Sliding On The Edge (8 page)

Don’t be a wimp. Lock the
door and don’t open it. I’ll be back by three
. She always sounded impatient , like I was being
stupid.

The high and lonely howl comes again,
only from another direction and closer. Another coyote. I picture
two lonely creatures out there, circling, looking.

Oh, no. I’m getting the
shakes, and . . . I don’t believe it. Monster’s here. So he did
come with me to Sweet River. The sirens in Vegas used to wake him
up. Now it’s coyotes howling in the night. City. Country. He’s
everywhere.

It’s him, all right. Dark
and shadowy.

I open the nightstand drawer and for a
moment hold the plastic bottle filled with Mom’s sleeping pills.
Then I pull out the slim toilet paper bundle, unroll the razor
blade, and hold it out to him in my palm.

“
See?” I whisper to him.
“It’s right here.”

He creeps out and sits hunched at the
foot of the bed.

I take the blade between my thumb and
first finger—no easy trick when the shakes come over me.

I already know how it’s going to feel.
How it’s going to open old scars from other times—those crooked
lines that turn to scabs and pucker the skin under my ankle bone.
But I know once the blade slides inside me, I don’t hurt, I don’t
think, I don’t shake anymore. For one delicious moment, I’m not
afraid of Monster or anybody else.

I have a half inch red
streak and a tiny trickle of blood that I blot with the toilet
paper. Monster’s slipping away, over the edge of the bed. He’ll be
gone in another second. My hands are steady now, so it’s easy to
wrap the blade and tuck it into the drawer. By the time I turn back
he’s gone, and the coyotes now are silent. Without the
frap, frap
of the fan,
there isn’t any sound.

Now I can finally sleep. The memories
will be good. They will be about sweet ice cream on a spoon, and me
laughing.

The knock at the door sends my heart
to my toes. I’m beginning to think about the downside of
doors.

“
Shawna, are you
awake?”

It’s Kay.

Chapter 14

Kay

Kay worked in her office almost every
night after dinner. And now that the house was filled with Shawna,
her smells, her sounds, but mostly her anger, Kay clung to the
certainty of numbers to help focus on something other than Shawna’s
explosive, unpredictable nature.

Tonight the numbers weren’t
as certain as she’d like.
This darned
checkbook won’t balance
, she thought. She
was adding the figures a second time when Shawna shuffled down the
hall past the office. “Goodnight,” Kay called.

“
Right.” Shawna didn’t stop
on the way to her room.

Kay waited for the slam of the
door.

Bam!

She stood partway up; then shook her
head. No. She wouldn’t rise to the bait. What could she do anyway,
spank the girl? For a moment she closed her eyes, before returning
to the numbers that wouldn’t add up.

She finally pushed her chair away from
her desk and, rubbing her eyes, laid her glasses on the pile of
invoices. She’d finish them tomorrow, after she dropped Shawna at
school.

Why was she nervous about Shawna’s
first day at Sweet River High? Shawna certainly didn’t seem to be.
Kay stretched her back. Maybe that’s what worried her. The girl
didn’t care about anything. Would Shawna continue her shrugging
indifference at school? What would the school do in
return?

I can’t worry about what
might happen
, she thought.
And I can’t change what’s already come around the
corner of the barn
. She turned off the
lights and walked into the hall.

She made her way to Shawna’s door.
She’d just check to see if she was feeling better. Maybe she should
tell her to go back to town and get the Diesels. Those
tight-fitting jeans seemed to be the crux of Shawna’s pout for the
last two weeks. No. Her granddaughter would not look like a hooker.
Kay raised her hand to knock, but stopped when she heard Shawna’s
voice.

“
See? It’s right
here.”

Kay waited, her ear turned to the
door. Who could she be talking to? She didn’t have a cell phone.
There was no phone in her bedroom. She listened again, but Shawna
didn’t say anything else. Kay knocked. “You awake?”

Small sounds like whispers came from
inside, but Shawna didn’t answer her.

“
Shawna. Are you all
right?”

“
Yeah.” Shawna
said.

A drawer slid open or closed, and the
bed shifted, like Shawna was climbing in or out. But no footsteps
came toward the door.

“
May I come in?” Kay
asked.

“
It’s your
house.”

Kay saw the shrug even from behind the
door. With a sigh, she turned the knob and pushed the door open. “I
just wondered how you were feeling.” She glanced around the room.
The window stood open, the fan was still. Shawna lay under the
sheet and a small dark stain, still wet, spread across the white
cotton. “Did you scratch yourself?” Kay asked.

“
Oh, yeah.” Shawna tucked
her leg under the blanket. “Mosquito bite, but I’m okay. It’s
stopped bleeding.”

“
I thought I heard you say
something.”

“
Thinking out loud, I
guess.” Shawna sat up. “Is there a rule against that?”

“
No.” Kay turned to leave.
“Do you want one?”

Shawna laughed. “Not!”

Kay pulled the door shut behind her
and leaned against it. She smiled. Had they just joked with each
other?

Chapter 15

Kay

The next day Kay drove Shawna to
school, and they made their way to the office. The principal’s door
stood open, so Kay knocked on the doorjamb to get his attention.
“Robby?”

Shawna glanced at Kay, looking
puzzled.

“
Kay.” A pudgy man in a
brown tweed jacket stood to greet them. “Good to meet you, Shawna.”
He nodded. “Please have a seat.”

He shuffled through a stack of folders
with his stubby fingers and pulled one out. “These scores are very
interesting,” he said without looking at either of them sitting on
the other side of the desk. “Very interesting.”

Shawna’s eyes were focused on her
feet, but at the mention of test scores, she looked first at the
principal and then at Kay, then drew herself up tight as a feral
cat cornered in the barn.

“
Shawna’s education has been
irregular.” Kay said. She shifted in her chair. She never explained
anything when she was dealing with her own business, so she felt
uncomfortable hearing her voice spill out excuses, especially in
front of Robby Green, who already knew more about her than she
wanted. Still, she couldn’t stop. “Her mother . . .” Kay’s throat
felt suddenly dry and she swallowed before finishing. “. . . moved
a great deal.”

No matter how many years had passed,
whenever she remembered that dark-haired girl with the darting eyes
and the nervous mouth, her whole body reacted like she was coming
down with something.

“
That makes these results
even more fascinating.” He put the papers on the desk and leaned
back in his chair. It squeaked under his bulk. “They are off the
charts.”

“
I can arrange for a tutor,”
Kay said.

The principal sat up and put his
elbows on his desk. “I’m afraid you don’t understand. Shawna scored
extremely high on her tests. Her verbal, math, and reading scores
are impressive. Her essay was,” he glanced at Shawna, “very adult
and shows a sophisticated level of writing ability. She doesn’t
need a tutor. In fact, she could be a tutor around
here.”

Kay looked at Shawna, whose face she
knew and whose sticky moods and bad language she was trying to
manage. Now she studied that face, mining for the brilliance this
school’s tests had revealed. “I’m surprised, of course, but very
pleased. What do we do about someone with ‘off-the-chart’ test
scores?”

“
She’s a candidate for the
advanced placement program. We have an AP Coordinator here, so I’ll
arrange a meeting. We’ll see that she’s challenged. And we should
probably get her started as soon as possible.” He looked at Shawna,
who was biting her thumbnail to the quick. “Are you ready for the
first day in your new high school?"

Chapter 16

Shawna

I don’t say a word while Robby and
Granny discuss me. When he asks me if I’m ready to go to school, I
want to shout, “Dumb question.” This is like the tenth school I’ve
been to in the last three years, and they’re all the same to me:
The prissy blonds look out from eyeballs they’ve chilled in the
fridge before class, and they won’t talk to each other until you
pass them in the hall; then they lay you out. The jocks just
released from a field or a court want to paw you, and then put you
down when you don’t roll over panting. The gangs are really
terrific minefields, and then there’re the nerds. I feel like
asking, “You got some level of hell I can go to? I’ll take one of
those, please.”

Instead, I zip it and I follow Mr.
Rolly-Poly Robby down the corridor, wondering how Kay knows him so
well, and if that’s going to work for or against me in this school.
When I step into the AP English class, the teacher sticks a piece
of paper into one hand and a book into the other and points to a
seat. I’m just in time to write a thirty-minute essay.

I’m glad I’m not rolling
dice today, with the kind of luck I’m having. A principal on a
first-name basis with Granny
and
a timed essay. I suck in my cheeks and bite
down.

I get a back seat, which is good and
not so good. The good part is I can sit with my back to the wall
and nobody behind me. The not-so-good part is I have to walk down
the whole row with all those eyes staring up into my face. Nerd,
nerd, two sets of icy blue eyes, one jock, and—uh oh, one category
I forgot—a troll.

More luck. I get to sit in the back
with a troll for company. Oh well, it could be worse. But then,
when I sit down, I get a closer look at the girl’s ferret-stare and
catch a whiff of that loamy smell. Trolls don’t know about
soap.

I glance up at the teacher, Mrs.
Heady. She’s been around chalk dust a long time. She’s also
embraced Sweet River’s dress code. I never knew they made whole
dresses out of plaid. Pencils sprout from the back of her head like
spores seeking light, and every once in a while she reaches back,
plucks one out, scribbles a note, then tucks the pointed end back
into her coiled braid. She makes it hard for me to concentrate on
the essay, but I finally manage to shut her out and read the
question.

“
It is easier to tell the
truth than to tell a lie. Do you agree or disagree with this topic
statement? Support your position with one or two specific examples
from personal experience, events past or present, or from books you
have read. (Three paragraphs minimum. 30 minutes.)”

Pathetic. Who thinks up these essay
questions anyway?

I pull out my Casino Royale ballpoint
and write Shawna across the top of the paper. This is an
interesting dilemma– —di . . . lem . . .ma. I love that word. It
means something terrible, but it rolls off the tip of my tongue and
sounds delicious. Do I put down the truth, or do I give her what
she’d like to read?

I look at the clock.

I better decide or I’m not going to
get anything down.

I disagree with the
proposition that it is easier to tell the truth than it is to tell
a lie. There are times when a lie works a lot better than the
truth. I come from Las Vegas, a town where lying is an art form, so
I have a lot of examples to support my position. In fact, I have so
many that three hundred paragraphs wouldn’t be enough space to
write them out.

Let’s take a bar girl for
example. She wouldn’t make any tips if she told the drunk how
flat-out ugly he was. Instead, by saying he’s a handsome so and so,
giving him a small pat on his butt and a smile that tells him he’s
the only guy she’s looking at, the girl takes home enough dough to
cover her rent and her child care for the month.

Sometimes it’s better to
lie than to hurt somebody with the truth. If a dorky guy asks a
girl out and she would rather drink rat poison than be seen in
public with him, I think she should tell him she’s got a date for
that night. That way he saves face and she’s off the hook. Imagine
a friend who is overweight asking for an “honest” opinion about how
she looks wearing her new, very tight pants. Talk about a
minefiled! If she looks fat and you tell her so, you can kiss that
friendship goodbye. There are tons of times like these when people
lie, and lying makes life better for the one being lied to and for
the person telling the lie, too.

Okay, I have two paragraphs of
examples—that’s more than enough. But, no, English teachers have
this essay-trinity-thing they want. So, what can I use for the
third?