Saratoga Woods 02 The Edge of the Water (8 page)

I
n very short order, Becca got to see the Derric Transformation, and she had to ask herself how well she’d ever really known him. She’d thought he was different from the typical high school boy. Africa, she’d thought, had
made
him different. She’d thought he’d been molded by losing both of his parents by the time he was five years old, by having lived in a cardboard box in an alley in Kampala, Uganda, till he was picked up by a children’s charity. She’d thought all of this made him see the world differently. But that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Courtney Baker was every girl’s nightmare. She was also the living embodiment of what—and whom—every boy wanted: blonde hair, blue eyes, satin skin that didn’t need makeup, great body, pretty hands with nice oval fingernails, excellent legs. She was one of those girls who were friendly to everyone, a Homecoming Queen in waiting, Becca thought sardonically. But the worst thing about her was that not a single one of her characteristics seemed phony. That alone allowed Becca to know absolutely what the future held the first time she saw Derric and Courtney talking together after school.

Other kids might have thought, No way does Mathieson have a chance with her! because Courtney was in eleventh grade and Derric was not. But their ages matched, and even if they hadn’t, it was pretty clear that what mattered to them both was some sort of connection they felt. They talked eagerly. They laughed together. Courtney gave Derric a little shove on the arm at some remark he made. He beamed at her and grabbed up her backpack to carry. He jerked his head in a “let’s go” movement, and when they moved off, they walked in sync, Courtney altering her pace to match his.

South Whidbey High School being South Whidbey High School—which was to say that everyone knew everyone along with everyone’s business—what went out was the Word. The Word, or perhaps better said the
Words
, were “hooked up,” and they applied to Derric and Courtney. Someone had seen them together at the Clyde, someone else had seen them at Village Pizza. They’d taken an electric boat out onto Goss Lake despite the cold, and when the motor went dead, they’d had to wait for rescue but they’d laughed their heads off at how dumb they’d been. They’d been in South Whidbey Commons, hunched over the table and drinking whatever. They’d been over town to Alderwood Mall. Becca had no clue how they managed to spend so much time together, considering that they were both also “A” students, but somehow they were managing it.

So, okay, she and Derric were over. It hurt as badly as anything ever would. But Becca found that the strange part for her was what hurt worse than being ignored by Derric and seeing him with Courtney. What hurt worse was seeing him change. It was like he’d given up part of himself. He removed the small Ugandan flag from the inside of his locker door, he took down a picture he had of the street band he’d played in while at the Kampala orphanage, he didn’t attend a concert of Zimbabwean musicians at the local art center that at one time he would not have missed, and worst of all, he stopped shaving his head. That smooth dark scalp of his had been his cultural trademark, the way he told the world who he truly was. But once he began dating Courtney Baker, he let his hair start to grow. And this saddened Becca more than anything else.

He was putting Africa behind him. While this might have been understandable under some circumstances for a boy who’d been adopted into an American family, for Derric to do it meant something more than moving on. It also meant leaving someone behind.

That person wasn’t Becca King. That person was Derric’s sister Rejoice, abandoned by him in the Kampala orphanage when he was adopted by the Mathiesons, with no one the wiser—aside from Becca—that Rejoice had been his sister at all. This was the secret that Becca held, the one thing that she knew about Derric that he wished no one on earth to be privy to. It was the secret that had unbalanced their relationship and had caused it to falter. She knew his secret; he did not know hers.

But hers, she thought, had nothing to do with who she was at the heart of her. While Derric’s secret did. And to see him reject Africa in favor of
whatever
it was . . . She couldn’t stand watching it. Intuitively, she knew it was wrong. Intuitively, she also knew she had to stop him.

• • •

BECCA HADN’T BEEN
to Saratoga Woods in ages. When she’d lived in Langley at the Cliff Motel with Debbie Grieder and her grandkids, it had been simple enough to get there. Even after she’d become expert at using her bike’s twenty-seven gears, it wasn’t exactly an easy ride to the place, considering that the route was continuously hilly, generally windy, and universally narrow. But it was a direct one, and the woods were only a few miles from the center of town.

Now that she was living some distance from the village, though, she had to rely on the free island bus to take her to the woods. No matter how she went at it, this meant two bus rides and a long wait in the bitter cold, but she was determined that nothing was going to put her off from what she had to do.

She went out to the woods on a gray winter day in late February, when the water of Saratoga Passage exactly matched the dismal color of the sky. She had to hike a bit once the bus dropped her off, so she made her way along the rutted roadside where the ground was frozen and the puddles wore silver skins of ice. Soon enough she reached the woods, looming darkly across a meadow where dead grasses lay beaten down by the weather and openings among the thick fir trees indicated trailheads leading into the shadowy forest.

She made her way to the far southwest side of the meadow. There a path climbed steeply into the trees. The ground was slippery, and she took care. If she fell on this trail, it wouldn’t be anything like the day when Derric had fallen here in the autumn. Then she’d come upon him as she’d chased Seth’s dog. Today there was no one around to find her if she tumbled down the bluff.

High on the trail, she reached the spot where Derric had taken his fall and broken his leg so badly. She gave it a glance only. She wasn’t here on a pilgrimage to the spot where he’d entered into a prolonged coma. She was here on another mission, and her destination was immediately opposite, up a narrow ill-defined sketch of a path that Derric himself had made through the trees.

It was a trail that no one would even notice, easily overlooked if you didn’t know that it was there. It led up a hillside to where some fallen branches and the trunk of an old-growth hemlock formed a low teepee. This looked insubstantial but it was actually sturdy, having been built over time by storm and wind. Becca took a breath, grabbed onto an alder’s trunk, and began to climb upward.

When she reached the teepee, she crawled inside. She worked her way to its farthest reaches. There, carefully wrapped in several old plastic shopping bags and even more carefully tucked away, she found the package where she’d first discovered it. It had been in this spot for ages. Impeded by the cast on his leg, Derric hadn’t touched it since October.

Well, Becca thought as she removed it, he would touch it now. Touching it, he would see the difference between the Derric Mathieson he actually was and the Derric Mathieson he was trying to be. This wasn’t about Courtney Baker, Becca assured herself. This was about Derric being true to himself. If nothing else, he needed to do that.

Becca put the package into her backpack. Quickly she got herself down from the teepee and out of the forest. Daylight was fading as she began her walk back into Langley. It was several miles, but the day was growing late and she couldn’t risk waiting for a bus to come along.

• • •

SHE REACHED LANGLEY
sooner than she thought she would, for as she trudged along the road, an elderly woman with a purple streak through her hair pulled over and offered her a lift into town. Chilled to the bone, she was happy to hop inside and be assaulted by two mini-dachshunds, ABBA’s greatest hits, and a heater running full blast. Five minutes later, she was in front of the Langley Clinic where, she knew, Derric generally waited for his mom to finish her workday.

He was alone in the waiting room. His head was bent over an open notebook, and he was referring to a text and then writing something. He looked up as the door opened. His eyes locked with Becca’s for a second before he looked away and continued writing.

Becca didn’t pause to take a reading from his whispers. She’d removed the AUD box earphone on her way out to the woods, and she’d not returned it to her ear, but she didn’t wait to gauge what his reception of her might be. She figured she could easily lose her nerve if she did that. Instead she strode across the room and sat right next to him.

He started to move. She put her hand on his arm. He said, “Hey, what’re you . . .” but that was all because at that point, she opened her backpack and in one second she had the package out and he knew as well as he knew his own name what was inside of it.

Then she heard it tumbling from him:
No way
 . . .
she’ll
 . . .
couldn’t
 . . .
now there’s going to be
 . . .
damn damn damn
 . . .
this is what
 . . .
oh great
 . . .
when it comes to trust 
. . . came at her, and she could have finished the broken thoughts easily because she knew they referred to what she held in her lap. Inside the package were dozens of letters, all of them written by Derric to Rejoice. She’d been five years old when he’d left her behind. Less than three when she’d been orphaned, she hadn’t even known that he was her brother.

Derric said in a whisper so fierce that it felt like a slap, “What’re you
doing
with those? What the
hell
do you think . . . No way do you even have the right—”

“This is who you are,” she said to him. “It’s who you’re running from. And that gives me the right.”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. What d’you expect’s about to happen? I fall on my knees and declare my love and beg forgiveness and—”

“This isn’t about us,” she hissed. “There isn’t an us and you’ve made sure I know it. Okay. I get it. End of story. We’re over. But
this 
. . . what I’m holding right here? This is about you and this is about your sister.”

“Shut up! Shut
up
!”

“I won’t shut up. You’ve hidden Rejoice for the last eight years and now you’re hiding yourself. D’you think I can’t see that?”

“I said shut up!”

“You’ve taken down flags, you’ve taken down pictures, you’re growing your hair and everyone thinks Oh look, he’s becoming
American
while all the time what’s really going on is—”

“Get out of here!” He grabbed the letters from her.

“You can’t keep hiding—”

“What the
hell
?” He shoved the package into his backpack. His expression was as hard as Becca had ever seen. He whispered fiercely, “You think you c’n talk to me about hiding anything from anyone? That’s really messed up. That’s frigging
unbelievable
is what it is. I’m not the person hiding anything but a bunch of letters. While you—”

“That’s what you think? This is just a bunch of letters? Please. Don’t even try to go there. You’re hiding your own sister. You’re pretending Rejoice doesn’t exist, so you’re hiding the truth. You think if you turn yourself into some one hundred percent
American
dude with a cute blonde girlfriend and—”

“
That’s
what this is about! I’m with Courtney and you—”

“Oh please. Give me more credit than that. This is about you. It’s about Kampala. It’s about who you left behind and what you can’t face anyone knowing.”

“Shut up, shut up, get away from me, shut up!”

Becca knew that the ferocity of his tone came from the fact that he was terrified someone might overhear them. His horror was the same as most people’s fear: that admitting to something dark about themselves might lead to being scorned by others. But what he didn’t see was that where he was
heading
with this new Derric of his led to scorn, while where he had
been
before his transformation led only to the truth about what it had meant to be alone and afraid and only five years old on the streets of Kampala.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m shutting up. You can do whatever you want. You’re a free agent. Have at it. Whatever. But maybe with all the
doing
you’re engaged in, you’ll eventually decide to
do
the right thing.”

“Which is what, according to the Book of Becca?” he demanded.

“Which is tell the truth.”

He threw the backpack to the floor. He did the same with his notebook and the text he’d been reading. “You are
really
an amazing hypocrite,” he told her. “Try thinking about
that
with all the other thinking you’ve been doing.”

Becca started to reply, but that was the precise moment when someone called her name. She turned to see Derric’s mom, Rhonda, with a chart in her hand, smiling at her from the hallway where the examining rooms were.

“We’ve missed seeing you!” she cried happily. “Where on earth have you been hiding?”