Sliding On The Edge by C. Lee McKenzie Page A

Shawna’s language or her antisocial behavior, not
suicide!
    She shook her head. No. She’d never
suspected anything like that. Was she blind? Stupid? Naïve? How can
a sixty-four-year-old woman be naïve? Wait. What makes him jump to
the idea of suicide when he’s dealing with a sixteen-year-old whose
emotions roller-coaster hourly?
    “ Of course, we can’t be
sure,” he continued, “but, ahem . . . well, Shawna’s essays . . .
are—” he signaled to Mrs. Heady.
    Mrs. Heady leaned forward as if she
wanted to share a secret. “Mrs. Stone, I’ve spoken several times
with Mr. Green about Shawna’s withdrawal and her sullen attitude,
and the fact that I see it worsening almost daily.” She cleared her
throat, “There are adults that haven’t experienced what your
granddaughter has. I haven’t, so I sometimes don’t know how to
respond to her work.” She held out a crumpled piece of paper. “And
I don’t often retrieve things students toss into the waste basket,
but Shawna was in a darker mood than usual on Monday, and I noticed
her doodling. She wasn’t on task at all, but when I spoke to her,
she did go back to work and complete her assignment. When she left
class, she threw this away. I . . . well, I had to know what was on
this paper.”
    Kay took the paper and read the
scrawled words. “Pity is for the living, envy is for the
dead.”
    Kay knew that quote. She knew it too
well. She’d tortured herself with it after Nicholas died. After
Peter left. When her life wasn’t worth living anymore.
    “ Monster. Monster. Just a
little longer.” The note continued.
    Underneath these words, Shawna had
drawn a ghoulish face with black, pinpoint eyes and a grin filled
with razor sharp teeth. Tiny drops of blood dripped from the gaping
lips and pooled at the bottom of the paper. It was childish, except
for the ugly face. She held it away and leaned back in her chair,
suddenly drained of energy, numb all over, like her arms might feel
if she’d slept on them.
    Kay let the paper fall to the table
and buried her face in her hands.
    “ I’m very sorry. This is a
shock, I know. I hesitated to make such an assumption, and kept
thinking this could just be a young girl adjusting to her new life
and feeling lonely. But we can’t take a chance, especially when we
have Mrs. Heady’s observations about Shawna’s increasing withdrawal
from social contact. She has no friends, talks to no one, and she
barely participates in class. I feel we need to intervene and get
Shawna some help, and we need to do it immediately.”
    Kay couldn’t respond. Her mouth seemed
full of sand, and the fears she’d struggled to push aside were
popping up like shooting-gallery ducks. What if she couldn’t handle
this troubled sixteen-year-old? What if something happened to this
girl while she was taking care of her? She wasn’t even her legal
guardian. What if she failed as a grandmother the way she had as a
mother? As a wife?
    The room closed around her. She was
suffocating. She shoved her chair back, walked to the window, and
pushed it open. Leaning out, she inhaled the Indian Summer air as
though it was her last breath.
    She’d learned to value her life, but
it wasn’t until she’d gone down to the mat with death that she’d
learned to truly appreciate it.
     
    It had taken Kenny Fargo, a derelict
cowboy with more common sense than any man she’d ever met, to put
her back into balance. He’d stood in her office door that morning,
his grimy hat in his hand. Ten years ago? That long? Yes. A
half-hour before, she’d watched Peter drive off down the rutted
road for the last time.
    “ So you’re gonna bail out on
us, I see.” Kenny set the crease in his hat like it was the most
important thing he had on his mind at the moment.
    “ Go away!” she
shouted.
    “ Sure. I can do that real
easy. What do you want me to do with the body? How about your
horses?”
    She looked up at him. The skinny,
brown-toothed old devil was grinning at