“Little Miss,” he drawled. “You realize there’s going to be a test on this material at the end of the week, don’t you?”
Little Miss. That was what he called me when I annoyed him. And I annoyed him frequently. It had crossed my mind more than once that, if I’d just stayed put at Hawthorne, I’d either be in Conceptual Physics II or AP Biology right now. Instead, because of the college’s ridiculous freshman year requirements, I had an auto mechanic lecturing me about the mysteries of the San Andreas Fault. At least they’d let me skip to Earth Science. But, yeah. I reckon I missed a little.
“A test,” Badfinger went on, “that will count for a good percent of your final grade this semester.”
“A good percent?” I paused, letting my next sarcastic rejoinder rest on the tip of my tongue. It was just too easy to mess with this guy. I would’ve felt bad, if I wasn’t so appalled by his dismissal of me as some twerpy little girl who couldn’t possibly grasp the infinitely daunting realms of . . . Concepts in Earth Science.
“You are on thin ice with me today, Little Missy,” Badfinger warned, turning around to face the dry-erase board. “Thin. Ice.”
“But I do know the point at which it freezes,” I chirped. “In Fahrenheit and Celsius.” A couple of kids in the back snickered. At least somebody was amused.
THE HORSE TWITCHED ITS TAIL, SNORTED. It turned its massive head around and looked at me out of the corner of its gigantic dark eye, as if to say, “You cannot be serious.” Walter stood there, holding the reins.
“Go on, put your foot in the stirrup. He won’t rear up.”
“Can I take a pass?”
“Take a pass?”
I hesitated. Walter was turning out to be a cool guy. My mom had left for work at the crack of dawn, so he spent the day showing me around the ranch, introducing me to the cowboy guys in the fields and the two girls in the office who took care of getting jobs for the animals—the horses actually had headshots!—and telling me his whole story. Walter grew up in LA; his family were movie people, set designers—his dad even worked with Orson Welles. But Walter spent his summers working on this very ranch, which belonged to his uncle at the time, and he’d always liked Westerns, so that became his main deal. Training horses for movies—picture horses, he called them. Which had a kind of poetic ring to it, I thought. Walter pointed out the horses I would recognize if I’d seen this movie or that miniseries, like they were real celebrities or something. He was so proud of them. Truthfully, I couldn’t tell the difference. I was like “there’s a brown one” and “there’s a black one” and, honestly, I never in my life needed to know what the term “gelding” meant. I guess I could appreciate that these horses were magnificent beasts and all. But now Walter expected me to climb onto the back of one and do what, exactly? I mean, as cool as it would’ve been to go charging off to Rivendell on my noble steed like Arwen rescuing Frodo in the movies, in real life, these suckers were huge!
“I’m sure he’s a nice horse and all, but, seriously, Walter. I’m not feeling it.”
“You’re not feeling it?”
“I, uh . . .” I stood there in the smelly barn in my Converse high tops, wanting to fit in, really wanting to love the ranch. But I’d never been one of those girls who fantasized about riding horses. I knew those kinds of girls back in elementary school. But I never understood the allure. I mean, it’s a big stinky animal. So what?
“I really appreciate the opportunity,” I explained, “and I appreciate that you’re taking time out of your day, but, really—I’m just not a horse girl.”
Walter wiped his nose with a bandanna he kept jammed in his back pocket. He frowned at me.
“You are your mother’s child, you know that?” He didn’t make that sound like a compliment, but I was secretly pleased. “What’re you so afraid of? Afraid you’ll fall off? You won’t. Gingerbread here ain’t exactly a rodeo pony. We just used him in the background of a Stetson cologne ad. All he’s good at is standing real still.”
“It’s not that.”
“Then what is it?”
“I don’t know. Why do you care? I don’t want to do it, that’s all.” I turned and started walking back to the house, vaguely aware of the farmhands or whatever who were watching this scene play out. This whole thing was getting lame fast.
“Hey, you’re starting a real disturbing trend here, you know that?” he called after me. I looked back. Walter tied Gingerbread’s reins to a post with a loose knot and followed after me.
“How is not wanting to ride a horse a disturbing trend?”
“Is this how you’re gonna live your life? You’re gonna run away when things get a little hard? When there’s something new and unfamiliar and scary?”
“Walter.” I stopped. “You remember how the first thing you said to me was that you’re not my father?”
“I’m not speaking to you as a father, I’m speaking to you as an adult who’s been on this planet longer than you have. Sometimes you have to stick it out. You have to be willing to do things you wouldn’t normally—”
“I did that already, didn’t I? Just because I don’t want to ride some big smelly horse doesn’t mean I don’t take risks. What do you think I came out here for? This whole trip was one big risk, and I was scared out of my mind, but I did it because I had to. I couldn’t hang around that shithole town anymore wondering why—wondering why she left me there—” I stopped. Good gravy. I was about to cry.
Walter squinted at me. Why was I standing in the middle of a field, telling my problems to the Marlboro Man, anyway? Because I don’t want to go back home. Because I want to be home right here. Because I don’t want to be Lula Monroe anymore, Weird Girl, holed up in her room at her grandparents’ house in the retirement community, watching X-Files with her gay best friend who doesn’t love her.
“It’s not you. You know that, right? She doesn’t even know you.”
I nodded. I knew. My mother didn’t even know me. The Marlboro Man pulled me in close to him and held me while I cried into his shirt.
AFTER THE BADFINGER HUMILIATION, I WENT to the computer lab to check my email. Rory was online. What was he doing online in the middle of the day?
Okay, this was nothing, right? Communication. Just go for it, give it a shot. What’s the worst that could happen? He could ignore me. He’s already doing that.
BloomOrphan: hey
Is it possible for a cursor to blink for a thousand years? So he wasn’t speaking to me. Fine. I minimized the screen and opened an email from Jay that had a link to a YouTube video of Le Tigre. This sort of disco-like girl band that she liked. I put my headphones on to listen. Instead, bing!
SpookyKid: Hey yourself.
He’s speaking to me! Now what?
BloomOrphan: how’s it going?
SpookyKid: Crazy busy. Senior year. How’s it going with you?
BloomOrphan: ok. I went by your house this am. patty said you moved out.
SpookyKid: Something like that.
BloomOrphan: everything ok? (dumb question?)
SpookyKid: Bit of a SNAFU at first, now ok.
BloomOrphan: oh. good.
Well, what did I expect? That he’s going to go into this whole dramatic story with me over IM?
BloomOrphan: Leo saw you in the paper this morning. undefeated.
SpookyKid: I know. Weird, right? Furman U in Greenville SC offered me a scholarship. Coach M says hold out for more schools.
BloomOrphan: congrats!
I was already bored with the small talk. I wanted to talk to him, really talk to him, like we used to. But what could I say in a stupid IM? How does it feel to be undefeated? I mean, really. But then:
SpookyKid: XF2. Mulder with a beard.
BloomOrphan: aieee!!! I know, right?!
SpookyKid: I knew you would freak out.
I almost jumped for joy, right there in the computer lab. This was major. This was huge. Not only was Rory speaking to me, he was speaking to me about The X-Files. This m
eant that, on some level, we were back. Something was smoothed over, forgiven. This would probably seem silly, if you didn’t understand us. If you didn’t understand the way we spoke. There were times when talking about The X-Files was actually more important than talking about ourselves. I mean, it was the way we talked about ourselves. It was the two of us saying, all right, we can’t even approach the real stuff, can’t even begin, but we have this shared love, and, yes, it’s just some television show, but it’s our television show. It was this language that we spoke, that only the two of us understood. If you knew me like Rory knows me, you would know that our first topic of conversation after the credits rolled on the second X-Files movie would not have been the plotline, the cinematography, or the special effects. It would have been the fact that, holed up in his snowy hideaway for all those years, Agent Mulder has grown a crazy exile beard.
We’re simultaneously shallow and intense this way.
SpookyKid: gotta run end of study hall
BloomOrphan: nice typing with ya
SpookyKid: :)
WALTER FINALLY GOT ME ON THAT damn horse.
“Now, I don’t wanna say I told you so,” he said. “But what’d I tell ya?” We rode the horses up a small mountain, through a wooded trail. Just when we’d come to a clearing near the top of the ridge, the gray clouds that had clotted the sky all day suddenly broke apart. Shafts of dark amber light seemed to pour out of cracks in the horizon as the sun began to set off in the distance, over the twinkling city lights.
“It’s okay. You’re right. This is the most beautiful—this is fucking amazing.” It was, truly, one of the most breathtaking things I’d ever seen that wasn’t CGI.
“You, ah—” Walter cleared his throat. “You use that kinda language in front of your grandma?”
“No,” I snorted. Then I got it. I didn’t even have any sarcastic comeback. “Sorry.” He was right. There was no reason to drop the f-bomb, especially in front of such an incredible sight. Go ahead and laugh, but it felt spiritual. Really, it did.
“Hey Walter, are—are you religious?” I asked him all of a sudden. I don’t know why I cared.
“Religious?” Walter barked a laugh. “What brought that on?”
“I dunno. Sorry, forget I asked.”
“I’m not a regular church attendee, if that’s what you mean. Are you?”
“Me? No. Not at all.”
“But you get it, don’t you?” He looked at me with a sort of Gandalf-like twinkle in his eye.
“Get what?”
“Being up here. Feels like you’re getting the point, don’t it?” Walter crossed one hand over the other, ruminating. “You can spend your day running from here to there, busying yourself with all these things you’re convinced are so important. It’s easy to lose your sense of being alive in it. Easy to forget that you’re still part of all this . . . all this life. You’re just another animal, and you’re right here in it with the bugs and birds and trees and mountains, on this little rock spinning around the sun. Doesn’t seem possible to forget that, but somehow we all do.” Walter scratched his long, sunburned nose. “The first time I ever came up to these mountains, when I was just a kid, I had this crazy idea that this is where God lives. But on the other hand,” he squinted out at the epic, molten-lava sunset, a half-smile on his face. “Maybe it’s not all that crazy.”
“Maybe you should bring my mom up here sometime,” I said. “If you can pry her off the BlackBerry.”
“Oh, your mom’s seen the sights.” Walter smiled to himself. “Sometimes you gotta be patient with her. She’s got a lot on her plate. But once you get to know her better, you’ll see. She’s amazing, Lula. Sometimes I wonder why she even gives raggedy ol’ me the time of day. I just thank God that she—” Walter stopped. “I suppose that’s your answer, right there. You wanna know if I’m religious? I sure haven’t made a dent in the pew, but boy do I thank God. For every morning I get to wake up and my coffee’s hot and your mom’s right there next to me at the breakfast table. I thank God I get to work this ranch for a living instead of having to put on a necktie and commute to some office. I get to smell sage and piñon instead of traffic exhaust. Somebody or something made a beautiful place in this ugly world, and saw fit to put me right in the middle of it. Now, whether there’s some old fella with a beard floating on a cloud up there or just some . . .” Walter waved his hand, “cosmic energy or whatnot, I got no idea. But whatever God is, wherever He lives, I thank Him because, I tell you what, I can look back on ever minute of it, good and bad, and I can tell you that I’ve had one hell of a life.” Walter laughed. “Pardon my French.”
I felt the horse shift his weight beneath me. I took a deep breath. Smelled the prickly-sweet pine smell and the sharp, musky sage. Smelled horse hair and leather. My own sweat. Thank God for this. Thank God. But I didn’t know who or what I was thanking. Did anybody know? Janet was Jewish, or at least she had been once. Leo was raised Lutheran, but he’d given up on religion after Vietnam, and Janet had followed his lead. Most of the kids at school, except me and Rory, went to the big First Baptist church in town, or their basketball rivals over at First Methodist. I went to the Baptist version with Jenny once, but I didn’t get it. A bunch of guys in shiny suits giving me earnest, toothy smiles like an army of Bill Clintons, shaking my hand with both of theirs and saying emphatically “We’re just so glad you’re here. God bless you, we just love you.” Who was this “we,” I asked Jenny skeptically, and why do they love me when they don’t even know who I am?
But I wanted to feel like Walter did. Like there was something or somebody in charge, watching over us, who had put me here for a reason. When I was all old and crusty like Walter, I wanted to look back and say I had one hell of a life. Pardon my French.
“I reckon that all sounds pretty corny, huh?” Walter chuckled. “Y’ask an old man about religion, you’ll get an answer, one way or the other. Come on.” He slapped the slack reins against his horse. “We better get back home before it gets too dark.”
“Okay. How do I . . . um . . .” My horse was just sitting there. “Where’s reverse?”
“Gingerbread!” Walter whistled sharply and clicked his tongue. Gingerbread craned his neck and, slowly, turned and followed.
“You’re looking pretty good up there,” Walter remarked.
“You think so?” I leaned back in the saddle as we began our descent.
“One ride and you’re already a pro,” he called back over his shoulder.
“Beats driving a car, that’s for sure.” Gingerbread’s hooves made dry claps along the rocks.
“Not much of a driver, huh?”
“I don’t know how,” I confessed.
“You don’t know how to drive a car?” Walter was mildly incredulous. “Shoot, time I was fifteen, I was driving horse trailers all over California.”
“Janet and Leo were too nervous to teach me on the Cadillac. I signed up for Driver’s Ed at school last fall, but there was only one period where you could take it, and it was the same time as Advanced English.”
“Maybe your mother could teach you. She’s pretty good behind the wheel.”
“Sounds like a bonding experience to me.”
nine
THE FRIDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL GAME WAS the absolute last place on earth I expected to find Samantha Lidell. I’d successfully avoided her ever since the Humiliating Incident last spring. And now there she was, smoking discreetly behind the Booster Club tent.
“Tallulah Monroe.” She said my name. “Didn’t expect to find you here. Long time no see.”
“Likewise,” I muttered, having a hard time getting the words out.
“I heard you got your GED. How is college life treating you?”
“I um. It’s okay.” I um. It’s okay. Dum de dum dum. Listen to me. I was like some monosyllabic mouthbreather. Did she have to be so cool? Just . . . standing there like that? “So what are you doing here?” I blurted out. Not very cool at all.
“I�
��m rooting for the home team.” She displayed her Fighting Eagles sweatshirt. “I’m Rory’s Senior Year Advisor. He’s been having a bit of a rough go lately, so I’m here for him.”
“Well. That’s nice of you.”
“His mother threw him out of the house. You knew that, didn’t you?” She gave me the patented Mrs. Lidell Withering Stare, so lethal it’s banned in twelve states. I wanted to crawl under the bleachers and die. “He—” Her mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear anything over the marching band.
“He what?”
“You heard me.” She exhaled smoke.
“No, actually, I didn’t.” The band was playing “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” if you can believe it. The Nirvana song. Since when did it have a trumpet solo? “What did you say?”
“He came out to his mother. Not on purpose. It happened during the summer, right before you came back. She caught him out on a date with a boy from UNC. And she told him not to come home.”
“Oh my God.” I felt terrible. And Sam was staring at me as if I were the one who’d thrown the kid out. “Is he all right? Does he have a place to stay?”
“He’s not out on the street,” she said. “Not anymore. I don’t know if I should tell you anything else.”
“What? I mean, I heard you this time—why not?”
“You know why not. Because of everything he went through. Rory was barely holding it together when you left. And you just went blithely along on your trip, never thinking once about who you hurt, or what it cost. You couldn’t leave a note, or pick up the phone just once? Return an email?”
“I already had this lecture from my grandparents, thanks,” I muttered, turning to leave. “I messed up. Well aware. Thank you.”
“No, Lula. I don’t think you are aware. We all care about you.” She grabbed my arm. I stopped. “You can’t just make people feel . . . feel so much concern for you, then act like it’s nothing when they get upset.”
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