“If we went, how would we get there?”
“Mr. McDaid said he would pick us up.”
“No!” I said. “I don’t want them coming here. Bryce doesn’t know.”
Mom startled, then laid the phone on the windowsill and sat on her bunk. “Lizzie, there is no shame in needing help from time to time. That’s all we’re doing here: getting a little extra help until we’re back on our feet.”
“It isn’t about Good Hope exactly,” I said. “It’s about why we’re here.”
My words hung in the air.
Finally, Mom said, “If Bryce is a true friend, he’ll know that what Dad did isn’t our fault.”
“Then why does it still feel like it?”
The quiet that followed was not the kind that had lifted our spirits on walks through the woods. It was the kind of quiet that rose into a barrier between us. I turned to face the wall, wishing it was already December 26 and that this first miserable Christmas on our own was over.
Finally, Mom stood up and patted my arm. “Come on, let’s get dinner and make a decision on full stomachs. I think I saw some giant cans of Chef Boyardee ravioli on the counter. No matter what, we are not going to bed hungry on Christmas Eve.”
The phone buzzed again as I was climbing down the ladder.
“It’s Joe,” Mom said. “Look.”
She held the phone up for me to see his message.
WANT A RIDE TO THE MCDAIDS? I CAN PICK YOU UP AT NOON.
“Why is his message all in caps?”
Mom giggled. “Maybe he’s one of those people who doesn’t know how to text.”
“Does Joe know about Dad?”
Mom shook her head. “Not unless you told him. He knows where we live, but he never asked why.”
“Then can we ride to the McDaids’ with him? I do want to go. I’m just not ready to tell Bryce why we live here.”
She put her hand on the back of my neck and pulled me close, kissing the top of my head. “Of course we can, Lizzie. Let’s go to the McDaids’. We’ll start our own new traditions tomorrow.”
Fifteen
Back home, in our life before Good Hope, Santa always left a stocking on my bed to open on Christmas morning. The stuff inside was supposed to keep me busy until I was allowed to wake up Mom and Dad. There were always oranges and whole nuts, then sometimes pencils and miniature Sudoku books or Silly Putty. The year we were ten, MaryBeth saw my stocking and told me all that stuff was dumb. Then she showed me the new purple iPod that came in her stocking, along with a fifty-dollar iTunes gift card. When I’d complained to Mom, she shut me down quickly.
“It’s an old-fashioned family tradition,” she’d said.
Before Good Hope, we had lots of traditions. Like every Christmas Eve, Mom read snow poems while Dad and I baked cookies for Santa and hung the stockings. Every Christmas morning, Mom was up early cooking homemade waffles and creamed chipped beef that we’d drown in real Vermont maple syrup.
“In honor of Granddad, who ate this every Christmas when he was fighting for our country in the navy,” she’d say. “But he wasn’t lucky enough to have syrup.”
At dinner, each of our places would have those tube-shaped Christmas crackers wrapped in shiny paper and filled with tiny candies and toys that scattered all over the table when we pulled them apart.
“In honor of your Scottish heritage,” Dad always said.
I had no idea what to expect this year. I knew what not to expect: piles of presents; Christmas waffles; Mom’s roast beef; sparkling cider in champagne flutes; sledding on Powder Hill; and most of all, Dad. So when I opened my eyes a little after seven and felt the red crocheted stocking pushing against my foot, I almost cried. Tradition had triumphed.
Inside was a single orange, a little package of cashews, a miniature journal covered in aqua fabric, a purple pen, and a bunch of tiny hand-crocheted hearts. I sat by the window and wrote in the journal, hoping to capture the way it felt to watch the sky blush as the sun crested the top of the hill on Christmas morning. I wrote without looking down, my eyes strained to examine the exact way light broke through the bare branches and reflected off the snow, turning everything pink, punctuated by black-capped chickadees darting from limb to limb, looking for food.
The chickadees were hungry. I’d never found that mother dog again, but there was something I could do to help the birds. Very quietly, I reached under Mom’s bunk, where the bird feeder had lived ever since we’d moved to Good Hope. Opening the window, I pushed the feeder out, then slid the window shut again before the chill spread through the room. A roll of green yarn lay on top of Mom’s crochet basket. I snipped a long piece to hang the feeder, wrote a quick note, and tiptoed out into the hallway.
The threat of Miss May’s authority hadn’t lessened in the six months we’d been at Good Hope. I found her in the kitchen stirring a big wooden spoon in a pot on the stove.
“Hello?”
She spun around so fast the spoon flew from her hand and bounced across the floor, splattering brown dots on olive-green linoleum.
“Elizabeth!” she yelped. “How many times have I told you not to startle me like that?”
“I’m sorry,” I said, with as much remorse as I could muster for something I had never been told before. “I didn’t mean— I was looking for the book to sign out. Oh, and I wanted to tell you Merry Christmas.”
She stared at me like I was talking gibberish. Finally, she picked up the spoon and held her other hand underneath so whatever the brown stuff was made a pool in her palm.
“I’m Jewish,” she said sharply.
“Oh. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”
“It’s not a disease, Elizabeth. It’s a belief system.”
“Yes, I know. I’m sorry. I just, well, you decorated the tree in the common room and all, so I assumed.”
“I do it every year. For the residents. Always have.” She puckered her lips and lifted her chin so she could look down her nose at me. “I, too, have a heart, Elizabeth.”
“Oh, of course. I never—I mean—gosh, that’s really nice—I mean, um, Happy Hanukkah?”
Miss May sighed. “Hanukkah ended two weeks ago.”
“Oh. Right.”
Seconds ticked by. Miss May rinsed the spoon and wiped up the drops on the floor with a paper towel. Then she turned back to the stove.
“Is that all you wanted?”
“Yes, well, no. I left Mom a note. I’m going out in the snow, just in the backyard, like to the bench, just for a little bit. It’s so pretty. I thought I should let you know.”
She nodded without saying a word. I didn’t wait another breath before escaping out the back door.
Grabbing the bird feeder from where it had landed in the snow, I zigzagged my way across the yard, leaving a trail of footprints behind. I knew exactly where I was going to hang it: right in the thickest boughs on the back side of the cedar tree, out of sight of the kitchen window. After it was secured to the branch, I filled the base with sections of my orange and the cashews. Then I danced off into the woods, completely ignoring my promise to stay in the yard.
Cloven hoofprints crossed the trail near the bend, threading a new course deep into a labyrinth of trees. I pushed saplings and holly branches aside to follow the deer until, in the middle of that sleeping forest, I paused, listening to the perfect hush of stillness.
A buck turned his head and caught my eye. If he hadn’t moved, he would have blended with the trees and I would have completely missed him. His antlers rose high above his head, with points spread like branches. He studied me with steady, dark eyes. He wasn’t afraid. He was the master of these woods. He had ownership here. I breathed icy air deep into my lungs and hoped I could inhale some of that power.
The buck and the faint scent of birch reminded me of sitting on my grandparents’ porch in Vermont and watching deer eat leaves and twigs in their yard. My grandparents’ whose ashes were still buried under the red maple tree at our old house. Someday, I vowed
, someday I’d have the power to go back and get them.
A cardinal broke the quiet with its noisy chatter. The buck turned away and disappeared into the endless white and gray, and I started for home.
Keeping secret the Christmas gift I’d made for Mom had been so hard, it was almost torture. But when she lifted white sparkly tissue away from the wrapping and drew in a breath, it was completely worth it. She traced the tip of her finger along each word of my poem that I’d written in calligraphy.
“Oh, Lizzie,” she said, “I love it.”
“Read the card,” I said, handing her the tiny white envelope.
“‘This poem I wrote for you, “Behind Birchwood,” has been published in the winter edition of the high school newspaper and has also been entered into a poetry contest through the library.’”
Her hand went to her mouth. “Oh, sweetie, a budding equestrian and now you’re a published poet, too! You are so amazing.”
“I hope you like it. I wrote it in the fall. Ms. Fitzgerald gave me the matting, and she said she’d have a copy of the newsletter for me when school starts after the break. And if I win the contest, I get twenty-five dollars.”
“Oh, my, and what would you do with that twenty-five dollars?”
It would be the middle of February before I knew if I won the money. That might be too late to help me buy Fire, especially if people kept asking to buy him.
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Hey, will you read the poem?” She closed her eyes and rested her back against the wall.
“It feels weird reading my own poem out loud to someone else.”
“Do it anyway,” she whispered. “For me.”
Behind Birchwood
I dance around slippery rocks
blanketed in deep green moss,
jump last year’s logs, rotted
now and slick with earth.
Raindrops ping in a slow,
steady rhythm, dropping
onto holdout leaves still
clinging to near-bare
limbs. Water trickles
in rivulets down
skinny spines,
gathers in tiny
puddles, cupped
in wet clumps
of decayed
leaves on
the ground,
soon to be
covered by
frost, then
hidden
under
snow.
Change is near.
Mom’s lips curved up into a soft smile.
“That’s my favorite part,” she said. “Change is near.”
Sixteen
Joe listened to Christmas music in the car on the way to the McDaids’. That surprised me almost as much as Mr. McDaid’s house did—it was sunshine-yellow with hundreds of white lights circling the pillars out front. He even had a life-sized baby Jesus by the front door, all tucked into a manger strung with more lights alongside Mary, Joseph, and all three of those kings. None of it matched Mr. McDaid’s abrasive personality.
“Holy mackerel, so fancy,” Mom said. She smoothed the collar over her blue sweater. “I’m not sure we’re dressed appropriately.”
I tugged my denim skirt down over black leggings and flinched. It was all I had, except one super-dressy dress that I hadn’t worn in over a year. Joe loosened his tie and pulled it off.
“You’re dressed perfectly. I’m overdressed. You’ll see.” He tossed the tie into the back seat next to me and smiled. “And you look almost like a regular girl in that skirt, Lizzie. Barely any trace of horse-girl at all.”
We walked up a brick path to the house and stood beside the manger. A string of lights on the edge had fallen and lay across baby Jesus’s face. The lights twinkled, and Jesus winked at me. Right when I started to giggle, Bryce flung the door open.
“Come on in,” he said, waving us into a two-story foyer with cream-and-turquoise marble floors.
Another surprise. I didn’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t this. Mr. McDaid barreled in, his face ruddy as if he’d been outside in a cold wind all day. He pushed Bryce aside to get to us.
“Merry Christmas! Merry Christmas!”
He pumped Joe’s hand like he was trying to squeeze the last bit of water from a well. Joe put his other hand under Mom’s elbow.
“Michael, this is Isabel, Lizzie’s mom.”
Mr. McDaid stood up tall, inhaled deeply, and puffed his chest out. “Well, now, you are just as lovely as your daughter.”
“Oh, well, thank you, Mr. McDaid—” Mom said.
“Ach! No, no! It’s Michael. Michael to all of you!”
He opened his arms wide and came at us like he wanted a group hug. I shrank away, saved from being crushed in an awkward embrace by Bryce pulling me out of the circle.
“Dad, stop! You’re weirding her out!” he said, scowling. “Come on, Lizzie, I’ll show you Tucker’s trophy room.”
I gladly followed him away.
Bryce’s house made me think about shoes. Like when you have an old pair that is too tight, but you wear them every day anyway and don’t realize how squished and painful your toes are until you slip your feet into new shoes that fit and suddenly your feet can spread out and breathe again. Bryce’s house was a new pair of shoes. The hallways were wide enough for me to hold both arms straight out at my sides and spin around like Julie Andrews in The Sound of Music if I wanted to. The furniture was pristine, as if no one ever sat on it, and every room had sunny floor-to-ceiling windows. There wasn’t one dark corner. It was so different from Good Hope.
Tucker’s trophy room was on the second floor, with a gold nameplate bolted right smack in the middle of the door. Nip N Tuck, it said in script. Inside, the room was lined wall to wall with shelves of trophies and photographs.
“Take a look,” Bryce said. “I have to do something real quick.”
He dropped into a purple velvet beanbag chair and flipped open his laptop. I looked away and moved slowly around the room, studying the pictures while he typed. When the typing paused, I pointed to a picture of him and Tucker against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains.
“Is this where you lived?”
“Yup,” he said, studying the computer screen.
“Did you ride in the mountains?”
“All the time.”
“What’s this one?”
Bryce glanced up. “Me and Tucker roping. First time we won. My dad decided that meant I was a manly man, so he had it blown up extra big, like we lived in Texas or something.”
In the picture Tucker was racing across an arena with his body low to the ground, his ears back, and his eyes focused on a terrified little red calf running away from him. Bryce was leaning forward over the pommel of a heavy western saddle, swinging the thick loop of a rope in the air.
“So weird seeing Tucker in a western saddle instead of your dressage one,” I said.
“Night and day. Clunk and grace,” Bryce grumbled.
“I knew you rode western, but I didn’t know you did rodeo kind of stuff.”
“My dad made me.”
“You didn’t like it?”
“It’s . . . no big deal. The picture I really want is of us winning in dressage, but if my dad has his way, that’ll never happen.”
I sat cross-legged on the floor next to him. “Why not?”
“We fight about it all the time. That’s why he was all pumped up when you guys got here. He was yelling at me again.”
“About what?”
Bryce’s face got really tight, and his jaw made this clicking sound.
“He says boys who ride dressage are gay. I have an older brother from when my dad was married before. Winston. He’s gay. He lives in Oregon. I’ve seen him only three times in my whole life and only because my mom convinced him to come to a few of my birthday parties when I was little.”
“Where is your mom?”
“Wyoming. That’s who I was just messaging.”
“Is she m
oving here?”
He shook his head. “They’re divorced.”
“Your dad got custody?”
“No, I got to pick. I would have stayed with my mom, but we live so far out in the mountains, it’s near impossible to find dressage trainers who will travel to give me lessons. When my dad came here, he promised to bring Tucker and let us get trained. I believed him, so my mom and I decided I should come. Now he has all these stipulations.”
“Like what?”
He slammed the laptop shut and swiped hair from his forehead. “If I don’t do this or that, I don’t get my lesson. He says he never promised I could show Tucker in dressage, only that I could learn. He’s a jerk and a bully and I hate him.”
“I’m really sorry. Maybe if he saw how good you two are.”
“It doesn’t matter. He won’t come watch.”
“Can you go back to Wyoming?”
“Ha! He’d never pay for Tucker to be shipped home, and my mom can’t afford it. She’d sell everything she’s got to make it happen if I asked, but I can’t let her do that.”
“So you have to choose between going home or keeping Tucker?”
“I’m not leaving my horse. My mom understands. Someday I might have to ride him the two thousand miles to get home, but for now I’m trapped.”
The sad, sweet notes from “O Holy Night” floated upstairs and trapped me in a memory of Christmas music coming from Dad’s study. I’d been trying really hard not to think about him all day. Every time I let my mind wander in that direction, it felt like something was sweeping me toward a big black hole.
“I’m trapped, too,” I blurted.
Bryce’s eyes darted in my direction, but he didn’t say anything. Neither of us did for the rest of the song. When it was finished, he shifted in the beanbag.
“Do you want to sit here? The floor isn’t very comfortable.”
“I’m okay.”
I picked at a loose thread along the hem of my skirt.
“Are your parents divorced?” Bryce asked.
“No,” I said. “I mean, I don’t think so. I never asked.”
Lizzie Flying Solo Page 10