“How long will he be gone?” Abby had asked. She was glad Matt was going to get the help he needed, but she wanted him to be there to watch her ride Ruckus, too. To help her get better at it.
“His doctor at the VA says it’ll probably be at least two months. It’s a good hospital. It’s good for Matt to be around other soldiers who’ve been through the same thing.”
“He’s going to call us every night,” Anders reported. “He wants to stay up to speed on how the horses are doing. He wants us to all be on the same page.”
Now Abby looked at Anders and said, “Your feet are soaked.”
“I jumped,” Anders explained. “But I guess I didn’t jump far enough.”
“Will it be your horse?” Anoop asked Anders as the three of them ran after Wallace up the hill toward the farm. “The new one, I mean.”
“No, I get Ruckus,” Anders said. “The new horse is Matt’s, for when he gets back. Grandma sold the Virginia Highlander, the one that was always biting, so that we could afford it.”
Abby slowed halfway up the hill, holding her side. Anders kept running, but Anoop slowed with her, trotting beside her.
“It is quite a serious hill,” he said, panting a little bit.
“It’s not so bad,” Abby panted back. “You get used to it. After a while you hardly notice.”
And then she took off and ran as fast as she could, Anoop laughing behind her, trying to catch up.
“Hey, there!” Mrs. Benton waved at them from across the field as they came over the hill. “Come see!” she called from the paddock.
The horse had a mottled gray-and-white coat and stood a good hand taller than Ruckus. “Meet Shannon,” Mrs. Benton said. “She’s a beauty, don’t you think? An Appaloosa.”
Abby slowly approached the horse and reached out her hand, palm up, flat. “Hello, Shannon,” she said, feeling a little shaky next to such a big animal. “Nice horse.”
Shannon put her nose in Abby’s hand. It was velvet soft. She sniffed, and Abby laughed.
“Matt wants you to ride her until he gets home,” Mrs. Benton told her. “Exercise her every afternoon if you can.”
“I don’t know,” Abby said, her heart fluttering. “I haven’t had very much practice at it yet.”
“He says you know what you’re doing. I’ll give you some lessons, show you how to put on a saddle.” Mrs. Benton grinned. “You can pay me back by helping Anders muck the stalls.”
Abby relaxed. “I can help muck,” she said, confident about that at least. “I like how the barn smells.”
“Like perfume,” Anders said.
“They should bottle it,” Abby agreed.
Anoop was still holding the envelope with the typed poem. “Shall we leave this with you, Mrs. Benton, or mail it to Anders’s father at the hospital? He will want to see how his poem looks printed out. My sister used a special font. It looks quite regal.”
“I’ll bring it when Anders and I go visit Matt tomorrow,” Mrs. Benton said, reaching out her hand to take the envelope from Anoop. “He says his doctor wants to read it.”
“Especially the part about the fox,” Anders added. “Dr. Reynolds is very interested in the part about the fox.”
Abby turned to Anoop. “You want to learn how to muck a stall? It’s kind of fun.”
Anoop looked doubtful. “I suppose. But if I go home smelling like horse manure, my grandmother will be suspicious.”
They stayed at the barn for a couple of hours, cleaning out the stalls and talking about horses, which kinds were the fastest, which were the best for riding through the countryside. Anders dreamed of owning a quarter horse one day, or a golden palomino, and Abby thought she might like to ride a Belgian draft horse, the biggest horse of all. “When I get brave enough,” she added, crossing her fingers that one day she would have that kind of courage.
“You have heard of jodhpurs?” Anoop asked, leaning against his shovel, and when Abby and Anders nodded, he continued, “The great Marwari stallion is from the Jodhpur region of India. It is the most spirited horse in the world. Do you know that Marwari stallions performed at my grandmother’s wedding? She says they wore diamond bridles.”
“Pretty fancy,” Anders said admiringly. “I’d like to see that.”
“It is rather amazing,” Anoop said, sounding rather amazed himself. “I have seen the pictures.”
Abby and Anoop left at twenty minutes before five so that Anoop would be back at Abby’s in time to be picked up by his mother.
“It is good to be around horses,” Anoop declared after they’d jumped over the creek on the way back. “Maybe I should bring my grandmother sometime. The horses might make her remember when she was young, and life was not so frightening.”
Abby stayed in the lot after Anoop’s mother picked him up. She set out her chair again and sat down, even though she knew she needed to get home. It made her mother unhappy when Abby was late. Abby still didn’t like making her mother unhappy, though now she knew that sometimes she had to.
That night. Coming back home with her sleeping bag and backpack. Her mother had paled when Abby told her what had happened, the candy, the cell phone, what the girls planned to do. Her mother hadn’t said much, just that she was sorry. They could talk it all over with Abby’s father in the morning.
Abby knew they wouldn’t.
The next Monday, Abby sat at her usual spot in the cafeteria with Anoop and Jafar. There had been only three girls at the medium girls’ table: Kristen, Georgia, and Rachel. Abby scanned the room until she found the others—Bess and Myla were sitting at a table over by the back window with two girls Abby didn’t know, and Casey was eating by herself, reading. Kristen, Georgia, and Rachel leaned over their lunches, talking in whispers as their eyes darted around the cafeteria. What were they plotting now? Abby wondered. How long before Rachel wandered off to find another friend, and it was just Kristen and Georgia at a table by themselves, looking around for someone else to make miserable?
When would they figure out they were the miserable ones?
A few stars blinked in the darkening sky. Abby thought about riding Shannon. It scared her, imagining sitting up so high. It would take getting used to. Maybe she’d fall. Crack a collarbone. Break her neck.
Abby laughed. Maybe she’d get run over crossing the street to go home for dinner. The possibilities of what might happen to her were endless. She stood and picked up the cooler. She left the chair. Someday someone would buy the wild lot, build a new house on it, make it the same as every other place. The weeds would fly off and land somewhere else. The fox would move on.
But until that day, this place was hers.
the fox tried to tell Crow the story, but Crow refused to believe her.
You flew? Crow asked, sounding doubtful. You flew up into the air, flew over the desert, and landed here?
The fox looked around her. She had to admit the field didn’t look like much. It was a different place now, here in the first days of winter. Most of the weeds were gone. All that was left were clumps of brown grass stirring in the chilly breeze. No flowers, no birds. The trees remained, but their branches were bare.
Well. Crow sniffed. Not much to look at. Let’s move on.
The fox nodded. Time to find a new story.
Crow flew above her as the fox began to trot in the direction of the creek. My natural habitat is the prairie, she bragged to Crow. Wide fields, big skies.
My natural habitat is in dreams, Crow retorted. In every mind, in every eye, Crow flies.
The fox snorted. You sound like a raccoon, the way you spout nonsense.
Crow took to the sky. Let’s see how you fly, Fox! Let’s see you sprout wings.
Who needs wings? the fox thought, and she began to run, the wind brushing back her fur, her paws thudding against the hard clay dirt. She closed her eyes. She leaped into the invisible air.
The author would like to thank Caitlyn M. Dlouhy, who makes everything so much better, and Ariel Colletti, for batt
ing cleanup. Thanks also to Justin Chanda for his unflagging support, and Kaitlin Severini for her copyediting eagle eye. The author owes a huge debt of gratitude to Jennifer Gardner at Prettyfab PR, and sends big hugs to her homegirls, Amy Graham, Danielle Paul, and Sarah Schulz, for their ongoing support. Thanks to Virginia Hall, fifth-grade history teacher extraordinaire, who got her family all excited about the Lewis and Clark expedition, and thanks, too, to poet Campbell McGrath—not only for his book Shannon, but for all his books, from Capitalism on, which have made this writer’s world a better place to be in. Finally, she is full of love and wonder when she thinks about those boys she lives with, Clifton, Jack, Will, and Travis the dog, i.e. the Dowells, otherwise known as her own ones.
FRANCES
O’ROARK
DOWELL is the bestselling and critically acclaimed author of Falling In; Shooting the Moon, which was awarded the Christopher Medal; Dovey Coe, which won the Edgar award; Where I’d Like to Be; Chicken Boy; the Phineas L. MacGuire series; the bestselling The Secret Language of Girls, and its sequel, The Kind of Friends We Used to Be; and most recently the teen novel Ten Miles Past Normal. She fell in love with the Lewis and Clark expedition when her son Jack studied it in his fifth-grade history class (thanks, Mrs. Hall!) and dreams of one day following their trail west in an Econoline van. Frances has always liked foxes and frozen grapes. She lives with her husband and two sons in Durham, North Carolina. Connect with Frances online at FrancesDowell.com.
Jacket design by Sonia Chaghatzbanian & Michael McCartney
Jacket illustration of girl copyright © 2012 by Greg Call
Hand-lettering copyright © 2012 by Karl Kwasny
Atheneum Books for Young Readers
Simon & Schuster • New York
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Dovey Coe
Where I’d Like To Be
The Secret Language of Girls
Chicken Boy
Shooting the Moon
The Kind of Friends We Used to Be
Falling In
Ten Miles Past Normal
From the Highly Scientific Notebooks
of Phineas L. MacGuire
(Illustrated by Preston McDaniels)
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Erupts!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Gets Slimed!
Phineas L. MacGuire . . . Blasts Off!
ATHENEUM BOOKS FOR YOUNG READERS
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Frances O’Roark Dowell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Dowell, Frances O’Roark.
The second life of Abigail Walker / Frances O’Roark Dowell. —1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary: Bullied by two mean girls in her sixth-grade class, a lonely, plump girl
gains self-confidence and new friends after a mysterious fox gently bites her.
ISBN 978-1-4424-0593-6 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-1-4424-0595-0 (eBook)
[1. Self-confidence—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Overweight persons—Fiction.
4. Human-animal relationships—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.D75455Sd 2012
[Fic]—dc23
2012010646
The Second Life of Abigail Walker Page 12