Wild Horse Spring (19 page)

Could that be how the whole Annn-i-MAL thing started? Could that possibly be the reason? And with a sickening jolt, I knew it was true. Colleen must have told someone what I said, and then somehow it got twisted. Guilt flooded my entire body! The name calling had been started by something
I
said.

The front door opened, and Daddy, Lynn, and Diana came in carrying pizza boxes. Diana was sunburned, and her hair was tangled from the wind. But her eyes sparkled. Her visit had been good.

“Things went well with your dad?” I said to Diana. I dished out cups of water for everyone, my hands shaking.

“Yeah, it was really fun,” she said.

I glanced at Daddy and Lynn, and they both smiled, a little bit cautiously.

“The day was a success,” Lynn said, putting the pizza boxes on the counter. The smell was incredible. My mouth watered.

“That’s great,” I said.

“Thanks for setting the table, Stephanie,” Lynn said. “Let’s eat!” said Daddy.

So we all sat down. Lynn had ordered one pizza with sausage and mushrooms, and the other plain, with extra cheese, the way Diana and I liked it.

“I went hang gliding and parasailing,” Diana said. “It was amazing!”

Amazing
. I thought of Cody. I was waiting for someone to ask about the police car next door, and I didn’t have to wait much longer.

“Why is the police car over at Cody’s house again?” Daddy asked.

I took a deep breath. “Uh … maybe Cody should tell you himself.”

“What?” Lynn asked. “Why don’t you just tell us now?”

I glanced at Diana, and our eyes locked. “Cody was
the one who hit Isabel,” I said. “He was scared to admit to it because he didn’t want to get in trouble. He told me while we were riding bikes today, and I made him call the police to report it. They were here when we got back.”

Diana’s mouth dropped open. Tears filled her eyes. “All that time,” she whispered. “He lied to us all that time!”

“We did the same thing ourselves last summer, Diana, with the wolves,” I reminded her.

“It’s not the same! Isabel almost died! It’s not the same! And he was lying to us!” Diana dropped her pizza onto her plate and got up from the table.

“Diana, I know this is upsetting, but there is no need to leave the table,” Daddy said. “Let’s finish our meal.”

“How could I eat now?”

“You need to eat, honey,” Lynn said. “We all do.”

Tears ran down Diana’s cheeks. “I knew I didn’t like him! I knew it! I was right the whole time!” She ran upstairs and slammed her bedroom door, leaving the three of us to finish eating in silence.

After dinner, Daddy, Lynn and I were sitting on the couch, each of us reading, though I’d read the same paragraph four times, when Diana came downstairs. Her eyes were red, but she wasn’t crying anymore.

“Sorry,” she said, barely louder than a whisper.

Lynn got up and gave her a hug.

I wanted to hug her too, but I couldn’t bring myself to approach her.
Annn-i-MAL
rang in my ears.

Daddy and Lynn suggested we recite our poems for them. I reluctantly agreed. Diana tried to get out of it, but Daddy wouldn’t let her.

I offered to go first. I hadn’t heard Diana practicing all week. I managed to get through my Elizabeth Barrett Browning poem with only a couple of stumbles. Daddy and Lynn applauded as I sat down. Diana looked defeated.

“All right, Diana, your turn,” Daddy said.

Diana got up and looked at the floor, and took a deep breath. “I don’t know mine yet,” she said, “so I’ll just read it this time.” She opened her book and read:

Diana put down the book.

“Well, the first stanza and the last stanza are almost exactly the same, so that will make memorizing easier,” Daddy commented.

“One word is different,” Diana said. “The word ‘could’ is changed to ‘dare.’”

“Maybe it will help if we talked about the poet and what the poem means.”

“I looked up William Blake,” Diana said. “He lived over a hundred years ago in England, and he was an
engraver. He used to engrave his poems by hand with his own illustrations. See, I printed out a picture of the poem the way he wrote it himself, with a drawing of a tiger. It seems to me like the poem is asking why God would make a creature as fearful as a tiger.”

“Do you think the poem says the tiger is evil?” Daddy said.

“Maybe …” She paused for a moment as if in thought. “Just because a tiger has to kill to eat doesn’t make it evil,” said Diana. “That’s nature. Like, just because the wild stallions fight, that doesn’t mean they’re evil. Even though I felt the situation was terrible for Firecracker, that’s just the way life is in the wild. If you understand the way the stallions feel about the herd, then you understand why they fight. It’s just part of nature.”

“Right. Wild animals aren’t evil,” I said. “They’re powerful, or fearful.”

“Maybe the tiger stands for nature!” said Diana. She had an expression of discovery on her face.

“A metaphor for nature,” Daddy said, nodding. “That sounds good.”

“Like, think about the storm we had the other night,” I said. “The winds and the waves that came all the way up on the dunes, and the trees that fell down. But then the next day the ocean was calm, and the sky was bright blue, and the sun was shining all day. Like, nature is so powerful, and so beautiful!” I said.

“I really like that,” Daddy said.

“I picked this poem because I like wild animals,” Diana said. “At first I thought it meant, why would God create something like a tiger that is evil? And I didn’t like that, because I don’t think of any animal as evil.”

“Well, one thing to remember,” Lynn said, “is that Blake was writing his poem several hundred years ago, and maybe people didn’t understand the natural world as well as we do now. Maybe Blake thought tigers were evil.”

“And I don’t believe in God. And one reason I don’t is because there is so much evil,” Diana added.

There was a silent moment, and I held my breath. What would Daddy and Lynn say?

Finally Daddy said, “One of the wonderful things about poems is that we read them year after year, and as we get older and wiser, we still get profound meaning from them. You will memorize this poem, and it has a meaning to you now. Ten years from now, you will still remember the poem, but what it means to you by then may be completely different. That’s the amazing thing about great literature.”

And that was all anyone said. For whatever reason, the moment passed by peacefully. Diana looked at Daddy and nodded. I wondered if Daddy was hoping
that maybe in ten years Diana would believe in God. She’d already changed her mind about it once this week. So it was possible.

“Why is tiger spelled with a y?” Lynn asked at last.

“It says online that was a common way of spelling tiger back then,” Diana said.

“Good choice. Maybe you can practice the poem in the car on the way home,” said Lynn.

Later, Diana and Lynn were upstairs together, and Daddy and I were alone downstairs. I knew that this was my chance. I had to do it.

I thought about the things Diana had told me about the horses, about the way their main goal was to keep the herd together. That there was nothing that a young horse wanted more than to be a part of a herd. We had told Daddy and Lynn about Firecracker finding a new herd. I wished my herd—Mama and Daddy and me—could still be together, and sometimes it seemed like a wound that would never heal.

And so now, where was my herd? I wanted to live with Daddy and Lynn, and I had to go through with asking, no matter how much I might hurt Mama’s feelings. I had to do what I thought was right, and be where I thought I belonged.

Daddy was bent over the folded newspaper in his lap, but I could see that with one ear he was listening for raised voices upstairs, because Diana was upset about Cody, and she often got upset when she was talking about her dad. I was listening for that too. So far the voices were even and quiet, reasonable, which was amazing. I had never expected things to go well today with her dad, but somehow they had.

I went over and sat on the couch next to Daddy.

“Daddy?” I said.

He looked up from the newspaper, but I could see he wasn’t completely focused on me. “Yes, honey?”

“I have something I’ve been thinking about for a while, but I’ve been afraid to say anything, because I thought I’d hurt Mama’s feelings.”

Daddy’s expression changed right away. He put the paper aside. “What’s that?”

“Well … I was thinking that I’d like to live with you and Lynn.”

Daddy’s eyes widened, and he bit his lip. “You would?”

“Yeah.” I realized I was twirling a piece of my hair and pushed it behind my shoulder and sat on both hands.

“Wow, honey. What’s made you decide this?”

“Well, I guess some of it started not too long after
Mama met Barry. I mean, I really wanted her to marry him because I thought we’d be happier, and I loved the wedding and everything. But now I kind of feel left out, and you and Lynn don’t make me feel left out.”

“We love having you as part of our family, and we want you to be with us whenever you can.”

“Also, I just don’t think Mama and Barry know what’s going on with Matt since he got kicked out of school.” I took a breath and plunged ahead. “Matt and his friends stole beer from someone’s garage and got drunk one night when Mama and Barry were out.”

Daddy’s mouth fell open. “Were you there when they were drinking?”

I shook my head. “No, I had spent the night at Casey’s house.”

“How did you know about it?”

“He bragged about it to me. I’ve seen him and his friends drinking before, and he threatened to hurt me if I ever told.”

Daddy put his chin in his palm, thoughtfully. “Did you say anything to your mother about this, honey?”

My lips felt like they were going to crumple, but I kept them stiff. “I don’t want to hurt her feelings.”

Daddy suddenly leaned over and pulled me close. “It’s okay, you can talk about it,” he said. He felt as warm as a bear.

“I know she loves me,” I said into his chest. “And I love her so much. I’m afraid she’ll get mad at me.” It felt like such a relief to say the words. I had been holding them in for so long, because I had thought it would be wimpy to bring it up, and I didn’t want to hurt Mama. Even though Daddy didn’t make Mama happy when they were married, and she was the one who first wanted the divorce, Daddy ended up hurting Mama’s feelings when he married Lynn a few months before Mama married Barry. I didn’t want to hurt her again. “Listen, I’m glad you’ve told me this. Lynn and I would love to have you with us, with all our hearts, and we’ll work this out,” Daddy said, squeezing my shoulder. “Think about it for a while, and make sure this is really what you want.”

“I have been thinking about it for a long time.”

Daddy sat quietly for several minutes. Then he asked, “Do you think you can tell your mom this yourself? Or would you like me to say something to her?”

“I know I need to be the one to tell her,” I said, sitting up straight and wiping my cheeks. “I can do it.”

“It would mean the most coming from you. You could write a letter if that’s easier,” Daddy said.

“Okay, maybe I will do that,” I said. I sat there with him hugging me, and I thought maybe he was crying too, but I didn’t look.

O
ur car was packed. After Stephanie and I helped Norm attach our bikes to the bike rack on the back of the car, we climbed into the backseat.

“Bye, little house with the triangular window,” Lynn said from the passenger seat. “Didn’t we have a wonderful time, girls?”

“Yeah,” Stephanie said.

I scanned the dunes, looking for one last glimpse of the horses. Leaving a place could be hard sometimes.

“Look,” Stephanie said. “Cody’s out on his front porch.”

I didn’t want to look.

“Daddy, can I take a minute to say good-bye to Cody?” she asked.

“That would be nice,” Norm said.

She jumped out of the car and ran across the sand, up past the red Mongoose in the yard. I watched her stand there talking with him, smiling and gesturing with her phone, I guess talking about the fact that maybe they’d text each other. His expression was serious, and he only smiled once, when she said her last good-bye. She ran back to the car, and I quickly looked away.

“How can you act like he’s still our friend?” I asked.

Stephanie looked at me with a level gaze. “What he did was no worse than what we did last summer with the wolves. He accidentally did something wrong, and he tried not to admit to it. He didn’t hurt Isabel on purpose. Remember how last summer you wished Russell would forgive you for what we did? Cody probably feels the same way.”

I glanced over at Cody. Stephanie had found out that Cody had to pay a fine, but since he had reported the accident himself, he wasn’t charged with a misdemeanor.

On the day after I found out that Cody was the one who hit Isabel, I had gone up to him in the driveway and yelled at him.

“How could you have sat there with me, watching the horse suffer, and known all along that you were the one who did it? How could you have walked around the aquarium with us, knowing that?” I was so mad I was shaking all over. What I couldn’t put into words was how betrayed I felt. I had started out not liking him; then I’d changed my mind. And then this!