Lizzie Flying Solo

by Nanci Turner Steveson

  Ms. Fitzgerald had looked like she wanted to hug me. “I love your spunk, Lizzie. The winner is announced around Valentine’s Day.”

  She’d said I had spunk. I’d never thought of myself as spunky before, but the way she meant it, I liked it. Spunky people made things happen. A spunky person would find a way to earn money to buy Fire. I just had to figure out how.

  The afternoon air was fresh and damp, and I ran toward Birchwood feeling energized. On a day like this, no one else would trek down the lane to stand in the cold and wet to see Fire. It would be just him and me. Before I got to the chestnut tree, I could see Fire standing by the tiny shed. Rain drizzled down his face, flattening his forelock. His eyes scanned the woods, and his ears pricked forward, then back, then forward again. He was looking for something. My heartbeat quickened. He was looking for me.

  I skirted around the chestnut and was headed toward the grassy strip behind his paddock when my foot snapped a stick in two. It popped like a soggy firecracker, and a body shot up from under a dense veil of brush. Two arms thrashed around near my face.

  “Ah!”

  I screamed and jumped away, fell to my knees, and rolled onto my back.

  Bryce stood beside me with his feet spread apart and his hands out at odd angles like he was ready to karate-chop me to pieces. We stared at each other for two beats, then both cried out, “It’s you!” at the same time.

  “What are you doing here?” he said. “You scared the flipping eye out of me!”

  “What are you doing here? I mean, I’ve never seen you— I was coming to see him.”

  I pointed to Fire, who was watching us in the dwindling rain. Bryce reached out a hand to help me up.

  “Holy smokes, my heart is racing,” he said.

  I flicked mud from my jeans. “Um, yeah, what do you think mine is doing? And why are you here, anyway?”

  “You mean here under the bushes or at Birchwood?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  He let out a breath and shifted his eyes quickly toward the barn. “I’m at Birchwood because my horse came from Wyoming today. That’s why I got to stay home from school. But I’m hiding because I don’t want to take the stupid equitation lesson my dad signed me up for.”

  “Wait, what? You have your own horse?”

  He jammed his thumbs into his belt. “Yeah, his name is Tucker.”

  “You keep him here, at Birchwood?”

  “As of today, yeah.”

  “How long have you had him?”

  “Four years.”

  “Oh, wow. How is it I didn’t know that? I love horses.”

  “I figured, since you draw them all the time.”

  He noticed.

  “Why didn’t you say something?”

  He shrugged. “I dunno. Do you ride here?”

  I looked away and changed the subject. “I didn’t know people in Wyoming ride English.”

  “People in Wyoming ride everything, but yeah, mostly western. My dad made me do all that stuff. It was hard to find an English trainer who would come as far out as where I lived.”

  “You don’t seem like an English equitation kind of rider,” I said.

  “I’m not. I’m learning dressage.”

  Dressage was like ballet on horseback. It didn’t fit the image of a Wyoming kid who wore cowboy boots and a giant belt buckle.

  “You like dressage?”

  His body stiffened. “What about it?”

  “Nothing,” I said quickly. “I think that’s great.”

  He pushed a swath of hair away from his face and clenched his jaw like he didn’t believe me.

  “Really,” I said. “I used to watch YouTube videos of Steffen Peters all the time. It just surprised me you like it, that’s all.”

  “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get all bucked up,” he said. “My dad promised if I moved to Connecticut with him, I’d get lessons. But once Tucker was on his way, Dad said I have to learn hunter equitation, too, and be on the stupid show team, which I have zero use for whatsoever. My dad thinks dressage is for sissies.”

  “He must not know the history of it, like the military part,” I said. “It’s not for sissies. It was used to train horses for battle, like in something-BC.”

  Bryce watched my face for a second, then nodded. “He knows all that. He doesn’t care. Anyway, wanna see him? My horse, I mean, not my dad. I’ll spare you that.”

  I looked up the hill at the back of the red barn. I’d never dared go any closer than the stone wall. “You mean go inside?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Am I allowed?”

  “Why wouldn’t you be?”

  “I don’t know. I thought you had to belong or something.”

  “Huh,” he said. “I never thought of it that way.”

  Of course he didn’t, because he had a dad, and he owned his own horse. He already belonged. Seconds passed. The rain dribbled to a stop. Long streams of sunlight pushed through the clouds moving swiftly over the barn at the top of the hill. Bryce turned toward the muddy road and waved to me over his shoulder.

  “Come on,” he said.

  I followed close behind, trying to control the butterflies whizzing around inside my belly. When we got to the top of the hill, a door on the side of the barn swung open. Joe stepped out, then Kennedy. Joe recognized me right away.

  “Well look-y here,” he said. “And who is this?”

  His eyes crinkled at the corners when he smiled, but Kennedy scrutinized me, her knuckles jammed into her hips.

  “Joe, this is my friend from school,” Bryce said. “Lizzie. She came to meet Tucker.”

  Joe stuck his hand out and winked. “Nice to meet you, Lizzie-from-school. This is Kennedy, former working student, now college student and my number-one instructor extraordinaire.”

  Kennedy rolled her eyes and shook my hand quickly. “Hey.”

  “Come on,” Bryce said. “Tuck’s down here. See you guys later.”

  Bryce strode ahead of me, eager to get to Tucker’s stall, but there was so much to see, and hear, and smell, inside that barn, I lagged behind. The air was both sweet and sour, a mixture of hay and leather and damp horses. The wide aisle had a concrete floor with big stalls flanking it. I recognized a lot of the horses I knew from the fields. A tall bay mare I’d called Princess hung her head over the bottom half of her door, her eyes almost shut and soft putters coming from her lips. A sign said her real name was Tiger Lily.

  The smallest pony, the little chestnut with one blue and one brown eye, could barely get her nose over the top of her half-door. I’d called her Sparkle all summer, but her sign said, “Bluebell.” Underneath, in bold letters, were clear instructions: “NO GRAIN!” All the way along the aisle, I recognized horses and ponies I’d considered my only friends during the summer.

  A dark horse stuck his head out of the last stall on the left and whinnied. A white blaze shaped like a lightning bolt ran from under his forelock to his muzzle. The horse stretched his neck toward us, his ears pricked forward and his nostrils quivering. Bryce quickened his stride.

  “That’s him!”

  He took Tucker’s face and kissed his soft muzzle, then scratched behind each ear. “Hey, boy, you doing okay?”

  It was hard not to be envious, but I understood exactly how attached Bryce was to his horse. Fire had been at Birchwood only a few days, but I already felt that same kind of bond growing between us.

  “He’s so pretty,” I said. “He’s black.”

  “Technically, he’s a dark bay,” Bryce said. “See, this is how you tell.”

  He pointed to faint brown hairs around Tucker’s eyes and nose. Then he took a crunchy nugget from his pocket and held it just out of reach.

  “Say yes!”

  Tucker flung his head up and down.

  “Say no!”

  He swayed left to right.

  “Are you impatient?”

  Tucker pawed the ground, then flicked his ears forward and snatched the treat away. I’d ne
ver seen Bryce smile like he did right then, as if nothing could possibly be wrong in the world because his horse was here.

  “That’s really cool,” I said.

  It was so cool, I had to force myself to keep from sighing.

  Bryce brought Tucker out of the stall and swept a soft bristled brush across his black coat, flicking his wrist at the end of each stroke.

  “I’ll get his hooves picked,” he said. “Then we’ll walk him outside. Let him stretch his legs some more. He needs it after the long trip.”

  My stomach squeezed. This was Friday. Jasmine and her crew didn’t usually ride on Fridays, but I felt skittish, like being inside the barn wasn’t safe. Like I needed to run.

  “Actually, I’d better start home soon.”

  Bryce ran a comb through streams of luxurious black tail hair. Each wave fell like silk against Tucker’s hind legs.

  “Where do you live? My dad can drive you later if you want.”

  “It’s okay. I live just through there.” I pointed in the wrong direction.

  Bryce shrugged. “No prob. Next time.”

  Next time. Please let there be a next time.

  “Yeah. And thanks for letting me see Tucker. He’s really beautiful.” I swung around to leave and body-slammed into Kennedy. “Oh! I’m sorry. I didn’t know you were there!”

  Bryce pointed the comb at me and laughed. “Two human collisions in one day. You’re on a roll.”

  Kennedy stared blankly, then held out a stack of papers clipped together at the top. “Joe said to give these to you.”

  “To me? Why?”

  She held them up so I could see the heading on the top page. Birchwood Stables Working Student Program.

  “What are they for?”

  “Give them to your parent or guardian,” she said with a touch of irritation. “It’s about becoming a working student.”

  “I don’t know what that means.”

  “It’s for kids who want to work in exchange for riding lessons instead of paying. Like what I did. All the info is in there.” She tapped the top page, then lowered her voice so Bryce couldn’t hear. “You’re not the first kid to come to us through those woods. It’s an opportunity.”

  Joe must have told her he’d seen me that day. Of course he’d know the path led to Good Hope.

  “Anyway,” Kennedy said, “there it is. Take them home; bring them back when you can.”

  She turned to leave and called over her shoulder, “And, Bryce, you know the deal with your dad. I can’t teach you dressage if you don’t take show team lessons. Don’t skip again.”

  Bryce lifted one of Tucker’s back hooves onto his knee and started digging it out with a hoof pick. “K, no prob.”

  Kennedy strode away. She’d been a working student here. Now she was an instructor. Instructor extraordinaire. I gripped the papers she’d put in my hands and watched her disappear into Tiger Lily’s stall with a saddle draped over one arm.

  “Come on, Lil,” she said, her voice almost musical. “Time for the lessons.”

  That could be me, I thought. Someday I could be her.

  Ten

  Saturdays were Community Days at Good Hope, which meant we were assigned weekly chores that took up the whole morning. In the haze of my first few months, I hadn’t really cared because there wasn’t anything else to do. But the day after Kennedy gave me the working student papers, I was antsy, looking for just the right moment to bring them up to Mom. Sharing the papers meant confessing I’d lied about where I’d been going all that time, but Fire was worth the risk.

  Mom double-checked the chore sheet when we went for breakfast. “Yup! Still lawn-and-leaf duty!” She sat down with her cup of oatmeal and a big smile on her face. “I’ve been waiting all fall for that chore.”

  The rain from the day before had stripped most of the leaves from the trees, which meant there’d be plenty to bag up. And we’d get to do it without Miss May hovering. She’d be inside, supervising all the others while they worked their own chores. Mom and I would have privacy.

  After breakfast, Mom buttoned up a red flannel shirt she’d bought at the thrift store and smiled in the mirror. She’d been talking about Saturday all week, hoping it didn’t rain, hoping nothing happened that took leaf-raking from her. She always loved fall the best, and lucky for us, Saturday had dawned clear and crisp, greeting us with the dazzling autumn sky she had dreamed about all summer. Miss May gave us two rakes and five giant lawn-and-leaf bags, then sent us outside.

  “The acorns!” she called after us. “Be sure you pick up every single acorn or they’ll kill the grass!”

  Mom and I held in our giggles until we were safely out of range of her hearing.

  “She always goes on about the acorns killing the grass,” I said, “but how can she think it’s the acorns when it’s the trees?”

  The two old oaks flanked either side of the yard. In the summer, leafy limbs canopied from north to south, east to west, blocking out any possible rays of sun. Acorns dropped in masses onto the ground, but by the time they fell, any grass that had hoped to survive had already withered and died.

  “We have to pick them up anyway,” Mom said. “Because she said to, and that’s what we do for now, okay?”

  I stacked the nuts into a pile by the steps, then, to make a rusty moat, scooped red chips from the crumbling bricks around the base of the house. “Why does Miss May complain about these chips clogging up the drains but never has anyone come fix the brick?”

  “I’m not sure I know the answer to that, but it isn’t my problem, either.”

  Mom put onto a tree stump an old-timey boom box she’d also gotten at the thrift store, then she cranked up really old music—like Frank Sinatra old—and started swirling around the yard with her rake.

  “Come on, Lizzie, dance!” she called. “Don’t be shy!”

  She pulled her hair from the ponytail holder and danced across the dirt, mouthing the words to the song. In the middle of a twirly circle, she leaned back and let her hair swing out behind her. Frank Sinatra crooned something about the way she looked tonight, and she spun faster and faster and faster until finally, at the end of the song, she let go of the rake. It sailed through the air, and Mom collapsed on the ground in a pile, giggling. I stood over her, feeling like a stranger to the silliness that used to be part of who she was, of who we were before Dad stole all those people’s money and everything changed. Before he betrayed us, and we had to hide his shameful secret.

  Mom raised herself on her elbows. “It may seem silly to dance with a rake, but honest to god, it feels so good just to dance again.”

  She got up and brushed crumpled leaves and dirt from her clothes, then took my chin between her fingers. Her face shined like a long dormant light had been switched back on inside her, and she smelled like baby shampoo and earth and mint.

  “We can’t ever forget, Lizzie,” she said, her cool blue eyes studying mine. “We must always remember how it feels to be normal so we’ll recognize it when we get there again.”

  I let the whole weekend pass without saying anything about Birchwood. Being outdoors made Mom so happy, I was afraid my confession would ruin her mood. On Saturday night, she and Linda finally went to that movie they’d been talking about. I worried all evening that Linda would say something about my absence at the library during the week, but Mom came home humming a tune, kissed me, and went right to bed.

  On Monday, Bryce stopped me in the hallway between third and fourth periods.

  “Hey!” he said. “I have a dentist appointment so I’m leaving, but I’ll see you at the barn later.”

  He gave me a thumbs-up before being swallowed by a crowd of kids who were deliberately still strangers to both of us. But that didn’t matter because I was going back to Birchwood after school. I’d been invited inside the barn again. I ducked my head to hide my smile and walked within a hair’s distance of Rikki and Sabrina, who were huddled together by their lockers. They’d heard Bryce.

 
“What barn?” Rikki asked.

  I looked away like I didn’t hear her and sped past.

  If it weren’t for the nagging memory of Jasmine staring at me through the trees that day when I was straddling the stone wall, I wouldn’t have cared as much. If I had just started going to Birchwood as Bryce’s friend, it would be different. But she had seen me. Even though she’d never said anything since school started, any question she might ask could lead to more of them about my family. I had to keep my guard up and not give anyone the ammunition MaryBeth had when she’d humiliated and shunned me. Not until the whole Dad thing was over.

  It wasn’t like I’d been doing anything wrong when Jasmine saw me. There weren’t any “No Trespassing” signs in those woods. But it was weird. If I were one of those girls and saw some stranger straddling a stone wall and spying on the riding lessons, I’d want to know why, too.

  After school, it took less than two minutes for me to sign in and out in Miss May’s book and throw my backpack through the door to our room. I raced down the path toward Birchwood, excited to see both Fire and Bryce. Seeing them would give me courage to talk to Mom after dinner, and after that—after she agreed for me to be a working student—I could be inside Birchwood every single day and it wouldn’t matter who saw me there. I would belong.

  Veering right at the fork, I picked up my pace, wove through the twisty trail, and came up behind the chestnut, out of breath, and slammed to a halt. The dust in Fire’s paddock lay quiet. The halter and lead rope that usually hung from his fence were gone. The gate was tied open. A few pieces of hay tumbled across the ground, rising when the wind picked them up and carried them away. In the distance, nearing the top of the hill, Fire struggled against Robert and Luis, the two men who worked in the barn. Luis was leaning back against a lead rope attached to Fire’s halter, and Robert was pushing his hindquarters.

  Fire reared and screamed so loud the sound carried across the hills and landed in my ears like an alarm. Robert and Luis yelled and closed in, surrounding him like a shackled prisoner. The last I saw was Robert dodging away, his knees narrowly escaping a strike from Fire’s back hooves. Then the three of them disappeared inside the barn.