Thief of Happy Endings

by Kristen Chandler

  I’m too small. They don’t see me. There’s too much dust. I wave my hat bigger. I yell, “Look at me!” I just keep waving and jumping and running so they can’t miss me until I think I’ve made a terrible mistake. “Look,” I scream. “Look!”

  Then it’s like some lever gets pulled on the giant switchboard of the universe. The gray and a palomino give my hat a wide white eyeball. They startle and instantly move away, taking the rest of the herd with them. And in a few pants-peeing seconds, the herd is past us.

  I guess there’s more than one way to talk to a horse. And one of them is loud.

  I look down at the trail. Alice’s hat is out in the middle, trampled. Mine’s in my sweaty hand. I walk out and pick up the cap and shake it. Behind me Alice stands with her hands out to her sides. Her face is powdered in dirt, even her mouth. I jog back to her.

  “Are you okay?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  I put her crushed hat back on and give her a quick hug. She’s stiff as a post.

  Then I sit down in the dirt. I just have to sit.

  Justin rides up, stopping just long enough to shout at me, “That’s it. You’re done with horses.”

  Chapter Ten

  “WHAT THE JACK Daniels were you thinking?” bellows Coulter over his desk. His office is dusty and barren. Alice sits next to me, fidgeting in her chair.

  “I was thinking the mustangs might run over Alice.”

  “And why were you thinking that? Besides the fact that they are mustangs and, therefore, deadly in your strange little mind.”

  I take a deep breath. I realize I don’t have a stellar track record with acting calm around horses. But that doesn’t make me wrong. “Mr. Coulter, Alice tripped so hard she wasn’t getting up, and I thought if they turned the wrong way they’d squash her. I also want to add that having us run next to stampeding horses is reckless endangerment.”

  “Reckless endangerment?” He snorts over his beard. “That’s a two-dollar word.”

  It’s two words, I think. And man I wish I would shut up.

  Justin sniffs behind Coulter. His hat is off, so I can see his ears are red. Like they’re burning. “The horses weren’t stampeding, they were safely driving down the trail like they have every morning since they got here. And she’s the reckless endangerment.”

  Coulter turns to Alice. “Were the horses going to trample you, Alice?”

  Alice is shrunken up like a pill bug. Her face is still dirty. She looks at Coulter, and then she looks at the floor. Her hand is shaking, so she folds her arms across her chest to steady herself.

  “It was pretty scary,” I say.

  Coulter says, “I am aware, Cassidy.” He looks at her, waiting. “But I would like Alice to talk for herself.”

  Alice blinks back at him and then pulls her hat out of her back pocket. She puts it on his desk. It’s impressively trampled.

  Coulter shakes his head. “Well, I’m glad your head wasn’t in that. Do you feel good enough to find Mrs. Sanchez?”

  Alice nods and beats it out of there. Coulter doesn’t even wait until the door is all the way closed behind Alice before he starts in. “What’s wrong with that one?”

  I’m not sure if this is a real question, but I answer anyway. “She doesn’t like loud noises.”

  “Like horses?”

  “Like your voice, sir.”

  Coulters pauses and then lowers his boom box. “You say what you think, don’t you?” He spins around on his chair. “Nevertheless, I can’t have you causing trouble like this. You’re like a bomb waiting to go off every couple of days. What is your problem?”

  It’s easier to explain about Alice.

  “She’s scared a’ horses. She shouldn’t be here,” says Justin with thick disgust.

  Coulter grabs his suspender straps. “Is that really all that’s going on here?”

  It’s a simple question. I just don’t have a simple answer. Yes, I am afraid of horses. But if I was only scared of horses, I wouldn’t be here. I’d just avoid horses, which is easy to do in a suburb. I’m scared of something a lot bigger and harder to explain, even to myself. The weird thing is that when I was charging at those horses that really could have hurt me, I was hardly scared at all. I just wanted to keep Alice safe. And I can’t explain that either.

  “She didn’t used to be afraid of them.” Coulter spins around in his chair again, then stops with his boots facing Justin like a roulette lever. He looks up at Justin but seems to be still talking to himself. “She just needs a little desensitization.”

  Justin bursts out. “Hell no, Coulter. Hell. No.”

  “Sir?” I say.

  Coulter ignores me. “Justin is an expert at helping our mustangs get over their fear of people. You could say he has a gift. He’s less gifted with people. So in a way, I’ll be killing two birds with one stone.”

  “How are you going to kill birds, sir?” My brain is still rattled from the whole Alice adventure.

  “By having Justin give you riding lessons. You won a free lesson, remember? But we’ll give you a few extra as a bonus. We need to get you up off the ground and in the saddle where it’s safe.”

  I glare at Justin. “Nothing about that sounds safe.”

  “Because I couldn’t teach you?” says Justin. His nose looks even more bent out of shape than usual.

  “You couldn’t teach a polar bear to swim,” I say.

  “And you’re about as teachable as brick.”

  Coulter laughs. “Oh, you two are adorable. Does this come in a box set? Now go make good choices together. You’ll have to start with some groundwork, but I want Cassidy on a horse by the end of the week. Do you both understand me?”

  “No,” says Justin, swinging his head back and forth. “I won’t do it.”

  I don’t say anything because all I can think is that I won’t do it either.

  Coulter turns on Justin, “If you want a shot at being a real horse trainer, you are going to have to learn to train more than horses. Do I make myself clear?”

  Justin doesn’t answer.

  “Do I make myself clear?”

  Justin kicks the floor.

  “All right. I’ll make it clear. You get this girl on a horse, or I give that hellion of a gray gelding to Darius to train.”

  Justin’s face twists up like he’s going to blow fumes out his eyeballs.

  Coulter stands and towers over me. “Cassidy. You have to promise me you’ll stop running in front of my horses. Can you do that?”

  “I wasn’t trying to . . .”

  “I don’t care if the Virgin Mary appears to you in a dream. Can you stop running in front of my horses?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Fair enough. You start tomorrow.” Coulter sighs heavily. “And Justin, you work on getting a sense of humor.”

  “I work for you, don’t I?”

  “I don’t have a sense of humor, boy. So you watch your mouth.”

  I think Coulter has a sense of humor. It’s just not a very nice one.

  Chapter Eleven

  TONIGHT RAIN PELTS the canvas and rattles the flaps. After an hour or so it slows down, but it never really stops. None of us feels like talking, especially Alice, who disappears into her bag without eating dinner. I bring her a plate of lasagna, but she isn’t interested.

  Banner asks, “Haven’t you wrecked her enough for one day?”

  It hadn’t even occurred to me that I was the cause of Alice getting hurt. But I guess that is one very sucky way of looking at it.

  I try to write a letter home, but I have a hard time thinking of things that are okay to say. Banner smokes just outside the tent under a tree, then comes back in and sprawls on her cot without talking. She tosses back and forth and then is finally quiet. Alice kicks at her giant green cocoon long after she falls asleep. I lie st
ill, thinking about how I’d love a warm shower. If I had a shower, maybe I could sleep.

  The rain keeps falling. The horse doesn’t whinny tonight, which is good. I couldn’t bear that sound right now. I turn off my flashlight and promise myself to finish my letters home tomorrow. After what seems like forever, Wyoming style, my mind drifts. Unfortunately, it drifts all the way back home, to a shower I would rather forget.

  * * *

  SHE DIDN’T ANSWER, but I could hear the water spraying. She’d been in there a long time.

  “Mom?” I waited. “Mom?” No answer. I left for a few minutes and then came back. “Mom, are you okay?”

  Our dog, Kidd, came in the room, and Wyatt followed him. “Where’s Mom?”

  “She’s in the shower.” I said.

  “I’m hungry.”

  I went downstairs and microwaved oatmeal for Wyatt. Kidd circled my feet. Kidd always knows when something’s up.

  I went back upstairs with a knife to jimmy the door. My plan was just to peek in. If she was in the shower, she’d never know. When I got it open Mom was standing in the middle of the floor in a bath towel. Her eyes were swollen.

  “What’s wrong?” we both asked at the same time.

  Then we both said, “Nothing.”

  I asked, “How come you didn’t answer?”

  She tightened her towel. “Go downstairs. I’ll be down in a while.”

  I called Dad on his cell phone. He didn’t answer. Dad is never without his cell phone. I called two more times. The first thing he said was, “Is everything okay?”

  I was standing in the pantry looking at canned vegetables. My chest was tight. I was trying to think of a reason why Mom would be staying in her room so much and crying in the shower. Good reasons. “Mom’s sick. When are you coming home?”

  When he finally spoke his voice was flinty. “I might not be home tonight, honey.”

  I asked, “What’s going on?”

  “I’ll see you soon.”

  “Where are you, Dad?” I had assumed he was at a conference, but I hadn’t asked. I was careless that way. Dad went to a lot of conferences.

  “At work.”

  “So why don’t you come home?”

  “I’m far, far away at work.” He sounded like he was telling me a fairy tale. Like I was Wyatt. “Are you doing all right?”

  I didn’t feel all right. I felt worried. Where was far, far away? “Does Mom have cancer?”

  “Of course not. Why would you say that?”

  “She’s been in her bedroom all day. There’s nothing to eat.” Which was totally selfish, and I was sorry right after I said it.

  He didn’t talk for a few seconds, but it sounded like he was crying. “She doesn’t have cancer.”

  I started crying, too, even though I didn’t know why.

  “I’d better go,” he said. “Love you, Cass.”

  “Love you, Dad.”

  And then he hung up.

  He showed up four days later and stood on the porch. He and Mom sent us inside and stayed three feet apart while we watched through the blinds. The twins went to the basement to play a video game. Wyatt kept trying to go out, and they would scoot him back inside to me. I finally turned on a movie and made popcorn.

  Dad didn’t say good-bye. He just left. And just like that, he didn’t live here anymore.

  It happens. I get that. But my parents loved each other. And then they didn’t. And Dad went from being “Daddy” to “your father.” Mom went from “my darlin’” to nothing at all, because Dad wasn’t there to talk to anymore. Then everything seemed to break all at the same time, including “the children.”

  Chapter Twelve

  KAYA SILENTLY HANDS Banner a letter over her hoagie sandwich. Banner drops her plate on a rock and bolts.

  Alice kneels next to me. “I hope that’s good news, don’t you?” She doesn’t seem mad at me for nearly getting her killed yesterday. But that’s probably just Alice.

  Charlie asks, “Do you think she wants the rest of her cookie?” The Sanchezes outdid themselves with dessert today. Charlie doesn’t wait for me to answer before he inhales the chocolaty thing.

  When Banner finally comes back from our tent her mascara is smudged, but she’s smiling.

  I ask, “Good news?”

  “Shut up,” Banner says.

  Alice moves off to the other side of the fire and then drops in some firewood.

  Charlie, who is wearing an orange-and-green poncho, says, “That’s an interesting expression. Shut up. It originally meant that a person was quarantined.”

  Banner looks at her empty plate. “Did you eat my cookie, fat boy?”

  “I did,” I say. “I thought you left it.”

  She moves from Charlie to me. “You and all your girlfriends need to all stay out of my way today. I don’t want anyone ruining my good mood.”

  “I’d hate to see you in a bad mood,” I say.

  “Yeah, you would,” she says. “You really would.”

  * * *

  My first lesson with Justin goes like this: I get the word through Danny to meet Justin at the mustang corral. The other kids are all meeting at the big corral to saddle and ride the regular horses. Justin watches me walk up, while he hangs on the fence. He’s wearing a T-shirt with a cow skull on it. Of his own free will, I think. Now I have to look at the top half of his arms, which are, like, bizarrely sinuous. That is not the kind of thing I need to be noticing right now.

  “I’m not going to be working with Smokey today?” I ask.

  “No,” says Justin. Then he just stands there, toeing the ground with his crusty boot.

  I look around. Behind him is the corral full of mustangs. I ask, “Do you want me to put a halter on one of the horses?”

  Justin wipes the back of his hand across his face. It leaves a streak of red dust on his cheek. Which makes me notice, completely against my will, that his eyes are muddy brown. Luckily, he opens his mouth. “You don’t just walk out and halter a wild horse.”

  “Okay,” I say. I’m bothered now in a different way. “Do you whisper to them first?”

  He takes his dirty hat off and spits. “It’s a load of crap, you know. You don’t whisper in a horse’s ear or anyplace else.”

  I remind myself that I promised I would not freak out, even if Justin is a jerk, which he is. “Can’t you pretend I’m a horse and be nice?”

  Justin looks off at the mountains. He shifts his shoulders. Then he shifts them back again. If he were to look at me, he’d know I’m about ten short seconds from packing it in. I can’t handle so many emotions fistfighting in my head. He doesn’t look at me. Finally he says, “I’ve never met a horse that irritates me as much as you. But I could try that.”

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “Nothing,” he says. “You stand outside the corral. Don’t stand near the fence either.”

  Using a stick with a flag on it, Justin runs a scrawny brown mare with white speckles on her back through a corridor that connects to the round pen and corral. That way he doesn’t even have to halter her. Which is good, because she’s a full-throttle mess. Her mane’s half torn off, and she’s got a wound on her rear that looks like one of the other mustangs bit her this morning. Once she’s in, there’s no place to go but up or in circles. She tries both. Every time she strikes the air with her hooves Justin holds his hands out to his side and says, “Easy, girl.” The horse gets back up against the fence and starts running again.

  Soon the horse is foaming with sweat. Her eyes are bugging out. Justin stands in the center, one leg cocked forward, watching her.

  He raises his hand. The horse flies up and goes the other direction. Justin puts his hand down. “Whoa,” he says. The mare keeps running. He drops his body down like he’s sitting. “Whoa.” The horse slows to a jog and then stops.r />
  He steps toward her. She keeps her head down. He takes another step. She moves her head side to side, but she doesn’t run. When he reaches her, he puts his hand under her mouth. There’s a gentleness in the way that he touches the horses that completely throws me off. Even from a distance I can see the horse settle in his hand. “Aren’t you a beauty?” His voice is warm and easy. Even I like him when he uses that voice.

  “Should I come in now?” I ask.

  The friendliness drains from his face. “No.”

  I have got to remember that Justin is one person around horses and another person around humans. And he may save his extra-irritating self just for me. “Are you going to let me do anything today? I could at least feed one of them. I could feed Goliath.”

  “His name’s not Goliath.”

  He spends five whole minutes rubbing his hand up and down the mare’s back. Every time she shivers he holds his hand still, and when he starts again he says, “Easy, girl.” Then he puts a lead line slowly around her neck and guides her back into the corral with the other mustangs. When he comes out he looks at me from underneath his hat. “That’s it.”

  I say, “You didn’t teach me anything. You just parked me in the dirt and did what you would have done with the horse anyway.”

  “That doesn’t mean I didn’t teach you something.”

  He keeps walking. I follow after him. “Coulter told me to get on a horse. I have one week, and all I did today was stand here.”

  He sniffs with his smashed-up nose. “You either get it or you don’t.”

  I’m kinda over being dumped on around here. “Get what?”

  “It’s not about you.”

  That’s fine. It isn’t about me. It’s about me getting on a horse. The horse I choose. And Justin isn’t the only person in the world who can teach me how to do it.

  Chapter Thirteen

  AT DINNER I slide next to Kaya. She blinds me with her smile. “How was your lesson with Justin today, sweetheart?”