by K. D. Kinney
“He did it!” Cessie ran to the fence. I slowly followed her and was so excited for him I felt like crying. What a dork. Noah looked right at me with a giant smile on his face and nodded. He waved to his parents as he headed out of the arena. I hugged the fence rail and laughed quietly when his mom and dad attacked him with hugs. Josh hugged him too. I couldn’t help it, I did let a couple of tears fall.
I looked over my shoulder, making sure no one was watching or trying to sneak up on me. Bree sat on the bleachers all alone and slumped over, hugging her legs. I remembered all too well the look on her face when she had to leave the arena without winning anything.
“Are you okay?” I stood next to Bree, mustering up a huge amount of courage as I waited for her answer. I hoped Bree wouldn’t have the face of a horse when she looked up.
She rubbed her eyes. “Not really. This hasn’t been the best week.” She looked as if she was about to say something else and hesitated as she scooted away. “Pay attention to the audience at your show. I won’t be there but someone else might be.” Bree jumped off the bleachers and walked away.
Great, I already had the carnie tailing me. My phone vibrated in my shirt.
“Crap! We’re late again.” I grabbed Cessie and ran for the Caravan.
I kept scanning the audience and there wasn’t anyone there I needed to worry about. Even though Mom was mad we were late, Cessie’s excitement over Noah winning allowed us to try to track him down after the show. Besides, I needed to see if we could all go to the concert together that night.
We couldn’t find him. I texted him and he didn’t answer. I texted Josh. He wanted to meet us by the barn. I scowled at my phone. Horses were everywhere because the competitions were still going on.
“What did he say?” Cessie asked.
“He will meet us at the barn.” I rolled my eyes.
“What are we waiting for?” Cessie grabbed my hand.
“For the horses to fly away.” I didn’t move until Cessie nearly yanked my arm off. “Okay.”
I let Cessie drag me all the way there. I controlled my panic until we got to the barn. I leaned against the wall where there was a rail between me and the horses.
“Go find Josh.” I pushed her to the doorway.
Cessie went willingly with an enormous smile from ear to ear as she disappeared into the flock of horses. I closed my eyes and could see them all flying in unison. Why was I comparing them to birds so much? Maybe the whole fight or flight thing was running rampant in my subconscious. I gripped my skirt and closed my eyes as I struggled to convince myself I’d be fine.
“Hi, Sera,” Rachel said.
I was afraid to open my eyes. There had to be a horse head in front of my face. I peeked, opening one eye slowly.
Rachel laughed. “There’s no horses.”
I sighed with relief. “Thank goodness.” I was still suspicious as I opened my eyes the rest of the way. It was just Rachel.
“Congratulations on your ribbon today.” I really didn’t want to be enemies with her.
“Thank you. Bree isn’t doing so well, though.”
“I saw that. What happened?”
“Her horse wouldn’t cooperate. He seemed to shy away from the people every time he went by the stands.”
“Maybe my fear was repelling him.” I hugged my chest.
“Her horse is like that. Bree was afraid to show him because he’s so flighty. I convinced her to try anyway. I kinda feel bad.” Rachel looked at the barn door and behind her. “I feel bad about something else. I haven’t been that nice to you. I’m sorry.” Rachel took a few steps away when something caught her attention. She waved and was gone.
Cessie had Josh by the hand and pulled him until he was in front of me. “I found him.”
Josh shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at the ground once Cessie let him go.
“Hey,” Josh mumbled
“Hi.” I leaned against my hands behind my back. “I saw Noah’s parents.”
“Yeah, he’s going out to dinner with them to celebrate and then they’re doing the fair together tonight.”
“Oh. They looked nice.” I bounced my butt against my hands.
“They are.” Josh leaned on his shoulder against the wall next to me.
“I wanted to tell him congratulations.”
“He told me he’d text you when he was done. But it probably won’t be until late.”
“How come he couldn’t tell me himself?” I squeezed my eyes shut. Maybe Noah wasn’t so different after all.
“His parents didn’t give him a chance. They’re rather strict. He’s not allowed to use his phone at the table, during family time, and especially in restaurants. They were excited after he took first so when he finished taking care of Ezra, they were off. He only stopped briefly to tell me what to say to you. Noah felt bad, he really did. He didn’t want to raise any suspicion … that he met a girl here or they might not let him stay the rest of the week. It’s not you.” He pointed from my shoulders to my feet. “You just happen to be a girl.” Josh wouldn’t look me in the eye.
I watched him for a bit. I was skeptical that being a girl wasn’t the whole problem. His parents were very well-dressed for attending a place as dirty as the fair. I leaned on my shoulder against the wall to face Josh and pulled on a staple that stuck half-way out of a board. I picked at it, not quite pulling it out. “Okay,” I said half-heartedly.
“Noah said we should hang out. He knew your mom promised that you could go out tonight. Umm … without a spare.” He glanced over at my sister.
“Yeah. I have tickets to tonight’s concert.”
“Weird Al, right?” Josh’s face lit up.
“Yes.”
“I wanted to go so bad. He’s so funny. Yo.Yo Yo Yo Yodaaaa …” Josh started singing.
Cessie laughed at his bad singing. I smiled.
“Do you like him?” Josh’s eyebrows nearly touched his hat.
“I do. He’s funny.” I nodded and couldn’t help laughing at his exaggerated expression.
“Well, Noah is no fun. I asked him about the concert before we even got here and he didn’t say much about it. Even if he had changed his mind later, the tickets were gone.”
“I’m happy to be going with someone that thinks it will be fun.” I still felt the weight of disappointment over not seeing Noah after his win. The fact he didn’t want his parents to know anything about me made it worse.
“Do you have another show?” Josh asked.
“No. Mom says that Wednesdays here are slow and Peppy seemed a little off today. So I can run home and get ready if you can go too.” My sour mood began to lift.
“You can’t bring me all the way to the horse barn and not let me hang out with a horse.” Cessie folded her arms and jutted out her chin.
I gave Josh a questioning look. He messed up Cessie’s hair.
“Come with me, kid. We’ll get some horse time out of your system. You wanna come?”
I shook my head. Josh and Cessie convinced me to anyway. They even got me in the stall. I leaned against the wall far away from Shasta while Josh showed her how to brush a horse and then he tossed her up on the horse’s back. He took Shasta out of the stall with an ecstatic Cessie and walked them around. I stayed put while it was a horse free zone. She had pure contentment all over her face. That look was worth dealing with my bad case of nerves.
Once he brought her back and we were heading home, Cessie wouldn’t stop talking.
“I held on with my legs! I rode him bareback. I felt everything. I felt like I was in one of those stories you read to me.” She pulled on my arm and kept stopping me from walking.
“I let you do something you wanted. Now it’s my turn. Let me go home so I can change to do something I want that has nothing to do with horses.” I stepped around her and jogged the rest of the way back.
14
When Josh knocked on the door, I jumped up to answer it. I’d been waiting impatiently while watching the cloc
k on my phone. I was also hoping a text might pop up from Noah. That was probably wishful thinking.
Before I even opened the door, I yelled, “Bye, mom, I’ll see you later.” And I was out of there, finally free.
“I always get a kick how different you look when you wear regular clothes.” Josh smiled. He started to reach for my hand before stopping to rub his palm on his leg instead.
I was far more comfortable in my new jean shorts, old Avengers T-shirt, and cartooned covered Converse. The only thing missing was my scrunched down socks. They clashed with the shoes. “Which look do you like better? Gypsy or this?”
“Whatever you wear is my favorite.” He stuffed his hands in the pockets of his baggy khaki cargo shorts. I had great T-shirt radar and he was wearing a nice soft looking blue one under his short-sleeved unbuttoned plaid shirt. He wore his baseball cap backwards all the time so that must be his thing.
“You looked different today in all the cowboy stuff.” I glanced at him.
“Like you, I wear it for the competition. I don’t necessarily like it,” Josh said as we passed all the food vendors. “I’m ready for a Pronto Pup. How about you?”
“I was thinking pizza.” I checked my phone again in case I missed something. Nada.
Josh looked at me with a slight frown on his face and quickly turned away when I noticed. My face reddened as I stuffed my phone in my pocket.
“I didn’t wait for my mom to answer before I left. I was afraid she was going to tell me to come back home,” I lied. Josh’s discouraged expression didn’t change. “I promise I won’t check again unless I actually feel it vibrate.”
“No, don’t worry about it. It’s my own problem. You don’t need to feel bad. I get it.” Josh got in line at Pronto Pups. I waited with him. However, we didn’t say much. When we were in line for pizza, the quiet was growing more awkward the longer it lasted.
He ordered fries from another stand before we walked to the tables under the massive tent. We sat down across from each other and Josh pushed the fry tray to the center of the table for us to share.
“I really want this night to be fun but I feel like Noah’s absence is looming over us both. Like his ghost is here or something.” Josh adjusted his hat. “Right here, right now, I want it to be you and me having a good time without worrying about what Noah is doing or what he’s going to say.” Josh shifted in his seat and turned his head down towards the table. Only his eyes looked up at me. “Can we just pretend you’re kind of like my girlfriend for tonight?”
I sat bolt upright and tucked my hands into my lap.
“I don’t mean kissing or nothing. Not like that. Like maybe hold your hand or stand close to each other, that’s all.” Josh dropped his gaze to the table again when his face flushed. “Maybe that’s a bad suggestion.”
“No it’s not.” I attempted to gather my composure. Some fear surged through me as I looked around. There was no sign of Bree, Rachel, or Kelly. Not even Noah and his family. Maybe it would be good if Noah saw me with Josh. It was rude for him to not send me a text. I’d never felt what was growing in my chest before. I didn’t like it at all. Pretending to be Josh’s girlfriend seemed to be the remedy, or perhaps a payback, for leaving me hanging. “I want tonight to be fun and I want to be like every other teenager here. I’ll do it.” I gave Josh the biggest, warmest smile, and held out my hand.
Josh took it readily and squeezed. He didn’t avoid my eyes this time as he smiled.
“So have you ever had a girlfriend before?” I felt a little flutter in my chest from his touch.
“Not really. I’ve been Noah’s shadow for a while. I’ve had some girls try to use me to get to him. Noah’s pretty sharp. He catches on and snuffs those girls out in a hurry. I’m always disappointed, though.”
“I think you’re a lot of fun. I can’t believe other girls don’t see that.”
“I’m kind of like the side-kick. Good for comic relief but never really considered a love match. Besides, Noah is the whole package. Tall, dark, and handsome. It is so cliché but it’s obvious it works. I’m short, pasty, and average. I don’t win the girl. I’m the Robin to his Batman. The Chewbacca to his Han Solo. Except I’m far from being Wookie. I’m more like an Ewok.”
I tried to stifle a laugh and failed. “I’m sorry, I’m trying to take you seriously, but you’re cracking me up.”
“That’s my job.” One of his eyebrows went so high on his forehead he looked like a cartoon character.
“Ewoks are way more cute than Wookies though.”
“Yeah? Tell that to all the girls that don’t like cute.”
“At least you aren’t covered in fur. If it helps you feel better, I haven’t had a boyfriend before, and I don’t have a best friend to blame it on. I don’t know if it’s the gypsy thing or the homeschooling thing that’s a turn off. I don’t talk trendy, I don’t really understand the whole social cue thing either. It tends to go over my head. Except when someone starts out as nice and interested and then that person doesn’t want to have anything do with me later. I notice that. What I don’t understand is why it happens so often.” I sighed and pressed my fingers against my eyelids. “Shoot. I didn’t mean for that to make me all emotional.”
“Hey, I know we weren’t going to bring him up, but if you did meet Noah’s mom you would totally get it. She’s nice but when it comes to girls, any girls, she transforms into an overprotective nosey vulture. His time here would be over if she even heard there were girls hanging out with him besides Bree, Rachel, and Kelly. She’s confident she’d hear from their moms if anything was amiss.”
“Will the girls tell her if they see her here?” I got my tears under control.
“No. They don’t like his mom because she’s rude when she thinks they’re doing anything inappropriate. She’ll comment on how they’re dressed. When they’re dating, she’ll let them know that she doesn’t approve because she thinks they aren’t old enough or that they’re too serious. We have all blocked his mom on Facebook. Even Noah has a Facebook she can’t see. All of our mothers don’t like having conversations with her either unless they’re sure she’s going to talk to them about horse shows or school stuff.”
“She sounds crazy. She wouldn’t like me, would she?” I scratched at some tape on the table.
“Don’t take it personally, probably not. She hasn’t liked any girls Noah has cared anything about and that is also part of the reason he stopped seeing girls. His mom makes it so unbearable.”
“He said part of the reason you were so mad at him was because you thought you had a chance with me because he’d sworn off girls.”
Josh rubbed his face and wouldn’t look at me again.
“You know you would have had a chance if I hadn’t met him first. Just so you know. I mean … Oh, man. I don’t know how to handle this.” I sighed as I stared hard at the tent’s ceiling. I was trying to be honest with him and I felt awful for not giving him a chance. “Is your mom anything like Noah’s?”
Josh laughed. “Heck no. She’s so different. She wouldn’t care if I had a girlfriend. I mean she’d care, but it wouldn’t be a huge deal. My mom would be happy for me.” He tucked his hands under the table. “Well, I only have my mom and she’s always working. Honestly, it feels like she doesn’t care much. My parents divorced some time ago and my dad drives semi-trucks across the country so he’s gone most of the time. I’ve had to work a lot on my own to get my horse and all the tack. Even though Noah helped me find some good deals, I feel like I’m on my own. I knew she wouldn’t come to any of the horse shows. She doesn’t really like the whole horse show concept. She’d rather sit at a baseball game or something like that. By the way, it really meant a lot to me that you came today. Especially when horses scare you so much. My mom isn’t even scared of horses.”
“I like watching from a distance and I admire you guys. You all have no fear with them. Are you an only child?”
“No. I have an older brother. He’s in college. I do
feel like an only child now. I think we are close to the same age difference as you and Cessie.” Josh reached for my hand and rubbed his thumb over my knuckles. “The more I’ve learned about you, the more I wish it was me that you liked. My brother looked after me the way you look after your sister. He tortured me more. You don’t do that.”
“I do call her names. Usually she’s the only friend I’ve got. I don’t wanna blow it even if I want to strangle her sometimes.” My heart fluttered again from his touch. Great. Guilt washed over me, but I didn’t pull my hand away.
Josh was so sincere. That was until his attention went to whatever was more interesting whether it was people off in the distance or a couple of kids running by. He stuck his foot out pretending he was going to trip them and pulled it away at the last second. He stared over my head when something else caught his eye. I studied his face. He was cute with his dark brown eyes, when I could see them behind his glasses. His jawline was well-defined, kind of square, and his sandy hair curled up in front of his cap. The hair over his ears was too short to curl out the way Noah’s did. He went back to eating the little pieces of fries left on the tray. A band performed at one of the small stages nearby. Josh knew the song and started singing it softly, bobbing his head.
I tapped his foot with my toes. He looked up. I was trying not to laugh at him. My mouth twisted to the side in a smirk. Then he started singing louder. He wasn’t very good. I winced.
“All right, I’ll stick to horse shows.” Josh slumped down as if I broke his heart. “Let’s go check out some stuff before the concert.” He jumped out of his chair, tossed our garbage into the trash, and spun around attempting to serenade me again.
“Stop.” I grabbed his hand and pulled him towards the stage. “Let the singers do the singing. I’ll hold your hand lots if you’ll just stop the noise, I mean singing.”