The Edge of Nowhere

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers; YA Paranormal

Synopsis

Becca King is on the run.

Her ability to hear "whispers" - the thoughts of others - has put her at risk from her stepfather, whose criminal activities she's discovered.

When she arrives on Whidbey Island, beautiful, wild, and a world apart, she embarks on a life very different from her old one, with new friends that include Seth, a kindhearted dropout turned gypsy jazz musician; Derric, a Ugandan boy adopted by a local family; Diana, with whom she shares psychic powers; and Debbie, who makes a habit of helping runaways.

Blending strands of mystery and romance and a hint of the paranormal in a haunting setting, The Edge of Nowhere is the first in a cycle of books that will take Becca and her friends through their teenage years on the island.

Elizabeth George, author of the bestselling crime novels about Inspector Lynley, brings her prodigious talents to her first book for young adults.

Release date: September 4, 2012

Publisher: Speak

Print pages: 464

Sample

 

How Things Began

On the last day of Hannah Armstrong’s existence, things were normal for a while. She made a 94 percent on a math test, and she accepted a movie date for later in the week.

She walked home, as usual. She didn’t use her hearing device since she didn’t really need it outside of school. This gadget had the appearance of an iPod, but it didn’t play music. Instead it played a form of static that removed from Hannah’s hearing the disjointed thoughts of other people. Since babyhood, she’d heard these broken thoughts of others, which she’d learned to call whispers. But they came into her head like a badly tuned radio; she could never tell exactly who the whisperer was if more than one person was present; and they made school a nightmare for her. So a mechanism that her mom called an AUD box had been manufactured for Hannah. She’d worn it since she was seven years old.

When she arrived home, she went to the stairs. She headed up to her room, only to see her stepfather come stealthily out of it.

They locked eyes. Damn . . . what’s she doing . . . why didn’t . . . came into Hannah’s head from Jeff Corrie as whispers always did, disconnected and seemingly random. She frowned as she heard them, and she wondered what her stepfather had been doing in her room besides trying once again to gather reassurance that she wasn’t going to tell her mother how she’d been helping him with his latest scheme.

It wasn’t as if she’d wanted to help him, either. But Jeff Corrie had Hannah’s mom in some sort of thrall that had more to do with his looks than his character, and caught up in their dizzying relationship, she’d told him what went on inside Hannah’s head when she wasn’t wearing the AUD box. It hadn’t taken him long to figure out a way to use Hannah’s talent. He decided to “employ” her as the cake and coffee girl at his investment house, just the person to bring in the refreshments and listen to the whispers of his clients in order to read their weaknesses. He and his pal Connor separated old folks from their money in this way. It was a grand scheme and it was making them millions.

Hannah had never wanted to help him. She knew it was wrong. But she feared this man and she feared the fact that his whispers, his words, and the expressions on his face never matched up. She didn’t know what this meant. But she knew it wasn’t good. So she said nothing to anyone. She just did what she was told and waited for whatever was going to happen next. She had no idea it would happen that very afternoon.

Jeff Corrie said, “What’re you doing home?” His gaze went to her right ear where the earphone to the AUD box usually was.

Hannah dug the box out of her pocket and clipped it on the waistband of her jeans, screwing the earphone into her ear as well. His eyes narrowed till he saw her turn up the volume. Then he seemed to relax.

“It’s three thirty,” she told him.

“Start your homework,” he said.

He went past her and down the stairs. She heard him yelling, “Laurel? Where the hell are you? Hannah’s home,” as if his wife was supposed to do something about that.

Hannah put her backpack in her room. Everything seemed to be the way she’d left it that morning. Still, she went to the bedside table to check the drawer.

The tiny piece of clear tape was ripped off. Someone had opened the drawer. Someone had read her journal.

It wasn’t enough, she thought, that she helped him and his friend. He had to possess her thoughts on the matter, too. Well, good luck to figuring out how I feel, Daddy Jeff, Hannah scoffed. Like I’d write something honest and actually leave it in my bedroom for you?

She left her room and descended the stairs. She heard her mom and Jeff Corrie talking in the kitchen. She joined them there and turned away from the sight of Jeff Corrie nuzzling her mother’s neck. He was murmuring, “What about n-o-w?” and Laurel was laughing and playing at pushing him away. But Hannah knew her mom liked what was going on between her and her husband. She loved the guy, and her love was as deaf and as dumb as it was blind.

Hannah said, “Hi, Mom,” and opened the refrigerator, reaching for a carton of milk.

Laurel said, “Hey. No hi to Jeff?”

“Already saw him upstairs,” Hannah told her. She added, “Gosh. He didn’t tell you, Mom?” just to see how she would react. Don’t trust him, don’t trust him, she wanted to say. But she could only plant seeds. She couldn’t paint pictures.

There was a silence between Laurel and Jeff. With the refrigerator door still open, hiding her from them, Hannah turned off the volume of the AUD box.

He’s not . . . he can’t be . . . had to be from her mother, she thought.

She tried to hear Jeff, but there was nothing.

Then everything changed, and life as Hannah had known it ended.

Little bitch always thinks . . . a break-in . . . surprise . . . Connor . . . if she hears that a gun . . . because dead isn’t always dead these days . . .

The carton of milk slipped from Hannah’s fingers and sloshed onto the floor. She swung around from the refrigerator and her eyes met Jeff’s.

“Clumsy,” he said, but inside his head was something different.

His gaze went from Hannah’s face to her ear to the AUD box on her waist.

She heard was the last thing Hannah heard before she ran from the room.

 

 

 

 

The Cliff

 

 

 

 

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Becca King’s mother, Laurel, had traded the Lexus SUV at the first opportunity after they’d descended interstate five on the serpentine stretch of highway known as the Grapevine in California. She’d lost money on the car, but money wasn’t the issue. Getting away from San Diego along with getting rid of the Lexus was. She’d traded it for a 1998 Jeep Wrangler, and the moment they’d crossed the California state line into Oregon, she began looking for a place to unload the Jeep as well. A 1992 Toyota RAV4 came next. But that only took them up through Oregon to the border with Washington. As quickly as possible and making sure it was all legal, Laurel then dumped the Toyota for a 1988 Ford Explorer, which was what mother and daughter had driven ever since.

Becca hadn’t questioned any of this. She’d known the desperate reason it had to be done, just as she knew the reason there could be no more Hannah Armstrong. For she and her mother were traveling as fast as they could, leaving house, school, and names behind them. Now they sat in the Explorer in Mukilteo, Washington. The car was backed into a parking space in front of an old wooden-floored store called Woody’s Market, across the water from Whidbey Island.

It was early evening, and a heavy mist that was not quite fog hung between the mainland and the island. From where they were parked, Whidbey was nothing more than an enormous hulk surmounted by tall conifers and having a band of lights at the bottom where a few houses were strung along the shore. To Becca, with an entire life lived in San Diego, the place looked forbidding and foreign. She couldn’t imagine herself there, trying to establish a new life far away from her stepfather’s reach. To Laurel, the island looked like a safety net where she could leave her daughter in the care of a childhood friend for the time it would take her to establish a place of refuge in British Columbia. There, she figured that she and Becca would be safe from discovery by Jeff Corrie.

Laurel had felt overwhelming relief when her longtime Bohemian lifestyle had been enough to quash any questions from her friend. Carol Quinn had not even acted surprised that Laurel would ask her to care for her daughter for a length of time she couldn’t begin to name. Instead of questioning this, Carol said no problem, bring her on up, she can help me out. Haven’t been feeling so great lately, Carol had said, so I could use an assistant in the house.

But will you keep this a secret? Laurel had asked her over and over again.

To my grave, Carol Quinn had promised. No worries, Laurel. Bring her on up.

Now Laurel lowered her window two inches, to keep the windshield from fogging up. The middle of September, and she hadn’t had a clue the weather would have changed so much. In southern California, September was the hottest month of the year, a time of forest fires driven by winds off the desert. Here, it already felt like winter. Laurel shivered and grabbed a sweatshirt from the back of the car, where it lay against the wheel of Becca’s old ten-speed.

She said, “Cold?” Becca shook her head. She was breathing deeply, and while she usually did this to calm herself, she was doing it now because on the air was the scent of waffle cones meant for ice cream, and it was coming from Woody’s Market behind them.

They’d already been inside. Becca had already asked for a cone. Laurel had already made the automatic reply of “In through the lips and onto the hips.” She was a woman who, on the run from a criminal, could still count her daughter’s intake of calories. But Becca was hungry. They hadn’t had anything to eat since lunch. A snack certainly wasn’t going to blow up her thighs like balloons.

She said, “Mom . . .”

Laurel turned to her. “Tell me your name.”

They’d been through this exercise five times daily since leaving their home, so Becca wasn’t happy to go through it another time. She understood the importance of it, but she wasn’t an idiot. She’d memorized it all. She sighed and looked in the other direction. “Becca King,” she said.

“And what are you to remember as Job Number One?”

“Help Carol Quinn around the house.”

“Aunt Carol,” Laurel said. “You’re to call her Aunt Carol.”

“Aunt Carol, Aunt Carol, Aunt Carol,” Becca said.

“She knows you have a little money until I can start sending you more,” Laurel said. “But the more you can help her . . . It’s like earning your keep.”

“Yes,” Becca said. “I will become someone’s slave because you married a maniac, Mom.”

Oh God what did he do to you when you’re my only—

“Sorry,” Becca said, hearing her mom’s pain. “Sorry. Sorry.”

“Get out of my head,” Laurel told her. “And tell me your name. Full name this time.”

There was a parking lot to Becca’s right, across the main road that ended with the ferry dock. People had been sauntering from cars in that lot to a food stand just to one side of the dock. A sign declaring the place to be Ivar’s was shining through the mist, and a line of people making purchases had formed. Becca’s stomach growled.

“Tell me your name,” Laurel repeated. “This is important.” Her voice was calm enough, but beneath the gentle tone was come on come on there’s so little time please do this for me it’s the last thing I’ll ask, and Becca could feel those words coming at her, invading her brain, perfectly clear because that was how her mother’s thoughts always were, unlike the whispers that came from others. She wanted to tell her mom not to worry. She wanted to tell her that Jeff Corrie might forget about them. But she knew the first statement was useless, and she knew the second was an outright lie.

Becca turned back to her mother and their eyes met and listen my children and you shall hear of the midnight ride of Paul Revere came from Laurel.

“Very funny,” Becca said to her. “It would’ve been nice if you’d memorized something else in sixth grade besides that, you know.”

“Tell me your name,” Laurel said again.

“All right. All right. Rebecca Dolores King.” Becca grimaced. “God. Does it have to be Dolores? I mean, who has a name like Dolores these days?”

Laurel ignored the question. “Where are you from?”

Becca said patiently because there was no point to anything other than patience at the moment, “San Luis Obispo. Sun Valley, Idaho, before that. I was born in Sun Valley, but I left when I was seven and that’s when my family moved to San Luis Obispo.”

“Why are you here?”

“I’m staying with my aunt.”

“Where are your parents?”

“My mom’s on a dig in . . .” Becca frowned. For the first time since they’d fled California, she couldn’t remember. She assumed it was the fact that she was so hungry because she was never at her best when there were physical needs that had to be taken care of. She said, “Damn. I can’t remember.”

Laurel’s head clunked back against the headrest of her seat. “You have to remember. This is crucial. It’s life and death. Where are your parents?”

Becca looked at her mother, hoping for a clue but all she picked up was on the eighteenth of April in seventy-five hardly a man is now alive, which wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She looked back at Ivar’s. A woman bent over with osteoporosis was turning from the counter with a carton in her hand and she looked so old . . . and then it came to Becca. Old.

“Olduvai Gorge,” she said. “My mom’s on a dig in Olduvai Gorge.” Nothing could have been further from the truth, but shortly before they’d made their run from Jeff Corrie, Becca had read an old book about the discovery of Lucy, aka Australopithecus afarensis, in Olduvai Gorge by an ambitious postgraduate fresh out of the University of Chicago. She’d been the one to suggest that her mother be a paleontologist. It sounded romantic to her.

Laurel nodded, satisfied. “What about your father? Where’s your father? Don’t you have a father?”

Becca rolled her eyes. It was clear that this was going to go on till the ferry arrived because her mother wanted no time to think of anything else. Least of all did she want to think of how she’d endangered her daughter. So Becca said deliberately, “Which father would that be, Mom?” and then she reached in her pocket and pulled out the single earphone of the AUD box. She shoved it into her ear. She turned up the volume and her head filled with static, soothing to her as always, the way satin is soothing against someone’s skin.

Laurel reached over and yanked the earphone out of Becca’s ear. She said, “I’m sorry this happened. I’m sorry I’m not who you want me to be. But here’s the thing: no one ever is.”

At this, Becca got out of the car. She had money enough in her jeans to buy herself something to eat, and more money in the pockets of her jacket. She fully intended to use it. There was even more money in her backpack if she wanted to buy everything on the menu, but the backpack was with her bike in the back of the Explorer and if she tried to get at it, she knew her mother would stop her.

Becca crossed the road. To her left, she could see the ferry coming, and she paused for a moment and watched its approach. When Laurel had first told her that she would get to Whidbey Island on a ferry, Becca had thought of the only ferry she’d ever been on, an open-air raft that held four cars and sailed about two hundred yards across the harbor in Newport Beach, California. This thing approaching was nothing like that. It was huge, with a gaping mouth for cars to slide into. It was all lit up like a riverboat and seagulls were flying around it.

The line at Ivar’s had diminished by the time Becca got there. She ordered clam chowder and made sure it was the New England kind, made with milk and potatoes and therefore possessing a dizzying number of calories. She asked for an extra bag of oyster crackers to float in the container, and when she had to pay, she did it in coins. She placed them carefully one at a time on the counter, and oh damn . . . what the . . . stupid chick told her that the cashier wasn’t pleased. Becca saw why when the cashier had to pick up the coins with fingers minus their nails. She’d bitten them down to the quick. They were ugly, and Becca saw the cashier hated them to be on display.

Becca thought about saying sorry but instead she said thanks and took her chowder over to a newspaper stand. She balanced the soup container on top and dipped her spoon into it as she watched the ferry come nearer to the mainland.

The chowder wasn’t what she expected. She’d been thinking it would be like the chowder her stepfather two stepfathers ago had made. He was called Pete and he used corn in his, and Becca was a corn girl. Popcorn, corn on the cob, frozen corn. It didn’t matter. Laurel claimed corn was what was fed to cows and pigs to make them fat, but since Laurel said that about nearly everything Becca wanted to eat, Becca didn’t give much thought to the matter.

Still, this particular chowder wasn’t worth fighting over with Laurel. So Becca ate only half of it. Then she jammed her container into a trash can and sprinted back toward the Explorer.

Laurel was on her cell phone. Her face, now without its spray tan, looked gray and weathered. For the first time, Becca thought of her mother as old, but then Laurel smiled and nodded and started talking in that way where no one could squeeze in a word. Carol Quinn was probably getting an earful, Becca thought. Her mom had been calling her twice a day to make sure every detail of the plan was hammered into position irreversibly.

Their eyes met, and when they did, what Becca heard was no one’s ever going to hurt, but that was cut off the way a radio gets cut off when someone changes stations and what came over the airways next was one if by land and two if by sea and I on the opposite shore will be. It was just like static from the AUD box and it worked as well. Laurel said something into the cell phone and ended the call.

Becca got into the Explorer. Her mother said sharply, “Was that New England clam chowder you were eating?”

Becca said, “I didn’t eat it all.”

Ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm took the place of what Laurel wanted to say but it didn’t matter and Becca told her so. “Stop it,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking anyway.”

Laurel said, “Let’s not fight.” She reached over and touched her daughter’s hair. “Carol will be waiting for you when the ferry docks,” she said quietly. “She has a truck for the bike, so there’s nothing to worry about. She knows what you look like and if she isn’t there when you arrive, just wait because she’ll be on her way. Okay, sweetheart? Hey. Are you hearing me?”

Becca was. She was hearing the words. She was also feeling the emotion behind them. She said, “It’s not all your fault, Mom.”

“There’s more than one kind of fault,” her mother replied. “If you don’t know that yet, believe me, you will.”

Becca reached for her backpack in the back of the Ford. Laurel said, “Where are the glasses? You’ll need to put them on now.”

“No one’s looking at me.”

“You need to put them on. You need to get in the habit. Where’s the extra hair dye? How many batteries do you have for the AUD box? What’s your name? Where’s your mother?”

Becca looked at her then. Listen my children listen my children, but there was no need for Laurel to recite that poem over and over, even if she couldn’t recall the rest of the words at that moment. For Becca read her expression as anyone could have done. Her mother was terrified. She was going on instinct alone just as she always had, but because her last instinct had been the one telling her to marry Jeff Corrie, she no longer trusted what her gut was telling her.

Becca said, “Mom. I’ll be okay,” and she was surprised when Laurel’s eyes filled with tears. Her mother hadn’t cried once since they’d left San Diego. She hadn’t cried at all since she’d spent herself crying when she’d learned who Jeff Corrie really was and what Jeff Corrie had done. We can’t go to the police, her mother had told her through her tears. God in heaven, sweetheart, who will believe you? No one’s reported a body yet and if we do . . . we have no evidence Jeff was involved. So she’d laid her plans and they’d made a run for it and here they were on the brink of something from which there was no return.

Becca reached out and took her mother’s hand. “Listen to what I know,” she said.

“What do you know?”

“Rebecca Dolores King, Mom. San Luis Obispo. My aunt Carol on Whidbey Island. Carol Quinn. Olduvai Gorge.”

Laurel looked beyond Becca, over her shoulder. The sound of traffic said that the ferry had arrived and was offloading its vehicles. “Oh God,” Laurel whispered.

“Mom,” Becca said, “it’s okay. Really.” She shoved open the door and walked to the back of the Explorer. Her mother got out and joined her there. Together they lifted her bike from the back and arranged its saddlebags on either side. Becca struggled into the heavy backpack, but before she did so, she dug inside for the glasses with their clear and decidedly useless lenses. She put them on.

“Map of the island?” her mother asked her.

“I’ve got it in the backpack.”

“You’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

“What about Carol’s address? Just in case.”

“Got that too.”

“Where’s the cell phone? Remember, it’s limited minutes. Yours is programmed with the number of mine. So emergencies only. Nothing else. It’s important. You’ve got to remember.”

“I’ll remember. And I’ve got it in the backpack, Mom. And yes to the rest. The AUD box. Extra batteries. More hair color. Everything.”

“Where’s your ticket?”

“Here. Mom, it’s all here. It is.”

Oh God oh God oh God.

“I better get going,” Becca said, gazing at the stream of cars heading into the town beyond the ferry line.

“Look at me, sweetheart,” Laurel said.

Becca didn’t want to. She was afraid, and she didn’t need to hear more fear. But she knew the importance of giving her mother this reassurance, so she met her gaze as Laurel said to her, “Look right into my eyes. Tell me what you see. Tell me what you know.”

And there was no midnight ride of Paul Revere now. There was only a single message to read.

“You’ll come back,” Becca said.

“I will,” Laurel promised. “As soon as I can.”

 

 

 

 

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The walk-ons and the bikes went first. There was a crowd of them, and Becca followed their lead. Those with bikes moved toward the front of the ferry, wheeling them along a three-lane tunnel toward an opening at the far end. The walk-ons went for a stairway. Among them were people fishing in their pockets and their purses, and Becca concluded that there was something to buy up above. She guessed it was food or hot drinks. Either would be welcome to her, because a cool breeze was coming off the water, she was shivering, and she was still hungry.

At the front of the ferry, people parked their bikes. Becca did likewise. She had intended to go back to the stairs to find the food, but the sudden roar of motorcycles stopped her. The noise was intensified because the motorcycles were coming through the ferry’s tunnel. There were only four of them, but it sounded like twenty, and what followed them was a line of eighteen wheelers. The cars followed, arranging themselves in four lanes, two to each side of the main tunnel.

None of this would have been a problem, since Becca had the AUD box with her. She plugged in the earphone and turned up the volume and concentrated on the static the AUD box produced. But as she did this, she saw that the first car coming into the side tunnel and parking just behind the spot where she was standing next to her ten-speed was a police car.

If it can be said that blood can run cold, Becca’s did at that moment. All she could think of was the logical first move Jeff Corrie would have made when he found his wife and his stepdaughter gone: phone the cops and report them both as missing persons, sending out the general alarm to find them as quickly as possible, so that Becca and what Becca had gleaned from his whispers could be wiped from the face of the earth. Jeff’s favorite motto had been about the best defense being an offense, and what better offense could there be? Becca could even picture the flyer he’d come up with and circulated far and wide. It would be fastened to a clipboard within the police car, she imagined, her face and her mother’s face upon it.

She turned away from the police car slowly, determined to look straight ahead. Anything else like a sudden turn would have given her away, and the thought of giving herself away not ten minutes after she’d left her mother was so frightening that she felt as if neon arrows were pointing down from the ceiling of the ferry right at her skull so that the cop inside that police car would get out and question her.

But the suspense of not knowing if she’d been noticed was too much for Becca to bear. She knew it meant exposing herself to even more of an assault pounding like hammers inside her head, but she did it anyway because she had to do it: she turned down the AUD box to try to catch some useful information.

It was nearly impossible to distinguish anything. There was Nancy damn it and dinner won’t be and nail polish all over and talked to my boss and William for a haircut . . . then suddenly with all of this came a warmth that should have been impossible to feel in this cool, damp place. With the warmth came scent, equally out of place. Where she should have been smelling diesel fumes from the big rigs or exhaust from the cars and the motorcycles, instead what she smelled was the sweetness of fruit being cooked. It was so intense that before she realized what she was doing, Becca actually swung around, exposing her face to the police car behind her. But she didn’t think of what might happen. Nothing seemed as important as finding the source of the warmth and the scent.

That was how she first saw him, the boy who would ultimately change everything for her. He was a teenager like her, and he was sitting in the police car. He was in the front seat, not the back, and he and the policeman were talking. They both looked serious, and the contrast between them could not have been greater.

The boy was black, deeply black, and the pure midnight of his skin made the policeman with him look white beyond white. He was also completely bald, not the bald of illness but the bald of choice. This suited him and, in contrast again, the policeman had lots of hair that mixed gray and brown.

Becca realized as she looked at the boy that he was the first person of any color other than white that she’d seen in the vicinity of the ferry. She didn’t intend to stare and she wasn’t actually staring when the boy looked at her. As their eyes met, the warmth Becca was feeling increased along with the scent of cooking fruit, but something else floated on that warmth and it was the unexpected hollowness of the boy’s despair. Along with the ache of it floated the whisper of a single word repeated three time: rejoice, rejoice, rejoice.

Becca half-smiled at the boy the way one does. But in return the hollowness grew, and when it began to feel as if it might take her over, she dropped her gaze. As she did so, the policeman got out of the car. He shut the door neatly and walked toward the stairs, punching in numbers on a cell phone.

While this was the moment that Becca cou