Also by
Joseph Monninger
Wish
Hippie Chick
Baby
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2011 by Joseph Monninger
Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Veer
All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Monninger, Joseph.
Finding somewhere / Joseph Monninger. — 1st ed.
p. cm.
Summary : Sixteen-year-old Hattie and eighteen-year-old Delores set off on a road trip that takes unexpected turns as they discover the healing power of friendship and confront what each of them is fleeing from.
eISBN: 978-0-375-86214-4
[1. Coming of age—Fiction. 2. Friendship—Fiction. 3. Automobile travel—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.M7537Fi 2011
[Fic]—dc22
2010053551
Random House Children’s Books supports the First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.
v3.1
To all girls who love horses
And Allah took a handful of southerly wind, blew His breath over it, and created the horse.… Thou shall fly without wings, and conquer without sword. O horse!
—BEDOUIN LEGEND
Contents
Cover
Other Books by This Author
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
About the Author
Chapter 1
I SLIPPED THROUGH THE GATE WITHOUT ANY PROBLEM AND heard the horses shift and move the way they do when something unfamiliar comes into their space. I knew the stable, of course, and I felt bad for sneaking in, but the Fergusons hadn’t left me much choice in the matter. Luckily, a full moon gave me enough light. I walked quickly across the first paddock, where we usually saddled them, and Bucker looked over his stall and whinnied. I said, “Shhhhh,” but he whinnied again, greedy bugger that he is, and I slipped close and gave him an apple. He chomped it the way he always does, the big blockheaded fool, but I kissed him on his star forehead and told him to be quiet.
“I’m here for Speed,” I said. “Not you.”
He slobbered over the apple. It was late September in New Hampshire, the leaves falling into tall grass. You could bite the air. You couldn’t blame a horse for feeling it. The air made us all crazy.
I DIDN’T TURN ON ANY LIGHTS. I WALKED DOWN THE boardwalk outside the stable doors and I gave a quick pat to the horses I passed. Pumpkin, Sally, Clumpy, Bees, Wally, and Sammy. Speed dozed in the second-to-last stall, next to Sammy, and he didn’t even wake when I stood right in front of him.
“What a lazy bucket you are,” I said when I reached for him.
I put my arms around him and he drooped his head over my shoulder and nuzzled his chin against my back. Other horses sometimes let you hug them, but Speed was the only horse I’d ever known who hugged back. He clamped me to him, his chin pulling me closer, and I held him for a little while and whispered what we were going to do. I told him I loved him, too, and he kept pressure on my back as though he were listening. As though he understood. Then I blew into his ear a little, to get it flicking, and he made a soft, gentle sound deep in his belly.
“Who’s my boy?” I whispered to him. “Who’s my favorite horse in the whole world? Who’s my good, good boy?”
I kissed him on his cheek and on his forehead. Then I grabbed his halter and clipped a lead to it, and swung the stall door open. He plodded out, a big horse still, nearly sixteen hands at the withers, but old, and he walked quietly. He had manners. Everyone who had ever ridden him—and a million people had ridden him—knew that. He didn’t kick or bite or fight the bit. His gentleness surprised you a little, because of his size, and if you didn’t know better you expected him to go back on it, but he never did. True blue, really. I got him out and rubbed his ears and forehead a little, then put my ear against his cheek.
“You want to go for a ride?” I asked Speed. “You want to get out of here?”
He didn’t, of course. No horse wants to leave a warm stall on a fall night to go walking in the dark.
He didn’t know it was his last night alive. A horse doesn’t know that kind of thing, even though it knows a whole lot more.
I TUCKED $240 ON THE HOOK OF THE SADDLE PEG IN Speed’s stable. That was what I figured the saddle was worth. I had written a note, too, but now I debated about leaving it. I had spent a long time composing it, trying to strike the right tone. The Fergusons are good people, and good horse people, too, so I didn’t want to hurt their feelings. I had worked for them two years, almost steadily, doing everything around the stables a person could do. I’d grown up in their barn, really, and I knew they weren’t trying to be cold or uncaring about Speed. They figured he was broke for good and they had Carter, their grounds man, dig a pit grave with his backhoe out in the bones pasture. They had considered letting Speed live through the winter, but if a horse dies in the New Hampshire winter, you can’t dig a grave for him—sometimes not even with a backhoe. It’s a mess. They had come to a decision, and I didn’t exactly blame them for it, but I believe a horse, or any animal, should have a chance to live as long as it has dignity. If it can’t eat, or has horrible tumors—and I’ve worked with horses with both problems—then a merciful end is justified. But Speed’s problem wasn’t anything like that. He had gone dead in his heart, I felt, and didn’t have much joy left, because for most of his life he had been treated like a machine. He worked in fairs, on pony ride circuits, at a horseback riding academy when he was younger. A horse-slave, Mr. Ferguson said about horses like Speed. The Fergusons had taken his body in, but not his heart.
I left the note on the hook with the money. I didn’t want anyone to be confused about my motives. I didn’t want the Fergusons to think I had betrayed them. It wasn’t like I had a long, carefully planned plot in my head. I didn’t want them to have that idea. I had decided to take Speed because I had to.
Dear Mr. & Mrs. Ferguson,
I am taking Speed on a little vacation. Don’t worry, I’ve got it figured out. I’ll take good care of him. I left $240 for the saddle, which I hope is fair, and if it isn’t, I’ll make it up to you in work. I hope you understand. Sorry to do this, but I couldn’t stand by and let Speed go down tomorrow. Sorry. No offense. I’ll be back in a month or two, and if you still want me to work for you, I’d like that. If not, I understand.
Hattie Wyatt
MY NOTE DIDN’T INCLUDE A WHOLE CATALOG OF THINGS. I didn’t say, for instance, that I hoped to let Speed be a horse for once. That I took Speed so he could have a chance to live on a prairie for a season, one fall, and that I’d love him and protect him. I didn’t say that Delores was coming, too, because they knew Delores, understood that she was as horse crazy as I was, but wasn’t necessarily someone you hired. I didn’t s
ay that we had plans to take her truck, that Delores had been kicked out of her house, or had been “invited to leave,” as she put it, and that she might keep going toward California. Over time I’ve learned you don’t tell people more than they need to know. I didn’t tell them we had over a thousand dollars saved and we had toyed with the idea of a cross-country trip for quite a while, but that Speed’s death sentence gave us a final push. I kept that to myself.
I SLID THE SADDLE OVER SPEED AND PULLED THE GUT straps tight. Speed didn’t shudder or protest or play any tricks like holding his belly full, then letting it slink when you climbed on him. He was too sound for that, and I felt, I don’t know, that I might have even welcomed a trick or two from him just by way of protest. He had his entire life to protest, and never did, and as soon as I climbed on his back I bent forward and told him I loved him. I whispered that he was my boy, my good horse. As gently as I could, I prodded him forward. He clopped ahead and then paused, not sure where to go. I kicked him a little more and said, “Come on, Speed,” and he did as I asked because that’s what he does.
We rode down the Fergusons’ long driveway. It was beautiful. The Fergusons made their money down in Boston and retired up here to New Hampshire, and they had the kind of dough that let them plant trees down a long driveway and hire people like Carter, and take in horses from the Humane Society. They did good things with their wealth, no dispute, but sometimes they didn’t notice that their hobbies made other people’s hands stay awfully busy. Maybe that isn’t fair, I don’t know, but Mr. Ferguson made money by trading on the stock exchange, and that was a different kind of work than digging fence postholes or cleaning stables, and he didn’t see that. He figured he was being okay with people—kind of like he rescued people from the Humane Society right along with the horses and llamas they cared for—but the help always came tied to a kind of work that reflected back the right way on the Fergusons. Sometimes thinking about them tied me up.
Speed clopped ahead anyway. I wanted him to give some sign of liberation, but I knew if I dropped the reins he would turn slowly around and go back to his stable. Horses are like people that way.
NEW HAMPSHIRE SUGAR MAPLES. THAT’S THE KIND OF trees the Fergusons had had planted along the road, and they were adolescent trees, but pretty, too, and going over toward fall. A wild night, my uncle Ed used to call nights like this one, when the moon is full and woodsmoke lips out of the chimneys. I rubbed Speed’s neck and told him to take a good, deep breath, but he just kept going slowly. He had spent about seven years at a kids’ pony ride place over in Dunbarton, and still, whenever he came to a left-hand track, he took it, thinking it was the circle he had had to plod with some birthday kid on his back and a mom running beside with a camera. That was the kind of thing that got to me about Speed.
We didn’t come to any left-hand turns, though. I pulled him right at the end of the driveway and kicked him a little to get him going. He took two steps a little faster, then settled back into his walk. The moon stayed up ahead of us.
“HELLO, SPEEDY,” DELORES SAID.
She came forward and rubbed his nose and forehead. She wore a headlamp, so the beam went wherever she looked. When she glanced up at me, all I could see was light. When I climbed off Speed, though, I saw her in the good moonlight. She looked excited. She looked pretty, too, the way her reddish hair picked up the light and her skin seemed bright and white and tied to the moon somehow. She had taken off some weight recently, and she moved with quick, easy motions that made me think of a broom touching the ground. She wore about a dozen friendship bracelets that people had given her, and whenever she reached up to touch Speed, her wrists flashed braided strings. She always liked little things like that, and she reminded me of a Christmas tree sometimes, only a tree in a household that didn’t have much, a tree that had to be decorated with popcorn strings and clothespin animals rather than fancy crystal balls and soft white lights. There was always a little something “make-do” about Delores, something thrift-store and sub-retail, and that wouldn’t have been bad except you could tell it sometimes got to her and made her self-conscious and lonely in her head.
“Any trouble?” she asked.
“Nope,” I said. “Not a thing.”
“Let’s get him in,” she said. “We’ll be out of the state by dawn.”
“Okay,” I said, and I kissed his nose.
We unsaddled Speed in no time, then rubbed him down quickly. Delores had taken a horse trailer from Gray’s Farm, her cousin’s place. She had put a bale of hay up on the eating rack so Speed could eat what he liked as he rode. We lined Speed up and led him inside. He went right up the ramp without a thought. He filled up the trailer, though, and it took us a second to close him off in the rear.
“He’s done that a couple million times,” I said.
“Sure has,” Delores said.
She latched the back with a padlock, then scooted around to the driver’s side. I climbed in and checked behind me. I couldn’t see Speed.
When Delores slid in, she was wired the way she gets sometimes. She had a manic energy that made people like the Fergusons nervous around her. They found her too much, too excitable. A lot of people did. But I didn’t. She was like a wind that came over the White Mountains, all nutty and strong, but she could be calm, too. Delores wasn’t all one thing.
“Okay,” she said. “No surrender.”
I nodded. She started the engine and pointed us west.
“WE DID IT!” DELORES SAID WHEN WE HAD GONE ABOUT A mile. “We freaking did it! I can’t believe, after all the talk, we finally did it.”
She tapped the steering wheel, playing along with Coldplay, the band she idolized. I could tell she felt good. She wore jeans and an old ratty sweater she liked and had her hair up in a baseball hat. She wore a blue down vest over the sweater, and her pair of Doc Martens. She was revved.
“We’re going west,” I said. “And Speed, too.”
“Old Speedy,” she said. “Your Speedy.”
“What do you think they’ll say when they find the note?”
“The Fergies? Oh, they’ll be glad to have the horse off their hands.”
“They’re not like that,” I said.
“You’re right,” Delores said. “They’re worse.”
“Come on.”
“What are they going to say, Hattie? You didn’t steal anything of value. They were going to put Speed down tomorrow. So now they won’t have to. They’ll tsk and call your mom, and that will be that. Then your mom will call my mom and they’ll piece it together. By that time we’ll be west of Chicago or something.”
“I’d hate to make them feel bad. They’ve been good to me.”
“Oh, they’ll like feeling indignant and everything else. It’ll give them something to do. They always figure we’re a bunch of crazy people living up here in trailers. You know. Trashy. This will make them feel superior.”
“You’re cynical,” I said. “They like you, too, you know.”
“They’re not sure what to make of me, Hattie. They figure I’ll be pregnant and on food stamps in about a year. They still have a little hope for you.”
“You’re full of it.”
“Road trip!” she yelled, and I had to smile. “The heck with everything else.”
It was a magical night. The moon shone right on the road, and we followed it, almost as though it were tempting us to catch it. We took back roads, just in case, and kept her Ford F-150 at an easy pace. On both sides of us the trees had begun to turn. My mom always listened to the foliage report, the track the autumn colors made from the north down. Peak for our region still remained a couple weeks away, but driving, I realized it didn’t matter. I wouldn’t be here.
We drove for a long time. Eventually we stopped talking, and the road hypnotized us. The whole world shrank down to a white line on a black piece of ribbon going through trees. My mind washed around to different things—the Fergusons, Mom, our house, Marbles my cat, the GED course where Delores an
d I had met and become friends—but it never settled on one thing. We had a leaving feeling, that’s what it was.
“What time is it?” Delores asked eventually. “You hungry?”
“It’s around four.”
“There’s a place I know that’s not too far. Right near the Vermont border. Why don’t we stop for breakfast?”
“I want to check Speed, too.”
She nodded.
“You know,” she said, “if I had a lot of money, I’d buy about a thousand acres out in Wyoming and I’d leave it empty. Just as empty as it could be. And I’d put out the word that anyone who had an old horse could just swing by and drop that horse off. Nature would take care of the rest. I wouldn’t allow anything but horses.”
“There are places like that,” I said. “I found some online.”
“I mean really free horse country. Prairie land. What do you think Speed will do when he sees a prairie?”
“He’s old,” I said.
“You wait,” she said. “There’s some life left in him. No more going in circles. Speedy boy is going to be free as a bird.”
Then for a little while Delores did a dance that she does when she’s feeling goofy. It’s a kind of wiggle thing where she pretends the gear shift is her partner, and she did some finger waves and some voodoo passes, and she reached over and made me do it, too. She goes high and she goes low, Delores. She was in an up phase, I knew, but that could turn around. I’d seen her change in five minutes flat, go from bubbly to sad in the time it takes to walk to the kitchen in most houses. Right now, with the sun just starting to scrape back the night, she danced like a crazy woman. “Full moon, full moon, full moon,” she chanted. And for a while she drove with her knees, her hands throwing themselves at the world around her. Now and then I spotted the slits in her wrists—the scars, deep scars going up and down vertically the way the serious ones try it—and wished that she would hold on and go a little slower, breathe a little deeper, find a center place and try to be there.
Finding Somewhere Page 1
