by Jessie Haas
“They’re vegans,” Joni said quickly.
Mrs. Ventura shook her head. “No. Well, we have been, but not anymore. Not all of us, and I’d love to sample your cheese.”
She opened the refrigerator and fumbled with the glass covers and the toothpicks. Was this the actual moment she was stopping being vegan? Joni pretended not to watch as a piece of cheese went into Mrs. Ventura’s mouth. Her eyes closed.
“Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Delicious! I haven’t had a piece of cheese in four years. And this one is part cow’s milk?”
She tried them both, she loved them both, and she ended up buying a wedge of each, along with a dozen eggs. Mom showed her the sturdy wooden cashbox. It had a slot in the top to put money through, and the lid was padlocked shut.
“So, really, you just leave it out here?”
“It’s built into the counter,” Mom said. “You’d need a chain saw to steal it!”
“Amazing!”
“How are you liking Vermont?” Mom asked.
Mrs. Ventura made a vague gesture. “Everything’s so different. The green. The … the smallness. Very beautiful. That’s why I’m going vegetarian. I see how rich this land is, and it makes me hungry. I can’t eat grass and I’m still not ready to eat meat, but I’m ready to try this.”
“That’s … good,” Mom said.
“Also,” Mrs. Ventura said, “I know your animals are treated ethically. I can see it, and I know your family. So that makes me feel like maybe this could be okay.”
It was almost an insult, and anyway, how could Mrs. Ventura judge how the animals were treated? She probably didn’t know any more than Chess did! But Joni could tell Mrs. Ventura didn’t mean it that way. She sounded tentative and fragile, and Joni felt sorry for her. She would have to take these eggs and those wedges of cheese home to Chess. What would that be like?
“Everybody loves our cheese,” Joni said. “Did you read the pasture journal for that day? The sheep grazed in the pasture with the wild garlic.”
“Wild garlic!” Mrs. Ventura whispered. Mom’s eyebrows popped up.
“Since when did you become such a saleswoman?” she asked when Chess’s mother had closed the door behind her. “We may have to send you to the Farmers’ Market this year!”
The door reopened, and Mrs. Ventura poked her head back in. “I almost forgot—Chess wanted me to pick something up for her. A pile of twine? She said you’d know, Joni.”
Joni got in the car with her and rode along to the barn. Mrs. Ventura bent tensely over the wheel, watching the swirl of dogs. Why was she so nerved up? She didn’t seem like the kind of person who would have a daughter like Chess.
She walked into the barn and stopped in her tracks, looking up at the swallows, and the light streaming through every crack in the boards. “Oh, my! This is amazing. And I understand you have kittens?”
“They’re not out here anymore,” Joni said. “We took them into the house.” Mrs. Ventura’s face fell. She was a total cat person, Joni realized. Just like Chess. We don’t believe in keeping captive animals. Who was “we”?
“Here’s the baling twine.” She scooped up a huge armful. “Where should I put it?”
Mrs. Ventura opened the side door. “On the floor, I guess. It’s got a lot of old grass in it, doesn’t it?”
“Hay,” Joni said. “That’s hay.”
“Yes, of course,” Mrs. Ventura said. “Hay. I don’t know what anything is here. I feel like a complete idiot. Did you ever move, Joni?”
“No.” Joni couldn’t imagine living anywhere else. She dumped the heap of baling twine onto the floor of the van.
“Thank you,” Mrs. Ventura said. “I wonder what she’s going to do with it!”
SEVENTEEN
A T-Shirt
In the morning, Joni headed over to Chess’s house on Archie. It was a perfect day for a ride, cool and misty. And a perfect place to ride, through fields and woods to visit a friend.
A friend? Yes, Joni decided. For every downturn, every moment of discomfort, there had been an upturn, usually involving feeding an animal and laughing. She could handle ups and downs, right?
Chess was waiting for her out by the barn. “Do you want to put him inside, or out in the pen?”
The pen was a paddock at the side of the barn, knee-high with lush grass. “Inside,” Joni said. “That’s too much feed for him.”
“He could have a little,” Chess said. “Couldn’t he?” Archie was gazing at the paddock with his ears pricked, looking pretty and soulful.
“Okay, ten minutes,” Joni said. She released him in the paddock, and they leaned on the fence to watch him graze. Chess didn’t speak. She was pale today and kept nibbling her lips.
But maybe she just wanted to watch Archie, who was having a wonderful time tearing off mouthfuls of grass with a happy, juicy, ripping sound. It was nice to be with somebody who didn’t think that was boring. “I wish I could eat grass,” Joni said. “It must be like baling into a huge plate of spaghetti!”
“He seems hungry,” Chess said.
“He’s a pony,” Joni said. “They’re always hungry! How long has it been?”
Chess shrugged. “Five minutes?”
“No, really. Can you check your phone?”
Chess looked away so Joni couldn’t see her face. “I don’t have it anymore.”
“Did you lose it?” That was one reason Mom and Dad wouldn’t let Joni have one. She wasn’t great at keeping track of things.
“I didn’t lose it,” Chess said. “They took it away.”
“Oh. Sorry.” Now Joni saw that Chess’s eyes were red. Should she ask what had happened? Because Chess had her phone yesterday. But maybe she’d better not go there. It seemed like a big deal, and they weren’t that kind of friends yet. “Anyway, I’m going to put him in now.”
“Already?”
Joni said, “There are two kinds of ponies, our vet says. Those that have foundered, and those that will founder. Archie’s an easy keeper. He gets fat just looking at grass.”
Chess’s dark eyes were large and serious. “So he can’t ever eat as much as he wants?”
“He can eat as much hay as he wants,” Joni said. She knew what that meant. Hay was like spinach. Grass was like chocolate cake. But it was necessary. “Foundering is horrible. It can be so bad, you can never ride them again.”
Chess folded her lips and didn’t say anything. She thinks it’s all about riding, Joni realized. She thinks it’s all about me. Now would be the time, if she had a phone, to pull it out and show Chess a picture of Hooper, and a diagram of a foundered hoof. But Chess would understand as soon as Joni took her to Kalysta’s. Meanwhile, this would be a good time to change the subject, if Joni could think of anything to say.
She looked off across the Venturas’ broad fields. Someone had walked out there recently, treading a path through the tall grass. They’d dropped a piece of baling twine. “How’s your twine project?”
“Secret,” Chess said.
Joni felt her cheeks get hot. Okay, this was worse than “go fishing”! Why did it have to be so hard? She went in to catch Archie, but he twisted away from her and trotted around the paddock, snatching bites of grass. Joni heard laughter, sharp and mean sounding.
“Come help me!”
“Why?” Chess asked. “Why should he always have to do what you want?”
“Right now so he doesn’t make himself sick! So help!”
“He’s your slave, you catch him!” Chess said. “Go, Archie!” Joni gritted her teeth and charged after Archie, trapping him in a corner of the paddock. He whirled and Joni stepped straight into his path. She could get hurt if he ran over her. She was too mad to care.
But Archie never carried a game too far. He stopped, pricking his ears innocently, and Chess chuckled, that deep, rich laugh that had first made Joni like her, not the sharp laughter of a few moments ago. “He’s so cute! ‘Who, me?’”
Working fast, Joni slipped on the hackam
ore. Archie ducked his head and nuzzled her arm, his dark eyes wide and soft. “You’re a brat!” she told him, leading him into the barn.
It had a broad aisle and four large, sturdy box stalls. Two were stacked with lumber, electric fence wire, and a few fiberglass posts from the last time horses had lived here, but the stall nearest the door was empty. Joni put Archie in it and tested the automatic waterer. It didn’t work.
“Do you have a bucket?”
“I don’t know,” Chess said.
Joni found a clean bucket in one of the storage stalls, filled it at the outside tap, and lugged it to Archie’s stall. “Can I borrow back a piece of baling twine?”
“I don’t have any here,” Chess said.
“Oh. Okay, I saw a piece out behind the barn,” Joni said. “I’ll go grab that.”
The baling twine was farther out in the field than she remembered. She picked it up and looked along the path of trampled grass toward the back fields. This would be an incredible place for horses. If Kalysta had this much land … maybe she should bring up the rescue idea again, when Chess settled into being nice. She must be upset about the phone, and whatever had happened to make her parents take it away.
Chess was in with Archie when Joni got back, trying to stroke his neck. He ignored her, checking out the stall for hidden sources of food. “Scratch his shoulder,” Joni said. “That’s what he likes.”
Chess raked Archie’s shoulder with her nails. He turned his head toward her, bright-eyed, suddenly interested. After a moment, his silver-velvet muzzle started to scrub on her shoulder.
“What’s he doing?” Chess sounded scared, but she didn’t flinch.
“Scratching you back,” Joni said. “Horses do that with each other. The harder you scratch, the harder he’ll scratch, so be careful.”
Chess reached up with her other hand and scratched more vigorously, laughing as Archie rasped her with his lip. Joni saw his teeth flash. “Watch out!”
“Ow!” Chess jumped back, rubbing her shoulder.
“You okay?” Joni asked. “They kind of nip each other when they scratch shoulders.”
Chess said, “Next time, I’ll wear a coat!”
Joni tied the bucket to the automatic waterer so it couldn’t tip, just in time. Archie reached over her shoulder, shoved in his muzzle, and gave a vigorous slosh. When the pail didn’t tip, he went on exploring the stall.
“So, what do you want to do?” Chess asked. “Go watch the miniature horses?”
That was progress. She didn’t call them ponies this time. “Watch them do what?” Joni asked.
“Just watch them. I take binoculars and a notebook. I’m documenting what’s going on over there.”
“What do you mean, what’s going on?” Joni asked, though she had a feeling she didn’t want to hear the answer.
Chess pulled a small notebook out of her back pocket and flipped it open. “Okay, yesterday? Two whole hours tied to the fence, wearing all those straps. And see?” She turned the page, showing a set of hash marks. “Every single day they wear those muzzles! They never get a chance to eat freely. Why shouldn’t they get at least a half hour to eat as much as they want? You do that for Archie!”
“Maybe they do get a chance,” Joni said.
“No. I’ve gone up there fifteen times in the last four days and they never had the muzzles off!”
“They must need them,” Joni said. “’Cause Mrs. Abernathy knows all about horses. Anyway, if she takes them off, maybe she wouldn’t be able to catch the minis to put them back on. She has a bad hip—”
“People who can’t take care of animals shouldn’t have them,” Chess said.
Who gets to decide? Joni felt a chill in her stomach. She said, “Well, it doesn’t hurt them to stand tied. They were probably just going to stand around, anyway.”
Chess looked straight at Joni for a moment, head tipped to one side. “Okay. We won’t go.” She hesitated. “Look—you’re nice, Joni. I think we can be friends. But you know what? There are things we’d better not talk about, okay?”
Okay? How could that be okay? How could they be friends if they couldn’t talk about everything? Joni didn’t know what “go fishing” meant, but she knew she could break into whatever that was all about, and Danae and Alyssa would abandon the game and listen to her. And “you’re nice, Joni”? That was practically an insult! Did she need a friend this badly?
No. But she wanted one. She wanted Chess. Because—that laugh. The flashes of complete understanding and ease. And the challenge. She liked that, at least some of the time. Anyway, she was Joni; she wasn’t somebody who quarreled with people …
“Okay,” she said, looking down.
“Good,” Chess said. “Come on—we’ll chill out in my room for a while.”
Joni had never been inside the white house. It was big, old, and expensive-looking, with elegant pale-colored furniture and real paintings on the walls. It smelled of lemon-scented cleaner, and there was a large cardboard mover’s box in the middle of the kitchen. Fun for cats, Joni thought, automatically looking around for one—but, no, no cats here.
Chess’s mother stood on a stool, arranging dishes on a shelf. “Hi, Joni!” she said. “Your brother’s napping, Francesca. If you’re quiet, he shouldn’t bother you.”
Chess led Joni through the house. The dining room and living room also had boxes in them, but Chess’s room looked as if it had been hers for years. There were posters of celebrities on all the walls—at least, they had to be celebrities, because what other people had posters made of them? Joni didn’t know who they were, but they were all posing with animals—dogs, cats, a horse, a lion.
But there were no real animals in the house. Joni realized she was listening for the sound of a cat’s paws hitting the floor as it jumped down from a high place, or the jingle of tags on a dog’s collar. At most houses she’d been in, there would eventually be a sound like that. Not here.
She sat down on the tightly made bed, and then she saw it—the same picture she’d seen on Olivia’s phone. The photo had been cropped so the dog crate didn’t show, and you couldn’t tell that the red jacket was actually a ringmaster’s coat. All you could see was Chess’s grandmother’s face.
It was a nice picture, actually. She was a young-looking grandmother, with dark, short hair cut almost exactly the way Chess’s was, and very bright eyes. She looked happy and proud. Joni was glad to see a real person, someone she could ask a question about. “Who is this?”
“Nana. My grandmother.” Chess didn’t seem to want to say more, and Joni felt a prickle of anger. One more thing they weren’t supposed to talk about? Well, so what! She was sick of being bossed around!
“Is she your mom’s mom?” She made her voice pleasant, like a persistent pest of a kid who didn’t pick up on subtle signals. And she waited.
“Yes,” Chess said. For a second, it seemed like she wasn’t going to say more, but then she went on. “Mom had to stay in bed for five months when she was pregnant with Noah, so Nana moved in with us. Then he was sick, so she stayed.”
“Is she going to come live here?” That could be bad—the ringmaster grandmother next door to the farm.
Chess looked away. “She has her life. She was with us for four whole years. So …”
Joni didn’t ask, “Do you miss her?” That was obvious—and she knew how it felt. She still missed Grandpa sometimes, and he died when she was eight. “Maybe you can go back and spend part of the summer with her.”
Chess glanced away again. Then she looked straight at Joni. “Do you like that shirt?”
“What?” Joni looked down at herself. What was she even wearing? A blue T-shirt, from some political campaign. It had a guy’s name in big letters across the chest. “No,” she said. “It’s just a shirt.”
“I can show you how to fix it so it will actually look good,” Chess said. “It’s easy.” She opened the drawer in her bedside table and took out a large pair of scissors.
“You
’re going to cut it? Where?” What would Mom think?
“Take it off,” Chess said.
Really? Take off her shirt? But Joni was too curious not to.
Chess sat cross-legged on the bed and bent over the shirt. Carefully, she cut along the neckband. Snick snick snick. The scissors parted the band from the rest of the shirt, and it fell to the floor like a fat blue caterpillar.
“Put it back on,” Chess said. Joni obeyed and stood up to look for a mirror.
“Hold still.” Chess went down on one knee, frowning. After a second, she started snipping again. In a moment, the whole bottom section of the shirt fell around Joni’s feet.
“Now hold your arms out,” Chess said. Snick snick—part of one sleeve slid down to Joni’s wrist. Chess walked around behind her and did the other one.
“Now.” She opened her closet door, and Joni saw herself in the full-length mirror.
“Wow!” The shirt was short, stopping just above the waistband of her jeans in an arching line. The sleeves were light and fluttery. With the neckband gone, the thin material lay close to Joni’s body, letting the little hollows at the base of her neck show. It was pretty. She was pretty.
“Where did you learn to do that?”
“Nana,” Chess said.
“Wow. That’s cool!”
“She’s cool,” Chess said. “She makes the world better every day.”
Her voice sounded shaky all of a sudden. Joni saw tears in her eyes. It must be horrible to move all the way across the country from someone you love. “She sure made this shirt better! Tell her thank you.”
The tears released down Chess’s face. “They won’t let me talk to her.”
EIGHTEEN
“How We Eat the Grass”
“Why?” Joni asked. Not letting someone talk to their grandmother was huge!
“They snooped around in my stuff.” Chess squeezed her eyes shut, shaking her head. “They think she’s still too much of an influence.”
So that was why they moved! Another thing Joni couldn’t say. She made a sympathetic noise.
Chess rubbed away her tears with the snipped-off end of one of Joni’s sleeves. “But we’re not stopping. This is a campaign, like antislavery. It might take a long time, but we’re going to end this!”