Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 1.2 - Rough Broke (3 page)

You'd forgotten how hard Dylan hits the alcohol, and it's not long before your head is spinning. He's ranting about some problem at school, how some teacher is accusing him of cheating, and you're not following the story too closely but you're pretty sure that he
did
cheat, and that makes it kind of funny that he's so pissed off about the accusation, but he doesn't seem to see the humor so you try to stop laughing.

Dylan doesn't calm down, and for some reason he wants to go over to the school, and it's not far and you have nowhere else to go, so you go with him. He's got a mostly-empty bottle of Jagermeister still on him, and when you get to the school he swears and throws the bottle at the building. It's pretty surprising, considering how drunk he is, but somehow the bottle hits square, right on one of the windows, and both the bottle and the window smash. There's a moment of stunned silence from both of you, and then Dylan is whooping, and you wish he'd quiet down a little because there are neighbors, but then he staggers over to you and gives you a boozy, adrenaline-soaked kiss. You don't really care about the neighbors anymore.

He staggers away from you, searching the ground, and you think maybe he's dropped something, but then he bends down and picks up one of the rocks that's been used to line a pathway, and he hands it to you and nods at the school, says it's your turn.

This place is probably four or five back on the list of schools you've attended, and you don't remember having anything seriously against the place when you
did
go there, but Dylan is smiling at you, waiting. You imagine what his mouth will taste like, think that maybe after you can go down to the creek or back to his house and just make out, lie down and explore each other's bodies, and you heave the rock and hear the glass shatter. You don't have time for your celebratory kiss, though, because that's when the siren blats and the lights flare from the parking lot, and you both turn in the opposite direction and see another set of lights from over

You grab his arm, try to get him to run, but he looks like he's in shock, and then he's bending over and throwing up, and you're not sure if it's from the alcohol or the situation, but either way you can't just leave him there, and the cops are coming and you try to get him moving, push him a bit and he's staggering away, and you put yourself between him and them, hoping you can at least slow them down and give him a chance. They grab you first and you struggle, but there's two of them and you're drunk, and they pin you to the ground fast, and as they're cuffing your hands behind your back you look up and see Dylan just standing there, staring at you. He hadn't even tried to get away.

They take both of you to the station, and you see your stepfather there and he's yelling at you, telling you not to bother coming home, and you find out that he's pressed charges for the fight and for taking the car. You doubt you have to worry about coming home, because you were already on probation and this is your third arrest in as many years. You think about saying that he hit you first, and you know you've got the bruise on your face to prove it, but then you feel the other bruises there from where you'd slammed your face into something or another when you were struggling with the cops, and you don't say anything.

They leave you in a hallway, cuffed to a bench, and you see Dylan's dad come in with some woman who looks like a lawyer. After a few hours, your court-appointed lawyer shows up and you read the statement Dylan made. He's saying that it was all your idea, that you'd gone to the school and broken both windows, and he'd been there trying to stop you. You don't know if they're his words or his dad's or his lawyer's, but you guess it doesn't really matter. You don't say anything, and he walks out of the police station that night with his dad; when he walks past you, he doesn't lift his eyes. You get sent to a pre-adjudication youth facility, and you don't get out of the system for another eight months.
You try not the think about Dylan, and then when you can't stop

thinking about him, you try to hate him. But you remember the desperation in the way he'd moved against you, the hunger too long repressed, and you think of the fear in his eyes when he'd seen the flashing lights of the cop cars. Your life was already messed up; you don't blame him for trying to salvage his own.

You're shipped to McLennan, the same place you were before, but this time your sentence is longer, and they're not going to keep you there. You're not sure where you're going to be sent, and you're not exactly looking forward to it, but you're not scared either. You're older and bigger now, tougher, and you think you know what to expect. Turns out you're wrong, but for once, the surprise isn't unpleasant.

You get to McLennan and have to sit through some orientation presentations that were boring the first time you heard them, and then you're sent to a small, dingy office to meet with your counselor. It turns out to be the same guy as before, a pudgy, tired-looking guy with a beard. You can't remember his name, and he doesn't give it to you. He knows yours, but you're pretty sure that's just because of the file in front of him.

He goes through the usual crap, how it's not good to see you back, and he'd really hoped that you'd gotten things under control last time. It's like you're supposed to care that you've disappointed him. You think about telling him how far down the list of disappointed people he is, but you don't bother. The truth is, the list isn't all that long, because there really weren't many people who gave a shit about you in the first place, but he's definitely at the bottom of it.

That's when the surprise comes. He hands over a brochure, and some forms, and they're for some place called the Rocky Path Ranch. You glance at the brochure and then back up at the counselor, waiting for the punch line. He sees your look, and shakes his head. He tells you that it's not an easy program, that they expect a lot more of the participants than

anywhere else you could be sent. There's hard work to do, and you're expected to go to counseling, and stay completely away from drugs and alcohol, and keep up with your school work as well. And he says it's a one-strike-and-you're-out program; they don't put up with any crap out on the range.

You just nod, and then you ask why. Why are you getting this chance? He glances at the file, then back at you, and smiles a little as he flips it around so you can read it. You figure out that you're looking at a report from your last foster family, the one on the farm, and you recognize the father's strong, tidy penmanship. There's a lot of technical stuff, dates and program requirements, but at the bottom there's a space for notes, and there's only one word, but it's all in capitals, and it's underlined four times
- "HORSES"

You look back at the counselor and he shrugs, and that's it, that's how you end up spending the next eight months at an outdoor education and corrections center instead of locked up inside. The counselor was right, it
is
a lot of work, but you like that, and the rules make sense. It's not fair to the horses to be drunk or stoned or anything but your best when you're around them. The counseling takes place on horseback as often as in a chair, so even it isn't so bad, and the school work… well, after a full day of working on the ranch, you're too tired to do anything but sit around anyway, so it doesn't kill you to sit around with a book in your hands.

There's usually around ten other kids in the program, sometimes more, sometimes less. There's one week that's in between a bunch of kids leaving and a bunch of new kids arriving and it's just you and the staff, and most of them have taken the weekend off, so during the days you work hard, doing all your chores and trying to fill in for the people who aren't there, but at night it's just you and one of the counselors. You’ve seen him watching you, and you think you know why. It's been months with only your own hand and that makes you brave, or bold at least, and when he's chopping up vegetables for dinner you stand close to him, and lean in a little. He inhales sharply and then freezes, but then he scrambles

away. But you caught the pause, you know he was torn, and you move after him, and you feel predatory and powerful as you see the warring emotions in his eyes.

You tell him it's okay, tell him that you want to and can tell that he wants to, and he's backed against the wall and has his hands out in front of him as if to hold you off, but when you close your fingers around his wrists and push, there's hardly any resistance as you move his hands up and hold them against the wall over his head. You move in, rub your whole body up against his. You don't kiss him because a lot of guys don't seem to like that, but you use your mouth, nuzzling and biting into his neck, and he groans a little and arches his head back, and that presses his body up against yours and you like that a lot. You shift your hands so that just one of yours is holding both of his, still above his head, and you take your free hand down to the small of his back and pull him in even harder against you. It's good to be in control, great even, and you feel strong and sexy and safe. But when your hand leaves his ass and goes to his belt buckle, he gasps in a much less pleasant way and pulls his hands free, and he says no, Dan, I can't, and you think how easy it is for some people to say no. He pushes you off him and almost runs down the hall to the staff office and locks the door. He doesn't come out until one of the other counselors arrives to take over the shift. The other counselor asks if it was something he ate, if they need to worry about food poisoning hitting the whole facility, and you say you don't know.

The next batch of kids comes in on Monday, and the counselor comes back to work. He's obviously told his supervisor, and they call you in for a joint counseling session. You hate counseling at the best of times, and this, two of them against you, stuck inside the stupid office when there's horses outside and work to be done, this is far from the best of times. They talk about a lot of stuff, about how it's not a rejection of you as a person, but it would have been criminally inappropriate for the counselor to allow anything to happen, and they talk about abuse of power and protecting potential victims, and for a second you think they're talking

about you, that
you
had the power and
he
had to be protected, and you don't want to think of yourself as a bully but at the same time it's nice to be the one with power for a change. When you figure out what they're actually talking about, it seems odd; you wonder if the counselor actually felt that he was in charge that night or if he's just going along with what his boss says.

You keep your head down for the rest of your stay, and at the end of eight months, you don't want to leave, and the staff say they don't want you to leave either, and you think you believe them. But you can't just refuse to be released. You think about committing another crime, but you're pretty sure they wouldn't send you back to the ranch. When you leave, the head of the program gives you a sheet of paper with names and phone numbers on it. He says they're people he knows who work with horses, up around Dallas, and they might have a job for you. He says you should tell them to call him, and he'll give you a good reference.

It's a long bus ride back to McLennan, and once you're there the outprocessing takes a couple days and it sucks to be locked up again after the freedom of the range. You keep the sheet of paper with the phone numbers in your pocket, and you look forward to getting out.

When you get back to Dallas, you’re not supposed to be released until your parents show up, but nobody comes, so your case worker drives you out to the house. You get out of the car and she seems to be waiting for you to go inside, but you're pretty sure that you're not going to be in there for long before you're kicked right back out, and it will be easier for everyone if she isn't there to witness that. So you go to her car window and say that the hide-a-key is around back, so thanks for the ride, and see you around. She looks reluctant to leave, but you twist around the side of the house and out of her sight, and it's not long until you hear the car pulling away. You wait a few seconds to be sure, and then walk back

You ring the doorbell, and you hear heavy steps on the far side— must be your stepfather. He has to unlock all three locks, one of which is new, and he doesn't usually lock the door when he's at home, so you figure maybe they got the letter from the Texas Youth Commission after all. They knew you were coming, and it made them buy a new lock. The door opens and he's glaring at you, and he doesn't say a word, just reaches down and grabs something bulky off the floor. It's your dad's old duffel bag, and it's packed full. Still wordless, he shoves it out at you, and you take it, and he steps back and shuts the door. You crane your neck, trying to see if your mother or Krista are even in there, but the inside of the house is in shadows.

You turn and start down the path to the street, but when you get to the sidewalk you realize that you don't know whether to turn left or right. You sit down on the curb with your duffel beside you, and you try to think. You guess you should have had a plan for this, but having a plan would have meant you were giving up on the fantasy, the world where your mom had picked you up when you got off the bus, and given you a hug and looked at your work-broadened shoulders and said something hokey about her little boy being all grown up. In the fantasy, she would have taken you home and there would have been a banner or something, like you've seen on TV, and a cake and some people to greet you and welcome you home. You knew better than to
expect
that, but that doesn't mean you were tough enough to have given up hope entirely.