Bone Gap (7 page)

“More dangerous than hanging out with a bazillion bees?”

She gestured to the fire. “The smoke calms them. Besides, they won't sting unless you piss them off.”

“How do I know what pisses off a bee?”

“Forget the bees. I saw the bruises on your face the other day. Looks like you pissed off someone a whole lot bigger. Did the horse do it?”

“She has a mean right hook.”

“Where'd you get her?”

“She showed up in my barn.”

“She showed up in your barn,” Priscilla repeated. She picked up a stick and poked at the flames. “What kind of barn is that, anyway? A magical barn?”

Maybe Priscilla was thinking of other things that had just shown up in Finn's barn, but he wasn't going to talk about that. He touched the mare's neck, and the horse took a few more steps closer. “I was sitting at my kitchen table, reading, when I heard a noise from the barn. And there she was.”

“I've heard of people doing stuff like that, leaving horses with other people. But regular horses. Not that kind of horse. That's some sort of fancy show horse.”

“Maybe. But she was in my not-very-fancy barn with ten bales of hay, so I guess someone wanted us to have her.”

Priscilla frowned, the firelight etching angry lines in her skin. People said Mel Willis was a pretty woman, but Finn thought that even mad, Priscilla was a whole lot prettier. Not
that he could tell her that. He had known her forever, but something had happened in the last year. She was just
there
all of a sudden, there in a way she hadn't been before. Spiky as she'd always been, but leaner and lusher at the same time. In class, he would stare at her. He didn't know he was doing it until she threatened to cut him with a corn knife.

Other kids stared, too. Some of them said Priscilla Willis was smokin', as long as you didn't look at her face. But Finn didn't see what was wrong with her face. That was what he should have told Miguel: Priscilla Willis didn't look like anybody else.

Priscilla said, “I bet she's worth, like, a million dollars or something. People don't leave million-dollar horses in barns. That's crazy.”

“It is crazy. But now I have a horse.”

“Are you going to keep her?”

Finn shrugged. It was odd to be sitting on a million-dollar horse, talking to Priscilla Willis in the middle of the night, but then it was a relief to be talking to someone besides the cat.

“Mind if I sit with you, Priscilla?”

“Petey. I hate the name Priscilla. What if I called you Finnegan?”

“That would be weird, because my name isn't Finnegan.”

“Well, my name isn't Priscilla.”

“Okay,” he said.
This is going well.

“What did you say?”

He shut his mouth and shook his head for fear she'd whip out
that corn knife. He slid off the horse's back and patted her flank. He didn't bother to tether her to a tree. Someone might have put her in his barn, but for some reason, it seemed as if she was her own horse and would decide where and when she wanted to stay, and where and when she wanted to go.

“You're not using a saddle? Are you nuts?”

“I don't have a saddle. And it didn't seem right.”

“So, you are nuts.”

“She has a bridle and reins.”

“Great. So, she could have dragged you behind her.”

“Not by the bridle, she wouldn't have. Even though it doesn't have a bit, it would have hurt her, wrenched her in circles.” Finn dropped to the ground on the other side of the fire. “Though I guess she still could have thrown and trampled me.”

“Awesome.” Petey watched the horse cropping the grass by one of the hives. “What's her name?”

“I just met her.”

“Still.”

“I'll think about it.”

“Come up with a good one. One that she'd like. No one wants to be saddled with a name they don't like.”

“Saddled, I get it.”

“It wasn't a joke.”

“Okay.”

“My jokes are
funny
.”

“Okay.”

The fire lit Petey's face from below, making her eyes appear even larger, blacker, angrier against the honey skin. Finn had trouble keeping them both in his field of vision, so he looked from one eye to the other and back.

Petey gave the fire a sharp stab, sending sparks spiraling into the air. “You're staring again.”

“Sorry,” he said. But he didn't stop staring.

She dropped the stick and met his gaze. “I thought they said you never look anyone in the eye.”

No one else had such interesting eyes. Another thing he wouldn't tell her. “Do you always pay attention to what they say?”

“If I did, I'd have to walk around wearing a paper bag over my head.”

“I wouldn't want you to do that,” said Finn.

Petey blinked so rapidly it was like watching the beating of wings. Finn cursed himself for his big, stupid mouth.

Then she said, “Your horse needs some water. I'll be right back.” Despite the fire and the half-moon overhead, she snatched up a flashlight long enough to double as a club and jogged toward the house. Petey ran on the track team, and her stride was long and graceful. At the spigot, she filled a bucket with water and brought it back to the beeyard. It must have been heavy, but you wouldn't have been able to tell from watching Petey. She was used to hauling buckets and hives and boxes filled with honey jars.

She set the water in front of the horse, and the horse lapped at it. She murmured to the mare. The mare exhaled and nuzzled Petey's ear.

“She likes you,” said Finn.

“She's a good horse,” Petey said. “You really should keep her.”

“Maybe I will.”

Petey stood for a while, hugging the horse, which probably should have seemed strange but didn't. The mare was huggable when not kicking things or careening across the prairie at a hundred miles an hour.

Petey said, “You hungry?” She didn't wait for him to answer. She dug around in a bag by the fire, pulled out a marshmallow, and speared it. She handed the stick to Finn, who held the marshmallow over the flames. Petey did the same. When their marshmallows were burned the right degree of delicious, Petey gave Finn two crackers and a piece of chocolate. He pressed the marshmallow between the crackers and chocolate and took a bite.

“No, no,” said Petey. “Dip it in this first.” She held out a large jar of Hippie Queen Honey. The mouth of the jar was just wide enough to fit the edge of his s'more. He took another bite.

“Even better, right?”

“Even better.” He managed to cram the rest of the s'more into his mouth. Then he had to lick his fingers to get the rest of the honey. Petey, on the other hand, took delicate nibbles, like a bee sipping at a flower.

“You never told me why you were out here in the middle of the night,” said Finn.

“You didn't ask.”

“I'm asking.”

She shrugged. “Can't sleep.”

“Why's that?”

“I don't know. Just restless. End of school does that to me. Keeps me awake. My brain won't stop talking.”

“My brain does that, too, sometimes.”
All the time. Every night.

“It's worse now. Maybe because I'm thinking about what I'm doing after graduation next year.”

“College?”

Priscilla—Petey—nodded. “You, too?”

“Yeah. Everyone says it's early, but . . .”

“I've been thinking about this since I was ten years old.”

“Thinking about college?”

“Thinking about getting out of Bone Gap.”

“Oh,” he said.

“I was looking at the applications online. It's like a bunch of guys got together, got drunk, and tried to see how many essay questions they could think up. You know that one of them wants us to write a five-hundred-word essay on the color red? And that's not even the craziest one. There's one that asks you to write a poem or essay or play, but you have to mention a new pair of loafers, the Washington Monument, and a spork. What's that about?”

“Which college is that?”

Petey waved a hand. “Who cares? Someplace I can't afford to go to anyway.” She sighed and examined her fingernails in the dim light of the fire. “Most I can hope for is the state university.”

“Me, too. You don't sound that excited about it.”

“It's big. Forty thousand people or something.”

Finn swallowed back the knot that immediately rose in his throat. Forty thousand people, forty thousand people,
forty thousand people
.

“And people . . . ,” said Petey. “Well, I don't particularly like people. But they have a bee research facility there. I would like that. But it's hard to get into. And it's really expensive, too. My mom won't be able to help much.”

“My brother, either,” Finn said. “I'm on my own. Scholarships if I can get any, and loans, if I can get those.”

“What about your mom?”

“My mom calls once a month to tell us how happy she is to be away from boring old Illinois. For my birthday, she sent me ten bucks.”

“Isn't she with some rich guy now?”

“Yeah. Some
cheap
rich guy. Maybe that's how rich guys stay rich.”

“Doesn't that make you mad?”

He didn't know what to say to that. Getting mad at his mom seemed about as logical as getting mad at a thunderstorm.

Petey said, “I guess ten bucks doesn't cover much tuition.”

“But it almost buys a whole pizza.”

One corner of Petey's bow mouth curved upward, her version of a grin. She tucked her long, wavy hair behind her ear. In the dark, the pink streaks looked black.

“You could sell the horse, skip college, and buy a hundred thousand pizzas.”

They turned to the horse, which suddenly stopped munching on the grass to regard them with deep, fathomless eyes. “I don't think she'd like that.”

“How do you know what she'd like?”

“I know animals. I'm good with them.”

“Or maybe they're good with you?”

“Either way. I want to work with animals. Study them. Be a vet or scientist or—”

“A rodeo clown?”

“That's exactly what I was going to say. A rodeo clown.”

Petey stretched her long legs. “I told you why I'm up. Why are you two wandering around in the middle of the night?”

“I guess I can't sleep either.”

“Roza?”

When he didn't respond, her expression changed. Not a frown, exactly, but a slight tightening of the features, a twitch and a tic. She bent one knee and dug the toe of a ragged gym shoe into the dirt. “Lots of people miss her. She was beautiful. I mean, she is beautiful.”

That might be why other people missed Roza, but it wasn't why Finn did.

Petey said, “She was nice, too. For a second I thought you were her.”

“What?”

“I know, it's weird. She never rode a horse or anything. But she used to come and visit sometimes.”

“She did?”

“Yeah. She liked the bees. And we would talk. I made her s'mores with extra chocolate. She liked chocolate. But she liked honey more. She would drink it right out of the jar.”

Finn rubbed his fingers together, feeling the tug of the honey drying on his skin. “What did you guys talk about?”

“Stuff,” Petey said. “None of your—”

“Beeswax, I hear you.” But Finn was surprised. Not that Roza would want to visit Petey and talk about
stuff
, but that he didn't know about her coming here.

“People say the word ‘nice' and they mean ‘boring.' A lot of times nice
is
boring. But that's not what I mean. Roza was nice and not boring at all.”

“Yeah,” said Finn. Finn wondered if Sean knew that Roza and Priscilla Willis were friends. Maybe he did. Maybe Sean knew about all of Roza's friends. Maybe Sean knew Roza so well that he would have told Petey himself: make sure she gets extra honey before Roza ever had to ask. Maybe he'd give up his own honey so she could have more. Sean had done it for Finn. When their mother was still around, she would buy them ice cream bars from the freezer at the grocery—an almond bar for
Sean, a Bomb Pop for Finn. But Finn hated the Bomb Pops; they stained his lips so red that people asked him if he was wearing his mother's lipstick, and the Rude boys would follow him around, making kissing noises. Sean told their mother, “Finn doesn't like Bomb Pops, I like Bomb Pops,” and he would trade his almond bar for the Bomb Pop, even though almond bars were his favorite, even though his lips got red, too.

But thinking about Roza and about Sean and about Bomb Pops and the Rude boys made Finn's ribs ache. He said, “Got any more marshmallows?”

Petey tossed him a marshmallow and he caught it out of the air. He stuck it on the end of his stick and put the stick in the fire.

“So, I guess you haven't heard anything new about her,” Petey said. “Roza, I mean.”

“Not sure they'd tell me, considering they blame me.”

“They'd tell you,” Petey said. “Everyone knows how you felt—feel—about her.”

“I don't think so.”

“It's not a secret.”

Finn wiped his forehead where the sweat was beginning to bead and only managed to wipe honey all over himself—sticky everywhere. “Okay, how do I feel?”

“What?”

“If it's not a secret, if everyone knows, why don't you tell me how I feel about Roza?”

Petey jerked slightly, as if he'd poked her, and her hair fell
like a curtain over half her face. “Never mind.”

“You want to talk about it, let's talk about it.”

“I'm sorry I brought it up.”

“No, really.” He was tired of everyone believing they knew everything there was to know about him, as if a person never grew, a person never changed, a person was born a weird and dreamy little kid with too-red lips and stayed that way forever just to keep things simple for everyone else.