I watch the mountains roll past, the same shapes as always, but with different colors. Inside me, words gather like storm clouds.
At home, Mom stops by the mailbox, leans out the window to retrieve a stack of envelopes. “Oh,” she says as she shuffles through bills. “Looks like Andy wrote you back.”
A sparrow drops the envelope in my hands, flutters into my heart as Mom continues down the driveway. “You’re not going to open it?” she asks.
I shake my head, try to keep my voice steady. “Not yet.”
Inside, Dad’s taking a chicken out of the oven. Mom opens the fridge, starts assembling salad ingredients. I kick my boots off on the porch and stomp into the kitchen.
“Wow, Claire,” Dad says. “What an entrance.”
I can’t keep the words inside anymore. The car ride was long enough.
“I know about Andy,” I say, my voice heavy.
Mom whips around, her eyes wide. “What? Claire, we were just in the car together. You didn’t—”
“I know about the pills,” I say. “And about Mr. Gonzalez basically making Andy go to Starshine.”
Mom’s eyes widen. “Who told you that, honey?”
“Maya,” I say. “She said Andy deserved it. I was really mad at her. Now I’m not really sure who to be mad at. Why did you guys lie to me?”
Dad sighs, closes his eyes. “It was a mistake, Claire. We should have told you.”
So it’s true. It’s definitely true.
“We wanted to protect you,” Mom says quietly. “We thought you didn’t need to know the full extent of what Andy had done.”
“He’s my brother!” I yell. “Don’t you think I would’ve found out eventually?”
Mom pinches her lips together. “We didn’t think it through carefully enough, but there’s nothing to worry about now. We got rid of the pills, and Andy’s at Starshine. He’ll get better there.”
Her words punch right in my stomach, and I feel the breath go out of me in a single rush. “Getting better takes a long time. And you didn’t get rid of all the pills.”
Dad’s eyes search mine: cloudy, confused.
Mom blinks, shakes her head. “What do you mean?”
“I found more of them in his closet,” I say. “Plus a weird phone.”
Mom and Dad look like statues, frozen in place. Finally, Mom speaks. “Can you show us?”
I lead them up the steps, my heart pounding, then burst into Andy’s room, not tiptoeing this time. For one second, I think I might have imagined the pills, that when I reach under the quilts and into the Secret Pillow they won’t be there anymore. But they are.
“Wow,” Dad says. “Okay. We missed those.”
“We checked his closet, though,” Mom says. “Remember? I used a step stool so I could see that top shelf.”
“These were in the back corner, where we used to make forts,” I explain. “In the Secret Pillow.”
“Secret Pillow?” Mom and Dad both say, scrunching their eyebrows.
“Never mind.” I shake my head. “What I don’t understand is how Andy got so many pills in the first place. Did the doctor prescribe him, like, ten million bottles at once?”
Dad shakes his head. “Well, there’s something else you should know,” he says. Then he turns to Mom. “What’s the point in hiding things from her anymore?”
Mom presses her hands to her forehead.
“Know what?” Fire rages inside my brain. I can barely see.
Dad clears his throat and looks at me. “Claire, your brother stole money from us.”
“It was just once!” Mom says. “There’s no need to exaggerate.”
The room spins. Maya’s words come rushing back: Ask your parents how Andy got the money for his pills.
“It was not just once,” Dad says, shaking his head at Mom. “You know it was multiple times, over the course of several weeks.” Then he looks back at me. “Claire, this will be hard to hear, but Andy took quite a bit of cash from your mother’s purse and used it to buy pills from various sources. Your mother and I spoke to him about it, and it seemed to stop. But Andy didn’t get better. Do you remember?”
My eyes fill. I don’t like remembering how Andy acted in those weeks leading up to Starshine: how he never seemed to have time to hike up Pebble Mountain anymore, how he always seemed tired, how he’d move in and out of the house like a shadow.
“That’s when we decided to search his room, and realized he had started selling pills to other people,” Dad says.
I wipe my eyes. Breathe.
“Maya’s dad isn’t the real reason Andy ended up at Starshine, Claire,” Mom says. “We are.”
Her lip trembles, and Dad puts his hand on her shoulder. “Andy’s the reason Andy ended up at Starshine, June,” he says softly.
I hear the wings, high overhead, fluttering closer. I try to breathe, but there’s no air anymore.
“Fine,” Mom says. “But we brought the pills to the police. We told them what happened, and then the court date was set.”
Sparrows sweep in swiftly, rush through my heart, carry every bit of it away.
“And you never told me.” My voice echoes, empty, like it’s coming from outside me.
“We did plan to tell you at some point,” Dad says. “But time passed, and we let it. That was a mistake.”
Mom nods. “You deserved to know what was going on,” she says. “Now that you do, we can think about where to go from here. Andy’s been doing well at Starshine.”
“But we still need to be cautious.” Dad reaches for her hand and squeezes it.
“And supportive,” Mom says. “Don’t forget that. If Andy can help with equine therapy, we should really consider it.”
Dad sighs. “We will,” he says, “though of course, we’d still need to discuss finances.”
But I barely hear them. My eyes are open now. I’m already stepping back into my boots.
“Claire,” I hear Dad say. “Let’s all sit down. We can talk more over dinner.” But I open the door.
“Where are you going?” Mom asks, her voice far away. I let the door swing closed behind me.
Inside, the hot flame I felt before grows. Except now when I think about who kindled it, I see Andy’s face.
How could he do this to our family?
CHAPTER 20
In the barn, I tear the envelope clumsily, leaving a jagged rip and sending little bits of paper floating to the ground.
DEAR LITTLE C.,
HEY, I’LL SKIP THE JOKE THIS TIME. I COULD TELL YOUR LETTER WAS PRETTY SERIOUS STUFF.
I frown. Andy without a joke doesn’t sound right. But I keep reading, my eyes trying to take the whole letter in at once without missing anything.
It’s all there, in black and white.
THIS SCHOOL PROJECT SOUNDS PRETTY COOL. YOU’VE BEEN WORKING HARD, WHICH IS EXACTLY WHAT I EXPECT FROM MY LITTLE SIS. KEEP IT UP, OKAY?
EQUINE THERAPY? I GUESS I’VE NEVER HEARD OF IT BEFORE, TECHNICALLY, BUT PRETTY SURE TAKING CARE OF SUNNY AND SAM COUNTS. SO I GUESS YOU AND I GET IT FOR FREE. WELL, NOT FOR FREE, BUT YOU KNOW WHAT I MEAN. IT SOUNDS COOL TO DO IT FOR OTHER PEOPLE TOO. YOU’D BE GREAT AT IT.
YOU SHOULD BE ABLE TO KEEP SUNNY AND SAM. AND LEAVE IT TO YOU TO COME UP WITH A SUPERSMART WAY TO DO IT!
BUT LC, I CAN’T DO WHAT YOU’RE ASKING ME TO DO. I CAN’T BE THE TRAINER.
My eyes blur. I reread the line. What does Andy mean, he can’t be the trainer? He’s an even better trainer than Mom—she always says so. He went beyond everything she taught him.
BEING HERE AT STARSHINE HAS MADE ME THINK THROUGH A LOT OF STUFF. LIKE WHO I AM, AND WHERE I’M HEADED, AND WHAT I WANT TO DO WITH THE REST OF MY LIFE. SOUNDS INTENSE, I KNOW. BUT WHAT AM I GONNA DO HERE EXCEPT THINK?
He added a smiley face there: sideways nose, high eyebrows. If I close my eyes, I can see his crooked smile.
I THOUGHT ABOUT WHAT YOU SAID. I REALLY DID. BUT I DON’T WANT TO LIVE AT HOME WHEN I LEAVE STARSHINE. I TURNED EIGHTEEN
NOT LONG AFTER I LEFT HOME, REMEMBER? I’VE GOT TO GET OUT ON MY OWN. BESIDES, I TOLD YOU I REALLY WANT TO BE AN AGRICULTURAL MECHANIC.
I can’t believe what I’m reading. The hot, sharp flame grows.
THIS BOX YOU FOUND SOUNDS PRETTY COOL! YOU’LL HAVE TO SHOW IT TO ME. IT’S STILL HARD TO BELIEVE ALL THAT STUFF ABOUT THE HORSES AND THE TUNNEL UNDER THE LAKES, THOUGH. ARE YOU SURE YOU SAW THIS STUFF? LIKE IT WASN’T YOUR IMAGINATION? IT SOUNDS AWESOME BUT KIND OF WEIRD TOO?
ANYWAY, I REALLY WANT TO SEE THAT STONE YOU FOUND IN THE BOX. IN OUR GROUP MEETINGS, THEY PASS AROUND A BASKET OF THESE SMOOTH POLISHED STONES. THEY CALL THEM “WORRY STONES,” I GUESS BECAUSE YOU CAN SORT OF RUB YOUR WORRIES OUT OF YOURSELF AND INTO THEM. WE GET TO HOLD ON TO THEM WHILE EVERYONE’S TALKING.
DOESN’T SOUND LIKE MUCH, BUT I REALLY LIKE THE STONES. WHEN I HAVE ONE IN MY HAND, IT HELPS ME THINK. AND IT MAKES ME CALM. SO SAVE THAT STONE, WOULD YOU? I DON’T THINK I’LL GET TO TAKE THESE ONES WITH ME WHEN I LEAVE.
LOVE,
ANDY
My eyes blur and I press my palms into them. Sniffle into my sleeve. Andy’s words feel like a tall, thick door that just latched shut.
He doesn’t believe me. He’s not going to help us. He’s on his own path.
But so am I.
Memories of the Andy I knew—Andy cupping his hands, boosting me into the saddle; Andy pointing at stars—scatter. In between, other images rise to the surface. Andy reaching into a purse. Filling his hands with pill bottles. Hiding them in the Secret Pillow.
I don’t recognize either Andy anymore.
I know what I want, though, regardless of Andy—and that’s Sunny and Sam. Without Andy, winning that five hundred dollars is the only thing left that could turn Mom and Dad’s maybe into a yes. I wanted to win before, but now I need to. The History Fair’s on Thursday. I don’t have much time to add anything new to my project.
But if I could catch one of the wild horses, bring it home, maybe even begin to train it—I could prove Jack’s theory, and mine. What better way to demonstrate that history’s important to the present than to show something from history that continued on, surviving even when nobody knew it? I couldn’t not win.
And Andy would wish he had believed me.
In their stalls, Sunny and Sam stand tall, their ears pricked forward. I slip in next to Sam and lean against him, my forehead pressed into his side, my arms draped over his back. “You ready for an adventure?” I ask.
I take a little longer brushing him. I need to think this ride through, because it’s dark now. Luckily there’s a full moon, and I strap a headlamp over my helmet for extra light. I have to stay focused: straight into the woods, then down the path where I always see the horses. I want to approach one, at least get her used to my voice and hands. I’ll bring an extra halter and lead just in case.
My hands shake as I handle Sam’s tack, and I have to take the whole saddle and blanket off, then put it on again, because I placed them too far back. Finally, slowly, I ease him out of the stable.
Cold snaps come so quick and sharp they make it hard to breathe. But they also happen every year, to remind us winter’s coming, and I know how to deal with them by now. I already pulled on a neck warmer, plus my insulated barn coat and winter work gloves. Now I nestle my nose deeper into the neck warmer so I’m breathing into scratchy wool instead of knife-edged air.
But the woods are still just woods. Even with my headlight’s beam casting a swath of bright light across the blue-black trees, I don’t see the wild horses yet: no wisp of tail, no hoofprints.
“Come on,” I murmur. “Show me where you are.”
I look over my shoulder, and that’s when I see her, all of her, standing right behind me. She’s that beautiful foggy silver, with a black mane so long it drips past her neck line, and big round hooves. She blinks her liquid eyes in harsh light.
Then the other one comes up beside her, a little bigger, but with gentle eyes.
At first, Sam doesn’t seem to notice. But when the horses start trotting, hooves punching through half-frozen leaves, he sidesteps, his mouth open and straining against the bit. Then he follows, in this awkward fast trot that’s hard to sit. He’s more excited than he was last time.
I can’t let go of the reins. But somehow I need to get closer, so I can catch one and prove what I know is true: that these horses are real. I need them to slow down.
But they don’t. Sam trots even faster now, his head nodding. “Ho,” I say, pulling a bit on the reins, sitting deep in the saddle. I want him to stay calm, but it isn’t easy. The wild horses lead by moving beside Sam, like their presence alone can pull him in the right direction. When they veer away from the path we usually follow, the one that leads to the lake, I don’t think much of it at first. But then I realize we’re heading toward the mountain.
Suddenly my phone chimes. I take a quick glance in my pocket and struggle to read the words that bounce up and down in my hand.
It’s Mom.
You aren’t out riding, are you?
My heart feels frozen. I know I’m breaking Mom’s rule, but right now? I don’t care.
Dad and I need to know where you are. It’s dark. I’ll meet you at the barn.
The wild horses suddenly stop and plant their feet, nostrils flared. They’ve probably never heard the sound of a phone before. When horses go statue-still, it’s hard to tell what they’ll do next. They could bolt. Or rear. Or, rarely, just calm back down if they realize nothing’s going to happen to them.
The phone beeps once more, but this time I don’t look at it. Good thing I didn’t try to take pictures. I just breathe.
The smaller wild horse leaps forward, her two front hooves stamping almost delicately into the ground. She starts running, and the other follows.
Sam does too. And then it’s all I can do to hang on.
My ears fill with a rushing sound, not just the sparrows, and not just hooves. It’s more than that. We whip past trees glowing in moonlight, moving too fast for me to get my bearings.
I didn’t know the path went this far, but the wild horses are really running now, their necks stretched out.
Finally Sam skids to a stop in a small clearing, and only then do I realize where the rushing sound is coming from. It seemed far away at first, but now it fills my ears. The wild horses aren’t alone. From the edges of the woods, streams of shimmering silver and black begin to pour in, hooves pounding.
Ahead of us, there’s an empty, curving path, scattered leaves, and trees clustered thick and dark.
But on either side, we’re surrounded by horses.
CHAPTER 21
I’m frozen. But not from cold. Clutching the reins, hoping Sam won’t run again, I can’t do anything but stare as rivers of horses course past, too many to count. I can’t begin to think about catching one. There’s no way to slow them down.
The phone won’t matter now. I pull it out and snap one picture, two, three. But when I glance down, shining my headlamp, the pictures just look like gray blurs across my screen. I look back up, confused: Why don’t even traces of their shapes come through?
Suddenly, the horses are gone.
It’s hard to see any real hoofprints in the dirt. I swivel my head around, but I can’t find a single sign of them—no quickly nodding heads, no swishing tails.
I sit awhile longer, Sam’s breathing slow now. Then I see something.
If the moon hadn’t glanced off the tree branch in that exact way, I probably would’ve missed it. But there it is: a strand of hair—so long and wiry-thick I know it came from one of the dappled horses’ tails—stuck to the broken-off edge of a dead branch.
I stop Sam and softly slide off his back so I don’t startle him. He’s finally tired. So am I.
When I pluck the hair from the branch and hold it up to the light, it’s a silvery black and even coarser than most horsehairs I’ve seen. It seems to shine, but in a way that makes it look like a beam of moonlight instead of a real hair that came
off a real horse’s tail. Then I remember my saddlebag, and I tuck the hair safely into it.
I keep Sam moving, trying to strike a balance between going quickly enough to get home fast and slowly enough to stay balanced. The ride is bumpier and slower than before, and I realize when I hear cracking under Sam’s hooves that some tiny patches of ice have formed over the leaves, probably remnants from earlier rain and today’s cold.
Just as I’m thinking I’ll probably have to be extra careful now, Sam stumbles and I almost lose my seat. I have to grab the pommel of the saddle so I don’t fall off.
“Hey, buddy,” I say, hopping off and stroking his nose. “What happened to you?”
Check his legs, I think, my heart sinking. I know that’s what Andy would do, right away. Sam’s not the kind of horse to stumble. I run my hands down the back two, then the front, feeling for swelling. When I touch his right leg, he picks it up fast and kicks lightly back, away from my hand, not because he wants to hurt me, but just because he’s trying to get away from some kind of pain.
My headlamp illuminates the scratch. It’s a gash, really, not huge, but a little deeper and longer than an easy-to-heal cut.
No. I should have been paying closer attention. I don’t remember seeing anything sharp, but then again, when the horses were running, I didn’t see much of anything. Who knows what Sam could’ve slashed, barreling up that path in the dark with all the others?
There’s a small first-aid kit in my saddlebag, so I dab a little antiseptic on Sam’s cut. Hopefully it will be enough to get him back to the barn. I pull the reins over his head and begin leading him slowly. Maybe I can sneak in and fix it up before Mom sees. Maybe it’s small enough to heal overnight, though even as I think it, I know that’s probably not true.
When we cross the pasture and I see the shadowy outline of Mom, standing in front of the barn with her hands on her hips, I know there’s no way to hide. I lead Sam up to her and try to explain, but my words seem to fall apart in the cold air.
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