by Anne Dayton
After a few minutes, I dare to open one eye, then, slowly, the other, and find the world unchanged. Everywhere I look, things are exactly as they were a few minutes ago: the trees are blowing in the gusty March winds, the grass is still shriveled and brittle, the stable is standing right where it always was.
I take a deep breath and let my shoulders relax. I’m a lot taller than I was last time, and I wiggle around in the saddle, trying to get used to the new fit. Alfalfa waits patiently as I get settled. I find the reins with my right hand, keeping an eye on Alfalfa’s ears. A horse shows you exactly how he’s feeling with his ears. If they’re facing forward, all is well, but if they’re facing backward, watch out.
Alfalfa’s velvety ears are facing forward, and there’s a sense of calmness about him. I let out a breath and try to relax. Maybe we can go on the ten-minute loop. Ed cleared it ages ago for the riding school he wanted to start, and we’ve always used it to give the horses exercise. I know it like the back of my hand.
I lean over and whisper, “Are you ready? Promise to go slow?”
Obviously Alfalfa doesn’t say anything, but he doesn’t have to. He always had this way of knowing. He knew what I wanted him to do with the smallest gesture, without so much as a word. I give him a gentle squeeze with my legs, and he eases forward. He breathes slowly and evenly, and soon I let my body sway in time with the gentle bobbing of his gait.
I feel a familiar tightening in my cheeks and realize I’m smiling. I never thought I would ride a horse again, but it feels so good to be here. I throw back my head and let the last rays of the setting sun warm my face, and I smile bigger and bigger until a few tears run down my face. Who would have thought I’d be here again?
But of course, Ms. Moore knew I could do it. As Alfalfa steps into the clearing, I whisper a prayer of thanks.
36
By the time I return Alfalfa to his stall and get him settled in for the night, it’s already six o’clock. I should go in and tell Dreamy all about what I’ve accomplished, but adrenaline is coursing through my veins, and there’s still more to do.
I pull out my phone and start making calls to the Miracle Girls. They can’t flake out on me now. Everything comes down to this.
***
“Are you going to tell us what we’re doing here?” Riley yawns, leans back on the floral couch, and stretches her feet out in front of her. It’s 7:30 now. We lost precious time getting organized.
Christine’s stepsister, Emma, is in the house, watching some new dance music video again and again, trying to teach herself the moves, so we’re in the old painting studio in the backyard. It’s better this way. Fewer people will be in on the secret.
“Yeah, what’s the deal?” Ana plops down next to Christine on the couch and wrinkles up her nose at the musty smell. For some reason Christine loves this old thing, even though it looks like it should have been dragged to the dump years ago.
“We’re finally going to do it. We’re saving Ms. Moore. Tonight.” I start pacing, but I don’t miss the look the other girls exchange. I know I sound crazy, but I figured out exactly how we’re going to fix this, and I need to get the girls on board. I can’t make this happen by myself. “So what we need now are your poster paints. Where are they?”
“In there?” Christine points to a closet across the room, raising an eyebrow.
“We’re going to paint Ms. Moore into a job?” Ana shakes her head, watching me.
I stop pacing and open the closet door, and I start digging around on the shelves. There’s all kinds of stuff in here—brushes, canvasses, bottles, tubes, and jars.
“What are we going to do with poster paints?” Riley pushes herself up and comes over to the closet to help me poke around.
“Ms. Moore got a job interview at some private school for rich kids in Boston, and she’s thinking of taking it. She’s flying out for an interview. She’s slipping away from us, and we’ve got to stop her.” I take a few breaths. “The school board wants to hush up the court case and make it go away, so she thinks there’s no point in staying. Plus, without Ashley to testify against her father, there’s no way for the school board to win the case.”
“What?” Ana sits straight up. “But I thought they voted to reinstate her?”
“Only if she won the case.”
Riley chews on her lip and takes a deep breath. “Zoe, we all love her, but I don’t really know what else we can do.”
My eyes go wide. “I do.” I yank a bag off a shelf and look inside. Watercolors. I toss it on the floor. “We can’t give up. Don’t you see? She never let us give up on ourselves.” I nudge Riley. “When we first met you, we couldn’t see who you really were. It was Ms. Moore who stuck up for you and challenged us to get to know the girl behind the cheerleading skirt.”
Christine laughs, and Riley lets a hint of a smile creep across her face.
“And Christine.” I shove aside a box brimming over with crumpled-up newspapers. “Without Ms. Moore, I don’t think you would have made it through last year.” Christine’s eyes water, and she bows her head to hide it. “No one else would have yelled at your dad, and that’s exactly what he needed.”
Christine stares at the floor. I’m not worried about those two. They’re usually up for anything, and even though this is very definitely against school rules, for some reason I suspect that will only make this more appealing to them. It’s Ana I’m not sure about. She is so good, so driven.
“Zoe’s right,” Ana says quietly. “Ms. Moore always told me to stay on my parents and not give up hope that someday we’d reach a compromise. And she was right.” Christine peeks up at her. “I mean, they’re still crazy, but things are better.”
“Aha!” I pull out a plastic grocery bag full of poster paints and hold it up triumphantly. “You guys—” I take a deep breath. They’re all staring at me. “Even if she’s given up on herself, we can’t give up on her.”
Christine walks slowly toward me. She takes the bag out of my hand and reaches into the closet to pull out a coffee can full of brushes.
“So what’s the plan, Red?”
***
“Oh thank goodness,” I say as Ashley Anderson and Riley emerge from Jordan Fletcher’s party. Only Riley was brave enough to go in there and get her. Two football players stagger back and forth on the lawn, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders. Riley opens the backseat door and motions to Ashley to get in.
“Sorry to, uh, tear you away,” Christine says from behind the wheel. I smile at her from the passenger seat.
Ashley hesitates as she takes in the handmade posters, the boxes stuffed with flyers, and the rolls of duct tape at my feet. She turns back to Riley, who shrugs and smiles sheepishly.
“You guys have been busy.” Ashley takes the middle seat and leaves Riley the one behind me. Ana scoots over to make room and nods at Ashley. Ana stunned us all with her idea to include our ultimate frienemy in our plan, but once she suggested it, we knew it was the right thing to do.
“Buckle up. We’re on a mission!” Christine acts like she’s going to peel out, but instead she looks up and down the streets of Jordan’s otherwise sleepy subdivision and then eases forward, driving like a grandma.
As we slip through the nearly silent streets toward the school, we fill Ashley in on Ms. Moore’s upcoming move and our plan. She’s excited, which is good because we didn’t really give her a choice. It’s midnight now, and I try to rub the tiredness out of my eyes. This morning seems like it was a month ago, but it feels good to finally be taking action in my life. No more sitting around, whining about how it’s all playing out.
“So we’re going to paper the school with flyers?” Ashley claps her hands. “What do they say?”
“Um . . .” I blink, trying to make my brain work at this late hour. I can’t really even remember. There’s one about justice being served. Another about having a say in our futures. I can remember one about being innocent until proven guilty. “A bunch of protest message
s. We’re going to put them everywhere.” I point behind me.
Christine rounds the final corner and points her car toward school. In the distance the shadowy walls are dark and still. She slows down to a crawl in the school zone.
“Have you figured out how we’re getting all this stuff in? They padlock the fence around the school after hours.” A huge streetlight illuminates the truth of Ashley’s statement. I guess we forgot about the huge fence around the perimeter because we see it every day. “How much do you have to carry?”
“Great.” Christine bumps her head on the back of the seat. “It’s hardly going to be a covert operation if we have to hop a fence with this stuff.”
“Go around back.” I point to the end of the block. “I know the code to the lock on the gate by the band room.”
“Really?” Ana’s face breaks into a smile as Christine executes a very cautious U-turn and heads toward the side street that leads to the back of the school. For once in my life being a band geek has paid off.
“Yeah, we always have competitions and parades on the weekend, and Mr. Parker knows the code. That way they don’t have to send someone out to unlock it every time.” I shrug. “He, uh, let it slip one time.”
“Zoe, you are a genius,” Riley whispers, and a moment later Christine pulls her car into the small parking lot by the band room, then steers over to the edge of the main lot, right next to the front office.
We all tumble out of the car in silence. The moon casts a silvery light on the old, crumbling roof of Marina Vista High, and the entire school looks like some abandoned ghost town from long ago. I pick out my math classroom and find myself mesmerized by how different it all seems at night—empty, quiet.
“Okay, the best strategy is to split up.” Ashley holds out her hand, and Christine gives her the car keys as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. She opens the trunk and rubs her hands together greedily. “Good job on this.” Ashley opens one of the huge boxes of flyers that we printed up the 24-hour Fedex Office store. “Let’s all take a part of the school we’re familiar with.” She hands me a stack. “Zoe, band room and the surrounding area. Obviously you won’t be able to get in the classrooms, but the breezeways are fair game. Slide a bunch under the classroom doors if you can. Put a flyer in every locker, every nook, and every cranny. The more creative you can be, the better.”
She assigns the rest of the girls different sections of the school, and then checks her watch. “Let’s meet back here in exactly thirty minutes. Then we’ll go in groups to hang the posters.”
We all nod, and I realize that I was right about Ashley. She may have wronged us in the past, and she may still have some very serious character flaws, but she sincerely loves Ms. Moore. And that makes her a bit like us.
“The key is we can’t make this easy for them. The teachers and administrators get here first, so we don’t want them to have time to clean it up.” She makes eye contact with each of us. Her stare fills me with confidence. “Got it?”
“Got it.” Ana gives her a high five before she turns and runs toward the English classrooms, laughing.
37
Dreamy, Nick, and I shivered through the service at Church of the Redwoods this morning. After last night I could barely drag myself out of bed, but I was glad I went. Pastor Levi’s talk was about Jesus the Radical, the man who overturned tables in the temple and said, “Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s,” and I felt a great calm come over me. Being a Christian isn’t about being “good.” It’s about walking the path of truth and light, and when something isn’t right, not being afraid to stand up and say, “Not today, not if I can help it, not without a fight.”
A part of me still can’t believe we did it, but mostly, I’m proud. It was irrational and over the top, but we did the only thing we could, and that feels good. But once I got home from church and spent the afternoon staring at my phone, willing it to ring, I realized that it was too early to celebrate the new and improved Zoe Fairchild. I have one more thing to do. I want him to be mine, and I’m going to tell him.
I IM the girls to say I’ll miss youth group tonight, then hop in the shower and blow my hair straight. I carefully apply a thin layer of pressed powder and smooth on a coat of lipstick. I slip on my best jeans and a shirt that’s just tight enough but not too revealing. Then I call him. I call him because I want to, because I like him and I’m ready to admit that now. Marcus and I are over, and he broke up with Grace to be with me. There’s no reason we shouldn’t be together, and I’m not afraid anymore.
He promises to meet me downtown in half an hour.
When Dean drives up in his boxy brown Toyota from the eighties, I’m waiting on a bench outside Half Moon Bay Coffee Company watching the last bit of the afternoon sun fade away. I’ve been picturing his face in my mind for so long it’s almost weird to see it in person. He’s even cuter than I remembered.
“Hey.” Dean’s wearing dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt with some sort of Chinese character on it that stretches across his chest. “Wanna go?”
I try to make my mouth work. “Huh?” How is it that the moment I see him I lose all train of thought? I was the one who called him, but now that he’s here I’m not sure what to do with myself or how to say that. I can’t say, “Will you be my boyfriend?” Or wait, can I? I should have called Riley first. But he’s already back inside his car, so I decide to embrace the new me and just go with it.
The worn leather gives off a sweet smell as I slide into the passenger seat. He turns on the engine, tunes the radio to the local college station, and pulls onto Main Street. My mind wanders as the cookie-cutter houses of our town zip past the window. What happened to me this weekend? It feels like everything has changed, like I’m a totally different person.
I lean forward and turn the radio down. “Where are we going? Are we running from the law?”
“I want to show you my mom’s Christmas present.” He smiles at me as if that explains everything, and I roll my eyes. Still, I settle back against the cushion and feel strangely content. Empty fields whiz past my window as darkness grows, and we drive farther north.
Eventually Dean turns right off the highway and takes a left at the underpass. I sit up in my seat and crane my neck to look around, but the seat belt catches and pinches my throat. If we were just going north on Highway 1, that means we’re now heading toward the Pacific Ocean. I try to make out some hint of where we’re headed in the dark night. He comes to a small winding road that traces the coast and takes a right to follow it.
“Do you even know where we’re going?” I try to catch Dean’s eye, but he keeps his face turned toward the road ahead of us.
“Don’t you trust me, Zoe?”
I study his profile. Do I trust him? I don’t really know. I want to trust him with my heart, but he’s so unpredictable. Then again, maybe not knowing is part of the thrill. I don’t answer him.
The ocean is on his side of the car as we pass lonely, decrepit piers with fishing boats, the occasional surf shack, and fish-n-chips places. I roll down my window and allow the saturated salty air in the car. I take a deep breath, then search the sky for the moon, but all I see are stars in the clear sky. Tonight must be a new moon.
Dean rolls into a deserted parking lot, and the tires crunch on the oyster shells that form makeshift gravel. He turns off the car and smiles at me. “You ready?”
“I guess.” I slam the door shut and follow him. There’s a hand-painted wooden sign that says Pillar Point Harbor. “Hey, this is where people park their boats.”
Dean puts out an arm to stop me from walking, looks up and down the windy back road, and then hurries me across it. “Berth.”
“Huh?”
He strides out on a long pier with many wooden arms shooting off it. It smells briny and almost tangy, and the air is softer here, laced with moisture.
“People berth their boats here. That’s what it’s called.”
“Ohhhh. Sorry, Popeye.”
I hear him laugh, but he’s focused on reading cryptic numbers marking each pier. Finally he seems to find the one he wants and takes a left. He pulls a key from his pocket, unlocks the gate that leads down the pier, and pushes it open.
Around us hundreds of sailboat poles sway back and forth as the gentle lap, lap, lap of the Pacific tickles the hulls. I focus on dodging coils of rope that have become unwound, splintering boards warped from the sun, and rusty nails sticking up at haphazard angles. We stop in front of a funny-looking boat.
“What’s this?”
Dean takes a long stride onto the boat and lands easily on the tarp. My eyes go wide. He smiles at me and holds his arms out by his sides. “This,” he says, gesturing around, “is my mom’s Christmas present.”
It’s definitely a sailboat. That much I can figure out by the huge, uh, pole thingy in the middle. Mast. Yeah, it’s called a mast, I think. But this sailboat does not have a little house in the belly. Instead it’s some kind of sportier version. It has two long, uh, floaty arm thingies and a tarp stretched between them.
“It’s only a basic cat, but Mom said she didn’t want to fool around with all the upkeep anymore.” Dean grabs hold of the mast and beams at me.
“Some cat. Is it house-trained?” The boat sways beneath him as it adjusts to his weight.
“Catamaran. That means it has two hulls.” He points down at the floaty arm thingies. “Time’s a wastin’, matey. Climb aboard.”
I start to back away slowly. This is not exactly how I pictured our first official date.
“C’mon. What are you afraid of?”
I hold up a finger. “One, my parents finding my body on the bottom of the ocean.” I take a few more steps backward and hold up another. “Two, ending up in Bora Bora. Three, puking my guts out all night.” The one I don’t mention is the thing I’m probably most worried about: being alone on a boat with Dean.
