Bone Gap (19 page)

“Finn should be careful? Or Priscilla should be?” Darla said.

The lemonade soured on Finn's tongue. If Jonas “Jeez Louise It's Not Meth?” Apple said anything about Petey having a sting, Finn would punch him.

Jonas said, “Women are complicated.”

Strange boy, ugly girl . . .

“Or men are simple,” said Darla.

Maybe he's taking advantage of her, maybe she'll do anything . . .

“One minute they can't stand the dog and the next day they load the dog up in a van and drive off. No phone number, no address. You don't even know if the dog's all right. I mean, they should tell you that the dog's all right, don't you think? A person should know about his dog.” Jonas rubbed at one eye. “Allergies are killing me.”

Darla handed him a napkin. “You have gravy on your chin.”

Petey returned from the ladies' room and took Finn's arm. “Hi,” she said.

“Hey.”

“What's wrong?”

“Nothing. Let's find a table in the back.”

She let go of his arm. “Why do you want to sit in the back?”

“No reason. Well, I want to ask you something about Amber.”

“Amber?”

Darla glanced past the police chief out the window. “Hey, who's that messing with your horse, Sidetrack?”

“What?” Finn said, spinning on his stool, just in time to see the mare rear back, kick her front legs, and charge past the diner.

He flew off his stool and ran out the door. The mare was already half obscured in a cloud of dust. Finn stood there, frozen, staring down the road, until a voice behind him said, “That fool horse is headed right for the highway.”

The highway? With the speeding cars and the semis and the SUVs . . .

Petey's moped leaned up against the building, key in the ignition. Finn jumped on the machine. He turned the key and kicked the start lever the way he'd seen Petey do. It didn't work. He tried again, this time squeezing the brake handles as he kicked. Still nothing. One more kick and the moped fired up. He took off just as Petey's hand grabbed the back of his shirt, almost pulling him off the bike. He struggled to hold the bike
upright, then gunned the engine, breaking free of her grasp.

He sped the moped after the runaway horse, fighting to keep his seat as the tires caught on the edge of the road through town. Flying gravel tattooed his skin with hot pricks of blood.

The mare was moving so fast her shoes sent up blue sparks when they struck the pavement. Ahead of her, brakes squealed as cars jerked left and right. The sound reminded Finn of an earlier time, a time when another car was jerking left and right, Roza's pale hands slapping at the back window.

The mare sped up. The highway was only a few miles down the road. If she reached it . . .

Sirens blared in his head. He gunned the engine as hard as he could, racing around the galloping horse. Once in front of her, he suddenly swerved the moped, tacking from one side of the road to the other. His hands pumped the brakes. She'd have to slow down. She'd have to.

She didn't.

The next time he swerved left, she banked right, galloping by him before he had the chance to react. He could see the white foam gathered at her mouth, the dark sweat on her flanks, the raw terror in her eyes. Something had scared her. Something had scared her so badly that she was going to run out onto the highway and—

Again Finn flew around the horse. This time, he dropped the moped into a slide, leaving yards of his own skin on the pavement as the bike sparked and squealed and finally stopped. Finn
could only lie in the road, pinned by Petey's bike, as his horse, his beautiful, magnificent, impossible horse, thundered toward him. The mare reared up, shrieking, hooves hammering the air. When those hooves came down, they came down right on his heart.

His first thought was:
I'm broken.

His second:
No, I'm burned.

Third:
I'm broken and burned.

A cool hand touched his cheek. He opened his eyes to see Petey's anxious face hovering over him, her hand squeezing his. On the other side of him, Mel Willis's long brown hair swung gently as willows in a breeze. Beyond Mel and Petey, the squeal of brakes, the slamming of car doors. The people of Bone Gap coming to see for themselves. They'd all followed him here.

“Finn?” said Petey. “Are you okay?”

“Describe the time you were run over by your own horse using only interjections.” He coughed, fought to sit up. His chest was burning as if he had been branded.

So, broken, burned, and branded.
But not high!
he wanted to say.
I'm not sniffing glue, people, and for that—

“You should stay still,” Mel said. “The mare stepped on you. She stumbled off at the last moment. As scared as she was, she knew it was you. You're lucky. She didn't want to hurt you. But you could have some cracked ribs.”

At this, Petey abruptly dropped his hand, stood, and stomped off.

“I'm fine,” said Finn. “Where did she go?”

Mel pointed. Her truck was parked a few feet away, blocking any traffic. The mare stood quietly in the middle of the road, lathered and exhausted. Petey took the reins and knotted them in her fist. Her angry fist. She was breathing hard, chest heaving.

Mel followed his gaze. “Priscilla called me when you took off on the moped.”

“She looks mad.”

“She always does.”

“No, she looks really mad. Did I break the moped?”

“I don't think she's worried about the moped. People sometimes get mad when someone they care about throws himself in front of a charging thousand-pound animal wearing steel shoes.”

“Sorry,” he said, though he wasn't sure what he was apologizing for. “Is she okay?” And he wasn't sure if he was asking after the horse or the girl.

Mel sat back on her heels. “I don't know, Finn. That horse just ran flat out for miles and barely missed getting turned into dog food. She stomped on your chest and she almost stomped on your head, so
you
barely missed getting turned into dog food.” She raked her hair from her face. “I think you should have the vet check her out. The vet should check you out, too. And maybe give you some kind of shot so you never, ever do anything like that again. Do you know how dangerous that was?”

Finn grunted. He didn't think it was any more dangerous
than playing with millions of stinging insects and risking anaphylactic shock. He straightened his leg. His thigh and calf were sanded raw as a T-bone at the meat counter. Then he really was sorry, sorry that he'd looked at it.

Mel sighed. “Just rest for a second.”

He ignored her and sat up. He'd been roadkill many times. What was one more?

“You're one giant pain in the Buddha,” Mel said.

“I'm fine.”

“Stop arguing with me. You look like you lost a battle with a thresher.”

By then, some of the people of Bone Gap had gathered behind Mel. Someone whistled. “Whooeeee. That's going to hurt later.”

“It hurts now,” said Finn.

“Whaddya expect?” someone else said. “Pulling a stunt like that.”

“Yeah,” said another. “Who do you think you are? Evel Knievel?”

“Evil
who
?” Finn said.

“Kids today don't know nothing.”

Petey said, “Some of us know not to use a double negative.”

“Priscilla Willis,”
Mel said. Her tone was warning enough.

“Sorry,” Petey mumbled, not sorry either.

“Don't mind her,” Mel explained. “She's just worried about Finn.”

Petey tossed her wild hair. “Who says I'm worried?”

Mel pressed a palm to her forehead. “Anyone want to adopt a couple of teenagers?”

“They're all yours, Sweet Melissa,” a man said.

“Groovy,” said Mel.

Sirens blared. Actual ones. An ambulance. Usually, EMTs worked in pairs, but only Sean jumped from the driver's side with a black bag. He always made his own rules. He strode toward Finn, one long drink of water, not a drop spilling out. Mel stood and caught his arm, whispered in his ear. Sean nodded.

He set his bag next to Finn. He didn't say a word, just pulled up Finn's T-shirt. In the middle of his chest, right on the breastbone, a furious red horseshoe was indented in the skin. Sean grabbed his stethoscope and touched it to the left of the mark.

“Breathe in,” he said. Finn did.

“Breathe out,” he said. Finn did.

Sean felt each of Finn's ribs with expert fingers. Then he laid his palm flat in the center of Finn's chest. “Does it hurt when I press down?”

Finn gasped. “A little.”

“How much? Scale of one to ten.”

“One.”

“I mean it.”

“Fourteen.”

Sean inspected the scrapes. “These aren't too bad,” he said.
“Considering.” He put his stethoscope back in his bag. He glanced up at Mel.

“Can you sit with him? I have to get the gurney.”

“Sure,” said Mel.

“I don't need the gurney,” Finn said. But it was like talking to a bee's nest. Nobody heard him. And if they did, they didn't care to listen, because they all had things to do. Sean went to the ambulance and got the gurney. Mel and Petey said they would take the mare home while Finn was being checked out at the hospital. They would make sure she had food and water. They'd call the vet.

Sean helped Finn lie on the gurney and wheeled him to the ambulance. One push and Finn was inside. Sean closed the double doors, moved around to the side of the truck. He hopped into the cab and started the engine. This time, he didn't bother with the sirens.

The hospital was twenty minutes from where the horse had stomped Finn. For most of this time, Finn could feel Sean gathering himself to ask one of his questions. Finn knew not to rush him. Finn shifted on the gurney, trying to ignore the sting of his cuts and scrapes, and the dull ache that bloomed in his chest with every beat of his heart. He counted the boxes of medicine on the cramped shelves. He counted the freckles on his arms. He imagined Petey visiting him in the hospital, slipping into the bed with him, letting him bury his nose in her hair, letting his hands roam where they would. He thought about Roza sitting
in the back booth at the Chat 'n' Chew, waiting with two ice cream sundaes and a lot to say.

Nineteen minutes into the ride, Sean asked, “Were you trying to get that horse killed?”

Finn almost swallowed his tongue in surprise. “What do you mean? I saved her.”

A pause. “You chased her.”

“She was running toward the highway,” Finn said. “I had to try to stop her before she got there.” He tried to turn his head to look at Sean, but the gurney was too low for him to see over the front seat.

“So you thought the best way would be to go after her on a really loud machine?”

Finn said, “Something scared her and I—”

“Horses are prey animals. She thought some smoke-belching monster was trying to eat her for lunch, so she did what prey animals do. She tried to escape.”

“But—”

“Don't you see?” Sean didn't sound angry, just tired. Tired beyond tired. The kind of tired that worms its way into the bone and stays there, feeding on the marrow. “You were the one who scared her, Finn. She was running away from
you
.” Sean stopped the ambulance and leaped from the cab. When he threw open the back doors, the sunset was blinding.

PETEY AND HER MOTHER GOT TO FINN'S HOUSE ABOUT AN
hour after Finn attempted to grate himself into sausage and his brother had to cart him off to the hospital for reassembly. They led the mare back into the slanted red barn. They fed and watered her and spent some time petting the desperate little goat that kept the mare company, a goat that promptly tried to eat the eyelets off the bottom of Petey's dress.

Though they could detect no injuries to the horse, Mel decided to call the vet anyway. They let themselves into the O'Sullivan house, where Mel made herself a cup of tea and sat at the kitchen table, sipping quietly while they waited for the vet to arrive.

Petey wasn't sipping, wasn't waiting for anyone. She moved around the house, examining family photos, opening and closing books, and peeking into drawers. If there had been a computer, she would have booted it up, but the O'Sullivans, it seemed, didn't have a computer anywhere.

“You're not looking through their things, are you?” her mother called from the kitchen.

“No,” said Petey. She wasn't looking through
their
things as much as she was looking through
Finn's
things. And considering what she and Finn had done—how real things had become—and considering the fact that Finn had tried to get himself killed right afterward, she had a right to snoop. She could still feel his arms around her, still feel his lips on her neck, hear the hitch in his breath, and yet when she'd seen him bloody and limp on the ground, she'd wanted to kick the crap out of him. It had been his idea to meet at the diner, but as soon as she'd put on this dumb dress, she knew she wanted to do all the things everyone else did. She wanted to go out for ice cream, she wanted to go to the movies, she wanted to hold hands while running through the rain, she wanted to get in idiotic spats over idiotic things, she wanted to make out until she didn't know whose tongue was whose. But none of these things would happen if Finn were too good to be true, if he were some character out of a tale, if she'd made him up through loneliness and sheer will:
And so the young lovers had a month together before he was stomped to death by his magical horse.

That wasn't the real reason she was snooping, though. The real reason was what he'd done at the diner, how he'd acted before his horse ran off. Cagey and strange, as if he didn't want to be seen with her after all.