Don't You Trust Me? (13 page)

I had finished reading “Sir Gawain and the Green Knight” the night before. It's this long medieval poem with somebody in it named Morgan le Fay. My interest
was aroused by the name, so I did some research on her. Hers was an arresting and provocative personality, like mine.

“Fairies, or the fay, aren't those stupid little twits with wings in children's books,” I responded. “They're like normal people, only much, much better. They're better-looking, smarter, and immortal. They can cast a spell of glamour so you don't see them as they actually are, and they can manipulate language so you'll believe anything they say. They're pretty amazing, and Morgan le Fay was their queen.
She's
the one who made the Green Knight and Sir Gawain do all that stuff in the poem. She was the one with the power.”

Ms. Tavernier's eyebrows rose. I think maybe she had been almost as desperate to escape the classroom as the rest of us—her eyes had been flicking toward her watch—and hadn't expected much by way of a reply other than a shrug.

“Well, that was a spirited defense, Morgan! I don't believe I've ever seen you so animated before. You know, the fay are thought of as easily offended, malicious, and even cruel when annoyed.”

“Of course,” I agreed. “I mean, if you were dealing with inferiors, wouldn't you be kind of cranky if they weren't properly respectful?”

“Ummm . . .” A sharp crease formed between Ms. Tavernier's eyes. “I don't know about that—”

“Sure you would,”
I argued, because of course anybody
would
; she just didn't want to admit it. “And look, I know that the fay weren't great to mortals, but that's because they thought of humans the way that humans think of a domestic animal, that's all. You wouldn't get upset if the owner of a dog or a horse bred them and sold their offspring, would you? You wouldn't see anything wrong with training an animal to do a job for you.”

Ms. Tavernier looked dazed. She opened her mouth to reply, but at that moment the bell rang and everybody surged to their feet. They rushed past me, a few of them casting dubious glances in my direction. I ignored them.

There were so many similarities between the cold and the fay! So yeah, okay, most of the cold I'd met in my life were pretty unimpressive, unlike the fairies of legend, but it only stood to reason that there would be dumb ones and smart ones, and that the smart ones (like me!) managed to hide themselves so you couldn't spot them.

I was enchanted with the fay.

I had set up in-store donation boxes (constructed by my little team of do-gooders, from cardboard and clear plastic) all over town, and the emptying of these had largely replaced the weekly door-to-door fund-raising. These were tempting for me, as most of the contributions were in cash. I had to force myself to turn
over the majority of the funds, or else people would get suspicious. Because you could
see
there was money in them. Another defect was that, as the boxes lacked my persuasive, in-person skills, they were not nearly so productive. Although I had no desire to go back to the hard slog of door-to-door, I was getting restless. I needed a better source of income.

And what do you know? V
oila!
A better source of income appeared.

The whole racehorse thing was Bounce's idea, not mine. Brooke was blathering on about our charitable activities while we were saddling up one Saturday.

“So you don't stick to one charity?” Bounce asked.

“No, Morgan says that there are so many deserving causes—it wouldn't be fair,” Brooke said.

Yes, Morgan
had
said that, but actually, mixing it up meant that none of the charities would begin to feel proprietary about us, and hence likely to investigate too closely.

“I wonder, then . . . ,” said Bounce.

Apparently Bounce's sister ran a horse rescue operation on a farm ten miles away, called Pegasus Stables. She took in retired thoroughbreds from the racetracks and tried to retrain and place them with new owners. If she couldn't, she kept them herself. Most racehorses retire before they're six, Bounce said, and then can go on to live another twenty or more years.

See, once horses stopped being used for transportation in the twentieth century, we didn't
need
them anymore. So, unless racehorses were big winners at the track, they were sold for slaughter and turned into pet food as soon as their competition days were over. Seemed perfectly sensible to me. Who needs some old slowpoke horse loafing around the place and eating its head off when there are races to be won? However, neither Brooke nor Bounce agreed with my (unspoken) opinion.

“Oh, how horrible!”

“Yes, after nearly killing themselves trying to please their owners, they were sold off for a few hundred dollars to be butchered. Perfectly healthy, young horses, some with scores of wins to their names. There's a new law against it in this country, but they still get sold to Canadian and Mexican dealers, who truck them back to their home countries and kill them there.”

Brooke moaned in distress at this hard-hearted behavior.

“My sister's farm is an accredited not-for-profit organization,” Bounce went on, “and I've always wanted to raise some money for her. You wouldn't believe how much one visit from the veterinarian can cost. Maybe we could use my stables . . . sell pony rides, or something? My expenses are high too, so I can't offer too much, but maybe you girls can think of a way.”

“Ask Morgan,”
said Brooke, with touching faith. “She'll know what to do.”

“Let me think about it,” I said.

AFTER THE RACE IS RUN . . .

SADDLE UP AND ENJOY A DAY

AT TWO AREA HORSE FARMS!

FUNDS RAISED WILL BENEFIT

RETIRED RACEHORSES

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23
^RD

Rain Date, October 30
^TH

After the race is run, after the cheering dies down and the crowd goes home, after a racehorse's running career is over—[blah, blah. Lots of stuff here about poor old racehorses].

The junior class of Lebanon Hill High School is proud to sponsor this event to raise money to benefit Pegasus Stables in their work to help provide new lives for animals formerly in the racing industry.

We had to really scramble to get ready in time, but we had sponsors and volunteers standing in line for the chance to participate. You'd think everybody had been waiting all their lives to aid retired racehorses or something. I mean, what about the poor little doggies and kitty cats being done out of a square meal? Didn't anybody care about them not getting any horse meat to eat? It made no sense to me. Don't get me wrong—I enjoy riding, but once an animal outlives its usefulness, I'm not sentimental. I did get some idea of why this event was so popular, from Brooke's father, who thought it was a nice, “cultural” cause for his daughter to be involved in. Meaning, I guess, that it smelled of old, established money, and that definitely appealed to a car salesman. I had no difficulty signing Uncle Karl up as a major sponsor.

Albany is kind of worthy but dull. Pretty much its major purpose is as a place for legislators to gather and state workers to put in their forty hours a week until retirement age. But thirty-five miles north is the summer resort of Saratoga Springs, where the rich people go to gamble. Identifying with that sophisticated, glitzy world was a winning strategy.

And of course there were lots of juniors and seniors at school who needed to put in their volunteer hours and hadn't gotten around to it yet. As the committee chair, I used my power to give my own classmates preference, saying that this was a special junior class effort.
Besides making me popular with my fellow juniors, it had the extra advantage of irritating Helena, a senior, who had had her heart set on running the fancy hat contest. Sophomores and freshmen were restricted to tasks like following the horses around and doing poop-pickup duty.

Because the weather in this part of the world tends to turn pretty grim after Halloween, we were under pressure to complete our preparations quite quickly. Brooke, Emma, and Melanie served capably as my immediate underlings, churning out publicity, organizing volunteers, and coaxing donations of goods and services out of their nearest and dearest. When Brett realized that the event would not take place in a gymnasium and that there were no bouncy orange balls involved, he lost focus and wandered off to practice layups, and I didn't see much of him. Honestly, sometimes I wondered if I shouldn't let Helena just have him.

I, naturally, was in charge of finances.

I must confess that Brooke was invaluable to me. She shouldered boring and petty tasks without complaint and remained cheerful, however tense things got. It was a huge undertaking, and the fact that we had so many people helping meant that somebody had to schedule them and tell them what to do. Brooke was ever ready to jump into the Miata and fly off to fetch or carry or run the multitude of errands that needed to be done. The
weather stayed beautiful and warm, so she flew from place to place like a jaunty little bird, with the top down and her hair flying in the breeze.

And this brings up the sole point of contention between us during the months when I lived with her family. Since I already had my driver's permit, I had been allowed to drive Aunt Antonia's Cadillac on several occasions, with a duly licensed driver in the passenger's seat. Although I was frequently told off for excessive speed, tailgating, and reckless overtaking, even Brooke and Aunt Antonia had to admit that I was both skillful and confident. Uncle Karl—who, by the way, owned a dashing little red Corvette he kept entirely for his own use—thought I was a hoot.

“And there she goes! Danica Morgan Patrick, moving up to the head of the pack! She cuts them off ! She's in the lead!” he would yell.

“It's because you learned to drive in Los Angeles traffic, I suppose,” Aunt Antonia said. “But really, Morgan, there is no need to be so aggressive here in upstate New York.”

Yet no matter how well I drove, Brooke refused to teach me how to drive stick shift. When I persisted in my pleading, she would turn red and drop her eyes and then make some excuse to leave the room. I teased and begged and praised her little car, all to no avail.

She would not turn over the keys to the Miata to me, the selfish beast.

I PRETTY MUCH DITCHED SCHOOL
while we prepared for After the Race Is Run. I mean, who had time for class when there were so many people to order around? Actually, my teachers cut me a lot of slack. I was raising money for some moldy old racehorses, which I guess trumped statistics and the Civil War in their minds. I guess it helped that our principal was an avid rider and a polo player and was going to ride in the demonstration. He was superhyped about the whole event and kept patting me on the back every time he saw me in the halls.

“Fine job, fine job, Ms. Johanssen! We're very proud to have you as a student here at Lebanon Hill High!”

And so they ought to have been. I am really, really
good, I was discovering, at organizing events. I admit I had a solid team to trot around behind me tending to the boring details. Brooke was everywhere, doing everything. Emma knew the horse world and had been in shows before, so that was helpful—she kept me from looking ignorant by jumping in with information, and all I had to do was keep my mouth shut. Melanie organized the decorations and designed posters and flyers.

Serena, being an animal lover, was naturally in seventh heaven and had to be forcibly removed from the horse barns because otherwise she wasted her time petting and cooing over them. She braided their tails and manes with satin bows, securing them with flower scrunchies and putting stupid hats with ear cutouts on their heads. She was lucky not to get kicked, in my opinion—they looked ridiculous. I stopped her before she got to
my
horse, physically barring her entry into Chessie's stall.

“No,” I said.

She protested but gave in, daunted by the look in my eye. “I've signed up for riding classes too, so I'll be joining you on Saturday mornings in the future,” she said.

Fine. She and Brooke could lurch around the baby ring together and dress their horses up in pink tutus, for all I cared, so long as they left me to practice in peace. I, of course, was to demonstrate jumping at the benefit, along with Bounce's niece and her friends.

During the course of planning After the Race Is Run, I had to fill out a lot of documents and forms, and eventually, as I was in and out so often, I got the run of the high school office files. I am sorry to say that it didn't occur to me immediately to take advantage of this fact. It was only after I ran across my own student file with a copy of my birth certificate, social security number, school transcript from LA, current grades and reports and so on, that I realized what a treasure trove this was. I copied everything (and a few other files for good measure) and brought them back home with me, secreting the pile of papers underneath my mattress for later study and consideration.