The next day, I suffer through six hours of classes, toss my heavy bag in the backseat of my old hatchback and drive down to the barn to see Buddy.
Leah’s in the stables already, waiting for me. “Buddy’s looking good today,” she says. “He was cantering around in the field like a yearling when I got home.”
The air smells like alfalfa and molasses and saddle soap. I breathe in deeply and feel comforted. “Yeah?”
“Yeah. You want to take him out? Come with me for a gentle trail ride?” She gestures at the gray mare standing in cross ties in the aisle. “Buddy’s girlfriend’s hoping you’ll say yes.”
I laugh. “Yes. But since when did we decide our horses were straight?”
We tack up Buddy and Leah’s mare, Snow, and head out. The air is cold and clear, and the frozen crust of earth on the dirt trail crunches under the horses’ hooves. It feels good to be back in the saddle.
“School okay?” Leah asks as we cut off into the woods.
She’s at a private Christian school. I’m at the regular public one. “Fine,” I say. “Blah, blah. You know.”
I don’t feel like talking about school. Not that it’s terrible or anything. It’s just what I have to do. I’m in my second-last year, so grades matter. I’m pretty sure I want to be a vet, and veterinary medicine is even harder to get into than med school. So I work hard, manage mostly A’s and generally feel disconnected from it all.
My life—my friends, my heart, my every spare minute—has always been with the horses. From sixth grade, when I got Buddy, to last spring, when he started having trouble with his leg, I spent every evening and weekend at the hunter-jumper stables where Buddy used to board. Lessons three days a week. Setting up jumps, schooling over trot poles, hours riding without stirrups to strengthen my legs, cleaning tack and braiding manes and rubbing down horses and getting up in the middle of the night to travel to shows.
I thought the kids I rode with were my friends, but when I retired Buddy and moved him to the Gibsons’, those relationships kind of fizzled out. There are a few people I still talk to occasionally, but it’s not the same as when you’re together all the time.
Leah and I ride on through the bare trees, mostly in silence, enjoying the stillness of the woods. Then Snow whinnies, her head lifted, and I can see the white cloud of her breath. A second later, I hear hoofbeats—someone coming down the trail at a steady lope.
“It’s Jake,” Leah says as a huge black horse with a red-jacketed rider appears around a bend in the trail.
Jake pulls his gelding, Schooner, up to a walk. He nods to us without smiling.
“Hi,” I say, moving to the side of the trail and halting to let them pass.
“Buddy’s looking good.” He takes both reins in one hand and adjusts his helmet.
I can see the steam rising from Schooner’s sweat-soaked chest and neck. “He’s definitely better,” I say. “And he’s happy to be out here, for sure.”
As if in agreement, Buddy tosses his head up and down, and Leah laughs.
“I have to get back,” Jake says and nudges Schooner into a trot.
Leah looks at me and sighs.
I shrug. “Whatever. It’s fine.”
“It’s not fine,” she says. “He’s being a jerk.”
Jake and I got along really well all last summer, when I first moved Buddy to the Gibsons’. When Buddy was too lame to ride, Jake used to let me take out one of his horses, so we could ride together. And I helped with his riding lessons, setting up jumps for the kids he teaches. We weren’t super close or anything—he’s a lot older, for one thing—but we hung out. Not friends, but friendly.
Right up until I got together with his sister. He’s barely spoken to me since he found out.
“He’ll get over it, or he won’t,” I say. After almost three months, I’m not holding my breath. “Either way, there’s nothing we can do about it.”
Leah has that pink flush under her eyes that means she’s trying not to cry. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” I say. “You can’t control what he thinks. Anyway, you’re way more upset about it than I am.”
She twists her fingers in Snow’s long white mane. “He’s my brother. You know?”
“Yeah.” Though as an only child, I don’t know that I can really understand. “At least Hannah and Esther are cool with us,” I say.
Leah laughs. “Hannah and Esther think it’s the coolest thing ever.”
After we get the horses settled back in their stalls and give them a couple of flakes of hay, we head up to the house. Leah’s mom, Diane, has invited me to stay for dinner.
“Pizza,” she says as we walk in. “Is that okay, Franny? You eat dairy, right? And wheat?”
“I eat everything,” I say. “Seriously. I don’t think there is any kind of food that I don’t like—except okra.”
Leah makes a face. “Doesn’t count as a food.”
Diane laughs. “Luckily, I made my special okra-free pizza.” She opens the oven door and peeks in. “Maybe five more minutes. So, can I get your advice about something?”
She sits down at the kitchen table and gestures for us to join her. She looks a little nervous—biting her bottom lip like Leah does and twisting her fingers together. Diane is ten years younger than my mom and a hundred times less confident.
“Sure,” I say, curious. “What’s up?”
Diane puts her elbows on the table and props her chin on her hands. “It’s about a woman at my church. She approached me the other day because she’d heard about Leah. Being gay, I mean. Turns out her son has just come out to her. He’s older—almost thirty, I think—but she’s beside herself. She hasn’t told her husband, and she’s scared of how he’ll react.”
I roll my eyes. It’s rude, I know, but I can’t help it.
Diane catches my expression and smiles. “I know it must seem silly to your generation, but these people are older. In their sixties.”
“So’s my dad,” I say. “Doesn’t mean you have to be a bigot.”
“Did you tell her about PFLAG?” Leah asks. “Maybe if she could meet some other parents and hear their stories…”
“Of course,” Diane says. “I invited her to our next meeting.”
My phone rings in my pocket and I pull it out, glancing at the screen.
“Sorry,” I say to Diane. “It’s my mom. I should just…” I answer the phone. “Mom? What’s up?”
“Oh honey,” she says, and I can hear the strain in her voice. “I’m in the emergency room. It’s your father.”
And the air all whooshes out of my lungs like I just got kicked in the chest.