Thief of Happy Endings
Page 29
I nod. “So don’t.”
He picks up his bag again. “Shit. You wrecked me, Cassidy.” He glares and turns. He’s going to leave now, for good. He’s going to walk out of my life and disappear.
“You aren’t wrecked, Justin. By me or your dad or anybody else. That’s a lie and you know it, or you wouldn’t be here right now. You made me fight. Now you goddamn fight, Justin Sweet.”
Justin keeps his back to me but doesn’t move. The sun is coming up, and it makes him stand out like a figure in a painting. Then he makes a noise, a piercing sound, like he’s gasping for air. I force myself to hold still. He shakes his head. He folds his arms across his chest and stamps the earth with his boot. It shouldn’t be this hard to let a small portion of misery out after a lifetime of it. But Justin has also had a lifetime of holding it in.
He covers his face with his hands and sways slightly to the side. It’s like watching that cloud explode with lightning over our heads. His shoulders heave. I can’t see his face, but I know he’s weeping. The sadness rumbles through him in waves. He finally drops to one knee in the gravel road.
I wait.
When he stands up he rubs his red, swollen face with his hands and looks at me like he’s amazed he’s still alive. He pushes his hair back and coughs awkwardly. “Well, that was shit.”
I smile a little, and he does, too. Then I wait again.
He puts his hand out for mine then pulls me in. I move slowly so I don’t hurt his broken ribs, but I don’t let go either. I can’t. Wherever we are, we’re burned into each other.
We’re incandescent.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
DAD COMES TO get me in a new used Subaru, like his last one but with no bike racks. It’s a nicer blue color, and it looks like it’s seen fewer miles. We hug awkwardly and say hello like strangers.
“What happened to your cheek?” His eyes are wide.
“I fell.”
His nostrils flare slightly. His chest is puffed up. Maybe I should have warned him. “Why didn’t anyone call us? Are you okay? Did you see a doctor?”
“Mrs. Sanchez fixed me up. I’m really fine.”
He swallows hard enough I can see it. “Well, we’ll get it checked out at home. You ready to go?”
“I have to get my stuff.”
“You want some help?”
“No, I got it. It might take just a few minutes.”
* * *
Alice is still packing in our tent. She and most of the rest of the kids are heading to the airport in Jackson Hole in an hour with Darius and Kaya. Banner and Spider are down by his bike arguing about the route they’re going to take home. Banner wants to see Crazy Horse Memorial. Through the open flap I see Andrew and Izzy walk past. They’ve been up in the woods for a long time, but I don’t think things are going well. I hear Izzy say, “You are exhausting.”
Andrew says, “You know what is exhausting? How fake you are. I can’t believe you had a boyfriend this whole time.”
When they get far enough past our tent Alice giggles. Not meanly. Just probably because they’re yelling so loud about such personal stuff. And then it hits me how cool it is that their yelling is funny to Alice.
I put my grandfather’s hat on. It looks dirtier than when I got it. I turn to Alice. “Can you come visit me in Denver? Would your parents let you?”
Alice says, “I’ll talk them into it. I’d like to meet your sisters and your little brother.”
I nod. “Good luck at your new school. If you go there.”
“We’ll see. If I like it, I’ll stay. If I don’t, I’ll go someplace else.”
We give each other a long, real hug.
“Let’s go find the boys,” I say. “I think Granger wants your email.”
Alice makes the face of pain. “Um. No. But Ethan does.”
“Called it,” I say.
Then there is too much saying good-bye. Charlie and Ethan both try to give me money so I can get a cell phone. I give them my email address. And my real address. Snail mail has grown on me.
Ethan’s still prickly he was left out of the truck-stealing and fistfighting, especially now that no one is being arrested for it. He towers over me on purpose. “You’re a big liar for such a short thing, Colorado.”
“I didn’t want to mess up your career in law enforcement, if you do that sort of thing.”
Ethan shrugs. “Sometimes you gotta break a few rules, right?” Then he gives me his real smile, not his cool one.
“Banner said that same thing before we went after Justin.”
“Banner? Stop trying to make me feel bad.” He hugs me so my feet come off the ground, and then he puts me down. “Don’t let anybody pick on you at home, okay?”
“No way,” I say.
Kaya jogs up to our group. “Your dad is looking for you, Cassidy. He asked me to come get you. He seems like he’s in a hurry.” She says this like my dad may have freaked out.
We walk down the trail together. I say, “I still can’t believe you didn’t tell me about dating Miles, or Riker being Justin’s dad.”
“Not everything is your business, Cassidy. Some things are nobody’s business.”
“Like how you told Miles about me and Justin?”
“That was a mistake. I make those.”
“Are you going to date Miles now?”
She cocks her head to the side. “Keep asking questions about Miles and I’m taking the lipstick back. The truth is I don’t know what I’m doing. This summer has been tough. I may go back to school and become a BLM officer myself.”
“What, really? You’d be great. That is so great.”
“We’ll see. Maybe I’ll fail the hell out it.” She smiles wistfully. “Who knows? But I’m sick of trying to get people to do the right thing. If I want things to change I might have to change them myself.”
I didn’t think Kaya could be any cooler. But yeah. She is. “Kaya, can I be you when I grow up?”
She laughs. “No. Thank goodness.”
Coulter shakes Dad’s hand very formally and then hugs me like a grizzly bear. “I’ll see you next summer, okay, kiddo?”
“Okay.” I like the sound of that.
Dad makes a sputtering noise.
“Mr. Coulter offered me a job as a junior counselor. I mean, of course I need to talk to you and Mom about it.”
“Let’s discuss it.” Dad looks like Mr. Coulter has just offered me crack cocaine, but I have a whole year to wear him and Mom down.
Justin comes out of the house and walks up next to me. I turn to Dad. “This is Justin Sweet. He’s sort of my . . . friend.”
Justin puts his rope-burned hand out to my father. “Hello, Mr. Carrigan.”
My father shakes his hand but doesn’t look happy about it. “Oh. Hello, Justin. You work here?”
“Yes. I actually live here. It’s nice to meet you.”
Dad takes in the snaps on Justin’s shirt, his split lip, his prizefighter nose. The way he’s standing right next to me. I don’t know if Dad has finished writing a book this summer, but he’s currently an open one. I say, “It’s okay, Dad. He reads and everything.”
Dad can’t get me in the car fast enough.
“Oh my god, Cass. It looks like I got here just in time. I can’t believe your mother left you here,” he says as we drive too fast on the gravel road out of the ranch.
“It’s good to see you, too.”
And then we don’t talk until we hit the main road.
We drive in and out of The Big Empty, past the rodeo grounds and the convenience store without slowing down. We don’t even stop for gas. I think Dad is trying to hold his breath until we cross the Colorado state line. Before long we’re out on the open highway, heading for home, and he relaxes his grip on the steering wheel and stops hunching his shoulders.
Dad starts up the engine again. “Are you getting those rocks for Wyatt?”
“The gray one is for me.”
I look over the desert I saw coming the other direction just a few months ago. I hear the wind on Dad’s doors. This time I roll down my window so I can swallow it. I don’t know what waits for me at home. I can’t really imagine sleeping in my old bed, with sheets and pillows and carpet and air-conditioning. Wearing my old clothes. It hardly seems like they will fit anymore.
But I’m excited to see Mom and the sibs. The closer we get to home, the more I can hardly wait to see them. And showers. I’m going to take a hundred showers. But thinking of home also makes the old sadness creep over me. My family isn’t going to be together. School’s going to be hard. Nobody knows or cares what happened to me this summer. There will be no horses or campfires or Coulter at home. I feel my throat tighten. What if I go back to being how I was? The sad girl who stays in her bedroom all day.
I look out the window. So much space. So much room.
I won’t. I refuse to ride that horse anymore. This summer was for something. And in that way, it is about me. No matter how awful the girls are at school. Or how lonely I feel. Or how weird things are at home. Or whatever happens to me. I rode a half-broke mustang across the top of a mountain in the dark, and then I jumped off a ledge on the other side. I made out with a broken-nosed horse thief that I’m crazy about. I helped Goliath and Roanie get homes, and I stood up to Justin’s dad. I told Officer Hanks what I think about what he’s doing to the mustangs. I’m not going back to being a miserable, trapped little suburban ghost. I have coraje. I am re-friggin’-silient.
“You okay?” asks Dad. “You look a little intense over there.”
I might also be a little more intense than I used to be. That’s okay, too. “I’m fine, Dad. Really.”
“Good,” he says, looking at me, obviously worried. He looks back out the window. “Do they get mustangs out this direction?” Dad asks. I think he’s trying to apologize, and I honestly want to let him. But he doesn’t need to.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Not anymore. You have to go farther out to see them.”
“That’s too bad. I’d like to see a wild horse.”
“They have them up by the ranch. At least for now. They might round them all up.”
“Oh, that’s a shame.”
“Yeah,” I say. “I hope they leave a few.”
That word. Hope. It sits on my tongue. I’m not sure what it means, but something different than it used to. Something harder and more interesting.
He turns on the radio but only finds different stations of static. The wind blows fast-food wrappers in the backseat. They make a dry, nervous noise. He asks, “It’s lonely out here, isn’t it?”
“Not to me,” I say.
“Oh yeah?” He keeps driving. “I’d like to hear about that.”
After a while I say, “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“I’m happy to do it,” he says. He doesn’t say anything about how awful I was to him.
“Did you finish your book?”
“Yes. Thanks for asking.”
“Can I read it?”
“Absolutely. I’d be honored.”
That’s enough. For now. It’s going to take some time for both of us, but it’s a start.
This summer did not go at all like I’d hoped. I did a terrible job of being drama-free, staying away from cowboys, and avoiding mean girls. I got thrown off a horse and was injured—pretty regularly. But the space between what I thought happiness looks like and all the things I didn’t want to happen is the space where I found a new happiness, and a new me. I can’t make my parents stay married, or let all mustangs go free, but I can make something brilliant with the way things are. That’s not lowered expectations, it’s braver ones.
I hope Banner and Spider make it back to South Carolina okay and her dad doesn’t change his mind and call the police on them halfway home. There’s a lot of wind between The Big Empty and Charleston. A lot of sharp turns in the road. You just never know what’s coming your way until it comes.
I put my hand out the open window and let it dive up and down. The cool wind skims along my skin, resisting my fingers pointed in the shape of an arrowhead. From here it looks like the sage goes on forever. But the desert isn’t empty. The mountains aren’t far away. They’re beautiful. Like the song humming inside me. Like the clouds that move gracefully over the highway. Like the things I haven’t told Justin yet.
But I will. Soon. And after that, we’ll just have to figure it out.
KRISTEN CHANDLER lives at the base of the Wasatch mountains with her husband and their herd of eight children, two dogs, and an old cat. In addition to writing, she is a professor at Brigham Young University and an equine instructor for at-risk youth. She has trained mustangs and followed wild herds on horseback in the Red Desert of Wyoming. As a teen, she went from small town to small town showing Quarter horses, getting into more trouble than she meant to, and eventually qualifying for the American Quarter Horse Association Youth Finals.
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