The Edge of the Shadows Read Free Page A

eyes.
    Isis took the rest of the money and crammed it into her wallet. She had a section of pictures inside this that was three fingers thick. She said, “Oh, you’ve
got
to look at him,” and flipped open to the first. “
Is
he totally hot or what?” She showed Hayley a picture of a boy whose hair stood out from his head in a way that made him look like a cartoon character recently electrocuted.
    â€œUh . . . he’s . . . ?” Absolutely nothing came into Hayley’s mind.
    Isis laughed in delight. “He doesn’t really
look
like this. He just did that to piss his parents off.” She shoved the wallet back into her purse. “Hey, d’you want to get a lump-whatever? I can’t remember what it’s called but there’s a lady over there selling them and they look totally like something I shouldn’t be eating in a million years. Which, of course, is why I fully intend to buy two or three.
What
are they called?”
    Hayley laughed in spite of herself. There was something beguiling about Isis Martin. She said, “Lumpia?”
    â€œThat’s it. I can tell I need you to help me navigate these mysterious island waters. I’ve been here since June. Did I tell you that? Me and my brother . . .” She rolled her eyes expressively, and at first Hayley thought this was in reference to her brother until Isis made the correction with, “My brother and
I
. Grandam goes berserk when I say ‘me’ as the subject of a sentence, so sometimes I do it on purpose. She thinks I don’t know it should be
I
. Well, I’m a congenital idiot, but I
do
know
me
is an objective case pronoun, for heaven’s sake. So d’you want a lumpia or two or six?”
    Hayley said, “Sorry. I can’t leave . . .” She waved around her. “The booth, you know. My sister’s supposed to be here, but she’s disappeared.”
    â€œSiblings. What a trial. Well, maybe another time?”
    â€œYou go on, Hayley.” It was Hayley’s mom speaking. She’d been on the edge of the conversation all along. “I can handle things here. Brooke’ll be back.”
    â€œIt’s okay. I don’t—”
    â€œYou go, sweetheart,” her mom said firmly.
    Hayley knew what that meant. Here was an opportunity to be “just a kid,” and her mom wanted her to have that opportunity.
    â€¢Â â€¢Â â€¢
    BROOKE FINALLY SHOWED up when they were disassembling their booth and getting ready to drop the unsold veggies at the nearby food bank, a feature of the island that most visitors to Whidbey didn’t know about. Tourists to the island came to soak up the atmosphere: the razor-edged bluffs rising up from beaches studded with sea shells and jumbled with driftwood, the pristine waters where a crab pot brought up fifteen Dungeness within two hours, the deep forests with shadowy hiking trails, the picturesque villages with their clapboard, seaside charm. As to the homeless population and the needy families . . . To visitors, they remained unseen. But people who lived on the island didn’t have to look far to find people in need, because many of them were neighbors, and when Brooke groused about how “totally dumb it is to be giving our food away when we should be selling it somewhere and making some money,” their mom cast a look into the rearview mirror and said to her, “There are actually people worse off than we are, sweetheart.”
    Brooke’s response of “Yeah?
Name
’em,” was out of character. But a lot of her remarks had been out of character lately. Their mom called this a stage that Brooke was going through. “The middle school years. You remember,” she said to Hayley as if Hayley had also been a Mouth with Attitude when she’d been thirteen. Hayley, on the other hand, pretty much believed that Brooke’s attitude had