Wild Horse Spring (2 page)

Mom and Norm were always coming up with ideas to play games and go to movies when Stephanie stayed with us every other weekend. It was like having me around was normal and having her around was some special occasion or something. It really irked me. And it still drove me crazy how every little thing scared her.

Now we passed people who had parked their trucks on the beach so they could fish. The grown-ups wore tall, thick rubber boots and cast their lines out into the churning water. White plastic buckets stood on the sand beside them. Little kids wearing sweatshirts were building a sand castle that looked more like a mountain with turrets. As seagulls circled above the fishermen, hoping for scraps, their high, eerie calls pierced the air.

Driving even farther up the beach, we didn’t see anyone else.

“Wow, it’s deserted along here,” said Mom. “That makes me a little nervous, Norm.”

“Is my cell phone going to work here?” Of course Stephanie would be worried about that.

“My buddy, the guy who owns the house, said it will, honey,” said Norm.

I didn’t have a cell phone, but Stephanie’s mom had given her one because of having to pick Stephanie up at different times from cheerleading practice. Mom and Norm had gotten annoyed with Stephanie’s mom for getting her a cell phone, since I didn’t have one, but I told them I didn’t care. I was glad I didn’t have one. If I did, people might notice that I never got a text.

It would be exciting to stay in such an isolated part of the beach. A better chance we’d see the wild horses. By the end of the week, I’d be riding bareback into the ocean. I’d always dreamed about having a horse that had never been touched by human hands but would become docile and affectionate toward me. Only me.

“I think this is where we turn,” Norm said, cutting away from the water between two dunes after glancing at the directions he’d printed out. We followed a short road of packed-down sand. And back among the dunes, surrounded by sea grass and some twisted
bushes leaning away from the water, were two small beach houses.

We drove slowly by a yellow house on stilts with a wraparound porch and a four-wheel-drive vehicle parked underneath. Then Norm stopped in front of a small gray cottage on stilts enclosed by latticework, with a large triangular picture window and a long, long wooden walkway leading over the dunes to the beach.

“I think this is it,” Mom said, looking at the picture on the printout. “It’s called Wild Horse Lookout.”

“Oh, I love that name!” I said.

Stephanie glanced at the house, then over at the yellow dunes, then back to the stand of gnarled, scrubby trees with shiny leaves behind us, and bit her lip. I was reminded of the white, terrified look on her face the day her horse ran away with her. I feel bad about it now, because I laughed at her, and it had been my fault. But later I helped her with her riding, and on our last day at the ranch, she’d ridden a big, gentle gelding named Sam. Some of her fear had gone away.

Now we pulled up in front of the gray house, and the most wonderful and amazing thing happened. Seven or eight small horses, chestnut and bay and black, still wearing their rugged winter coats, galloped across the dune behind our house. Whinnying and sending sand flying, they veered away from our car and pounded
off toward the inland forest. Second to last was a tiny black foal with long legs and knobby knees, stumbling along to keep up with its mother. The stallion was in the rear, also black, with his dark head low, herding the rest.

“Oh my gosh!” I practically jumped out of the car before we stopped moving. “Did you see the foal?” I couldn’t believe how small the horses were. They looked like ponies. And their tails were so long they almost brushed the ground.

Mom jumped out of the car too. “Oh, Diana, wasn’t that a beautiful sight?”

I ran up the dune after them, my feet sinking in the soft, cool sand, and I watched until the foal disappeared into the gnarled trees in the direction of the setting sun. Without a thought I followed her.

O
h my gosh, I couldn’t believe those wild horses ran right through our yard! They scared me to death. At least they were smaller than the ones at the ranch last summer! After the ranch, I thought I was almost over my fear of horses. Maybe they just startled me.

I could not believe Daddy rented us this house out in the middle of nowhere. Only one other house was in sight, and it looked empty. Ever since he married Lynn, Daddy had tried to be Mr. Wild Adventureman. I guess
to impress her. Well, I’m sorry, I’d known him all my life, and he was completely a city person. I wondered when that act was going to wear off, and he would let Lynn know what he was really like.

I’d already tried my cell phone. It worked. Thank God!

Of course Diana had to go running across the dunes after the wild horses.

“Diana, Stephanie, come on. We’ve got to unload the car!” Daddy yelled as he unhooked our two bikes from the rack on the back. I stayed around, helping him roll them under the house. He opened the rear liftgate, and I waited for him to load me down with two bags of groceries. Then I followed Lynn to the front door, where she finally got the key code to work.

“You’re a big help, Stephanie,” Lynn said as she pushed the door open. She put her arm around me and squeezed. “Have I gotten a chance to tell you how happy we are that you’re with us?”

My face felt warm, and I couldn’t stop myself from smiling. I really liked Lynn, so sometimes I felt guilty. I knew I ought to be loyal to Mama. Sometimes Mama asked me questions about Lynn, and I acted really vague. I never acted like anything I did at Dad’s was fun, even though it was, because Mama would get jealous. I had been thinking and thinking about living
with Daddy and Lynn. But I hadn’t said it out loud to anyone.

One reason was because I really didn’t like Barry’s son, Matt. Matt flunked out of his first semester of college and had been living with us since Christmas because his mom said he couldn’t live with her anymore. Now Mama and Barry were spending all their time arguing about what to do about him. Matt and his friends were wild, and Mama constantly tried keeping him in line, but she didn’t know half of what they did. Should I tell what I knew?

But then there was Diana. Could I live with her?

I wish I could figure out where I belonged
.

I heard Daddy yelling for Diana as I followed Lynn inside. The house was old-looking and comfortable, with weathered, gray porches on the front and back. Inside there were worn hardwood floors and wicker furniture with pretty but faded pillows in beachy colors, sky blue and teal. I left the grocery bags on the counter in the glaring white kitchen. White walls, appliances, countertops, cabinets, and even white bar stools. In the living room, sunlight poured in through a tall triangular window, which gave an amazing view of the royal blue sky and a long wooden walkway that led to the water over the pristine dunes.

As we were bringing in our suitcases and the rest
of the groceries, Daddy and Lynn got more and more annoyed with Diana for running off and not helping unload the car.

I dragged my suitcase upstairs, and Lynn came with me to look at the bedrooms. The master bedroom, where she and Daddy would stay, was on the first floor, but there were two small rooms on the second floor.

“Why don’t you go ahead and pick whichever one you want, sweetie,” Lynn said as she put towels in the bathroom. “Since she ran into the woods, Diana gave up her chance to pick.” Lynn headed back downstairs.

Both rooms had yellow walls and a sliding door leading to an upstairs porch. I chose the room with a sky blue bedspread instead of the room with the navy striped comforter, and flopped my suitcase on the bed. I stepped out onto the porch and leaned over the wooden railing into the ocean breeze. I gazed at the waves and the wide, shimmering beach that stretched as far as I could see in both directions. The sky was huge, with thin wisps of silvery clouds that floated above the water like a magical land. The sun shone brightly on the dunes, and some birds flying by looked like sparkles against the clouds. So beautiful. The only problem was, there wasn’t a single other person around, much less anyone my age. Except Diana, of course.

I had no idea what Daddy and Lynn would say—or Mama—about me living with them. What scared me
most was asking Mama. I knew she would be so hurt. And living with Diana? Well, I would be the first to admit that I’m a “girlie girl,” as in I wash and blow-dry my hair every day, and I’m particular about my clothes. Diana pays no attention to her flyaway, strawberry blonde hair. She just sticks it in a ponytail, most of the time forgets to wash it, and a lot of days doesn’t even comb it. She wears jeans and sweatshirts with dirt smears (or whatever!) from the barn and doesn’t care. After we’d had the adventure with the wolves last summer, I’d been happy that we’d gotten close, or at least stopped being enemies. I mean, we were stepsisters now, after all, and it meant a lot to me for us to get along.

But being in the same school changed things. I hadn’t realized until I had gotten there with Diana how things were for her. She hardly had any friends, and a lot of people avoided her. She wasn’t in the advanced sections of language arts like me. The only advanced section she was in was science, because the only thing she was interested in was animals. I mean, it didn’t make a difference in how I felt about her. It was just, well, sometimes awkward when it came to other kids.

We both had a language arts assignment to do over spring break, which I thought was completely unfair. We both had to memorize a poem of our choice and be
ready to perform it for our class when we got back. I chose a famous love poem by Elizabeth Barrett Browning called “How Do I Love Thee?”

I picked a love poem because lately I’d been thinking about love—all kinds of love—a lot. Love for another person. Love for my family. Love for God. My teacher had said, “The most powerful force in the world is love.” I’d been thinking about that a lot. I wondered what it would be like when I fell in love someday.

Diana chose a poem by William Blake called “Tyger.” I didn’t know why it was spelled funny like that. Lynn said maybe we could practice together and perform our poems at the end of the week for her and Norm. I guess that could be kind of cool. I like poetry. When I read poems by, say, Robert Frost or Emily Dickinson, I sometimes think,
That’s exactly the way I feel! How can another person know I feel that way?

I opened my suitcase and started putting my things in the dresser drawers, automatically folding my socks and separating out my shirts and shorts like I have them arranged at home. Diana would probably live out of her suitcase the entire trip.

At school I sometimes heard people talking about Diana. Once I was standing by my locker, and I heard someone call her a name, something like “Annn-i-MAL.” As I clicked my locker closed, I’d had a sick feeling in
my stomach. Then I’d walked down the hall, pretending I hadn’t heard anything.

The last weekend I stayed with Daddy and Lynn and Diana, I’d tried to talk to Daddy about it. I hardly ever got a chance to be alone with Daddy anymore. It had been a Saturday afternoon. Lynn had gone to pick Diana up from the barn. Dad had just finished mowing the lawn when I found him going through the mail at the kitchen counter. He had his reading glasses on, and the wrinkles between his eyes deepened as he separated the mail into piles. His T-shirt was sweaty, and there were beads of sweat on his forehead where his hair was getting thinner. I sat at the counter next to him and pretended to read the front page of the paper.

“What’s up, sweetheart?” Daddy said, looking over his glasses at me with a smile.

“Nothing,” I said. That’s always the first thing I’d say, even if I wanted to talk about something.

“Something’s on your mind.” He put a bill aside and slid another out of its envelope.

“It’s, well, it’s Diana, I guess. She doesn’t really hang out with anyone.”

“Hmm.” Daddy folded his glasses and put them in his shirt pocket, then he faced me. “What do you mean? Isn’t she friendly with the kids that hang out at the barn?”

“I don’t think so.” It seemed like the horses were Diana’s friends, instead of people. I crossed my legs and traced the squarish bone on top of my knee with my finger. I whispered the next part. “I heard some kids at school making fun of Diana.”

Daddy sat up straighter and looked at me more sharply. “Do they bully her?”

“They talk about her behind her back.”

“What kinds of things do they say?”

“They call her names. Stuff like that.”

“Is she aware of it?” Daddy asked.

“I’m not sure. We’ve never talked about it.” I couldn’t tell Daddy that I hadn’t stood up for Diana.

He let out a huge sigh and said, “I’ll talk to Lynn about it. Meanwhile, how do you think you should handle things?”

I knew he was going to say that. “Well … act in a loving way?” I said. “Isn’t that right?” I traced my kneecap with my finger again, avoiding Daddy’s eyes.

“Yes. So what should you do?”

“I guess I could invite Diana to hang out with me and my friends at school.”
I’m sure that’ll go over really well
.

“Good idea. You could also include her when you have friends over to the house.”

“I’ve tried that, Dad. The one time I had Colleen over, we invited Diana to play cards, and she completely
snubbed us. I mean, I could try again, but she doesn’t usually want to do things with us, though.”

“That’s fine if she doesn’t. You could just invite her, and then she can decide. Anything else?”

“I can’t think of anything.” That was a lie. I could think of something: Stand up for her. But I’d never do that. I couldn’t even stand up for myself!

I hadn’t told Dad, but I didn’t invite friends over to Mama’s house because of Matt, and I didn’t want to invite friends over to Daddy’s house because of Diana. So I just hardly ever invited anyone over.

Downstairs, cabinet doors opened and closed, and plastic grocery bags rattled. Lynn and Daddy were still unpacking the groceries.

I headed downstairs but stopped on the landing when I heard their voices starting to rise.