The Second Life of Abigail Walker (17 page)

“Where are you going?” Kristen yelled after her from the front door as Abby trundled down the driveway. All the medium girls leaked out of the house and onto the sidewalk. “You can't go home! We'll send that video to your dad!”

Abby stopped. She put her bags down on the driveway and turned around. “And then you'll have to explain it to
your
mom—and my mom, for that matter, won't you? What you were doing making a video of me like that. You'd be doing me a favor. My mom thinks you're my friend.”

“Well, your dad's going to think you're a fat pig!” Kristen shrieked.

“I'll just have to live with that,” Abby told her. She picked her bags back up and headed toward the street.

It was two weeks until Halloween. A few weeks after that it would be winter, and the birds would fly south. Would the fox go south too? Abby didn't think that animals other than birds migrated, but the fox was so small and delicate, it seemed too fragile for winter. Where would it find food?

Abby stopped. She stood in front of the yard
across the street from her house and stared. There was a sign. How had she not noticed the sign? She'd been too upset, she supposed, about having to go to the sleepover. That would be the only way to explain how she'd missed the
FOR SALE
sign where the mailbox once stood.

For sale. If she had money, she'd buy the lot, and she'd live there. She imagined living in her chair by the oak tree, the red cooler by her side filled with grapes. She could spread a tarp over the tree branches when it rained and drag out the old beach umbrella from the garage on superhot days, for extra shade. But what would she do about going to the bathroom? Abby snorted. What a life. She crossed the street to go home. She thought when she got inside she might call Marlys and tell her what happened. Would Marlys laugh when Abby told her about how she ate that candy like a starving person?

No, Abby knew that she wouldn't. Marlys wasn't against anyone, especially not Abby.

Abby crossed the street to her house and ran up the stairs to the front porch. She had the helium feeling again, the dance-around-in-circles
feeling. The world was a new and undiscovered place, filled with horses and foxes and pronghorn deer. And friends. Friends along for the expedition.

november. abby
sat in her chair behind the oak, knowing that without the weeds, she wasn't so hidden anymore. She looked around her. She couldn't believe the weeds were gone. And the flowers. Even the robins had flown away. When they came back next spring, would there be a new house standing here?

She pulled her sweater tighter. It was getting cold.

A car door slammed twenty feet away, and Anoop's voice called out, “Abby, are you there?”
She turned to see him standing at the edge of the lot, peering around. When he saw her, his face brightened. “There you are! You are hidden behind the trees!”

“Well, not so hidden that you didn't see me,” Abby said, getting up from her chair. “Did you wear sneakers, like I told you?”

Anoop walked toward her. He was dressed in jeans and a heavy sweater, a ski cap pulled down over his ears. “My athletic shoes are only for PE. But I have hiking boots that I got for summer camp last summer.” He stuck out his leg and pointed to his foot. “See?”

“Your grandmother let you go to summer camp?”

“We told her it was computer camp,” Anoop said with a shrug. “We did not mention the rock-climbing aspect.”

Abby folded her chair and leaned it against the tree. “Did you bring the poem?”

Anoop held out a manila envelope. “Yes. It is typed. I now owe my sister two weeks of dish washing.”

“Two weeks? Boy!” Abby wondered if that was a high price for twenty pages' worth of poetry? Twenty pages was a lot, but poems were skinny. “I could come over and help, at least on weekends.”

Anoop shook his head. “For our dishwasher, you don't even have to rinse the dishes. It is all very easy.”

They walked to the fence at the back of the lot. “Are they still getting the horse today?” Anoop asked as they climbed over. “I am eager to see the new horse. My great-grandfather was from Marwar, and he rode a great Marwari stallion. This is according to my grandmother. She is telling me everything about our family's history, so that I won't forget.”

“Did you tell her about seeing the horses today?”

“You are kidding,” Anoop said. “Or else you are quite mad.”

Wallace was waiting for them on the sidewalk. “That dog looks as if he is expecting us,” Anoop observed.

“He is,” Abby said.

They ambled down the path to the creek. Anders was waiting for them, on their side of the water. The week before, Abby had gone to the creek and there he'd been, sitting on a rock, like it wasn't a big deal that he crossed on his own. “We decided it was time to expand the safe perimeters,” Anders had explained. “Matt said it was okay for me to come across if I wanted to.”

That was the day Matt had left for the VA hospital. “A room finally opened up,” Mrs. Benton had told Abby when she and Anders reached the farmhouse. Her eyes were red, but there was something softer about her, Abby thought, like maybe now she didn't have to be so strong all the time.

“How long will he be gone?” Abby had asked. She was glad Matt was going to get the help he needed, but she wanted him to be there to watch her ride Ruckus, too. To help her get better at it.

“His doctor at the VA says it'll probably be at least two months. It's a good hospital. It's good for Matt to be around other soldiers who've been through the same thing.”

“He's going to call us every night,” Anders reported. “He wants to stay up to speed on how the horses are doing. He wants us to all be on the same page.”

Now Abby
looked at Anders and said, “Your feet are soaked.”

“I jumped,” Anders explained. “But I guess I didn't jump far enough.”

“Will it be your horse?” Anoop asked Anders as the three of them ran after Wallace up the hill toward the farm. “The new one, I mean.”

“No, I get Ruckus,” Anders said. “The new horse is Matt's, for when he gets back. Grandma sold the Virginia Highlander, the one that was always biting, so that we could afford it.”

Abby slowed halfway up the hill, holding her side. Anders kept running, but Anoop slowed with her, trotting beside her.

“It is quite a serious hill,” he said, panting a little bit.

“It's not so bad,” Abby panted back. “You get used to it. After a while you hardly notice.”

And then she took off and ran as fast as she
could, Anoop laughing behind her, trying to catch up.

“Hey, there!” Mrs. Benton waved at them from across the field as they came over the hill. “Come see!” she called from the paddock.

The horse had a mottled gray-and-white coat and stood a good hand taller than Ruckus. “Meet Shannon,” Mrs. Benton said. “She's a beauty, don't you think? An Appaloosa.”

Abby slowly approached the horse and reached out her hand, palm up, flat. “Hello, Shannon,” she said, feeling a little shaky next to such a big animal. “Nice horse.”

Shannon put her nose in Abby's hand. It was velvet soft. She sniffed, and Abby laughed.

“Matt wants you to ride her until he gets home,” Mrs. Benton told her. “Exercise her every afternoon if you can.”

“I don't know,” Abby said, her heart fluttering. “I haven't had very much practice at it yet.”

“He says you know what you're doing. I'll give you some lessons, show you how to put on a saddle.” Mrs. Benton grinned. “You can pay me back by helping Anders muck the stalls.”

Abby relaxed. “I can help muck,” she said, confident about that at least. “I like how the barn smells.”

“Like perfume,” Anders said.

“They should bottle it,” Abby agreed.

Anoop was still holding the envelope with the typed poem. “Shall we leave this with you, Mrs. Benton, or mail it to Anders's father at the hospital? He will want to see how his poem looks printed out. My sister used a special font. It looks quite regal.”

“I'll bring it when Anders and I go visit Matt tomorrow,” Mrs. Benton said, reaching out her hand to take the envelope from Anoop. “He says his doctor wants to read it.”

“Especially the part about the fox,” Anders added. “Dr. Reynolds is very interested in the part about the fox.”

Abby turned to Anoop. “You want to learn how to muck a stall? It's kind of fun.”

Anoop looked doubtful. “I suppose. But if I go home smelling like horse manure, my grandmother will be suspicious.”

They stayed at the barn for a couple of hours, cleaning out the stalls and talking about horses, which kinds were the fastest, which were the best for riding through the countryside. Anders dreamed of owning a quarter horse one day, or a golden palomino, and Abby thought she might like to ride a Belgian draft horse, the biggest horse of all. “When I get brave enough,” she added, crossing her fingers that one day she would have that kind of courage.

“You have heard of jodhpurs?” Anoop asked, leaning against his shovel, and when Abby and Anders nodded, he continued, “The great Marwari stallion is from the Jodhpur region of India. It is the most spirited horse in the world. Do you know that Marwari stallions performed at my grandmother's wedding? She says they wore diamond bridles.”

“Pretty fancy,” Anders said admiringly. “I'd like to see that.”

“It is rather amazing,” Anoop said, sounding rather amazed himself. “I have seen the pictures.”

Abby and Anoop left at twenty minutes before
five so that Anoop would be back at Abby's in time to be picked up by his mother.

“It is good to be around horses,” Anoop declared after they'd jumped over the creek on the way back. “Maybe I should bring my grandmother sometime. The horses might make her remember when she was young, and life was not so frightening.”

Abby stayed in the lot after Anoop's mother picked him up. She set out her chair again and sat down, even though she knew she needed to get home. It made her mother unhappy when Abby was late. Abby still didn't like making her mother unhappy, though now she knew that sometimes she had to.

That night. Coming back home with her sleeping bag and backpack. Her mother had paled when Abby told her what had happened, the candy, the cell phone, what the girls planned to do. Her mother hadn't said much, just that she was sorry. They could talk it all over with Abby's father in the morning.

Abby knew they wouldn't.

The next Monday, Abby sat at her usual spot
in the cafeteria with Anoop and Jafar. There had been only three girls at the medium girls' table: Kristen, Georgia, and Rachel. Abby scanned the room until she found the others—Bess and Myla were sitting at a table over by the back window with two girls Abby didn't know, and Casey was eating by herself, reading. Kristen, Georgia, and Rachel leaned over their lunches, talking in whispers as their eyes darted around the cafeteria. What were they plotting now? Abby wondered. How long before Rachel wandered off to find another friend, and it was just Kristen and Georgia at a table by themselves, looking around for someone else to make miserable?

When would they figure out they were the miserable ones?

A few
stars blinked in the darkening sky. Abby thought about riding Shannon. It scared her, imagining sitting up so high. It would take getting used to. Maybe she'd fall. Crack a collarbone. Break her neck.

Abby laughed. Maybe she'd get run over crossing the street to go home for dinner. The
possibilities of what might happen to her were endless. She stood and picked up the cooler. She left the chair. Someday someone would buy the wild lot, build a new house on it, make it the same as every other place. The weeds would fly off and land somewhere else. The fox would move on.

But until that day, this place was hers.

the fox
tried to tell Crow the story, but Crow refused to believe her.