Emma. She was going to be wondering what I was doing in here so long. Oh, well. I’d think of something. I always do.
I groaned aloud as I peeled off fifteen twenty dollar bills (fifteen!) and tucked them into an envelope, but it was a necessary sacrifice. I needed Janelle to stay put and stay quiet for a little while longer while I planned my future. I addressed the envelope, omitting Janelle’s name for the moment so Emma wouldn’t spot it. Then I went out and hopped into the car.
“I thought you must have slipped through a portal to another dimension or something,” Emma said. “What took you so long?”
When in doubt, tell the truth. Or some of it.
“The phone rang and I answered. It was a relative of ours.” Well, of Brooke’s, anyways. “She’s in a jam because she needs her medication. She left it here by mistake, and she really needs it. So we have to make a superfast run to the post office and Express Mail it to her.”
Emma rolled her eyes. “Right now, of all times? I have to say, Morgan, I think it’s amazing how you can have this amount of responsibility on your shoulders, but you never seem to break a sweat. I’d probably be cursing her out right this second, but you don’t even seem to mind.”
“It’ll be okay,” I said. “But don’t mention it to anybody, would you? No big deal, but nobody knows she was here at the house but me. She’s having problems with her parents, and she wanted to talk. We’ll make it back in time—we just have to move. C’mon, Emma, I bet this dumpy old station wagon can go a lot faster than this.”
“I’m already doing forty! In a thirty-mile-an-hour zone!”
“Oooh! Scary! What a lawbreaker you are!”
“Okay, but if I get stopped, you can pay the fine.” Rounding the corner at a death-defying forty-five miles an hour, Emma shrieked. She was a real daredevil, that one.
We had the money Express Mailed off to Janelle in no time, and nobody at Hidden Hollow even noticed how long it had taken us to fetch the papers. They were working steadily, changing soiled tablecloths, emptying trash bins, moving folding chairs from one place to another as our needs changed, rearranging flowers and plates of cookies, leading horses and ponies around.
It was a beautiful day. For the previous week everybody had studied the weather forecasts like they were the Delphic oracle or something. Not me. I figured it would either be nice or it wouldn’t. As Emma had said, I don’t break into a sweat over much of anything. In the long-range forecast there had been rain threatened for the day of the benefit, but gradually the storm warnings shifted off. We had clear skies and a big yellow sun. The peak of the autumn leaf season was past, but there was still plenty of color left, and, at least in the sunshine, the air was soft and warm.
I am not especially sensitive to pretty landscapes or fine artwork, and I am certainly not sentimental, but for a minute there I almost got it about how people didn’t want to see these horses turned into Alpo.
Once we’d checked out the progress at Hidden Hollow, we took a quick drive over to Pegasus to see how the events were proceeding there. The horses were outside, and a nice-size crowd stood by the fence, watching them being put through their paces. They were like fine leather goods from Hermès, or maybe a classic car from Rolls-Royce: beautiful and classy and . . . I don’t know, expensive looking. Like something I would be proud to own.
I watched them go by, shining in the sun, and, letting go of my usual caution, I said aloud what I was actually thinking. “I guess they are worth a certain amount of trouble.”
Everybody, the Styles family, Emma, Melanie, Bounce, and Bounce’s sister, burst out laughing. The sound was so loud and raucous that it startled the horses, and they shook their heads and whinnied. These people thought that what I’d said was a masterpiece of understatement, but of course it wasn’t; it was a simple statement of fact, and quite a stretch for me, frankly. Normally the only thing I thought was worth this much effort was me.
But those horses were beautiful, desirable, valuable objects, and therefore worth trouble, and possibly even some of my hard-earned money, in order to protect and preserve them. I toyed with the idea of skimming off a smaller amount for myself and leaving a substantial sum to actually benefit the animals. It might be worth it, if only to prove to myself how much control I had over my acquisitive nature.
On the other hand, I wasn’t likely to be around much longer to reap the benefits of having saved them from the canning factory. And there was no doubt I was going to need a lot of cash to make a new life for myself.
So, deal with it, horses. I’d decide about the extent of my generosity when the time came.
15
EVEN WITH MY HIGHLY DEVELOPED ability to delegate boring work to others, I was swamped all day at After the Race Is Run. However, since it was well known that I was the organizer and brain behind the event, I did not mind; I got so much praise and approval that I found myself almost literally purring with satisfaction.
Nearly everybody from school came, even Brett (without Helena). He looked around at the crowds of people happily eating sausages and pork roast, the ladies wearing floral dresses and hats shaped like birthday cakes and birds, the kids riding ponies in the ring and patting the velvety noses that protruded from every stall, and said, “Cool! But don’t horses do anything more than walk around in a circle?”
The guy was an idiot. If I hadn’t disliked Helena so much, I’d have told him to take a hike. And of course, he was awfully good-looking.
I told him to go and watch the jumping and polo demonstrations for some suggestions about what horses could do besides walk around in a circle. Then I had to leave, as I was scheduled to put Chessie through her paces and demonstrate how to get the most out of a horse in a jumping exhibition in front of an admiring audience.
“She’s utterly fearless,” I heard Bounce say proudly as I waited my turn to ride into the ring. “I’ve never had such a promising student before. And the bond she has with that horse is remarkable. I wouldn’t have pegged Chessie as a jumper, but Morgan has convinced Chessie that she is. She simply lets the horse know what is expected, and the horse loves her so much that she does it.”
Involuntarily I snorted. Chessie stiffened, raising her head to slew her eyes around at me, trying to judge my mood. She danced nervously. No, I didn’t deceive myself for a moment that she obeyed because she loved me. I thought better of my Chessie’s intelligence than that. The horse knew what was good for her, that’s all. No big secret there.
By this time Chessie and I had learned each other so well that we moved as if we were one animal, clicking through the various paces as if we had been programmed, and soaring like a lark over any obstacle that happened to be in our way.
I wondered if, after I had left upstate New York, I should head to the hunt country in Virginia, where I could pursue a fox over open fields, leaping fences and ditches with wild abandon. That sounded like a lot of fun, but I had been involved with horseback riding long enough to know that it was an expensive hobby. Still, I had skills now, and that might get me a job at a stable. Not the equal of the position I enjoyed here, but at least I’d have a chance to indulge in my time off. I’d have to fudge up a letter of recommendation—I couldn’t exactly expect Bounce to write one after I’d been exposed as an impostor and walked off with the majority of the proceeds from this event.
Stupid Janelle. She was ruining everything.
One last jump, higher than any before. The crowd held its collective breath, and then there were gasps of pleasure and gratification as we sailed over and landed gracefully on the other side. Applause ushered us out of the ring. I smiled and touched my finger to the brim of my hat in salute as we strode away.
I felt almost fond of Chessie in that moment.
There were other jumpers after me—Bounce’s niece and so on—but once I was finished, everybody else was an anticlimax. I nodded at the other participants and said random things like, “Nice job,” and “You’ve got a good seat,” because that was what was exp
ected. They said, “Yikes, I wouldn’t want to go up against you in a competition! We heard you were something special, and I guess so!”
I just smiled.
“Morgan! Morgan, did you see me? I didn’t fall off or make a fool of myself or anything!”
It was Brooke, of course. I hadn’t seen her, being far too busy to bother, but of course I lied and said I had.
“And Emma did great too. She’s good. Not like you, of course, but better than me. Well, that wouldn’t be hard, would it?”
No, it wouldn’t, but I didn’t say so.
“Girls, you both were wonderful!” The Styles family had come up to congratulate us. Uncle, Aunt, and Grandmother clustered around, admiring and happy. Aunt Antonia made a big fuss over Brooke in order to compensate for the fuss Uncle Karl and Grandma were making over me.
“Such grace! So cool and collected! You make it look so easy!” they said, rendered starry-eyed by their first view of my riding skills.
“Well, Brooke only started lessons in September,” said Aunt Antonia, “so I think it’s remarkable that she has learned enough to appear in public in an exhibition like this. Morgan has had years of practice. Though, of course,” she amended, looking a little embarrassed at her own vehemence, “she certainly is impressive.”
The truth was, as you know, that I had had no more practice than Brooke. I simply had the talent and she did not.
“Brooke has improved,” I said.
To my surprise I saw a flare of anger in Aunt Antonia’s eyes. She was opening her mouth to deliver what I thought would be a sharp reply, when Brooke forestalled her.
“Yes, I have improved, haven’t I? I was so proud of myself,” she said, and she looked proud of herself too. Weird. If I were her, I would hate my guts, knowing how inferior I was to me, if you follow what I’m saying. But Brooke seemed incapable of jealousy. It was actually a bit annoying.
I looked at Aunt Antonia to see how she would respond to this. What was biting the woman, anyway? I hadn’t said anything mean. I’d been polite—gracious, even.
Aunt’s face softened. She bent forward and kissed her daughter’s forehead and stroked her hair. “And we are proud of both of you, but especially of you, Brooke, for learning so much so quickly.” She looked around at her husband and mother, as though defying them to contradict this last statement.
They paid no attention but continued to pepper me with comments and questions. Well, of course. That was what was annoying Aunt. We were supposed to pretend that Brooke and I were equally worthy of praise.
At last Aunt Antonia grew so annoyed by the attention being showered on me instead of upon her beloved Brooke that she linked arms with the other two and carried them off, saying, “Come on! I want some ice cream, and these young ladies have a great deal of work ahead of them. It’s a wonderful event, girls. Everybody is saying so. We’ll see you later!”
It’s funny. I was born not quite understanding the way most people think and, especially, feel. I have to study them to figure out how they will react to things I say or do. Yet in this situation Uncle Karl and Granny were being obtuse, while I totally got that Aunt Antonia was resenting my success. She didn’t like everybody ignoring Brooke and concentrating on me. Okay, I didn’t exactly know what it was in my words or tone that had ticked her off a minute before, but I knew why she was so ready to take offense.
But still, she was reluctant to demand that her mother and the father of her only child ignore me and heap praise on Brooke. This was where human relations got confusing for me. Aunt Antonia wanted her daughter to win. I understood this, although personally I can’t imagine caring about anybody else’s success but my own. Yet, for some reason that I did not understand, having to do with “morality,” or “being a good person,” she could not bring herself to say so or act on her feelings.
It must be complicated, being a person with a conscience.
In any case she was right. There was a lot of work ahead of us, and it kept coming at us hour after hour. I had the extra duty of siphoning off a good chunk of the cash for myself in an inconspicuous way. This was harder than you might think. Bounce kept worrying about the cash boxes. You’d have thought everybody attending was there for the express purpose of ripping us off.
As usual I ignored the checks and went for good old dollars. Twenties were my personal favorite—not so large that they were memorable, but much less bulky than ones. I was stashing my share of the loot into an inner breast pocket of my riding jacket, and I didn’t want to start to look too much better endowed on one side than the other.
While planning the event, I had resisted the suggestion of my fellow committee members to procure tickets with numbers. I claimed that I did not want them because of the extra expense and the time crunch, but really it was so that nobody could compare the number of tickets sold and the amount of money in the cash boxes. This way I could manipulate the attendance numbers to suit my own purposes. Everybody knows that head counts based upon simple impressions are inaccurate.
Later in the day Francea showed up on a bicycle. I suppose she was on the lists as a volunteer, so she figured she had better at least make an appearance, and couldn’t resist getting into an event for free. But when she spotted me, she got all shifty-eyed and slithered away, out toward the parked cars again. That girl didn’t have an original thought in her head. There was nothing of mine out in the parking lot, so I didn’t care. Later I saw her dragging a trash bag full of stuff away. She tried to jam it into the basket of her bicycle, but it was too big and things kept falling out onto the ground. People started looking curiously at her and her bag of stolen goods. Leaving half the fallen electronics and assorted goodies where they lay, she slowly wobbled away on her bike.
Fine, I thought. Excellent. If anybody suspects there’s any money missing, we will know who to blame—there were plenty of witnesses. Thank you, Francea.
The sun slid downward toward the west. The crowds lessened a little, and I got a break to walk around like a paying customer. I stopped by the petting zoo and tried to figure out why these kids, and even some adults, were so anxious to feed and touch a bunch of alpacas and lambs and baby ducks. I guess they’re soft and “cute”—whatever that is—but even baby animals can bite. I watched as one little boy got knocked over by a goat, greedy for the feeding bottle the kid held in his hand. How the boy howled!
A little further on there were snakes and lizards. Older kids were interested in these, but they bored me, the sluggish things. As I approached the hawks and owls, though, I perked up. Those sharp beaks and talons attracted me. Unlike the fluffy grass-and grain-eaters in the petting zoo, these were predators, swift and merciless. I wondered what would happen if I let one of them go. Would I enjoy watching it fly, seeing it pounce on a victim? The woman tending the birds was a falconer—she flew them in search of prey.
“Yes, I love it, but you have to go out in all weather: rain, shine, or snow. It takes real dedication. It’s not for everybody,” she was saying to a small crowd of onlookers.
Okay, not for me, then. I don’t go out in bad weather for any reason, let alone to watch some dumb bird kill a mouse. I turned away.
“I might have known you’d be here, Morgan!”
“Hi, Brooke,” I said. She was smiling, tired but happy and enjoying the day.
“I hardly remember anything about you from when we were little, but I do remember that,” she said, nodding her head at the whole scene, with the sheep and the snakes and the owls.
“Remember what? Remember from when? We barely knew each other when we were kids.” For some reason I was feeling irritable and jaded. I had no patience for this “remember when” stuff.
“Sure we did. It was a long time ago, and I don’t recall a whole lot of details, but you came out here for a week once, oh, back when we were both about seven years old. We went to a petting zoo like this, remember?”
“No,” I said. I was looking around, wondering if I should nip behind the concessions bo
oth and have a look at their cash box. Technically I was not in charge of it—it belonged to the grocery store people who’d donated the food—but as the event planner, I could go wherever I chose, or at least so I had decided.
“Yes,” Brooke persisted. “And like you do now, you loved animals so much. Especially birds, which is why I wasn’t surprised to find you here looking at these guys.”
“The birds are handsome,” I conceded.
“I can’t believe you don’t remember going to that petting zoo. You were crazy about it. But I’ll bet you do remember the promise we made to each other, don’t you? I flat-out won’t believe that you’ve forgotten about that.”
“About what?”
Brooke’s eyes narrowed. For the first time since I had met her, she looked . . . I’d have to call it troubled, and uneasy. “You mean you don’t remember? I know, sure it was silly, but we were so serious. We swore! You even insisted that we do a blood pact, where we cut our fingers and mingled the blood together and then spit on it. You’re telling me you don’t remember what we promised each other?”
I groaned internally. Now what?
“Oh, sure. Yeah, I remember. It was just a dumb kid thing, though. I’d forgotten for the moment.”
The expression on her face did not change.
“What? What did we promise?” she asked. Her eyes were intent, watching me.
“Oh, you know,” I said, shrugging. “That we’d always be friends. And we are, of course! It was kind of lucky in a way that I fell so hard for—” I fumbled for the name for a moment. “Uh, Ashton. I mean, it brought us back together again after all these years. It’s been so great spending this fall with you, Brooke,” I continued, pouring on the charm. “I’m glad I got this chance. That’s what you meant, isn’t it?”
Don't You Trust Me? Page 11