Missing (5 page)

“I bet you'd like to be out there too,” I say. “I bet you'd like to gallop across that field instead of being cooped up in here.” For a second I think about opening the gate and letting him out. I ditch that idea quickly. He'd probably never come back and I'd be in major trouble.

I fed Renegade this morning before school—hay and some oats that I found in a metal drum in the barn. Tully says he's happy to hand over that job to me. I fill up the bathtub now with a hose that stretches from the barn and retrieve the empty grain bucket, which Renegade has kicked against the fence. As I go in and out of the corral, I keep my eye on him, but he is disinterested, still staring at the distant hills. I toss another flake of hay over the fence, drop the apples on top and wait.

I like the way Renegade smells. I like the smell of the hay, and I even like the smell of the manure stomped into the dusty ground.

I wait a little longer.

My eyes flick to the round pen at the end of the corral. Somehow I know that it's the key to working with Renegade. If only I knew how to use it. Tonight I'm planning to read the stuff I got off the Internet.

At last Renegade drifts over to the bathtub and drinks, raising his head nervously every few seconds. Water streams from his muzzle. He stretches out his neck and nudges at a piece of apple. His lips close on it and he chews.

He is close now, so close. Only the fence is between us. I hold my breath. I could reach out and touch him. But I don't.

Tully has a surprise at dinner. “We have our first guest,” he says.

“I thought you weren't opening until next summer,” I say.

Tully has barbecued us each a steak and baked some potatoes, and we're eating on the porch. Dad jumped in the lake to clean himself up after he finished working. His hair is still wet and slicked back, and he looks more relaxed than I've seen him for a long time.

“I'm not,” says Tully. “But this is one determined lady.”

It turns out he's been emailing back and forth all day with some woman in England. Tully says her name is Marion Wilson and she has friends who stayed here ten years ago and highly recommended it.

“When is she coming?” I say.

“Next week,” says Tully. “I told her we weren't set up for riding or anything. She says she just wants to relax. She doesn't eat breakfast, wants a bag lunch and will have dinner with us. She sounds like a very nice lady.”

“What cabin are you going to put her in?” says Dad.

“I think cabin two, next to you guys.”

“How long will she stay?” I ask.

“She wasn't sure. She wants to leave it open.”

“She's coming here all the way from England? Weird,” I say.

“Maybe she's going somewhere else as well.” Tully sounds excited. He told us last night that he's always dreamed of having a guest ranch, once he got the traveling out of his bones. I'm not sure what I think. Tully already feels like family—that sounds like a cliché, but I swear it feels like we've known him longer than a week and a half. This woman will be a stranger. I'd way rather have the place to ourselves.

There's something else that bothers me, but I'm not sure what it is. I'm lying in bed later, tossing and turning because it's so muggy, when it comes to me. Tully said that Marion Wilson mentioned friends who were here ten years ago. But ten years ago the Double R wasn't a guest ranch. I know that because there was no guest book for that period. In fact, there was a gap of about six years. Even if Marion was out by a year or two, it couldn't be right.

Did Marion Wilson make a mistake? Or maybe there was a guest book and it just got lost. It's probably nothing, but it niggles away at me. It's a long time before I fall asleep.

F
ive

In the morning the sky is full of dark, foreboding clouds. I walk up to the end of Thurston Road. There's no sign of Van. While I wait for the school bus, I worry about what to do if he comes. I mean, the bus is going to be empty. So if he gets on first and goes to the back, am I supposed to follow him and sit beside him, or should I sit in the seat behind the bus driver again? I hate situations like this. I never know what to do.

Van races up on his bicycle at the last minute and has just enough time to hide it in the bushes before the bus comes. I end up getting on first. I sit down in the same seat I had yesterday and Van sits across the aisle. He wants to compare social studies homework. For once I've got it done, and I let him copy some of my answers. “You're a life saver,” he says, smiling, and I notice that he has a crooked front tooth.

We talk for a few minutes. The bus stops for two girls and a guy. Van gets up and moves to the back of the bus with them. He's probably sat in the same seat all year, but I still feel a tiny bit hurt. More kids get on and they all seem to go to the back. It gets noisier and noisier. There's a lot of laughing. A whiff of cigarette smoke drifts up the aisle. I resist the urge to turn around and see who it is. The bus driver yells, “Put it out NOW!” There's dead silence and then a few giggles.

I pull out my book and try to read.

It's raining hard by the afternoon. Dad's waiting for me at the bus stop in his pickup truck. I mumble goodbye to Van, but Dad watches Van retrieve his bike, and he opens the window and says, “Why don't you throw that in the back and I'll give you a lift?”

“Sure,” says Van. He's dripping by the time he slides onto the seat beside me.

It's steamy inside the truck. “The defogger's not working properly,” says Dad as he wipes the windshield with his sleeve. The rain is coming down in sheets now and the wipers can't keep up.

Dad and Van chat like old friends while I sit silently. In the next few minutes I learn all kinds of things about Van: He has three sisters, all younger. His family lives in the house that Van's dad grew up in. His dad is a logger and his mom has a fabric shop in town and teaches quilting. Van's grandparents live with them.

We go past the Double R Ranch sign and then, after about a kilometer, Van says, “Right here.” A wooden sign hanging beside the road says
The
Gallaghers
. Dad turns onto a narrow driveway that winds between rain-lashed trees. It's dark out, even though it's only four o'clock. A gray weathered house comes into view, with the lake, churned into small whitecaps, behind it. There's a swing set, the swings blowing in the wind, and a structure made out of red plastic blocks that looks like a playhouse.

When Van gets out, rain blows inside the truck, spattering the seat. He heaves his bike out of the back, shouts “Thanks” and disappears around the side of the house.

“Nice kid,” says Dad, turning the truck around. “Is he in your grade?”

“Yeah,” I say.

“Any of your classes?”

“Social studies,” I mutter. I'm tensing up. Dad doesn't usually take an interest in my friends. In fact, I don't think he's ever really noticed that I don't exactly have friends. I've always blamed it on him— all the moving around and changing schools. How can you make friends when you're only going to be around for a few months?

That's the excuse I use, anyway. But lately I've been starting to panic. Maybe it's something I'm doing. Or not doing. I tell myself I'm just out of practice. I
used
to have friends when we lived in the Valley.

Dad isn't giving up. “It's great that he lives so close.”

“Right.”

Dad looks at me sideways. “Don't be suspicious every time someone is nice to you.”

The criticism stings and stupid tears form behind my eyes. What's wrong with Dad? And how does he know if Van's being nice or not?

“Drop it,” I say, my voice sharp.

I mean it. I don't want to discuss Van. I don't even know if I like him.

Dad lifts both hands off the wheel and says, “Sorry.”

I feel too tired to fight with Dad. I wipe the water off the seat with a rag that he keeps on the floor, and then I slide over to the window. The rain races in streaks down the glass. My thoughts turn to Renegade, wondering how he's doing in the storm.

When we get back to the ranch, Dad says he's going to get a bit more work done before dinner. He's right in the middle of tearing the old cabinets out of cabin five and only stopped to come and save me from getting soaked. I put on a raincoat, pull up the hood and hurry out to the barn. Renegade is in the shelter, staring out at the rain. He's wet, his black coat sleek, his tangled mane glistening with water drops. He's spread his hay around and tromped it into the ground, soggy and muddy. I lift up the blue tarp covering the bales of hay. There's a bale that I cut open this morning, the orange twine sprung to the side. I break off a flake and toss it in front of Renegade. I stay for five minutes, talking to him softly, and then go into the barn.

The rain is drumming on the metal roof, as loud as gunfire. It's dim but I find a switch on the wall, and when I flick it, the barn fills with bright light. I stand still for a minute, breathing in the smell.

Mom loved the smell too
. I suck in my breath. Where did that come from? I don't even know if it's true. I try not to think about Mom. I don't really know what I'm supposed to feel. She left us to live with that trainer and that was a crummy thing to do.

The fact is, my memories of Mom are all screwed up. I remember Dad doing all those little-kid things like tucking me in at night or reading me a story. I even remember him giving me my bath. But not Mom. She was always busy meeting with other trainers or judging horse shows or talking on the phone to clients. Did Mom even
think
about me after she left? I'll never know because she went and got herself killed and my world fell apart. Dad sold the stable and all the horses, including my horse Monty, who I adored, and we left.

I take a few deep breaths until I feel like myself again. Whatever that is. I decide I need a project, so I spend the next hour sorting through the pile of tack in the little room. I shake out saddle blankets, knocking out bits of grass and dirt and seeds, and stack them on racks. I move all the saddles to one side, straightening out girths, leaning them carefully against the wall. There's nothing really wrong with them that a bit of saddle soap won't fix. I hunt through the clutter on the shelves to see if I can find some. I dig through brushes, plastic curry combs, hoof picks, a tin of something called Hoof Maker, a bucket of rags, a bottle of mane detangler, some sponges. No saddle soap.

I clean up the mess on the shelves, finding a place for everything. I make a pile of things to throw away. Keeping busy makes me feel a lot better. When I'm finished, I survey the room. There's still lots to do but I've made a start. Suddenly I realize that it's quiet— no more drumming on the roof. I go to the barn door and gaze out. Everything is dripping, but the clouds have torn apart and patches of watery blue sky are poking through. The air is fresh. I'm starving.

S
ix

It's lunch hour at school and for once I've got something to do. As soon as the bell rings, I head downtown to the tack store. It's four blocks away, right in the middle of the town, which is only about twelve blocks from end to end. A life-size model of a horse stands outside the store and there's a bulletin board by the door, covered with photographs of horses for sale and notices about riding camps and horse shows. I've been here once before, about two months ago, just to look around, but I never told Dad. I love everything in the store: the blankets with their bright Navaho designs; the gleaming saddles with intricate patterns tooled into the leather; the bright red, blue and green halters; even the rows of buckets on the floor filled with all kinds of brushes.