The Edge of the Light (30 page)

O
n the day designated to introduce Rejoice to his parents, Derric took Becca with him to pick her up in La Conner. Rejoice didn't get into the car at once, though. Instead, she stood before Becca and looked her directly in the eyes. “I got something I have to say to you,” she announced.

Becca had been wearing the earbud, so she hadn't a clue what Rejoice wanted to tell her. Before she could reply, though, Rejoice rushed on with, “I acted bad with you a bunch of times and I'm really sorry. I was, like, gynormously dumb. Der was trying to be cool with me and to make sure he didn't do anything to give me the wrong idea. I was totally the one to try to make something happen between us. And I got to say now . . . I'm
so
happy to have a real brother. I mean a real brother from the same parents. It makes me feel like I have a place in the world, if that makes sense.”

“It totally makes sense,” Becca told her.

“C'n we be friends, then?” Rejoice said.

“Like, forever,” Becca replied.

The two girls hugged and Derric cried, “Group hug!” and threw his arms around both of them.

Becca felt what the word
bittersweet
had to mean: the joy of Rejoice's homecoming into a family comprising her only sibling and the sadness of having no sibling of her own and of having no knowledge of where her family—in the person of her mother—was.

They piled into the car for the drive to Derric's house near Goss Lake. When they arrived, Becca saw the building through Rejoice's eyes, pleasantly gray-shingled in a clearing made to contain it, with the land surrounding it left in its natural state of ferns, salal, wild huckleberries, and grasses. Rejoice, she saw, was taking it all in.

Once inside the house, Derric called out “We're here” and his parents responded with “In the kitchen” and “In the office.” He and the girls chose the kitchen, and trooped in that direction to find Rhonda icing a cake meant for their dessert that evening. She looked up as Derric said, “Here's Rejoice, Mom.”

Becca could never have predicted what happened next. Rhonda said nothing for a moment. Her lips parted, then closed, then curved in a smile. She said, “My holy God. You've found your sister,” and then she cried out, “Dave! Come here!”

She crossed quickly to Rejoice and took both her hands, saying, “You are lovely, sweetie.
Welcome
.”

Derric, Becca saw, was completely dumbfounded. So was she. They looked at each other wordlessly as Dave Mathieson hurried down the hall from his office, coming in answer to the insistence he'd heard in Rhonda's voice. He stopped short at the sight of Rejoice. Then he said, “Good Lord. They were right.”

Dave went to Rejoice, saying, “Well, you're the image of him.
We should have known.
Had
we known, things would've been different.”

Next to Becca, Derric stirred. He said, “You guys want to tell me what's going on?”

“Let's go to the living room,” was Rhonda's reply.

There she explained, and her explanation was simple. The director of the orphanage had suspected that Derric had a sister among the children who were picked up off the Kampala streets on the day he'd been taken to the orphanage. But there were twenty-five children brought in to Children's Hope of Kampala on that hot afternoon, and among them at least twenty were sobbing their little hearts out, terrified because their world was undergoing an upheaval again. All of them had lost their parents—mostly to AIDS—and getting along on the street had become a way of life. Now they were thrust into yet another world, this one peopled by strangers who were examining them, administering strange syrups and pills to them, inoculating them, bathing them, finding clothes for them, assigning them to beds, assessing them for everything from language skills to the ability to follow simple directions. Derric, five years old at the time, had been put at once into Sick House. He'd come into the orphanage with pneumonia and a fever raging at 105 degrees.

“You talked about a sister,” Rhonda said, “but you were so ill that it seemed you might be imagining her or she might have died along with your parents. Had we known . . . Oh sweetie, I hope you know we
never
would have separated the two of you. We would have adopted Rejoice as well. But then later on, you
never mentioned a sister and none of the girls ever said they had a brother.”

“She was too little,” Derric told his mom. His face looked totally haunted. “Like I said before, Becca was the one to find her in La Conner. See, when I fell in the woods? When I was in the hospital all that time? Becca was there that day when I fell and she went back to the woods to try to figure out why I'd been there. I had a hiding place where she found the letters and . . . Becca always wanted me to tell you but I was scared because . . .” Tears began to course down his cheeks as he spoke, and he seemed to be unaware of them.

“Oh, sweetheart, why?” Rhonda asked him.

“Because I left her in Kampala when I could've maybe brought her here,” he said. “Because I never said when I
could've
said. Because I made it all about me coming to America and I liked you and wanted you to be my mom. . . .” He turned away from them all, raising his arm to cover his face.

Rejoice scooted along the couch where they were sitting. She put her arms around him. She said, “Big bro, it's
so
okay. I came to America anyway. You
tried
to tell them right when we got there to the orphanage. And me? I forgot I even
had
a brother, so I was always okay. We were both always okay.”

“All's well that ends well,” Dave Mathieson said.

“I think we owe a lot to Becca,” Rhonda added.

• • •

BECCA HAD A
small hope that Dave Mathieson might be of a different mind in the aftermath of the reunion and reconciliation
among all of them. But that hope didn't live long. Dave took her aside for a moment as Rejoice and Derric walked out to the car to make the drive back to La Conner.

Dave said to Becca, “I need to thank you.”

She was surprised. “What for?”

“For finding Rejoice for him. Rhonda and I should have put in more effort, especially when those letters turned up.”

“I had the advantage,” Becca said. “You knew he was writing to someone called Rejoice, but I knew Rejoice was his sister. And you
did
ask him about her. I think you did everything you were s'posed to do.”

He ran his hand back through his salt-and-pepper hair. Up ahead, Derric and Rejoice laughed and bumped shoulders together and Rejoice cried out, “Oh totally no
way
!”

Dave said, “One way or the other, you did a good thing. We're grateful for that.” And then when Becca would have left in good spirits, he said, “Have you told him yet? Olivia Bolding and her search for Hannah Armstrong?”

“I promise I will.”

“I hope you keep that promise,” Dave replied. “Things need to be made right everywhere, and in this case, you're the best person to do it.”

W
hen Jenn was next at school, she knew that she had two things that she absolutely had to accomplish. As soon as she saw Becca, she set about accomplishing the first of them. She didn't want to become some dumbo who crashed through her life burning personal bridges right, left, and center, and she understood that she'd come pretty close to doing this with more than one person in her immediate group of friends.

In their shared English class, she passed a note to Becca—
Talk to you whenever???
—and waited to see what would happen. Becca looked over at her and nodded. She mouthed the word
lunch
and Jenn nodded back.

They met outside. They went to the back of the school where they could watch the potheads slithering up to the woods of South Whidbey Community Park. It was the kind of day that suggested an early summer instead of twenty days of nice weather beginning sometime after the Fourth of July. In Washington, though, you never knew, so they held their faces up to the sun while it was available to them.

“My life's getting . . . well, it's sort of complicated,” Jenn said.

“Yeah?” Becca lowered her head. She took her earbud thing out of her ear and started searching around in her backpack till she brought out a pipe cleaner that she used on it. Jenn waited. Becca looked up. “I c'n hear you good without this,” she said. “Especially when it's just you and me.”

“Oh! I didn't know that. Did you tell me before?”

“Prob'ly not. I forget to sometimes. Anyway, what's happening?”

Jenn wasn't quite sure how to put it. How do you tell someone who's your BFF that you keep thinking about a girl, in a way you never thought you'd be thinking about a girl? She was drawn to Cynthia Richardson. She wanted to explore what this meant. But she was afraid of that exploration. So she also wanted to protect herself.

Becca said slowly, “Hey, c'n I say something, Jenn?”

“Sure.”

“This might sound like la-la land, but Mrs. Kinsale's always telling me that life is just life. People are who they are. No one's s'posed to try to change anyone into being a way they
aren't
, if you get what I mean.”

Jenn nodded. She started at the only place she could think of to start. “I made the team,” she said. “The All Island team? I got picked second.”

Becca dropped the earbud to her side in her haste to throw her arms around Jenn. “Awesome!” she cried. “I always
knew
you could do it!”

“I wouldn't have, though,” Jenn said. “Not without Cynthia and
Lexie. They worked out with me and pushed me and Lexie . . . ? She even helped me get the job at G & G's. And then when it came time for tryouts, Cynthia took me there and didn't even try out herself.”

“How come?”

“She said she never meant to try out. She just wanted to help me because she thought I could make the team. She said she needs to stay in shape anyway 'cause of her scholarship to University of Virginia, so training me helped her to do that. But I'm not sure that was . . . well . . . all of it.”

Becca blinked. For several seconds her eyes got all strange, like she'd stopped being able to see Jenn at all. But then she blinked another time and she was back to normal. She said, “I bet anything she did it for you.”

“She thinks I'm good enough to get a scholarship if enough people see me on the All Island team, and—”

“Sure, but it's more than that. I bet she did it for you 'cause she's into you.”

“You think?”

“Yeah. You're into her, too, huh?”

Jenn touched her fingers to her lips. “I keep telling myself I don't want to be. Only, yeah, I might be. I want to, you know, be with her sometimes and other times I'm . . . I guess I'm scared.”

“But scared's not bad, is it?” Becca pointed out. “I mean, scared's just . . . scared, right?”

“I get that. Only my mom's so freaked just 'cause I'm working for Gertie and Giselle. She's gonna think they turned me
into a lesbian or something if she knows I'm into Cynthia. And then . . . ? She'll never let me go back home. But I can't stay with the Richardsons forever. So I don't know where . . .” Once she'd said that, Jenn realized how it sounded: like a manipulation. She hastened to add, “I got to apologize to you, Becca. I totally get why I couldn't stay with Mr. Darrow. I got it right when you said it, but I was too mad and I expected that if you were my friend—”

“I
am
your friend.”

“—that you'd say sure to anything I needed. But sometimes friends have to say no and I get that it doesn't mean anything other than saying no.” Now for the difficult part, Jenn thought, because if there was another no involved, she didn't know where else she would turn if she had to find a place to live permanently.

Before she could ask, Becca said, “You know, that room at Mrs. Kinsale's house is still open. All's you have to do is say it's okay for her to at least try to get you and your mom back together. And really, Jenn, d'you think that's a bad thing?”

“Nah. I can see it's pretty smart to try. It might be totally hopeless but it's not bad. I'm okay with it all. Mrs. Kinsale, my mom, whatever.”

“She'll prob'ly want you to help take care of her dogs, though.”

“I c'n get behind dogs.”

“There're five of them. Well four, really, because Oscar hardly counts as a dog. You want me to ask her when you can move in?”

“I'd like that.” And as Becca stood and Jenn stood as well, she said to her, “C'n I ask, Becca . . . ?”

Becca turned. “What?”

“C'n I get you to be my BFF again?”

Becca laughed and gave her a lighthearted punch on the shoulder. “Duh. Like I ever stopped?”

• • •

THAT TOOK CARE
of the first accomplishment that Jenn had promised herself she would make. The second came on the day that the Gay Straight Alliance met. Jenn understood that it was a huge and scary step for her, but she figured it was one she had to take. After she survived her conversation with Becca, Jenn was ready.

At lunch, she took her brown bag to room 210. There, she slid to the back of the classroom and decided she would just lurk and listen. But it turned out that this was impossible. There were only twelve kids present that day, and their sponsor, Tatiana Primavera, had a counseling motto that seemed to be “Tell everyone your truth as soon as possible.” Thankfully, the first truth she required of Jenn was only her name, which she mumbled at Ms. Primavera's beaming, “And
who's
our visitor today?” Then the counselor repeated it for all to hear: “Jenn McDaniels. Welcome, Jenn.”

Cynthia mouthed the word hello at Jenn and glanced at Lexie, who raised her eyebrows and gave Jenn a thumbs up. The rest of the kids didn't seem to notice or even care. They were busy with committee reports on the subject of the Rainbow Prom. The head of ticket sales was saying something about the LGBATQ community on campus. She wanted to know whether enough outreach was being done to the Qs.

Jenn frowned at all the letters. She got L and G: lesbian and gay, but the rest pretty much mystified her. So she merely took everything in and asked herself what she'd been asking herself every day for months. Where did she fit in?

Then the chair of the advertising committee stood to give his report. She'd seen him before: a senior boy who'd started a website featuring bow ties that he designed and made. The
South Whidbey Record
had done a story on him when he'd outfitted the entire Seattle Men's Chorus with bow ties for an upcoming concert. He was wearing one of his creations now: sort of a Tommy-Bahama-married-to-Jerry-Garcia. He blended this with a tight-fitting vest and white dress shirt. His jeans were black. His shoes were yellow PF Flyers. He looked, she decided, pretty amazing. His name was Jeff but he insisted on Rupert. “Fits me better than Jeff,” he said.

Now he was announcing that they had to increase their publicity if they wanted to bring in kids from Coupeville, where ticket sales were lagging. A dozen more posters were needed within two days, and they had to be good. “Volunteers?” he asked. “You don't have to draw the images, just do the lettering and the colors. Believe me, a kindergartner could manage this.”

Jenn looked around. It came to her that there were all types of kids in the room. It also came to her that she couldn't distinguish which of the alphabet soup of letters that designated sexuality applied to which kid. They were just part of South Whidbey High School. There was no big deal with who they were or what they were, unless someone—like her—made it one.

She raised her hand. Rupert's face lit up. “Have I managed to convince someone
that lettering posters isn't a death sentence?”

“Think you have,” Jenn told him. “I'll do it.”

“Available today?”

“Today and whenever,” Jenn replied.