The Edge of the Light (2 page)

I
n Deception Pass State Park, the weather was milder. While the rain had been coming down in great waving sheets in Coupeville at the center of Whidbey, in the north part of the island the day was wet, but not wet enough to cancel a hike.

No one worth his salt in the Pacific Northwest would have been put off by rain, anyway. A change of gear was all it took, along with using more care on the park's trails. But on one particular trail, hikers were largely protected from the weather. For despite the elevation gain, most of the path carved its way beneath some of the greatest trees of the park: hemlocks that loomed like skyscrapers, Douglas firs that shed small cones everywhere, fragrant cedars, madrones gracefully stretching their bark-peeling branches above the forest floor. All of these formed a canopy through which only the most severe rainfall could pierce. True, there were boulders for hikers to contend with along the way, and they could be slick, but the three individuals on the trail weren't bothered by this.

Becca King—sixteen years old—was one of the hikers. The second was her boyfriend Derric. The third was fifteen-year-old
Rejoice Ayoka, and Becca had sensed from the moment when she and Derric had picked the girl up for this hike that Rejoice wasn't happy. Before this, eighteen-year-old Derric had always driven to La Conner alone to see Rejoice, which was no problem as far as Becca was concerned. For although she and Derric were a couple, he shared a past and a heritage with the younger girl: They were both Ugandan, and they had both been adopted out of the same orphanage in Kampala. There were other parts of the Derric-and-Rejoice relationship, too. But Derric had not yet mentioned them to Rejoice, and Becca wasn't about to say a word in reference to them, either.

Now they were approaching the final section of the trail. The going was trickier, with a sharp descent down a bluff followed by a jump onto a path that edged a raindrop-speckled and winter-bleak expanse of water called Cornet Bay. Derric went first to break the fall should either of the girls slip, and when he reached the bottom and made the leap onto the path below, he turned to help the girls.

Becca was cautious. She'd been concentrating on more than just her footwork. She'd also been working hard to keep her mind as perfect a blank as possible.
Empty of all there is
was a mantra she was using to achieve this blank. She'd been repeating it silently since leaving Derric's car, and only when there was conversation among them had she allowed anything else to enter her head.

Becca was full of the mantra when she heard Derric saying, “Hey, don't do it that way, Rejoice!” in a tone of alarm. She roused
herself to see that the other girl was poised to jump down to the lower path, arms extended behind her, as if she intended to fly.

“He's right,” Becca said to the fifteen-year-old. “Don't, Rejoice!”

But Rejoice didn't appear interested in either of their warnings because she laughed and called out, “Catch me, Derric!” and flung herself off her perch in his direction.

Derric scrambled, saying, “That's a dumb-ass thing to—” but he managed to catch her, although both of them ended up on their butts in the mud. Rejoice laughed as Derric began struggling onto his feet.

“I knew you could do it!” She clapped, as if applauding the boy's heroics on her behalf.

Derric looked at Becca, and she heard him perfectly.
What she thinks about it
came to her as clearly as if he'd spoken although he'd not said a single word.

She wanted to reply. She told herself what she
would
have said had Derric only known that she could hear what was going on in his head: “It's not what I think. It's what Rejoice is thinking. You better watch out.” But she said nothing. Instead, she smiled at him as he came back over to the final jump and helped her down.

“Ooooh, Becca was too scared to jump,” Rejoice said airily.

Derric replied with, “Becca was too
smart
to jump. You, on the other hand, could've broken a leg.”

“No way,” Rejoice countered. “I knew you'd take care of me.”

Although the path was now virtually flat as it skirted Cornet Bay and led in the direction of the Deception Pass Bridge and the roiling waters beneath it, Rejoice appeared to have
considerable trouble staying upright. “Way too slippery!” was how she explained it as she grabbed for Derric's support time and again. “Can you help me, Derric?” became a constant refrain.

Derric maintained his cool. He was, as far as Becca was concerned, the personification of patience with the younger girl. It had been a number of weeks since Becca had taken him to La Conner to meet Rejoice, and it was obvious that he considered it too early to do anything more than just hang with her when he was able to make the drive. Talking to her honestly did not seem to be something that was going to happen any time soon.

The trouble with this was how Rejoice was interpreting Derric's visits. Becca had had her suspicions about this when the girl's calls to Derric's cell phone began to come more than three times a day. So when Derric had invited Becca to join them on this particular hike, Becca had said “sure,” because she wanted to be exactly that: sure about what was happening with Rejoice.

Back at Derric's car, they stowed their gear and the remains of the snacks they'd taken with them. Rejoice called out, “Shotgun!” and over her shoulder said to Becca, “It
is
my regular place, you know,” and clambered inside the car.

Derric muttered, “Sorry, babe,” as he shut the cargo area of the Forester.

“No problem,” she said, and added, “but we should probably talk, you and me.”

He didn't reply. She'd gone back to
Empty of all there is
for the remainder of their walk, so she didn't hear anything else from him. She climbed into the car and told herself that the
prospect of studying the back of Derric's dark, shaven skull wasn't so bad anyway. He had gorgeous skin the color of bitter chocolate, and from her angle behind the passenger seat, she could see the smooth curve of his cheek and the muscle in his jaw that moved when he was feeling something he hoped not to reveal.

As they took off, Rejoice declared, “Next time I'll make sandwiches to bring with us. What kind of sandwich d'you like best, Derric? PBJ? Roast beef? Ham?”

“Anything but bologna,” he replied, and with a glance over his shoulder at Becca, “What about you, babe?”

“I wasn't
asking
Becca,” Rejoice said.

“No prob,” Derric told her. “I was.”

Rejoice settled her shoulders in girl fuming mode. She shot a look at Derric before saying, “Okay. What
about
you, Becca? Do you even eat sandwiches? I bet you think they'll make you fat. I bet you exist on celery.”

Becca smiled to herself at this. When she'd first come to the island almost sixteen months previously,
fat
certainly would have been one of the words to describe her, although
chunky
had been her mom's word of choice as she'd monitored every morsel that had passed Becca's lips. But thinking about her mom was too scary a thing, so instead Becca said, “I go for tuna mostly. But it's got to have a ton of mayo and relish. And I like whole wheat bread.”

“
Course
you do,” Rejoice muttered. “It's more
healthy
.”

A little silence settled among them. Derric's gaze met Becca's in the rear view mirror. She gave him a look that was meant to
tell him that there were things he couldn't put off much longer, but she kept in her head
Empty of all there is
because she didn't want to hear what he was thinking. On the other hand, she wouldn't have minded hearing what was going on in Rejoice's head, but to loosen her hold on the mantra would mean to give Derric's thoughts admittance as well as Rejoice's, and she'd long ago realized that the only way she could even the playing field between herself and her boyfriend was to give him the privacy of his own thoughts. She pretty much always learned them eventually anyway.

Such was the case now. Derric said to Rejoice, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Depends,” Rejoice told him. “Mom's not letting me date till I'm sixteen, you know. I mean a
real
date, like at night going to the movies or something.”

“I know that.”

“Oh.” She sounded disappointed. “Then what d'you want to ask me?”

“Why you do white girl hair.”

Becca winced. Very
bad
idea for a topic of conversation. Girls and their hair . . . ? Guys should just stay away from it. In the case of Rejoice's hair, Derric would have been wiser to run in the opposite direction. And calling it white girl hair? Dumb, dumb, dumb.

So she was unsurprised when Rejoice demanded, “What's
wrong
with my hair?”

“Straight and stiff like that? It looks . . . I dunno. Unnatural, I guess.”

Becca wanted to say, “Don't!” to Derric. She also wanted to
say, “Are you an idiot?” But instead she waited for Rejoice's reply, which was fast enough in coming.

“So what am I s'posed to do exactly? Shave my head like
you
?”

He shrugged. “No one in Kampala had hair like yours. Don't you remember?”

“I didn't even
have
hair,” she told him. “And all's I remember is getting my head shaved. What did I have? Lice or something?”

“Everyone had their heads shaved. Or they wore hair super short so they didn't have to comb it and break it.”

“My hair doesn't break,” Rejoice said.

“That's because of all the gunk you smear on it. What is it anyway?”

“Uh, Derric . . . ?” When he glanced at the mirror, Becca shot him a don't-go-there look.

“I
like
my hair this way,” Rejoice said. “I had frizz bombs all over my head and then my mom found this and I
like
it.”

Becca could feel the girl's hurt, and she touched Rejoice's shoulder. “Rejoice, he's a guy. He doesn't get it.”

Rejoice flinched to shake Becca off. Derric said, “Whatever,” in that universal male way of ending a discussion.

But Rejoice continued with, “What would make my hair better, then?”

For you
went unspoken, but it was as if Rejoice had said it anyway. Derric had to have known that, Becca thought, but instead of reassuring Rejoice that, really, her hair was just fine and he'd been having a moment of male insanity, Derric said, “Wear it short or shave it all off. It'd make you look cool. It'd make you look African.”

What Becca thought was, It'd make you look like Derric, and she couldn't believe he didn't know that. On the other hand, maybe that was how he was going to clue Rejoice in to the truth. Head shaved and smiling, Rejoice would virtually be Derric's twin.

“I'm not African,” Rejoice was saying. “I'm American.”

“Your style might be American,” he replied. “But your blood is African, just like mine.”

Rejoice squirmed in her seat, as if she wanted to disappear into the Forester's fabric. She set her face and crossed her arms. It wasn't until they'd finally reached her family's farm outside of the town of La Conner that she spoke again. Then it was only to say, “You're really mean, Derric. And
not
just about my hair.” Before he could reply to this, she jumped out of the Forester and ran to the house.

Becca moved from the back seat to the front. She looked at Derric. He looked at her. He said, “I blew it.”

“Ya think? When did you get so dumb?”

“I was trying to help her out. Her hair—”

“That was seriously uncool.” Becca fastened her seat belt as he backed the car away from the pristine white farmhouse where Rejoice lived with her parents—Jeff and Darla Vickland—and her four siblings. “No girl wants some guy criticizing her hair.
Or
her body.
Or
her clothes.”

“I was only trying to help,” he protested. “Her hair looks bad. It's like . . . grisly. She needs to know it. What else am I supposed to do? I'm her brother, for God's sake.”

“And you've
got
to tell her that. She's
into
you, Derric.”

“No way. She knows I'm just a friend.”

“Don't be a sponge brain.”

. . . probably feeling jealous of what we have only what we have isn't anything because I'm not going there no way . . .

Becca was defeated by this sudden jumble of Derric's thoughts. Even the mantra didn't help her. She grabbed her backpack from the back seat and began to riffle through it to find what she needed. This was an earbud connected to what looked like—but was not—an iPod. Instead, it was what she'd learned to call an AUD box, a device that obscured the thoughts of others with static so that Becca herself could concentrate.