by Ibi Zoboi
“Everything okay?” Not sure where this comes from. Maybe he senses something on my face. “Did I freak you out earlier?”
“No, no,” I say, swatting away mosquitoes. I explain to him everything that’s happening with Big Red and my parents.
He just nods, and in his deep Southern accent says, “Well, I’m just sorry to hear all that, T. I know how much ole Red means to you.”
I nod thanks.
“Y’know, I really know how hard it is to lose something so close, like a childhood companion,” Skyler says. “Ruby was my pet pig. I got her as a little tiny baby, played with her, grew up with her, everything. Then, one day, my parents put her up for sale, she got bought during one North Salem animal showing competition, and became bacon months after, last I heard.”
“That sucks” is all that comes out, even though there’s so much I want to say, so many words I want to offer.
He walks closer to the edge. “If I could help, I would.”
Having him here to walk me through this is enough. Skyler plus Britney Spears sounds like the perfect combination to get me through this broken moment in my broken life—the dread knotting in my chest of having to put Big Red down.
“I need to be with you right now,” he mutters. I watch him take more steps forward and my heart is beating so hard in my chest. His toes dangle on the edge.
Oh my God. He’s crossing over the ditch. He’s crossing over no-man’s-land, showing the kind of bravery I used to pray for. I blink back the shock, my heart thudding in triples now. Suddenly, he’s on our side of the divide. He’s standing in front of me—so close I can reach out and touch him.
“Can I hold your hand?”
I nod at him.
His hand grips mine and the warmth is everything.
“I’ve been wanting to do this.”
“I have too,” I say softly.
His hands move to my cheeks and his lips are so close to mine, but he pulls back just to look me in the eye, my chest heaving. “Tank Robinson, can I kiss you?”
“Please,” I say, my heart feeling like it’s about to pound its way out of my chest.
He presses his lips against me, soft and easy at first and then hard and firm. Everything in my head goes quiet, and I feel like I’m floating on a cloud far, far away from North Salem. When we pull apart, the taste of his cherry ChapStick is left in my mouth and I can’t help but smile at his smile.
If Momma or Daddy came out to see this, they would kill me. Hell, they would kill the both of us and then blame the Smiths. And I don’t know why, but I’m also suddenly realizing that part of me actually doesn’t care. Part of me kinda wishes one of them came out and saw us. It would make things easier for me. I would no longer have to think about how to come out to my God-fearing parents and especially not have to think about explaining how the first boy I’ve ever kissed was their enemy’s one and only son.
I kick at a fly buzzing around my legs, taking in everything, not wanting this night to end.
Before long, Skyler tells me he has to go and get some rest for tomorrow. I watch him walk away, still feeling like I’ve been split at the seams and stuffed with rays of sunlight. I do a last-minute inspection of the horses. Tomorrow I’ll be racing Lima Bean, who’s just plain gorgeous, with her white, silvery hair. I end up letting Big Red out of the shelter to run around in the open field.
Ignoring the coyotes singing in the distance and shielding the glowing full moon from my face, I watch him go so freely under the expanding night sky, how happy he looks, not knowing what’s going to happen to him.
I wake up the next day with his name repeating over and over again in my mind. The dream I had last night was about him and it’s too embarrassing to talk about right now, but I’m gonna need to change my boxers for sure.
I end up showering, grabbing a bowl of Cocoa Puffs with Natasha, and helping Daddy load his pickup truck and trailer for the race today. The sun is so bright and yellow, pinned in the bluest, stillest sky I’ve ever seen. Something about it is like a reminder of hope, a reminder of Skyler.
Suddenly, I look up in the distance and Skyler’s helping his folks load their trucks, too. Sheep, goats, and hogs getting loaded in the back of one. Horses in the others. It’s all actually kind of adorable, but the tension that lives on this road kills away all of that feeling after a while, with Momma and Daddy side-eyeing the Smiths so damn hard.
After they’re all loaded, I look over and watch Skyler’s parents drive away, leaving him there. He calls me over sneakily.
I take a deep breath and tell Momma that I’ll be right back. Daddy’s in the back of one of the trailers.
She waves me off.
I walk behind the house and down the hill in our backyard to the pasture. I stand in front of the ditch, feeling electric volts run through me, like I’m one and the same with the earth’s center or some shit, thinking about crossing over the ditch for the first time. Sure, it’s a great fuck off to my parents, but the adrenaline is overwhelming. So overwhelming, I can feel my heart beating in my chest. It’s my turn. I should be able to cross this ditch, like Skyler did last night.
Then it hits me—what Skyler said about taking back his happiness. This isn’t about Momma or Daddy. This is about me and what I want. This is about having the courage to tell myself that it’s okay to love him. It’s okay to be strong and brave and daring in the name of love.
He’s waiting at our usual spot, a slight grin easing on his face.
I take a deep breath and jump over the ditch, like I’m crossing through the golden gates of reality into a brand-new life or something.
“Hey, you,” he says so sweetly, hugging me tight. “You smell ready for today.”
“You too,” I reply, grinning.
I take a whiff of myself. He’s right.
Somehow we end up going to his house and he takes me upstairs, almost giving me a minitour of it. I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be inside the place where someone as interesting and different as Skyler lives. His parents own Confederate flags and MAGA posters, but Skyler has reminded me that he doesn’t believe in any of that, that he knows his parents are racist and have been contributing to the hatred of me and my family in this town since we’ve been here. He makes it a thing to remind me that he’s not like that, that he’ll always be here to stand with and for me, never against me.
We laugh small laughs. “Why did your parents leave you?”
“I told them I would meet them there. I told them I had some last-minute things to do before heading out to the race. Truth is, I just wanted to do this.”
He leans in and kisses me soft on the lips.
Instantly, I feel like there’s a lit match in my gut. I half smile.
I’m supposed to hate him. But when my lips touched his for the first time and we collided, every butterfly in a hundred-mile radius fluttered in my stomach. And I felt at home for once. And all of this just happened again. Just now. Wow.
Days ago, I imagined kissing him for the first time.
Yesterday, we actually did.
Right now, in this moment right here.
It hits me. One thought repeating in my head, squeezing past every happy thought I can have right now.
My parents would kill me if they knew I was here in the Smiths’ house. They would bring me back to life and kill me again if they knew I had kissed Skyler. Skyler’s parents would do something drastic, too, like force him never to leave his room or send him hundreds of miles away to Texas, if they knew he liked and kissed someone with my skin color—dark brown like somewhere between umber and cocoa. That’s the nature of this town.
I end up sneaking back over to my side, hearing my name being screamed. “Tank. Tank. Taaaaaank!” I know that tone, that voice, whenever I hear it. And it’s a pissed-off Lisa Renée Robinson.
Turns out, I accidentally left the pen open and the goats got out.
It’s usually a tradition for us to eat at Mother Mal’s Pancake House befo
re we go to the race, but not this year. This year, we go straight to North Salem Park, where the race and animal showings are hosted every three years. Maybe this is my parents’ way of showing me just how serious they were about me winning this race for them? Maybe this is their way of saying they don’t really care about my feelings toward this race, just winning? I don’t know, but I’m only salty I don’t get those signature hash browns that I like with the sautéed onions.
At first, the air smells like shit and tastes kind of dirty and bitter once I get out of my dad’s truck, where I have headphones on listening to Britney’s “Hold It Against Me,” avoiding what could’ve been the most awkward ride of my life. I look down and realize that I’m stepping in a fresh, mushy pile of horse crap in my brand-new boots.
Fuck.
I keep walking, wiping my feet as I go, going across a parking lot and through a series of barns. I end up stomping my feet on a concrete slab near the registration table as we get signed in. I see the medium-sized gold horseshoe-shaped trophy that looks like this year’s updated version of the trophies we already have at home from previous years. It’s cool to look at. Some white, bald man in a gray suit, who looks as if he’ll be dying of a heatstroke in a matter of time, shows us where our assigned spot to set up is.
If everything indeed has a bright side to it, like Britney’s “Stronger” and “Break the Ice,” then I guess the bright side to being here at the North Salem Park for this year’s race and animal-showing competition is that there’s a lot of free food. The air smells like pizza and funnel cake and everything reminds me of a carnival, except without rides, just animals behind tiny fences and trailers full of hay.
There’s a fan blasting near the area where we get set up at, saving us from this blazing heat as we start unloading Lima Bean from behind the back of the truck, and then we unload all the other animals for the showing.
I look left and right, then right again. Conveniently for me and inconveniently for our parents, our main competition is setting up next to us. Skyler waves and smiles, like he doesn’t care at all that he’s been caught with me. His mom catches him and swats his hand away, giving him the dirtiest look and then giving the same one to me.
Skyler looks away, focusing back on brushing a horse—probably the one he’s using to race with. He’s a really tall, all-black horse with one silver stripe going around the top of his head like a crown, like he’s royalty and destined for victory. He’s a beauty.
I remember seeing speakers all over the place, and suddenly a loud voice starts blaring out of all of them. “The triennial North Salem Horse Race will start in approximately seven minutes.” The voice is low, smooth, and relaxing. The whole time, my eyes don’t shift away from Skyler.
“Tank!” Momma and Daddy both call out for me in different tones, reining me back in from my daze.
I turn around to walk over to them.
“Lima Bean’s all ready to go, son,” Daddy says to me. “If we win, we’ll buy you a new horse that looks exactly like Big Red. Maybe you can name him Little Red.”
I don’t say anything back, just look into his eyes and feel how strangely detached we both are in this moment.
He places a hand on my shoulder, leans in, and kisses me light on the forehead. “You got this.” An uncomfortable, tight-lipped smile. “You got this.”
Do I?
I don’t want this.
Momma comes over and kisses me on the forehead, too, kissing into the creases of it how proud she is of me.
The two of them stand at my sides, and out of nowhere, they begin reciting a prayer. They pray for my heart, they pray for my mind, they pray for Lima Bean, and they pray for victory.
An overwhelming wave of nausea hits me, and my hands get really clammy.
The same loud voice comes over every single speaker in this open park again. “Attention, all horse racers! We’ll begin in approximately one minute.”
“Hurry, son, go get him,” Daddy shouts in a voice somewhere between excitement and anxiety.
I get saddled up and ready on Lima Bean, nudge her at her sides lightly in the direction of where everyone’s lining up for the race. There are individual lanes drawn on a field that I didn’t even see when I got in. I don’t know where Skyler is now, since there are over thirty racers, but I hope he’s out here and I hope he wins.
So many thoughts flood my brain and I’m having a really hard time sorting them. It’s like I’m two halves of something. Part A of me wants to win this, get my parents the trophy, so they can stop bugging me about it for the next three years. Part B of me, though, wants to do everything I can to have Skyler win, and then I can finally stand up to my parents and also to his.
Last night, I spent a lot of time thinking about this and talking to my three Britney Spears posters about it as well. To win or not to win? I know if I gave this my all with a clear mind, I could definitely win. Especially now that I’m looking at some of these other horses that look like they’ve been starving for months. But I’m not sure if I want to.
The same bald white guy in a gray suit stands in front of all the horses with his hands behind his back. I can barely hear him, but he’s explaining all the rules for this race, things I grew up reading and hearing about from Daddy.
My whole body clenches, and I feel the muscles in my legs and arms rise up, the same muscles I use to control thousands of pounds of thundering horseflesh.
I almost forget I’m wearing a hat. I pull it down over my low fade, so it feels tight and secure. I don’t wanna lose it. It was a birthday gift from Grandma G.
The bald man whips out his hands from behind his back and I see a gun. I gulp as he points it into the air. I watch him so closely, licking his lips. I look around and grab onto the reins around Lima Bean.
“On your mark,” he says.
I swallow hot spit.
“Get set.”
I lean in forward a bit.
And then, BOOM! “Go!”
We’re off and I’m tied for third place. Not sure who the two are in front of me, but I know that their horses look like they won’t make it past the first lap with how hard they’re working them.
I jerk my head back, the wind slapping me in the face hard—so damn hard. I end up passing everyone by the time it gets to the second-to-last lap. I’m in first.
Big Red dies today. The thought enters my head in the most fucked-up way. I don’t even realize I’m fucking crying, until everything blurs and I feel Lima Bean go off the track a little. I wipe my face on my sleeves and suddenly, I’ve gotten passed by two people. One of them, I think, is Skyler.
It starts drizzling a little bit, giving us all some temporary relief from the heat.
I try to get Lima Bean to go faster to catch up. After a while, it’s just Skyler and me neck-and-neck. I can see the finish line approaching and I can tell by the look in his eyes that no matter how this ends, we will have each other.
It’s in this moment that I finally man up, something Daddy’s always telling me to do, and I pull Lima Bean back. Skyler crosses the finish line.
Once Skyler wins, my stomach flips, but I’m smiling hard. The crowds of spectators all erupt in a series of different sounds. Some of them are cheering, like they’re really excited that he won. Others are not. I can feel the anger coming from my parents and I can’t even make them out in the crowd yet.
We all get off our horses once everyone crosses the finish line and walk through the crowd to our stations.
When I get to mine, Momma and Daddy have huge scowls on their faces.
Daddy walks over to me sternly. “What the hell was that?” The anger is leaking from his voice.
Skyler comes over with the first-place trophy and sets it down. “It’s for you.”
Everything stills. Daddy takes a step back. Momma holds his arm.
“Skyler—”
He interrupts me, walking past me and toward my parents with the trophy in his hands, giving it to them. What the hell is he doing?
“I know how much this means to you.”
“Why?” Daddy says on repeat even though Skyler just basically explained why.
I walk over to Skyler, to stand at his side, and he says, “I have something to say to you. I know you won’t like it, but—”
“We kissed.” I finish his sentence, wanting to have this moment. My heart is pounding so hard in my chest and now the rain is picking up. I hug myself.
Momma looks shaken. Natasha smiles while eating cotton candy.
“You kissed?” Momma asks, giving me a strange look, like I just said I killed someone.
“Yeah.” I look away to sort through my thoughts and stop being an anxious mess. I breathe in and out, repeating my favorite Britney Spears lyrics in my head.
“I know you won’t like it or whatever because of God or the Bible or because the world thinks all boys should like girls or whatever, but—”
I’m interrupted.
“Absolutely not,” Daddy goes. “Jesus. God. No, no, no, no. What have you done to my son?” He approaches Skyler and Skyler takes a few steps back, flinching.
I jump in between them.
There’s the longest pause that lingers between all of us.
The Smiths arrive to get Skyler, but he tells them that he’s staying right where he is.
Momma chews on her lip, then nods, her head in her hands, and she’s now crying, holding her hands together like she’s about to begin praying, asking God for a cure for me.
Skyler’s dad grabs him by the arm forcefully and pulls him back. He yells so loud, everyone at this competition probably knows what’s going on. “We’re going home, packing your bags, and you’re going to spend some time with your grandparents in Texas!”
“No!” A yelp emerges from my gut. “Leave him alone,” I shout at his parents, my voice inching higher as the words come out. I feel a rush of adrenaline shoot up my neck. Things slow.
Skyler reaches for my hand and I give it up, lacing my fingers with his.
Speakers blare to life in all directions and an announcer’s low voice booms, robotically, “One minute until the triennial group competitor photo. I repeat, one minute until the triennial group competitor photo.”