She beams at me. “What?”
“I hope this date don’t involve me hauling my skinny ass onto one of them giant goddamn Pegasus bastards.”
She feigns a frown. “Arabella and Mingo do not have wings. And I resent the implication. They are purebred Appaloosa.” She steps forward and loops the reins around the tree-trunk crossbeam.
Oh, Jesus nut-crushing Christ. I’m doomed. I’ve never been on a horse, and I definitely don’t want today to be my circus clown debut. Me bouncing and bashing the ol’ family jewels a galloping mischief is not good first-date material. Afterward, we’ll sip lemonade on her front porch while I apply an ice pack to my nutsack.
I watch her saddle the horses, all the while trying to think up some excuse that will get me out of this death-defying debacle.
Wynona finagles her sneaker into the loopy foot-holder thing and swoops onto the bigger horse like he’s a playground seesaw. She merry-go-rounds me a grin like she’s expecting me to do the same.
I flick her a crooked stare.
“What?”
“What do you think, what? I ain’t scaling my ass up that friggin’ four-legged skyscraper.”
Wynona scrunches her face and sticks out her tongue. Damn, she’s cute. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of a little horse?”
“I ain’t scared of him. I’m scared of the big-ass boulder he’s gonna buck me into.”
“She.”
“What?”
“Mingo’s a she, and she’s a sweetheart. She wouldn’t hurt a flea.”
Just then, Mingo jabs her head at me and snorts like she’s agreeing.
Wynona laughs. “See?”
“I don’t know.”
“Oh, please. You can fistfight a guy as big as a horse, but you’re afraid to ride one?”
Her saying that pushes me over the edge. I’d rather get thrown off a horse to my death than have Wynona think I’m a pussy. I step up to Mingo and notice that my saddle has a giant handle like I’m some Special Olympics equestrian. I’m surprised she’s not making me wear a football helmet.
I jam my foot into the loop and grab the handle. Mingo starts walking, forcing me to hop on one foot to keep up. I try to push off the ground, but before I’m halfway up she lunges forward and I lose my grip and land on my ass.
Wynona’s cackling under her hand, which for a split second bubbles a rage in my gut like right before a fight, but then I notice something unusual in her sparking eyes. She’s looking at me differently from the way most glaring eyes do. She’s laughing like we’re at the cinema together watching a Monty Python flick.
I jump to my feet and fake a laugh, but I can feel the red on my face. “Wouldn’t hurt a flea, huh?”
“Just relax,” Wynona says through the giggles. “You’re making her nervous.”
“Maybe we should shoot her up with some equine ecstasy.”
Wynona smiles and my insides swoosh. I walk over to Mingo and jump onto her like I’ve done it a million times.
I don’t know if it’s the elevation or the view or the giant body twitching between my legs or Wynona’s applause, but something immediately lifts me to a place I’ve never been and transmogrifies me into a person I’ve never seen. Like all of a sudden, I am a horseback rider. Mingo must sense the change, because she nods and blasts me a nostril-flapping thumbs-up and trots off like I ESP’d her a ready, set, go.
Wynona gallops past me with a solemn expression, as if my ass-over-teakettle tumble never happened. I’m bouncing pretty good, so I press down on the foot holders and the ride smoothes like the feet things are control pedals. I let go of the handle and hold the reins like Wynona, except I use two hands. I feel balanced.
We pass through a gate into an enormous field and the tall tan grass swaying in the wind makes me feel like I’m riding through a wheat ocean on a dirt jetty.
Wynona fades into the scenery like she’s painted there.
Mingo’s head is tick-tocking like a metronome. Even though I can’t see her eyes, I can tell by the way she’s holding her head up that she’s proud of me and proud to be carrying me. She’s snorting me attaboy s and being extra careful with her footing and speed. This probably sounds corny, but I sense she’s looking out for me. Like she actually cares about me.
I suddenly feel like Mingo is carrying me into my future. It makes me feel old. Older than I’ve ever imagined myself getting. Like ninety or a hundred. So old the memories aren’t memories but parts of me, like limbs. Real parts of a real person. So old I can see more stuff behind me than in front.
I’m sitting at an enormous oak table talking to a skinny, scared, dirt-encrusted kid. I’m explaining to him how horseback riding isn’t about skill, but trust. I’m explaining to him how horseback riding is about more than him. I tell him about the horseback ride I took that day with the beautiful girl in the beautiful field beside the beautiful ocean and how the beautiful wind made my ugly eyes cry. And I tell him about how that horse saved my life.
Mingo snorts me back to the present. The tall, tan grass sways beneath me. The warm wind dries my eyes.
My eighteenth birthday suddenly feels very far away.
Mingo catches up to Arabella as we enter a tunnel of trees. It reminds me of the rhododendron path at the Prison, except this trail smells like the pine-scented disinfectant I scrub the toilets with. Mingo trots alongside Arabella as if she has a secret to tell her, and my leg bumps Wynona’s. She smiles without turning, makes a clicking sound with her mouth, and jabs Arabella in the sides with her heels. They gallop away.
The tunnel dumps us onto a sandy beach littered with leaves and limbs like a hurricane hit it. I wonder if they washed over from the Prison.
Wynona turns Arabella smoothly toward the ocean like the reins are a steering wheel. Mingo follows.
Wynona gazes at the ocean as if it’s her first time seeing it. I’m right next to her, but she doesn’t see me. Her gaze is intense. And familiar. The courtyard. The day I pummeled Pitbull. After the fight, when she was kneeling beside him and glaring at me with that look of . . . what was it? Not fear. Not anger. Determination. Except today I’m the pummeled Pitbull, and the ocean is me. Freaky deaky.
I’m happy she likes God Art more than Man Art.
She turns to me when her conversation with the ocean is over. “You’re a natural.”
Jeezy breezy lemon squeezy! Being called a natural for the third time in one lifetime.
She inches Arabella closer and leans her face into mine, and my face does the same without me telling it to. Her kiss feels like a feather landing on my lips. She keeps leaning until her body is sliding down Arabella like some equestrianated stripper move.
I dismount with far less grace, and we meet at Mingo’s ass. Romantic. Mingo flicks her tail and catches me in the eye. Wynona laughs. The horses stand at the water’s edge as if she ordered them to. I step back, and Wynona steps forward and grabs my hips and keeps walking until she bumps into me and hugs my waist, and I stumble backwards and fall on the sand, and she lands on top of me, which I guess was her plan all along because she’s giggling an evil giggle.
Her eyes are glowing green like they’re plugged into something, but I don’t get much time to appreciate them on account of a distracting crotch rigor mortis that boinks me south of the border. Normally, I wouldn’t care about a little beach time chubitation, but the way Wynona’s positioned, her hoo-ha sensor’s gonna set off a warning alarm with the slightest twitch.
I try to mind-wrestle the blood flow with thoughts of nuns, bran muffins, and horse manure, but Wynona shifts her hips and the friction is too much, and it happens. Cricket Junior repositions himself. He’s like, Hey, what’s going on up there?
Now there’s blood rushing to my face as fast as other places, and I’m waiting for Wynona to jump up and slap my cheek, but she doesn’t. Instead, she presses her chest hard into mine and starts kissing me hot and heavy with tongue and everything. Oh, shit, this is trouble. Definitely not gonna slow the flag-raising ceremony down in
Stiffytown.
Suddenly, she pulls her lips from mine and stares at me hard and cold.
I brace for the impact.
Then she says it. “I’m a virgin.”
That’s what she says. I’m a virgin. You believe that secret-slipping hullabaloo? I’m expecting to get tally-whacked across the face, and she tells me something all personal and intimate like that.
I’m so shocked and relieved, I respond without thinking. “Me, too.”
Her face crinkles. “Yeah, right.”
Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have leaked that. Do girls think that’s faggy and lame? Damn it, why did I say that?
“You’re joking, right?”
Shit, what do I do? Lie? Make up some steamy story? Spin some freaky shit about some chick I hooked up with in the walk-in cooler at Duckies? As I’m scrambling for a juicy lie, my crotch rocket shifts again, but this time in a deflating direction. My mind runs out of fuel, and my imagination deflates too. Fuck it. I’m a horseback rider now. “Sorry, no. I’ve never done that.”
Her face softens. “Why’d you say sorry?”
“I don’t know. You had this expression like you expected me to be all experienced with girls and shit.”
Then the strangest thing happens. She lowers her body onto me like she’s tired. She starts kissing my chest through my shirt and unbuttoning a few buttons, and it feels really good what she’s doing, and I’m really getting into it and so is Cricket Junior, who’s preparing backstage for another surprise appearance, when Wynona suddenly sits up and screeches like Captain Jumptoattention poked her in Naughtytown.
“What the hell is that?” she screams.
Jeez Louise, I didn’t think the mini ironman was that powerful. Then I realize she’s pointing at my chest.
I peer at my wound through the gap in my shirt. No wonder she screamed. It looks gross. It hasn’t scabbed over much on account of I think it’s infected. It’s red and raw, with a damp scab that’s like six inches long. I try to lighten things up. “Just a flesh wound.”
“Jesus, what happened?”
“It’s just a scratch. From yardwork and stuff.”
“Yardwork, my ass. That thing is friggin’ huge. Did you get in a knife fight or something?”
“No, seriously, it’s from a tree branch.”
“Bullshit! Tell me the truth. What happened?”
“I didn’t get in a knife fight, I swear.”
She crosses her arms over her huffing chest. She looks like she did that day in Principal LaChance’s waiting area.
“I cut myself on a tree limb that day after I scratched your face.”
“What do you mean? Like on purpose?”
“No. Sorta, but no.”
Her face starts to shake.
“It wasn’t on purpose, I swear. I’m not like some . . . It just happened. I was so freaked out by what happened . . . by the cut on your cheek . . . I was just so pissed at myself for hurting you. I just freaked out. But not on purpose. I think I was just trying to . . . even things up.”
Tears start dripping down her face. “Even things up? My cut was an accident.”
“I know. This was too, I swear. It just . . . I just . . .”
Her tears start coming faster. She opens my shirt and looks more closely at the gash. Her face scrunches, and the tears become a waterfall. Some of them land on the wound. I imagine them miraculously healing it like in a science fiction movie, but they mostly just sting.
She dries her eyes and stares into my face. “Can I tell you a secret?”
I nod.
“I don’t like fighting, but I was secretly rooting for you.”
I take her head in my hands and pull her lips to mine. Her heat melts into me like sunshine.
We kiss some more and ride some more and kiss some more and ride some more. We don’t do anything more than kiss, which I’m happy about. I’m nervous about the sex thing because I really like Wynona, and I don’t want to make some rookie sex mistake that might make her stop liking me. I mean, she likes me now, and we’re not doing anything more than kissing, so if she’s cool with it, why mess it up? One of those if it ain’t broke don’t fix it deals Caretaker’s always rambling about.
At the end of our date, I walk home really slow to savor the hot-cocoa-in-my-bloodstream sensation. My feet feel like they’re in stirrups.
CHAPTER 20
Dinner that evening is my all-time favorite. A Monte Cristo sandwich. It’s ham and Swiss cheese stuffed between thick slices of French toast sprinkled with powdered sugar and served up with raspberry jam. Sweety eaties. I’m super hungry, so I eat two portions. I can put away food like a pregnant rhino. I probably have a parasite or something.
After dinner, we clean up and head to the storytime tower. The Little Ones settle in all comfy-cozy with pillows and blankets and ginormous bowls of popcorn. The room smells like a movie theater. If you didn’t look too closely, you might be fooled into thinking this was a real family room and the Little Ones were real family.
It’s easier than usual to slide into Storyland tonight, probably on account of that’s where I’ve been all day. I grab my notebook and flip it open. I scan my scribbles to refresh my memory. This is the first time I’ve ever written one of my stories out instead of just jotting down notes. Maybe I’ll show it to Moxie.
I tell the Little Ones more about the island Apollo Zipper got stranded on, which I call Kef. Like how the Kefian kids stay underground during the day because on Kef, sunshine makes kids grow older.
I’ve never seen the Little Ones listen so intently. They’re staring at me the same way Wynona did on the beach today. Like they’re seeing through me. A strange foreboding scrubwiggles the back of my neck, and I turn. There’s nothing behind me except my bright reflection in the black glass. My face morphs into an image of Wynona surrounded by a wheat-field frame. Her face is glowing like it did on Arabella today. She’s smiling her calm, confident smile. I feel the corners of my mouth rise. Her face disappears and my reflection returns. I’m wearing her calm, confident smile. I almost don’t recognize myself.
I hear a sniffle behind me and turn. The Little Ones are still staring. Maybe I look different to them, too. Or maybe it’s what I said about the Kefian kids wanting to stay young forever. Maybe they’re wondering if they’d want to stay young forever. Maybe they think the Kefian kids are crazy. Who in their right mind would wanna stay an orphan forever? Maybe they want to change too, and grow up under the singeing glare of the brilliant sun.
The silence rumbles like thunder. I place my hand on my chest. It’s not thunder. It’s my heart.
I tell the Little Ones how the Kefian kids work together to gather food and cook and clean, and how at night they go swimming in an underground grotto that’s warmed by an enormous bonfire. I tell them about the beautiful island girl Apollo meets, Wanony, and about her plans to steal a ship and sail far away from Kef, and how Apollo asks her if he can come along, and how she says yes.
The Little Ones sit perfectly still like they’re frozen in place.
The story room floods with light when Mother Mary enters. The Little Ones don’t get up right away, and Mother Mary doesn’t rush them. She sees they need to defrost before they can move.
After the Little Ones leave, I gaze at the dark, distant sea. I think about Apollo and Wynona. They both feel so real and yet so make-believe. I wonder what would happen if I believed in them. I wonder if believing in them would help me escape my island.
I recline in my fire-escape lounge chair and stare at the stars. A buried Dear Life Reason has been prickling my gray matter. One I never thought I’d write about. But that bumpy horseback ride jarred it loose from my underground vault, and it’s been bouncing around in my head like a ticking time bomb. I gotta get it out before it explodes.
Dear Life, You Suck
Reason Number Three
By Cricket Cherpin
IF CHRISTMAS SUCKS, WHAT HOPE IS THERE FOR THE OTHER 364 DAYS?
I was eight years old. It was Christmas Eve. I only discovered it was Christmas Eve when I was led outside by the social worker and saw the sign in the liquor store window. CHRISTMAS EVE SPECIAL! RUM EGGNOG! $7.99! At first, the only blinking lights I saw were the ones on the police cars and the ambulance. But then I saw the colored lights in the upper-story windows of my apartment building and the lit-up Christmas tree on the fire escape. I couldn’t see any of that stuff from our apartment because we lived in the basement and didn’t have any windows. I knew Christmas was coming. I just didn’t know when.
Christmas music blared through the paper-thin walls from the apartment next door.
Silent night, holy night
All is calm, all is bright
Dad didn’t have money for a tree, so he dug up a shrub in the playground across the street. It didn’t need a plastic base because the dirt and roots held it up. The asshole had money for drugs and booze but not for a Christmas tree. It didn’t have any lights or ornaments. Mom and Dad got high and decorated it with shit they found around the apartment. Broken crayons, empty beer cans, plastic straws, razor blades. A spoon bent into a Z with a bronze burn mark on the bottom. The special ornaments, like my Matchbox cars and Eli’s pacifier, hung from shoelaces on the higher branches. At the peak of the Christmas shrub, five hypodermic needles were taped together in the shape of a star.
On the glass table beside the electric heater, Mom and Dad left Santa a few powdery lines and a cocktail.
The music from next door was so loud, it felt like it was playing inside my head.
Round yon Virgin Mother and Child
Holy Infant, so tender and mild
Eli screamed in the bathtub. Mom screamed back. Eli screamed louder. Dad couldn’t hear any of it over the bubbly sweet crackle of his pipe. I usually volunteered to give Eli his bath when Mom was high, but I didn’t volunteer that night. I didn’t want to leave the Christmas shrub. I knew it was only a shrub decorated with trash, but there was something magical about it. I thought maybe something magical would happen in my life if I knelt beside it long enough.