Wild Horse Spring (4 page)

I
followed Diana to the top of the stairs.

“I picked the room with the blue bedspread, but I don’t really care that much which room I get if you want it,” I said. I really wanted us to get along on this trip.

Diana, without answering, went into the room with the striped bedspread and dumped everything in her suitcase on top of the bed. “Okay, I’m officially unpacked,” she said.

“Right,” I said, laughing, thinking that maybe we’d
just avoided a big fight. But then she walked to the door of her room and slammed it.

Sigh. Life with Diana.

I had already hung my sundress in the small closet and folded my T-shirts and shorts in the dresser. Opening the sliding door, I stepped onto the wooden upper porch overlooking the beach and ocean, and then leaned on the railing, watching and listening to the hushed sound of the waves beyond the dunes. I loved that sound. It just made me feel happy in my skin. Birds sang loudly, though I couldn’t see them. From below, strains of classical guitar floated up from one of Daddy’s CDs. A breeze threaded through my hair.

Through the sliding door to her room, I could see Diana lying on her bed on her stomach, on top of her clothes.

She had to be mad at Daddy for yelling at her. “Hey,” I called, “it’s cool that we have this porch to ourselves.”

Diana didn’t answer. She remained on her bed without moving.

There were a lot of times when the three of us—Daddy and Lynn and I—were all working to get Diana to cooperate. It reminded me of when we were at the ranch last summer, and one of the horses was running around the ring bucking, and three wranglers were trying to lasso it all at the same time.

Maybe if I were bad, Daddy would pay me attention, like he did with Diana, or like Mama and Barry did with Matt. How is it fair that Diana gets to live with Daddy all the time, and I only see him every other week? He’s not even her father.

One of the only times I’d been by myself with Daddy since he married Lynn was last week at Easter, when we went to the Methodist church at the last minute. My friend Colleen had told me the youth group was fun, and she’d invited me to come before the church service on Easter.

Daddy had come to pick me up, and when we passed the church, he got a funny look on his face. He turned to me and said, “Hey, Steph, want to go? Just you and me? Lynn took Diana to the barn, and they won’t be back until later.”

When I was little, I used to go to church with Daddy and Mama, but we hadn’t been in a long time, since before the divorce. “Okay,” I’d said.

The service was more modern than our old church, and had a band with guitars and microphones instead of a choir with robes. In her sermon, the preacher talked about how Jesus’s resurrection can bring about a resurrection in each one of us. A whole new life. Daddy had taken my hand and squeezed it, and suddenly I realized there was a tear rolling down his cheek.

After the service, we went to lunch. “I didn’t realize
how much I missed going to church,” Daddy had told me while we ate.

It had been a beautiful, warm day. The daffodils and dogwoods were blooming everywhere. I watched a family of four walk by outside the restaurant, with two little kids in their pastel Easter outfits. The boy had on a pink bow tie.

“Diana doesn’t believe in God,” I had told Daddy. I turned to watch his face. He wiped his mouth with his napkin before saying anything. “Did she tell you that?” he asked. I couldn’t tell what he was thinking from his expression.

“Yes.”

“Did she say why?”

“She said one time she heard a story about a barn catching on fire. All the horses inside died. She said how could God let such a thing happen? He could have stopped it. So she decided there was no such thing as God.”

“I see,” he had said, turning his coffee cup around in his hands. “Well, what about you? Do you believe in God?”

I watched Daddy’s face while I considered. “What about
you
, Daddy? Do you still believe in God?” Had Daddy stopped believing in God? Maybe because God didn’t prevent the divorce?

Daddy blew out a heavy breath. “I can see why you might wonder,” he had said. “I guess I’ve been angry with God. But yes, I believe in him.”

“Me too,” I said. And that was all we had said about it. I was surprised he hadn’t seemed shocked about Diana, and it made me want to open up more. I wanted to tell him about what had happened with Matt. I really wished Matt wouldn’t live with Mama and Barry and me anymore.

Matt and his friends were always on the computer, going on Facebook and laughing. Once I tried to see what they were doing, and Matt said, “Get out of here, you little twerp!” I was so shocked and embarrassed, tears came to my eyes and I could hardly see where I was going when I left the room. I had tried not to cry as heat crept up my neck and face. The laughter of Matt and his friends followed me out of the room, burning my ears.

Another time I got dropped off from cheerleading when Mama and Barry were out, and Matt and his friends were drinking beer in the basement. I hadn’t told Mama. I could imagine what Matt would have said to me then.
Crybaby! Tattletale!
After that, I stayed away from Matt. I wanted to tell Daddy. I had the perfect chance to tell him at brunch after church that day. I could’ve asked him then if I could live with him
and Lynn. But I chickened out. I was afraid of hurting Mama’s feelings. I was afraid Daddy would say no.

Then the chance passed, and I went back home to Mama’s house.

Now I had a whole week with Daddy and Lynn. If everything went okay this week, I promised myself I’d ask them.

Diana came out onto the porch. She didn’t say anything, and her eyes were still dark and angry. She leaned on the railing a few feet away from me, looking down at the porch below. I could see her measuring the distance from this porch to the one below.

She glanced sideways at me. “Let’s sneak out tonight and find the horses,” she said. “If we wait till Mom and Norm go to bed, they’ll never hear us.” If I was going to ask Daddy about living with him this week, I wasn’t going to take any chances of getting into trouble. “No way! Remember how much trouble we got into last summer?”

“How could they catch us? We’ll be back before they wake up. They’ll never know.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble.”

“I don’t want to get in trouble.” Diana mocked me in a baby voice then. She looked at me and shook her head with disgust.

Just then someone came out onto the beach from the
path beside our house. It was the skinny, dark-haired boy who had been riding the red ATV. He wore beat-up running shoes with no socks, longish nylon shorts, and a sleeveless hoodie. Diana and I watched without speaking as he went down to the hard, dark sand near the edge of the water, did a few stretches, put in his earbuds and then took off running. Like a soldier, he pounded down the beach.

“How old do you think he is?” I asked.

“Fifteen? Sixteen? He’s fast,” Diana said.

Diana joined our school cross country team this year, at Daddy’s urging. Daddy told us everybody should try one sport a year. Diana tried to quit after the first week of practice, but Daddy wouldn’t let her.

Turns out she was good. The stands were always full for our football and basketball games, but hardly anybody went to cross country meets. At the first meet, Dad, Lynn, and I basically stood around the finish line with a few parents and siblings. After we waited what seemed like forever, the leaders burst out of the woods. All the really fast boys came thundering across the finish line, panting and soaked in sweat. And moments later, there came Diana, with her thin, white legs; spiky, strawberry blonde ponytail; and flaming red spots on her pale, freckled cheeks. Even without decent running shoes, Diana was the fastest girl. I was
shocked to see her first, especially since she claimed to hate it so much.

I couldn’t believe how much Daddy and Lynn cheered for her. I wished they would cheer half as much for me when I was at a cheerleading competition. I mean, I’m balancing on people’s fingertips, and she’s
running
.

Anyway, Daddy and Lynn took her out after that first meet and got her some good running shoes with blue and orange stripes. By the end of the season, she had put all kinds of miles on those shoes, and she’d come in first for the girls at every meet. She still complained and said she hated it, but she admitted she loved the way running helped her mood.

I looked over at Diana, who was watching the boy. He had run so far down the beach by now that he was a tiny moving dot. The late afternoon wind had picked up, whipping our clothes and hair.

“Hey, want to go for a walk on the beach?” I asked Diana.

“I know why you said that,” she said, looking at the dot. “But sure.” We each grabbed a sweatshirt and headed downstairs.

I
didn’t feel like talking to Mom and Norm, so I let Stephanie tell them we were going for a walk on the beach. They told us not to go swimming since they weren’t going to be down there with us, and we told them that the water was cold enough to turn us into giant goose bumps anyway.

Mom, in the kitchen starting dinner, gave me a searching, intense look, but I ignored her. She said something about what time she wanted us home. Mom
was letting her blonde hair grow out a little bit because Norm liked it longer. I thought Mom ought to wear her hair however she wanted, not the way Norm wanted. Framed by the longer waves, her face looked softer now than it used to. Before she married Norm, when it was just the two of us, Mom’s face had looked so pointed and tense.

Norm was inserting a bunch of his oldie CDs into the player provided at the house. He drove me crazy listening to Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne and other rockers who were about a million years old. He did have a CD by Tracy Chapman that I liked. She sang in a throaty voice about a revolution and the world changing, and it made me want to believe her. One of these days people would stop telling me what to do all the time.

Stephanie and I went onto the back porch and headed down the long wooden walkway to the beach. Small dunes dotted with clumps of grasses on either side of the walkway swayed in the salty sea breeze. Right beside the walkway a sign proclaimed Do Not Disturb the Dunes. Just ahead, the surf roared with a soothing rhythm.

Stephanie’s long, dark hair kept blowing in her eyes, so she took a rubber band from her wrist and pulled her hair back into a ponytail. In the humidity, her hair
had begun to curl around her face. My hair doesn’t do anything.

At the end of the walkway, we stepped onto the sand and both turned left, into the wind, in the direction of the running boy.

“He ran into the wind first,” I said, “so running back will be easier, with the wind at his back.” I ran down to the shoreline, digging in with my toes as the water foamed over my feet, leaving me ankle deep in the dark, wet sand. The water was so cold it made my feet ache. “It’s freezing!” When I ran out, I noticed my feet had turned bright red.

Stephanie came down, dipped one polished toe in the racing froth, started to squeal, and then ran out again.

We passed a small patch of sand nestled in the dunes that had been roped off with orange tape attached to some stakes. A small sign attached to one of the stakes warned against disturbing the area.

“Look!” Stephanie said as she stopped. “Sea turtle eggs are buried here. One night this summer when the moon is full, a bunch of baby turtles will hatch and crawl down to the sea. I went to a program about the sea turtles one summer when we were here.”

“I’ve heard of those,” I said quickly. Mom and I had not been on many vacations before she married Norm. Sometimes we’d take day trips, but never a real vacation
like this one, or like last summer at the ranch. I stooped to pick up a broken piece of shell, then told Stephanie what was on my mind. “I know Norm is your dad and you love him, but he’s always trying to tell me what to do. He’s not my father.”

“But at least you get to be with him,” Stephanie said then. “I only get to see him every other week.”

I didn’t answer for a minute. I’d never thought of that. Then I said, “Well, I hardly ever see him.”

“Still. I’m not going to say that my dad cares more about you than your own dad,” Stephanie said, “because I know that’ll make you mad. I haven’t even met your dad. But sometimes I wish you’d try to look at things from another person’s point of view. My dad feels responsible for you. He’s not trying to be your dad; he’s just trying to help you. I think you should be grateful that he cares.”

“I don’t need a lecture. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” I shouldn’t have brought it up. I should have known she’d say stuff like this. Anger pulsed through my body. “If I sneak out, are you going to tell on me?” I narrowed my eyes, shaking back my blowing hair.

“Did I tell on you last summer?” Stephanie shot back. She walked ahead and wiped her eyes. Was she crying? I pretended not to notice.

Just then we saw someone far up the beach examining something in the sand.

“Wonder if that’s him,” Stephanie said. As we got closer, we saw that it was the boy, in his sleeveless hoodie, bending over to look at something.

“What’s he looking at?” I said.

As we walked closer, my heart began to beat faster. I realized I was counting on Stephanie to be the one to say something to him, because she was the one who made friends so easily. I hated boys.

He was looking at a dead man o’ war. It lay glistening like a bluish-pink balloon in the sand, with tentacles tangled beside it like purple and blue spaghetti.

While I was trying to think about how to walk by, or whether he would notice us, Stephanie just walked up beside him, looked down, and said, “Eww, what is that?”

He looked up and held out his thin, muscled arm, preventing her from coming closer. “Careful, it can still sting.” He had piercing, dark brown eyes, and his face was narrow, with a sharp nose. He moved with quick, precise energy. With the knuckle of his index finger, he pushed his glasses up on his nose.