Origins: The Fire (3 page)

For the first time since the move, I threw my arms around her and buried my face in the comforting bend of her neck. “I’m sorry,” I said, my words muffled against skin scented with a combination of rosemary and horse liniment. “Only slow rides from now on. Promise.”

When Mom stiffened, I gripped her all the tighter. I wouldn’t let her slip away. Not this time. Her hand patted the spot above my left shoulder blade, so soft, so hesitant, I almost thought I’d imagined it. Like after this past month, she’d forgotten how.

And maybe I did imagine it, because she untangled herself from my grasp a moment later and stepped away. I tried not to let the hurt show on my face while she adjusted the wire-framed glasses that only intensified the intellectual
glint in her eyes. People said Mom didn’t look like a stereotypical veterinarian, not at all, not with those acres of blond hair and her petite frame and delicate features. She eschewed makeup as a waste of time, and her bare face only seemed to enhance her natural beauty.

We looked completely different, the two of us. I was shorter, sturdier, with natural muscle like my dad and his brown hair and eyes, too. The quarter horse to her thoroughbred. But I liked to tell myself I had Mom’s heart-shaped face.

And her stubbornness.

“You have to follow the rules, Mila. I need you to be safe.”

She hesitated before tucking my wind-blown hair behind my ears. As her fingers grazed my temples, her eyes closed. A tiny sigh escaped her lips.

I stood frozen in place by the unexpected sweetness of her gesture, afraid that any sudden movement might startle her back into the present. I so, so wanted this version of Mom back, the one who dispensed hugs and kisses and comfort as needed. But up until this moment, I’d been convinced that the old version hadn’t made the trip to Clearwater. That maybe the old version had holed up somewhere in Philly—along with the missing pieces of my memory.

Mom pulled away all too quickly, her right hand flying to the emerald pendant dangling around her neck. My
birthstone. A necklace Dad had given her when I was just a baby.

After his death, Mom heaped more affection on the symbolic version of her daughter than she did the real thing.

Her abrupt swivel kicked up dirt. I watched the dust plume upward in a small, tangible reminder of her rejection, a cloud that thinned and thinned until it finally dissipated into blue sky. What would it be like, to disappear so easily?

“Go walk Bliss out and rub her down. I’m going to check on Maisey,” Mom called from over her shoulder, her swift stride already carrying her halfway to the barn.

If only I were as efficient at leaving things behind as she was.

“Oh, and Kaylee called. She wants to pick you up for a Dairy Queen run in half an hour. You can go there and nowhere else, understand?”

“Yes,” I said, barely suppressing an eye roll. Come straight home after school. No going anywhere without approval. Never let anyone besides Kaylee—who’d gone through a rigorous prescreening process—give me a ride. You’d think we lived in the slums of New York City or something.

Not that it mattered. I didn’t have anyone else to go with—or anywhere else to go—anyway.

I leaned my head against Bliss’s lathered body, taking comfort in her warmth, in her musky horse smell, before straightening. “Come on, Bliss. Let’s walk you out.”

She snorted, as if in approval.

I started a slow trek in Mom’s footsteps, letting my eyes wander over the grounds that practically screamed country. Everything here screamed country.

Like the gravel driveway to my right, and the dirt trail that sprouted off and led to the guesthouse ahead. Our new residence was a smaller, more modest replica of the vacant eight-thousand-square-foot, L-shaped main house that sprawled another half mile back. The same white paint with green trim, the same covered porch. No lounge chairs with their wrought-iron backs crafted into the shape of horse heads, but we did have our very own bronze horse-head door knocker.

The dirt path continued from our guesthouse and led to the tall, A-framed building to my right. The stables; part of the reason Mom and I were here. Apparently the owners had a sick relative in England and had to stay indefinitely, so Mom had been hired on as the resident vet and caretaker.

Lucky me.

I supposed some girls would be thrilled to move to a big ranch away from the city, to help care for the horses, to make a fresh start.

I rubbed Bliss’s oh-so-soft muzzle. So far, the horses were the only thing working for me.

TWO

D
o these colors look right together, Mila?”

Kaylee’s high-pitched voice, so close to my ear, plucked me right out of a memory with Dad—a good one.

He’d been walking through Penn’s Landing, hand in hand with Mom, while I ran up ahead, taking in all the tourists and the skaters, the historic ships and the musty scent of the Delaware River. The air held a chill, in spite of my red-mittened hands, but his bellowing laugh had warmed me.

When I opened my eyes to the brown-and-tan interior of the Clearwater Dairy Queen, loss ripped through me. Back in the memory, I’d felt loved, a sense of belonging. A feeling that was hard to come by in a fast-food restaurant in a strange town.

Kaylee wiggled her alternating Purrrfectly Pink and Purplicious fingernails right under my nose, bouncing the entire booth with her enthusiasm. I forced my fists to unclench and fought back the urge to bat those colorful fingers away.

“They look great, right?” In typical Kaylee fashion, she jumped in and answered her own question before I’d even had a chance to respond.

“They look awesome,” Ella answered from across the table, genuine enthusiasm lighting up her narrow, mousy face.

“Awesome,” I echoed. Actually, I couldn’t summon even a speck of interest over nail polish colors and top coats. “How’d you get that scar on your pinkie?”

Kaylee stopped the finger wiggling. She frowned as she inspected the little fingers on both hands, squinting at the white line I’d noticed, near her first knuckle. “This tiny thing? I have no idea.” She shrugged. “Maybe I pricked it with a needle in my sleep—hoping I’d fall into a coma and wake up somewhere besides Clearwater.”

From across the table, Ella sighed. “Don’t forget the prince and the magic kiss.”

“As if.” Kaylee’s overzealous snort made Ella burst into laughter, and even I couldn’t hold back a smile.

Ever since the day I first met her four weeks ago, Kaylee Daniels had operated at that same breakneck speed. She’d
been the first person at school to introduce herself: a leggy, freckled dynamo in high-heeled boots. After latching on to my arm in homeroom, she’d practically dragged me to the desk next to hers.

I remembered the exchange verbatim.

“You’re Mia Daily, right? The one who just moved into the guesthouse at Greenwood Ranch? The one from Philly, which, oh my god, has to be a billion times more exciting than here? I’m Kaylee Daniels, and I’m going to tell you everything you need to know about Clearwater. Which, unfortunately, isn’t much. First and foremost—we need more boys here. More. Boys.”

Once she paused to take a breath, I’d corrected my name—my parents had shortened Mia Lana into Mila as a nickname years ago—and then let her babble flow over me, even welcomed the distraction.

“So, what’s the emergency?” Back in real time, Parker’s Vanilla Skies perfume preceded her clomping, platform-shoed arrival. She carelessly tossed her fringed purse onto the table, almost taking out Ella’s Butterfinger Blizzard before she collapsed into the booth next to her.

Parker? Kaylee had invited Parker? I tried not to groan.

Beside me, Kaylee’s Purrrfectly Pink index nail tapped her Coke float cup. “Um, hello—ice cream?” But out of the corner of my eye, I saw her not-so-subtle head jerk in my direction.

“Ahhh,” Ella said knowingly. Just before a trio of pitying smiles landed on me.

I scuffed my Nike on the sticky floor under the table, wishing I could slide down and join it. Kaylee had tricked me. This trip to Dairy Queen wasn’t really about her satisfying a sudden urge for ice cream. It practically screamed intervention.

Mila Daily, charity case, that was me. Those pitying smiles followed me whenever people found out about Dad, along with awkward silences. As if they were terrified the wrong words would crack me like a broken mirror—and nobody wanted responsibility for picking up the pieces.

My sneaker rubbed the floor again while I tried hard to look uncrackable. Since I wasn’t sure I succeeded, I did the next best thing. I deflected.

“I like your haircut, Parker.”

Parker’s hand flew to the ends of her long, painstakingly flat-ironed blond hair. But instead of the smug preening I expected, she frowned. “Okay, single white female. Leslie only trimmed it a quarter inch.”

Kaylee waved away Parker’s snark. “Oh, whatever. You’d be pissed if no one had noticed,” she said, elbowing me. She pushed a Diet Coke across the table. “Here. You must need the caffeine.”

“You’re a goddess.”

“I know.”

As I watched the exchange, the grateful smile I shot Kaylee for her save faded. What must it be like, to have friends who knew you so well they could order for you? At this point, I could barely order for myself.

“So listen—” Kaylee started.

The squeak of the door interrupted Kaylee. For a moment, the smell of asphalt and manure mingled with frying chicken and grease. Two teenage guys walked in: one blond with a small U-shaped mole on his forehead, the other dark haired with a tiny red stain on his shirt collar.

That made customers ten and eleven since we’d been here.

“Ugh, just look at Tommy…those scruffy old work boots?” Kaylee said, scrunching her slightly crooked nose and talking loud enough to be heard over the whir of a blender. “Atrocious. An affront to feet everywhere. And Jackson isn’t much better. Did you know he plans to stick around once we graduate, so he can help his parents run their store? La-ame.”

Ella and Parker nodded in agreement.

“Plus Jackson dresses like he’s the founding member of the Carhartt shirt-of-the-week club,” Kaylee continued in real time, shaking the booth with one of her typically over-the-top shudders. “Logo shirts—also lame.”

I tried to drum up similar disdain for the yellow logo on Jackson’s shirt, but instead saw my dad cheering on the
Phillies from our old living room. Wearing his red tee with the white, stylized P logo in the top right corner.

I pulled the sleeves of Dad’s flannel shirt over my hands and rubbed the worn fabric between my fingers. The feel of it was so familiar by now, I could probably recognize the shirt blindfolded. He’d been forty-three when he died thirty-five days ago, yet all I had left of him was this and a handful of memories. It wasn’t enough.

An insistent tug on my baggy sleeve made me look over, to find Kaylee staring at me. All of them, staring at me.

“What?”

Kaylee glanced at my shirt-covered hands, cleared her throat in a not-so-delicate
ah-hem
, and then flashed me her brightest smile. “We brought you out here because we thought you might need to get out a little more.”

Ella nodded while Kaylee continued. “You know, a break from the ranch, your mom…”

“That shirt,” Parker muttered under her breath.

I stiffened, but no one else seemed to notice what she’d said.

“…things,” Kaylee finished.

Dad dying. Summed up as things.

Suddenly the vinyl seat felt like a trap. I’d made a mistake, after all. A mistake in thinking that an outing with Kaylee, with anyone, would help. At least back at the ranch, the horses didn’t think I could be fixed with a Blizzard.

I winced as soon as the thought formed. They were trying, at least. Okay, not so much Parker, but Kaylee. And Ella, in her quiet, don’t-rock-the-boat way.

They were trying. They just didn’t understand.

“Thanks,” I finally murmured. I just wished they’d focus their collective interest on something besides me.

Luckily, the door by the cashier squeaked open. “Who’s that?” I asked, mentally apologizing to the boy, whoever he was, for nominating him as diversion-of-the-minute. He eased into the restaurant, a tall, lean frame topped with a mass of dark, wavy hair.

Kaylee’s brown eyes widened. “Dunno. But
day-yum
… I’d like to.”

Parker feigned a yawn. “You’d say that about any guy who wasn’t local and had a pulse. Actually, nix the pulse part.” But when she craned her head to look over the back of the booth, she puckered her lips and let out a short, off-key whistle. “Not bad.”

Not to be left out, Ella craned her neck to peer at the newcomer, who was now placing his order to the young, pimpled cashier. “Maybe he’s from Annandale?” she said, naming the next closest high school.

I shook my head. “He said he just moved here when he ordered.”

Parker curled a pink-glossed lip at me while she swirled her straw in her Diet Coke. She always made at least three
revolutions before each sip. “Right. Like you could catch that from all the way back here.”

“Mila’s quiet. She notices things,” Kaylee said, taking the sting out of Parker’s words. And then she laughed. “But maybe she does have some high-tech hearing aid stashed away in there.” Her fingers reached out to yank playfully at my earlobe, and the sensation triggered a series of images.

White walls. A blurred image of a man in a white lab coat. His fingers reaching out, jabbing deep into my ear.

In my lunge to escape, I jolted the table and knocked over my Blizzard cup. I was out of the booth and on my feet before I even realized I’d moved.

“Jesus, Mila. Don’t be such a spaz,” Parker snapped. “Seriously, someone tell me why we hang out with her?”

“Shut up, Parker—she’s cool. I mean, at least she’s lived somewhere besides this godforsaken place. Where were you born again? Oh, that’s right—Clearwater.”

I stood by our table, dazed. For once, Parker was right—I was acting like a spaz. Based on the stares and giggles from around the restaurant, everyone else thought so, too. Including the new boy. Up by the cashier, he studied me with blue eyes so pale, they looked almost translucent.