Sliding On The Edge

Sliding on the
Edge

By

C. Lee McKenzie

Published by C. Lee McKenzie at
Smashwords

Copyright 2013

(Previously published by WestSide
Books, 2009 )

Smashwords Edition, License
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Table of Contents

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Sample Chapters

Chapter 1

Shawna

Something’s wrong. It’s not a
heart-grabbing noise like when somebody jiggles the doorknob to see
if it’s locked. It’s not a bitter smell like the electrical short
we had last month, when all the breakers popped. No. It’s something
in the air, something like a ghost making its way through the room.
And it can’t be Monster, not after last night.

I squint into the morning light, then
roll onto my back and blink at the damp veins in the ceiling. The
toilet in the apartment above us flushes twenty-four seven. There
must be ten people living up there, and our ceiling takes the brunt
of 4B’s high-density living.

The air conditioner isn’t humming. Is
that what woke me up?

My hair is plastered to the side of my
face. I paid the electric bill. I’m sure I did.

Did I?

The hands on our wall
clock
chunk, chunk
around to eleven. I pull on my jeans and my bra, then dig
under the roll-away and haul out the rest of my clothes from
yesterday. Mom’s bedroom door is closed like always, so I tap on it
and wait. When she doesn’t yell at me to go away, I knock again,
harder. Then I twist the knob and push. It’s usually locked, but
today it swings open.

The sheets twisted together in a heap
on the bed look like they’ve killed each other. The dresser drawers
stick out like stair steps, their insides scooped clean. I pull the
door shut and roll my forehead back and forth against the peeling
paint. I’m in free-fall, clutching at clouds.

F
our steps across the hall and I’m in the bathroom. It’s been
stripped. The clutter of Mom’s bottles and sprays, mascara tubes,
and nail polish, all gone. My toothbrush and a crushed, half-empty
toothpaste tube curled up on the back of the toilet make a lonely
still life.

I splash my face with cold water, then
lean against the sink and hold on with both hands. More than
anything, I wish I could crawl in and swizzle down the drain along
with the water.

What’s she up to this
time?

The face in the mirror doesn’t have a
clue.

In the kitchen the sink
full of take-out containers are losing their battle to mold. We’ve
lived here three months, a record. The mold, on the other hand, was
a tenant before we paid our first rent check. It
has
been around so long,
it’s immune to bleach. I gave up after the first week.

A folded piece of paper
sticks out from under the greasy skillet. When I tug at it, a bus
ticket and a hundred dollar bill flutter onto the linoleum
floor.
Where did she get a hundred? . . .
And how? . . . damn.
I kneel and scoop up
the money, then stare at the piece of paper next to it. At the top
is Casino Royale’s logo, with show girls playing cards and roulette
wheels down the side. Royale is one of her favorite gambling
places, one I can usually stake out at about six in the morning
when I need to get lunch money from her. There’s a note on the
piece of paper, but I don’t pick it up. I don’t want to touch it
and I don’t want to read it.

The clock keeps
chunking
. My knees go
numb. Upstairs 4B’s toilet flushes. I turn my head so her words
aren’t sideways.

She starts with “Shawna sweetie, Dylan
and me are going to New Jersey to try our luck at some other
tables.”

Huh?
I squeeze my eyes shut then open them. There’s more. I pick
up the paper and get off my knees.

“
He bot you a tiket to
California and left you a hundred (he’s a sweet heart, right?).
Your granma lives in a place called sweet river. Its close to
sacamento in California. Go there so I can get in touch once were
settled, hon.

Jackie”

In the bottom corner of the paper Mom
scribbled something else, but while her writing is hard to make
out, her scribbling takes code-breaker training. I don’t bother to
try.

Instead, I read the note one more time
and turn it over, in case she added more on the back. Like, “I’ll
miss you.”

No. The back is blank.

I hang over, resting my
head on my knees.
Don’t get the shakes.
Don’t get the shakes. You know what happens when you get the
shakes.

I wish I could be five
again . . . I wish she would prop me up on pillows like she did,
then, and feed me ice cream . . . and I would lick the spoon and
she would laugh and I would laugh and she wouldn’t leave until I
slept.

Blood is backing up behind my
eyeballs. I need oxygen, quick. I straighten up and walk to the air
conditioner, giving it a hard smack on the side. The blades inside
crank over and cool air fans across my face. I stand there,
thinking about my mom, writing the note while I was asleep, leaving
without saying something.

Like “Good-bye.”

“
See ya.”

“
Be careful.”

And I know Dylan watched
her write that note. She never calls herself Mom when he’s
around.

Finally, I study the tight scribble in
the bottom corner. “Kay Stone” and a phone number. Below that is,
“ps you gotta sneak out of the apartment. Rents over
do.”

“
Oh, man, not again.” My
voice sounds whiney—like I’m six, not sixteen.

On the calendar hanging over the hot
plate, I’d scrawled “rent due” in purple marker across the first
week. The rent was due last Saturday, so I figure I have about an
hour before Tuan bangs on the door.

I gotta lie
down.

Gotta think.

I sprawl across the roll-away and bury
my head under my pillow. Mom could come up with doozies, but this
one is pretty big. She’s skipped out for a few days at a time
before, but she’s never left me a ticket or a grandmother to go and
stay with.

“
Screw
her!”
And what about this Kay
Stone? That’s a new name on the family tree. I don’t remember ever
hearing the name Stone.

And why should I go,
anyway? I can make it on my own without some granny minding my
business. It would serve Mom right if I just cashed in the ticket
and stayed right here in Vegas. She’d never find me here, and I can
take care of myself. Get a job.

I hurl the pillow across
the room, knock over the bullet lamp, and send it crashing to the
floor.
Great, now Tuan’ll come pounding on
the door to see what kind of damage I’ve done to his
furniture.

I wrap Sweetheart’s hundred and the
ticket inside the note and jam them into my jeans pocket. I skim my
hand over the top of the fridge and reach to the back, feeling for
the goods I’ve hidden there. The envelope is dirty and torn, so I
take care to fold it over the cards inside, then slip the packet
into my hip pocket. Then I find my thin treasure, one of Dylan’s
razor blades wrapped in toilet paper. As I pull it forward, my hand
knocks over a small plastic bottle. It falls and rolls across the
floor. I scoop it up. It’s Mom’s sleeping pills she got after a guy
named Regan dumped her. Just thinking about him makes my flesh
creep. Guess she doesn’t need these anymore, now that she’s got old
Dylan. I put the razor blade and the pills inside a paper
bag.

Packed.

Now, all I have to do is escape
without making Tuan suspicious, but that’s not going to be easy.
Sour Puss Tuan circles his apartments like a reconnaissance plane
every day. My only hope is to do like Mom taught me.

“
The best way to bail out on
your rent,” she’d say, “is to act totally normal.”

So I bounce down the stairs
like always, and check my expression in the mirror outside Tuan’s
apartment door. On it is a tag fluttering from a piece of
string:
“ForSale/$2.” Tuan’s been trying
to sell that cracked glass since we moved in. If I stand so the
crack cuts my face into two pieces, I actually look kinda
interesting. If I stand on one side and get my full face, I just
look dorky. No sixteen-year-old looks like me in Vegas, except for
the Keno players’ kids from Kansas.

“
Somebody’s got to be able to work a regular job. And
t
hat’s gotta be you,” Mom would say,
jabbing her finger into my chest.

Once a month, sometimes twice, like in
the summer when school’s out—that’s as regular as it gets with Mom
and me—I play a lost teen, asking for directions at the casino door
while Mom lifts tourist wallets, and, I have to say, she’s pretty
good. We’ve never been busted. A couple of close calls, but the
cops have never booked her.

The door opens and I jump
at Tuan’s sudden appearance. He’s armed with the paintbrush that I
see him use every day to cover up graffiti. We live way too close
to Morrie’s Hardware, and all the taggers test their Krylon
spray nozzles on our wall before they head for
their real targets downtown.

“
Good morning, Tuan.” I
smile and smooth my hair in his mirror like I’m in no hurry to go
anyplace. His eyes don’t blink. He’s kinda snaky that
way.

“
Not good,” he
grumbles.

He jerks his door closed behind him
and stomps outside. I follow and watch while he swipes gray paint
over the red-and-black stucco art.

“
Las Vegas!” He spits into
the gutter. “Hoodlums do this. All time.”

While he dunks his brush into the
paint I slip past him. I want to run, but I make myself walk the
way the girls do on the street when they’re working. “Look at us”
they say. “We’re not doing anything wrong, just walking.” Come on,
Tuan, watch me leave like I’m coming back, like this is the same as
any day since I moved into your dump. I almost make the corner when
he yells.

“
You betta tell her rent due
at noon or you both out!” He flings his arm, and paint

flies like gray raindrops onto the
sidewalk.

I wave and smile.

When I reach the corner, I can still
feel his snaky eyes on my back.

Chapter 2

Shawna

There are lots of good
things about Las Vegas, but the best thing is it never shuts down.
If I steer clear of the old section of town and the back alleys,
moving from casino to casino, looking bored like I’m waiting for my
parents, I can stay pretty safe around the clock. The trick is to
avoid crossing paths with the same security guards too often. I’m
thinking that if I hang around Vegas, I can make it on my own. Have
before.
Yeah. Sure I can.

I’ve been knocking around town since I
left my buddy Tuan this morning. It’s now four in the afternoon.
I’m starved and it’s time to make some life decisions. I know
Kibby’s Hamburgers is hiring, but nobody works long at Kibby’s.
Their last burger-flipper, who sat next to me in biology, filled me
in on the night manager—who grew hands whenever she was alone with
him. That picture I get in my mind makes me shiver. So I’ll check
out Stan’s Café. They hire a lot.