by Kate Lattey
“Keep going,” Phil urged me as I leaned back against the scratchy cushions. “What else?”
“Marlene. But I’m starting to think that she sold me a dud horse in the first place, so maybe it’s her own fault if I’m making her stud look bad. But I don’t want to keep making a fool of myself by trying to ride Tori, and I’m scared to try.” I hated even saying the words, but it was true. Buying Tori had been one huge mistake.
“Sell the horse?” Phil suggested. “Seems to be what happens around our place when things don’t go according to plan.”
“I can’t.”
“Why not?”
“Because she was expensive,” I said, realising as I spoke how stupid it sounded. But it was true, and I tried to explain. “She’s supposed to be my top horse, my Grand Prix prospect. And she’s got all the talent in the world for it, she’s fully capable and super athletic. That’s why Dad bought her, so I could have the horsepower I’ve never really had. I mean, I’ve had the ponies, and they’re amazing, but I’m off ponies in a season and a half, so I need to move up.”
“But you don’t like her.”
“I…” I took a slow breath, then shook my head. “No. I don’t.”
“Have you told your dad that?”
“Are you kidding?”
“No.” His voice sounded level, unconcerned. “Why not?”
“Because it would make me sound like a failure.”
“So you’d rather have a horse you can’t control that makes you look like a bad rider – hey, I’m taking the words out of your mouth, here – instead of telling your dad that it’s not working out and maybe you should look for something a bit more easy-going instead.”
Somewhere in the distance, a cat yowled. “I’m not used to giving up. I’ve always been able to ride anything.”
“I guess things change.”
“Maybe.”
“You should talk to your dad, at least. See what he says. Maybe he’ll agree to sell her, maybe he’ll say to stick at it but will buy you a ton of lessons. That couldn’t hurt, right?”
“Nope. That wouldn’t be bad at all. And actually, he said he was going to get me lessons with a pro, when he bought Tori. But so far, nothing.”
“Well then. Hit him up.” Phil stretched his arms forward and cracked his knuckles in self-satisfaction. “That’ll be a hundred dollars for your session.”
“Dream on. Anyway, it’s your turn now.” I wondered what he’d say, and whether I’d be able to give as good advice as he’d just given to me.
“Um. I don’t know. Nothing as obvious as yours, I guess. I don’t mean obvious,” he amended as I huffed slightly. “I mean like, specific. Everything’s just the same as it’s always been. Only now it seems to be…worse. I dunno.” The moon shifted and peeked through the tack room window, and suddenly I could see Phil a lot more clearly. He was staring into the distance, frowning, but as his face came into the light his expression shifted, and his tone lightened. “No big major problems, anyway. Just need to harden up a bit, eh.”
“I don’t know about you,” I told him honestly. “But harden up has never worked for me. I mean, if only we could just go Oh man I’m being way too emotional, let me just shut off the fact that I care without turning into a sociopath. That’s like, impossible.”
Phil let out a short, bitter laugh. “Try telling my family that. You know what they’re like whenever anyone starts having an emotion, or feeling bad about themselves. Just harden up and get on with it,” he quoted, his eyebrows drawing together in a deep crease.
He was right. The Fitzherberts were unsentimental people – at least, his parents and two older siblings were. Lacey was a soft touch, but she got a free pass on account of being the youngest, and a girl. Phil was more sensitive than he let on, and I wondered how hard it was for him to be told to harden up all the time. As though any kind of soft emotion was automatically a weakness, or something to be ashamed of.
“Gah. It’s all so stupid, and messy, and just…dumb,” I said in frustration.
“That’s the world we live in,” Phil replied. “Get hard or go home.”I choked back a laugh, and even in the limited moonlight, I could see him blushing. “You know what I meant.”
“Yeah. I do.” I sighed, pulling my legs up higher and leaning my head against Phil’s shoulder, which was kinda bony but also comforting. How had I never realised how much I’d missed him? I could never talk to anyone else like this. Not even AJ. But something about this situation was loosening my tongue. In the dark, it was easier to talk. I don’t know why.
“Why is the world such a mess?” I asked softly.
I felt Phil shrug. “I don’t know. It’s always been like that, I think. It’s just that we can’t help knowing about it now.”
“You mean because of the internet and stuff?”
“Yeah.”
“Do you ever feel like…” I hesitated, unsure of what I was about to say. “I don’t know how to explain this so I don’t sound like a terrible person.”
I felt Phil turn his head towards me, and the light stubble on his cheek grazed my forehead as he spoke. “You can’t shock me. I already know you’re a terrible person.”
“Ha ha. Fine. I’ll say it, and you’ll be shocked.”
I could hear the smile in his voice. “Okay, I’ll brace myself. Go.”
I sat up a little, and rested my chin on my knees, wrapping my arms around myself as my brain desperately scrabbled for the right words. “Do you ever feel like it’s just too hard…to care? Like, when bad things happen around the world – suicide bombings and terrorist attacks and people getting beheaded and there being millions of people living in rat-infested refugee camps and it’s so awful and you feel so bad about it, but then you still have to get up every day and go to school and live your life, and your own problems seem so little and petty but then they’re also like, huge, because they’re the only problems that you’ve got. And then you get upset about stuff, and people are like um at least you’re not living in a rat-infested refugee camp and you know that’s true and you try to see that perspective but it’s so…exhausting,” I told him, my words tripping over each other as I tried to make him understand. “Like it’s just too hard to care that much about everyone all at once, so you just ignore it as much as possible. Until something really bad happens, something terrible and cataclysmic, and everyone gets really worked up and it’s all over Facebook and there are hashtags and memes and everyone changes their DPs and you do it as well because if you don’t then it looks like you don’t care about other people’s plights, and then someone posts something about how the media is misinterpreting what’s going on or how you’ve only been shown the stuff they want you to see, and that hundreds and thousands more people are dying that you never even hear about. So then you feel shallow and you have to feel bad for those people too, for their problems and because they’re being ignored by the media, and it makes you mad that you’re being manipulated into caring more about some people than others, and you try and wrap your head around how it must feel for people to be in those kind of horrific situations, seeing their families get killed and not being able to go to school for fear of their lives, and you think how grateful you are for where you live and what you get to do in your life. But then your mum yells at you for not keeping your room clean, and teachers tell you off for not studying hard enough and it’s like sorry but I have the weight of the freaking world on my shoulders right now, except that I don’t. Not really. Because all those problems are other people’s problems, and my problems are whether I’ve done my homework and whether my room is clean and how my ponies are going and whether my dad just spent a stupid amount of money on a horse I can’t ride. I can’t do anything about whether someone decides to strap a bomb to themselves and kill innocent people. All I can do is write a hashtag and change my profile picture and feel guilty for having a better life than millions of people who are living in rat-infested refugee camps, and then I hate feeling so bad about so
mething I can’t change and I can’t fix and it’s just so…it feels like such a burden, except it’s not, because look at everything we have, and how trivial our problems are…”
My words petered out at last, my tongue finally tying itself in so many knots that I had to stop. I wondered what Phil was thinking. Probably that I was crazy. I shouldn’t have said anything, should’ve quit while I was ahead, but it was too late now. My guts were officially spilled, and Phil still hadn’t spoken, so I sat up and looked at him, trying to gauge his reaction.
He didn’t meet my eyes. Instead, he was focused straight ahead, his expression tight and his jaw clenched. I thought he was mad, at first, until I realised that his eyes were shinier than usual. Was he…but boys don’t cry. It was the first thing that came into my head, and I shoved it away immediately. Of course they cry. Everyone cries. It’s perfectly normal, and healthy, and I was not going to judge him for it. But it made me uncomfortable. Not because he was a boy, but because crying people always do. I never know what to say to them, and my hugs always seem insincere, no matter how hard I try to make them feel comforting. I wanted to be AJ just then, because she would’ve known what to say and how to reassure him, or how to lighten the mood and stop him from crying, because I knew he didn’t want to do that in front of me. He was looking away now, trying very hard not to blink.
“You okay?”
He nodded, then raised a surreptitious hand to rub at his damp eyes. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be.” I leaned into his shoulder again, because it was all I could think of to do, and felt him lean back into me, reciprocating my touch. “Never thought anyone would be crying over my first world problems,” I teased, trying for some levity.
“Don’t say that.” Phil’s voice had changed, gone deeper, and I sat up again.
“What? Why not?”
He glared at me, that deep line reappearing between his eyebrows. “That first world problems crap. Because that’s part of the problem. It’s exactly what you’ve just been talking about. Everyone’s problems are their problems, and they still hurt, no matter how big or small they are. They still hurt. So saying your problems are not real problems because there are bigger problems in the world is so unhelpful. Everyone has things in life that suck, it’s just the scale of it that changes. Sometimes people can’t get out of bed in the morning because their arms and legs have been blown off. And sometimes people can’t get up because they just…can’t.”
He clenched his jaw, leaned back into the couch cushions and sighed heavily. His long eyelashes were damp and starting to curl slightly, and despite everything that we were talking about, my brain shifted gears abruptly and started thinking about how pretty his eyelashes were. Jealous, my mind whispered, and then Oh my God can’t you shut up and focus for five seconds?
“Do you ever wish we lived in a simpler time?” Phil asked softly, and I pulled my errant brain back to the topic at hand.
“Hmm. Like when? Because we’ve been studying the Middle Ages at school, and I’m not putting my hand up for that.”
He almost smiled, then his face turned serious again. “Not quite that far back, then. But before the internet or TV, before daily newspapers even, when all you knew about was what was happening in your own corner of the earth, your own village and maybe the town over the way.”
I nodded. “When you got to live in your own little pocket of existence and didn’t have to know that people were being ruthlessly slaughtered a million miles away. And you could just feel bad about things without having all this stupid guilt.”
The sleeves of the red hoodie slipped over my hands, and I looked down at the frayed cuffs. This hoodie had been well-worn, and much-loved. I had to give it back, and I never wanted to take it off. It was the closest I was probably ever going to get to Anders, and I cursed the rules of society that made my best friend’s boyfriend off limits to me. Holes had been pushed through the seams just above the cuffs, and I slid my thumbs into the spaces where only Anders’ thumbs had been before. I hoped he was going to be okay. I should go visit him again, see how he was doing, give him his hoodie back. Talk to AJ, tell her the truth about Squib. My stomach clenched up at the thought, but I steeled myself. Tomorrow, I vowed.
“Be nice, wouldn’t it,” Phil continued, unaware of my wandering mind. “Only having to think about your own problems.”
“Yeah, I reckon. To have a life where you only had to worry about basic things, like whether your cabbages were growing fast enough, or whether the boy you liked was interested in you too,” I mused out loud. And then I stopped talking, because Phil had turned to look at me at last, and his eyes were boring into me with sudden intensity.
“I don’t know about your cabbages,” he said slowly. “But you don’t need to worry about the second part.” And even as my brain frantically thought no, wait, not you, I was thinking about Anders, what’s happening? he was leaning in closer and closer still, and his eyes were still fixed on mine and I could see his breath in the cool air, and then he was kissing me and I forgot about Anders, and I forgot to care that Phil was like my cousin, because he certainly didn’t feel like my cousin right now. And because it felt so good to have someone holding me, and kissing me, and wanting me. The blanket slipped down around my waist and his other arm came around me and pulled me in closer, and I closed my eyes and kissed him back.
Phil made a small noise in the back of his throat, then I yelped as his cold hand slid underneath the red hoodie and across the bare skin of my lower back.
“Argh!”
“Sorry.” He snatched his hand away and pulled back from me, looking embarrassed. “I didn’t…”
“It’s okay,” I said instinctively, because I didn’t want him to feel bad. I knew how much he hated being embarrassed, and even in the dim light, I could tell he was blushing furiously. It was something he’d always done easily, and he’d always copped a lot of flak for it – from Bradley mostly, who seemed impervious to embarrassment but loved to deal it out to little brother. But as Phil’s expression relaxed and the tension shifted out of his shoulders, I realised that I meant it. It really was okay. In fact, it was pretty good. The memory of his lips on mine, his body pressed against me, and his hands…
“It was just…cold. Here.” I reached over and took his hands, rubbing them between both of mine and huffing warm breath onto them, trying to warm them up. Phil looked at me and his face broke into a slow smile.
“There,” I said. “Now try again.”
A little tentatively, he reached around and slid his hands back underneath my top, one on either side of my waist. They were still cold, and I shivered. He winced, and it was all getting a bit awkward, so I leaned in towards him and kissed him again, to see if that would break the ice.
It did. As we kissed, Phil’s hands moved to the small of my back, and I moved closer until I found myself sitting across his legs, facing him. His hands slid higher, caressing my shoulderblades, and his mouth was warm, his kisses gentle. The moonlight faded behind a cloud, returning us to darkness.
Time stood still. There was just me, and Phil, and the smell of hay and leather and stale horse sweat, his lips on mine, and his hands exploring my bare skin, both of us warming up fast…
Right outside the tack room, just feet from where we sat, a rooster crowed raucously. We both jumped at the sound and our foreheads banged together, making me giggle reflexively. We broke apart slightly, breath coming quickly, pulses racing.
Phil’s mouth twitched into a smile. “Why has it taken us so long to do that?” he asked, tucking a strand of my damp hair behind my ear and slowly tracing a line down the side of my neck
I shrugged. “Because we’ve been friends for years, and it never occurred to us to think of each other any other way?”
“Hmm.” He leaned towards me and pressed his lips against the spot where our skulls had clashed. “Speak for yourself,” he murmured. “It’s been ages since I thought of you as just a friend.”
Taken ab
ack, I straightened up, pulling away from him slightly. “Seriously?”
He didn’t have to answer – I could read it on his face. But he spoke anyway. “Yeah. Why do you think I’ve been avoiding you?”
“Okay, wait. You’ve been avoiding me because you like me? What kind of warped boy logic is that?”
Phil shrugged, and even in the grey light, I could see his face and neck reddening again. I became belatedly aware of what the rooster already knew – it was no longer the middle of the night. It was closing in on dawn, and I was sitting on the couch in the tack room, half-dressed, with Phil. In Phil’s lap, more precisely. Who would’ve seen that one coming?
Him, apparently.
“But why?” I demanded. “Why avoid me? Surely that was counter-productive. I mean, if we stopped talking altogether then we’d never have done any of…this.” He grinned, his hands still under my hoodie, and I screwed up my nose at him. “So what was the point?”
“I dunno,” he admitted. “Scared, I guess. That you wouldn’t be interested, that you’d kick me to the kerb.”
“Well,” I told him. “You know what they say. Fortune favours the brave.”
And I put one hand on his neck and pulled him closer and kissed him again. What the hell, right?
CHAPTER TWELVE
“We need to talk.”
AJ pulled a carton of juice out of the fridge and set it on the bench behind her. “Sure, what’s up?”
I looked at her back as she continued rummaging around, at the sling that still hung around her neck. Spit it out, I told myself. Just get it done.
“I can’t ride Squib for you.”
I waited for her to spin around and stare at me incredulously, to ask why, and argue, but she didn’t. She just reached further back into the fridge and pulled out a half-eaten tub of yoghurt, then closed the door and turned to face me.
“Okay.”
I stared at her as she pulled the lid off the yogurt and dug a spoon into it.
“Okay?” I asked.
