Pain woke me hours later. My head pounded. My face hurt. My ribs ached. My legs throbbed. I lay in bed, not moving. The sheets and blankets felt as heavy as slabs of concrete. I managed to turn my head. On the nightstand, I saw a glass of water and a bottle of pills. Warren struck again—my hero. I propped up on an elbow, taking shallow breaths until the pain eased toward bearable. Then, I struggled to remove the cap from the bottle.
Sweat broke out on my face, under my arms, when I picked up the glass of water. I choked down the pill. After I returned the glass to the nightstand, it was time to rest. I wouldn’t move until the tablet took effect. I closed my eyes. Was it my imagination or did I hear voices?
Warren must have skipped school to take care of me. He had a strange schedule with Running Start, a college program for high school juniors and seniors. Some of his classes were at the high school, but the rest were at Everett Community College. He left Stewart Falls at 7:30 for the college where he took more advanced math, science, and computer courses. He returned after lunch for more classes at the academy. When he graduated next June, he’d have his associate degree along with his high school diploma.
He must be exhausted. Following the doctor’s directions, Warren had come in every two hours to wake me up and ask me if I knew my name, how old I was, and where I lived.
When I got rude, he asked questions about Xanadu. What breed was my horse? Purebred Arabian. How old was she? Eight on her last birthday. What had I given her for a present? I’d gone to the produce stand in Seattle with B.J. and bought ten pounds of carrots—long, skinny organic ones with the fresh greens still on them.
Had Xanadu’s birthday been a special occasion at Grandma’s riding stable? Of course, it was. She baked a carrot cake for all of the two-legged people to eat since Xanadu wasn’t about to share her carrots. Well, Grandma told me she baked it. I knew she bought it at the bakery in Stewart Falls, where Mom doesn’t shop because the food was too expensive. Mom won’t even get me a cake on my birthday anymore and as for a party, forget about it! We haven’t celebrated my birthday in years and I’m always happy when she remembers to buy me at least one Christmas present. I’m not her favorite daughter, Priscilla is.
Luckily, I have my grandma, but cooking isn’t one of her favorite things. She has Parthenon Pizza’s number on speed-dial. She was thrilled when she joined AARP and got the 20% discount at her favorite restaurants. She can outride me, beat me at barrel racing, and train horses better than I can. She mucks forty stalls faster than Mom cleans our house.
Thinking about Xanadu and how we took some really high ribbons at the county fair and almost qualified for the state fair this year, I drifted off to sleep. The next time I woke, I was ready to get up. Everything had stopped hurting.
When I looked in the mirror in the bathroom, the sight of the big bruises surprised me. The right side of my face was black, blue and purple like a Halloween mask. No wonder it ached when the pills wore off.
The bruises made my blue eyes look even darker than usual. An artist, B.J., called them cobalt blue, but I’d always thought they were just weird until she came to live in Stewart Falls. Silver, green, purple and navy all rolled into one strange sort of blue. The only people I’d seen with eyes the same color were my half-brother and half-sisters, none of whom lived with me. It made living in Stewart Falls downright strange at times. I never knew when I’d run into another sibling with our father’s eyes.
Tears stung my eyes when I tried to brush my hair. It was a waist-length black mess still full of dirt and grit from the staircase. Rinsing my face with cold water helped and I decided to find an ice-pack. I tightened the belt on my robe and started for the kitchen. Suddenly, I recognized the voices. It was the television. Only, it wasn’t my older brother in the family room, it was Grandma. She got out of the recliner and came over to me.
“What are you doing here?” I asked. “Who’s looking after the horses?”
“Fiona. She isn’t substituting at the academy today. She’s at the barn and she can handle the lessons and the stock.” Slender, with less gray in her hair than Mom, Grandma didn’t look sixty-eight. Mom told me once I looked like Grandma when she was my age. As usual, she wore blue jeans and a T-shirt advertising her stable, Horse Heaven. Since she wasn’t working, she’d opted for tennis shoes, rather than her low-heeled, lace-up riding boots. “Would it hurt if I hugged you, honey?”
“It’d hurt more if you didn’t.” A tear slipped down my cheek. “Did Warren call you?”
“Yes.” Grandma put her arms around me. “He had a big algebra test today. He wanted to know if I could leave the farm and look after you until he could get back here. No contest, believe me.”
I pressed my cheek against her shoulder. It felt so good to have her hold me. Mom might not come in at night like Warren did. She wouldn’t take time off work to look after me, but Grandma did. Was it strange that I still wanted Mom to hug and kiss me? She had pushed me away so hard and so often that I never talked to her about anything important. How could I?
“On the way here, I stopped at McDonald’s and got you breakfast.” Grandma finally let go of me. “I’ll zap it in the microwave for you.” She headed for the kitchen and I followed her. She opened the freezer, took out a blue gel-pack, wrapped it in a dishtowel, and passed it to me. “Put that on your face.”
In a few minutes, I was eating a biscuit sandwich. Grandma poured me a glass of orange juice. She put it on the breakfast bar in front of me, and then got a cup of coffee. “What are your plans for today?”
“I want to take a shower and wash my hair.”
“Fine.” Grandma bunched up the sandwich wrapper and sack from my breakfast and threw them in the garbage can under the sink. “I’ll sit in the bathroom while you’re in the shower.”
“What? No way, Grandma. That’s gross.”
“What would be gross is if you bashed out your brains on the floor when you faint in the shower.” Grandma sounded very matter-of-fact. “Why didn’t Conway send you to the hospital? I’d have Jed or Catherine on stand-by in the barn if you were one of my horses.”
“Are you trying to give Bruce heartburn?” I finished the last of the orange juice. “He’s already pissed about my doctor’s bills and pitches fits about what I’m costing them.”
“Really?” Grandma tried to look innocent and failed miserably, her hazel eyes amused. “I didn’t think he cared that much about Adam’s finances.”
I’d never thought of that. Of course, my dad paid for Warren and me to visit the doctor, dentist, and chiropractor. Seeing the mischief in Grandma’s eyes, I smiled. I was afraid to laugh, because I knew it would hurt too much. Now, I had an answer for the next time Bruce hassled me about falling down, and I wouldn’t be afraid to use it.
Adding milk to her coffee, Grandma put the container back in the refrigerator. She paused by the stove and set the oven timer for fifteen minutes. “Okay, honey. It’s download time. Tell me everything you’ve been up to this week, including what happened at school yesterday.”
“Warren already did,” I said. “I slipped and fell after cheer practice.”
“You expect me to believe that B.S., Sarah? Start talking.”
I managed to distract Grandma with stories of school and my first serious boyfriend. Download time was what she called her-listening-and-me-talking-uninterrupted for fifteen minutes. I didn’t talk about the accident, although it remained on my mind. It was my fault, but I didn’t know what to do about it.
When Grandma started asking questions about cheer practice that I definitely didn’t want to answer, I changed the subject to her dog’s new litter of collie-heeler mix puppies that were almost a month old. She could talk about their antics forever, and I loved listening.
While Grandma watched Chuck Norris save Texas on his cop show, I curled up on the couch and let the events of the day before slide through my mind. After practice, Rita, Kaitlyn, and I stood on the stairs behind a cluster of football jocks. Jason was ticked because Rob kept telling everyone about the great job we did on our scene in The Taming of the Shrew during English. We were the first group to get A’s and the class had given us a standing ovation. Another first!
Our performance thrilled the teacher who wanted to know which of us came up with our strategy to update the speeches in the play. Both Rob and Kaitlyn told him it was me. Then Mr. Barrett told me I should go out for drama because I obviously had a talent for understanding what Shakespeare meant when he wrote the part, and I’d showed everyone who the real shrew was.
That led into a lecture about never judging by appearances and somehow the teacher tied it back into the play. Rob had raved about me all day, in the rest of our classes, at lunch, and at his football practice. I’d even heard him telling the headmaster about it while I waited for Mom in the office.
Grandma woke me when her show ended. After that, I took a shower and washed my hair. She helped me blow dry it. Then Grandma put fresh sheets on my bed and sat in the chair next to it. She read me a story from the Album of Horses like she used to when I was Priscilla’s age. I snuggled up with Cappy, the big stuffed tiger my dad gave me when I was an itty-bitty three-year-old before he left on one of his Army tours and we listened to the history of the Arabian horse until I fell asleep.
* * *
The slam of the closet door brought me out of a sound sleep that afternoon. My eyes slitted against the light, I saw Priscilla changing her clothes over by her canopy bed. She didn’t pick up her shirt or pants, just tossed them on the floor for the maid to throw in the laundry hamper—oops, that was me. Well, I wasn’t cleaning up after her today.
I buried my face in one pillow and pulled the other over my ears. Blessed silence.
She stomped out of the room and a couple minutes later Warren paused at the door. “Timber stopped at Mulligan’s Diner, the café in Pine Ridge and brought you some soup when he came for tutoring. Do you want it now?”
“Maybe later,” I said, my voice muffled. “I just want to rest.”
“Okay. I’ll tell Priscilla to leave you alone.”
“Thanks.”
I faded into sleep.
A loud boom shattered my dreams. A scream. Running footsteps.
“It wasn’t me.” Priscilla yelled from the living room. “It’s not my fault.”
I bolted upright in bed. Tried to make sense of what I’d heard. I shook my head. Pain exploded behind my eyes. I smelled smoke.
I stared across the room. Saw my computer monitor sparking on the floor. Glass from the screen scattered on the floor. The plastic frame was in more pieces.
“What the hell?” Warren raced in the door. He spun around, disappeared for an instant, then returned with the fire extinguisher. “How did this happen?”
“I don’t know.” I watched him spray the computer. “Is it dead?”
“A total goner.” He unplugged the power cord from the wall.
Priscilla peeked in the door, trying to look innocent. “What happened?”
“You tell me.” Warren coiled up the cords. “I told you to leave Sarah alone. She’s sick and you were in here bothering her.”
“No, I wasn’t. I just wanted my basketball. It wasn’t me. I didn’t do nothing.” She hustled out of the room.
“I guess asking her to help clean up the mess is hopeless.” I pushed my blankets aside. My computer wasn’t new or fancy. The old clunker of a monitor had hit the tower and the hard-drive lay on its side, under one speaker. “She’s long gone. I’ll get the broom and dustpan.”
“No, you won’t.” Warren pulled my robe and slippers out of the closet. “You’ll go sleep in Mom’s office. I’ll make the little brat help me and if you’re not here, you won’t get upset when you hear her complaining and carrying on. She only does it because she knows you’ll do all the work and she can escape.”
“But she’ll pitch a fit at Mom and Bruce. Priss always does when you make her do chores.” Tears burned my eyes. I hated it when they picked on Warren. He was so good, the only person who cared about me. “You’ll hear about it forever.”
“Like I care.” Warren draped the robe around my shoulders. “Wait till Aunt Cathy calls with the price of a laptop for you to use at home. It’s a good thing that your school one is downstairs in my room, and Priscilla couldn’t get near it.” He dropped to one knee and put on my slippers. “You’ll hear some serious whining and sniveling from Bruce when he sees the bill for a new computer.”
I managed a nod while I gazed at the smoking ruins again. Wait a second!
“Oh my Gawd, Warren! My cheer pictures from camp are gone! I just downloaded all of them from the digital camera.”
“Did you send them to anyone on the squad?” He handed me Cappy because he knew I wouldn’t leave my tiger where Priscilla could get her hands on him. “They could email you copies.”
“My emails are toast, too.” Tears trickled down my face. “And I saved all the ones from Jason. They were so sweet.”
“Stop before I hurl.” Warren guided me out the door. “I’ll do what I can to resurrect the hard drive, Sarah, but true love makes me puke. I get enough of the world being well lost for love from Mom.”
I sniffled and tried to swallow the lump in my throat. “All the photos Aunt Cathy took of me and Xanadu at the fair are gone, too. It’s the first time we were invited back for Championship Day. I was working on a video to send the Colonel, and that’s history unless you save my hard drive.”
I looked at the pieces of my computer scattered on the floor. Okay, so my big brother always made problems in my life go away, but how could he save the day this time? He couldn’t.
Warren hugged me but didn’t say a word.
I glanced to the left and saw Priscilla peeking around the corner of the kitchen door. She stuck her tongue out at me and then disappeared. A tear trickled down my cheek and I tasted salt when it landed on my lips. “I hate this house, and I totally hate these people.”
“I know how you feel, but accidents happen. You have to move on.”
“How can I? I just realized all my schoolwork is on the computer, and that little witch wrecked my life again.” Rage bubbled inside me and came to a full boil. “I’m so dead, Warren. Our presentation went great yesterday, but I have to finish my Shakespeare reflection and turn it into Barrett. I was working on the intro in here because I had to babysit Princess Priss.”
“You have time to redo it,” Warren said. “You aren’t cleared to return to school yet.”
“It’s gone! I totally can’t remember it. My brain’s fried and my head hurts. It’s those drugs. I can’t think and now I have to start that paper again. How am I going to find all those sources? Why did Barrett insist on so much research before we even did our presentation?”
“It’ll be okay, Sarah. I’ll make it okay.”
I moaned. “My life is over. And my sophomore project—oh my Gawd! I didn’t back it up. Why do I ever try to do schoolwork at home? Just kill me now.”
“Come on, Drama Diva.” Warren opened the door to Mom’s study that doubled as a guest-room when anyone was dumb enough to visit. “Emote yourself in here and get some sleep. I’ll go through your computer and see what I can pull off the hard-drive. Next time I want you to back-up everything and stick to doing academy stuff on your school laptop.”
I slid out of my robe and kicked off the slippers. “Next time? Next time!”
Warren pulled the cushions off the couch and yarded out the double bed inside. “Yes, Sarah, next time. Tomorrow’s always another day.”
I got under the covers, hugging Cappy who always kept bad dreams away. “There won’t be a next time. I’ll never get out of 10th grade alive and I’ll be kicked off the squad and Jason will dump me and my life just sucks!”
“At least you have a life,” Warren headed for the door. “I’ll get your pillows. You might have broken your neck yesterday or busted your head like a watermelon on those stairs. I could be planning your funeral instead of nursing you and listening to you snivel.”
“Now, who’s emoting?” I demanded and closed my eyes. “Goodnight, Superman.”