After Midnight

  Sali didn’t want to stop munching on the pasture grass, but once I untied her and mounted I promised her two cookies, which persuaded her to get moving. As we rode back to the barn I thought of every explanation I could give Trick as to why I was up so early. Inventing a story was not an option; my brother could always tell when I was lying. Explaining how I’d helped the dark boy also meant admitting to sneaking out of the house and riding alone in the dark; two things that would get me grounded until Christmas, maybe Easter. No, I’d have to be very careful about what I said, and pretend the silver ring sitting in the bottom of my hip pocket wasn’t there.

  I took care of Sali, rubbing her down and watering her before I tried to sneak back into the house. I thought I had made it when I slipped into the empty kitchen and started toward the stairs, only to be stopped in my tracks by Trick’s voice.

  “What are you doing up this early?”

  Although the hall was dark, I put on my grumpy morning face before I turned around. “I took Sali for a ride.” I had to change the subject before he asked me when. “What’s for breakfast?”

  “Oatmeal.” Trick looked a little guilty. “I know, you hate it, but we’re out of everything else. After looking at those mares yesterday I was too tired to run into town. I’ll get some more groceries this afternoon after I pick up my order from the feed store.”

  Normally I’d make a fuss about the oatmeal, but my heart just wasn’t in it this time. “It’s okay.” Then, just so he wouldn’t become suspicious, I added, “If I choke to death on it, say nice things about me at the funeral.”

  I went upstairs to my bedroom, and to keep up appearances I let the door slam just a little. Then I waited and listened, but all Trick did was go down the hall to knock on Grayson’s door and tell him to get up.

  I washed up and changed as fast as I could before I went to join my brothers for breakfast. Gray ate his oatmeal without complaint, but I made a few faces as I picked out all the disgusting raisins. I hated oatmeal, but I’d happily eat ten pounds of it ice-cold than swallow a single wrinkled grape. The only thing worse than raisins were prunes.

  Trick drank his coffee and read the paper. Everything was going to be fine, I thought, and then Gray’s voice made me jump when he said, “I want to try out for the football team.”

  Gray had been born without a sense of humor, so I knew he wasn’t joking. “Seriously?” Because we had moved around so much, neither of us had ever joined clubs or tried out for anything. “You? Football?”

  Trick looked over the top of his paper and asked my third question for me. “Why?”

  “I want to,” Gray told his empty bowl. “You said we were staying here.”

  Our older brother put down his paper. “What brought this on?”

  In typical Gray fashion, he only shrugged.

  Although Trick and I occasionally watched NFL games on TV, and we always had a little Superbowl party every year, we weren’t really football fans. I couldn’t imagine my brother in a uniform running around a football field. He’d hated group activities ever since he’d started getting really big, back at the beginning of middle school. He wouldn’t even pose for class pictures.

  “Don’t they have a size limit or something?” I asked, and got a blue-eyed glare in return. “Come on, Grim, be realistic. The first time you make a tackle, you’ll probably turn the guy into a crunchy pancake.”

  “Catlyn.” Trick gave me the shut up look. To Gray, he said, “You’ve never shown any interest in football.”

  “I’ve watched some games.” He took his bowl over to the sink and came back to stand by the table. “I know how to play it.”

  I remembered some football players in a class at my last school grumbling about having to spend most of July going to practice. “Didn’t they already hold tryouts over the summer?”

  Gray shook his head. “The county cut back their funding. All the smaller schools around here are starting later and playing shorter schedules.” He glanced at Trick. “It’s just tryouts. I might not even make the team.”

  I almost swallowed a raisin. “Right.” When he wanted to, Gray could run down a horse, lift a hundred-pound sack of feed with one arm, and beat both me and Trick at darts, horseshoes and hoops. I noticed how my brothers were looking at each other, as if I weren’t even at the table. “If you do make it, I’m not going out for cheerleaders. They already”—I couldn’t say hate me—“have enough of them.”

  “You have no experience playing team sports, and I need you to help me with the new horses when I buy them,” Trick said finally. “I’m sorry, Grayson. Maybe you can try out for a college team.”

  “Yeah.” My brother’s chair screeched across the linoleum as he shoved it back and got up to stomp out of the kitchen.

  I didn’t understand why Gray wanted to play football, but I felt sorry for him. “Trick, couldn’t you just let him try out, this once?”

  “I could,” he said. “I think it would just be a replay of what happened to him in fourth grade.”

  Gray doesn’t play well with others, his teacher had once written in the margin of his report card next to the “U” for his unsatisfactory behavior. He’d earned it because of what he’d done to three older boys who had jumped him during recess. According to every other kid in Gray’s class, he hadn’t hit anyone, but had flicked them off like gnats. One boy had fallen on his arm and sprained his wrist; another had broken his nose when he hit a chain link fence face first. I still remembered how angry Trick had been when he’d come to school to have a conference with that teacher.

  “Gray’s older now,” I reminded him. “I know he’d be more careful.” I heard the sound of a car pulling up the drive out front and frowned. “Are you expecting someone?”

  “No.” Trick got up and went to the front room.

  I followed him, and through the front windows saw a black-and-white patrol car marked with a stylized logo that read Lake County Sheriff. The big, dark-haired man who climbed out of the car was wearing a khaki uniform with a shiny gold badge on the breast pocket.

  Oh, no. I knew he was here for me. The boy I’d met last night must have told his parents about getting bucked off into our fence, and they’d called the police, and now I was going to be arrested because I’d … helped him? Passed out? Spent half the night under a tree?

  The bulge in my pocket suddenly felt as big and heavy as a brick. Stolen his ring?

  “Morning,” our visitor said as he came around the car and stood between it and the front porch. “I’m Jim Yamah, the local sheriff.” The mirrored sunglasses he wore gave him a menacing look, aided and abetted by his thick mustache and broad, heavy build. He didn’t smile or offer Trick his hand but inspected us in a distinctly unfriendly fashion, as if he’d found us at the scene of a crime we’d just committed. “You’d be the man of the house?”

  Trick didn’t step off the porch. “Patrick Youngblood.” He rested a hand on my shoulder. “This is my sister, Catlyn.” As Gray came out of the house, he added, “My brother, Grayson.”

  “Just the three of you, then?” Yamah asked.

  “Yes.” I felt Trick’s fingers flex against my shoulder before he took away his hand. “Is there a problem, Sheriff?”

  “I received a report of an incident out here last night.” The mirrored sunglasses turned to Gray. “You boys get into a tussle with anyone? Maybe someone you caught trespassing?”

  As my brother told him no, I bit the inside of my cheek. No one had seen me out riding except the dark boy, I was sure of it. But if his parents had caught him sneaking back into his house, and saw his torn and bloodied clothes, they’d have wanted some answers.

  Had he told them about me?

  “How about your horses?” The sheriff turned and nodded toward the barn. “Any of them wander off last night?”

  He didn’t know what had really happened, I realized. He was fishing for details, and glaring at my brothers as if he suspected they’d caught the dark boy on our property, and had work
ed him over or something.

  “We had a quiet, uneventful night, and none of our horses have gone missing,” Trick said calmly. “You want to tell me what this is about, Sheriff?”

  Instead of answering his question, Yamah changed the subject. “I expect you don’t know about the curfew.” He hooked his thumb in his belt. “Minors are required to stay at home indoors from eleven p.m. to five a.m. No exceptions.”

  “Our realtor mentioned it,” Trick said. “But my brother and sister were here all night, and we didn’t have any visitors at all.”

  “Just so you know,” Yamah said, looking at me for the first time, “any minor caught out after curfew is given a week of community service under my direct supervision. There’s always plenty of trash on the roadways and around the lake that needs cleaning up.”

  The prospect of spending seven days being watched by Sheriff Yamah’s spooky sunglasses while picking up garbage around town erased any lingering guilt I felt. No way was I saying a word in front of him about my curfew-violating midnight ride, or the boy.

  “You don’t have to concern yourself with my brother or sister,” Trick told the sheriff. “They’re good kids.”

  As much as I resented being called a kid, and as little as I deserved the praise at the moment, I put on my angelic face. It usually worked on everyone, but it didn’t seem to impress Jim Yamah.

  “Whatever you say, Youngblood.” He smiled at me, his teeth very white against his tanned skin, and I thought of a shark getting ready to bite something dangling in unsafe waters. “You youngsters had better get going now, or you’ll be late for school.” With that he got back into his car, and after giving us all one last, long stare, drove off.

  “Were you out last night wandering the woods again?” Trick asked Gray.

  “No. I was asleep.” My brother went back inside, and this time he slammed the door.

  I heard Trick mutter some words I wasn’t allowed to use under his breath, and knew this was the moment I should confess. In fact, I should have told Trick the truth when I’d come in this morning. This whole thing was my fault.

  As I thought of how to tell him, I stuck my hand in my pocket, and felt the ring, cool and smooth against my fingertips.

  Do you feel that, Catlyn?

  I couldn’t tell him, not now. I’d never kept secrets from my brothers, but I still didn’t know exactly what had happened to me last night. Until I found the dark boy and talked to him about it, not knowing all the details might get me into more trouble than keeping quiet. I knew it was wrong, but I’d think up a suitable punishment for myself, like doing all the dishes or eating oatmeal for the rest of the week.

  Trick put his arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry about it, Cat. You know in small towns like this they always go after outsiders first.”

  “Yeah, I guess.” He thought I was scared because I hadn’t done anything wrong.

  I’d have to eat a lot more oatmeal before I felt better about myself. Maybe even with raisins.

  The next week at school was better than my first day, thanks to Barb, who stuck by me every day and treated me as if I were her new best friend. When we went to lunch, she picked a table as far away from the cheerleaders as we could sit and still be inside the cafeteria, which also helped. Her friends all still kept their distance, but by the middle of the week she had coaxed some other kids, mostly freshman, to sit with us.

  I should have tried to be friendlier, but I had a lot on my mind. At home Trick and Gray were barely speaking to each other, thanks to my own silence. Then there was the dark boy, who I just couldn’t find.

  I spent every moment I could hunting around the school for him, first in all of my classes, and then checking out the faces of the kids who passed me in the halls. I never spotted him once, and by Friday I was beginning to wonder if he was somehow avoiding me.

  “Who are you looking for?” Barb asked as she caught me inspecting the kids sitting at the tables near ours in the cafeteria. “Aaron Boone? He goes off campus with the other jocks for lunch, you know.”

  “No.” Hearing that name killed my appetite, and I looked over at Ego, who had already wolfed down his lunch. “You want my apple?”

  He grinned, flashing his chipped tooth. “Only if you don’t want to see me fish it out of the trash can after you throw it away.”

  I handed it over while Barb complained about how unfair it was that underclassman weren’t allowed to leave campus during lunch period. I wouldn’t tell Barb, but I was glad the jocks shunned the cafeteria. Every other time I saw Boone I caught him watching me. I also noticed him following me and Barb a few times in between classes. When Barb saw him and said “Hi, Aaron” he just smiled at us, and once when she got the giggles he rolled his eyes at me. My mentor made it clear that she thought he was the cutest boy in school, but I didn’t like or trust him.

  Then there was Tiffany Beck, my other stalker.

  Boone’s girlfriend and I only had one class together, in which the teacher made us sit in alphabetical order, so she was in the second row while I sat in the very back. The first time I walked by her seat in class, she tried to trip me (which was also the last time I walked by her seat). If the teacher called on me and I answered, she’d whisper something rude and all the girls around her would crack up. When we passed each other in the halls, she’d do something with her face: glare, scowl, or smirk. If I didn’t get out of her way, she made a point to swerve into me to step on my foot or bang her shoulder into mine.

  Tiffany seemed to be a pro at how to harass someone without getting caught, and I knew better than to react to it. Complaining about her bullying would only make things worse, too, so I put up with it in silence. All I could hope was that eventually she’d get bored and move on to torment someone else.

  “Cat?” Barb’s hand waved in front of my eyes. “Are you awake? I said, who are you looking for?”

  “Uh, just a guy.” I hadn’t told her anything yet about the dark boy; Barb was a nice girl but a dedicated gossip, and I didn’t want her spreading any rumors about him and me that Gray might overhear. At the same time she did seem to know everyone at the school, judging by how many kids she talked to on a daily basis, and I wasn’t getting anywhere finding him on my own. “I saw him out riding the other day.”

  “Someone from school?”

  “I think so,” I said, trying to sound casual. “I don’t know his name, but he’s about our age, with dark hair and eyes.”

  “It was probably me,” Ego said. “Don’t look so surprised. I go riding all the time.”

  “Yeah, on your bike.” To me she said, “You mean someone riding a horse, right?” When I nodded, Barb grinned. “I know everyone who goes here. Describe him to me.”

  “Well, he’s tall and slim, kind of pale, and his hair is um, straight and dark. About down to here.” I touched the appropriate spot on my arm. “He was riding a big black stallion.”

  “Not counting your brother, most of the boys around here don’t wear their hair long.” She glanced around. “Not too many of them ride, either.”

  “Are you sure it was a boy and not a girl?” Ego asked. “Darla Hamilton has long brown hair, and she’s been in riding competitions since sixth grade.”

  Barb wrinkled her nose. “That girl always smells like the inside of a barn.”

  I resisted the sudden urge to sniff myself. “No, I’m pretty sure it was a boy. His hair is probably black, not brown.”

  Barb asked me a few more questions, but I had to keep my answers vague so she wouldn’t become suspicious.

  “It might have been one of the pickers’ kids,” she said. “They don’t go to regular school so they can work with their folks full-time in the groves. Some of them have long hair, too, don’t they, Ego?”

  He nodded. “Haircuts in town are too expensive for them.”

  I remembered the boy’s strange accent. “Do they have access to horses?”

  “Only if they steal them.” Ego dropped the core of my apple into
his lunch bag and crumpled it up. “Maybe that’s who your mystery guy is, Cat. A horse thief.”

  Had he stolen the horse? Was that the real reason the sheriff had come out to the farm? Why did that possibility make me feel as if someone were hammering a three-inch nail into the side of my head?

  Barb leaned close. “Are you okay?”

  I needed to find him, and talk to him, so much that I was starting to make myself sick over it. Without thinking I took the ring I’d been carrying around in my pocket out and held it out to her. “He dropped this while he was riding across our property. Does it look familiar?”

  “Wow.” She took the ring and studied it. “No, I’ve never seen it before.” She peered at the stones and then sat back. “You know, with this bird design, it might belong to one of the Ravens.”

  Was he part of a gang? “What are the Ravens?”

  “Not what, silly, who. They’re the oldest family in town.” Barb tried on the ring and admired it for a moment before slipping it off. “They’re descended from some circus people who came here from Europe about a hundred years ago and bought up most of the land. The circus people built the town and started a bunch of cattle ranches and horse farms. When my mom was in high school the Ravens had this huge mansion built on the island. That’s where the family lives now.”

  I wanted to snatch the ring back from her, and I didn’t know why. “What island?”

  “The one that’s right in the middle of Lost Lake,” she said, running her fingertip over the ring’s gleaming stones. “The Ravens have serious money, you know. The family still owns just about every shop in town, plus most of the ranches and farms around here. The land next to your farm belongs to them, too. I’m pretty sure they have a son, but I’ve never met him.”

  “His name is Jesse,” Ego put in. “But it’s not him.”

  Jesse Raven. Just thinking of the name made me feel better. “Why not?”

  “Because the Ravens are snobs who think they’re too good for this town,” Ego informed me. “They wouldn’t lower themselves to mix with the riffraff. You know if they want something, they make my foster dad buy it and bring it out to them when he goes to work.”