ALLUSIVE AFTERSHOCK (2 page)

I tugged up my jeans
and shrugged on a long-sleeved shirt, buttoning it one-handed, grabbing an
elastic band from the doorknob with the other. I didn’t even bother combing my
hair, just ran my fingers through the tangles, and pulled it back, looping the hair
band several times around it. I snatched my jacket from the hook behind the
door, pulling it on as I ran to the kitchen, grabbed an apple from the bowl
filled with assorted fruit on the counter, and shoved it into my jacket pocket.

Passing the living
room, I saw the mess of scattered, broken china on the floor in front of the
hutch. Mom stood at the edge of the room, shaking her head. I could almost feel
her anguish at the sight in front of her. With her hands clasped together, fingers
folded into the soft peach Angora wool of her sweater, she crushed the collar
close to her chin as if it was a security blanket; maybe it was to her. My dad had
given her that sweater last Christmas and she wore it all the time.

“Sorry, Mom.” I wanted
to comfort her but she waved me on, not even looking at me. The china set, an
heirloom from my mother’s family, passed down for five generations, would have
one day belonged to Ambrosia or me. Well, that decision was no longer an issue.
At that moment, I realized nothing lasts forever. Particularly porcelain china.

The smell of hay mixed
with horse manure assaulted my nose when I strolled into the stable no less
than two minutes later. Most people cringe at that smell, but I embraced it. It
meant I was near Big Blue. I walked past my dad who’d already shoveled most of
the hay into the trough, and headed straight to Big Blue’s stall.

“Adela, don’t go in
there yet. He’s very skittish and might stomp on you by accident. I’m going to
give Courtland Reese a call. I want him to check out Blue before you ride him.
That is, if he hasn’t already been solicited by another rancher around here.”

“Dad, seriously? Courtland
Reese? Come on. I know Big Blue better than anyone. I can handle him
,
can’t
I, big boy?” I said, as I got closer to my horse.

Courtland Reese was the
boy everyone at school hated and made fun of because of his freakish connection
to animals. Well, Max hated him, mostly. Everyone else just went along with
whatever Max said.

I reached over the gate
and placed my hand on Blue’s head and he reared back, flaring his nostrils as
if he didn’t know me. I recoiled in shock.

No. Big Blue can’t
do this. He’s my baby
. I had been there when he was born, the very first
person he’d seen as he lay there covered in that white gooey-looking
transparent sac. It gave his midnight black coat a bluish tint. I’ll never
forget Dr. Showbert, the veterinarian, saying Blue was the largest colt he had
ever seen. I knew from that very moment what I would call him.

“Shhhh. Big Blue,
shhhh. That’s it. Come on, it’s okay,” I coaxed in my softest persuasive voice as
Big Blue inched closer to the gate and let me stroke his beautiful black face.
I gently traced the white diamond on his forehead, a gesture he always seemed
to love
,
and a bubbling thrill tingled throughout my blood when he
nuzzled my cheek.

I was pleased that Blue
let me pet him, but my mind seethed with anger over the prospect of Courtland
Reese, a guy my own age, handling my horse. A boy Max despised. A boy who was
the talk of every rancher within ten miles of Pleasant Ridge. He always seemed
different from other boys, standoffish, and he looked a bit older than the rest
of the guys in school. It was rumored—if you paid attention to those sorts of
things—that Courtland had some weird ability to communicate with animals,
particularly horses. Back in elementary school, kids made fun of him, calling
him
“
Dr. Doolittle
”
and “freak.” Not so much anymore though, now
that we were all seniors and way too cool for such immature behavior—well, most
of us. Max still referred to him as “Freakazoid.” Courtland was also half Miwok
Native American and most people said that was where he got his strange ability.
I think a lot of the kids regarded him as scary and unapproachable more than
anything else. He was quiet and didn’t socialize much, which didn’t help his reputation.
I’d always thought he had a certain bad-boy look—sort of a leftover hot guy
from that movie, “The Outsiders.” Yeah, I’m an 80’s movie nerd. 

Certain that I could do
better than Courtland, I smiled and nuzzled Big Blue right back. Courtland
Reese had nothing compared to this kind of love. Big Blue was mine and nobody could
ever soothe him the way I could. “See
,
Dad? Big Blue is fine. We don’t
need Courtland.”

It wasn’t that I didn’t
like Courtland. All I really knew about the guy was what Max told me. Maxen
Wendell, my best friend, future boyfriend and husband,
only he didn’t know
it yet
, was an excellent judge when it came to sizing up people. Max was
popular, always had been, just the opposite of Courtland. I sort of felt
special that Max actually hung around with me … considering I wasn’t popular.
Max and I became friends outside of school because we lived close to each other
and I was probably the only other person his age within six miles other than
Courtland.

Max said Courtland was
too “sweet” so he must be a mama’s boy as well as a pansy. I’d thought about
pointing out that Courtland’s mother died several years ago so he couldn’t
possibly be a mama’s boy, but it really wasn’t something worth starting an
argument over. I wasn’t even sure about the sweet part; he didn’t look very
sweet to me. He frowned a lot and never spoke to me unless I said something to
him, which rarely ever happened, mostly because we really had nothing in common
except for our love of animals. Court wasn’t a bad guy. I guess I just never
really took the time to get to know him, but today wasn’t the day to start. I didn’t
want him near Big Blue, except my father seemed to think Courtland Reese had
what it took to make or break a good stud like my horse.

“Well, I’m calling him
anyway,” my dad said, interrupting my thoughts. “There are other animals around
here besides Blue that could use a bit of calming.”

Convinced that Big Blue
was steady and unflustered, I trucked back inside the house to help pick up
china with my mom, another spirit in dire need of appeasement. Mom sniffled as
she swept up shattered pieces of china and my heart felt as broken as Mom’s
dishes, not for the china, but for my mother. She put so much stock in
preserving the past. Personally, I didn’t see the importance but respected the
fact that she did.

“Sorry, Mom.” I didn’t
really know what else to say to her so I grabbed another dustpan and broom.

Angelica Castielle, the
ever-protective angel, shooed me away. “Careful, honey. I’m afraid you’ll cut
yourself. I’ll finish sweeping this up. Why don’t you go help with the twins
instead? Could you get them dressed and give them some cereal?” Did it bother
me that my mother would, on occasion, treat me like a twelve-year-old? Yeah,
but this particular time I was thankful to be away from her sniffling over
broken antique porcelain.

“Sure.” I forced a
smile and headed toward the twins’ room. I’d rather help them figure out what
they were going to wear anyway. My siblings’ choices of clothing never failed
to amuse me. Ambrosia always wanted to mimic Aaron. She was no doubt slated to
be the next great tomboy in our small town of Pleasant Ridge, following in my
very own footsteps. In fact, I still wanted to do everything Max did. I’d been
following him around most of my life. Max is the one and only child of Julie
and Carl Wendell, owners of Wendell Winery, the second largest vineyard in
Pleasant Ridge, California. My parents provided Max with free riding lessons
from the time he turned ten years old. They also allowed him to board his horse
Misty, a golden mare, in our stable in exchange for some great—from what I’d
heard—wine. Max joked that Misty had the hots for Big Blue. Hell, he might’ve
been right.

As I rounded the
corner, I smiled at the usual banter coming from the twins’ room. I paused at
the doorway and shrieked when I saw Ambrosia sporting a plastic baseball bat in
her hands ready to swing it at Aaron’s head.

“Ambrosia, don’t you
dare hit Aaron with that bat
!
Give that to me. Do you want to put your
brother in the hospital?”

Ambrosia dropped the
bat as if it suddenly acquired some magical power and singed her hands. Sitting
on the lower bed, she pulled the pink comforter up to her chin, and shook her
head, her reddish brown curls dangling over her face and down her back. “He
called me a baby because I cried when the earthcrack happened this morning,”
she confessed with an angelic pout.

“Earthquake,” I
corrected and looked at my little brother. “Aaron, I cried too. Does that make
me a baby?” Well, I hadn’t exactly cried, but almost and he didn’t need to know
that.

Aaron scrunched his
eyebrows together, jumped off the bed and stood, shooting his fists straight up
in the air. His identical reddish brown curls fluffed around his head, and a
thin red blanket tied around his upper chest hung down his back. Mom made sure
he knew never to tie anything around his neck and he took it literally. “Don’t
worry, I will protect you. Me and Dad. We’re the mans of this family.”

“Well, I feel much
better now, don’t you, Ambie?” Ambrosia rolled her eyes and giggled. I’d taken
to calling her that after I read in some paranormal story that ambrosia meant “food
of the gods, said to bestow immortality.” Picturing my little sister as some
immortal’s snack sort of grossed me out. My mom thought it would be cute for
all of us to have the same initials as she and my dad, ARC. Actually, I thought
it gave us all some sort of bond, something that connected us, more than just
blood.

“Let’s see, what do you
guys want to wear today?”

“Mama said we didn’t
have school today ‘cause of the earthcrack,” Aaron pouted.

“Right.”

“When can we go back to
school?” he asked.

“Stupid earthcracks. I
don’t like them.” Ambrosia jumped off the bed, standing stiff with her arms
crossed over her chest and sticking out her bottom lip, while Aaron stood at
her side, a mirror image. 

“Yeah, stupid
earthcracks,” he mimicked.

“In about a week, I
guess.” I handed Aaron a pair of jeans and a blue shirt I pulled from his
drawer. “Here, put these on. Ambrosia, you have a blue shirt, don’t you? Oh
here it is,” I said, rummaging through the messy drawer that my mom would no
doubt have a fit over. That is, if she ever got over the mess in the rest of
the house.

“Who’s here?” Aaron asked
at the sound of a knock on the front door.

“Probably that
obnoxious Courtland guy. Daddy wants him to help soothe the horses,” I said
with a sigh.

“He’s not noxious. He’s
nice and handsome, like Daddy. I want to marry him when I grow up.” Ambrosia
twirled around, holding her clothes out in front of her so they flowed through
the air.

“You’re stupid.” Aaron
rolled his eyes and pounced onto his bed.

“Shhh. Both of you get
dressed; I’ll go tell him Daddy’s in the stable.”

I strolled toward the
door, glancing in the living room on my way. The vacuum roared with an
occasional crunching sound as my mother pushed the beast over and over the area
in front of the hutch.

I opened the door to
find Courtland Reese. His already broad shoulders seemed huge in that dark
green hoodie zipped halfway up his chest, revealing a dark blue and black
checkered shirt I’d seen him wear before. As I remembered, it had tight short
sleeves that made him look rather tough the way his muscles peeked out from the
hem of the sleeve, not like the freaky weird guy everyone claimed he was. He ran
his fingers through his dark hair and gave me an almost dangerous looking half-smile
then looked down at his feet. He shifted from one foot to the other, sticking
both hands in his pockets before glancing back at me with vibrant green eyes. I
don’t remember ever being this close to him and I suddenly felt like I’d
forgotten to get dressed. I’d never noticed his eyes before or the way they
could make me feel so defenseless. He kept glancing around the front yard as if
he was looking for something. Why did he always act like there were a million
and one things he’d rather be doing than talking to me? Well, the feeling was
mutual, I’m sure.

His dog Shiloh, on the
other hand, a black mixed lab, took a step forward, wanting my attention. My
heart melted as she wagged her tail fast enough to knock a small child across
the porch and nuzzled the palm of my hand, her wet cold nose sliming my fingers.
I smiled at the feeling and looked up into Courtland’s eyes that lingered on me
for a few seconds before he averted them back to the ground once again.

“Ah, is your dad home?”

I nodded, unable to
find my voice. Why was it again Max hated Courtland?

“He called me to come
over to check on the horses,” Courtland said, his eyes squinting from the sun,
making him frown a bit, adding to that dangerous look he sometimes had going.  

Now I was the one studying
the cracks in the old red-painted concrete porch my dad had been threatening to
remodel with wood decking since we’d moved there eight years ago. Why anyone
would paint concrete is beyond me. What’s wrong with plain gray? I mean,
everybody knows it’s concrete.

“He’s over at the
stable,” I said, managing to locate my voice somewhere down past my esophagus, the
statement so curt, I even surprised myself.

“Thanks.” He turned and
headed down the pathway.

“Wait,” I shouted, not
sure what I wanted to say. I wasn’t about to apologize for my rudeness, that’s
for sure, but I didn’t want him to mess with Big Blue. I wanted to be the one
to calm him and talk to him. Big Blue was my horse and I didn’t see the need to
have a stranger whisper in my horse’s ear. If anybody was going to do any
whispering to Big Blue, it was going to be me, no matter what my dad said.