BACK TO SCHOOL
I couldn’t delay by brushing my teeth any longer; I was about ready to gag on the foamy toothpaste and I could hear Rachel calling up the stairs for Norah and me to hurry. It was raining outside, and the Master ranch—where I was stuck living for the next year and a half—was on a road so rural it didn’t even have a name. Honestly, “road” was a generous term—it was basically a dirt driveway, and its potholes were currently hidden under a foot of water. Rather than braving the weather on the ancient bicycles parked on the side of the house, Rachel had said she’d take us to school in the truck, which meant my mini-vacation from school was over. Apparently you can only use your dead mom as an excuse to skip algebra for so long.
I was nervous. And I felt stupid for feeling nervous. What was I, twelve?
To be fair, it had been a hell of a week. Funeral, freak storm, fever—my least favorite “F” words.
I stared grimly in the mirror: Dark circles puffed under my eyes, my skin looked pasty, and my lips were chapped. The big burgundy sweater I wore only made my face look more hollow. Skinny jeans, my mom’s wedding ring on my right hand, my dad’s wedding ring on my thumb, and an old pair of Rachel’s boots. Definitely looked like I wanted to be a fashion designer.
When I’d shown up at the ranch, I’d spent the majority of the first three days locked in my new room marathoning episodes of Project Runway on Netflix. I’d brought my sewing machine with me to Stony Creek, but the pedal cord had snapped in the back of my grandma’s station wagon on the move here, and I didn’t have the money to fix it. I did some embroidery to pass the time, but it wasn’t the same. I wanted to be a designer—I wanted to go to the Fashion Institute of Technology and open a store in New York. But our insurance was so crappy and Mom's medical bills were so insanely high that they obliterated any chance of going to college. When I graduated high school next year, I would be on my own, totally broke.
Next week, I told myself. Next week, I’d start researching internships. I’d make a plan. I’d work on designs, I’d figure out how to get money to fix my sewing machine. I’d use friggin’ sheets, if I had to, to make a portfolio to show at the Fashion Institute. I’d find a way.
Today, however, I’d let myself feel as miserable as I wanted.
A hell of a week, indeed.
“Oh, good, you’re ready,” Rachel said, when I finally came down to the kitchen. “Come on, Norah!” she called up the stairs again. I could hear a muffled response as Rachel grabbed two brown paper bags and handed one to me. I was ruffling their routine, an extra mouth to feed and an extra body to transport. Joe, in his plaid flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, sat at the table reading an article on his laptop, completely unaffected by the morning rush.
Rachel had tried to get me interested in the ranch, and I might have been, but because she wanted me to like it, I didn’t—which was immature, and I knew it was immature, but I didn’t care. There were eggs to collect, a cow to milk, a garden to tend (though nothing was growing in mid-October), and, of course, the horses. There were eight, five of which were boarders owned by city people who came by once or twice in the summer to ride them.
“That’s your lunch,” Rachel said, pointing at my bag as she filled her thermos with steaming coffee. “I didn’t know what you’d want, so I put in a little of everything.”
I didn’t say anything, but she was already at the foot of the stairs ready to call up one last warning just as my cousin came bounding down.
“Ready!” she announced, landing on the floor, grabbing her lunch out of her mom’s hands and dashing out the front door, hair still wet from her quick post-barn rinse-off in the shower. Norah was fourteen, a freshman, and completely obsessed with horses. She got up at four a.m. every day to feed them and, I don’t even know, muck out their stalls? My only source of farm terminology was Black Beauty, so I honestly don’t know what she did for three hours every morning before school. Norah didn’t like me and I was indifferent about Norah. I got it, though—I was invading her turf, soaking up all her parents’ attention. If the circumstances were different, if I had met her even once before moving into her house, I think I would have liked her. Problem was, I hadn’t met her before, and now we had a year and a half to butt heads.