“I knew it!” she said. Her face was all lit up like she’d written the poem herself. “I knew you were a great poet!”
I slid further into my seat.
“Hello, earth to Lizzie!” Ms. Fitzgerald said. “I asked if you would read the poem to the class.”
I begged her with my eyes not to make me do it, but her eyes begged me right back.
“I’m not comfortable reading my own poem out loud,” I said. “Besides, everybody’s probably already seen it.”
Jenna nearly leaped out of her chair. “No, we haven’t, Lizzie! And that’s why we’ve been reading poems out loud to each other all year, just for moments like this. I say you read it. What about everyone else: Don’t you think she should read it to us?”
There were scattered yeahs or go for its from around the room. Danny rolled his eyes at Jenna and put his head down. “I’m takin’ a nap.”
Jenna didn’t stop there. “Besides, we have to start reading our Partners in Poetry pieces next month. Since you’re working by yourself, don’t you want to practice?”
Danny raised his head. “Next month? I don’t even know who my partner is!”
Ms. Fitzgerald looked around the room. “Seriously? Does everyone else know who their partner is?”
Jasmine raised her hand. “Danny’s my partner.”
“Oh, right. I forgot.” He buried his face in his folded arms again.
Ms. Fitzgerald put her hand on my shoulder. “No worries, Lizzie, but do you mind if I read it to the class? It’s really quite lovely.”
I shrugged and sank lower.
Honorable Mention didn’t come with money. That’s all it meant to me now. I had only a little over a week before Mike made Joe sell Fire. Right that second, it was really terrible news.
Ms. Fitzgerald went to her desk, picked up my poem, and turned the page so everyone could see that the words were in the shape of an upside-down teardrop. Super. Just what I didn’t need.
“This is a perfect example of a concrete poem style. See how it’s shaped like a raindrop?”
Raindrop, not a teardrop. Good.
“Listen and you’ll understand the creativity and thought Lizzie put into this style.
“Behind Birchwood
I dance around slippery rocks
blanketed in deep green moss,
jump last year’s logs . . .”
She read the whole thing, start to finish, walking up and down the rows between the desks, performing like Jenna did when she read. Listening to someone else read the words I’d put on the page made it sound more like a real poet had written it. Like, maybe I was on the way to someday being as good as Robert Frost. Ms. Fitzgerald read the last line barely above a whisper.
“‘Change is near.’”
She paused and looked around the room. All the kids were staring at me again.
“That’s my favorite part,” she said.
Jenna stood up from her desk and pumped her fist. “Oh, Lizzie! That. Is. Stellar!”
But all I could think about was how to make up that twenty-five dollars.
Joe said I could use the barn washers and dryers to earn more money, so I posted new signs around the barn and added Laundering to the list of services I offered horse owners. Over the next few days, more people signed up for tack cleaning. I wrote down the money in my notebook, but even though I hadn’t quite reached my goal, there was something I just had to do.
I took the envelope with the one-hundred-dollar bill Mr. McDaid had given me and brought it to school. At lunch, I pushed it across the table to Bryce.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Open it.”
He pulled out the Ben Franklin and held it up. “Huh?”
“Your dad put it in my jacket pocket on Christmas. I don’t want his money. I figured it could help you and your mom.”
“My dad gave you this?”
“Yeah. Now I’m giving it to you.”
“What about saving for Fire?”
“Five more people signed up for tack cleaning. I’ll save enough money the honest way. I want you to have that. This way your dad is helping pay for you to get home.”
“Thanks, Lizzie. I know how much Fire means to you.” He tucked the envelope into his jacket.
That evening, Bryce came to Fire’s stall, where I was brushing out his tail.
“My mom is on her way,” he said. “I’m leaving Sunday.”
I’d known it was coming, but his words made my insides freeze.
“Sunday? Already?”
“Sunday. But I have an idea, a plan.”
I didn’t want a plan. I wanted him to stay. I wanted his dad to not be who he was so nothing had happened to make Bryce leave. I wanted to throw my arms around his neck and tell him how his friendship had kept me upright during the months since we’d known each other and I was so sorry he had to leave and I’d never forget him. Ever.
But I didn’t do any of that.
Instead, I said, “A plan?”
He lowered his voice. “Can you sneak out from your house at night?”
“I did once. Why?”
“Can you meet me here tomorrow night, at midnight?”
“What’s going on?”
“You trust me?”
“Of course,” I said.
“Then come at midnight, right here by Tucker’s and Fire’s stalls, okay?”
“Can’t you tell me why?”
“I can, but I won’t. You’ll see. It’s a reverse going-away surprise. Okay?”
My stomach swooped up inside my belly. “Okay. Midnight. Tomorrow. Here.”
He slipped out of the stall. I didn’t see him again all evening.
At a quarter till midnight the next night, I bypassed the chestnut tree and went around to the old stone wall, traveling the path I could have walked blindfolded. From the woods, I could see a crack in the door to the barn. A single bulb cast a triangle of light across the snow-covered ring. I ran past it quickly, then flattened myself against the wall and peeked around the corner. No one in sight.
“Bryce?”
He came out of Fire’s stall. “Come in. Hurry.”
“What are we doing?”
He handed me a helmet and said, “Put this on.”
“Huh?”
“You know the rule, no riding without a helmet. Put this on.”
“Why?”
“We’re going riding. We never got to ride together before, and now I’m leaving. So put the helmet on and let’s get going.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. “We can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because—I don’t know. Well, for one thing, I don’t have my own horse to ride.”
“Yeah, you do. Look behind you.”
Fire already had his bridle buckled on. He was chewing the bit like none of this midnight stuff was a big deal.
“Get him and let’s go,” Bryce said. “Time’s a wastin’.”
“I’m going to ride Fire? Bryce, you’re crazy!”
“Best kind of crazy you’ll ever know,” he said, grinning.
I didn’t wait for him to say anything else. I lifted the reins over Fire’s head and followed Bryce and Tucker to the outdoor ring. The snow came up well past Fire’s fetlocks.
“We’re going to leave tracks,” I said.
“Last time anyone except you or me was out here was in the fall. No one will see them,” he said.
“Are you sure about this?”
“One hundred percent.”
“No one’s ridden Fire except Joe. What if he’s too much for me?”
“Not true. Joe let me ride him the other night. You’ll be safe.”
“You rode him?”
“I did. He was a perfect gentleman.”
“Bryce—” I started, but there really wasn’t anything to say. I patted Fire’s neck then gathered the reins in my hand. “Of course he was a perfect gentleman. What was I thinking?”
I pushed myself off the
ground, swung my right leg over his back, and settled into the saddle. I’d dreamed of this for so many months, but until that warm simmering feeling spread throughout my body, I hadn’t known how perfect it would be. I laid my cheek against Fire’s thick yellow mane and closed my eyes, knowing there would never be words perfect enough to describe how it felt.
“Ready?” Bryce asked.
I sat up and gathered the reins, not caring that he could see a tear streaming down my cheek.
“Totally ready,” I said.
We rode past the stone wall, past the place where I had made my own trail to and from the chestnut tree, turning right into the thick of the woods. Fire and I trailed behind Tucker and Bryce for at least ten minutes until the density eased and the trees opened to a gentle, sloping hill and a large field of unbroken snow. Everything, from the sky to the ground, was white and navy. Fire’s back swayed side to side as we made our way carefully down the hill. At the bottom, Bryce pulled Tucker up and motioned for me to come next to him. His face looked both pained and happy, crushed and excited at the same time.
“You understand why I have to leave, right?”
I nodded. “I’m glad you told your mom. It was the only way to get out.”
Bryce ran his fingers through Tucker’s mane, then looked at me, his eyes serious. “Remember what you just said. The part about speaking up. It took a lot of punches before I had the guts to call my mom. It’s going to be hard to not feel like what he did was my fault, but it wasn’t. It’s his problem. My head already knows that, not so much the rest of me. But I’ll get there. So will you, someday.”
I looked up, startled.
“I—”
He waved his hand to stop me, and I let it go. There wasn’t anything that needed to be said. Bryce knew me. He’d nailed it. Exactly. He’d given me a key.
“Hey, wanna canter up the hill?” he asked.
“You think it’s safe? Fire won’t take off bucking?”
Bryce tilted his head. “Lizzie, it’s you riding him. You’re his human. He won’t ever do anything to hurt you.”
“You’re right,” I said. “Let’s do it.”
“Ladies first.”
Tucker didn’t want ladies to go first. He pranced in circles like he was a polo pony before the start of a match, pulling against Bryce’s hands holding the reins. I turned Fire toward the top of the hill.
“Now?”
“Now!”
I didn’t even need to squeeze my legs; Fire’s energy told me he was ready to go. The second he felt my grip on the reins soften, his front legs rose, he pushed off with his hindquarters, and we glided into a perfect and powerful canter. I leaned forward, twisted my fingers into the feathery softness of his mane, and together, with snow flying up around us, Fire and I floated to the top of that hill like we were one. It was a dream come true, like a promise that nothing bad could ever happen again.
Twenty-Nine
Bryce, his mom, and Tucker pulled out of the Birchwood driveway just after dawn on Sunday, heading over two thousand miles to Wyoming. Joe and Kennedy and I were all there to say goodbye. Mr. McDaid was not.
“We have to go a roundabout way to avoid some of the mountain passes in the snow, but we should be home by Thursday,” his mom had said.
She looked exactly like Bryce, with yellow hair, green eyes, and high cheekbones. When she hugged me and thanked me for being there for Bryce, the fear I’d felt over losing my best friend was replaced with happiness for Bryce and for his mom. The loss to me was great, but the joy for Bryce was greater.
Bryce hugged me with one arm. “Stay out of trouble,” he said, grinning. “And I’ll buy you a front-row seat when I’m in the Olympics.”
“I’m counting on it,” I said softly.
After the trailer was out of sight, I went to Fire’s stall for comfort. The one-hundred-dollar bill I’d given Bryce was tacked to the front with a note.
Keep it to buy Fire. We’re okay. Now it comes from me. Thanks. B.
On Monday, I sat alone at our table in the cafeteria, smelling ammonia and smashing mashed potatoes with the tines of a fork until they looked like a giant striped pancake. I was wondering how far Bryce might have gotten in the twenty-four hours since he’d been gone when Jenna dropped her tray onto the table and sat in his seat.
“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”
Whenever Jenna asked a question, she scrunched her face up so her freckles bunched together.
“Yeah.”
“I heard Bryce moved away.”
“How did you hear that already?”
Jenna raised her shoulders and twisted her mouth. “His dad lives next door to us.”
“Oh, I didn’t know.”
“Yeah, I saw you there on Christmas. I wanted to come say hi, but we weren’t invited, so I didn’t. My parents don’t like Mr. McDaid very much.”
“He’s a complicated man,” I said.
Jenna had three desserts on her tray and no real food. She started in on a piece of chocolate cake.
“Did you already eat your lunch?” I asked.
“What do you mean? This is lunch.”
“It’s all dessert.”
She looked at her tray like this revelation surprised her, and grinned. “I’m not allowed to eat this kind of stuff at home. My mother is a health nut and my father doesn’t pay attention to anything except his job, so I eat dessert here.”
“Huh. I never noticed,” I said.
“Probably because we never ate lunch together before, so how would you know?”
She scooped a spoonful of chocolate pudding from a dish and plopped it on top of berry pie, then cut a big forkful and offered it to me.
“No thanks.”
“You sure? It’s really good.”
I looked around the cafeteria at all the kids I knew nothing about. What they ate, where they lived, who their friends were, what their parents were like. It had been almost six months that I’d been in this school with my head down.
I smiled at her. “I’m sure, but thanks anyway.”
That afternoon when I got off the bus, I trudged the half mile to my road, still thinking about Jenna. I’d never really noticed before how lonely she looked. Did Bryce even know she lived next door to him? And if I hadn’t noticed that Bryce had bruises and Jenna was lonely, what else was I not seeing?
I crossed to the other side of Brook Drive, cut the corner through the snow, and stayed flush against the brushy trees. It was a habit so no one passing by might see me going to Good Hope.
“Lizzie!”
I turned quickly, and there he was, standing on the opposite corner, waiting for me just like he used to when I first started kindergarten, on special days when he would take an early train home to surprise me. He looked exactly the same, from the way his dark hair was cut short to his freshly shaven face. Even from across the road, I imagined I could smell his menthol shaving cream. When I was little, he used to let me sit on the edge of the sink and swirl my grandfather’s brush around in a cup, then dab minty foam all over his face before he scratched away black stubble with a razor.
“Lizzie,” he said again, softer this time. “It’s me.”
My tongue was pinned to the roof of my mouth. When I was finally able to push words out, they didn’t even sound like mine. “I was supposed to get to pick if I wanted to see you.”
He started across the road until I put both hands up.
“Lizzie, I’ve waited so long,” he said. “I couldn’t wait anymore.”
“Does Mom know you’re here?”
I already knew the answer. Mom had given me the power to decide. She wouldn’t take it away without talking to me first. Not Mom.
“I need to tell you something,” he said. “I need to explain.”
A silver sports car was parked about a half a block up the road. Through the window I could see the outline of the lady with blond hair poofing out around her head. She watched me watching her, then raised her hand and waved.<
br />
“Is that her?”
He glanced quickly over his shoulder, then came across the road anyway, his hands out, palms up, the way you get a frightened pony to trust you.
“Don’t worry about her, Lizzie. She had the money to get me out of jail, that’s all. I couldn’t stand being in there. You have no idea what it’s like to be confined.”
My leg almost jerked out, aiming for his shin. “There are other kinds of confinement, Dad, so yeah, I know all about that.”
“Sweetheart, I thought I’d get to see you if I was out.”
“You were out. I waited. You never came. You got out before we even moved. You didn’t even try to help us. You knew where to find me all along, but you didn’t come.”
“It’s not that simple. Mom didn’t want—” He glanced over his shoulder at the car and the blond lady waiting to save him again. “I’m sorry, Lizzie, so very sorry.”
“Has the trial happened yet?”
He shook his head. “I’ve made a decision. That’s why I had to come.”
His eyes got wet, and he put two fingers to his chest, trying to press away something that hurt, the same way I always did. I knew everything about him—the shape of his nose, the way he tilted his head and closed his eyes when he pulled a bow across the strings of his violin, the specific way he bunched the couch pillow under his head when he was reading. I even knew that sometimes, on those Saturday mornings so long ago when it was his turn to make breakfast, he burned the bacon on purpose just to make me and Mom laugh.
“What, then?”
He shifted from one foot to the other. “I’ve decided to plead guilty.”
My hand flew to my mouth. “Guilty?”
“I’m not going to fight it anymore. If I plead, I’ll go to a prison that isn’t as bad, and I’ll be out in four years.”
My legs trembled.
“I know that sounds like a long time, but if a jury finds me guilty, it could be fifteen. I can’t do fifteen; you’ll be all grown-up by then.”
“Guilty?”
He nodded solemnly, his face grave, ashamed. He was afraid.
“Why didn’t you tell me that from the start?”
“I didn’t know what to say. It was all so wrong, but it was my wrong, not yours, not Mom’s.”
Lizzie Flying Solo Page 17
