"Below Zero" - читать интересную книгу автора (Box C J)

2

Saddlestring, Wyoming

FIVE DAYS LATER, ON A SUN-FUSED BUT MELANCHOLY SUNDAY afternoon before the school year began again the next day, seventeen-year-old Sheridan Pickett and her twelve-year-old sister, Lucy, rode double bareback in a grassy pasture near the home they used to live in. Their summer-blond hair shone in the melting sun, and their bare sunburned legs dangled down the sides of their old paint horse, Toby, as he slowly followed an old but well-trammeled path around the inside of the sagging three-rail fence. The ankle-high grass buzzed with insects, and grasshoppers anticipated the oncoming hooves by shooting into the air like sparks. He was a slow horse because he chose to be; he’d never agreed with the concept that he should be ridden, even if his burden was light, and considered riding to be an interruption of his real pursuits, which consisted of eating and sleeping. As he walked, he held his head low and sad and his heavy sighs were epic. When he revealed his true nature by snatching a big mouthful of grass when Sheridan’s mind wandered, she pulled up on the reins and said, “Damn you, Toby!”

“He always does that,” Lucy said behind her sister. “All he cares about it eating. He hasn’t changed.”

“He’s always been a big lunkhead,” Sheridan said, keeping the reins tight so he would know she was watching him this time, “but I’ve always kind of liked him. I missed him.”

Lucy leaned forward so her cheek was against Sheridan’s back. Her head was turned toward the house they used to live in before they’d moved eight miles into the town of Saddlestring a year before.

Sheridan looked around. The place hadn’t changed much. The gravel road paralleled the fence. Farther, beyond the road, the landscape dipped into a willow-choked saddle where the Twelve Sleep River branched out into six fingers clogged with beaver ponds and brackish mosquito-heaven eddies and paused for a breath before its muscular rush through and past the town of Saddlestring. Beyond were the folds of the valley as it arched and suddenly climbed to form a precipitous mountain-face known as Wolf Mountain in the Twelve Sleep Range.

“I never thought I’d say I missed this place,” Lucy said.

“But you do,” Sheridan finished.

“No, not really,” Lucy giggled.

“You drive me crazy.”

“What can I say?” Lucy said. “I like people around. I like being able to ride my bike to school and not take that horrible bus.”

“You’re a townie.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Townie’s are… common. Everybody’s a townie. There’s nothing special about it.”

Lucy affected a snooty, Valley Girl inflection: “Yeah, I’m like, common. I should want to still live out here so I can curse at horses, like you. You’re the weird one, Sheridan. I keep telling you that but you don’t believe me.” She flicked a grasshopper off her wrist. “And I don’t constantly have bugs landing on me.”

“Stop talking, Lucy.”

Lucy sighed, mimicking Toby. “How long do you think Mom is going to be in there?”

“A long time, I hope,” Sheridan said.

Marybeth Pickett, Sheridan and Lucy’s mother, had brought them both out to their old house on the Bighorn Road. Their mom owned a business-consulting firm, and she was meeting with Mrs. Kiner, who was starting a bath and body products company using honey or wax or something. Phil Kiner was the game warden of the Saddlestring District, the district their dad used to manage. Because of that, the Kiners took over the state-owned home that was once occupied by the Picketts when the family moved to their Grandmother Missy’s ranch for a year, and then to town to a home of their own. Toby had been one of their horses growing up, and when Sheridan saw him standing lazily in the corral, she’d asked if she could ride him around until their mother was done. Lucy tagged along simply because she didn’t want to wait inside and listen to business talk.

“I’m getting hungry,” Lucy said.

“You’re always hungry,” Sheridan said. “You’re like Toby. You’re like his lazy spawn.”

“Now you shut up,” Lucy said.

“Lucy Pickett,” Sheridan said in an arena announcer’s cadence, “Lazy Hungry Spawn of Toby! I like the sound of that.”

In response, Lucy leaned forward and locked her hands together under Sheridan’s breasts and squeezed her sister’s ribs as hard as she could. “I’ll crush you,” Lucy said.

“You wish,” Sheridan laughed.

They rode in silence for a moment after Lucy gave up trying to crush Sheridan.

Said Lucy, “I miss Dad. I miss his pancakes on Sunday morning.”

Sheridan said, “Me, too.”

“What’s going to happen? Is he ever moving back? Are we moving where he is now?”

Sheridan glanced at the house where her mother was and shrugged, “Who knows? He says he’s in exile.”

“It sucks.”

“Yeah.”

“It sucks big-time.”

“Mmmm.”

“It sucks the big one.”

“Okay, Lucy, I got it.”

“Ooooh,” Lucy said, “I see your boyfriend. I knew he was going to come out and stare at you.”

“Stop it.”

Jason Kiner, like Sheridan, was set to be a junior at Saddlestring High School. He’d come home from football practice a half hour before in his ancient pickup. He was tall, dull-eyed, and wide-shouldered with shaved temples and a shock of black hair on top, something all the players had done to show their solidarity to… whatever. He had seen Sheridan and Lucy when he drove up in his old pickup but pretended he hadn’t. Playing it cool, Sheridan thought, a trait in boys her age she found particularly annoying. He’d parked near the detached garage, slung his gym bag over his shoulder, and gone into the house.

He emerged now wearing a Saddlestring Wranglers gray hoodie, clean jeans, and white Nikes. He’d spiked his hair. Jason ambled toward the fence in a self-conscious, half-comatose saunter. Waved at them, nonchalant, and leaned forward on the fence with his forearms on the top rail and a Nike on the bottom rail. Trying to make an entrance of sorts, Sheridan thought. They were riding the horse toward the corner of the corral where Jason was waiting. It would be a minute before they’d be upon him.

“There he is,” Lucy whispered.

“I see him. So what?”

“Jason Kiner looooves you.”

“Shut up. He does not.”

“I’ve looked at his MySpace page and his Facebook page,” she whispered. “He looooves you.”

“Stop it.”

“Look at him,” Lucy whispered, giggling. “There’s loooove in his eyes.”

With the arm Jason couldn’t see, Sheridan elbowed her sister in the ribs, and Lucy laughed, “You’ve gotta do better than that.”

When Toby sleepwalked to Jason, Sheridan said, “Hi there.”

“How are you guys doing?” Jason said. “I didn’t see you when I drove up.”

“You didn’t?” Lucy asked, mock serious.

Sheridan gritted her teeth and shot a look over her shoulder at her sister, who looked back with her best innocent and charming face.

“It’s been a long time since I rode,” Sheridan said. “We asked your mom.”

Jason shrugged. “Nobody ever rides him anymore, so you might as well. I’ve been thinking about saddling him up, but with football practice and all…”

And the conversation went completely and unexpectedly dead. Sheridan could hear the insects buzz in the grass. She could feel Lucy prodding her to say something.

Finally, Jason’s face lit up with purpose. “Hey-did that chick call you?”

“What chick?”

“She called here a few days ago for you. She still had this number from when you lived here, I guess. I gave her your cell phone number.”

Lucy purred into Sheridan’s ear, “He has your cell phone number?”

Sheridan ignored her. “Nobody called. Who was it?”

“I didn’t know her,” Jason said, “She said she used to live here and still had the number for the house.”

“What was her name?”

Jason screwed up his mouth and frowned. “She said it, but I can’t remember for sure. It was a few days ago. Oh-I remember now. She said something like, ‘April.’ ”

Sheridan dropped the reins in to the grass. “What?”

Jason shrugged. “She said something like, ‘I wonder if she remembers a girl named April.’ Anyway, I gave her your number and…”

Lucy said to Sheridan, “Did he say what I thought he said?”

Sheridan leaned forward and felt Lucy grip her hard to keep her balance. “Jason, this isn’t very funny.”

“Who’s trying to be funny?”

“If you are,” Sheridan said, “I’ll kill you.”

Jason stepped back and dropped his arms to his sides as if preparing to be rushed by the two girls. “What’s going on? What’s wrong with you two? You act like you see a ghost or something.”

Sheridan pointed toward the yard in front of the house but had trouble speaking. Jason turned to where she gestured.

The three Austrian pine trees their dad had planted so long ago in the front yard had all now grown until the tops were level with the gutter of the house. At the time they’d been planted, he’d joked that they were Sheridan’s Tree, April’s Tree, and Lucy’s Tree.

“April was our sister,” Sheridan said, pointing at the middle one. “She was killed six years ago.”

The door of the house opened, and their mother came out. Sheridan noted how Jason looked over his shoulder at her in a way that in other circumstances would have made her proud and angry at the same time. But now her mother looked stricken. There was no doubt in Sheridan’s mind that Jason’s mom had just mentioned the call they’d received.