Albert noticed Taylor and nickered a welcome. She joined Pixie and Albert under the dripping tarp and petted the side of Albert’s neck. Brushing her hand along his mane, she realized it was full of snarls that had snagged debris — small twigs, leaf bits, even dead flies. The rain hadn’t washed him fully clean, either, but had left mud rivulets down his side.
Pixie looked just as bad, possibly worse.
Once the weather cleared, Taylor would wash them properly and comb out their manes and tails. She’d braid them and then brush their coats until they shined. With her love and care, Taylor was sure these two could be brought back to the healthy state they must have enjoyed at one time. She was determined to make it happen.
“Reality check, Taylor,” she scolded herself. “They’re not yours, remember?”
So what? It didn’t matter. She’d clean them up, anyway. If they were going to find good homes, they would have to look presentable. If they looked good, someone was bound to want to ride them.
Taylor suddenly realized that, though she’d assumed they could be ridden, she didn’t know that for sure. There hadn’t been a saddle or bridle in their shed.
“Would you let me ride you, Albert?” she wondered, speaking more to herself than to Albert. Taylor had never ridden a horse bareback, but she had seen Ralph do it occasionally for short distances. He always warned her not to, saying it was much too dangerous.
“It can’t be that dangerous if we’re just walking in a fenced-in yard,” she considered, petting Albert’s side. “We’ll only walk slowly.”
Checking around, Taylor searched for something to stand on for a boost up. The wooden bench from the outdoor table set would do. She had a halter but no reins. That was all right. There was really no place to go, so there was no need to use the reins for direction.
Taylor dragged the picnic table bench over to his side and stood on it. She breathed deeply to steady herself. “Here I come, Albert. Please don’t move, or I’m going to land right under you.”
Albert swung his head around to look at her curiously.
“It’s just me,” Taylor spoke to him soothingly.
Albert sputtered and Taylor sensed impatience in the sound. Maybe it was her imagination; she wasn’t sure. Did he want her to climb on? She hoped so. It was possible that no one had ridden him in a long time and that he missed it.
“Here goes,” she said, swinging her leg and arm across his back and pitching herself forward.
“Nononono … nooo!” she squealed as she felt herself sliding across to his other side, taking the blanket on his back along with her. Curling her toes to stop her forward motion, she clutched at his neck, halting her momentum. “Whew. That was close,” she said, imagining how painful it would have been to land headfirst on the other side.
In the next minute, Taylor had pulled herself up onto Albert’s back and patted his withers and managed to straighten the blanket beneath her. “Good boy.” Clicking gently, she pressed his sides with her knees to move him. Without hesitation, he walked forward out of the homemade shelter. Taylor’s head hit the top of the tarp, showering both rider and horse with a frigid spray of cold water. Albert neighed shrilly at the sudden cold but kept walking.
Pixie emerged from the lean-to. “No, Pixie, you go back,” Taylor instructed with a wave of her arm.
The little pony hesitated and then kept on coming.
“I said go back,” Taylor repeated as Albert walked on, but Pixie kept following. “Oh, I guess it doesn’t matter,” she mumbled, accepting the fact that Pixie would not be deterred from going wherever Albert went.
Taylor breathed in the misty air and smiled broadly. How great to be riding bareback right here in Claire’s front yard!
Taylor rode Albert at a walk all along the circumference of the fence, with Pixie staying close behind. A car went by and the man driving stared at her with goggle-eyed amazement. The look on his face made Taylor laugh out loud.
A gray-haired woman walking a small white dog on a leash came down the road. She wore a raincoat, black rubber boots, and a sour expression. Taylor recognized her right away. It was Mrs. Kirchner, her former third-grade teacher.
Mrs. Kirchner had her eyes on the road, watching her dog. She stopped by the corner of the fence to pick up her dog’s poop and bag it. When she straightened, she saw Taylor, Albert, and Pixie on the other side of the fence.
Mrs. Kirchner staggered back in shock, nearly tripping over her little dog.
Taylor clamped her teeth together to keep from laughing.
The dog started yapping fiercely at Albert and Pixie. Albert sidestepped nervously, and Taylor soothed him by stroking his neck.
“Taylor Henry! What are you doing on a horse?” Mrs. Kirchner cried, as though Taylor were back in her third-grade class and had ridden a horse into the classroom. “And what is that little horse doing there?”
“She’s a pony,” Taylor explained.
“Well, what does that matter?” the woman shouted irately. “Why are they there? Why are you riding them?”
“I just wanted to. We’re not bothering anyone,” Taylor answered, not quite understanding why Mrs. Kirchner was getting so red-faced.
“Not hurting anyone!” Mrs. Kirchner cried with a shrillness that made Albert sputter. “Not hurting anyone! That’s hardly the point! There are laws about this kind of thing! You can’t have a horse and pony in a front yard. It’s intolerable that we have to put up with the usual menagerie she houses here. But a horse! A pony!”
Claire must have heard the shouting because just then she opened her front door and stood there dressed in flannel pajamas and Crocs. Five dogs raced out around her and careened down to the fence, barking madly. Alerted by the noise, four more dogs scrambled over the porch gate to join them. They jumped up on the split-rail fence, yapping at Mrs. Kirchner and her dog.
Taylor leaned forward, preparing to grab on to Albert’s mane if the dogs suddenly made him bolt or rear. Her heart raced and she breathed deeply, willing herself to remain calm. She knew a horse was sensitive to the mood of its rider.
Albert stood calmly as the dogs raced around him. Taylor realized he wasn’t going to be spooked by them and relaxed.
Mrs. Kirchner scooped her dog into her arms. “This is really too much! What’s next — a camel? I wouldn’t put it past her!”
Claire clapped her hands sharply as she made her way toward the fence. “Stop that barking!” she commanded her dogs.
“I’m going home right now and calling the sheriff,” Mrs. Kirchner threatened Claire.
“Calm down, Mrs. Kirchner. The sheriff already knows I have the horse and pony,” Claire said.
“He knows they’re in your front yard?” Mrs. Kirchner shot back skeptically.
Not exactly, Taylor thought, but she said nothing.
“We’ll see just what the sheriff does and does not know,” Mrs. Kirchner shouted over her shoulder as she stormed away. “If he has permitted this, he will certainly get a piece of my mind. We pay the taxes that pay his salary.”
Claire exhaled with a deep, slow breath and rubbed her forehead. Taylor looked down at her. “Sorry.”
“What for?” Claire asked.
“If I hadn’t been riding Albert with Pixie tagging along, she might not have noticed.”
Claire chuckled a little sadly. “She’d have noticed eventually.”
“What will the sheriff do?” Taylor asked.
“Probably give me twenty-four hours to find someplace else to put these guys. If I don’t, he’ll give me a summons.”
“What if you can’t find them a home?”
Claire sighed unhappily. “He’ll come with a trailer and take them.”
“And then what?” Taylor asked.
“He’ll try to sell them at an auction.”
Taylor ran her hand along Albert’s bony side. “What if nobody wants to buy them?”
Claire bent to pet Bunny, who was licking her hand. “Don’t think about it, Taylor. You
don’t want to know.”
After that, it was all Taylor could think about. On Sunday she’d called Travis to tell him everything that had happened. “Kirchner is such an old witch,” he’d sympathized.
Now, on Monday morning, she sat beside Travis on the bus and revealed the horrifying results of her Sunday-night Google search. “Horse meat. Killing horses for horse meat is illegal in the United States, but slaughterhouses in Canada and Mexico send reps to these auctions, and they take the horses back with them.”
Travis scrunched his face into an expression of disgust. “Horse meat! Gross! Won’t the sheriff just put them down?”
Taylor covered her face with her hands. “That’s not much better!”
“Don’t worry,” Travis said. “Someone will want them.”
“Like who?”
“I don’t know. Someone.”
“Who’s going to want both of them?” Taylor wailed.
“I don’t know. I guess you’ll have to split them up.”
Taylor put her hands down. Travis’s words had caused a knot in her stomach. “No! They can’t be separated. They’re best friends. It would be too cruel.”
“Not as cruel as … you know … the other thing,” Travis said quietly.
Mrs. Kirchner had, indeed, called the sheriff’s office. Because Claire had gone to high school with the deputy who came to her house, he gave her three days, instead of twenty-four hours, to find a home for Albert and Pixie.
“That’s not much time,” Travis commented.
“I know. This is already the second day. We have to find just the right home for them, too. It’s got to be someone who really loves horses,” Taylor said as the bus pulled up in front of the school. “Someone who will give them the care they need to get better. Ralph came by Claire’s on Sunday and looked at their teeth — that’s how you can judge a horse’s age.”
“How does that work?” Travis asked.
“It’s interesting,” Taylor replied. She had been there on Sunday when Ralph stopped by, and he’d explained it to her. “Under age five, a horse still has what they call milk teeth. After that the teeth get more angled. By age ten, a small groove starts at the top of the incisor, and by twenty, that groove has reached the lower end of the tooth. So you can guess the age of a horse between ten and twenty depending on how long the groove is. But by the time a horse is twenty years old, the groove starts to go away at the top, so you can tell if a horse is older than that.”
“Man, that’s cool,” Travis remarked.
“I know,” Taylor agreed. “He figures that Albert is about fifteen, which is a full-grown horse. Pixie is over twenty. That would be old for a horse, but ponies live longer. Still, she’s not young, and she needs someone who will treat her gently.”
Taylor and Travis joined the flow of kids getting off the bus and entering the middle school’s front door. In the crowd Taylor thought she heard someone call her name. Turning, she saw Plum Mason and a few of her snooty friends — not anyone who would be calling to her.
Turning forward, she continued into the school. Suddenly, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Startled, she swung around and faced Plum. “Didn’t you hear me calling you?” Plum asked, annoyed.
“What?” was all Taylor could think of to say. That Plum was calling to her was practically unthinkable. Aside from the occasional snide classroom comment — as had happened last Friday — the girl never spoke to her.
“Are you deaf or something?” Plum said. Her friends came along, forming a loose semicircle behind Plum. They snickered at Plum’s remark.
“Come on, Taylor,” Travis said. He’d walked nearly to the staircase but turned back when he noticed that Taylor had been waylaid by Plum and her pals. “Let’s go.”
Taylor made a move to walk away with Travis.
“Wait!” Plum stopped her. “I just want Claire Black’s phone number. You’re friends with her, right?”
Taylor narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “Why do you want it?” Claire used only a cell phone, and Taylor knew the number by heart. But she wasn’t about to give it to Plum — not without a very good reason.
Plum sighed, vexed at the inconvenience of explaining herself to Taylor. “I don’t think that’s any of your business. So, do you know her number or not?”
“No!” Taylor blurted without a moment’s hesitation.
“No?” Plum sneered doubtfully. “Then how do you get in touch with her?”
“My mother knows it. I don’t.”
Plum rolled her eyes. “Then could you ask your mother for it and tell me tomorrow?”
Travis took Taylor by the crook of her elbow and pulled her away from Plum. “If she remembers,” he told Plum, “which she might not.”
“What are you, her boyfriend?” Plum sneered.
“Why, did you want me to be your boyfriend?” Travis shot back.
“Ew! Like I would ever go out with you!” Plum replied.
Travis responded by contorting his face into a comical knot and crossing his eyes at Plum.
Taylor glanced at Travis’s horrible face and hooted with laughter.
“Loser!” Plum snarled.
The buzzer for first period sounded, giving Taylor an excuse to move away from Plum altogether.
“Don’t forget that number!” Plum called after her as she hurried down a different hallway from the one Taylor was headed for.
“You know Claire’s number, don’t you?” Travis remarked as they once again headed toward their classrooms.
Taylor nodded. “Sure I do, but I’m not giving it to Plum.”
“Just on principle — because she’s Plum?”
“Yeah, but also …” A thought had come to her that was so awful she didn’t even want to say it out loud.
“Also what?” Travis pressed.
Taylor stopped and stepped closer to Travis. She dropped her voice to a low, confiding tone. “What if she’s heard about Albert and Pixie? What if she wants them?”
“How would she hear about them?” Travis asked.
“PV is a small town,” Taylor reminded him. “Everyone hears about everything.”
“At least if Plum took Albert, it would be a home,” Travis pointed out.
Taylor fought the jittery panic rising in her. “A home?” she questioned, her voice rising shrilly. “A home with Plum the horse killer?”
“What are you talking about?” Travis asked.
Taylor drew Travis over to the side of the hall at the end of a bank of lockers. Lowering her head, she spoke softly so no one would overhear. “When I was over at Westheimer’s barn I would hear people talking about Plum, and how the last two horses she’d leased from Ralph had died.”
“What do you mean, leased?” Travis asked.
“Plum paid money every month for the upkeep of a horse Ralph owned. She didn’t own the horse, but Plum had the right to ride it whenever she wanted. Ralph could use the horse for lessons, but he couldn’t let anyone else but Plum take it out on trails or ride it in the corral.”
“And the horses she leased died?” Travis checked. “Both of them?”
Taylor nodded.
“How’d she do that?”
“No one knows for sure if it was her fault,” Taylor admitted. “One of them had colic and the next one went lame.”
“And the people at Ralph’s thought it was her fault?” Travis asked.
Taylor nodded. “They said she gave the colic horse grain with mold in it, which caused the colic.”
“Why would she do that?” Travis wanted to know.
“I don’t think she meant to. I bet she just didn’t even look at it before she fed the horse.”
“What about the lame horse?” Travis inquired. “How’d she manage that?”
“I heard Ralph’s wife complaining to him that Plum rode that horse too hard. She said Plum never cooled either horse down or groomed them afterward. I remember Mrs. Westheimer was really steamed that day because she tried to tell Plum to groom the horse
and Plum had mouthed off to her, saying she paid good money for her lease and she shouldn’t have to work, too.”
“Did someone else groom the horse for her?”
“Ralph or his wife would do it if they saw Plum get off, but a lot of times they were teaching or on a trail ride, and they’d come back to find the horse all sweaty, still saddled, and loosely tied up outside.”
“Now I see why you don’t want her anywhere near Albert,” Travis remarked.
“There’s no way I’m going to let that happen. The Westheimers refused to lease another horse to her. I heard she was riding over at Ross River Ranch now.”
“But if she wants Albert, how can you stop it?” Travis questioned.
Taylor didn’t know how, but it couldn’t happen. It just couldn’t!
Taylor didn’t absorb much learning in school that day. It was nearly impossible to keep her mind on her work while thinking of Albert and Pixie the whole time. Last period was social studies, and as Taylor took her notebook from her locker, she became anxious. She had been so preoccupied with Albert and Pixie over the weekend that she’d slapped her report on Egypt together in less than an hour late Sunday night. She knew it was too short and full of typos.
“See me after class, Taylor,” Mr. Romano said the moment she handed the paper to him. One glance had apparently told him it was not well-done.
Taylor smiled weakly. “Okay.” On Sunday night she’d convinced herself he’d accept the short, unchecked work, but deep down she’d known he wouldn’t.
“Oooooh, somebody’s in trouble,” Jake Richards teased Taylor as she took her assigned seat.
“Yes, and it’s going to be you, if you’re not quiet,” Mr. Romano told Jake.
During class Taylor tried to focus on Mr. Romano’s lecture on the conquest of ancient Egypt by the Greek general Alexander the Great. But her mind was really on Albert and Pixie — just as it had been all day long. And as much as she tried to keep from stealing glances at Plum, she found she couldn’t resist.