Wild Horse Spring (12 page)

“Stephanie, do you mind running over to the Clarks’ and seeing if leaving around ten will work for Cody?” asked Lynn. “That will give us time to get Diana up and get some breakfast.”

“S-sure.” I would have liked a chance to comb my hair before going over there, in case I saw Cody, but after overhearing Daddy’s conversation with Lynn about me and boys, I thought it would be better if I acted like it didn’t matter, so I skimmed down the front steps and headed across the packed sand to the yellow house. I passed the ATV in their driveway and quickly combed my hair with my fingers before knocking on the doorjamb.

I’d been hoping Cody would come to the door, but it was Mrs. Clark.

“Hi!” She smiled. Her brown eyes were warm and friendly. The aroma of pancakes wafted from inside the house. Mrs. Clark said she was making sea cookies, one of Cody’s favorites. I asked her if ten o’clock was a good time for Cody to head over to go to the aquarium, and she said yes. I tried not to crane my neck to see if Cody was anywhere in the room behind her.

“I’ve got to get Cody up,” she said with a conspiratorial smile. “He’s usually an early riser, but for some reason this morning he’s sleeping in.”

That was funny. Cody and Diana
both
sleeping in this morning.

“Okay, see you in a bit!” I said, without commenting or letting my expression change, and turned to run back across to our house.

And just then, a police car pulled into the sand-packed driveway. An officer got out, slamming the door, and stepped up onto the front porch.

I stood rooted to the porch.
What’s going on?

“Can I help you, sir?” asked Mrs. Clark, wiping flour off her hands.

The officer stepped forward to shake Mrs. Clark’s hand. “Morning, ma’am. Sergeant Lloyd Stone. How are you this morning?”

“Fine,” said Mrs. Clark warily. “Is there a problem, sir?”

“A horse was hit on the beach late last night by somebody driving an ATV.” The sergeant was stocky and muscular, with almost no hair, and carried a shiny black gun. “I’d like to take a look at this ATV.” He stepped back into the yard and circled the ATV, with his arms crossed, looking real carefully at the tires and body. Then he snapped a few pictures of the ATV using a camera with a long lens.

“Well, that’s impossible,” said Mrs. Clark. “No one was driving this ATV last night. I’m quite sure.”

“I’d like to ask you and your family members some questions, if you don’t mind.”

Mrs. Clark knitted her brow. “Well … I would never let Cody drive the ATV at night. And everyone in our house was in bed by midnight last night.”

“Someone called 911 from a cell phone in the wee hours of the morning to report an injured horse but hung up before identifying themselves.” The sergeant gave a cell-phone number and said it was registered by Malia Clark. “Is that you?”

Mrs. Clark put her hand over her mouth. “That’s Cody’s phone. So, you’re saying he was out on the beach last night and made a call to 911?”

What? Cody called 911 last night?

“I’m saying that phone was used to call 911. I’d like to speak with Cody, please.”

Mrs. Clark glanced at me, and her face had turned pale. “Stephanie, maybe you should go home. Please tell your parents that the earliest Cody can make it today will be ten–thirty, and he may not be able to make it at all.”

“Yes, ma’am.” I started across the sand, warm now beneath my bare feet.

“Wait, we’d rather you didn’t leave, young lady,” said the sergeant. “Were you out on the beach with that young man last night?”

“No, sir,” I said, in sudden shock. A roaring started in my head.

“You’re sure about that? The voice on the recorded 911 call was female and sounded about your age.” The sergeant loomed closer to me now, taking off his sunglasses and squinting at me thoughtfully in the bright sun.

“I’m sure,” I said in what I know was a scared voice.

What happened last night? Did someone use Cody’s phone to call? Was Cody out on the beach? Was he with Diana? Did they hit a horse with the ATV?

“Where are you staying, young lady?”

I pointed at our house. “Over there.” The blood had gone to my head, and I kind of felt like I was going to faint.

“And how do you know this young man?” The sergeant leaned against the car, patiently, holding the camera.

“We met on the beach, that’s all. We just started talking, and he offered me a ride on the ATV.”

“You realize that in this county you have to be sixteen to ride an ATV? Are you sixteen?”

My mouth dropped open. “No, sir. I don’t think Cody knew that either.”

“What happened to your arm?”

I cupped my other hand over the bandage. “I scraped it when I fell off the ATV yesterday afternoon.”

“Some people I’ve interviewed did say that they saw some young people driving an ATV behind the dunes in a somewhat reckless manner yesterday afternoon. Was that you and Cody?”

Someone told the police that they saw Cody and Diana and me on the path when we fell off the ATV?

“Well,” Mrs. Clark glanced at me. “That was purely an accident, and this young lady can certainly assure you of that, can’t you, Stephanie?”

I nodded. “Yes, ma’am. It was an accident. Cody was really sorry.”

The sergeant regarded me with his narrow eyes. “All right. You go on home, but I’d like you and your family to stay put so we can ask you some questions in a few minutes.”

I looked back at Mrs. Clark, and she gave me a nod.

“And now I’d like to speak with Cody,” said Sergeant Stone to Mrs. Clark.

“Just a moment, I’ll get him,” she said. “I’m sure this is all a big misunderstanding, and we’ll be able to straighten it out very easily. I know Cody didn’t hit any horse.” She turned to go back inside. I started running back to our house, my heart beating all out of time.

As I was running, my brain was whirling like crazy trying to figure everything out. Had Diana snuck out last night and somehow ended up hanging out with Cody? I just couldn’t believe it, since Diana had said more than once that she didn’t even like him. And she knew how I felt about him! So why would she do that?

And if they’d been riding the ATV on the beach last night, it seems like we would have heard them.

I turned around and looked at Cody’s house just in time to see Mrs. Clark go inside with the sergeant. And he was going to be over here soon, as soon as he talked to Cody. And what would Cody say to him?

A hot breeze blew, whistling around me, stirring up the sand and whipping the sea grass. My hair stung as it blew into my eyes, and I raked it away.

I slowed to a walk as I got to the yard at our house. The more I thought about it, the madder I got at Diana. How could she have sneaked out with Cody? And when had they planned it?

She was so tough to get along with, and I had tried so hard. I’d gone along with what she wanted to do last summer and gotten into trouble with the wolves. I’d tried to be loving toward her, and now look!

I went inside and quietly closed the front door. Daddy and Lynn were in the great room, facing the ocean, and wouldn’t have seen the sheriff’s car unless they came to the front door and opened it.

“There you are!” Lynn immediately began cracking eggs into a bowl.

“Stephanie, what took you so long?” Daddy said, looking up from his computer.

Diana was sitting at the counter, eating cereal, in that old, faded Heineken T-shirt of her dad’s.

“Sorry.” I stared at Diana, willing her to meet my eyes, but she was either paying no attention or purposely avoiding looking at me. In that very second, I was almost sure: she had sneaked out with Cody, and she was trying to keep it a secret from me.

Well, I wasn’t going to keep her secret.

“A policeman is over at the Clark’s house,” I said in a really calm voice. “A horse was hit on the beach late last night by an ATV, and he thinks Cody did it.”

“What?” Lynn, who was stirring eggs, stopped. Daddy stared at me. Diana, though, just kept eating, which completely convinced me.

“And the person who called 911 from Cody’s cell phone was a girl.”

Now, like a shot, Diana looked up at me, holding her spoon in midair. Her mouth was open and her eyes burned into mine.

O
h my gosh! How could Stephanie do that to me? Come in and announce that!

After our whole adventure with the wolves last summer, after all we’d been through. And she’d always been on my side!

Suddenly it hit me. She was mad about Cody. Thought I planned to sneak out with him from the beginning.

“A girl called? What girl? So what does that mean?” Mom said.

“It means that a girl was with Cody last night when the cell phone call was made about the horse,” Stephanie said. “The policeman asked us to stay here because he wants to come ask us some questions,” she added.

“Us? Why us?” Norm demanded. “We had nothing to do with that.”

“Is the horse okay?” I asked. “Did the horse live?”

Everyone in the family stopped. Looked at me. Mom put both hands on the counter, a look of shock on her face. “Diana?”

“What?” Then I turned to Stephanie, glaring. “Thanks a lot! Thanks for being so loyal!” I threw my spoon into the bowl.

“What were you doing with Cody?” Stephanie said.

“It was just coincidence. We didn’t plan it.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“So the person who made the middle-of-the-night cell phone call to report the injured horse was
you
?” Mom screeched.

“I’m going upstairs.” I couldn’t believe Stephanie had done this to me. I jumped off my stool and stomped toward the staircase.

“Now you wait just a minute, young lady!” Mom said.

“You’re not going anywhere,” said Norm. “You’re going to sit on this couch and explain this to us before the policeman gets here.”

If I could have thrown a bucket of paint in Stephanie’s face right then, I would have. To tell on me, just because of a boy. I was too mad to sit down; there was no way I was going to do what Norm told me to do. I just stood at the foot of the stairs. My head felt like it was going to blow off.

“We didn’t do anything! We just found the horse. It was already injured. We weren’t on the ATV, we were riding bikes.”

“In the middle of the night?” Mom said.

“I wanted to check on that wild horse that was injured. It wasn’t the middle of the night; it was just really early in the morning, about five or six.”

“You know better than to go out at that time without telling us where you’re going.”

“What were you doing with that boy?” Norm asked.

“I just ran into him on the beach, and he wanted to come with me.” I gave Stephanie a look of vindication. “I didn’t even want him to come. I told you I didn’t really like him.” I wasn’t going to admit to her that my feelings for him had changed, not now. I really wasn’t sure how to deal with that myself.

“And he wanted to come anyway?” Mom asked.

I nodded. “Yeah.”

Stephanie gave me a smoldering, skeptical look.

“I don’t care if you don’t believe me,” I said to her.
“It’s the truth. He rode your bike.” I pulled at a string from the hem of dad’s old T-shirt. “What did they say about the horse? Is it okay?”

“They didn’t say,” Stephanie said.

“Diana, are you telling us the truth?” Mom said.

“I’m not a liar!” I yelled. “I can’t believe this. There was an injured horse! She needed us! Maybe we saved her life! And all you guys can do is yell at me!” That was it. I ran up the stairs to my room and slammed the door.

I started to lie down on my bed but went outside on the porch instead and stood looking out at the beach, smearing the tears off my cheeks with the heels of my palms. My brain buzzed with anger at everyone, and my heart pounded. I let the sun dazzle my eyes and listened to the surf and tried to do what my doc had said, which was to slow down my breathing and try to rate my mood. Moronic Mood-o-Meter nine point five, maybe even ten. Terrible.

I tried to see down where the mare and foal had been on the beach but couldn’t see that far.

Mom would come upstairs to talk to me now, I knew she would. Maybe we shouldn’t have been out on the beach at that time of night, but Cody and I didn’t do anything wrong. What we did was good.

As usual, nobody ever saw the good in what I did.
I couldn’t wait to be a grown-up and make my own decisions.

Well, maybe I just wouldn’t wait around for the cop to come ask me a bunch of questions. Maybe I’d just climb over the porch railing and leave. That would show them. Maybe I’d just go stay at Dad’s. He’d support me. He didn’t have a bunch of ridiculous rules about everything.

I sat on the bed and put on a pair of shorts and a T-shirt. I was tying my running shoes when there was a knock on my door.

“Diana?” Mom came in. Her face looked very serious. “We need to talk about last night in detail before the police get here. I don’t know what kind of crime it is to hit a horse.”

“I told you, I didn’t hit a horse! I didn’t do anything! I called 911! That’s all I did!”

“It’s just that the policeman is going to be looking for the person who did it, and you’re going to have to have a solid story proving you didn’t so he’ll believe you.”

“What do you mean? I’ll just tell the truth? Won’t the truth be good enough?”

Mom blinked and looked at me levelly. “I hope so.”

Only a few minutes later, the police car drove up and parked behind Norm’s car, and Norm went to the door.

“Good morning, officer,” Norm said, shaking his hand. “Please come on in and sit down.” He waved his arm at the couch.

Stephanie and I sat on the stools at the counter. I could feel waves of hatred coming from her and avoided looking at her or talking to her. My brain was still buzzing with anger, but my mouth was dry too. Why did everyone always assume that I had done something wrong?

“Thank you. Sergeant Lloyd Stone,” said the officer. I recognized him from last night. He made a lot of noise coming in, with his boots and keys. A black gun gleamed on his belt. He took off his sunglasses and put them in his shirt pocket, then got out a really small laptop.