Love and Muddy Puddles

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  Chapter 25

   

   

  It would sound cute to say that Cupcake and I galloped into the sunset, but of course, it being the middle of the night, there was no sunset. And at first she was a little bit hesitant to gallop, but she got used to it quickly and I was urging her on, faster and faster. The anger in my body was being transferred to Cupcake’s hooves. I just wanted to move, fly away, escape. I want to be by myself. It was pointless to be with others. No one would understand what had happened. No one had understood anything at all about my life up to this point. Not Dad, not Mum, not Josh. Not even Charlie.

  I hate you! I hate you all! I yelled to the darkness. Everything’s gone! I can’t do this anymore!

  We rode and rode and I was crying and my nose was streaming and I was gasping and screaming and raging. Every muscle in my body was aching to go harder, and Cupcake, like the wonderful girl she was, was taking all the anger for me, going faster and faster down the hill until it felt like we had taken off and were above the world, flying and floating right up to the moon.

  My tears cleared and my body slumped, exhausted. I leaned down and hugged Cupcake around the neck and brought her to a walk.

  I looked up at the sky. The stars were out, like a cloud of fireflies buzzing. And the moon. I had never seen such a moon. It had been beautiful in the car, but to be outside in the air beneath it was like being part of a fireworks display. It was getting higher now and it had turned from pale gold to a deep silver. Occasionally it ducked behind a tree and I could see the branches and leaves as stark outlines against it.

  I was still doing sniffy, gulping breaths but the rage had gone down. My whole body was spent. I felt like I had been tired for a long time.

  Cupcake stopped to nibble the grass. I let her. It wouldn’t hurt this once not to be strict. And maybe she was like me and needed to be given a break once in a while. While she munched, I had a little chat to the moon. It’s funny to talk out loud to the sky but I figured someone or something would be listening.

  “I just feel like nothing’s fair,” I said. “You probably saw it all happen. My friends dropped me, but really, it was only because I had to come and live out here. And that’s not my fault. It’s Dad’s fault. If he hadn’t wanted his stupid life change, we wouldn’t be here and I would still be popular and everything would be okay.” And I gave a short, sharp sigh.

  The moon in all its shimmering glory looked back at me. And it didn’t say anything.

  I mean, I know that’s what’s meant to happen, right? The moon is not supposed to talk to you in the middle of the night when you’re angry. It would be super-weird if it did, but I just wanted a little bit of understanding. Somehow I wanted a magic-moon-fairy-godmother type person to pop down from the sky and say, “Yes, Coco, this is all completely unfair and I will miraculously go back in time for you and fix it so that none of this ever happened. Oh and by the way, would you like a new dress? I see that yours is both wet and out of fashion. Ka-zing!”

  With nothing but silence coming back to me, I got angry again. “Fine,” I said. “If you won’t help me, I’ll fix it myself. Come on Cupcake, let’s go.”

  I dug my heels into Cupcake. The entrance to the track up the cliff and over onto the dam was nearby. It was my favourite ride and I was going to take it. I pondered briefly about the fact that Dad might be looking for me and maybe I should go back, but I quickly got rid of the thought.

  “Too bad,” I said aloud. I was beginning to like this talking-to-the-sky thing. “It’s his fault I’m in this state anyway. He can just wait. He’s wrecked my life—what more does he want from me?”

  I pushed Cupcake hard. She cantered up the mountain, panting and sweating, but now I didn’t even care about her. I just wanted one thing—to get revenge on everyone. I wanted to make them look for me, to worry. I wanted them to pay some attention to me for once.

  “Nobody ever thinks about me!” I yelled out loud. “Nobody cares! They just think they can ignore me and get away with it. Well, I’ll show them.”

  We came off the top of the mountain onto a flat area that had a few different little streams and boggy patches. I could tell that Cupcake wanted to slow down whenever we went near the water. She seemed nervous. But I just kept going and going, digging in my heels. When we got to one bigger place where she actually had to cross the stream, she shied at it and wouldn’t go through. I got angry with her.

  “Come on Cupcake. This is silly. Just do it.” I yelled at her and slapped my reins across her shoulders. “Keep going! Go through the water.”

  And then I asked those fateful words, words which, I know now, will never cross my lips again. I said these words: “What could be worse than this?”

  Yep.

  Seriously.

  You would think I would have learned.

  But I hadn’t.

  The thing that could be worse than this was about to happen. Cupcake didn’t want to step into the water. And then, a wombat, scared by all the noise of a crazy, yelling girl and a wild, galloping horse in the middle of the night, disturbing his quiet grass-eating, came running out of the bushes, straight into Cupcake’s eye line. Cupcake saw the wombat.

  Cupcake has never liked wombats.

  When she saw it she shied, reared and bolted. As she jumped the stream, I fell backwards, and as I fell, my ankle twisted underneath me. All I could hear, as I landed on prickly, muddy scrub, was an enormous crack.

  And that was when it all went black.

  If they were making a movie of my life, this would be the point where the soft focus and the wobbly camerawork would come into play. I would flutter my eyelids a few times, say some nonsensical, but vaguely meaningful words and then open my eyes to focus right into the face of the person I love the most, whereupon I would smile and they would smile and wink back a few tears and whatever conflicts we had had up till that point would suddenly all be meaningless and completely over because just seeing each other again would be enough to solve every problem that had ever taken place.

  It wasn’t quite like that.

  As I opened my eyes, all I could see was the moon laughing at me. All I could feel was shooting, sharp pain, moving upwards from my left foot but then quickly taking over my entire body. After about a minute the pain was so bad I threw up. All over my dress and on the ground. Then, because I couldn’t hold up my head as it was both exhausting and painful, I put my head back on the ground and so of course my hair was covered with vomit.

  I shut my eyes again. Perhaps it was all a bad dream. Perhaps when I next opened them I would magically be in a hospital, lying on clean white sheets, my hair washed and blow dried, with Wi-Fi available for my iPod and a TV playing comfortingly in the background.

  I opened my eyes. It was still dark, scratchy and vomit-smelling. I winced. The pain from my foot was now becoming a serious throb, I was beginning to feel something decidedly uncomfortable in my ribs as well, and, even worse, I realised I was completely alone.

  “Cupcake! Cupcake! Where are you?” I yelled. But my voice sounded pale and small, like one of those chipmunks on a YouTube clip. “Cupcake...” I pleaded. But there was no Cupcake. She was gone.

  And I was left by myself in the dark and the cold.