“Like . . . where?”
“Don’t know.”
“Don’t know?” His question was backed by Everyone knows so she’s holding back Goth skanks always put it out there so what’s with—
Becca wanted to tell him she wasn’t a Goth, heavy makeup or not. Instead she said pleasantly, “Nope. Don’t know. I don’t do drugs.”
“Oh yeah right. Bet you get ‘good grades’ in school, too.” He made sarcastic air quotes on the good grades part. Hate straight skanks what a freaking poser went with this.
Seth said a little hotly, “You know, Becca is a—”
“S’okay, Seth,” Becca interrupted. “I like good grades. Don’t you?”
“Good grades don’t like me,” was Aidan’s reply. He turned the candle, using his palms as if this would warm them. “I get distracted too easy. That’s why I’m here. To get un-distracted.”
Seth joined him at the table once he’d helped Becca put away her shopping. She went for a recipe book, brought it to the table, and started leafing through it. She said, “You been at school this year? I don’t think I’ve seen you. You a junior? Senior?”
It turned out he was both of the above and neither of the above. He was taking classes and waiting for his credits to arrive from his previous school so South Whidbey could decide what the heck he was. His sister was a senior and he should be the same, but who the hell knew what was going to count up here.
“You got a twin?” Seth asked.
“Irish,” Aidan said. “I’m the mistake.”
“Huh?”
Aidan flipped the book of matches in his fingers. “It’s a lame expression for having two kids within a year of each other. My sister’s only ten months older’n me.”
“Wow. Fast work,” was Seth’s remark.
“Bad work.” Aidan leaned back in his chair, yawned, and scrubbed his hands in his too-black hair. His hands, Becca saw, both bore tattoos: a devil on one and an angel on the other. His fingernails were painted black. It came to her that Aidan Martin looked like someone in disguise. Just like her, he was running from something. She couldn’t help wondering what it was.
SIX
After Aidan and his grandmother departed, Becca set about dinner, which Seth shared with them. He didn’t seem to want to leave, but he also seemed to want Ralph to go to bed or go somewhere, which wasn’t like him. She figured something was up.
When he showed Becca the front page of the Record that he’d scored from the Cartwrights’ kitchen, she understood why he’d waited till Ralph took himself upstairs to bed. There she was, clearly in focus in a photograph, and Becca King clearly in focus on the front page of a paper was not a good thing. Seth was the only person who knew this. She was on the run. Her mom was on the run. The person they were running from had turned up once on Whidbey Island in a failed search for them both.
At the time Jeff Corrie had been looking for his wife and stepdaughter: Laurel Armstrong and her fatso kid called Hannah. But Laurel was now in hiding in British Columbia and Hannah Armstrong had long ago morphed into Becca King, who hadn’t been remotely fat in a year. Only the fake glasses, heavy eye makeup, dark lipstick, and black clothing remained of the girl she’d become on the run from Jeff Corrie.
Still, Becca logged on to the Internet at least once a week to see if her stepfather was making any progress in trying to find her. He wanted her back because he wanted her talent; he wanted to use that talent for his money schemes. But he had serious problems of his own now: Not only had his wife and stepdaughter disappeared, but so had his investment firm partner, Connor, and the investigation into these disappearances had been going on for a good six months. That would be keeping him occupied in San Diego. But it wouldn’t necessarily be keeping him away from the Internet, where googling Whidbey Island could lead to the Record could lead to looking at the Record could lead to Jeff Corrie laying his eyes on the Record’s front page. Where this could lead was to Jeff Corrie showing up again, only this time with a picture of Becca King and questions for the sheriff’s department.
That couldn’t happen, and Becca knew it. So did Seth.
Becca breathed out two words. “Oh no.”
Seth said, “I figured you needed to know. Lookit the caption, Beck.”
She read it. The photographer hadn’t asked their names. Because so few people lived on the south end of the island, most people knew everyone. So when she saw, “Derric Mathieson, Becca King, and Jennifer McDaniels show good sense in running away from the fire,” she assumed someone at the paper had supplied their identities. Derric’s would be simple, mostly because, born in Uganda and adopted into an island family, he was the only African boy at South Whidbey High School. As for Becca and Jenn, Becca was Derric’s girlfriend and Jenn’s family had been on the island for generations. It wasn’t rocket science to work out who they were. She studied the picture to see if she resembled her old self in any way.
She didn’t think so. But she couldn’t be sure. She needed an old photo of herself to compare.
• • •
BECCA WENT TO South Whidbey Commons after school. It sat on Second Street in the center of Langley, a community of some one thousand inhabitants whose colorful cottages were built high above the waters of Saratoga Passage. Some of these cottages had gone through conversions, becoming everything from boutiques to the local museum. One of the conversions was the Commons, painted mustard yellow with a late summer garden still blooming out front and a bookstore, art gallery, and coffee house within. At the very back was a room used for games and general hanging out. The computers were here. When Becca arrived, Seth was there too.
For some reason, so was Aidan Martin, along with about a dozen other kids and the other two members of Seth’s trio, Triple Threat. The musicians were playing an uplifting piece of gypsy jazz on mandolin, bass, and guitar. Their listeners had their gazes fixed on the amazing dexterity of the musicians’ fingers.
This didn’t apply to Aidan Martin. His skateboard was lying upside down across his lap and his fingers were spinning its wheels. He looked sardonically amused by everything around him. Midway through the piece, he set his skateboard on the floor and reached for a deck of cards on a nearby table. He manufactured an exaggerated yawn and began to shuffle.
What a dolt, Becca thought.
With everyone focused on Triple Threat, the computers were free. Becca logged on. She made short work of googling Jeff Corrie’s name. He wasn’t in the papers as often as he’d been initially, when Becca and her mom had taken flight from him. Then, he’d been dealing with multiple investigations. His plate crammed full of legal troubles, he’d done the smart thing. He’d lawyered up. From that point on, his lawyer had done the talking for him. But what the lawyer said was what the paper pointed out: There was no evidence of foul play associated with the disappearances of these people. There was only a trail of money that filtered to Connor and Jeff instead of to their investors and even that, the lawyer said, had been orchestrated by Connor to make Mr. Corrie look guilty. So why wasn’t the investigation centered on him? San Diego was a stone’s throw from the Mexican border and maybe the cops should be calling their cohorts there because it made a lot more sense to figure Connor West had slipped across that border than to believe Jeff Corrie had somehow done away with him without leaving a scrap of evidence, didn’t it?
Jeff was playing it smart, Becca concluded. Unless they found Connor’s body or she herself stepped up and explained how she helped the two men get money by listening to the investors’ thoughts to pinpoint their weaknesses, Jeff would stay a very free man. He’d also stay a man who was looking for her, and Becca’s blood went to ice cubes when she followed a link to an editorial in the San Diego paper and her gaze fell on the two words Whidbey Island.
“Corrie has said from the first that his wife’s cell phone was found on Whidbey Island,” she read, “and since the sheriff’s departme
nt in Coupeville, Washington, confirms this, one has to ask whether the man’s claims of persecution constitute yet another example of how things tend to go wrong in the San Diego police department.”
God, Becca thought, he was getting the newspaper on his side! Soon enough he’d be back up here searching for her.
She went back in time on the Web. She needed the first serious mention of the disappearance of Laurel and Hannah Armstrong. That was the one that featured their photos, her own being her fifth grade school picture.
When she found it, she took the front page of the Record from her backpack. She glanced around the room, satisfied to see that everyone was enthralled with Seth’s music. Quickly, then, she unfolded the page and compared herself now at nearly sixteen to the person she’d been in San Diego at the time of the picture: eleven years old and forty pounds overweight.
That much excess weight on a frame of less than five feet four inches made a lot of difference, and she could see that difference in the picture. Then, she’d had chipmunk cheeks and a gruesome double chin, and if the picture had been full length, she’d have been also looking at thunder thighs and a butt the size of West Virginia. She’d had long hair, bangs, and braces. All that was gone now, most especially the weight. When she held the newspaper picture up to the screen to compare it to the other photo, it didn’t seem to her that there was any resemblance.
Or maybe that was wishful thinking, she decided. What she really needed was to have Seth look at it because—
“What’re you doing?”
She swung around to see that Aidan Martin had come to the computers. He was standing directly to her left with a very fine view of the monitor. He was looking at it and looking at the front page of the paper and Becca knew that her only choice was to knock the ear bud of the AUD box away from her ear in the hope that she could pick up something from him.
Could not go for a guy with ear gauges no way . . . very hot . . . in tune because if it is I can join them . . . not about me at least thank God . . . sweet looking butt on that babe . . . don’t study for that physics quiz I am in such trouble . . . totally hot . . . not pregnant I swear . . . I hate her guts to the max she is such a liar . . . oh right she’s so not cheerleading material . . . dinner tonight because it is not my turn and I’m not going to make it no matter what she . . .
Useless, Becca thought. There were too many people. It was the curse of not being able to control anything, not the thoughts of others and not her life. She forced a laugh, said, “Whoops,” and put the ear bud back in. She said, “Helps me hear. It’s a brain thing. Sorry. What did you say?”
He pulled out the chair next to hers. “Just asked what you were doing.” He nodded again at the computer. He looked friendly enough but there was something weird about the way he watched her, with his upper lip jerking in a spasmodic tic.
She said, “An assignment. Art class. Facial structures. I’m hopeless.” She went back to the main Google page, folded the newspaper paper, shoved this into her backpack, and said, “The only thing I’m worse at is math. What about you?”
“I suck at everything.” He spun the back wheels of his skateboard, and added, “’Cept this and a snowboard.” He watched the wheels spin. Becca gave a little sigh of relief at the change of subject, but just when she thought she was safe, Aidan said abruptly, “So what about facial structures?”
“Like I said. Just an assignment.”
His blue eyes fixed on her disconcertingly. “What kind of assignment?”
“Some kid in class asked . . .” She thought furiously. She didn’t even take an art class. What the heck had she been thinking with this whole lie? She laughed self-consciously. “I can’t even remember what he asked. I was probably doodling or something. Anyway, we ended with this lame assignment about using a picture of ourselves and finding a picture of someone else and whatever.”
“Cripes. How can you stand school?” The question seemed casual, but he was still entirely focused on her, zeroing in, as if he had laser eyes into her brain.
She said, “I might as well like it since I’m stuck with it.”
He didn’t reply to this. Instead, he looked away from her, back at the musicians, and he nodded at Seth. He said, “I heard he dropped out,” and he made it sound like an idea that he himself wanted to grab onto.
“He took the GED,” Becca told him. “He works for a contractor now. He’s an amazing carpenter. And he’s got his music, which he writes, and—”
“You sound worried,” Aidan said, turning back to her. “What’s that about?”
Becca halted abruptly and felt herself getting hot from her neck to the top of her head.
He said, “Oh. Are you and him . . . ?” with a tilt of his head in Seth’s direction.
“No!” But her protest was way too loud. He was throwing her off. He was like someone in a boxing ring, jumping all around her and confusing her with punches. She said in a completely lame fashion, “I have a boyfriend.”
Aidan smirked. “Did you think I was coming on to you or something?”
“No! I mean . . . You said me and Seth . . .” God, she thought, what was going on?
As if on cue, Seth fingered expertly into a solo, and they turned to listen appreciatively. It was part of the performance of gypsy jazz. One musician at a time took a solo turn. At the end of Seth’s the audience applauded. But before the mandolin player launched into his solo, a young man rose from the audience and raised a fiddle to his shoulder. He began to play as if he’d rehearsed with the trio a thousand times.
Becca had never seen the young man before, but she knew that the musicians for the upcoming gypsy jazz festival were arriving in Langley, and this was probably one of them. Unlike Seth and the others, he completely looked the part of gypsy jazz musician. He had mounds of black hair tied back with a leather cord, he was swarthy-skinned, his eyes were so dark they were practically the color of coal, and he had gold earrings in his ears and four wedding bands on a chain around his neck. And he played the fiddle like someone who’d been doing it from the crib.
Best of all, he took Aidan’s attention away from Becca. He demanded everyone’s gaze, but especially the girls’. He radiated health, vitality, and sex. And when he smiled at the applause that followed his solo, Becca figured it was swoon-time for every girl in the room.
For her, it was time to disappear before Aidan Martin wanted to ask her any more questions. She waited long enough to hear Seth yelling, “Get over here, man!” to the fiddler, who moved through the people in order to join the trio. At that, she faded out of the room.
It was only when she was outside the Commons that she remembered she hadn’t shut down the computer.
SEVEN
Hayley Cartwright got called into the office of Tatiana Primavera just before lunch. Tatiana Primavera was the former Sharon Prochaska, who had changed her name long ago in the fashion of others newly born to the more offbeat aspects of island life. She was also the A through L counselor at South Whidbey High School, and one of her responsibilities was shepherding the A through L seniors through the process of applying to colleges and universities. Hayley was not on track with this. She wasn’t even exploring the possibilities.
That she didn’t intend to apply for higher education was what she was trying to make clear to Ms. Primavera when the lunch bell rang. Luckily that bell saved Hayley from a full-blown argument with the counselor. When Ms. Primavera dismissed her with “We’re not finished talking about this, young lady,” and “I’ll see you later,” Hayley made a swift escape to the New Commons, where the student body of the high school ate together.
The New Commons was sparsely populated on this day. Since the weather was still good, most everyone was eating outside. The lowlifes and the dopers were thus not represented at any of the tables. Neither were the athletes and their hangers-on, who were out in the sun, engaged in flexing their muscles and ha
ving their muscles admired.
Hayley was about to join her regular tablemates when someone locked onto her arm. “God,” Isis Martin said. “Why aren’t you in my French class? Where are we eating?” She didn’t wait for an answer as Hayley led her to the table she generally shared with her friends. They were already there, but Isis didn’t stop talking long enough to be introduced. “It was just the worst,” she said to Hayley. “You know Mr. Longhorn, right? Except, of course, we have to call him Monsieur, although if anyone could possibly look less like a monsieur, I don’t know who it is. So he’s ragging on me after class. Why? Well, excuse me but I got my period. And pardon me, but he wants me to explain why I missed the tardy bell? And I’m supposed to explain in French? Anyway, he’s all, ‘Mademoiselle, vous êtes whatever,’ and I’m trying to explain and he apparently decides he’s humiliated me enough for one day and he lets me go. Or at least I think he’s letting me go ’cause I start to walk off and he yells arretez, which I totally think he’s yelling at someone else. So I say, ‘What for God’s sake?’ and he writes me up for my attitude. Do you believe that?”
At last, Isis took a breath and a bite of her sandwich. Hayley heard Jenn McDaniels snicker. Jenn and Becca King were at the table with them, and Becca’s eyes—fixed on Isis—had become the size of silver dollars. As Hayley looked in her direction, she saw Becca remove the ear bud of her hearing thingy. Jenn said to Becca meaningfully, “I’d turn it up, not off,” and Hayley shot her a look to say Hey, cool it. So Isis was a talker, Hayley thought. She’s my friend and you accept your friends for who they are.
Becca’s gaze shifted to Hayley. Her lips curved in a small smile. It wasn’t a mean smile, though. Instead, it looked encouraging. Or encouraged. Or something because Hayley didn’t know for sure. And Isis was winding up again. She’d swallowed her bite of sandwich, taken a gulp of non-fat milk, and was about to say something when Derric Mathieson dropped onto one of the two empty chairs at their table.