by Becky Citra
“Hi,” says Lindsay. She has long blond hair and she’s gorgeous. “It’s about time you got here. Come on in. Everyone’s downstairs.”
Van knows the way. I follow him down a narrow staircase. About twenty kids are sitting around a big room in chairs and on the floor, talking and laughing. There’s a Ping Pong table at one end and a largescreen TV. Boxes of pizza, bowls of potato chips and a huge plate of veggies and dip are set out on a table.
Van introduces me around. There’s no way I can remember all these names. For a few seconds, everyone stares at me. My smile feels wooden and now I regret coming. They’re probably all good friends. I feel like such an outsider.
Van gets a slice of pizza, but I can’t eat a thing so I just grab a can of Sprite out of a cooler. I’m mad at myself for feeling so nervous, but I can’t help it. I have no idea what to expect. These kids are supposed to be religious. What am I doing here?
The chairs are all taken, so Van and I sit on the floor, our backs against the wall.
Van gets into a long conversation about boats with a boy with blond dreadlocks. I sip my soda and pretend to be interested. To be honest, I’m a little surprised. I haven’t been to a lot of parties, but this seems pretty normal. I’m not sure what I was expecting: hymns and prayers?
Someone calls Van over for a game of Ping Pong and he says, “Is that okay?”
“Sure,” I say. “I’m fine.”
The conversation floats around me but I can’t think of a way to make myself part of it. Everyone’s talking about the usual stuff: computers, movies, music, parties, summer plans. I’m starting to feel stupid, sitting there not saying anything. I glance over at Van. He’s teamed up at the Ping Pong table with a short boy with red hair who I remember is called Mike. At the other end are Lindsay and another girl. They’re all laughing and shouting a lot. Van high-fives Mike when they win a game.
I get up, put my empty can of Sprite on a table and head for a door in the corner of the room. I’m pretty sure that no one even notices that I’m leaving.
I slip outside into the backyard. There’s a full moon so it’s almost as bright as day. I take in a deep breath of the cool night air. Then I notice that I’m not alone. A girl is sitting on the step. She has dark brown hair, streaked with red and cut in feathery layers around her face. There is a ring in her lower lip. She’s smoking a cigarette.
Dad used to smoke a pack a day. I hated it—the way it made his clothes smell, the way his fingers turned yellow. Not to mention that I was scared to death that he might get cancer. I guess something shows on my face because the girl waves her cigarette and says, “Sorry.”
I shrug. “It’s a free world.” I figure I need to offer some explanation as to why I’m out here, other than to spy on her. “I just felt like a bit of fresh air,” I mumble.
The girl looks at her cigarette and we both giggle. “I’m Chloe,” she says.
“I’m Thea.”
“I know,” says Chloe. She makes a sweeping gesture with her hand. “Sit down.”
I sit down on the step beside her.
“You came with Van,” she says.
“That’s right.”
“Are you guys going out?”
“No,” I say quickly. “He’s just a friend.”
“Hmmm.” Chloe gives me an appraising look, and I feel my cheeks flush. “He’s available, you know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“He and Lindsay broke up a couple of months ago.”
Van went out with Lindsay. I try to arrange my face so nothing shows, but I’m not sure how I feel about this. Lindsay is so pretty, and she seems really popular.
“We’re just friends,” I repeat.
Chloe takes a final drag on her cigarette and then drops it on the ground and puts it out with the toe of her runner. She picks up the butt and lays it carefully on the step beside her. “I don’t smoke nearly as much as I used to,” she says. “But you know—it’s a party.” She smiles at me, her teeth white against her olive skin. “Van says you’re into horses.”
Van has been talking about me?
“I used to ride all the time,” I say. “I kind of grew up with horses.”
“Me too,” says Chloe. “I ride almost every day. Do you have a horse now?”
“No. Well, I’m sort of borrowing one.”
“Like a lease, you mean?”
“Not exactly.” I find myself telling her about Renegade. I tell her about how I’m working him in the round pen and how he’s starting to make eye contact with me. I talk more than I mean to, and I cut it off abruptly, embarrassed. Chloe will think I’m a motormouth.
But she looks fascinated. “I’d love to see him,” she says. “Maybe I could ride my horse over one day.” Now it’s Chloe’s turn to look embarrassed. “Not that I’m pushy or anything,” she says.
“No, I’d love that,” I say. “You can come anytime.”
Van comes outside then, the screen door banging behind him. “There you are,” he says. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. You’re on for Ping Pong.” He smiles at Chloe. “Hey, Chloe,” he says.
“Hey,” says Chloe. She puts up both her hands.
“No cigarette.”
“We’re trying to get her to quit,” says Van.
“Yes, Mother,” says Chloe. “Wait a sec,” she says to me. “Phone number?” We exchange numbers and enter them into our cell phones. Then she gives me a little nudge with her foot and I get up. I glance back at her as Van and I go inside and she mouths “He likes you” at me.
She grins. She has a great smile. It’s contagious. I grin back.
I get caught up in the Ping Pong game. When I make an especially fantastic spike, everyone hollers and I hear myself hollering too. Then someone puts on a movie and Van and I squish onto one end of a long couch. I don’t get a chance to talk to Chloe again, though she catches my eye once across the room and smiles. Later, when I look around for her, I can’t see her anywhere, and I figure she must have left.
Van’s dad picks us up at eleven. I thank Lindsay and her mom, who’s sitting upstairs in the living room, looking like she wishes everyone would leave. I fall asleep in the truck, and the next thing I know we’re at the Double R and Van’s shaking my shoulder.
“See you,” he says as I climb out.
“See you,” I say.
I can’t sleep. How can I be so dead tired one minute and so wide-awake the next? I toss and turn for an hour. My phone hums. There’s a text message from Chloe, just saying hi. She can’t sleep either. I text her back. Then I lie there and think about Van for a while and wonder how he’s feeling about his grandfather. We didn’t get a chance to talk about it tonight. There were always too many people around.
Finally I get up and get dressed again in my jeans and a T-shirt. I pull on my running shoes. I close the door quietly behind me and stand on the porch for a moment. It’s still bright outside. Moonlight shimmers in a silvery path down the middle of the black lake. A bat flits silently past my head. I hurry to the barn.
It’s like we’re doing some kind of dance. Just me and Renegade. He moves when I move, shifting his position so he’s always facing me. His ears are forward. His eyes are dark and soft in the moonlight.
I feel like an invisible rope connects us. If I back up, he steps toward me. If I turn to the side, he steps with me.
He is watching, always watching.
I turn my back to him and walk across the round pen. I hear his hooves on the ground, following.
He’ll learn, Marion told me, that next to you is the place he wants to be.
She didn’t tell me how I would feel when it happened.
I turn around. Renegade stops, his eyes meeting mine. I make the kissing sound and he takes a step forward.
I kiss again.
Another step. He is so close I can touch him now.
So I do.
I rub him gently between his eyes.
A shiver ripples under his sk
in, down his neck and along his flanks.
But he doesn’t leave.
Fifteen
Dad is awake when I get back to the cabin. He’s making hot chocolate in our little kitchen. He doesn’t ask me where I’ve been, but his eyes rake over me. I’m conscious of bits of hay clinging to my running shoes and Renegade’s scent in my clothes. I’m bursting with joy over what just happened between Renegade and me. More than anything, I want to tell Dad.
The words stick in my throat. Suddenly, for some stupid reason, my thoughts get mixed up with Mom and I imagine telling her too.
Mom, who I try so hard not to think about. Mom, who loved horses like I do. Mom, who wrecked everything when she left.
I swallow. It’s so long since Dad and I have talked about anything that matters. Anything at all. I’m not sure I know how anymore.
“Want some hot chocolate?” he says.
“No thanks,” I say.
I feel frozen to the floor. The clock on the wall is ticking loudly. It’s half past four. We’re both up in the middle of the night. There should be so much to say.
I want Dad to ask me. I want him to say, “Where have you been? What happened?”
But he doesn’t. Instead he says, “We’re not staying, remember. Not past the fall.”
This is Dad’s way of telling me that he knows about Renegade. That he doesn’t want me to get emotionally attached. It’s too late. Sudden tears sting my eyes. For one overwhelming second, I hate Dad. Really hate him.
“I just don’t want you to be disappointed,” he adds.
Thanks. I get it. I stare past Dad, stone-faced.
He goes back to his bedroom and closes the door.
I put my hands up to my cheeks and breathe in the smell of Renegade. I’ve just had the best night I can ever remember. Why do I feel so miserable?
The next day I tackle the snarls in Renegade’s mane. I dig my fingers into the middle of the mats, yanking the coarse hairs apart. I use a pair of scissors to snip away the worst knots. I think about getting the bottle of mane detangler from the barn but it’s probably old and dried up. I make a mental note to go back to the tack shop and buy some horse shampoo and conditioner.
Marion was here earlier, admiring Renegade. I showed her how he has suddenly accepted my touch. I can run my hands over his whole body—his legs, under his belly, even his ears. We made plans for what comes next.
Renegade stands patiently, his tail switching at a few flies. I’ve worked through about half of the mane and my fingers are starting to ache. The back of my T-shirt is damp with sweat. Pull, tug. I whisper apologies to Renegade, but his eyes are half closed and his head hangs down.
The comb catches and a plastic tooth breaks. I step back, take a breath. A sudden mental picture catches me off guard. Mom beside me, her long brown fingers skillfully braiding strands of Monty’s mane and securing them with tiny black elastics. My clumsy efforts and then Mom’s hands on top of mine, gently guiding.
Did that even happen? I’ve pushed away the memories for so long, I don’t know what’s real anymore. I swallow a lump that’s squeezing my throat.
Concentrate on Renegade. I survey him critically. His coat isn’t exactly gleaming. I know it will take days of brushing to get rid of all the dirt and bring out the shine. But he looks much better than he did.
A film of dirt sticks to my arms and my hair and my clothes. My hands are dark with grime. Half an hour more, I tell myself, and then I’ll quit for today.
The thought of jumping into the cool lake is tantalizing.
Sixteen
Van comes over after lunch and we go out in his boat. He cuts the motor and we drift in the sun. We talk about the party for a while.
“Chloe likes you,” he says. “She has a pretty lousy life. She could probably use another friend.”
“What’s wrong with her life?” I ask.
“Her dad left a couple of years ago. She’s living with her mom and her mom’s boyfriend, who she can’t stand. I’ve met him. He’s a total jerk.”
“What does he do?”
Van shrugs. “He’s just a jerk. He hassles her over dumb stuff. And he drinks all the time.”
“That sounds depressing.” I think about Chloe’s infectious grin. She’s pretty good at hiding things too. “What about Chloe’s mom? Does she stick up for her?”
“Her mom doesn’t care what Chloe does as long as she stays out of the way. She doesn’t even care that Chloe smokes.”
My dad would freak if he caught me with a cigarette. And he asked a million questions before he let me go to the party. Something shifts inside me. Slightly. Maybe my life isn’t so bad.
“Chloe spends most of her time riding. If she didn’t have her horse, I don’t know how she’d survive,” says Van.
“She’s going to ride over to my place sometime,” I say.
“That’s great,” says Van. He sounds like he really means it, and I wonder if all the youth-group kids care about each other that much.
I lift my hot hair off my shoulders and twist it into a braid. I think about going swimming. Van’s been leaning back, his baseball cap tipped over his eyes, but now he sits up. Turns out he’s thinking about swimming too. “There’s a good spot to land on Spooky Island,” he says.
It only takes a few minutes to get to the island. Van turns the motor off and lifts the propeller out of the water; then he guides the boat between two fallen trees that stick out from the shore. He ties the boat to a branch and we climb out, wading across smooth slippery rocks until we get to the shore.
The island is small and covered with scraggly dead trees. Dry sticks are scattered all over the ground; they’re sharp under our bare feet so we have to step carefully. Van shows me a fort he worked on for years. He pretends to be offended when I tell him it looks like a random pile of branches. He digs into the middle of it and produces a grimy jar with a rusty lid. “I used to leave messages in here,” he says with a grin.
Van strips off his shirt. I’ve got my bathing suit on under my clothes but I still feel shy taking off my shirt and shorts. We wade in from a grassy bank to swim. The weeds feel like ropes around my legs until we get to deeper water. I float on my back and stare up at the sky. One puffy white cloud is floating in a sea of blue.
I feel perfect right now. If only I could save this feeling for when we have to move again.
On the way back, we talk about Van’s grandfather and Livia Willard. I’ve been waiting for Van to bring it up and he does, finally. He says he can’t stop thinking about it, wishing there was some way he could change the past.
I know all about wanting to change the past. It doesn’t work. I could have told Van that.
“Grandpa’s gotta be the gentlest guy in the universe,” says Van. “He’s had to live with this for so long. It’s not fair. And what I really hate is there’s nothing I can do about it.”
A cold pit opens up in my stomach. Van is convinced that his grandfather is innocent. Could he be wrong? Then I think of that sweet old man with his birds, and none of it makes sense.
“Someone out there must know something,” I say. “A little girl can’t just disappear like that.”
“Yeah, well she did.”
“It must have been hard on your grandmother too,” I say.
“Yeah,” says Van. “But she’s tougher than Grandpa. She’s kind of a rock. She’s always there for everyone. Always.”
Van is quiet for a few minutes, brooding.
I say, “How did the chess game go?”
“Oh that,” says Van with a sigh. “Grandpa checkmated me in eight moves. It made his day.”
We cut across the lake and slowly follow the forested shoreline back to the ranch. Van says if we’re lucky we might spot some wildlife—a bear or a moose. The boat noses around a point and we’re at the edge of the marshy bay in front of the old abandoned cabin. Two black ducks with white patches on their heads skitter through the lily pads. They take off into the sky with a racket.
Van turns the motor off, and we drift.
“I wonder if that old boat is worth salvaging,” says Van.
A boat is pulled up on the bank, half hidden in bushes. Faded red paint is peeling along the sides, and a fist-sized hole gapes near the back. It doesn’t look like anything I’d want to ride in.
“Be my guest,” I say. I study the cabin. It’s not possible, but I’d swear it’s sunk even deeper into the weeds today. Sun glints off the windows and turns the moss on the shingles a fluorescent green. Everything looks utterly neglected. It’s hard to imagine Esta and Iris playing here so long ago.
And then I catch a shadow of movement behind a pane of grimy glass. I suck in my breath.
For a second a face peers out, wavy through the dust, as though underwater. It fades back into darkness.
“There’s someone in the cabin,” I say softly.
“What?” says Van.
“Behind the window. Someone was looking at us.”
“I don’t see anyone.” Van sounds skeptical.
I lean forward, my eyes riveted on the window.
Nothing.
“There was someone there,” I say slowly. “I’m sure of it.”
We wait for a few minutes, watching. Two squirrels chase each other down a tree, chattering shrilly and making me jump. Then it’s dead quiet again. I imagine a shadowy figure standing back from the window, staying perfectly still, waiting for us to leave.
“It looks pretty deserted to me,” says Van. “You want to check it out?”
There’s nowhere that looks like a good landing place for the boat. And I’m not so sure I want to go inside the cabin anyway. I sigh. “No, I guess not.”
Van starts the motor. He skirts the lily pads and points the boat back to deeper water. I look over my shoulder.
I don’t really care whether Van believes me or not. There was someone there. I know it. I frown, trying to bring into focus the fleeting image of the face in the window.
I’m almost positive it was Marion Wilson.