“Because I have to put my hair into a ponytail anytime I need to focus. But I constantly lose them, so I keep a bunch in my backpack.”
I dumped a handful of hair ties into her bag. “Huh. I’ve only ever seen you with your hair up at school. It’s down when you barrel race.”
“Because I don’t really focus then. I don’t know…it’s different for some reason. Like…I justdo it.” She shrugged, zipping the backpack shut and tossing it over one shoulder as she stood.
“I think that’s called being a natural, Blair Bear.”
“Oh, shut it.” She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, kicking rocks at me—clearly thinking I was teasing. “Come on, it’s time for our greateye-scapade.”
“Great,Ican’t wait,” I said, drawing out theIwhile winking at her.
We walked the rest of the way to the house plotting our attack. Dad, Grandpa, and Austin would be out on the ranch working. Jackson was probably holed up in his bedroom already. But Mom could be anywhere, and she was always catching us in the middle of pranks, which meant being sent to muck out stalls.
As luck would have it, she was in the garden when we strolled up the porch steps. And the moment the screen door slammed shut behind us, Blair was kicking her sandals off and sprinting toward the kitchen. I followed down the hall, tossing my backpack on the counter and watching her crafty mind work. An impish smile tugging at the corners of her lips as she pulled her hair into a high pony.
“I’m eyeballing everything in the fridge,” she announced, unzipping the bag of stick-on googly eyes.
“Okay, um…” I racked my brain for ideas.
She interrupted my thoughts by slapping a handful of eyes into my open palm. “Don’t think. Just do.”
We stuck googly eyes to just about every possible item in the kitchen before carrying out our mission through the rest of the house, until the bag of two hundred was empty, and we fell to my bedroom floor. The wood was warm underneath us, thanks to the afternoon sun streaming in through the open window, and Blair tapped her bare foot on the hardwood to the sounds of Dolly Parton coming from the garden.
“Denver! Blair!” My dad’s voice boomed up the stairwell.
Blair looked at me with a grimace, mouthingoh, crap.
“Do we run?” I asked quietly.
“Nah, we take it like men.” She pretended to wipe sweat from her brow as she sat up, her shoulder brushing mine. Then with a salute, she said, “If we die, it was nice knowing ya.”
I snorted and reluctantly got to my feet, pulling her up with me. The two of us marched down the stairs, preparingfor the wrath of my dad. Bennett Wells was the polar opposite of my mom—gruff and quiet, as opposed to her outgoing personality. But he also loved Blair like a daughter, and that regularly saved my ass from a whupping. Even when he was mad because I’d failed a test or forgotten to do one of my chores, she’d jump in and defuse the situation.
“What the hell is this?” Dad stood next to the open fridge, pointing to a jar of pickles with googly eyes. Both the eyes and the contents of the jar were wiggling slightly—likely from the force of his opening the door—and I clamped my mouth shut, doing my best to hide my reaction.
Blair, however, couldn’t stop a giggle from escaping, even as she held a closed fist to her lips. Itwasfunny. Every jar staring back at us. Even the milk jug had eyes…and a smile Blair must’ve drawn with a marker when I wasn’t looking.
“I got a bunch of googly eyes from my mom,” Blair said through her laughter.
“We thought it would be funny.” I bit my bottom lip to stop from laughing. It wasn’t only the prank that was funny—it was my dad’s scowl as he presented a head of lettuce with lopsided eyes stuck to it, and maybe even more, it was the gasping bursts of laughter coming from behind Blair’s hand.
“What’s not funny is the way I almost crapped my pants when I opened the fridge.”
Another muffled laugh from Blair.
“We’ll take the eyes off the stuff in the fridge.” She pulled herself together enough to smile sweetly at him.
His dark eyes flitted between us before he gave a single nod. Grabbing his can of Pepsi from the counter, Dad brushed past us and out the back door.
“You like how I specified the fridge?” she whispered. “We better peel those off and get out of here before he sees what I did in the bathroom.”
—
Since school let out for summer vacation the week prior, Blair had been running barrels for hours every morning. She caught a ride to the ranch with one of our day workers, which meant arriving at five o’clock in the morning. And she practiced from daybreak until the mid-morning sun was too hot.
Rays beat down on the open arena, and I wiped a bead of sweat from my forehead as I watched her. On the back of her chestnut gelding—a gift from my parents at the end of the previous year’s rodeo season—Blair held tight around the last barrel, hair whipping out from under her cowboy hat as she gave a kick. Her own sounds of encouragement for her horse were drowned out by my mom clapping and shouting, “Bring him on home, girl!”
Mom treated every practice like it was the finals at the Calgary Stampede, hollering and clapping her hands together, screaming as if Blair was running for fifty grand. She didn’t even bother timing most runs because she insisted the time didn’t matter as much as the ride itself. I leaned against the fence next to her, jokingly using my hands as earmuffs, and watched Blair storm toward us with a Cheshire cat grin.
