17

Being punk
Isn’t about clothes and junk.
It’s about freeing your mind
From social confines.

— The Square Pegs

I SAT ON CHILI. WHY DID IT ALWAYS have to be so hot when I had my lessons? Maybe because it was hot every day. Every. Stinking. Day.

“Don’t worry,” my dad would tell me in the evening. “It’s about to start cooling down soon.” But cool weather was starting to feel like nothing but a distant memory.

“Let’s practice moving Chili up a gait today,” Bill said as he placed my helmet on my head and snapped it. “We don’t need to worry about the jump if you don’t feel ready.”

I nodded then turned to Chili. “Down,” I ordered her. She lowered to the ground, and I swung a leg over the top of her. I pressed my feet into the stirrups. “Stand.”

Chili stood, and Bill patted her nose. “You’re such a smart horse. Aren’t you, girl?”

I tapped her sides gently with my feet and said, “Walk.” We moved around the arena for a couple of laps like that until I got up the nerve to cluck my tongue at her, moving her into a trot. I always felt like I was going to flop right out of the saddle when we started trotting, but I concentrated on staying as steady as possible.

“Move her up to a canter,” Bill called to me from across the arena. Even though we’d cantered just a couple of weeks ago, my stomach knotted up at the thought of going any faster.

I shook my head. “I don’t want to,” I cried. “I’ll fall off.”

“You won’t fall off,” Bill yelled back. “You’ve gotten strong.”

“I’m not strong,” I cried. And I knew when I said it that it was true. I wasn’t strong enough to ride a horse. I wasn’t strong enough to stand up for myself. I wasn’t strong enough to face high school.

“Whoa,” I told Chili as I pulled back on the stirrups with my legs. The reins attached to them pulled on Chili’s head and she stopped. We stood there for a moment in the heat, both of us breathing heavily.

Bill ran over. “Why’d you stop? You were doing so well.”

“I don’t want to canter today.”

“But you were doing so well with it just a couple of weeks ago. What’s happened?”

“I’m just . . . not ready for all this.”

Bill patted Chili’s nose again. “You are ready. You seem to have lost your confidence. You just need to find it again.”

Well, if that was all I needed then I was really in trouble.

“Let’s practice turning some more,” Bill said.

So I turned Chili—left, right, left, right—until the lesson ended.

“You’re making good progress,” Bill said as he pulled the saddle off Chili. Every time he did that, I thought how wonderful it must have felt for her to get that hot, sweaty thing off—like the same way I felt when my helmet came off. “I don’t want you to stress out about it.”

I stared at the floor of the stall. But I was stressed out about it. I was stressed out about everything. And Bill was just being nice—I wasn’t making good progress at all. I was going backward.

I sat down on a small stool in the stall and Bill helped me remove one of my boots. Then he handed me a brush. I took it with my foot. “I think you should spend some quality time in here with her.” He picked up the saddle. “I’m going to go put this away and clean up the tack room. You two need some good bonding time.”

I sat on the stool and stared at Chili, only the two of us now in the stall. “Did you hear that?” I said. “Bill wants us to bond.” I got up and stood in front of her. I stared into her deep brown eyes. She nosed my face and licked at my red hair. Then she put her head down to my bare foot.

I smiled. “You really are a smart girl,” I said as I rubbed at her head with my toes. Then I picked up the brush with my foot and did my best to brush her sides while sitting on the stool. I could only go so high, but I knew Bill would do a better job later.

Bill came back into the stall and placed a bucket with some carrots in it next to me. “She’ll love these,” he said. “They’re nice and cold—right out of the fridge.”

I fed Chili one carrot at a time with my foot while Bill finished brushing her down, then I made my way to see Trilby. I still had to talk to her about homecoming.

I kicked a little at the door of Sonoran Smoothies. She glanced up and gave me a funny look. I kicked again. Why don’t you come in? she mouthed.

I shook my head. I didn’t want to smell the smoothies in there. I once read that our smell memory is our strongest memory. If I set foot in Sonoran Smoothies and smelled the smoothies, it would be like reliving my Great Humiliation, not that I wasn’t already reliving it fifty times a day. But I guess that was still better than fifty-one times a day.

Trilby came outside. “What are you doing out here, Aven?”

“I can’t come in,” I said. “But I wanted to talk to you about something.”

“What?”

“You know how you said that one thing you didn’t like about being homeschooled was that you wouldn’t get to go to any school dances?”

“Yeah?”

“Well, Zion and I want to go to the homecoming dance for our school, you know, as friends. I mean, Zion’s not my boyfriend or anything like that, and I know they’re going to play that manufactured music you don’t like, but we were hoping you’d come with us. Come with him. Come with us.”

I wasn’t sure what to expect from Trilby, but I was happy when her face lit up. “Really?” She jumped up and threw her arms around me. “That would be so much fun.”

I was filled with both a mixture of happiness for Zion that Trilby would be going to homecoming with us and annoyance for myself that I now had to go as well. But I liked to think that my happiness for Zion outweighed my annoyance for myself. Or at least that it was evenly split—fifty-fifty. At worst—forty-sixty.

I peeked in on Henry and saw he was busy taking care of customers. He seemed like he was having a good day, so I made my way home to take a cool shower. Then I sat down at our kitchen table with my parents. No matter how busy we all were, how hectic things were at the park, we always tried to sit down every night for dinner together.

“So I’ve decided to go to the homecoming dance,” I told them.

Mom dropped her chicken leg onto the table and threw her hands over her mouth.

“Oh my gosh,” I pleaded. “Please don’t overreact. It’s just a dance.”

“My baby’s first dance,” she said, her voice muffled through her hands. “We’ll have to get you a new dress.”

“Yeah,” Dad agreed. He waggled his eyebrows at me. “I hear pink ribbons and ruffles are all the rage in high school these days.”

“Definitely not,” I told Dad. “And they also don’t say stuff like all the rage, either.”

Dad grinned. “Then I hear they’re hip.”

Mom casually picked at her chicken leg. “So is a boy going with you?”

“Just Zion. And Trilby is going with us, too.”

“Trilby from the smoothie shop?” Dad asked.

I nodded. “Yeah, she’s cool.” I glared at Mom. “Probably because she’s homeschooled.”

“Now if you were homeschooled you wouldn’t be going to homecoming, would you?”

“Trilby’s homeschooled, and she’s going to homecoming.”

Mom brushed my comment away with a wave of her hand.

“Trilby listens to punk rock, you know,” I said. “Her dad was even in a punk band.”

“Robert?” Dad said. “But he seems so normal.”

“I didn’t realize you had to be abnormal to be in a punk band.”

Dad scrunched up his nose. “No, I just meant he seems so, you know . . . normal.”

Mom rolled her eyes. “Really, Ben, you are so uncool.”

“I am not uncool,” Dad said. “I just thought punk band people had a lot of tattoos and piercings and wore ripped clothing. Maybe a Mohawk. Robert’s hair is completely normal.” He raised his eyebrows. “And I’ve seen him wear a polo shirt before.”

“Punk is about what you are on the inside, not what you look like on the outside,” I said.

“Oh, I like that,” Mom said. “I think I should check out some punk music.”

“I’ll play some for you. I’ve found a bunch of good bands.”

“Cool.” Mom clasped her hands together excitedly in front of her face. “We’ll bond over punk music.”

Dad gave Mom an incredulous look. “I can’t see you enjoying punk rock, Laura.”

Mom dropped her hands on the table and glared at him. “You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He snorted. “You have Taylor Swift on your Favorites playlist.”

“What’s wrong with Taylor Swift?” Mom cried.

“Nothing. Just pretty sure she’s not very punk rock,” Dad said.

I decided to change the subject before things got seriously heated, and Dad mentioned that Mom also had Justin Bieber on there. “You know, I think Josephine might know something about my father she’s not telling me.”

“Your bio father?” Mom asked.

I picked up my chicken wing with my toes and took a bite. “Yeah, she’s awfully evasive about it when I ask her.”

Dad stared at me. “Have you been asking her about him a lot?”

I shrugged. “A little, I guess.”

“What is it you want to know, honey?” Mom asked.

“Anything,” I said. “I don’t know anything at all about him.”

“And Josephine can’t tell you anything?” Dad asked, looking down at his plate, pushing his chicken thigh around.

“She says she can’t, but I’m not sure she’s being completely truthful. She gets all shifty-eyed when I ask her about him.”

“Shifty-eyed, huh?” said Mom.

I dropped my chicken wing from my toes onto my plate and sat up straight. “Yeah, like this.” I made my eyes dart back and forth around the room.

“Well, I don’t know why she’d lie to you,” Mom said. “If she says she doesn’t know anything, then I’m sure she doesn’t.”

“Maybe she’s trying to protect me,” I said.

“From what?” Dad asked.

“Maybe my father is someone awful.”

“Not a chance,” Mom said. “No one awful made my baby.”

“Maybe he’s something truly terrible. Like an animal euthanizer or something.”

“I don’t think that’s an actual job,” Dad said.

I narrowed my eyes at them. “Maybe he’s a politician.”

Mom grimaced. “That would be quite shocking, but I doubt he’s a politician. Maybe he’s something cool.” She smiled. “Maybe he’s in a punk band.”

“Now that would be cool,” I said.

“Why all this sudden interest in your father?” Mom asked.

“Just curious.”

“Well, you know what they say about curiosity,” Mom said.

“It killed the cat.”

“Nope,” Mom said. “It’s the sign of a powerful brain.”

I smiled. “Who says that?”

“Science.”