In a minute Ethan hops in. Sorry. I was talking to Colt.
Nobody says anything. We all know what they were talking about.
Our car has never been so quiet. I stare out the window on the way to church and imagine I’m riding Dream. Dream and I have ridden every road in Hamilton. I picture us galloping now, keeping pace with the car. I imagine jumping ditches and hedges as we pass by.
I close my eyes. I don’t want to imagine anything else.
Dad parks the car, and I follow Ethan into church. We take the front right pew because that’s where the interpreter, Mrs. Gorton, stands. Mrs. Gorton has white hair and could play Mrs. Santa Claus without a costume. She signs all the songs, the announcements, and the sermon. Sometimes I watch her to see what she leaves out so I can tell Ethan later.
Only not today. This morning I’m not watching or listening. My head feels like it’s underwater—so deep nobody can get to me. I stand up and sit down when Ethan does. But I don’t sing. Ethan sways to the music even though he can’t hear it. He says he can feel the organ vibrate. And I guess he can, because he’s always right with the rhythm. His fingers move through the lyrics, signing the words, and I know he’s singing in his heart.
But I’m not.
I don’t hear a word of the sermon until halfway through, when Ethan elbows me.
Don’t you wish Colt were here? he signs.
I frown at him and shrug. Then I hear Pastor Alan say, “They refused to worship Nebuchadnezzar, even when he threatened to throw them into the fiery furnace.” I figure he must be talking about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.
“They told the king that they knew God could save them from getting burned to death. But even if God didn’t come to their rescue, they’d still be okay. They could get through anything because God would be with them. And when old Nebuchadnezzar peeked into that fiery furnace, he saw four people walking around. Our three friends had the Lord with them, even in the middle of the fire.”
Our pastor keeps going with the story, but I can’t hear him. I’m too busy imagining Grayson in a crown, about to push Dream and me into a fiery furnace.
When we get home from church, Ethan races into the house. Munch barks and chases after him. Squash runs after him too. When the rest of us trail in, my brother is standing over the fish tank. He turns around, and his face says it all. Abednego, he signs. He’s dead.
We hover over Ethan and his dead fish.
“I’m sorry, Son,” Dad says. He pats Ethan on the head.
“It’s all my fault,” Mom insists. “I never should have brought you an almost-dead fish. I hope you know that you got more life out of that little guy than anyone else could have.”
“I’m sorry, Ethan,” I say, signing it at the same time. I want to come up with something more. I just can’t think of anything to say. He looks so sad, as if he’s known this fish his whole life.
Ethan chooses a “burial at sea” for his fish. The four of us gather around the toilet. Ethan holds Abednego by the tail. He closes his eyes, and Mom and Dad do too.
I know my brother is praying. I wish he’d sign it. I want to know what he and God are talking about. Because somehow when Ethan prays, things happen.
Ethan opens his eyes and smiles. Then he flushes the toilet. He was a good fish, Ethan signs. I’d better go check on Shadrach and Meshach.
The rest of the day I spend with Dream. We walk, trot, and canter all over Hamilton . . . as if this will be our last ride.
It’s getting dark when we arrive back home. Just as I get to the house, Mom drives up with Dad and Ethan in the car. I realize I’ve missed our Sunday evening supper out at Crazy Larry’s Dairies. But I don’t care. I wouldn’t have wanted to leave my horse.
I brush Dream and get her settled, then walk inside.
There’s a voice I don’t recognize, and at first I think there’s someone else in the house. But when I tiptoe to the kitchen, I only see Mom and Dad and Ethan. They’re huddled over the phone. The voice I hear is coming from the answering machine. Dad hits the button again, and I listen as Mom signs to Ethan.
“This is Martin Clayton, Grayson’s father. I know my sister brought the kids to your house and confirmed that you have our horse. We would prefer not to involve the authorities. My sister believes you came upon the horse by accident. Apparently she was unable to resolve this herself. I’ll be in your area tomorrow. I’ll make arrangements to haul the horse away at your convenience. Please call me when you get this message.”
His voice sounds like a television announcer’s. I picture a larger version of Grayson. The man gives his phone number and again asks—no, tells—us to call him back. He ends the call with something like “The law is the law, and it’s on our side.”
The machine clicks off. All eyes turn to me.
Without a word, I walk to my room, fall onto my bed, and cry myself to sleep.
9
Endings
Monday is our last day of school. Ethan and I always celebrate the end of school with a crazy breakfast. Mom lets us choose chocolate cake, hot fudge sundaes, ice cream cones, or anything else we dream up.
But this morning neither of us is hungry. I sit at the breakfast table and listen to my dad’s report on how he and Mom have tried everything they could think of to keep Dream. I stare into my orange juice and nod like I’m taking in Dad’s explanations. Only I feel like I’m asleep. I’m still in the middle of my nightmare. I want to wake up and discover that none of this is really happening.
“I’m being honest with you, honey,” Dad says. “You deserve that much. Maybe we should have done something more when we first got Dream. Maybe we could have legally claimed your horse then. I just don’t know.”
“This is nobody’s fault,” Mom says. She hasn’t stopped pacing. She’s still in her fuzzy, rainbow-colored bathrobe. Green slippers peek out like little nightmare monsters hiding under the bed skirt. “We were on the phone half the night with our lawyer. She says there was nothing we could have done then.” Mom stops pacing. “And there’s nothing we can do now.”
I swallow hard. “When . . . wh-when will . . . ?” I can’t go on.
Ethan finishes my question: When will they come for Dream?
Mom and Dad exchange a look that says it all. Then Dad answers, “Grayson and his father are coming this evening.”
I get up from the table.
Mom swoops beside me. “I had a good conversation with Mrs. Ford. She said they’ll keep Dream for the summer while Grayson is staying with them. She said Annika made a special point to invite you to visit whenever you want.”
I nod. But I know I won’t visit. How could I? How could I stand seeing Dream—Jinx—and then leaving her again?
Mom drives Ethan and me to school. I stare at my old tennis shoes. I can’t bear looking out the window at the places Dream and I have ridden. The places we’ll never ride again.
Ethan elbows me. I’m still praying it won’t happen, he signs.
Me too, I sign back. And it’s true. I haven’t stopped praying for a miracle. Every time I woke up in the night, I asked God to keep Grayson and his father far away from my horse. But what if God says no? I sign to Ethan without saying it aloud like we usually do. What if God lets them take Dream away from me?
Ethan doesn’t look away. It will be okay. You will be okay, Ellie. You’ll see.
I want more. I want Ethan to promise me that God won’t let this nightmare come true. I want him to promise that something will happen to let me keep my horse. But I know he can’t promise me that. Nobody can.
“Ellie!” Cassie runs up to our car as soon as my mom pulls into the loading zone.
Rashawn is right behind her. “Colt told us everything. I can’t believe this is happening!”
They hug me and keep their arms around me as we walk inside. I can tell Cassie has been crying. It makes me cry too.
“Th-they’re coming tonight,” I manage to get out. “They’re taking Dream away. I don’t know what
I’ll do—” I can’t finish because I’m crying too hard.
“I talked to my aunt,” Rashawn says. “She’s a lawyer in Kansas City. But she doesn’t know anything we can do either. It’s so unfair!”
When we reach our classroom, Ashley and three of her friends come up to me.
“We think it’s horrible, Ellie!” Ashley says. “I wish I could do something to help. I just can’t believe what Larissa did to you!”
“Yeah. That’s pretty low,” Hunter agrees. Hunter Van Slyke is one of Larissa’s best friends. At least I thought she was.
I look up through the mob of girls circled around me, and I see Larissa. She’s already in her seat, staring at her desk.
I sit down. Dylan and a couple of Colt’s other buddies stop by and tell me they’re sorry about my horse.
I don’t know what to say to anybody.
When we’re all at our desks, Colt signs to me, I’ll walk you home. We can run away if you want.
I sign, Thanks. Part of me wants to say yes to running away with Dream and Colt and Bullet. But what good would that do? They’d come after us and take Dream anyway. I have to think of Dream now. I have to make this as easy as I can on her.
Miss Hernandez has us finish our blog presentations. Nobody is into it. Ashley and Rashawn report on their presidential blog. But Ashley starts tearing up when Rashawn tells about one candidate who owns horses. So they cut it short and sit down.
At recess everybody in our class—except Larissa—flocks around me.
“I think I’d take my horse and run away as far as I could if anybody ever tried to take Misty,” Cassie says.
“I thought about it.” I glance at Colt. “But they’d just find us. And they might take it out on Dream. I have to help my horse get through this. I’m hoping I can still call them sometimes to make sure they’re taking good care of her.”
“They sure didn’t take good care of her before.” Rashawn reties the red bow on her braid. “What did they have to say about that?”
“Yeah!” Dylan agrees. “We all saw what your horse looked like before you started taking care of her.”
I tell them what Grayson said about Dream getting loose while they were gone and only getting skinny after she’d run away.
“I’ll bet,” Hunter says.
“My dad made Grayson’s dad e-mail photos of Dream and Grayson together,” I explain. “He wanted to make sure they really did own her first. They sent us a dozen pictures. Dream looked healthy in all of them. I guess she got scrawny when she was on her own. Or when she got bounced between rescues.”
“I still don’t get it,” Colt says. I’m sitting on one of the swings, and he’s standing on the other one. He’s not swinging, just twisting and untwisting. “How could they lose a horse, for crying out loud? They must not have wanted to find her that badly. If I lost Bullet, I’d never stop looking for him.”
“And what about the stable where she was staying? Why didn’t they keep looking for her?” Cassie asks, like she can’t believe it either.
I twist my swing like Colt’s doing. “I guess somebody thought Grayson took Dream—only they called her Jinx. Nobody at the stable could believe she’d jumped their fence.”
“Some stable,” Dylan mutters.
“Some jumper,” Colt says. He sounds proud of that fact.
We exchange looks. I know we’re both remembering how Dream jumped the fence in my backyard. Dad had to build the fence higher to keep her in. But at least when Dream jumped our fence, she came right back home.
“And some name. Jinx is a rotten thing to call any horse,” Colt says.
“No wonder she ran away,” Dylan chimes in.
“Where do you think she was all that time?” Rashawn asks.
It’s a question I’ve asked myself a hundred times. “Nobody knows for sure. She went to at least two rescues we know of. Still, nobody will ever know where Dream was when she was missing.”
“And nobody would have ever known she was here if it hadn’t been for Starring Larissa!” Colt says.
We all turn and stare at Larissa. Her eyes grow big. Then she looks away and walks into the school building, her nose in the air.
10
Good-Bye
Colt keeps his word and walks me home, even though Dylan tries to get him to go to baseball practice. “Ellie, listen to me!” Colt says. “If you don’t want to run away, I have another idea.”
“What?” I try to hope. I want Colt to have a real plan. I want God to pull off a real miracle.
“We let them take Dream. Then we break into their barn or pasture and take her back.”
I sigh. “And they’ll never guess who did it, right?”
“Maybe they’ll quit looking like they did last time?” Colt doesn’t sound so sure of himself.
“How are we supposed to get to Cameron in the first place? If we do get there, how are we going to get Dream back? And if we do get her back, then what? What do we do when they come looking for her? And what do you think my parents would do if—?”
“Okay, okay.” Colt kicks an invisible ball. Hard. “I didn’t say the plan was perfect.”
“I know. Thanks for trying. At least you had a plan. Everything still feels like a nightmare. I can’t stop hoping I’ll wake up. Now that’s a lousy plan.”
We turn onto our road, and Colt stops dead. “Man, they’re not wasting any time, are they?”
A black horse trailer is parked in front of my house. I freeze. Everything goes blurry. I can hear Colt’s voice, but it sounds far away.
Ethan runs up to us. His fingers are moving so fast I can’t read them.
“Slow down, Ethan,” Colt says.
Ethan signs again. They were here when I got home. Dad told Mr. Clayton he had to wait until you got here. Then Mom got home from the reptile rescue.
“What did she tell him?” Colt asks.
She told him to hold his horses, Ethan signs.
Ethan and Colt fall in on either side of me. We bump arms as we walk toward the ugly black trailer. Our footsteps echo like thunder in my ears. I stretch on my tiptoes to see if I can spot Dream inside the trailer. It looks like a prison, with bars on the side windows. But I’m too short to see anything. And tears are blurring what I do see.
“Ellie!” Dad calls. “You made it!”
Mom is planted firmly next to him. “When I found out what was going on, I was ready to lie down in front of that trailer.”
“She’d do it too!” Colt shouts.
I turn to see who Colt’s shouting to.
Annika comes walking up from the side of the house. I think she’s crying. “I’m so sorry, Ellie. I told Grayson and Uncle Martin to wait. But they thought they’d be doing you a favor by taking the horse before you got home.”
“Where are they?” I ask, my voice shaking.
Annika motions to the backyard. “They can’t catch her.”
I push past all of them until I’m at the gate. Grayson and his dad are running at opposite ends of the yard. They’re trying to corral Dream. It makes me think of the day I saw Dream galloping across the school yard with animal control chasing after her. They didn’t have any luck either.
Suddenly I’m aware that Annika is beside me. “Please tell them to stop chasing her,” I beg. “I’ll catch my horse.”
Annika climbs to the top of the fence and shouts, “Grayson! Uncle Martin! Come over here!”
Her uncle and cousin look shocked. Maybe they’ve never heard her yell before. They run over to the gate.
“That horse is crazy!” Grayson says.
His father is panting. Sweat streaks his white shirt. “Is it always this hard to catch?”
I ignore them and slip through the gate. I take a few steps into the yard and call, “Dream!”
That’s all it takes. She trots up to me. She snorts, then nods as if agreeing with me. I throw my arms around her neck. I feel like a traitor as she follows me back toward the gate. I want to give Grayson and his dad a le
sson in how to catch a horse. Don’t walk or run straight at her. Don’t look her in the eyes. Act like you know she wants to see you. Love her.
But even if I could say all this without crying, they wouldn’t listen.
Grayson tosses me a lead rope. Once I snap it to Dream’s halter, he jogs over to us. “I can take it from here.”
It’s not easy, but I step aside.
Grayson stands to Dream’s left and faces forward. He folds the excess rope the way he should, not wrapping it around his hand. Somebody has at least taught him something about horses.
“Grayson’s had two years of riding lessons at the stable in Kansas City,” his father says.
I turn to look at him. “K. C. Stables?”
“Right,” he answers. “How did you know?”
I shrug. I knew because that’s where Larissa keeps her horse, Custer’s Darling Delight. Is that where Dream will have to live after the summer’s over? I can’t even think about it.
Dream lets Grayson lead her around the side of the house. They get as far as the trailer before my horse puts on the brakes.
Grayson turns and frowns at her. “Come on. We’re almost there.”
Dream stiffens her forelegs, locking her knees and digging in. She refuses to go another step.
“She won’t go in, Dad,” Grayson whines. “I can’t load her.”
“Here, I’ll do it.” Mr. Clayton takes the lead rope. He walks Dream in a big circle. As she passes by me, she turns her head and stares at me. I can almost hear my horse ask me, Why?
Warm tears choke my throat and make me cough.
The trailer’s ramp is down. Dream lets Mr. Clayton lead her right up to the back of the trailer. But my horse refuses to set foot on the ramp.
“Has this horse ever ridden in a trailer?” Mr. Clayton demands.
“Yes.” I walk up and take the rope. “Please step back.”
When he doesn’t back off, Annika shouts, “Uncle, just get out of the way!”
As soon as Mr. Clayton is out of our sight, I walk straight up the ramp and into the left side of the trailer. Dream follows me. “Good girl, Dream,” I murmur, stroking her soft forehead and her beautiful blaze.
Night Mare Page 4
