Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (18 page)

For the moment, she was safe.

• • •

THE MOMENT DIDN’T
last long. Becca waited for five minutes, shivering in the cold, after Ralph Darrow left the clearing. She listened hard for his return, but the only sound she heard was the
rat-a-tatt
ing of a pileated woodpecker on a dead alder nearby. She finally gathered up her courage and made a dash for the clearing, its two hemlocks, and the tree house. She scrambled up the stairs and across the balcony. She zipped inside the place and there she huddled, relatively safe. Or so she thought.

Not fifteen minutes later, she heard it. Someone was coming up the stairs. The movements were stealthy, but she was listening hard. She knew what had happened. He’d gone for a weapon.

Of
course
, she thought. He didn’t know who was inside the tree house, aside from the fact that someone was trespassing on his property. It could be a criminal on the run, a dope dealer, a smuggler, a terrorist, anyone. For all he knew, the person inside the tree house was armed. Naturally, he’d arm himself as well.

The trap door made a small squeak when it opened. Becca stifled a cry as furtive footsteps came toward the door. She saw the knob of it turn, and it began to open. She wondered if she had time to get by him, time to run for the stairs, time to flee altogether. She gathered her wits and her courage to make a run for it, drawing in a deep breath and—

It was Seth. He had an armload of wood. She hadn’t lit the lantern and the place was dark, so he didn’t see her. He jumped and yelped when she said, “Don’t light a fire.”

“You scared the holy crap out of me!”

“Your grandpa was here,” she told him.

“Here? Where? Inside the tree house?”

“Below. He saw my footprints everywhere. Yours too. He looked up the ladder but he didn’t climb up.”

“Cool. That means—”

“That means he’s gone to call the cops or he’s gone for a gun.”

“He doesn’t own a gun. Well, maybe he does, but I’ve never seen it.” He went to the stove and dropped the wood onto the floor. He began to mess around with the fire.

“Don’t!” she said.

“Chill,” he told her. “It’s okay. I’ll talk to him.”

“Talk? About
what
? Seth, you can’t.”

“Got to. If he’s seen our footprints, he knows something’s up. He’s going to ask me what. I need to tell him.”

“But he’ll make me leave. He’ll want to know . . . Seth, you can’t tell him anything!”

“He’s cool, Becca. It won’t be a problem. I should’ve said something a while back.”

“Seth, no! He’ll ask . . . I can’t tell . . . Please. Never mind. I have to leave.”

She began grabbing her belongings, shoving them into the duffel bag that Seth had provided her months ago. He said, “Hey. What’re you doing?”

“What’s it look like? I’m packing up to go.”

He headed for the door at this. He said, “No way. Where’re you going to go to? For God’s sake, let me try to handle this before you go tearing out of here, okay? Have a little faith.”

“Where are
you
going?” she demanded.

“To
tell
him something. He knows I’m using the tree house, so I’ll let him—”

“Are you
loaded
or something?”

“Hey—”

“Really, I mean it. Because you have to be if you think your grandfather’s going to go for some girl on the run hiding out in his tree house.”

“Cripes, you must think I’m an idiot. I’m not telling him that.”

“
What,
then?”

“We’re hanging out here, you and me. It’s the place we come to . . . you know.”

“What? To have sex? You’re going to tell him we’re having sex up here? Oh that’s just great. He’s going to love that. Especially when you tell him I’m only fifteen.”

“He’s not going to ask how old you are. And I’m not going to tell him we’re having sex. Just that—”

“What? We’re smoking dope? He’s going to
know
I’m hiding out here.”

“Don’t be so paranoid. It’ll work out.” And to prove this to her, he left the tree house with the words, “I’ll be right back.”

• • •

BECCA’S DREAD OF
the outcome increased while Seth was gone. At first, she thought about following him through the woods to Ralph Darrow’s house. She’d tell a version of the truth to the old man, she decided. And then she’d throw herself on his mercy. But what version of the truth would work? The one in which her mom dropped her off at the ferry dock and then just disappeared? The one in which she read her stepfather’s mind and ran with her mom from San Diego? The one in which she’d been hiding out on Ralph Darrow’s property because she was afraid for her life? What could she tell him that wouldn’t require one explanation on top of another explanation leading to the Big Explanation: I sort of read minds and it got me into trouble.

No. It seemed to her that, like it or not, she had to depend on Seth. She had to believe that he could cook up a story that Ralph Darrow would believe. And he needed to believe it as long as it took for her to find another place to live. For now that he knew there was someone using the tree house on his property—no matter what Seth told him the reason was—he’d be wary, aware, on guard, whatever. It stood to reason, too, that he’d be back to check on the place from time to time.

She peered out the window into the darkness. She willed Seth back. She double-willed him to tell his grandfather something that Ralph Darrow would accept. He needed to believe that no one was living in the tree house, that Seth and someone were using it only as the occasional hangout, a place to meet, to talk, to play music, to write music, to
whatever
, and then to depart. Anything else wasn’t going to work.

Come on, she thought. Come on. Come
on
.

An hour passed. Then another. During the first one, Becca packed her belongings. During the second, she grabbed her flashlight, left the tree house, and descended the ladder. She knew the route to Ralph Darrow’s house. It seemed to her that her only choice was to trace it.

It carved through the forest where the undergrowth was thick, even at this time of year. So one could leap behind a huge growth of salal just off the path if concealment was necessary. In the height of summer, with the brambles grown in and the stinging nettles flourishing, that would be impossible.

As she got closer to the clearing that held Ralph Darrow’s house and his spectacular garden of rhododendrons, Becca began to smell the woodsmoke. A few more minutes brought her to the edge of the forest, where she paused and peered around to see what was what. No one was outside, but lights were on in the house. Smoke issued from the large, stone chimney. Seth, she decided, would still be inside.

She crept forward. She’d never been in Ralph Darrow’s house, but she’d peered through the windows, which was what she did now. The fireplace, she knew, was in the living room. That would be where Seth was . . . if he was still within.

They were playing chess.
Chess,
of all things! There she’d been—out in the woods with what felt like her whole life in the balance—while Seth and his grandfather had been playing chess!

She fumed. She wanted to bang on the window. Had Seth actually managed to
forget
what he’d set out to do? Could she not even depend on him, her friend, her
only
friend . . . ? She wanted to stomp her feet and vent and yell.

He felt something because he looked up. His eyes met hers. He gave a nearly imperceptible shake of his head. He glanced at his grandfather, then back at her. She got the message and beat a retreat.

Not to the tree house, though. She couldn’t return there without knowing the worst. She went as far as the path back into the forest and there she waited. She did not wait long.

“Now
that
was a dumb move,” Seth said when he joined her ten minutes later.

“What the
hell
were you doing?” she demanded. “You said you were going to talk to him. Did you actually
forget
or something? I’m out there wondering and waiting and worrying, and you’re playing
chess
? What’s wrong with you?”

“Chill,” he told her. He cast a look at the house before he set off into the woods. He said over his shoulder, “I told you it would be cool and it was. It is. But what’d you expect me to do? Was I s’posed to burst into his house and just happen to tell him a story about the tree house thirty minutes after
he
just happened to be out there scouting around it?” He huffed along the trail. Becca was hard-pressed to keep up with him. His whispers told her how badly she’d offended him with her questions and her accusations.
Thinks I’m . . . idiot would have . . . I am NOT dumb . . .
pretty much said it all.

They didn’t speak again till they were in the clearing, where Becca apologized to him. She said miserably, “Sorry. I’m
sorry.
I didn’t mean . . . I don’t know what I’m saying sometimes.”

“That’s pretty clear,” was his reply.

“And I don’t think you’re dumb. I’m just . . . I’m scared and mixed-up and sometimes what I think’s going on isn’t what’s going on at all.”

“Got that right,” he said.

She shuffled her feet. She waited. She wasn’t sure of anything.

Then he said, “You’re one of my tutors for the GED. Applied Math. You’ve got a boyfriend who’s got a big jealousy problem so we meet out here. We tried the library. We tried South Whidbey Commons. We even tried a conference room at City Hall. But the dude kept finding us and interrupting so we decided to hide out here.”

“That’s what you told him?”

“Pretty good, I thought. I mean, it’s more or less true. All except the tutoring me part of it. He checks out the story, he gets a thumbs-up. I’ve met my tutor all these places. Only thing missing is her jealous boyfriend, but
you’ve
got that.”

“Well, I did.” She looked from the tree house back in the direction they’d come. “Did he believe you?”

“Sure he believed me. And the reason he believed me is that I didn’t jump onto his porch and make some completely stupid announcement out of the blue. I had to wait for him to bring the topic up. When you’re playing with the truth, that’s your only choice.”

Playing with the truth
didn’t sound so good, though.

“I hope this doesn’t backfire on you,” Becca said.

“It won’t. I got everything handled,” Seth told her.

I
f Courtney was like two people—a public Courtney available to her friends and a very private Courtney who texted him pictures—Derric couldn’t fault her. For he, too, was quickly becoming two people. He was the Derric who kept telling his mom to lay
off
the subject when she wanted to talk about what she always referred to as “the raging hormones of the adolescent male” because he and Courtney weren’t
doing
anything and they didn’t intend to
do
anything, all right, Mom? But he was also the Derric whose thinking appeared to be limited to one subject only these days and whose dreams left him damp and embarrassed and standing too long in the shower in the morning.

When he finally made the decision to go to Courtney’s Bible study group, it was for only one reason. She’d told him it was held in the daylight basement of her church. That meant that she would need to drive them there. Driving them there meant driving them home at the end of the meeting. That meant being alone. Being alone with Courtney was what he wanted. They needed to talk. She
kept
texting. She
kept
sending him pictures. He was turned every which way, and, worse in his own mind, he’d started sending pictures to her. He
knew
it was dumb but he couldn’t seem to stop. Something had to give. In some direction. Forward or backward.
Something.
So he’d say, “C’n we talk?” after the meeting and he’d suggest a spot on Goss Lake that was a swimming property where no one lived. No one would be there in the month of March, but there they could lay a blanket out on ground that the owners had groomed for picnics. There they could talk in the darkness and decide once and for all how things were going to be.
Nothing
was going to happen between them after a Bible study, he told himself.

Courtney’s face transformed when he asked her if she’d take him to the Bible group. His mother’s face, when he told her where he was going and with whom, transformed as well. But where Courtney’s altered to delight, Rhonda’s altered to deep suspicion. She said, “Ten o’clock,” and when he protested, she added, “School night, Derric. Don’t give me grief.”

He said fine and he found himself soon enough in a group of eleven kids along with a youth pastor from Courtney’s church. They sat in a circle of mismatched chairs and two sofas, Derric and Courtney having scored one of the sofas. She sat pressed to his side, wearing skinny jeans and a modest belted tunic, for which he was grateful. Otherwise, he’d not have been able to concentrate on anything, although, truth to tell, it was tough enough anyway because the Bible story Pastor Ken had chosen for discussion was called Susanna and the Elders. It was all about sex, although in the beginning it was just about some lady who wanted to take a bath in her garden. But two old guys spied on her from behind a tree, felt some serious lust at the sight of her naked body, and decided they wanted to do the deed with her.

Pastor Ken stopped the story at that point and said, “Now let’s take a look at how this can be a metaphor in our own lives, okay? Let’s take it beyond Susanna’s nakedness to search for what her nakedness really means.”

Kids offered suggestions, alternatives to nakedness, a richer and greater meaning from the Bible than the simple words suggested. Someone said virtue, someone else said honesty. Love for God was offered. So was devotion to the Ten Commandments. Derric tried to listen, but he didn’t participate. He kept his eyes fastened on whoever was speaking, but his awareness was only Courtney. Everything else was driven from his mind.

They took a break midway through the meeting: punch, cookies, and cupcakes. Then they talked more and then they prayed their special prayers. More than one of them prayed for chastity. Courtney did, too, but he was prepared this time, and when she’d finished asking for strength, he said fervently, “Me, too, Lord. Please. Me, too.” A couple of girls laughed at this, and a boy said, “I hear you, bro,” and Pastor Ken said, “We all need strength for a variety of things. Me, I need patience to deal with my kids. Eight and ten. Girls. Both going on twenty. Jesus Lord, please give me the strength to be a good dad to them.” And after that the meeting broke up. A few minutes later, and he and Courtney were on the road.

At first he thought maybe they
didn’t
need to talk. They’d turned a corner, he thought. They’d turned over a new leaf. But then Courtney said, “If you want, we could go some place for a while. There’s still forty-five minutes. Want to?” and without a thought of no in his brain at all, he said, “Goss Lake? Close to home and I know a place . . .” She flashed him a smile and off they went.

The swimming property was a forested lot that tumbled down an unbuildable hillside to the lake. It had been sold to someone years in the past as a picnic spot, a swimming spot, a place to launch a sailboat from a purpose-built dock. A trail led down to it from a narrow dirt lane. They fished in the trunk of Courtney’s car, found three blankets and a flashlight, and set off through the trees.

It was a perfect night. The moon was a Cheshire cat’s smile through the bare tree branches and the stars were bright. It was cold, but in the draping shelter of some hemlocks near the water, they laid out their blanket and wrapped themselves in the others.

Courtney shivered. “Colder than I thought,” she said.

“Probably not the best idea.” He scooted over and put his arm around her. She snuggled into him and sighed.

From beneath the sheltering branches of the trees, they could see the lake, still in the darkness, nothing breaking its surface and no wind blowing. An owl hooted somewhere in the trees and in the distance a coyote barked. Courtney shivered again. She moved closer to him. She murmured, “I know an even better way to stay warm.” She put her hand on his leg and ran it up his thigh. She said, “Derric, if it’s okay with you . . . I mean, I’ve got something I’d sort of like to say.”

“Sure,” he told her. “Fact is, I was sort of thinking the same thing. That we should talk. But the Bible thing . . . I don’t know. It made me feel like maybe we don’t need to after all.”

“Why?”

“The chastity thing. I can’t do it, Court, if we keep texting and sending pictures like we’ve been. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I like to look at them. I mean, I really like to look at them. But it seems . . . I mean, I don’t see how we can talk about one thing and then do another. Which, it seems to me, is what we’ve been doing.”

He felt her turn her head to look at him. So he turned his. She kissed him. And then she put her hands on him. And then she eased him to the ground.

“That’s exactly what I wanted to talk about,” she said.

Only, at that point they didn’t talk at all.

• • •

AFTERWARD, HE DIDN’T
feel the way he thought he would feel. Inside where he’d always figured he’d be all lit up, where he’d feel connected, where he’d know who he was, he was completely numb.

He was also an hour late. He knew his mom would be waiting for him, and he failed completely in his effort to slide into the house and into his room without her knowledge. He’d just got to his bedroom doorway when he heard her coming in his direction from the living room. It was pitch-dark in the hall, and she flipped on the lights. She took one look at him. She knew.

No lectures, he thought. For once in your life, please, Mom, no lectures. I used a condom, all right? Just like you taught me. That’s what you want to know, but don’t ask me now.

She looked at his face, mostly his eyes. Then she said the most unexpected thing. She said it quietly, totally without judgment. “It wasn’t like you thought it would be.”

He shook his head numbly, his throat getting tight and his vision clouding with tears like a six-year-old. It wasn’t like he thought it would be. It was wonderful and horrible all at once. It should have been a beginning. It felt like an end.

“I’m very sorry about that, sweetie.” She approached him, and he wanted to shrink away. “Want to talk about it?”

He shook his head.

“Maybe tomorrow,” she said. “You try to sleep now.”

She passed him, then, and went to climb the stairs. He stood there alone in the quiet darkness till he heard the soft closing of her bedroom’s door.

• • •

HE DIDN’T SLEEP.
It seemed to him that everything in his life had gone very wrong. In the hours that passed as he stared at his ceiling, he tried to come up with the first moment when he’d made the move that had set him on the path to where he found himself now, but he couldn’t even think straight enough to go back three weeks to whatever he had been doing then, let alone a month or two.

Courtney texted four times during the night.

Godgodgod!

And
So hot babe.

And
Cant B leve.

And finally
No regret.

His answers came from him by rote.

!!!

U 2.

The best.

Not 1.

Then he just wanted her to go away. He wanted to
think
when he
couldn’t
think anyway, and having her there texting and texting him only made what he was going through worse.

He got up at his regular time, staggering to the shower. He stood beneath the water and felt it hit his head and sink into his hair, which he grasped as hard as he could and which he washed and scrubbed as hard as he could, as if washing and scrubbing could rid his skull of it as well as of the thoughts inside his head.

In the kitchen, his mom was scribbling into a notebook on the counter, and his dad was eating his usual bowl of instant oatmeal. When Dave Mathieson said to him, “How’s things cooking, sport?” Derric glanced at his mom and he understood that she hadn’t betrayed him. He said, “Okay,” and when Dave said, “You came in late. Don’t let that happen on a school night again, okay?” he said, “I won’t. Sorry. I should’ve phoned or something. I got caught up with Courtney after her Bible group’s discussion.”

Dave chuckled. “Now that’s something you don’t hear every day.” He scooped up the rest of his oatmeal, carried the bowl to the sink, and ran water into it. Then he was gone, after kissing Rhonda and giving Derric a one-armed hug. Then Derric and his mom were alone together.

And still she didn’t press him. It was only when he’d finished his own breakfast of cereal, orange juice, and toast that she turned from the counter where she’d been writing and said to him, “Seems like you discovered something about yourself last night.”

“I think maybe I did.”

“That’s not necessarily a bad thing, you know.”

“It doesn’t feel good.”

“Got you,” she said. “But that’s the thing about growing. Going through what you have to go through to grow . . . It pretty much doesn’t feel good while you’re going through it.”

“This isn’t the you’re-growing-up-now lecture, is it?” he asked her.

“What d’you mean?”

“You know. ‘My little boy is growing up.’”

She smiled although she looked a little sad. She said, “Honestly? I didn’t even think of it like that. I was thinking more of inner growing, if you know what I mean. Heart growing. Soul growing. Whatever you want to call it. That’s the tough stuff. But you’ll get through it.”

“Problem is, I don’t even know what ‘it’ is.”

“Yeah. That’s part of the growing,” she told him.

• • •

HE THOUGHT IT
was strange. After her endless lectures about taking precautions and STDs and unwanted pregnancies and all the ways in which two kids could mess up their lives while they were still only adolescents, it came down to her knowing that he was trying to deal with consequences. He was trying to understand them first. Then maybe he could move on to doing something about how he felt about them.

It was completely backward, though. It seemed to him that of the two of them, Courtney should’ve been the one to feel tugged by conscience, tugged by desire, at war with herself without knowing why. She, after all, was the person who’d been pledging chastity. But she didn’t seem to feel anything but happiness and
I luv U U U!
became her regular message, sent once an hour by text or mouthed in the hallway between classes at school.

He didn’t understand her but that wasn’t so much a problem as was the fact that he didn’t understand himself. He needed to work this out, though. He needed the time to attend to . . . whatever the heck it was inside him that was eating at him.

So three of her
I luv U U U
messages he didn’t answer one day. He wasn’t surprised, then, to find her waiting for him after jazz band rehearsal.

She was sitting on the floor in the corridor, slim legs stretched out in front of her, her back to the wall, a textbook open on her lap. She got to her feet when he came out of the band room. She looked the same as always, good.

She said, “Don’t have your cell phone today? I texted you a bunch of times,” and she sounded a little nervous.

He said, “No. I got them. The messages. Sorry. I just figured . . .” He shrugged. “Hey, you know how I feel.”

The other band members were leaving the room and some of them glanced over and some said hi to Courtney. A couple of the guys laughed at something. Someone said, “Oh yeah. Big-time,” and Courtney looked from them to him, her eyes darkening to violet as she made an interpretation of this that she shouldn’t have made at all.