Wild Horse Spring (9 page)

“Weren’t you saying yesterday that you wanted to feed and ride them?” I asked.

Since talking to Sally, Diana had changed a hundred and eighty degrees in the way she thought about the horses.

“Well, she explained some things to me,” Diana said quickly. “Anyway,” she said, changing the subject, “let’s try to remember what those guys looked like.”

“Let’s see, that one guy had blond, curly hair.” I described them as well as I could. “He had on a red T-shirt and jeans. The other had a buzz cut. One earring and a white T-shirt. Both of them were kind of heavyset.”

“The blond one was driving a black Yamaha Raptor,” Cody said. “The other guy drove an old red Mongoose, just like this one.”

“Oh, good!” Diana said with admiration. “I was looking at the guys, not the four-wheelers.”

Diana pulled a business card from her pocket. “Can I borrow a cell phone?” I handed her mine, and she punched in the number, listened for a minute, then mouthed to us, “Answering machine.” After a moment she said, “I just wanted to report that I was in the maritime forest behind the dunes and saw two boys on ATVs chasing some of the wild horses.” She then carefully described the boys as well as the ATVs and then hung up.

The names the boys had called us flashed through my mind again. And once again, Diana and Cody had been brave and stood up to them, while all I could do was try not to cry and crouch out of sight.

My phone dinged with a text message, and I opened it. “Oh my gosh.” I stared at Diana. “Daddy and Lynn are on their way home.”

“W
e’re going to get in so much trouble,” Stephanie said, and I swear she was about to cry. I wanted to smack her and say, “Snap out of it!”

“Okay, we’ll head back, but we’ll get Cody to let us off before we get to our house so they’ll think we went for a walk on the beach,” I said.

“But what about our scrapes and bruises?” Stephanie said, rubbing blood from her arm.

Cody picked up his helmet and shook out the sand. “So your parents wouldn’t want you to ride the ATV?”

“I don’t want to ride again,” Stephanie said. “I’ll walk back.”

“That’ll take too long,” I said.

So, after a second, Stephanie climbed on behind Cody, and he scooted way up on the seat so I could get on the back. Stephanie put her arms around Cody’s waist again, and I put my arms around hers, while my feet dangled beside the big cratered wheels.

“Ready?” Cody turned the key and hit the start button. The engine fired to life.

“Go slow!” Stephanie shouted.

“I am!” he yelled over the engine. He put it in gear, and we headed down the sun-dappled path as it wound through the trees, the wide wheels rolling ever so sedately over the pine needles and sand. In the warmth of the sun, I could smell the apple shampoo in Stephanie’s hair and the coconut of her suntan lotion. Cody probably could too. On the other hand, I’m pretty sure I smelled like sweat.

We meandered slowly along through the forest, the sound of the four-wheeler muffled by the pine needles. None of us spoke until we made it back out onto the beach.

I told Cody to stop and let us off, then jumped off the back.

“Whew,” said Stephanie, slowly crawling off the vehicle.

Stephanie lightly touched Cody’s arm as she handed him back her helmet. Unbelievable. She really did it to me sometimes.

“You’re both okay?” Cody snapped the helmet under the seat.

“Yeah.” I looked at Stephanie’s scrapes and my own. “Let’s wash off in the ocean.”

So as Cody roared off, we went down to the water’s edge and splashed the ice cold water over our arms and legs to get the sand and dirt and blood off. Stephanie squealed every time the water touched her skin. The scrape below her elbow was pretty bad. I had a huge bruise on my hip, but you couldn’t see it because of my shorts.

“Let me do the talking,” I said to her as we started walking back. “Here’s our story: We just went for a walk on the beach and had trouble remembering which one our house was. Cover that scrape with a towel as soon as you get there.”

“I’m not a good liar.”

“I know. You’re terrible. That’s why I said I’d do the talking.”

Stephanie didn’t respond, and we walked along silently for a few minutes.

“So when you went to look for the horses, why didn’t you at least come tell me what you were doing?” she finally asked.

I scuffed my toes on the sand. “I figured you’d try to talk me out of it.”

She nodded, and we walked in silence for a little bit longer. We passed a large sign on a post beside a dune, and I realized this was one of the warning signs that Sally had been referring to. In large letters, it said not to feed, ride, or come within fifty feet of the horses.

Stephanie examined the scrape on her elbow, which was still bleeding a little.

“So,” I said, “how did Cody ever convince you to ride the four-wheeler? I never would have thought you’d do that in a million years.”

“I know!” she said. Her eyes got wide, and she smiled. “Me neither. He hardly said anything really. I just got fed up with being scared.”

“I can’t believe you rode with him.” It seemed like Stephanie had a split personality that shifted when there was a boy around.

“He’s nice,” Stephanie said and then smiled. “And cute. Don’t you like the way he pushes his glasses up on his nose—so studious.”

“You think every boy is cute,” I said.

“That’s not true at all!” Stephanie checked her elbow again. She wiped some blood away.

In the distance we spotted Mom, still wearing her golf clothes and visor, standing beside Stephanie’s
beach chair, with her hands on her hips, staring down the beach at us.

“Uh-oh,” Stephanie said. “She probably saw Cody drive by already. She might think we were together. Maybe we should have waited longer.”

“Just follow my lead,” I said.

When we got within about fifty feet, Mom hurried toward us. “Where have you been?” She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, cocking her head at us.

“Just for a long walk on the beach,” I said. “You didn’t want us to stay here the whole time you were gone, did you?”

“No—but you should have left a note.” She joined us walking back toward the chair.

“Oh my gosh, I’m sorry!” Stephanie exclaimed. “We forgot!” I glared at her. She was acting way too sorry. She caught my eye and bit her lip, then grabbed the towel from the chair and awkwardly draped it over her arm. She might as well have had a neon sign on her forehead that said, “I fell off the ATV and scraped my arm.” Ugh. She was hopeless.

“I just saw that boy Cody drive by on his four-wheeler a few minutes ago,” Mom said. “He went flying over a dune. Those things are so dangerous.”

I tagged along behind Mom and Stephanie on the walkway, listening to Mom’s inevitable list of
physician’s assistant stories from the trenches. Just two weeks ago a teenager had fallen off an ATV and required thirty-six stitches in her forehead. Just last week a teenager broke his ankle in an ATV crash. Last year three teenagers wrecked an ATV and were killed. I touched Stephanie on the shoulder, and when she glanced around, I rolled my eyes and did a talk-talk-talky motion with my fingers. She smiled weakly and looked away.

Suddenly Mom looked at the towel draped over Stephanie’s arm. “Stephanie, there’s blood on that towel. Are you hurt?”

“No, it’s okay.” Stephanie tried to hide her arm, but Mom peeled back the towel and examined the scrape.

“She was doing some cheerleading stuff and tripped over a piece of driftwood that was out on the beach,” I said. I looked at my throbbing leg and saw the bruise was spreading down my thigh, so I grabbed a towel and put it around my waist so Mom wouldn’t see.

Stephanie looked at me wide-eyed as we headed through the back sliding door of the cottage into the living area.

“Oh, honey, that’s a bad scrape. You should be careful with that tumbling on the beach. Diana, while I wash Stephanie’s arm, will you please go get the first-aid kit from under the sink in our bathroom? And get some bandages out for me.”

“Sure.” I got the kit and started taking out some bandages when Mom’s cell phone started ringing.

“Diana, could you pick that up?” Mom said.

I delivered the kit and grabbed her phone. “Hello?”

There was a brief silence on the other end, and then I heard an enthusiastic “Oh, hey there, dudette!”

That was a nickname he’d started using for me lately. It was Dad.

My heart squeezed and turned a flip.

“How’s the vacation going?” he said. “You guys having lots of fun?”

“Yeah, so far.”

“Good, good.” It sounded like he was flipping through papers. Multitasking again, only focusing part of his brain on the conversation. Sometimes he used his salesman’s voice with me. “My conference is going well too.”

“When will we get together?” Suddenly I felt dizzy. Dad’s voice sounded faint, and I started seeing black spots dance before my eyes. I remembered I hadn’t eaten yet. And maybe I’d run too far.

“Later this week, we’ll definitely get together. I have somewhere I want to take you.”

“Where?” My throat went dry. I definitely needed a drink.

“It’s a surprise! It’s going to be very cool. Hey, maybe I better talk to your mom to arrange the details.”

I glanced over at Mom. She was putting the finishing touches on the gauze she’d wrapped around Stephanie’s forearm. “Just a minute,” she said, giving Stephanie a tight smile, then patting her shoulder. Mom took the phone from me, playing nervously with her earring. “Hello, Steven.”

W
hen Lynn took the phone, I glanced at Diana to see what happened next. She raised her eyebrows and barely shook her head, like she was saying,
Don’t know, but there’s nothing we can do now
.

I couldn’t believe Diana lied so easily to Lynn. And soon Daddy would come in from cleaning the golf clubs, and we’d lie to him too.

While Lynn talked on the phone with Diana’s dad, Diana watched her like a dog eyeing steak on a plate.

“She can come and spend the day with you, but we’ll pick her up before dinner,” Lynn said in a real firm voice. I went and stood right at the front door so I could hear the conversation but also see what Daddy was doing. Daddy, still out behind the car, was reorganizing his golf bag. Clubs lay crisscrossed on the sand, along with a stack of little white balls, bags of tees, and a couple of golf gloves. Cody stood there talking to him, and Daddy handed him a club. Cody practiced swinging it. It looked like Daddy gave him some tips, because Cody swung the club again. Daddy nodded and smiled. Cody handed back the club and headed toward his house.

It looked like Cody had made friends with Daddy, which was great. It made me feel a little guilty, because if Daddy knew we’d been riding on the ATV and fell off, he might not let us hang out with him anymore.

Lynn, still wearing her goofy golf visor, paced around the couch while she talked to Diana’s dad. “You’re not going to take her parasailing or anything crazy like that, are you? We’ve already got our hands full this week.” Lynn listened for a minute. “All right,” she said. “We’ll meet you at the entrance to Jockey’s Ridge at ten-thirty Thursday morning. And Steven … please call if you’re going to be late.” She closed the phone, leaned over the counter, pulled off her visor, and ran both hands through her hair.

And then Daddy walked in. “Hey, that Cody is a nice young man. I told him that we’re going to the aquarium and the Wright Brothers Memorial tomorrow and invited him to come along with us. That okay with everybody?”

“Sure!” I said.

Lynn nodded. “Sure, that sounds fine. And then the next day Diana is going to visit her dad. I just talked to him.”

“That go okay?” Daddy asked, focusing on Lynn.

“Yeah.”

“Diana, your mom hit some great shots today,” Daddy said. “She beat me on two holes, can you believe that? So, how did you say you did this to your arm, Stephanie?” Daddy asked, touching the bandage Lynn had made.

I hesitated. Diana had lied just now, to Lynn. But I couldn’t do it. I knew Diana was expecting me to do it, and I couldn’t even look in her direction. I felt the blood pounding in my neck. “We … uh … fell off the ATV.”

Daddy took off his golf hat, scratched his head, and looked at me. “You did what?”

I could feel Diana’s furious eyes on me, the freckles standing out on her white face. “Stephanie!”

I drew a deep breath. “We were riding the ATV too fast and fell off.”

“How did you end up doing that?” Lynn said, with confusion in her voice.

I went over to the couch and sat down. “Well … Diana went out for a run, and she was gone a long time and I got worried, so I asked Cody to give me a ride on the ATV to look for her. And then we found her, and we were riding back—”

“The three of you?” Daddy said.

“Yes, and we saw some guys on ATVs chasing the wild horses, and we went after them to make them stop. And that’s when we fell off.”

“Diana you lied to me! Are
you
hurt?” Lynn asked.

“Just some bruises,” Diana mumbled.

“So the three of you rode on the ATV?” Daddy said. He had his hands on his hips, his eyebrows had swooped downward, and his mouth was a straight line.

Diana stared at him unblinkingly, without answering, crossing her arms over her chest.

“Lynn, you want to talk about this in the bedroom for a minute?” Daddy asked.

“Sure.”

“Diana, have a seat on the couch with Stephanie,” Daddy said. “We’ll be back in a minute.”

Daddy and Lynn went into the bedroom. The door clicked shut behind them.

I pulled my feet up and sat cross-legged. My arm started to throb. Diana sat down next to me, glaring.

“I can’t believe you told,” she hissed, her eyes dark with anger.

From behind the door, we heard the low rumble of their voices.

“I’m sorry.”

“You’re so lame.”

I heard Lynn’s voice rise, and then Daddy’s. Then Lynn’s again. The doorknob turned, but the talking continued, and the knob turned back.

Finally the bedroom door opened, and Daddy and Lynn came out and sat down on the love seat across from us. “Lynn and I have discussed this,” Daddy said, “and we agree that it makes no sense for you two to be grounded while on vacation. It would ruin the vacation for the whole family. So you’ll be grounded for a week when we get back.”