Afterparty(12)

She pulls open the unlocked double doors to the stable. “We are so in.”

I am staring down Kimmy’s horse, named Loogie by her brothers due to his giant, snotty horse nose, at least eliminating the pretentiousness factor. Loogie stares back in round-eyed confusion.

“You said you wanted a horse that’s a big puppy,” Siobhan says. “Do you need a leg up or what? Shit. I hope I remember how to tack them up.”

But she does it, perfectly.

Also, it turns out, you don’t forget how to ride a horse, especially the part about how you’ll fall off if you aren’t gripping with your thighs. Which I am, hard. But heading onto the trail that leads away from school, through the dry creek bed, through rustling leaves and confused birds that chirp in the dark, I get what the horsey girls have been going on (and on and on) about.

“Best pact ever,” Siobhan says, even though Chelsea’s horse, Sir Galahad, looks like he bites and keeps wiggling his horse butt as if he wishes she’d fall off. “Cool, huh?”

“Beyond.” I want to whip off the black breaking-and-entering ski cap, shake loose my hair, and canter. “Doesn’t it make you kind of want one?”

“Hello. It’s me. If I wanted one, I’d have one.”

It’s true. I can see her going, Hey Marisol, let’s fly down to Kentucky on Sunday and get me a horse. And Marisol, the housekeeper who is always there when Siobhan’s parents are away doing whatever they do, booking the flight.

“You’re just down on horses because Galahad is nasty and Loogs is Mr. Cutie.”

“Don’t go all horse whisperer on me,” she says. “They’re just buff cows you sit on. All I want is one little video of Galahad going over a fence with me on his back. He only performs for you, Chelsea? We’ll see about that.”

“Siobhan, no! Security will be down here in ten seconds if you turn on the lights in the paddock.”

“Boo! Hiss! I’m trying to cheat with Galahad and you’re spoiling our special moment.” Siobhan waves her cell phone at me, but I don’t take my hand off the reins.

She chucks it at me from a foot away. We hear it hit the ground.

“Shit!” Siobhan says.

We hear Sir Galahad crushing what turns out to be the plastic case. Siobhan dismounts and gets her battered phone, scooping up shards of the gold plastic case from the walkway just outside the stable.

She says, “Don’t freak! It’s not like it’s purple and my name’s bedazzled on it or anything.”

“I’d be just as happy not to get my name bedazzled onto a police report!”

Or whatever kind of document wrecks your permanent record when you leave evidence of horse rustling strewn all over Latimer.

“Kill the mood, why don’t you?” Siobhan snaps as I slide off Loogie’s back onto another plastic fragment that crunches under the heel of my boot.

? ? ?

“So,” Dylan says when he’s standing by my locker, waiting to collect my notes. “Get much work done last night?”

I say something that sounds a lot like “gark.”

He says, “I heard somebody went riding.”

“Really?” I deserve the Oscar for best performance by a girl pretending not to jump out of her skin. Not just because he knows but because what if the idea of criminally insane girls is a turnoff for him, not unlike all other boys in their right minds?

“Kimmy is pissed,” Dylan says. “McKay bawled out her and Chelsea for not grooming their trusty steeds after they rode them, and Siobhan’s trash-talking Galahad. So I’m thinking, Hmmm. I didn’t know you rode.”

I haul Siobhan to the bleachers at the end of the field. She is abnormally serene.

I say, “Excuse me, was this a pact to get expelled? Because I missed that part.”

“Stay calm. Surrender sharp objects.”

“Sib, this could mess up our lives!”

“I’m messing up your life? Because your life is sooooo perfect without me? Your life sucks without me.”

“Not what I said.”

“Calm down,” she says. “Chelsea thinks it was some guy on the soccer team who likes her. Nobody knows.”

Except that when I’m standing there in the carpool line, Dylan comes up behind me and hands me a neatly folded napkin with a rubber band around it and a big piece of Siobhan’s gold plastic phone cover in it.

He says, “Next time, try not to leave a trail of bread crumbs.”

First pact, and I have fallen off the Good wagon.





CHAPTER EIGHT


YOU’D THINK IT WOULD BE a given that messing with Chelsea wouldn’t include letting her know we did it. But Chelsea thinks it’s proof that boys will go to any length to get her attention. She’s happy about it. Which is so not the reason we borrowed her horse.

“Don’t you want to see the look on her face?” Siobhan says. “If she knew.”

“I would love to see the look on her face. But not as much as I don’t want to get kicked out of Latimer and grounded for all eternity.”

“Boo-hoo,” she says. “I’m bored. Let’s go play at Century City.”

Usually, we go to Century City after playing dress-up in her mom’s closet. Which is the size of my house.