They hiked for ten minutes to reach the clearing where the hemlocks stood. It was pitch-black out there, and Becca ended up grateful for Seth’s companionship. She had her own flashlight, which she’d rustled from her backpack, but the wind had risen along with the rain, and the creaking branches of all the alders, firs, and cedars made her jumpy. It was comforting to have Seth hiking in front of her. It was even more comforting when he didn’t pause as they reached the clearing, but instead grabbed an armload of firewood from its spot behind a fallen tree’s massive root-ball. He carried this to the ladder of the tree house and heaved it upward and through the trapdoor.
From the first, it had been no ordinary tree house. It had been built to last, tightly constructed, with a sound roof that kept out the wind, the rain, and the snow, as well as double-paned windows that held in the heat. It contained a small woodstove to make the place warm, and here Becca had hidden night after night, week after week, with a lantern for light, a cot and sleeping bag as her bed, jugs of water to quench her thirst, and a Coleman stove to cook her meager meals. Her “bathroom” was a bucket squirreled away in the bushes, along with a shovel and a rake to bury whatever needed to be buried. It was a grim kind of life, complete with showers in the girls’ locker room at school, but she was surviving.
It was also the life Derric wanted to know about. “Where the hell are you staying?” had become the demand he’d started making along with “Come on. What’s with Seth Darrow? What the hell is going on?”
She couldn’t blame him. She’d spent Thanksgiving at his family’s house: Derric’s chosen girlfriend. But when it came time to leave, she left they way she’d arrived, on her mountain bike, refusing all offers of transportation. When she did the same at Christmas, Derric started asking questions. He’d asked more questions when he’d seen her in town in Seth’s VW. “We’re just friends” didn’t cut it for Derric. “There isn’t a problem,” she tried to tell him. But of course, this was a lie.
There was a problem, and it was his father. Since Dave Mathieson was the under sheriff of Island County, it wasn’t likely that he would let things go unnoticed if he learned that a minor was living alone in a forest tree house. Besides, in the autumn he’d been on the trail of a cell phone owned by someone called Laurel Armstrong. He’d given that up but the last thing Becca wanted him to know—aside from where she was living—was that Laurel Armstrong was her own mother, on the run with Becca from San Diego.
Her secrets from Derric were driving a wedge between them. The fact that he had a secret—which she alone knew—only made things worse. He wanted to make the ground level between them. You know my stuff, I know yours. But this was something she couldn’t allow. She told herself it was for his own good, but sometimes she wondered if she was being honest.
Inside the tree house, Seth went for the little wood-burning stove. He’d taught Becca how to bank a fire, but all along she’d had trouble getting it right. This time was no different. He frowned at the cold and put his hand on the stove top. “Beck.” He sighed.
“I know, I know.”
She set about unpacking the Star Store bag. It contained cold cuts, a carton of milk, a dozen hard-boiled eggs, a loaf of bread, two sandwiches, three rolls of toilet paper. There was even a magazine, an old issue of People with The Sexiest Man Alive! on the cover. She set it to one side and took one of the eggs. As Seth rebuilt the fire, she peeled it, watching him. Funny how you couldn’t tell about people, she thought. Seth seemed and looked like a parent’s worst nightmare: He was a high school dropout with too-long hair, ever-enlarging ear gauges, and—she saw—a newly pierced eyebrow. He wasn’t tattooed, but that was probably coming. That he was nicest person ever was something that didn’t ride on the surface of her friend.
“How’s the music going?” she asked him. He slammed the door of the woodstove once he had the fire lit.
“Two gigs coming up in Lynwood. Another in Shoreline.” He grinned. “We’re working our way toward Seattle. Any day now, baby.”
“You write anything new?”
“Yep.”
“Cool. C’n I hear?”
“S’pose. If I could play the woodstove, which I can’t.”
She rolled her eyes. “Very funny. You know what I mean. When’re you guys rehearsing again?”
“Don’t know. GED’s coming up. I’m sort of concentrating on that. The music part—I mean the writing, composing, you know—that’s just on the side right now.”
“Got it.” She extended one of the eggs to him.
“That’s for you,” he said.
“I’ll pay you back.”
“Someday,” he said. “Either that or I’m gonna beat it out of you.”
She knew he was kidding, but she also knew that she couldn’t go on taking money from Seth in the form of the supplies he’d brought her for the last two and a half months. It wasn’t fair, and the only way to end the unfairness was to find a job. She said, “Whatever. But I can’t let you keep spending money on me.”
“Like I said, it’s cheap entertainment,” he told her. “What’s happening these days with Derric?”
She made a face. “Still the same. ‘What’re you doing with Darrow? Where’re you living? What’s going on?’”
“You should probably tell him. I can see why he’s getting the wrong idea, Beck. It’s a guy thing. You can’t blame him.”
“I’m not blaming him. I’m just asking him to trust that what I’m telling him is all I can tell him. It’s like he thinks you and I are hooking up in secret. As if,” she said.
“Uh . . . thanks.”
“I didn’t mean it like that. Anyway, he got ticked at me again today and then I saw him deliberately having one of those let’s-get-chummy conversations with one of the cheerleaders later. And he wanted me to see them talking, I know it. He wants me to see he can have anyone he wants. And I know that, too. I’m not exactly stupid.”
Seth rustled in the backpack he’d worn from the VW as he listened to this. “One of the cheerleaders?” he said. “Major bummer.” He brought out a sack of cheddar popcorn and he used his teeth to rip it open. He said, “Want some, then? It’s past its sell-by date, but nothing says ‘screw the world’s cheerleaders’ better than popcorn.”
NINE
Jenn McDaniels decided that the amusement value of being Annie Taylor’s guide to Langley was pretty much nil. She’d ended up inside South Whidbey Commons with Annie because she could have gone two ways in the late afternoon: accompany Annie to the meeting of the seal spotters that the young woman had read about online or wrestle her brothers into cleaning their room while her mom cooked dinner and recited dutifully memorized passages from the Old Testament. Between the two options, showing Annie Taylor the ropes in Langley had seemed more appealing. Now, though, Jenn wasn’t sure she’d made the right choice.
It was hot as hell in the room. There were too many people in too little space coughing and hacking with winter colds. And she wanted a cigarette. Annie had promised pizza when the meeting was over, but the meeting had gone on forever so far and not a single thing had been resolved. Jenn couldn’t see what the fuss was all about. The coal black seal had shown up early. And this was a dire event in the lives of the islanders . . . why? No one seemed to have an answer to this question. Least of all did Annie Taylor, who had spent most of the meeting taking notes like someone about to be tested on the topic. When she wasn’t scribbling onto a legal tablet, she was leaning into Jenn whispering, “Who’s that guy talking?” and “What d’she say, Jenn?” and “How many seal spotters are we talking about?” and “Is there more than one organization watching for that seal?”
Jenn had no big answers. The identity of the main guy talking was the only question she could address. He was Ivar Thorndyke, and as far as Jenn knew, he was the person who’d established the whole dumb organization of people who watched for the black seal up and down th
e coast. They had binoculars, telescopes, and a telephone tree. They had an Internet site and documents of the seal’s every movement. What they didn’t have was a life, Jenn scoffed. God, she wanted a cigarette.
While she was sitting in the room enduring the general oddball nature of the seal spotting debate and wondering whether Annie Taylor would ever have enough of it, she caught sight of the SmartAss FatBroad, which made everything worse. Geez, she wished that creepoid would take a very long walk off a very short pier. It was bad enough having to see her ugly mug at school. Running into her in town was enough to make Jenn vomit. She flipped her one when Becca caught sight of her and she sputtered a laugh when the FatBroad’s eyes took this in and widened with surprise. What? Jenn thought. You don’t know I’d like to kick your fat butt all the way to wherever you came from? Hell, I thought I’d made that clear from Day Number One.
She saw Seth Darrow, then. Obviously, he was who the FatBroad had come looking for. What they were up to was one for the books. What did she want with Seth? She had Derric and he wasn’t enough?
They left together, Becca King and Seth Darrow. Jenn gave them time to disappear. Then she caught a glimpse of a Goth from school who followed them shortly upon their departure. Cool, she thought. If anyone in the place had a cigarette to bum, it was going to be Augusta Savage. She loved nothing better than corrupting people. Jenn squeezed out of the meeting to catch up to her.
As luck would have it, Augusta was lighting up under a nearby streetlamp. Two Goth boys were slouching her way from the direction of a little community park up on the corner of Second and Anthes streets. But they were still some distance away, so Jenn figured she could score a smoke before the guys got to Augusta and distracted her with their dubious wonderfulness. She was that kind of odd-o. Boys came first. As long as they had the appropriate equipment, they were fine with Augusta.
Jenn said hey to her and Augusta cast an indifferent look in her direction. They’d been to grade school together, but you wouldn’t know it by how Augusta appeared now and how she acted. Then she’d been all blonde ringlets and Mary Jane shoes with tights that matched her myriad outfits. Now she sported a half-shaved head of black hair with ends so split they might have been snake tongues, and the rest of her was piercings, chains, and Doc Martens all the way. She pretended not to recognize Jenn. Whatever, Jenn thought. Just hand over a smoke.
She said, “Got a coupla extras?” to Augusta.
“Extras of what?” Augusta said, ennui itself making the supreme effort to speak aloud.
“Smokes,” Jenn said impatiently.
“Oh. Smokes,” Augusta said. “I thought you meant tits.” She smiled her slow and knowing smile, her eyes fixed on Jenn’s nonexistent breasts. “When’re you going to grow some?” she asked. “You even started your period yet?”
“You could’ve just said no to the cigarettes,” Jenn advised her. “It’d save you all the effort, Augusta.”
Augusta rolled her eyes and dug in a black hobo bag that hung from her shoulder. She took out a cigarette and broke it in half. “Best I can do,” she told her.
The two Goth boys were upon them then, and Augusta drew one of them into an embrace by hooking her leg around his. She kissed the other guy in a way that made kissing anyone look completely repulsive. Jenn left her to it and headed for one of the outdoor tables in front of the Commons. There she lit up and took a very nice hit. It wasn’t good for her, it slowed her down in soccer, and she had to quit if she wanted to make it athletically. But she’d been smoking since she was ten years old, and it was a habit now. She’d quit tomorrow. She closed her eyes and settled back to enjoy the guilty delight.
Someone snatched the cigarette from her fingers. Her eyes flew open as Squat Cooper stomped it to bits on a paving stone. She said, “Hey!” to which he replied, “Stunts your growth, gives you cancer, makes wrinkles, turns your teeth yellow, and creeps out your breath. Not to mention what it does to the now extremely remote possibility of anyone putting his tongue inside your mouth.”
“I just bummed that from Augusta Savage,” she told him.
“Who names their kid Augusta?”
“If my name was Fergus and everyone called me Squat, I don’t think I’d be mentioning anyone else’s name,” Jenn pointed out.
“Piquant and amusing, my friend. What’re you doing here, anyway?”
“What’re you doing here?”
“First asked, first answered.”
She sighed. Squat was . . . so completely Squat. She told him about the meeting going on.
Squat lowered himself into one of the chairs at her table, rested his elbows on his knees, shook his head, and said, “This’s got to be the only place on the planet where they’d call a town meeting about a seal.”
“It’s not a town meeting. It’s Ivar Thorndyke and the seal spotters.”
Squat guffawed. “Even better. This is the only island on the planet where people join a club to watch for a seal.” He pretended to hold binoculars to his eyes and he altered his voice to a high-pitched tone. “‘Oh, Jeffrey, Jeffrey! Come and see! I think she’s arrived! Shall we alert the media?’” Then he lowered the binoculars and his voice as well. “‘No, Bunny-pie. That’s a small submarine you’re looking it. We’re being invaded by the terrorists, but no worries. As long as they don’t touch our Nera, all’s well, my dear.’”
Jenn had to smile. He was right. Whidbey Island was a loony bin half the time. The other half it was so boring to live here that she thought she’d petrify before she managed to get herself permanently onto the mainland. “So what’re you doing in town?” she asked him.
“Babysitting the twins.”
His half-brother and half-sister, fruit of his father’s second marriage to the executive assistant for whom he’d left Squat’s mom. It had been one of those scandals-of-the-century kinds of departures for Mr. Cooper because Squat’s older brother had walked in on Dad and the executive assistant. And she’d not been executively assisting him.
Jenn looked around. “So where are they?”
“At the Clyde. There’s a Pixar movie showing. Toy Story Twenty-Five: Finding Nemo under the Ratatouille. I have no clue. I left them there with popcorn, M&M’s, Junior Mints, and Milk Duds. If I play my cards right, someone’ll abduct them for the candy. I can’t hope they’d be abducted for themselves.”
Jenn chuckled. “You’re evil.”
“Hey, the babes all want evil guys. Nice guys like me when I’m the normal me? No one’s interested. Except you, of course. That kindergarten milk-sharing thing we’ve got going.”
“Or something,” she told him.
“When you figure it out, let me know what it is.” He got to his feet.
“Where to now? Want to check out the meeting?”
“That seal,” he said with a shake of his head. “I think I’ll go peep into windows instead.”
He sauntered off, hands in the pockets of his jeans. There wasn’t much to do to kill time in town, aside from reading the public announcements on the bulletin boards in the coffeehouses, the post office, and the vestibule of the Star Store. But she figured that didn’t bother Squat Cooper. He’d probably just work a few calculus problems in his head.
There was nothing for it but to return to the Commons. Inside, Ivar Thorndyke had set up his computer. He was showing everyone the most recent picture of the seal that had been taken. He was telling everyone that she hadn’t been close to shore yet, but this picture had been taken up north from the beach at Joseph Whidbey State Park and she swam near enough for people to tell it was Nera.
Ivar’s concern was Nera’s health, he said. Showing up early might mean she was sick. They’d had a pod of bottlenose dolphins in the sound that one year, did everyone remember? They were out of territory and all of them died and no one knew why. “Now, we don’t want that happening to Nera,” he declared.
Th
at’d definitely ruin the seal festival, Jenn thought, unless they wanted to do the taxidermy thing on the seal and carry her through the village like some saint in a big glass coffin. Jenn worked her way over to Annie Taylor, who was squinting at the picture of Nera as if trying to see the seal more clearly. She said, “Any idea of her age?”
Several heads swiveled in Annie’s direction. She was a stranger, and it was odd for a stranger to turn up at one of the seal spotters’ meetings. Jenn thought about introducing Annie to the people but she didn’t have to, for Annie introduced herself. She told them she was a marine biologist, and if there was something she could do to help . . . ?
Ivar’s face lit up at that one. He picked two brochures from a nearby table and passed them over to her. “You might be the answer we need,” he told her. “Let’s talk after the meeting and see ’f that’s the case.”
The meeting ended with commitments made on the part of the seal spotters. Now that Nera was in the area and a photo proved it, there had to be regular watchers along her route, which followed the west side of the island. They needed daily reports at specific times. They needed to know where the seal was sighted, what time she was sighted, what she appeared to be doing, how long she lingered wherever she showed up. Anything unusual needed to be reported, Ivar told them. Use the Web site.
Whatever, Jenn thought. She was starving to death. Village Pizza was over on First Street, and she was ready for a large one with sausage, olives, and mushrooms. But when the meeting broke up, Annie approached Ivar.
She got all over the topic of Nera’s early arrival, telling Ivar that if the seal was sick, there was only one way to help her. She’d need medication, and a wildlife specialist had to be brought in to deal with this. An evaluation of her health could be made and while they had her in captivity, it would be an excellent opportunity to take a sample of her DNA.