!” Jenn cried.

  “‘No way’ what?” Mr. Vansandt asked. “No way that you were coerced? No way that you’re having a sexual relationship with Lexie? Which is it?”

  “No way to everything!” Jenn declared. “I can’t even believe my mom . . . I’m working there because I need the money. I got to have money to be on the All Girls’ team. There’s hardly any jobs for kids on the island and this job fell right into my lap. No way in hell was I not going to take it when they offered it to me.”

  “Lexie’s your
transportation to get there on time, isn’t she?”

  “So what? Look, my mom’s all . . . all . . . She’s all about the Bible and being baptized and going to church. Anything that looks to her like the path to hell freaks her out. When she came to the restaurant, she saw some lesbians and went ballistic. Then she invited her minister to pray over me or whatever and I can’t believe she called you! Cynthia and Lexie aren’t interested in me—like, sexually—and I’m not interested in them except as friends and athletes. I’m a normal human being—”

  “Let’s not start referring to some people as normal and some as abnormal, please.” It was, finally, Ms. Primavera speaking. She added, “If you’d like to come to the Gay Straight Alliance, you’ll see for yourself that everyone in the club is just like you.”

  “I’m not gay!” Jenn shouted.

  “I didn’t say you were,” Ms. Primavera replied, in a friendly fashion. “I meant just like you as in just a normal human being, Jenn, going through what every high school student goes through. The same kinds of experiences, the same kinds of problems.”

  Jenn seriously doubted that. She would have been willing to bet her position on next year’s varsity soccer team that no one in the club had a mom like hers.

  “That’s the purpose of the club,” Ms. Primavera said. “Mr. Vansandt wanted me to be here to invite you to attend a meeting. Cynthia’s president, by the way. Lexie Olanov is a member.”

  “Whatever,” Jenn said, but she crossed her arms over her chest. Her gesture said this conversation was over. She and her mom had some talking to do . . . if Jenn ever went home again, which she didn’t intend to after this scene.

  Mr. Vansandt said, “Well, your story matches Lexie’s, Jenn. It matches Cynthia’s as well. I’ve spoken to them both.”

  Jenn reeled at this one, smacked in the face by a perfect wave of humiliation. That her two friends would be called into the principal because of whatever insane thing her own mom had claimed on the phone . . . ? It was almost more than she could bear.

  • • •

  AT LUNCH, SHE marched right by the table of her regular lunch crowd over to Cynthia and Lexie. They were sharing a turkey wrap. A container of chopped fruit accompanied this. Both of them had a carton of nonfat milk.