Death of a Kleptomaniac

by Kristen Tracy

  “I don’t cheat,” Tate says. “I’m fast. Even inside a bag.”

  “And it’s a fact that his favorite sport is riding a water weenie behind our family boat.”

  “That is not my favorite sport,” Tate says. “Football is my favorite sport. Basketball is a close second.”

  “But it’s so hard to play that game while riding the weenie,” Wyatt says.

  “Okay,” Denise says. “Let’s stop talking about weenies.”

  I am relieved that Denise is here.

  “I brought my Magic Eight Ball,” Denise says. “Let’s ask it questions.”

  My mind leaps to Hopkins. Is it weird to ask a Magic 8 Ball a question about my cat?

  “Me first,” Tate says.

  Ooh. I’m curious to know what Tate thinks about. “Are we going to skunk Skyline?”

  They’re the rival football team. Tate is a running back. I guess it makes sense that his mind would be totally preoccupied with sports.

  “Most certainly!” Denise squeals. “Okay. Me next. Should I go to Belize now or wait until next year, when I have more money?”

  “What does it say?” I ask.

  “Without a doubt,” Denise says. “Does that even make sense?”

  I consider telling her that you can’t ask a two-part question. But I don’t. If she owns a Magic 8 Ball, she should know how it works.

  “You go, Molly,” Denise says.

  I’m nervous. I don’t want to ask a lame question. What I really want to ask is either about the fate of my cat or the fate of my heart, and both of those seem out of bounds, like the exact wrong question to ask in public. Instead, a random question pops out of my mouth.

  “What are the chances that I’ll fall off my horse?” I say.

  “Zero,” Tate says. “If you hold on to the reins.”

  “Don’t focus on falling,” Wyatt says. “That’s a pessimist’s game.”

  “Don’t give her a hard time,” Denise says. “She’s allowed to ask the ball anything she wants. It’s the rule of the ball.”

  Denise turns around and winks at me. She’s so friendly. And easy to like. I bet she has a million friends.

  “Once I had a dream that I fell off a horse,” she says to me.

  “Recently?” I ask.

  “Nah. I don’t have premonitions,” Denise says. “I think the horse represented my PE teacher. He was such an ass. You can’t ignore your dreams. They’re unleashing stuff that we suppress all day. They mean shit.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “Okay. That’s my question. Um, I want to know if I’ll fall off my horse.”

  “Expect the good outcome and it will find you,” Wyatt says. “That’s an old saying by a famous prophet. Or guru. Or something.”

  Denise looks at me again and rolls her eyes. “I’m going to ask it your question. Will Molly fall off her horse?” She lifts the ball and shakes it over her head. “Outlook not so good.”

  “Cool,” I say.

  “Wait,” Tate says. “I think that means you’ll fall off.”

  “No,” Denise says. “The outlook is not so good that she will fall off. You have to read the ball correctly.”

  “No,” Wyatt says. “I think Tate is right. You played with fate and now you better hold on tight. And not just with your hands. Hug with your thighs.”

  Denise laughs and turns toward the backseat. “Don’t listen to him. You’re going to be fine.”

  “I know,” I say. “I’m wearing boots.”

  An hour goes by and Denise doesn’t get tired of her Magic 8 Ball game. She asks it about China. Tate asks about upcoming NFL games. Wyatt asks it weird questions about tsunamis and volcanoes and alien landings in New Mexico. My mind wanders and I think about what it would be like to marry into this family. I’d be related to Wyatt. And probably Denise. Forever. We’d probably have to play this game all the time.

  “We’re almost there,” Wyatt says. “You can almost smell that we’re at Alpine heights.”

  I take a deep breath, but I don’t smell that. As we turn off onto the mountain road I decide that I should ask the eight ball about Hopkins. “Will my cat survive his next battle?”

  Denise peers into the ball. “You may rely on it.”

  “Great news!” I feel authentic relief at that answer.

  “You know, it’s just a toy,” Wyatt says. “If you’re professionally fighting your cat, you shouldn’t rely on the eight ball for advice.”

  “My cat’s going through a metaphorical battle,” I say.

  “That’s deep,” Wyatt says. “I like the way you think.”

  Tate looks embarrassed. He bumps his shoulder against my shoulder in a flirty way, and I bump him back. It doesn’t feel electric like it did with Henry. But it still feels pretty good. Henry or Tate. Henry or Tate. In a world where Melka doesn’t exist and I had a choice, which one would I choose? Who would make the better boyfriend? I sort of want to run this by the Magic 8 Ball.

  “We’re here!” Denise yells, releasing her seat belt before we stop.

  I look out the window. Good lord. Are those our horses? I am overwhelmed by feelings of eagerness, awe, and terror.

  I guess I’m not a fan of the horse after all. I mean, these look like they’re on steroids or something. Tate tries to calm me down.

  “They’re more afraid of you than you are of them.”

  “Who said I’m afraid?” I ask.

  “You haven’t gotten out of the car yet.”

  I look at him and then I look around inside the car’s immaculate backseat. He’s right. It’s time to exit the vehicle.

  “I need to tell Wyatt something,” Tate says, glancing over his shoulder. “I’ll be right back.”

  Wyatt and Denise have already picked out their horses. I’ve decided that they’re a mildly weird couple. And seated on their big, tan, glossy horses, they only look weirder. Tate and Wyatt talk, and I suck in deep breaths. It smells like a minty cough drop inside the car. It’s the air freshener. I look between the front seats, at the dashboard. I see a plastic ladybug dangling from the cigarette lighter. Who knew air fresheners came in such cute packaging? I look back out the window. Nobody is watching. I reach forward and unloop the ladybug from the lighter’s knob. Then I shove the plastic bug into my jacket pocket. I zip it closed.

  When I look back at Tate and Wyatt I begin to grow concerned that they’re planning something. But that’s stupid. What could they be planning? Because Wyatt has the most riding experience, it was decided on the way up that he would ride the lead horse.

  I watch that horse strike his front hoof against the ground, sort of like he’s trying to dig into the earth and make a hole. Until now, I hadn’t realized that horses had an innate desire to dig. I pictured them more as sleigh and carriage pullers.

  Tate walks back to the car smiling. I know it’s time for me to get out and join everybody. If I stay in the car any longer I’ll look too weird to date. I open my door a crack.

  I walk toward Tate and the horses. From the road, or inside my television, they have always seemed about my height, not this massive. In actuality, I only go up to a horse’s tail. A man has already unloaded the towering animals from a trailer. He’s saddled them and done whatever else you do to a horse before a person mounts it and rides it through the mountains.

  “This is Peppa,” says Tate, leading a white horse with black speckles toward me. “He’ll be your horse. I’ll be riding Salt.” Salt is a black horse. Because I doubt cowboys have a sense of irony, clearly these horses have been misnamed.

  “What are the names of their horses?” I ask, pointing to Wyatt and Denise. Their horses are both gargantuan and tan.

  “Pickles and Ballerina.”

  I wonder if Wyatt renamed them for comic effect, or if these are their actual names.

  “Who’s riding Pickles?” I ask.

  “Denise.”

  I look at my horse and can see right up its cavernous nostrils. Then it opens its mouth. Oh my god. I never realized
that horses had such enormous teeth. I thought they were vegetarians and just ate grain. I take hold of Peppa’s reins. He pulls his head back and whinnies.

  “Horses can sense fear,” Tate says.

  I frown at my horse, hoping I’ll be able to confuse him. Maybe he’ll think I’m not afraid, but ticked off. We walk our horses over to Wyatt and Denise, who are already perched in their saddles.

  “The air smells like a mountain,” Denise says.

  Of course, at that very moment, my horse releases a well-timed fart. Everybody looks at me. I look disapprovingly at Peppa’s back end.

  “Do you need help?” Tate asks, pointing to my saddle horn.

  “I think I can do it.”

  I slip my boot into the stirrup and pull myself up off the ground. For some dumb reason, Peppa starts walking toward the brush, and I haven’t even slung my leg over yet. I’m not even on him.

  “Whoa!” I say.

  Tate smiles as he watches me hoist myself onto my moving horse.

  “Nice job, Lone Ranger,” Wyatt says. “Last one down the trail owes the rest of us fifty bucks.”

  “Wyatt,” Denise says. “Molly might not know that you’re joking.”

  Does Denise think I’m developmentally challenged? I didn’t really think I’d owe anybody fifty bucks. Denise keeps explaining how this is a joke.

  “The horses are trained to follow each other single file, and you’re the lead horse. Of course, Molly, you’ll be the last one there.”

  “That’s fine,” I say. I hadn’t expected my date to be a race.

  “Now that we understand the equine mind, let’s get this party started,” Wyatt says. He lightly kicks his boots against Ballerina’s side and she starts to move.

  “We can give them a little leeway,” Tate says. “We don’t have to stick right at their heels.”

  But Peppa seems to want to follow them very closely. He’s rushing to stay with the lead horse. Tate angles his horse across the path, blocking Peppa’s progress.

  “Once Ballerina is out of sight, he’ll loosen up. He won’t want to hurry.”

  “Okay.”

  Then Peppa releases an excruciatingly long fart. It’s like my horse is part whoopee cushion.

  “Do they feed them a pure bean diet?” I ask.

  “Some horses are just gassier than others, I guess.”

  Tate makes Salt walk right next to Peppa. I don’t think that they’re used to walking shoulder to shoulder like this. They seem to want to walk single file, like Denise said. But after a few minutes, they settle down. Tate is full of questions. He asks about Tigerettes.

  “Why do you like it so much?” he asks.

  I don’t know why he assumes that I like it that much.

  “I don’t know,” I say. “I want to be part of something. When high school is over I want to be able to look back and say, I did that.”

  “You really think ahead,” Tate says.

  I’m not quite sure how to take that comment. Is he judging me? There’s nothing wrong with thinking ahead. High school will be over in two years. I’m not thinking that far ahead. “I want to get the most out of everything,” I explain. “Life is for living.” Ooh. That sounded cheesy. Why am I suddenly saying cheesy things?

  “And that means being a Tigerette?” Tate asks.

  “This year it does,” I say defensively. It sounds like he hates our drill team. Which is not cool. He’s an athlete. He should appreciate us.

  I let Salt and Peppa walk in silence, their hooves clomping against the hard dirt trail.

  We pass a thick bank of trees that have already dropped their fall leaves. Our horses mash over them. “I bet this place had gorgeous foliage.”

  “So you’re a leaf peeper,” Tate says in a joking voice.

  “I would never use the word ‘peeper’ to describe myself,” I say.

  “I don’t know. I like it. Peeper,” Tate says. “I might start calling you that.”

  “I’m sixteen. You cannot start calling me Peeper. I won’t allow it.” I like that Tate is playful. But he’s also more immature than I realized. Unlike Henry, who is considerably more mature than I realized. Why am I still thinking about Henry?

  “I thought you were seventeen,” Tate says.

  “No, not until February.”

  “Seventeen’s great. It’s like the beginning of everything.”

  I’ve heard that about sixteen, eighteen, and twenty-one, but never seventeen.

  “That’s when things really started happening for me,” he says.

  It sort of sounds like he’s talking about losing his virginity. Is that what he means? I guess seventeen is a reasonable age for that. I don’t personally feel ready to be deflowered. It’s always struck me as a good idea to hold on to that for as long as possible.

  Tate steers Salt so close to my horse that his legs and my legs touch. From the corner of my eye, I see Tate reach for my thigh.

  “Hey, Peeper, make Peppa stop.”

  I need to break him of this nickname as politely as I can. I pull back lightly on the reins and Peppa stands still. Salt has stopped, too. Tate leans over and slides his hand beneath my hair, setting it on the nape of my neck. I lean toward him and close my eyes. I think I smell ham. Or baloney. Finally, I will be able to compare his kisses to Henry’s kisses. My lips actually tingle in anticipation. Then I realize something terrible. There’s no way this can happen. I’m leaning too far already and our lips aren’t even close. Kissing on horseback, unless you’re on the same horse, is essentially impossible.

  “I can’t,” I say.

  “Why?” he asks.

  “I’ll fall,” I say.

  He seems to believe me.

  “Maybe at the end,” I say.

  “Maybe?” he asks.

  “Most likely at the end,” I say. My mind flashes to Henry and our make-out session. I really wish my mind would stop doing that.

  Tate pulls away from me and sits up in his saddle.

  “Wow,” he says. “In addition to the pine trees I think I can smell eucalyptus.”

  I look down at the ground. The scent of the air freshener wafts out of my pocket the way the smell of baking bread escapes an oven. Taking it was a bad decision. At the first chance I have, I need to throw it into a bush and get rid of it.

  Tate kicks Salt lightly in the side and makes a clicking sound with his mouth.

  “We should get going,” he says.

  I nod and smile. Peppa clops along just fine for a bit. But then he starts trying to wander off into the brush again. Like maybe there’s a fresh can of beans out there just waiting to be devoured.

  “Come on,” I encourage in a stern voice.

  “You okay?” Tate asks.

  Salt and Tate have pulled ahead of us quite a bit. I’m not panicked or anything, but I don’t want Peppa to start backtracking. I kick him lightly in the sides. He lowers his head to the ground and chomps off the head of a tuft of weeds.

  “Kick him again,” Tate says.

  I try, but he wanders farther off the trail.

  “Peppa, go back to the trail,” I say.

  Tate coaxes Salt off the trail.

  “We’re on our way,” he says.

  But he’s at least a basketball court away, and I’m starting to feel nervous. I think Tate can sense this.

  “You’re fine,” he says.

  Right as he says that, I hear somebody shaking a maraca. Peppa tries to go in reverse, but the sound grows louder. Then, suddenly, Peppa is standing on his back legs. His front legs look like they’re trying to climb a ladder into the sky. There’s no way for me to stay in the saddle. As I’m tumbling off the back end of the horse, I can see something moving on the ground. It looks like a piece of rope. It flashes. Then it’s gone. I feel pain. First in my butt and then in my head. And then I don’t feel anything.

  When I wake up, I’m alone. I’m lying in the brush and there’s a white horse tied to a woody shrub. Wait. That’s my horse. That’s Peppa.
I try to lift my head, but it hurts. I reach up and touch it, and my hand gets wet. I pull my hand away and look at it. It’s covered in blood. Crap. It’s my blood. I’ve hit my head. Where’s Tate? I rest my head back in the dirt.

  How much blood have I lost? I remember reading somewhere that nothing bleeds like a head wound. I think I’m supposed to apply pressure to it. Again, I reach up to touch the cut. This time I realize that I’m not touching my head. Something is tied around my head. I can feel buttons. And a pocket. I pull on a piece of loose fabric and lift up the sleeve of Tate’s shirt. Wow, if I wasn’t bleeding to death by myself in the wilderness, I would think that gesture was so sweet.

  I let the sleeve fall to the ground. I can’t believe this is happening. God, my butt feels like it has a rock wedged deep beneath the skin. It feels like it’s swelling. Did I land on a patch of thistle? I can’t find a comfortable position. It’s too painful to even try to shift the weight of my body, so I lie flat on my back in the dirt.

  As I breathe, I notice something rising and falling on my chest. It’s a small rock. When I push it off, a piece of paper flies away. Using my right hand, I smash the paper flat to the ground, then drag it back to me. As I raise it up, I see that it’s a note. But it’s hard to read. Things are blurry. How hard did I hit my head? It’s from Tate. I make out his signature and take a few breaths. As I squint, trying to make the words come into focus, pain pumps through me. I manage to get through the note anyway.

  Molly,

  I’ve gone to get help. You fell and hit your head. Peppa is tied to a bush. Back soon.

  Love, Tate

  Holy crap! He used the word love. I know it probably doesn’t mean anything. He was probably just in a hurry and that’s how he signs all of his notes. Weird. He doesn’t love me. Does he? I read it again. Then everything is so blurry that I have to put the note away. I retrieve the rock and set it right on my chest again, where Tate left it. But I keep holding the note. I close my eyes. I bet he’ll be here with help really soon.

  We’re not that far away from the trailhead. I bet whoever comes to get me will be able to drive a truck right to this spot. I mean, people get hit on the head all the time. It’s not like I’ve fallen down an inaccessible cliff and broken all my bones. I try to calm myself down by telling myself that the more I relax, the better I’ll feel. But, that’s a lie. I’m in agony.