Paint My Body Red

by Heidi R. Kling

  Jake stops and, while he slowly winds a thick blue rope around his forearm, he carefully avoids eye contact with the frantic animal, making a shhh, shhh, shhh noise. After a while, Maverick’s hooves stop beating the dirt. The breaths through her nose are more natural and less erratic.

  With his head down, Jake inches closer. Maverick lets Jake get close enough to reach out his palm and offer it up for a sniff. The horse snorts up Jake’s scent and instead of nudging into him like she would if this were a movie and not real life, Maverick neighs angrily into the air. Tossing her head back, she recoils.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  The next day he tries again.

  “She just needs to get used to me is all,” he says in his ever-optimistic way after she chases him out of her corral. Jake narrowly escapes her wrath by leaping over the fence and crashing into me, sending us both tumbling to the dirt.

  Maverick catches my eye and from the looks of hers, she’s laughing at us.

  “Maybe she doesn’t like you because you gave her a boy’s name.” I don’t take my eyes off the horse. It’s hard to stop looking at such a fine creature.

  Jake snorts, still sore from this loss. “Maverick’s a fine name.”

  “Not for a girl.”

  “She’s not a girl. She’s a mare. And she’s half mustang. This is a wild horse and a good thing, too.”

  “Because she’s so easy to train?”

  My tease is met with a cocked eyebrow.

  “No, smarty pants, because a lot of cowboys name their mares boys’ names. You have a better one for her?”

  Cupping my face in my hands, I study her white mark on her forehead; it looks like a broken wing.

  “Scout.”

  “Scout?” He nods. “I had a mare named Scout once. That’s a good name.”

  “Glad you like it.”

  “How’d you think of that?”

  “Her mark looks like a broken wing, which made me think of a mockingbird—you know, Harper Lee—so obvious deduction is Scout.”

  “Your brain must be an interesting place to reside.”

  “Interesting is one word to describe it,” I say wryly, and he laughs. “So give it a try. See if she likes you more with her new and improved name.”

  He tries.

  First he circles, the slow approach. Dirt scratches into the air, warm, nose huffs irritation, ending, again, with a furtive dismissal as Scout chases Jake out of her zone. He does this dive roll over the fence, landing on his ass in the dirt. Jake throws his hands in the air. “Don’t know what I’m doing wrong.”

  I’m thoroughly amused as I offer him a hand up. “Is this the first horse who’s rejected you, Jake?”

  “Yes, as a matter of fact, she is.”

  “Well, you haven’t earned her affection yet. That’s all.”

  “Oh, really. You want to give it a try then, hot shot? Be my guest.” He hands me the rope. It’s boa constrictor thick.

  “Sure, why not?” I know she’s not going to hurt me. She wouldn’t have hurt Jake either—she just wanted to scare him out of her area.

  “Just stay back. Stay calm,” he advises unnecessarily. “That sound I was making, it’s also how you soothe a crying baby. Do it over and over again. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh.”

  Right. His lips are all puckered, and it’s halfway between hilarious and hot and then I’m practicing too, Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Shhh. Scout’s looking at me like I’m nuts.

  “Don’t make eye contact with her. You don’t want to make her think you’re challenging her. Approach slowly.”

  Cautiously, I climb over the fence, keeping my eye on him without making eye contact with Scout.

  Her energy changes when I enter the corral. She bends her head down and kicks at the dirt, it sputters into the air as she snorts and grinds. I glance over at Jake for guidance. What if I was wrong? Am I fast enough to get over the fence in time if she charges?

  His nod is reassuring. “It’s okay. Slowly.”

  I stop for a second, keeping my gaze on her hooves, avoiding her eyes. Shhh, shhh, I say, while Scout adjusts to my being here.

  Then I take another step forward.

  And another.

  In the noonday heat, I circle her, ever so cautiously, keeping her tensely muscled frame in my peripheral vision. I step inside as I circle slowly so she won’t know how close I’m actually getting.

  I’m close.

  And then I’m right there beside her.

  “Easy, easy,” I say, quietly. “Easy, girl.” I hold out my palm and let her sniff my skin. I don’t touch her. I don’t look directly into them, but I can see her eyes are fiery, and I know our newfound intimacy will be short-lived if I push too much too soon.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Then

  I think a lot about secrets.

  How everyone has them: Elena and Golden Boy and Elliot and Ty and me. Mom. How we keep our true feelings buried so deeply beneath the surface no one knows what we’re feeling or thinking until it’s too late to help. To make them see through the junk to find the treasure.

  I tried to make Ty see we could be there for each other without doing that with each other. He didn’t see it the same way.

  “Next group, come with us,” said the counselor at the doorway. We left homeroom in groups of four to go to school board assigned trauma therapy.

  Since Ty was in my homeroom and sat next to me, naturally we were in the same group. In a sterile room with chain hotel style art on the walls, we sat around one of those round tables with the fake wood tops that smelled like someone recently sprayed it down with an antibacterial spray.

  The chairs were metal folding chairs and I thought about the gum and who knows what else that lurked under the clean surface.

  “How are you all feeling?” the counselor, Mr. Fenrick, asked. He leaned in, and the bald spot on the top of his head glowed like it’d also been rubbed to shine. But his question shone through kind, brown eyes.

  “Okay,” one girl, Rachel said.

  “Fine,” one boy, A.J., said.

  “Shitty,” my brother, Ty, said.

  Instead of correcting him for vulgar language, the man in the shirt and tie leaned in and said, “Thanks for being honest. How so?”

  “I feel like I’m trapped in a video game with no exit.”

  “Hmm. And how does that make you feel?”

  “Shitty.”

  “Right.”

  “Ty,” I said, quietly. I was hoping this would be an in-and-out kind of thing. We were all required to attend group therapy once a week now. Check in, in case we were thinking about checking out.

  “What?” he glared at me before turning back toward the counselor.

  “What about the rest of you? Paige? Can you relate to what Tyler is saying?”

  “Sure, but I wouldn’t say it like that.”

  “Yes, well everyone expresses themselves in different ways.”

  Yeah, like some of us show up drunk night after night banging on their sisters’ doors, while some of us turn up the volume so loud on their iPods, we’ll probably have irreversible hearing damage later in life.

  “How would you say it?” He cocked his head. His eyes were warm and open. Was that something he trained in? Listening? It made me uncomfortable, all this focused listening.

  My household existed in short sentences of declaration and question. “Who wants Thai food?” and “Did you take the trash out?” and “I’ll be home after you’re asleep. Don’t forget to lock up.” There wasn’t a lot of eye contact.

  I squirmed in the metal chair.

  “Things aren’t great. We’ve had multiple suicides at our school that are supposedly contagious, only there is no antidote or serum or vaccine to prevent us from catching it. And we’re all aware how ridiculous that sounds. I mean, I’m aware and I’m the one saying it. How could something like wanting to end your life be contagious? It isn’t a runny nose. It’s your life. What Ty said makes sense, it does feel like being trapped in a
video game.”

  “But do you see an exit?”

  I shrugged. “There’s always an exit.”

  “Thank you, Paige. You’re right in feeling like there is no rhyme or reason to it. Sometimes, people are looking for a way out. A way out of their misery, and so when one person makes a tragic mistake and commits suicide, it opens the flood gates, releases the taboo, so to speak, and that is why others follow.”

  This made sense. But.

  “So they were already planning to kill themselves and one of us actually going through with it gave them the green light? I don’t buy that.”

  I didn’t buy that.

  I couldn’t buy that.

  So many of us were that miserable?

  Was I that miserable?

  I looked at my tablemates. Rachel with the same bob cut she’d been sporting since the fifth grade. Her whole routine of matching socks with her Polo shirt and white tennis shoes that looked so clean she must have twenty pairs. The handle of her tennis racket stuck out of her light blue backpack. She probably had practice after school.

  Did she want to die? If so, how? And when? On the court? During a match? After?

  What about A.J. with his curly black hair, brown eyes, checkered-hipster shirt, and hipster glasses? He was fumbling with ear buds dangling out of his white painter pants. He just wanted to get back to his music. His scruffy black and white Vans tapping on the floor told me he was listening to music in his head.

  Did he want to die?

  No.

  No way.

  Or did he?

  The counselor addressed Ty again.

  “Granted I haven’t played video games since I was a kid”—Mr. Fenrick looked about forty-five—“but after we won one round we just went to the next level.”

  “If you don’t get killed.”

  “Right. Which I did many times,” he kind of joked, but it fell flat. “What I’d like you guys to do for me this week is to visualize instead of the game ending, advancing to the next level. Moving on. Moving forward. I’d like you to write up different endings. Be as creative as you like.”

  “Will we get extra credit?” Tennis Rachel asked.

  “Sure. So can you do that?”

  We needed to move forward. Move on. From each other.

  When I thought about what the counselor said, an alternate ending to my video game, this is what I saw.

  A computerized image of me running one way.

  Ty running another.

  A clean split.

  I said this to Ty after school when he was playing video games and I was watching him from the wood floor of our entryway.

  He didn’t look up at me.

  “You enjoyed our little visit with the shrink, then?” he asked.

  “I found it helpful, yeah.”

  “As helpful as sleeping with that douchebag water polo player after the dance?”

  So he wasn’t that drunk.

  “It’s none of your business what I do.”

  He made this sort of snorting noise. “You just did it to make me jealous.”

  On the flat screen, overly bloated soldiers exploded. Blood splattered. Heavy artillery. Gushing arteries. Boom. Boom!

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Uh-huh. Because you’re usually really into douchebag water polo players. They’re exactly your type.”

  “What is this?” I grimaced at the realistic graphic violence on the screen. “It’s disgusting.”

  “It’s fun. Want to play?”

  “No.”

  “Oh, come on, don’t be such a buzzkill.”

  I sat next to him and he handed me a controller.

  “I get to pick my own soldier.”

  “Go ahead.”

  He clicked back to the menu screen. My choices were a beefcake marine named Buzz who looked like an even more bloated version of the one who just exploded, a tall, redhead aptly named Red, and a shapely woman with a full head of bleach blonde hair named Goldie.

  “This is so sexist. Like she’d be able to run around like that shooting people with her boobs falling out of her uniform.”

  “Are you kidding? She’s hot.”

  “Well, she might be HOT, but what she’s outfitted in isn’t PRACTICAL. For war or any other activity.”

  Ty deadpanned, “This is a futuristic world of zombies and mayhem. Practicality isn’t the number one concern. Staying alive is the goal.”

  “Still,” I said.

  Even though our subject matter was ridiculous, it was nice talking like this. Almost like things were normal again, but his voice had an edge to it, and I kept my guardrails up.

  “Put your machine gun where your mouth is, then.” His eyes were bright, challenging.

  “Lovely, Ty.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Fine. I think I will.” I matched his tone.

  If we were going to move on, move forward, we had to get back to doing normal brother and sister things.

  Sitting on the floor.

  Playing video games.

  Normal.

  I chose Goldie and she/we proceeded to kill zombies like a freaking maniac. By the time it was over, I was all amped up, there were zombie bodies everywhere, and my zombody count was at 147.

  “Is this what you meant by moving on? Letting me be killed by zombies?” Ty asked.

  “I didn’t…oh.” My stepbrother naturally chose Buzz, and there he was, dead, in a heap of zombies, brain partially eaten.

  “Sorry,” I said, sheepishly. “You almost made it to the safety zone.”

  “Almost,” he said. “Only works in horseshoes and hand grenades.”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not at all how that saying goes.”

  “And I’m pretty sure you know that you didn’t have to go off with Matt in order to make me want you.”

  “That’s not why I did it, Ty.”

  “Who cares why you did it? I noticed. The end. Now do you want to reboot and play again or what?”

  Did I want to reboot and play again?

  No. I was trying to be friends. I was trying to be stepbrother and stepsister. Sitting on the floor in front of a stupid video game was how all this started and it made sense that this is where it would end. At least in my mind.

  Maybe it was his voice. Maybe it was the darkness in his eyes. Maybe it was my behavior last night, first at the dance, lying to my friends, and then going off with a boy I wasn’t even slightly attracted to.

  None of this I wanted.

  Not even remotely.

  And something shifted in me. I couldn’t worry about Ty’s feelings anymore. If he was going to hate me forever, so be it.

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Now

  I’m right back out there the next morning.

  Scout looks up at me from her alfalfa with an expression of part curiosity, part recollection, but nothing about her says she’s about to submit.

  I appreciate her honesty.

  Climbing onto the lower rung of the splintered fence, I lean back, stretching my arms. My head falls back and I watch the sky while she eats. Then, hoping that she’s freshly full from alfalfa and a healthy slurp of fresh water, I approach her.

  It’s easier this time. She doesn’t paw at the dirt as I move closer and closer.

  My heart races as I reach out my palm, but instead of rearing up and beating me to death with her powerful hooves, she nuzzles her velveteen nose into my hand. I reach into my pocket and pull out a handful of sweet feed—a mix of oats, corn, and syrup—which she gobbles up. When I dig for another handful and offer it up, she graciously accepts. We do this dance for a while and instead of avoiding my eyes, instead of me avoiding hers—we look at each other. Really look. It’s spontaneous and slightly mad but I know what I want. I know exactly what to do—how to fix everything. I run into the house and announce, “I’m entering the rodeo and I’m going to ride Scout!”

  Anna is mid-coffee sip and sort of sputters out the hot liquid, moppi
ng it up with a hand-embroidered napkin and looking at me like Scout had that first day with a mix of contempt and curiosity.

  “I must not have heard you correctly. You didn’t just say you were planning on entering Scout in the rodeo?”

  “I did.”

  “What? How?” Anna speechless is a new thing. She looks up at Jake who sort of shrugs, like, hear her out.

  “She likes me. Ask Jake. She lets me approach her and doesn’t kick me, or,” I make eye contact with Jake, “chase me out of the corral, like she does with some people.”

  “Hey now, you want me on your side or not?”

  I grin over at him.

  “Eating sweet feed out of your hand is not the same as performing in a stadium with hundreds of noisy cow folks looking on. You know what you’d have to do? It’s breaking her in. She’ll buck you off. She doesn’t want to be ridden,” Anna says.

  I shrug. “Then she can buck me off.”

  “Paige.” Anna sighs. Her tone with Jake is irritable, too. “Jake? Jump in anytime.”

  “Scout does seem a bit taken by Paige,” he says, purposefully. The straw sticking out from his lips again. “She won’t let me get anywhere near her, and she is the mare I was planning on competing.”

  “You’ll help me then, Jake?”

  “Do I have a choice?” His tone is wry, perhaps for Anna’s sake, but he doesn’t hide the spark in his eye over this new challenge of breaking in both the city slicker and the mare.

  I grin, clasping my hands together. “It’s settled then. How do I sign up?”

  Anna sighs, tapping the side of her skull. “It’s your head, kid. But you need to get your daddy to approve before I’ll even consider it.”

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  I knock lightly on Daddy’s door.

  He’s sitting in his chair facing out the window when I tentatively approach.

  When I don’t see him for a couple hours and get caught up in something else, I sometimes forget he’s sick. I see him, the old him, everywhere on the ranch—tilting his cowboy hat into the sky, riding across the dirt—in all my memories. But then I see the new him again, and it hits me as hard as it did the first day on the ranch when he wheeled onto the porch, transformed, fading, and each day fading more.