“Thanks,” I try to be polite. “I’ll figure it out.”
She sucks in a small breath, like she’s gonna say something, but then just disappears into the closet. When she remerges, she’s holding a set of small silver tubes that reflect off the light that slices through the curtains.
“I saw these colors at the supply store and thought of what you’re workin’ on.” She moves forward, setting them on one of the built in ledges behind my easel. “Take it or leave it,” she shrugs with a small smile that scrapes. She doesn’t mean for it to. It just does.
Her too soft hand brushes my shoulder as she leaves, but not before she tells me to be careful. To only take the side streets to Clem’s. To not talk to strangers. To take the phone she’s got a GPS app downloaded onto.
I bolt out the door to Clementine’s as soon as her footsteps fade to nothing.
“Clemmie. I think I might be broken.”
Mathletes, or Mathgeeks, or…something—that’s why I’ve been lounging in the Rivera’s stables all alone for the past hour. But I couldn’t very well stay in that room, with those tubes gawking at me.
I turn my head, and all I can see is the shiny embroidery on her new riding boots. Pale yellow light floods the stable entrance, and she stands in front of it, all dark and imposing. Serious and totally sure of who she is with her hands on her hips, her raven hair falling around her in glossy waves.
“Why?” she asks, gathering Beulah’s saddle as she tries to look at me where I lay. On the ground. Possibly in animal feces. “There’s a perfectly good bench, Sloane.”
I sit up, shaking hay and feed out of hair before I blindly braid the length of it. “I think better lookin’ up.”
She hands me the set of reigns I usually take as I roll my neck, waking my body up from the almost slumber I fell into.
“You taking Thea?” Clemmie asks me, gesturing at “my” horse before smiling at her stubborn little filly. Beulah will only let Clemmie ride her; I’ve tried. Thea’s not a baby, though. She’s a wise old mare who now whinnies at me, gently tossing her mane, like she knows the first time I walked in here I walked right past her.
“Oh hush,” I croon, taking a brush to her long neck. “You know I’m not strayin’.”
Her golden coat shines brighter with each stroke and I find myself thinking about Evie’s hair again.
“So you’re broken.” Clemmie is a no bull kind of girl, but she isn’t loud about it. All her thoughts are tightly wound up in her pretty little head, and she always doles them out at the perfect moment. I’ve never seen her have an outburst, not like me. “What happened?”
I sigh, my arms going limp as I rest my face against Thea. “Evie tried bein’ nice to me and, I don’t know why, but I can’t stand it when she does that. Like what are you tryin’ to do?”
“Context clues would say she was trying to be…nice…?” Her brows quirk. “What’d sheactuallydo?”
“She got me oil paints.”
“Don’t you do watercolor?”
“Yes!” I shout, and Thea startles. “Sorry. Yes, thank you.Everyoneknows that.”
“I mean…” she rounds her horse carefully, gnawing in her bottom lip. “It’s kind of thoughtful of her to expose you to new things. Don’t you think?”
Suddenly, my chest feels like it could cave in on itself. I abandon Thea, needing the sky as I rush out of the stables andturn left. The sunflower fields I helped them till last year hold me close enough, but the sky above gives me that air I need.
“Sloane!” I hear Clemmie shouting. “Stop walkin’! You know you can’t find your way out!”
She’s right. I’m already mindlessly lost in the field with no sense of north or south. I sit, crushing a few stalks, chest heaving as I drop my head onto my knees.
“Wanna tell me why that triggered you?” Clemmie says quietly, taking the spot next to me.
I know better than to avoid her question.
“Because itwasthoughtful,” I tell her, water welling in my eyes as I grind my jaw. “And I know she’s tryin’ to love me, but it feels like she just wants me different. Like the watercolors. She could’ve gotten more of those, better brushes, but instead she got me oil paints.”
Clemmie barely dips her head. “Okay?”
“Sheoil paints. I don’t wanna be like her—what doesn’t she get?”
Clemmie hums as the sunshine bathes her in golden light, and I’m jealous. Jealous of her little life in their little cottage on all this land, just her and her mom, who understands her more than anyone in this world. She’s always reminding me that she doesn’t have a dad, like she doesn’t understand how lucky she is to have amother. And even though she and Lucía are so different, they only really exist because of each other. I see it every time I’m sitting in the corner of their couch, watching them.
