Sliding On The Edge (14 page)

I look into the yards as I pass, until
I find one with a hose hooked to a spigot in the front. I turn on
the faucet and hose off my knee. I don’t care if my jeans get
soaked. I gulp the cold hose water, spit, and douse my face. When I
look up, I about drop my upper teeth.

“
Hi, Shawna.”

It’s The Troll. She’s standing on the
front steps, looking at me.

I put the hose down and back away.
“Sorry. I was thirsty. I didn’t know I was taking your
water.”

“
It’s like all the other
water around here. It won’t kill you just because it comes out of
my hose.”

“
No. I didn’t mean it that
way. I just—”

“
I know what you
mean.”

I really hate it when someone says
that to me. Nobody knows what I mean unless I tell them, and I’m
not telling her a thing!

“
Thank you for the water.
That’s what I mean and nothing else.”
Great, Shawna. You went and told her what you mean and you
just said you weren’t going to do that. What’s wrong with
you?

“
If you’re not scared to
come inside, I can give you cold water in a glass.” The Troll leans
against the doorjamb. “The glass is clean.”

“
I never said it
wasn’t!”

She laughs. I’ve never seen her do
anything except stare at me or whisper warnings, and now she stands
there laughing!

“
You don’t have to say it,
Shawna. Who knows, maybe I read minds.” She turns to go inside, and
then looks back. “Coming?”

Today is not working out as I’d
planned. First I get a ride from a fat-handed freak, and then I get
cornered by my high school troll buddy. Man, I shoulda stayed home
and watched the Sunday Boys. No, I can’t do that anymore. Casey
might stab me with a pitchfork.

I follow her inside.

I swear, the house is smaller and
darker than a broom closet, and marbles would roll into the back
corners of the living room if you put them in the center of the
floor. I feel like I’m visiting Puzzle World, where nothing’s
actually level.

“
Come into the kitchen.” The
Troll calls from the other room, and I back through the doorway,
still trying to make sense of the living room. When I turn, she’s
holding out a glass of water. “This house is really
old.”

“
How old?”

“
A hundred and fifty years.
All of them are about the same on this road. Miners built rooms to
live in during the Gold Rush. Other people came later and added on
to them.”

I drink the water and give her back
the glass.

“
More?” she asks.

I shake my head.

“
You want to see my room?”
The Troll doesn’t wait for me to answer. She presses past me, back
into the living room and turns right, down a short, narrow
hall.

I duck my head and fold my arms across
my chest before I follow her. The low door and ceiling make me feel
like a giant.

Her room is big and it has
light from windows along the back wall. The bed is small but neat,
and covered with a pink flowered bedspread and one pink
pillow.
The Troll in pink. Who would have
thought?
Her desk stands against the
opposite wall, and it shines from so much polishing that the dark,
sleek wood reflects my face.

“
Nice.” I’m trying to get
over what I’m seeing. The Troll has a great room. “How long have
you lived here?”

“
Ten years. My mom has a job
at the bank. It’s close, so she can walk to work. Saves money on
gas.”

“
You and your mom live
alone?”
Not that I’m really
interested.

She nods. “My dad left before I was
born.”

“
Uh-huh.” I could add stuff
about my dad, but I don’t.
Keep to
yourself, Shawna. Play your hand close. It’s the only way to
win.
“What’s your real name?” I ask before
I think how that’s going to sound, but she misses the point, and I
don’t have to walk around the slur.

“
Marta. Don’t you hear Mrs.
Heady all the time? Marta, stand up straight. Marta, go to the
board. Marta, do this. Marta, do that.”

“
Guess I wasn’t
listening.”

“
That’s what I thought.
You’re someplace else most of the time.” She sits on the edge of
her bed. “Sit down.” She motions toward the desk chair. “I know you
don’t like me, but it doesn’t really matter. You don’t like
anybody, so I don’t take it personally.”

I open my mouth to tell her to stuff
it, but instead say, “I’m new, so I don’t know all the ropes
yet.”

“
You know a lot more ropes
than the rest of us. You’ve got to. I mean Las Vegas!” Marta laughs
like she did before, kind of nervous.

I stand up and almost tip the chair
over.

“
Hey! I’m not laughing at
you. I think you’re cool, but you don’t give anyone a chance to
know you. Maybe if you did, you’d find someone you like, or at
least get along with.”

“
Friends make me nervous.” I
walk toward the door. “I gotta go. I didn’t tell my grandmother
where I was going, and she raises all kinds of hell when I break
her rules.”

Marta follows me to the front yard and
onto the road. “See you tomorrow.”

I shrug. “Sure.” I don’t look back,
but I swing my hips a little more because I know she’s watching
me—Shawna, who knows the ropes.

That was weird. I wonder
how it will be in class when I sit next to her. Will she still give
me those ferret looks? Will I have to talk to her? What’ll I do if
. . . no, not happening.

I reach the grassy park and
go left along the main street toward the highway with my thumb out.
In about two minutes, a truck stops alongside me.
Oh, no. It’s Kay’s truck with Kenny driving and
Buster in the back.

“
Howdy, Missy!”

“
Are we back to Missy?” I
climb into the passenger seat.

“
Yes, we are, because your
grandmother’s about ready to thrash your backside from here to Las
Vegas and back again for not telling her where you were off to this
morning. I sure do hope you got a whopper of a story to settle her
down.”

“
I went to see a . . .
friend.” I never thought that line would pass my lips. Sweet River
soft again.

Kenny gives me the
seat belt stare
; then
puts the truck into gear and rolls onto the highway. He looks at me
from under his sweat-soaked tan hat. “You got a friend?”

“
Sure.”

He nods.

I shrug.

Kay meets us at the front of the
house, one hand on each hip, her face hard. Even from the truck I
can see the red around her eyes. Man, does she look
scary.

Chapter 27

Kay

Kay woke that Sunday to the sound of
Buster whining. She pulled her curtain aside and looked out. Why
was that dog running down the road then back? She opened the window
and whistled. Buster ran to the porch and pawed the front door
until she let him in.

She made coffee, finished her
bookkeeping and by nine was caught up.

Kenny had already taken up his spot on
the porch, but Shawna hadn’t come out of her room yet.

Kay tapped on Shawna’s bedroom door.
She waited, listening, then looked inside. Shawna’s bed was empty.
Kay went to the kitchen and filled her empty coffee cup and looked
outside, but the backyard was empty. “Shawna?” She called from the
back door and waited. When Shawna didn’t poke her head out of the
barn, Kay pulled on her boots and walked across to Floyd’s. Maybe
she had gone to see the black horse

Floyd’s horses were grazing at the
back of his property, but Shawna was nowhere in sight. Kay walked
back to her barn and checked the stalls, then returned to the
house, where Kenny had already taken up his post on the front porch
with his Sunday paper.

“
She’s not at Floyd’s. She’s
not in the barn or in her room.” Kay paced the length of the porch
and back.

“
Now settle down. She’s
around here someplace.” But he folded the paper and dropped it next
to the rocker.

Kay’s mind spun with all the
possibilities of where Shawna might have taken off to, but with
each step, she felt her heart thud harder against her chest.
What if she’s run away? What if she’s on her way
back to Las Vegas? She could be hurt. She could be lost. After all,
she doesn’t know this area. I should have made plans to make Sunday
less lonely. I know she hates the quiet and the routine. So why
didn’t I deal with it?
She stopped in front
of Kenny, whose eyes were tracking her back and forth. “Kenny, we
have to find her.”

He eased himself up. “You stay put.
She might show up and it’d be good for you to be here. That way you
can give her a whack on her backside while you’re riled. I’ll take
the truck and drive into town.”

She has to be safe, Kay
thought.
And what if she isn’t?
As Kenny drove down the driveway, she felt the
sting of tears in her eyes. If Shawna was gone, the space she left
behind would be bigger than Kay had ever imagined possible. In such
a short time, and in spite of all the disruption . . . No. She
couldn’t say disruption, because that wasn’t what Shawna’s being
there had become. Somehow, this brazen sixteen-year-old had shaken
her awake and alive. She worried about her. Yet she somehow felt
the stir of hope—for this girl and her future. Even that word had
meaning again. “Future,” she said, liking the sound in her
ears.

Kay wiped her eyes with the back of
her hand. If Kenny finds her, and if she comes back safe . . .“I’ll
make this work. I’ll get her the help she needs. I’ll do whatever
it takes to save Nic’s girl.”

When Casey drove up for work, Kay made
another turn around the house and then out to the barn, just in
case Shawna had gone for a walk and returned.

“
Did you see Shawna along
the road when you came in?” she asked Casey.

“
No, Ms. Stone. Sorry. Is
anything wrong?”

She sighed. “I’m not sure. I think
she’s just escaped Sunday on the ranch, but she didn’t tell me, so
I’m a little worried.”

He shook his head. “She doesn’t make
it easy for you, does she?”

“
No.”

“
Must be Las Vegas manners.”
He turned to go into the barn. “If you need me to help, let me
know, okay?”

She nodded. “Thank you,
Casey.”

As she walked up the back steps and
into the kitchen, she heard the sound of the truck and ran to the
front porch. Was Shawna in the passenger seat? Yes. Relief spread
warm and clean through her. Then she got mad. What was she riding,
a roller coaster? Fear. Relief. Anger. And a thousand pounds of
doubt. She was up, down, around, and on her head. And all because
of Shawna Stone, who sat next to Kenny Fargo, looking like she’d
just come back from a vacation.

Chapter 28

Shawna

Nobody ever worried about where I went
or when I came home. I was the one who worried. I was the one who
bugged the guards to find Mom inside the casinos and the bars, when
she didn’t show up at the apartment by 6:00 A.M. I took care of me
and Mom, when she crashed and burned. So what’s the big deal about
going into town without telling someone?

I get out of the truck. Kenny and
Buster skirt the house and head straight for the barn.

Cowards
.

In the living room, Kay paces in front
of me, her hands waving all over the place, like she’s talking to
God. She isn’t saying anything, but her body is shouting, and it’s
got a vocabulary that can singe your heart. When she stops, her
eyes stare out from behind one of those tragic Greek
masks.

“
Do you know what it’s like
to wait for somebody to come home and not know where they are or
what they are doing or if they’ve been hurt or what—?”

Do I!
I’d like to tell her about some of those nights. Waiting for
Mom. Wondering if she was coming back to the apartment or staying
someplace else. And if she did come back, who or what she’d bring
along. I shrug.

“
Damn it!” She punches the
air and bolts to the end of the living room.

My mouth drops. I’ve pissed her off,
all right.

“
Why do you do these things?
Do you want to hurt me? Do you want to make my life as miserable as
possible?”

“
I didn’t think going into
town was going to make you miserable,” I answer, and it’s not a
lie.

It’s like someone opened a valve on a
blow-up mattress and let all the air out. She collapses in the
nearest chair and stares at the floor.

“
I’m not used to being a
grandmother. I don’t even know what grandmothers are supposed to do
these days. Mine baked birthday cakes for me and told me bedtime
stories.” She covers her face with both her hands and mumbles
through her fingers. “You’re too old for bedtime
stories.”