I take one of Kansas’s good stainless steel pails from the feed room out to the pasture. As soon as Electra realizes there’s no food in the bucket she completely ignores me and returns to mooning over Brooklyn. I only have to wait about a minute and a half before she spreads her hind legs and pees again. I catch a cup or so before she gets annoyed with me and trots off.
It stinks. It’s yellow and frothy and smells to high heaven. But it’s mare urine, and it’s full of hormones. I take it back to the barn, mix half of it with the remains of my Gatorade and stuff it in the fridge in the tack room. If it’s cold enough and I’m thirsty enough, I know I’ll be able to drink it. Maybe small amounts at a time. A sip a day, so that by the time school starts I’ll be on the road to being a new woman. I’m thankful I have the refrigerator at the barn to use. Once I stored some salt water for my barnacles in the fridge at home and Mom drank it by mistake. I wouldn’t want to make that mistake again. Just to be sure I use a black marker to write my name on the label. Kansas has a barn rule that we don’t borrow other people’s stuff without permission.
I want to wash the remains out of the bucket before Kansas gets home, but Brooklyn is watching me with such interest that I take the pail over to his paddock. It won’t quite fit through the rails so I open the gate and slide in with him. Kansas told me not to get close to him unless there was a wall or a fence between us, but I think she’s totally misread the situation with Brooklyn. She doesn’t understand that he only bites people if they are disrespectful to him, which is completely reasonable as far as I am concerned. And I sure don’t disrespect him. We’re both hybrids. He may even know this already because animals are highly perceptive.
He stuffs his head in the bucket, lifts it out again and flips up his lip like he’s laughing.
I squat by the bucket, looking up at silly Brooklyn, the sun behind his head, and something strange happens to my field of vision. It’s as though a shadow crosses over it, almost as if there’s a blind spot in the middle. I hold my hand above my head and slowly slide it into view. There’s something wrong. There’s a piece missing. I blink really hard. I have to do this three times, and then I can see properly again. Brooklyn is watching me. He’s lost interest in the bucket and instead is sniffing my hair. I feel his bristly nose wiggling against my scalp.
“Sylvia!”
It’s Kansas. I didn’t hear her drive up. Maybe it’s not just my eyes playing tricks on me. Maybe my ears are packing it in too. Her truck makes almost as much noise as my mom’s ex-car—how I missed her coming in the driveway is beyond me.
I stand up quickly, knocking over the bucket accidentally on purpose. Brooklyn sniffs the spill spot and does his smiley thing again.
Kansas holds open the gate for me. “You shouldn’t be in there with him like that. He could take the top of your head off.”
“He’s smiling.”
“No he’s not. It’s called a Flehman response. He’s drawing scent molecules or pheromones towards a chemical receptor in the roof of his mouth. What was in the bucket?”
“Some Gatorade.” I hate myself. I am lying to Kansas. But it’s for a crucial cause.
“Odd,” says Kansas. “Oh well, sometimes they do that when they smell something they haven’t come across before. Come see what I got.” She heads off to her truck, cooling in a patch of shade by the barn. On the front seat is a cardboard pet caddy.
“A kitten?” I gasp. “I’ve always wanted a kitten! But of course with my dad’s allergies . . . .”
A whimpering sound emerges from the box, and a wet black nose seeks to escape through one of the round ventilation holes.
“A puppy,” says Kansas. “I’ve always wanted a dog. Now that I’m finally not renting I can have one.” She reflects for a moment. “Though a cat would be a good idea too, something to keep the mice under control in the feed room. Maybe next week you and I can go back to the shelter and look for one.” She opens the caddy and lifts out a black and tan fuzzball with a round pink tummy.
“She looks like a baby bear!” I say.
Kansas cuddles the puppy in her arms. I’ve never ever seen her look so happy. “Her name’s Bernadette,” she says. And before I can say anything about what a silly name that is, she adds that this was her mom’s name. “The folks at the shelter think she’s German shepherd. Mostly. I don’t care. Mutts are good. Hybrid vigor you know.”
I cough. “Hybrid vigor?”
“Yeah. Hybrids don’t have all the health problems that purebreds have. Hip dysplasia, skin problems, that sort of thing. Hybrids are tough little monkeys, right Bernadette?” Bernadette squirms and licks her ear. “I’ll go put her in a stall,” she says, carrying her into the barn.
Hybrid vigor. I like that. Of course I also like what the Toyota pamphlet had to say about hybrids: they are a seamless blend of the power of gas with a high voltage battery to optimize power, performance and fuel efficiency and still have 70% fewer emissions.
I am the wave of the future—vigorous, seamless, powerful and environmentally friendly. Top that, Amber.
“Hey, who’s this coming?” says Kansas as a cloud of dust is stirred up where the driveway meets the road.
It takes me a second to recognize the vehicle. “It’s my mom’s new car.”
“Nice red.”
“Barcelona red metallic,” I tell her. “The interior is bisque.”
“Wow. But who’s driving? That’s not your mom.”
“Oh god. It’s my cousin Stephanie.” I can’t believe Mom let Stephanie drive her brand new car. Taylor says that Stephanie is relentless and impossible to resist, but my mom is not only an adult but also a trained helping professional. I would have thought she could bring some of her skills into play here.
The car glides to a gentle stop behind Kansas’s truck which, in comparison, looks like something from a junkyard. I make a mental reminder to give her the Tundra pamphlet.
My mom is in the passenger seat. Auntie Sally is in the back.
“Was that ever fun,” says Stephanie bouncing out of the car.
My mom grabs the key fob. “I’ll drive back,” she says.
“Yeah, whatever,” says Stephanie. “Anything to be out of the house and away from all the young animals.” She’s still wearing her denim shorts and corset top. Kansas is staring at her; I bet she thinks Stephanie is some sort of alien creature even after my mom introduces her as my cousin.
“Now take me to meet this horse of yours,” says Auntie Sally.
“Well, not exactly a horse,” says Kansas.
Which stops everyone in their tracks of course.
“What?” says Mom.
“He’s a hinny,” says Kansas. Obviously she expected everyone to know by now. She looks to me but I won’t meet her eye. Then she explains to my mom and my aunt and my cousin what a hinny is. I could die.
“Oh that’s rich,” says Stephanie, laughing. “Grandpa bought a half-assed horse.” I wish she’d shut up. Without Taylor here there’s no one to stop her. Auntie Sally gave up years ago.
My mom turns to me. “Honey, you didn’t say anything about this.”
“I was going to,” I say.
“Kansas,” says my Mom, “will this be okay? Sylvie wanted a horse. Should we send him back?”
“You could send him back?” says Kansas, with much more enthusiasm than I would have liked.
“No we can’t,” I say. “He’s fine. Maybe he can’t be much of a dressage horse, but I don’t care. Hybrids are the way of the future, remember Mom?”
Auntie Sally grabs my mom’s arm and tugs. “Come on, Ev, let’s have a look.”
I lead them around to Brooklyn’s paddock.
“Well, this is disappointing,” says Stephanie. “He looks like a horse to me.” She leans over the top rail and dangles her fingers in Brooklyn
’s direction. “Hey, horsey.” Brooklyn ignores her. “Kind of a cute little guy, doncha think?”
I expect Brooklyn to launch himself and maybe take her arm off for me, but he doesn’t. He paws at the spot where I spilled the bucket.
“Mind if I take a look around?” Stephanie asks Kansas.
“Sure,” says Kansas. “But no smoking in the barn.”
“Oh, Stephanie doesn’t smoke,” says Auntie Sally.
“Of course she doesn’t,” says Kansas but she watches Stephanie’s departing back through slitty eyes.
Auntie Sally says, “Can I go in and pat your horse, Sylv? I brought him a carrot.”
“We’re not hand-feeding him right now,” says Kansas, and I know what’s coming and it’s too late to stop her. “You have to be careful around a horse that bites.”
“He bites?” says Mom. I guess Dad never told her, which is kind of a surprise. I slide in next to Auntie Sally for protection.
“He bit the transport driver,” says Kansas.
“Only because—”
Kansas jumps in before I can finish, “Sylvia, it doesn’t matter why he bit someone. We have to be careful around him for a while.”
“Is there anything else I don’t know?” says Mom.
“How about I make us all some iced tea?” says Kansas.
They send me to find Stephanie. Of course I don’t want to find her, so I walk very slowly and look first in the most unlikely places such as the shavings shed and the back of the manure pile. I figure she’s probably in the tack room smelling the leather and playing with the whips, and then I remember my Gatorade bottle. Someone like Stephanie wouldn’t care if my name was written on it. She’d drink it anyway. She wouldn’t sip it like I was planning to do. She’d glug it all down. I’m enjoying this prospect and take my time walking down the alleyway in the barn, but then I wonder what effect it might have on Stephanie to have an overdose of estrogen. I know what happens when people don’t have enough estrogen, and everything I’ve read emphasizes how important it is to keep hormones in proper balance. Presumably people can also get into trouble if they have an excess. Maybe she’d turn into Pamela Anderson and explode out of her corset. Or maybe she’d act like a mare in season and become a disgusting flirt even with boys she didn’t like. But whatever happened, it would be my fault. Everyone would blame me.
I fling open the tack room door in a near panic. She’s not there. I check the refrigerator. My Gatorade is still tucked in at the back.
That’s when I hear her singing. She’s an awful singer. She sounds like a cat with its tail on fire.
I follow the sound to the spare stall where Kansas put her new puppy. I stretch on my toes and can just barely see over the door. Stephanie is sitting on the floor and the puppy is on her lap, stretched out, belly-side-up on her thighs. For a second I think Stephanie must be preparing her for some sort of ritual sacrifice because Bernadette is totally vulnerable and Stephanie is leaning down towards her. She stops singing or keening or whatever she’s been doing, takes a deep breath, presses her lips on the puppy’s belly and blows a series of air bubbles that sound like trumpet notes, just like Auntie Sally used to do with Erika when she was a baby. Bernadette wriggles. Stephanie strokes her until she settles then she does it again.
I lose my balance and topple against the door which rattles on its hinge.
“Who’s there?” says Stephanie.
I tell her it’s me. Then I slide back the latch and slink into the stall. I don’t expect Stephanie will be pleased to have been caught being gentle, sweet and affectionate.
Stephanie sets Bernadette on her feet, and the puppy turns and clambers back into her lap. Stephanie strokes her, then glares at me.
“You are a very lucky person,” she says.
“I know that.”
“And you owe me big-time for what you’ve done to my sister.”
I tell her I’m really really sorry.
“I don’t care how sorry you feel,” says Stephanie. “What you have to do is make it right.”
Stephanie terrifies me so I say the first stupid thing that comes into my head. “I would if I could, I would give Taylor one of my big toes but—”
“Don’t be a moron.”
Bernadette tumbles out of Stephanie’s lap, waddles to a corner of the stall, squats and pees. Halfway back to Stephanie she attacks a scrap of wood and wrestles it to the ground.
“Taylor’s dancing days are over,” says Stephanie.
I tell her I know that.
“I’m going to be away at university. Mom is useless and Erika is too young. So you’re going to have to help her find a new life to pour herself into.”
“Okay, Stephanie.” I will say anything to make her happy.
“I think she should take up riding,” says Stephanie.
She has to be out of her mind. I knew she was weird, but this is insane. “Oh no, Stephanie, that will never work. Taylor’s afraid of horses. Actually she’s afraid of everything, except maybe angels. And us horse people, well, we’re born this way, all of us—Kansas, Dr. Cleveland, me, we were born wanting to ride and be with horses. You can’t make someone a horse person.”
Stephanie stands up and dusts off her bum. Bernadette makes a bee-line for her shoes and collapses on them. Stephanie scoops her up and presses her against her cheek. “This will be a healthy atmosphere for Taylor. She’ll be okay with horses once she gets to know them. I know I would have turned out differently if I’d been able to ride like I wanted to when I was a kid.”
I decide not to remind her that she made Grandpa pay for plastic surgery on her nose instead. She could have had a horse. Instead she got a little ski-jump. She probably doesn’t want to hear this.
Bernadette’s hind feet scrabble on Stephanie’s chest, pulling down the edge of her corset. Despite trying as hard as I can not to look, I see another tattoo. The letters are ornately scrolled and it takes me a few seconds to decipher them. Even then they don’t make sense. “Gregory?” I say.
She follows my line of vision then hikes up her top and stares daggers at me. Maybe she expects to turn me to stone, but I’m too confused by events to comply. Auntie Sally used to be married to Uncle Gregory but I haven’t seen him for years and years and no one talks about him anymore. “But he left you,” I say.
“He didn’t leave me, you idiot. He left my mom.”
“Okay.” What else can I say?
“And don’t you dare tell anyone,” says Stephanie. She points a finger at me. “No one else knows, so if someone mentions it, I’ll know you squealed, and I’ll have to kill you.”
“I won’t say anything!” I’m sure she means it. She looks like a killer, even though she has a puppy in her arms that is licking her neck. Psychopaths often have close relationships with animals, my mom says, because they can’t manage human relationships.
“That is, if I haven’t killed you already for not helping Taylor get a new life without dance.” She steps towards me menacingly. I can see the tattoo on her shoulder. Definitely there are fangs, and talons and scales and feathers. It’s a mess. I shudder. It must be another hybrid, but this one is some sort of monster.
“Okay! I’ll help her.” Though I don’t know how. It’s not as though I don’t have enough problems of my own.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
So yet another day passes without my being able to ride my new horse. Mom says I have to come with her while she drops off Auntie Sally and Stephanie. Then we head home. I also miss taking my first dose of mare urine.
Dad’s back from his golf game. I’m thinking he must have had a high score because he sure doesn’t look happy as he bursts out the front door and meets us on the driveway.
“I’ve been frantic,” he says. “Where have the two of you been?”
“We’re fi
ne,” says Mom. “We just dropped off Sally and Stephanie.”
This is like throwing gasoline on a fire. “You’ve been at Sally’s all this time? Last I heard you were broken down at the side of the road, and then my cell phone cut out.”
“I dealt with it,” says Mom.
“Okay,” says Dad. He takes a deep breath. “You’re okay, that’s what counts.” He looks at the car. “That’s a high-class loaner.”
“It’s a hybrid,” I tell him and he smiles at me so I tell him, “Hybrids are the way of the future.”
A suspicious expression crosses his face and takes up residence. He turns to Mom but doesn’t say anything.
She tosses the car’s key fob into her purse. “My father,” she says, “sent Sylvie a hinny.”
My dad looks puzzled but still doesn’t say anything.
“A hinny,” says Mom, “is a cross between a donkey and a horse.”
“That’s a mule,” says Dad.
“Not if the mother is a donkey and the father is a stallion,” I say.
“Well . . . .” says Dad. For some reason he looks like he’s trying not to laugh.
“I wouldn’t say what you’re thinking, Studly,” says Mom. She’s smiling.
“That smells like a new car,” says Dad.
“It is,” says Mom.
I’m all prepared to tell Dad about the advantages of hybrids, but Mom says, “Not now, Honey.”
“How much?” says Dad.
“It’s all in my name, Tony,” says Mom who then turns and strides up the sidewalk and disappears into the house.
“Dad, I don’t care if Brooklyn’s a hinny. I’m keeping him. I like it that he’s a hybrid. Hybrids are good.”
“I suspect I’ll be hearing a lot to that effect in the next little while,” says Dad. He opens the car door and seats himself behind the wheel. He sighs. “Nice. But don’t tell her I said so.”
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