Thief of Happy Endings

by Kristen Chandler

  Kaya smiles. “Horses are mirrors of our emotions. If you’re relaxed, then he’s relaxed.”

  “What if I’m not relaxed?”

  Kaya smiles. “Relax.”

  “What if I can’t?” I ask, feeling myself become much less relaxed every second.

  “Think about something calming,” she says.

  “How about not being here?”

  I look up to see that most of the kids are saddled up and riding. Banner is trotting in tight circles out in the middle of the arena for Coulter and Justin. Dang Banner. Alice rides by with Darius walking beside her. Even Danny is mounted. Darius asks, “What’s the matter, Cassidy? You having trouble getting on?”

  Kaya brings over some plastic steps for me. “This mounting block will help.”

  When I was little I could climb into the saddle, no problem. Well, there was a problem. But I try not to think about that. Unfortunately, that makes me think about that.

  “Come on, Cassidy,” says Kaya. “You can do it.”

  Smokey is moving around again, so I wait. I don’t want to scare him. I do not want to scare me.

  “Are you okay?” says Kaya.

  For some reason the worried look now on Kaya’s face reminds me of my mother. And then all I want is to be home. Who rides horses anymore anyway? It’s like driving a stick shift. It’s a completely useless skill. “I’m not going to ride,” I say. “I don’t want to.”

  “Cassidy. You came all the way to Wyoming to do this.”

  “It was a mistake. I thought I did. But I . . . I need to lie down.”

  And then it’s all I can do to keep my feet from buckling right out from underneath me.

  Kaya asks, “Do you need me to walk you back to your tent?”

  I know where my mice-infested tent is. I start walking. Behind me I hear the voices of the other kids talking and laughing. I ignore them. I’ve heard those voices before. They’re just voices. I have lots of voices louder than those in my head.

  “CASSIDY!”

  I turn around. It’s not really a choice. Coulter isn’t walking toward me. He’s just yelling.

  “Cassidy, get the hell over here with that horse. You don’t have to get on him. But you sure as hell have to take charge of your own animal.”

  For the second day in a row everyone is staring at me. I go get my horse.

  Kaya stands patiently waiting for me. She beams at me as she hands me the lead rope, like I’ve just done something wonderful. “Just go get acquainted. This isn’t a race to get on. Just make friends with him, like you did with Alice. That was wonderful.”

  “He’s a horse, not my roommate.”

  I take the rope and walk. The horse follows me. He doesn’t immediately step on me. He actually sticks his nose in my armpit. Then he sneezes and blows horse snot all over my side. “Oh!” I yell.

  “Keep walking, kid,” yells Coulter. “All the way to the arena.”

  Smokey nudges me. I can feel the warmth of his dirty nose through my shirt. All right, I’m going already. When I get inside the arena I walk to Coulter with Smokey still basically in my armpit. I feel like I’m being escorted to the first day of kindergarten. Except by a horse.

  “That animal bothering you, Miss Cassidy?”

  “No,” I say. If I cry, this is all going to crap. I’m not going to cry.

  “Okay, then. I got a phone call before you got here. Your mother says you showed some unusual talent as a little thing.”

  I say, “I’m not seven anymore, Mr. Coulter.”

  “You sure as hell aren’t. So I want you to work that horse of yours from the ground today. I want you to walk him up to the big house and back. And then down to the pond. Then go show him your tent. Make sure he gets a good look at it. Don’t let him step on you or eat the weeds. And when you’re done with that I want you to take off his saddle and brush him until he shines like a new spoon. Can you do that?”

  “I can try,” I say.

  “I have no interest in your trying. Can you do it?”

  “Yes,” I say.

  “That’s what I thought. Now get going.”

  I walk through all the kids looking down on me from their horses. I hope they can’t see my hands shaking. The surfer kid with the white-blond hair, I think his name is Scotty, says, “You have to get on the horse to ride it.”

  Doesn’t matter. Smokey and I are getting out of Dodge.

  Smokey wants to eat, so I have to keep tugging on him to keep him out of the weeds, but other than that he’s decent. He follows me. I wouldn’t follow me. If he’s a mind reader like they keep telling me, he’s getting an earful right now. Anyway, at least he stays out of my way and I stay out of his. When we find some shade at the big house I stop and scratch the blaze on his face. Dust flies in the air. Dust flies when I touch anything on him. He’s like an overfull bag in the vacuum cleaner.

  When we get to the pond I let him drink the water, and he slurps and slurps and my heart beats at its normal speed. Then I show him my cool digs and tell him about the mice. He cocks his ears to me like he’s listening. So I tell him about Banner, too. Just to give him the heads-up.

  It’s weird the way a horse can take the mad out of you. By the time we get back to the barn to take off his saddle, I feel almost cheerful. “What do you do around here all day, Smokey?”

  He licks his lips and nods his noggin at me.

  “That means he likes you,” says Kaya.

  I startle. “Oh, hi. Yeah?”

  “When a horse licks and chews he’s basically saying he trusts you. Smokey’s old and set in his ways. He doesn’t usually warm up to people this fast.”

  “Well, good,” I say. I’d lick and chew back if Kaya wasn’t standing right here next to us.

  Kaya shows me how to tie him with that cool cowboy knot and take off all the tack. I’m still embarrassed that I’m not riding with everyone else. But I like it, too. This way I can concentrate on the horse. I brush Smokey until he starts stamping and scratching with his hooves again. When I take him back to be with his buddies I barely lead him. He walks right next to me.

  The rest of the day is chores and eating and chores and eating. There are a lot of chores on a ranch: feeding, watering, shoveling, sweeping, cleaning tack, feeding chickens, weeding the garden, stacking the firewood. As soon as you do one job, another job grows in its place. But I know how to work, so I don’t mind. It’s easier than doing something that scares me.

  When I get back to my sleeping bag that night I want to kiss it. Home sweet pillow. I survived the first day.

  Alice says, “I could ride horses all day. Wasn’t it great?”

  “Yeah,” I say, mostly because that is the word I can say with the least amount of effort and the least need to say more words after. Even my eyelashes are tired. And it was a great day, just not in the way Alice’s was.

  “You and Smokey have a good time?” asks Banner, her voice flipping in just the perfect way to imply everything insufficient about me.

  I can’t stand Banner, but I like Smokey. He likes me. “Yeah. We had fun together.”

  “That’s darling,” says Banner.

  * * *

  Not long after the lights go out, I fall asleep. Unfortunately, I don’t stay that way for long. I wake up to more whinnying. It’s a shrill, angry whinny tonight, like something is wrong. I lie in the dark of the tent, listening to the horse calling or crying or whatever it is until I can’t stand it anymore. I throw on my coat and boots and step outside the tent.

  I smell cigarettes.

  “What’s got you up, Cassidy?” asks Banner.

  I look into the dark up on the hill and see Banner sitting on a camp chair stuck in the trees. The light at the end of her cigarette looks like a tiny red coal. I guess we’re both crappy sleepers. She doesn’t seem too worried about getting sent h
ome. Maybe that’s the idea.

  I say, “That horse. It sounds miserable.”

  “Probably one of those mustangs. They don’t like being trapped any more than we do. You want a smoke? Calms me right down.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Whatever.”

  I feel like I’m being unfriendly not to smoke with Banner, but I don’t care enough to actually smoke. Maybe that’s my problem with friends. I wish I had them, but not enough to do what it would take to make them like me. The horse keeps whinnying. Coulter must hear it. “Somebody should do something.”

  “Yeah. Somebody should do something.”

  “Good night, Banner.”

  I go back into the tent. Alice is silent. After a few minutes Banner comes back in. She makes the tent smell like cigarettes. I wonder if the telltale smell will be here in the morning. At first she rolls back and forth on her sleeping bag like a boat in bad water, but eventually she stops moving, and I can hear her breathing evenly. I let myself think about home for a while, but it just makes the lonesome hole in my stomach get bigger. Who gets homesick when they’re sixteen?

  Me, I guess.

  The horse keeps whinnying. I wonder if I should do something. Maybe Banner’s right, maybe the horse does feel trapped, or lonely. Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe it had a decent life before it got cornered and rounded up and everything started to suddenly suck like a giant gale-force wind tunnel. And now the horse is wondering when that feeling of not being okay is ever going to stop.

  It’s dark in the tent. I close my eyes. But I keep seeing things.

  * * *

  SOPHIE LOOKED AWAY down the hallway. “It’s just that Haley’s locker is closer to most of my classes.” Sophie and I had four out of eight classes in the same room at the same time. Sophie’s idea, not mine. Because we’d been best friends since sixth grade when she moved into my neighborhood. Even when the whole world made fun of her for smelling like an ashtray. Even in seventh when she got fat eating peanut butter. Even in eighth when she got braces and looked like a Transformer.

  She’s skinny now and has bleached teeth and hair extensions. She also has new friends and a creep for a boyfriend.

  “You don’t mind, do you?” She says it like a question, but it’s not a question.

  I tried to hold it together. Dad and Mom were fighting nonstop. I had slept zero hours. I felt like I’d swallowed razor blades. I wasn’t above being needy. “Kind of,” I said.

  “I mean, this way you’ll have more room in your locker. So, okay then?”

  The hot mess of tears started backloading in my face. I had to make it quick. “If this is because of Gavin? I swear I never . . .”

  “God no. Gavin and I are great. It’s just you aren’t . . . you and I are going in different directions now.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “Nothing. Just. I like to go to parties. I have lots of friends, Cassidy. You sit at home and make food for your little brother.”

  That cued the waterworks. And the panic. Sophie wasn’t just my best friend, she was my only friend. I was too stressed to do the social thing. Who would I talk to now? Who would I sit with? What if I never have another friend because I’d become unfriendable? “You know why I have to make food for my brother.”

  “Yeah. I mean, of course. But you might try a little harder.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Just because your parents are getting divorced doesn’t mean that you can’t be presentable.”

  I was wearing the shirt I didn’t sleep in the night before, with tights and flip-flops. I had no idea what I was wearing until she mentioned it.

  “Everyone has problems, Cassidy. You just have to stay positive like I do. Maybe you could get your own boyfriend if you’d be a little more cheerful.”

  What I thought: If I had Gavin as my boyfriend, I would go to the health department and ask for the douche bag vaccine. He could varsity letter in cheating on you. And I did not ask him if he wanted to make it a threesome even though he told his jerk off buddies that I did. I would never do that to you. We are best friends. Best friends don’t dump you when you’re down. They don’t say the things you fear most about yourself in the hallway so that you feel naked in front of the entire school.

  What I said: “I gotta go.”

  What I did: Stopped going to school.

  Chapter Six

  I WAKE UP before my alarm. It must be the birds gossiping outside the tent. And the smell of the air warming up. I get dressed quietly and hustle out into the dark, wondering what wildlife besides the birds are up this early. And then I walk really fast, in case it’s something that wants to eat me.

  When I get to the outhouse I creak open the door and check around for critters. Not even a mouse is stirring. The outhouses still stink, but being alone is okay. I clean fast, and it’s kind of therapeutic after the last couple of days. It’s a lot easier to sweep out a floor than my head, but doing one seems to do the other.

  On my way back to my tent Ethan erupts from behind a pine tree. I totally jump and make a yee sound. He nearly chokes laughing.

  “Did you think I was a horse?”

  My heart is still pounding. I’m not in the mood.

  “Now, don’t be mad, Colorado. You’re scary when you’re mad.” He raises his fists like he wants to box with me.

  I don’t get Ethan. He seems more like one of those kids with an Internet start-up that pays his parents’ mortgage. Everyone likes him and does what he says already. I don’t see what he gets out of a “leadership camp.” I also can’t figure out why he talks to me.

  “So are you going to ride today?” he asks. “Or let that Banner girl make fun of you again.”

  I shrug. “Probably the last one.”

  “Why’d you come here, if you’re so scared of horses?”

  A little nosy. “Who says I’m scared? I’m an advanced horse walker. Why’d you come here?”

  “Governor of Texas has to ride a horse.”

  I stop walking. “You want to be the governor of Texas? What? Really?”

  He shakes his head and laughs. “No. Not really.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “Can you keep a secret?” He looks at me when he says this, so it’s possible he’s serious, although I have yet to see him be serious, so I’m not sure what to look for.

  “Yes. I can keep secrets.” I try not to let the irony of this statement sound like sarcasm.

  “My parents are both schoolteachers.”

  In spite of how crappy I feel, I laugh. “That’s your secret?”

  “It turns out schoolteachers don’t make enough money to send their kids to expensive camps, and they sure don’t make enough money to buy them a horse that costs more than a car. I need to learn how to ride. Really ride. Like in the mountains and across rivers and shit.”

  The image this conjures up in my mind is entertaining but doesn’t make any sense. “That’s your secret? You want to be the Lone Ranger?”

  For the first time since I’ve met Ethan he looks surprised. But maybe it’s ironic surprise. “A Texas Ranger. The Lone Ranger was a fictional racist. Texas Rangers are legal officers of Texas government. That can never be done away with, by order of the Texas constitution. And it turns out if you want to be a Texas Ranger, you have to be good on a horse.”

  “They still have Texas Rangers? I mean, I thought that was just in books and stuff. Didn’t they save some president from being killed or something, and then they helped get Bonnie and Clyde?”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he says, smiling. “They solve murders and investigate people and the whole thing. It’s harder than being an astronaut. Okay, not harder than that, but about that hard.”

  “And you professionally rescue people? On a horse?” I ask.

  He nods happily at himself. “They also have
helicopters and cars. But yeah, they chase people on horseback when they need to.”

  I get why Ethan would want to do that, actually. You ride horses and save people. I mean, that’s not a bad job. I look at Ethan again. “Are you kidding?”

  He shakes his head and looks deliberately innocent.

  Honestly, I’d like to believe anything Ethan says. But I’m not sure. You can’t tell with Ethan. He could totally be jacking with me just for fun. The Texas Rangers. Ethan starts whistling. We walk along like that. He’s a good whistler. He gets the highs and the lows. Maybe he’s telling the truth. It’d be pretty cool if he is.

  * * *

  Banner is standing in the tent talking to Kaya when I get there. They’re both standing too straight. I recognize the posture. My parents have done a lot of standing up too straight. Alice is sitting on her bed with her eyes glued to the floor. There’s enough estrogen in the tent to start a cage fight.

  Banner’s red hair is pulled back into a ponytail so her high cheekbones jut out. “Darius told me it came yesterday.”

  Kaya leans back in her boots and nods. “That’s what I’m saying. I have to drive down to get it. But really, nothing comes this early in the camp. Sometimes we go for weeks without mail to campers.”

  Banner winces. “I have mail coming.”

  “Are you expecting something?” asks Kaya.

  Banner digs at her fingernails. “That’s my business, isn’t it?”

  “Of course,” says Kaya. “There’s no reason to get upset.” She steps toward Banner.

  “I’m not upset. I’m incarcerated,” says Banner.

  Kaya folds her arms across her chest. “Speak with respect, please.”

  “Respect? Is that what I’m learning, Pocahontas?”

  Kaya straightens up like a rope being pulled at both ends. Banner kicks her way back out of the tent, hits the flap of the entrance, and leaves it swinging behind her.