She said, “I’m pretty close,” which was a total lie.
“Where’s it gonna be?”
“Don’t know. Like I said, I’m close but not there yet.”
But Seth was no fool. He heard something in her voice and he said, “Don’t play that game, Hayl. You got the smarts. So use ’em.”
She looked at him. “It’s not as easy as that and you know it, Seth Darrow.”
FOUR
Seth ended up going to his grandfather’s house for two reasons, only one of them having to do with his good news. The other one was inspired by eating the tuna sandwich he’d been promised by Mrs. Cartwright. He devoured it while sitting at the family’s kitchen table. There, he’d caught sight of the local newspaper discarded on a chair.
He never read the South Whidbey Record, because his reading skills were the pits. He wouldn’t have thought to read the paper then in the kitchen except for the fact that a picture on the front page attracted his attention. It wasn’t the most recent copy of the Record, he saw, because the story was about the fire at the fairgrounds. The fire had happened in the middle of August, and since it was now the beginning of September, he had to wonder why the paper was still lying around. As he was attempting to answer that question, he saw the picture.
Becca King was in it. So were Derric Mathieson and Jenn McDaniels. They weren’t especially close to the camera, but they were completely visible in the crowd because they were moving away from the fire and everyone else was moving toward it. Becca was especially visible. Wondering if she knew about this was what took Seth to his grandfather’s place.
Becca had lived there since the previous November. First she’d been hiding out in a sturdy, snug tree house built by Seth far back in Ralph Darrow’s forest. Now she was in Ralph’s house itself, trading housework and cooking for a room. She was also charged with keeping an eye on Ralph Darrow’s diet, which veered in the direction of Whidbey Island vanilla ice cream topped with whipped cream, nuts, and chocolate sauce for dinner if someone didn’t pull the plug on that one.
Seth’s grandfather lived on a huge spread of land off a road called Newman. You rumbled up a hill to get to it. Then you parked in an open space just below the crest, followed a path around the hilltop itself, and finally descended a trail toward a meadow. It was in front of you, then: a huge garden featuring rhododendrons the size of military tanks along with various dogwoods and a collection of specimen trees. The shingled house sat on one edge of this garden, with Ralph Darrow’s forest backing up to it.
At this time of year, like everyone else who had a garden, Ralph was in his. As Seth followed Gus down the trail that led to it, Ralph paused in his raking of the long-spent rhododendron blooms, pushed his wide-brimmed hat to the back of his head, and massaged the small of his back. He was seventy-three and when he looked around the property, Seth could see from his expression exactly what he’d seen from Hayley’s expression when she looked around her family’s farm. How the heck am I going to keep up with this place? The only difference was that Hayley didn’t need to keep up with her family’s place. She only believed she did.
Ralph caught sight of Seth’s dog first and then he saw Seth. He said, “Seth James Darrow. What brings you here this fine afternoon, favorite male grandson? And keep that damn dog out of my herbaceous border before I go after him with a shovel.”
Seth said, “Gus, no. Here, boy,” and he went to the porch where, inside a wooden chest, Ralph kept a supply of beef bones for the Lab. He rooted one out and Gus was happy to gnaw it. This left Seth free to talk to his grandfather.
Becca King, he discovered, was not at home. She’d gone off with Derric that morning and they’d not returned. She’d been charged with buying vegetables, eggs, cheese, late peaches suitable for jam making, and bread at the farmers’ market, Ralph told him. From there . . . who knew? Derric had been making cow eyes at her and she’d been doing much the same to him, so they could be anywhere at this point. “Such,” Ralph concluded, “are the ways of deep and abiding adolescent love.”
“Hey, you met Gram when you were fifteen,” Seth pointed out.
“I b’lieve that makes me an authority.” His grandfather nodded at a second rake that leaned next to the handrail of the porch steps. “Join me, grandson. What d’you want with Miss Becca?”
Seth couldn’t tell Ralph about the picture in the Record because of where it would lead if he gave his grandfather the information. So instead he said, “Wanted to tell her something. You, too.” He went on to share his good news: the GED and the invitation to play at Djangofest.
His grandfather smiled and tossed down his rake. “We are due,” he said, “for a celebration.”
Knowing that this would involve Whidbey Island vanilla and the trimmings, Seth sought a way to head his grandfather in another direction. That proved unnecessary as it happened because a shout of hello from the top of the hill and a “You! Ralph Darrow!” announced a visitor.
• • •
SETH LOOKED IN that direction to see they were being joined by a woman in overalls with disarranged gray hair somewhat tamed by a sagging French beret. Behind her trudged a boy. He looked either bored or ticked off but it was hard to tell which. His hair was dyed black, and his face bore bizarre mutton chop sideburns like something out of another century. He was tall and gangly with shoes the size of hockey stick blades and jeans so baggy the crotch was nearly at his knees. He wore all black. He was carrying a skateboard under his arm and gazing around as if to say there sure as heck wasn’t going to be a place to ride it here.
Seth didn’t know either one of these people, but he figured his grandfather did. Ralph Darrow knew everyone on the south end of the island, especially old-timers, and this lady looked like an ancient hippie who’d come to Whidbey sometime in the late 1960s, probably wearing what she wore now: sandals, a tie-dyed T-shirt, jeans, and obviously handmade socks. When she reached them, she smiled, and said, “There you are, Ralph Darrow.” Seth saw that some of her teeth were missing.
She was, he discovered, one Nancy Howard, and the boy with her was her grandson Aidan Martin. He’d been on the island for a while, he’d moved up here from Palo Alto, California, with his sister, he’d done “jack-darn-all to meet anyone and I mean even at the high school and don’t lie about that, young man,” so his grandmother Nancy had “hogtied him into the passenger seat of the camper” in order to do something about that. She’d heard Ralph Darrow had a young thing boarding with him, and Aidan here was going to meet that person. Nancy glanced at Seth expectantly, as if he were the young person in mind. She looked pretty doubtful about that. Seth was too old for high school and he looked it.
“That’s Becca King,” he told her.
“She’s out and about,” Ralph said to Nancy Howard. He extended his hand to the boy and said to him, “Ralph Darrow, Mr. Aidan Martin. This young man is my grandson Seth: builder, carpenter, and first-rate musician.”
Aidan looked largely indifferent to the introduction, but this wasn’t something to deter his grandmother. She said, “You boys go get to know each other. Shoo, now. I want to ask Ralph about his rhodies.” She turned her back to do this, drawing Ralph over to his prized New Zealand specimen.
That left Seth to deal with Aidan. He called to Gus and said to the boy, “Show you the pond if you want to see it.” Aidan shrugged. He shifted his skateboard to a spot beneath his other arm, and he shuffled along in Seth’s wake as Gus came loping from the porch, with the bone in his jaws like a duck he’d retrieved.
The pond was old but not a natural feature of the land. Ralph had backhoed it into existence at about the time he’d also constructed the house. It lay immensely in a dip of the land, with lawn growing up to its edge on its near side and a deep green conifer forest leaping up on its far side. Trails led off into this forest, one of them to Seth’s tree house, others making long loops elsewhere. Gus headed for the tree house tra
il, but Seth called him back by means of a ball. Next to gnawing bones, Gus loved chasing balls. It was something to do, Seth figured, while he showed the kid the pond.
Aidan, he saw, was not impressed. He stared at the pond with dull eyes and said, “Yeah. Cool.” That was the limit, a real conversation ender.
Seth said, “You a boarder, huh?” in reference to the skateboard. “Snowboard, too?”
“Hell yeah,” Aidan said. “You board around here? Does anyone?” He asked the question like a kid who thought Whidbey Islanders were living in a period prior to the existence of skateboards. He didn’t seem to expect an answer, either. He dug deep in the pocket of his jeans and brought out a pack of Camels. He said, “You got a match?” which Seth didn’t. When Seth told him this, the other boy swore and shoved the cigarettes back where he’d found them. He set his skateboard on the ground and sat on it, staring moodily at the surface of the pond. He said, “Christ, what a pit. How d’you stand living here? She doesn’t even have Internet. You got Internet?”
Seth joined him on the ground. Gus ran over with the ball in his mouth. Seth kept throwing it to keep the dog entertained. He said, “Here?” and gestured around the place. “Nope. Grand doesn’t believe in the Internet.”
“So how the hell d’you . . . I dunno . . . How do you talk to your friends?”
“I don’t live here,” he said. “I got Internet where I live. They got it in the Commons, if you need it. South Whidbey Commons. In Langley. You been there? It’s where kids hang out.”
Aidan scoffed. “She wants to handpick who I meet,” he said. “So if it’s kids in general and she don’t know them or at least know about them . . . ? No way. I might get in ‘trouble.’” He sketched quotation marks in the air. He snorted. “She makes me run to the beach and back twice a day,” he went on. “Isis goes, too, because she’s my frigging guard, you know? She rides a bike so I can’t ditch her.” He smiled to himself. “I ditch her anyway. Into the forest and what’s she gonna do? Ride after me? Not hardly. She might break a fingernail. She doesn’t want to tail me anyway. She hates it here as much as I do.”
“Who’s Isis?” Seth asked, as there wasn’t much else Aidan was giving him to go on conversation-wise, aside from a general air of unpleasantness that Seth decided it was best to ignore.
“Sister,” he said. “Prison guard. Whatever.” He looked around, his expression indifferent. “What do people freaking do around here?”
Seth thought about telling him that the island was pretty much like everywhere else. Whatever you wanted, you could find if you looked hard enough as long as it wasn’t a fast-food chain, of which there were none except a single Dairy Queen on the highway coming up from the ferry dock. But he figured Aidan would work things out for himself.
A question gave Seth the information that the boy was enrolled at South Whidbey High School, so Seth knew that all Aidan had to do was ask around for what he wanted. The school was small, but it was like any other high school in the country: There were your dopers, your athletes, your heavy scholars, your techies, your various kinds of artists, your losers, your dweebs. There was booze aplenty. There were drugs of all kinds. There were also parties that featured both. Since the kid didn’t look like a narc and he didn’t act like one, he’d do okay if he lost the attitude.
Seth said, “Kids do regular stuff, I guess,” to which Aidan replied with a guffaw, “I bet.”
Seth felt himself bristle at this implied judgment of a place he’d lived all his life. He started to say something but Aidan interrupted.
“Sorry, man,” he said quickly as if he realized how he’d been acting. “I c’n be a real asshole sometimes.”
FIVE
Becca and Derric shared a long kiss. His hands in her hair, she lost the ear piece of the AUD box and caught not much longer really want . . . from him. This matched what she was thinking, so she wasn’t surprised. But she also wasn’t ready.
It was simple for her. When she gave herself to someone, it was going to be Derric. But she wasn’t going to do it in the back of a car, on someone’s sofa, out in the woods, or half-freezing to death at night on a Whidbey beach. She wanted . . . well, what did she want? She hadn’t yet worked that one out. All she knew was that the time wasn’t right.
They’d done the shopping at the farmers’ market. They’d gone from there deep into the woods to a place called Mukilteo Coffee, where roasting beans filled the air with the scent of burnt toast and where a few dollars bought them a lunch to share, out on the back deck looking into the forest. Now they were sitting inside Derric’s Forester, in Ralph Darrow’s parking area. Two other vehicles were next to them: Seth’s restored Bug and a completely un-restored, rusty, rickety-looking VW camper van. The presence of these vehicles was what put the brakes on their make-out session. Getting caught with Derric’s hand up her T-shirt . . . That would be too embarrassing.
Becca said, “Got to go,” against Derric’s mouth and she caressed his perfect, shaven skull.
“See you tomorrow, then?”
“Only if you’re up for homework.”
“You’re killing me,” he told her, but he said it with his highwattage smile.
A final long kiss and she scooped up the shopping bags from the back seat. She watched until his car disappeared back down the hill. Then she turned and headed for Ralph Darrow’s house.
She saw the driver of the VW camper straight off when she peaked the hill. An older lady stood in the garden below, talking to Ralph, and when Ralph saw Becca, he gave a yell for Seth. She saw Seth then, a few moments later. He came from the pond with Gus bounding around him, in the company of a strange-looking boy. It was the sight of this boy that encouraged Becca to leave the AUD box’s ear piece out of her ear. He was projecting an attitude that made a chill run down her spine.
She got nothing in the way of thoughts from anyone as she descended. It wasn’t until she was closer that the first of the scattered mental murmurings filtered through the air. And then it was damn not what I thought, which she assumed had to come from the older woman, because she was openly assessing Becca, like someone who’s looking at a horse to buy. After that came saved by the Becca bell . . . could be something good for the boy but God knows that nothing’s helped to make him . . . I can’t forget to tell her about the picture . . . she keeps her wits about her with that young man . . . would have been way cool . . . what’s with the face paint . . . some half-Goth skank . . . what you’d expect . . . frigging dumb idiot sometimes . . . besides making him run to the damn beach.
It was a lot to deal with all at once, but the length of the fractured thoughts pleased Becca mightily. What floated to her was still broken up by what other people would have called static, but to Becca it marked the progress she’d made in hearing more and more of what she’d learned to think of as whispers. In her earliest years the thoughts of others had come to her only as simple words. Then they’d advanced to phrases whose ownership she couldn’t identify. Now she was beginning to snatch full sentences out of the air. She wasn’t always sure who was thinking what, but often the context was enough to tell her.
She hadn’t got far in blocking out the whispers without aid of the AUD box, though. That was the ultimate goal: to hear the complete thoughts of whoever was nearby, but only when she wanted to hear them.
Ralph called out, “Meet our guests, Miss Becca,” and gestured to her to join them. He introduced her and added, “They’re your fellow Californians. Least, Aidan here is.”
Becca said hi and indicated the bags she was carrying. “Want to come inside?” she said to Aidan. “Got to put these away and find a recipe that disguises brown rice, or Mr. Whidbey Vanilla here won’t eat it.”
“We c’n eat the ice cream for him,” Seth told her, taking two of the shopping bags from her.
“Break your arm first,” was Ralph’s reply to this. But he walked Nancy Howard to the far side o
f the garden, where they continued their discussion about his plants.
More time for them to get to know each other put Becca in the picture of what she was intended to do. She shot Aidan a smile, but he didn’t return it. Whatever, she thought, and she led the way to the house.
Aidan asked her where she was from as soon as they got inside. She stalled on answering because where he was from was pretty crucial. The story she’d been telling for a year was that she was from San Luis Obispo, California, and if he was from anywhere near that town, she would be in trouble when it came to questions of “Hey, do you know . . . ?” which she wouldn’t be able to answer. So she put away veggies and fruit and eggs and she pretended she didn’t hear him long enough to hear Seth ask him where he was from. Palo Alto, it turned out. She had about two hundred miles to play with, then.
She turned from the counter. Aidan was at the table. A candle sat at its center and he was playing with it. He lit it from a book of matches that lay nearby. He stared at the flame.
“San Luis Obispo,” she told him.
“Cow town,” he said. “I went there once. What a dump.”
Becca and Seth exchanged a look. “Oh well,” she said.
Aidan seemed with it enough to catch her tone because he said immediately, “Sorry,” and looked around the kitchen as if seeking inspiration for what to say next. He settled on, “So what d’you guys do around here?” Out of here on the next ferry indicated his own wishes in the matter.
“Aside from school?” Becca said. “Football games. Dances. Parties. Hanging out. Kids go over to the mall in Lynnwood. What else?” She asked this of Seth.
“Biking, hiking, kayaking, camping, hunting, clamming, fishing, crabbing.”
Aidan looked back at the burning candle and said, “Fab,” as if what he meant was “Shoot me first.” Then he said, “What’s the dope scene?”
“What you want is here. I guess,” Becca said.