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  Sliding on the Edge, Copyright 2012 C. Lee McKenzie

  Published by C. Lee McKenzie

  Interior layout: www.formatting4U.com

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems—except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews—without permission in writing from the author at [email protected]. This book is a work of fiction. The characters, events, and places portrayed in this book are products of the author’s imagination and are either fictitious or are used fictitiously. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental and not intended by the author.

  Sample chapters of Princess of Las Pulgas are included at the end of this book. For more information about the author’s work, please visit her webpage. www.cleemckenziebooks.com

  Other Young Adult Novels

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  C. Lee McKenzie

  Double Negative

  The Princess of Las Pulgas

  Sudden Secrets

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  C. Lee McKenzie

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Other Writing Credits & Books

  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.

  Four 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 j
eans 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 that’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.

  When I get to the café, there isn’t a Help Wanted sign in the window. I walk inside anyway. Stan’s fries are still fifty cents—within my budget—and I order one grease-soaked box of limp potatoes. With a plop of ketchup for color, I’m in heaven. Today’s newspaper is on an empty table, so with my lunch or dinner—I haven’t decided which one—I shuffle through the pages to the help wanted ads.

  “Wanted:

  Part-time fry cook. Experience Required.”

  I can fry stuff.

  $8.00/hr. Midnight to four A.M. Pete’s Dugout.

  That’s down on Pioneer. Not where I want to work.

  Housekeeping $6.50/hr. Motel Escondido.

  Hmmm. Toilets. Maybe not.

  I’m down to my last fry and still hungry. That hundred Mom left has to last until I land a job or... I pull the note out and read it again. “Your granma lives in a place called sweet river.”

  What are my options? Stay here, quit school, and get a job cleaning toilets or call the number on the back of Mom’s note. I lay my head on the grease-flecked newspaper and listen to the paper crinkle under my ear. Wanted: under-educated sixteen-year-old to scrape crud off the floor. Experience Required.

  My stomach growls.

  “You sick or somethin’?”

  I jerk upright to face the guy standing over me.

  “Ahh, no. Just tired.”

  “Go sleep someplace else. This is a restaurant, not a flophouse.”

  “You could’a fooled me.” I grab my paper bag off the table and head for the door. He is one big scowl and I’m not going toe to toe with a greasy grump. Outside, I poke my head back in, flip him off, and yell, “I’m going to the emergency room. Your grease is rancid, Pedro!”

  He’s after me in a shot, and around the corner I slip into the nearest store before he can see me. He does a fast waddle past the window while I peek from behind a dress rack.

  “May I help you?” A sales girl peers over a 25% off sign at the end of the clothes rack.

  Gee, sure, yes. Please help me find my mother, okay? She’s somewhere in New Jersey at a crap table. There’ll be a sleazy guy with blond hair next to her. “I don’t think so.”

  “Are you looking for anything special?”

  Actually, I am. Some answers would be nice for a start. Maybe a life if you got one of those in here. “No.” I clutch my paper bag and the pills rattle inside their plastic bottle. “Just looking.” Just searching for a way out.

  She smiles and moves to another customer.

  My stomach is flipping pancakes, and I feel like hurling. I squint my eyes and swallow. Maybe the grease was rancid after all. Or maybe that part of my anatomy can’t stand the idea I’ve got circulating through my brain: A place called Sweet River.

  “Are you okay?” It’s the chirpy sales girl again, her face curious and a bit worried.

  When I look past her into the mirror I can see why she’s looking at me that way. I’ve turned the color of paste. “I think I got some bad food.”

  Now her face is more than worried. She’s already seeing a big mess, one she’ll get stuck having to clean up.

  The greasy grump walks past, back to his “restaurant.” He could have been my next employer. Oh man. I make my decision. I’m trying the granny package.

  After breaking the hundred for change, I step into the bus depot phone booth. I pick up the receiver and punch in the first ten numbers. But when I get to the last digit, my finger freezes midair. What if—I glance at the name again—Kay Stone doesn’t answer? I know my job options in this town, and I can’t go back to Tuan’s, that’s for sure. He’s already changed the locks by now, and anything I left is in Tuan’s back room. It’ll sit there until some poor desperate sap needs something like our aluminum pot and pays him five bucks for it like we did. I punch the last number on the phone pad and wait.

  One ring

/>   Two.

  “Hello.” A woman’s voice is on the other end of the phone, but it doesn’t sound like a grandmother. It isn’t creaky or wispy. It sounds like it belongs to someone a lot younger. Oh, no. Mom gave me a wrong number.

  “Uhh. Is... uh... this Kay Stone?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well—” I hadn’t thought exactly how I’d say this next part, but now there isn’t any time to choose my words. “My name’s Shawna, and my mom says you’re my grandmother.”

  The phone goes silent.

  “Are you there?” I can’t risk her hanging up because all I have is Sweetheart’s hundred, and I’m using a chunk of it on this call.

  I can barely hear her breathing. I hope she isn’t having a heart attack.

  “Yes.” Finally. A reply all the way from Sweet River.

  “Well, here’s the deal. My mom’s split and she left me this ticket to Sacramento. She said to call you and let you know.” I wait through another long dead silence. “I hate to rush you, but I’m running out of money on this call and—”

  “What’s your mother’s name?”

  “Jackie.”

  “Your father?”

  Oh damn. Mom told me once, but she’d been in her “I-don’t-want-to-talk-about-it” mood, so even though I hadn’t been sure what she’d said, I’d dropped it.

  “I think it was Nic or Rick. He’s dead.” I hear her swallow. Is she drinking something? I don’t think she’s buying that I’m telling the truth. “Hello?”

  “When does your bus arrive in Sacramento?”

  I check the schedule I’d picked up. “About ten tomorrow morning.”

  Another long silence. These pauses are killing me.

  “What do you look like, so I can find you at the station?” she finally asks.

  I almost say, “Dorky,” but instead I say, “I’ve got black hair and brown eyes. I’m about five-four, and I’m wearing a T-shirt with—” I pull the shirt front out and check to see which one I have on, “Bad Ass Attitude,” I say.

  She clears her throat. “I’ll meet you at the bus station. . . Shawna.”

  I hang up knowing that at least she remembered my name.