Sliding On The Edge (26 page)

“
That was a long time ago,”
Kay says. “And I had very different problems than now.”

She looks away, like she’s thinking
about how to steer the topic back where she wants it—to my mother
and the problems I’ve brought down on her head.

“
Now, since all of this
suicide business, the therapist has to see documentation, something
only your mother can give me. Then the school will be next. So
what’s it going to be? Shall I call Jackie and ask her to sign the
papers making me your legal guardian?”

I think about my choices, when that
beautiful, horrible word pops up again, di-lem-ma! I can stay here
with Kay, curry horses, follow a zillion rules, give Marta hip-hop
lessons, and put another bump in Deirdre’s nose when she sticks it
into my business.

Or I can go back to Mommie and another
Tuan-apartment life. I hold out my hands like a balancing scale.
Sweet River on my left: no freedom, lots of Sundays. Las Vegas on
my right: nothing but freedom, nothing but Sweethearts.

It almost seems like a wash, that is,
until I think about Magic, until I remember the last part of my own
sleeping beauty funeral—the part I couldn’t remember before. Mom
never came to look down at me. She never came to say good-bye. But
somebody else did. The woman with a single long red braid, tied
with a velvet ribbon. The woman from when I was five, who floats in
and out of memory.

At my dream funeral, she
looked down on me . . . and she propped me on pillows and fed me
ice cream with a small spoon and said she’d miss me.

I look up at Kay, remembering. “Ask
her to sign me over.”

Kay sighs—that same sigh that comes up
from her boots, whenever I say something in a way she doesn’t like
to hear it.

“
I’ll ask,” she says. “Now
go get showered and dressed. I’ve already called the school and
told them you wouldn’t be there today. Once I talk to your mother,
we may have a lot of things to do.”

Chapter 49

Kay

In her office, Kay pulled out the
wrinkled paper Shawna had left with Jackie’s number written on it.
She punched in the numbers and waited. If she asked Jackie like she
would an ordinary human being, Jackie would never sign over legal
custody. How was she going to get this woman to do what had to be
done, what was in Shawna’s best interest? How—

“
Hello.” Jackie’s voice,
heavy with sleep, came over the line.

“
It’s Kay. I need you to
sign custody papers for Shawna so I can get medical coverage for
her. Otherwise, I’ll have to send you the bills. Which way do you
want me to handle it?”

“
What papers?” Jackie seemed
to be struggling to make sense of Kay’s question.

“
I’m sending some papers for
you to sign. If you don’t, you’ll have to pay Shawna’s doctor
bills.”

“
Is she sick?”

“
No. But the school says I
have to have insurance for her, and since I’m not her legal
guardian, I can’t get it.” Kay wondered if that were really true.
“Will you sign the papers if I send them to you?”

“
Papers? Sure.”

“
Where do I send them?” Kay
asked, picking up her pen. She waited. “Jackie?” Had the woman gone
back to sleep? “Hello?”

“
Had to look
outside.”

Kay rolled her eyes and wrote down the
address. The phone went dead as soon as she’d gotten everything
except the zip code. Was the woman drunk? High?

Kay looked at her watch. It was only
eight fifteen in the morning.

Chapter 50

Shawna

My room looks like a cleaning service
came through it. Nothing’s on the floor, the bed is smooth and
tight at the edges. The curtains are pulled back and the windows
are open, making the air inside as fresh as the October day beyond
the screen. This isn’t the room I remember from Saturday night.
It’s been flushed and scrubbed and disinfected.

I shower, dress, and dry my
hair, and when I look in the mirror, I’ve changed from zombie back
to dork. But the dorky girl looks better than I remember from the
old Las Vegas days. “Hmm.”
So Deirdre is
jealous of me.
“Interesting.”

“
Are you ready, Shawna?” Kay
calls down the hall.

For what?
I wonder. I grab a sweatshirt and walk to her
office. “I thought you said I wasn’t going to school
today.”

“
You’re not. We’ve got an
appointment with my lawyer. Your mother’s agreed to give me legal
custody, so we’re going to get the papers ready and send them right
away…” She comes from behind her desk. “…before she changes her
mind.”

I know Kay’s right. Jackie changes her
mind more than she changes her underwear, but ugh. . . another trip
to Sacramento . . . in that truck . . . with my silent
driver.

I’ll go see Magic, give him his apple
and his vitamin, which he missed yesterday. Just a minute with the
old boy, and I’ll be ready to take on Kay and her truck.

“
Meet you at the truck,” I
say halfway out the office door, before Kay can tell me we don’t
have time.

I don’t cut up the apple this time. I
slice it in half, dump two vitamin pills into the palm of my hand,
and run across the field to the fence.

“
Magic!”

I climb the fence and throw my leg
over the top like always and wait. “Magic!” I call again. “Where
are you, you ornery old horse?”

I shield my eyes with both hands and
scan the pasture. Not a horse in sight.

I jump to the ground, run to Floyd’s
barn, and rip open the doors.

Empty.

I try to keep my breathing steady, but
I can’t. I feel the same way I did the morning I found Mom’s note
and the ticket with Kay’s name and number on the back. That cold
numbness pours over me, finds its way into my stomach, and makes me
sick.

I have to do something. I
have to . . .
get my
grandmother.

I charge back across the field and
hurdle the fence, run to the house, up the back steps and through
the kitchen door, letting it bang closed behind me. I run down the
hall to Kay’s office. “Magic’s gone!”

She stands up from her desk and comes
to me. “Magic?”

“
My . . . Floyd’s black
horse.” I’m trying not to shriek.

“
Magic,” Kay repeats. “Did
you check Floyd’s barn?”

“
Yes. He’s not there.”
Saying that makes my stomach knot up tighter than before. “There’s
not one horse anywhere out there.”

“
Come on. Let’s ask Kenny if
he knows what’s going on.”

I jog behind Kay to the barn, where we
find Kenny in the tack room.

“
Floyd’s horses,” Kay says,
“they’re gone.”

Kenny looks at her like he’s not heard
what she said. “Thought I saw something going on there this
morning. Strange truck. Just reckoned it was the new people, comin’
to check out the property.”

“
Did they have a horse
trailer?” Kay asks.

“
Yep. But I didn’t stay to
watch what was happening.” Kenny nods toward me. “Had little Missy
here to check on.”

“
How about Casey? Was he
around?”

“
He was driving into Floyd’s
when I came out of the house, but I didn’t see him after that.
Figured he did his chores, then went to school.” Kenny walks
outside and looks across at Floyd’s. He rubs his chin like that
might make him remember more about what he saw earlier. “Dang.
Shoulda’ gone over when I saw that truck . . . that truck . . .” He
faces us. “It had Texas plates.”

“
No!” I cup my hands over my
ears. I‘m choking. I feel like something has me by the throat and
is pressing the life out of me. The fingers are tight and growing
tighter.

Sharp pins of light dance across Kay’s
face. The barn, Kenny, Floyd’s shack across the field—all whirl
around like a crazy Ferris wheel. Or maybe it’s me. I’m whirling
and everything else is fixed.

Then dynamite’s exploding in my head.
Bam! Bam! Fingers slip away, and tears rush down my face. I don’t
care if Kay sees me crying. I don’t care if Kenny sees me
either.

Kay grabs my shoulders and pulls me to
face her. “I’m not promising anything, but if we can get Magic back
. . .?”

She doesn’t finish her
question, but I know what she’s asking. Will I be Shawna Stone for
real? Her granddaughter? Marta’s friend? The AP student? There are
a lot of questions inside the real one:
Will I change?

I step away, out of Kay’s reach and
look into her eyes. I’m looking to see if they’ll say she’d just as
soon buy my ticket back to Vegas and be done with me. That she
doesn’t want to have to stand suicide watch every day and night.
That being my legal guardian isn’t how she wants to spend the rest
of her life. That she’s tired of my weird Monster fantasy, my foul
mouth. That I’m a disappointment to her. I expect something like
that to be there, staring back at me.

But it’s not. What’s staring
back are eyes that say
I understand how
you feel, losing something you love. I love you and I don’t want to
lose you, too.

I feel a lot of things right now. I
feel scared for Magic. I feel scared for me, and I have this new,
strangled feeling in my chest. Something I’ve never had before.
Then I hear my own voice rising out of that strangled mess. “I will
love him. I will love him. I will love him.”

I can’t believe it—now, Kay is crying.
Big fat tears roll to her chin, and she doesn’t bother to brush
them off. “Oh, Shawna,” she says. “I love you so much.”

She pulls me to her and we cling to
each other, like we’ll fall into an ocean and drown if either one
lets go.

“
I tried to catch up with
them and stop them, but they had too much of a head start. I
thought you ought to know they’re heading down Highway 99.” Casey
looks at me. “I’m really sorry, Shawna.”

There’s no anger in his face, no “it
serves you right” in his voice. He would have stopped the truck and
brought Magic back to me, because he’s always known I had that
black horse tucked under my heart. I want to tell him he was right
from the beginning. I want to say something to let him know I’m
sorry, too . . . for a lot of things.

“
Mrs. Stone,” he says,
handing Kay his truck keys, “take my truck. It’s
faster.”

“
Thank you, Casey.” Kay
turns to Kenny. “Hitch up the trailer. Most truckers stop at Santa
Nella, so I’m betting these guys will too. I’ll go ahead and try to
stop them. We can keep in touch by cell.”

“
You plannin’ to hijack that
truck?” Kenny asks.

"I’m planning on saving those horses.
If it takes hijacking, so be it.” Kay grabs my arm. “Go in the
house and get the truck keys for Kenny.” She pushes me toward the
house. “They’re on the kitchen table. Get going or Magic’s going to
be at the other end of the state.”

I take the steps by twos, snatch the
keys, and run back outside. I toss the keys to Casey, who grabs
them and then takes my hand. “When we get Magic back to the ranch,
let’s talk, okay? And I mean talk—not fight.”

I manage a nod and that seems to be
the right thing, because now Casey smiles and wipes a tear that’s
trickling to my chin. Before I make it around the side of the house
to Casey’s truck, he and Kenny are maneuvering the horse trailer
into place to hook it up.

Kay has the passenger door open, and
is already behind the wheel. She’s disconnecting from a call on her
cell.

“
Yes, cancel this
afternoon’s meeting. I’ll be in first thing in the morning about
the custody papers.”

I climb inside and buckle up
my seat belt—
another first, I think. I’m
going over to a whole other side of the world.

Kay slides the gears into reverse,
whips around, and spins the wheels over the gravel. The ride down
the road is the worst, and I’m clinging for my life to the door,
the dash, the seat. At the “T” where she has to turn left, she
doesn’t stop to look both ways. She is a rule breaker today, and,
at this moment, I see the girl she used to be—reckless, full of
energy, strong-minded.

She hangs a right at the next corner,
and shoots across two lanes of traffic to make a quick left onto
the highway. I’ve thought about dying so many times, that it’s a
surprise not to want to die now. If I die now, so will Magic, and I
want him to live very much.

A tight, hard feeling squeezes the
breath out of me. I’m sad and excited and scared, all at the same
time. But now there are no more shakes. I’m steady inside, like I
haven’t been since I was five. Since the woman I knew only a little
while, in some motel I can’t remember came to me.

She wore her hair in a
single long red braid, and propped me up on pillows and fed me ice
cream, and let me lick the spoon . . .

And she laughed and I
laughed—

Epilogue