Riding Invisible (16 page)

Will glared at our new therapist. “He only said that because he's got shit for brains!”

And then he whooped, an odd, menacing sound that sort of shook the quiet room, and his laughter resembled two alley cats mating, and he was wearing that moody explosive expression we recognized Right Away.

I started shrinking, the invisible son, until suddenly the bomb went off and Will leaped four feet away from the sofa and…fuck…he started trashing the shrink's office! A bunch of books fell off an end table before Dad could reach him.

Angelica, her face the color of a powdered-sugar doughnut, dialed security at the same second Dad pushed Will out the door, practically lifting my brother with his powerful hands, tendons stretching and tight against the back of Will's neck. Angelica told whoever answered the phone that everything was under control.

Mom breathed this sigh like they say in the novels: A Big Sigh of Relief. Meanwhile, I observed how Angelica's hands were trembling. She was shaking worse than Mom gets sometimes, the way I trembled in the barn yesterday—Will has that effect on people, but hadn't this therapist ever met a kid with serious conduct disorder? Get a life, lady. This is your JOB!

And then Mom and I hiked toward the elevator. The first thing I noticed? Will's eyes, all yellowish under the fluorescent lighting and how much he seemed to hate me.

I turned to Dad. “Are you getting the feeling that our situation is hopeless?”

The elevator arrived with a clunk and a
DING!
and the doors slid open.

“Hopeless is a powerful word,” Dad said.

Mom started crying, and we crowded ourselves into the elevator.

Will patted her shoulder. “Gosh, Mom, it's never
COMPLETELY
hopeless, is it?”

Which might be an encouraging thing for him to say, but the sarcasm in his voice was thick like paste.

We made it home from the shrink's office, and the instant Dad and Mom leaped out of the car, before I could grab the door handle, Will leaned toward my ear.

“Bro. I need twelve dollars. Today!”

“Forget it. I don't have that much money. Leave me alone!”

Will smiled, a pleasant grin, and gave me a playful punch on the jaw. “Have it your way,” he said. Then he flipped his head forward and his hair draped over his face until all I could see was his word…
DEATH

Saturday—11:48 p.m.—my bedroom

Such a nice beginning—Mom let me drive her car to school. Well, with her in it, of course. The Art Club scheduled a special work meeting in the auditorium this weekend. We have to finish painting some scenery the carpenter volunteers built for the drama club play. It was especially perfect because Christi happened to be hanging out on the sidewalk in front of school, and she noticed that I was behind the wheel.

The painting activity went well because Christi and I got to work on a sign for the wharf scene, and then she had an idea that we should add a seagull, so the project turned out excellent, because we carved the gull out of cardboard with an X-Acto knife and painted it all realistic. And then we had a little accident….

After we cleaned up (sorta) I invited Christi to walk over to Shy's stable. She insisted that we stop at a market first, so she could buy some carrots, explaining that this was our low-fat lunch, plus it was also a bribe for my horse because…guess what?! She's afraid of horses.

“Don't worry,” I told her. “I won't let anything happen to you.”

When we got to Frank's, I unlocked Shy's stall and introduced my beautiful guy to Christi. She said hello, but stood way back in the corner. After I buckled the halter and snapped on a red-and-white lead rope, we took him to the round pen and turned him loose.

“Have you found a place to live?” Christi asked.

“Not yet. I've been waiting to hear back about this room and corral in Granada Hills, but it's probably rented. Maybe Frank has something for Shy because a friend of his runs a boarding place and she's expecting a stall to open. She wasn't sure. She's going to call him when she finds out.”

Christi inched her way over to Shy, and he quickly planted a famous horse-snot smooch on her paint-spattered T-shirt (directly in the middle of her left boob—good aim).

“Yuck!” Christi shrieked.

“He loves you. What can I say!”

“Yeah? That was a horse kiss? He should have a reward, right? But I left the carrots in the barn.”

When we opened the round pen, all of a sudden my gut did one of those shocked elevator drops, because Guess Who was sitting on a green plastic chair near the far side of the hay shed. With both feet propped on a small table and chewing the end of a long stem of hay.

Christi stared at Will and he stared at her, and then he stood real slow and walked over to say wassup. And Will kind of winked at me like he approved of her or something.

“What are you doing?” I said. “You're not allowed around Shy. Not for any reason.”

“I need that twelve dollars. Came to collect.”

“Why don't you just get over it, Will?”

“Because it ain't over! And I'm sorry, I don't wanna hurt your horse, but I guess I'm gonna have to.”

Will jogged a few steps to the round pen and pulled the latch on the gate. And even though according to Tavo's race horse story I'm the calm and quiet horse, the
HERMANO
that's supposed to win the race because he's so smart and learns so fast, I wasn't sure I could be that animal. I wanted to be the horse that beats the shit out of Will. I knew I could do it. He's huge, but I'm wiry. He's fast, but I'm faster.

Will headed straight to Shy, bending over to grab Frank's lunge whip off the dirt, the one that cracks the air with a loud snap to move a horse into free lunging. This whip is
NEVER
used for hitting horses. Frank doesn't do that. But Will?

My brother raised his arm, and the tip of the whip flicked the air, which was Shy's cue to lunge, run in a circle close to the rail, something he'd been trained to do whenever that whip moves. I blasted forward, pouncing on Will, hitting hard. He lost his footing. Like a slow-motion DVD scene, the whip sailed up and landed at the round pen's edge. Shy raced by, leaping over it, hooves thudding on the soft sand. Will and I almost went airborne to get there, side by side, struggling to reach it first. Shy kept cantering around and around, circling fast, a one-horse merry-go-round. I slid through the dirt, my fingers brushing against the stiff handle, but Will dove forward, grabbing my knees; we both tumbled, dust scattering, fists connecting. Shy kept going. Fast! In our direction. Christi screamed in the distance.

“Whoa!” I yelled, and Shy slid to a stop.

Will and I were on each other again, pummeling, punching. We couldn't breathe through the anger, and God I wanted to tear him to shreds, and when I kneed his stomach he hollered, and somehow I wrestled free and jumped up with the whip in the air like he'd raised it at Shy. I made it snap.
CRACK!
And something in me cracked at the same time and I wanted to beat him to death. To death! Until he became a shapeless mass of mush. Will rolled away, propelling his body through the sand until his back pressed against the metal bars on the pen, and for that fraction of a second he couldn't move, couldn't escape. His face exposed and fearful, with me in charge of the whip. Me in charge of The Power.

“Go ahead. I dare you!” Will shouted.

His words were hard to hear over a horse in the barn that started to neigh—a loud, piercing cry. Agitated. Way upset. It brought me back. Transformed me into my real self, the calm and quiet one, the smart brother. The winning horse.

I flung the whip over the fence. “Just go home!” I yelled.

In a second he was gone, crawling through the metal bars, staggering off, slinking away like a pissed-off coyote. Christi stood at the gate, her lips all frozen-looking. I walked toward her and Shy followed.

“Shy has to be moved today,” I said. “I'm asking Frank where that woman lives, the one with the stables not far from here. Maybe I'll persuade her to let me have the stall even if it's not available.”

“Can I go?” Christi asked.

“Yeah. I'm thinking we'll lead Shy over to wherever she lives.”

By this time Shy and I were standing side by side. Christi opened the gate, and I could see that little space between her teeth so clearly and the small diamond on her nose with those golden flecks in her eyes. I felt her strength, and it made me stronger; the knowledge propelled me forward, and I held her face in my hands. We closed our eyes and kissed.

Kissing Christi wasn't so much like that kiss I'd shared with Grass. This was a soothing kiss that turned me on, yes, but there was a powerful current that flashed between us, too.

“Whoa,” Christi said when we pulled away.

I didn't say anything. I reached for her hand, and everything in my life felt good for a change.

Then we took off, looking for Frank. We told him the plan, and he wanted to come along.

“The owner is a funny ol' gal,” he said with a wink. “Name's Miranda, from Texas, about sixty years old. She'll make room for your horse even if she doesn't have it.”

So the three of us walked Shy about a mile toward the hills on the other side of Mission Boulevard. The stall wasn't available, but Miranda agreed to let him hang out in her arena.

“I don't suppose you have a room for rent?” I asked.

Miranda told me no, she doesn't board humans. For me, though, the main disappointment was how her corrals and barn weren't clean like Frank's, and when we left, the way Shy whinnied, a real sad sound. I could tell he already missed Oreo, his pony friend.

While we were walking back to his place, Frank told me to bring my stuff over and sleep on his couch. “You'd better stay out of Will's path for a while,” he said.

Christi gave Frank a gentle punch on the arm. “That's very nice of you.”

“Yeah, Frank,” I said. “Thanks, buddy.”

“Hey, Yancy, don't thank me. You're gonna do all my dishes and mop a bunch of floors, so maybe I'm not all that wonderful.”

Once we were back at the stables, Christi called her sister, who arrived a few minutes later. They gave me a ride. Then I was bolting inside our house, our exhausting house. And when I hollered for my parents, they came racing from the kitchen, preparing themselves for the latest heap of news. When I got to the whip part, Dad started running down the hall, and we barged into Will's room.

“It was just a joke!” my brother shouted. “I'm not gonna hurt that stupid horse. Why don't you grow up, Yancy?”

Dad lunged, eyes bugging out, arms swinging through the air. But Will rolled to the side, diving off the end of the bed, and then he was gone, straight out the open window. (There he goes!) We heard the gate that leads to the front yard slam shut, and when a car backfired and started on the street, no one reacted…. Will can't drive.

Can he?

Instantly we were through the front door, all three of us. Shit! Dad's fun car, the classic, the one he stores with a cover on it, that car went squealing off, exhaust spilling from the tailpipe, engine roaring, and when a station wagon turned the corner, driving slow but crossing in front of Dad's 1958 Chevy, there it was. Will didn't seem to be paying attention to the station wagon or the stop sign.

Then there was the sound of it, metal on metal, and all of us running. I didn't want Will dead. “Kill Will” was over.

And when we got there, his head was all bashed in, and he was crying, but he was alive, and now he's in the hospital for observation. Two nights minimum. It's a big mess. At least the other driver is fine.

My head aches for Will. My arm aches because it has to keep writing all this crap and it makes me realize how tired I am of everything that goes on in this family. Just like Mom and Dad. I'm tired, too.

I think this journal is gonna decompose or explode or burst into flames from all the shit it contains.

Sunday—10:00 p.m.—home

With Will in the hospital doing fine so far, just a bump on his head, a few stitches, and a broken arm, I'm able to sleep safely in my own bed and not at Frank's. Then today I visited Shy at Miranda's, the new place. He stared at me like maybe he wonders why I've let him down this way. Why can't he live at Frank's? Like he deserves some kind of an answer that a horse can relate to, only I don't have any answers. Maybe it's like a marriage, this relationship of Shy and me.

It reminds me of the marriage at home. My room's right next to my parents' bedroom, and when I walked past this evening, I could hear parental angst.

“It's too big of a job for us!” Mom was saying.

“Baby, we can't give up.” Dad's voice, all strong and pleading.

(My thoughts:
WHA—???? C'MON, POPS.
)