Taming the Star Runner (12 page)

Nothing. He gazed at the empty pasture.

It was raining now, harder. It felt like tears, it felt like blood, on his face.

Travis lay on his bed, going over his manuscript. He was absentmindedly correcting things, the technical stuff mostly, cutting description, fiddling with a comma, trying to figure out how to let people know what a character was saying without writing word for word what he was saying. “He swore” worked pretty good, but he needed something else too…

He turned down the music.

Through the open window he could hear the mockingbirds fighting over what was left of the pecan tree. He rolled off the bed and pulled his desk chair to the window.

The revisions were beginning to bore him, now that the novelty of the editor's marks had worn off. The book was okay, and the reality of publication
(it was really going to happen!)
could still stop his breath, but he wasn't living this book anymore. He just wanted it done.

He listened to the birds. He had a great appreciation of the sense of hearing now, after being stone deaf for two days and panicked that it might be forever.

He folded his arms on the windowsill and rested his chin on them.

Spring wasn't bad. Fall was always his favorite time of year, but spring wasn't bad at all.

There was the realtor, in her navy suit and plasticized hair, showing someone around the property. The economy was bad, it was a bad time to be selling, but every once in a while someone came to look.

He had to keep his room straighter.

Teresa had filed for divorce, but now she was dragging her heels about going through with it. Christopher had started bed-wetting and both Ken and Teresa seemed unduly freaked out about it. Travis thought if it'd bring them together again he'd personally load Chris up with juice every night. And a couple of nights he had.

He was tired of their story and wished for a happy ending.

But now he thought stories didn't have endings, only pausing places.

Joe's story was still stuck on whether he was an adult or a juvenile, but Orson was going to get to sit on death row while his ending was being debated.

It was funny, the thought of what might have been, had he stayed—“what if?”—could still make Travis sick with dread. But the memory of the storm, of racing lightning, when he had been so close to death he could have reached out to touch it—that only brought an odd kind of joy.

Faintly, he could hear Casey yelling, “Heels. Heels! Heels!” He smiled. They were good friends now, close in a real funny way, free to fuss at each other, or laugh when no one else got the joke; she only had to raise an eyebrow to let him know what she was thinking, and sometimes she seemed to read his mind. They had a deal together, to quit smoking.

But something was gone. The intensity of a flaming candle, a laugh in the face of danger. He tried to remember the heat he had felt for her before, but it was fading now, like the memory of the storm, like the memory of the Star Runner, who, after all, had been just a horse.

Casey was still a good trainer. She still did well at the shows, she had a waiting list of people who wanted to ride with her. But there was something missing … he still loved her, but not the same way.

But he couldn't, wouldn't, believe that he missed the horse.

He could hear the realtor, in the house now, chirping about moldings, whatever they were.

He didn't much care about the place selling—Casey had already found another barn—except maybe it would cheer Ken up. Ken had promised him he could transfer to East River High, and it looked like he'd get to start with summer school, since he was flunking English. (This was going to be great in interviews, he thought. “The year I sold my book I flunked English.” Ha!)

He would be in classes with Jennifer. He had gone with her and some of her friends to get pizza, to movies, they were a little preppy for him but he could get along with them. He had never felt so protective of anyone as he did of Jennifer.

He looked at his manuscript. It was just a stack of paper, pretty soon to be a book, but it wasn't the whole world anymore. Nell (he could call her Nell now) was nagging him to begin another one right away, so he'd have a good start on it before this one came out.

“Get going now,” she warned him, “or you'll freak at the reality of the audience, once reviews come in.”

Yeah, yeah, sure, Travis thought. But anyway, he did have an idea…

He pulled his chair up to the desk and rolled a blank piece of paper into his typewriter.

He sat there, waiting.