The Boy I Love (9 page)

Sometimes Dad will take me for a walk on forest service land, but I guess today he felt like staying close to home. He told me to keep a lookout for a painted bunting, which he thought he'd heard out by the far pasture the other day. We walked across our back lawn and then into the woods that divided our property from Cutty River Landing.

“You know, Wren,” Dad said, after we'd walked in silence awhile with no sign of the painted bunting. “That Tim fellow seems nice enough. But you're not old enough to date.”

“Right,” I said. “Except you know that I am.”

Dad laughed. When a bird trilled from the top of a longleaf pine and he looked at it through his binoculars, I knew he was going to ask me to identify it, so I went ahead and said, “Carolina wren.”

“Good girl,” he said, even though I'd known that one since I was five, seeing it was the bird he'd named me after.

I waited for him to say something like he usually did, about me being
his
Carolina wren, or else for him to say something more about Tim. In a weird way I kind of liked it that everyone, including my parents, thought that such a cool and handsome guy liked me. It made me feel special, even if it wasn't true. Even if what
was
true might change Tim from one of the most popular guys at school to an outcast like Jesse Gill. Which seemed so unfair, and I hoped again that Tim wasn't worried about me telling Allie, or anyone else.

Meanwhile Dad had apparently said all he meant to about Tim, as he switched the subject completely. “I guess I don't need to tell you, Wren. We're in a bit of trouble here.” He put his binoculars down and sat on a log. A couple of greenheads buzzed around his hat, but he didn't even bother waving them away. He just started talking. He said a lot of things I already knew, like how donations to my mother's rescue efforts had pretty much dried up since the economy fell apart, and how Mom kept turning down offers to adopt horses even when they did come in, because she always wanted their homes to be just perfect.

“Not that any of this is her fault,” he put in quickly. “She did a great job with this place for a long time. She couldn't have known what would happen.” He started talking about how much money people had been losing in the last few years. And then he said that they hadn't wanted to tell me,
but Mr. George Lee, one of Mom's biggest donors—the man who owned the Mercedes dealership—had committed suicide because his business went under.

“Not Mr. George Lee,” I said. I couldn't believe it. Mr. Lee used to bring his kids by the farm to visit with the horses. His youngest daughter was just a few years older than me. Tears sprang to my eyes, thinking of her losing her father in such an awful way.

Dad must have seen how I was about to cry. He took a deep breath and said, “I'm sorry to have to tell you all this, Wren. But you need to know. Things are bad all over. And now the university's going through all kinds of cuts. They're not going to renew my contract. Already I was down to one class this term. They're canceling my class next semester. So that's another piece of income lost. And my forest service job isn't near enough to pay for all this.” He waved his hand in a wide sweep, indicating the house, the barn, the Jeep, the car, the land.

He told me that they hadn't paid their mortgage in full for two months. Mom had been scrambling to find more donors but without any luck. “We're so far behind at this point. Last time we refinanced, the real estate market was booming. Now this place is worth . . . well, not as much. Not nearly as much as we owe. And even if it were, there aren't any buyers. Not even if we wanted to parcel the place up.”

“Dad,” I interrupted, thinking on what he'd said
yesterday, about all of us ending up on the street. “What's going to happen to us?”

He stood up and walked a little ways away from me. Picked up his binoculars like he was staring at a bird. But I knew there wasn't any bird, not at that moment, and after a bit he put the binoculars down. “I know you love this place, Wren,” he said. “I used to love it too. I was born here just like you. But now I feel like it's time to let go. I know you heard what Holly said the other day, and it's true. This place was built on blood. Our family ought never to have kept it.”

Panic rose in my chest. “But Dad, we
didn't
keep it,” I said, scrambling. “Not really. I mean, the house is gone. And we don't grow crops. We just keep horses. Everything is different from what it used to be.”

“Wren,” Dad said. “It's not different enough. Ever since we found out about James, I feel like I'm living at a crime scene. An unspeakable crime scene. And I can't stand it. I don't want a single blade of grass from this place.”

“But—but all that was so long ago.” I was pleading now. “It shouldn't have anything to do with us anymore.”

“When I was a boy, I thought that too,” Dad said. “I never let myself think about the things that went on here. Even after I grew up and should've known better, I thought that it didn't have anything to do with me. Then we found out about James. And my thoughts changed, Wren. Or they
didn't change so much as they got louder. So I couldn't pretend I didn't hear them anymore.”

I interrupted him before he could say anything else. I didn't want to hear that horrible word, “slave.” I didn't want to feel this guilt over something I'd never done. I couldn't bear it.

“Dad,” I said. “I just want to know what's going to happen.”

He didn't answer me right away, just started walking again. I followed him up the hill, out of the trees, near to where Tim and I had sat the day before. Dad had a big mosquito bite over his eye. I could see it starting to puff out from his skin. It made him look weirdly young, that mosquito bite. I wanted it to go away. He picked up his binoculars again and pointed them up at the sky, toward a raptor that circled above us. Then he handed the binoculars to me so I could see it was a red-tailed hawk. While I stared at the bird, Dad found the words to tell me, and it was ugly. Not the bird. But what all would happen to us. He told me as plain as he could, and all the while I listened to him I didn't move, or take my eyes off that bird.

It would take awhile for the bank to foreclose. They were so backed up it could take a year or more. Mom and Dad would use that time to adopt out all the horses and get rid of most of our stuff. He kept using the word “downsize,” like we were some sort of corporation instead of a family.

“Where will we live?” I asked him, when it seemed like he was done talking.

“We'll look for an apartment.”

“An apartment!” How were we going to fit into an apartment? We were
farm
people, not
apartment
people. “What about Daisy?”

“We won't go anywhere we can't take Daisy.”

“Are we going somewhere we can take the barn cats?”

“We're going to find homes for them, Wren. We're going to get our house in order.”

Get our house in order. It didn't make sense.
This
was our house. How could leaving it be getting it in order?

“I'm not leaving!”

“I know how you feel, Wren…”

“No,” I yelled. “You actually don't.” I took the binoculars off and shoved them into his hands. Then I turned and ran as fast as I could back through the woods. Dad followed me a little while, until his footsteps slowed down and then stopped altogether. But I kept running, all the way to the paved road, and since I couldn't think of anything else in the world to do, I just kept on running till the sound of my own breath drowned out every single thought in my head. I ran all the way to Tim's house.

*   *   *

By the time I got there I was drenched in sweat, and I knew my face was beet red. Thank goodness he was the one who opened the door.

“Wren,” he said, sounding real surprised. “What's wrong?”

I couldn't think of what to say. I just saw him standing there, all sweet and worried, and I stepped forward and fell into his arms. And you know what? They felt exactly the way I'd imagined they would. They felt strong, and willing to hold me tight for as long as I needed. In that moment I felt too exhausted and too defeated even to cry. I just buried my face in Tim's chest while he rocked me back and forth.

His parents had gone out to lunch, so we had the place to ourselves. Once I got myself under control, Tim led me though the house—everything seemed sparkling clean and new—to his bathroom so I could take a shower. He gave me a flannel robe, and as I wiped the steam off the mirror with the sleeve, which was a million miles too long for me, I heard the doorbell ring. I knew it would be my parents, or at least one of them, so even though my clothes were gross and sweaty, I put them back on to prevent Dad having a heart attack. When I got downstairs, Tim was calmly saying, for what must have been the third or fourth time, that I was very upset and couldn't talk to anyone right now.

Dad, almost as tall as Tim but not quite, was working up a lather on the front porch. Probably up until this minute he'd tried to be reasonable, but now the sight of me standing back there in the living room, my hair all wet, was more than he could bear.

“Look,” he shouted at Tim. “This is my daughter we're talking about. Just who the hell do you think you are?”

To me it sounded like a rhetorical question, but I guess it didn't to Tim, because he thought about it for a second. Then he said, “I'm the man she ran to, sir.”

And he shut the door, firmly but gently, right in my father's face.

I wanted to call Allie
and tell her about what was happening with the farm. At the same time, I couldn't stand to think of saying any of it out loud. It felt too intense to talk about over the phone. This wasn't like finding out Ry had a girlfriend—by now I had to admit that was just a pretend problem. This was all about my home, my entire life. The words “we're losing our farm” were too horrible to say. And—I know this was awful of me—but it almost made me feel ashamed, like our family had something wrong with us. It would be better to tell her at school, when I could see her face react to everything.

On Monday, Tim and I sat together on the way to school. He asked me if my parents were mad at me, or at him, and I told him that, weirdly, they didn't seem to be. At one point he said, “You should come over for a swim before it gets too cold.” We both knew it wouldn't get too
cold till sometime near Thanksgiving, so I said, “Yeah, that'd be fun.”

When the bus pulled up at school, Allie stood waiting for me on the sidewalk. She peered through the windows and saw me sitting next to Tim. We got off the bus, and you'd never have known when she said hi that anything in the world was wrong. She waited until Tim got a few steps ahead. Then she lit into me.

“Why didn't you call me?” she asked, sounding furious.

“I did!”

“
One time
.” Like that didn't count at all.

“I'm sorry,” I said. “Things were real bad at the farm this weekend.”

I guess she didn't hear me, because instead of asking about the farm, she said, “I know all about Tim coming over to your house. I suppose there's a reason you didn't tell me?”

I wondered how she knew but didn't bother asking about it. Allie stood there, towering over me, looking fierce. If she'd looked at all like she had hurt feelings, I think I might have softened. But she looked purely mad, like I'd broken some strict law she'd laid down for me.

“I didn't tell you,” I said, trying to keep my voice calm, “because I knew you'd be mad. Which I guess was right.”

This dark look came over her face. Then she said, quiet but deadly serious, “Wren Piner. You knew that I like him. I've liked him since sixth grade. We said before school even
started that if he were going to be anyone's boyfriend, he would be mine.”

That was about the stupidest thing I had ever heard her say. Tim was not some front seat you could call shotgun for. At the same time it sounded sort of right, because I did feel guilty, and I found myself wishing I could just tell her the truth and clear everything up. Tim being gay wasn't a big deal. Allie didn't care about things like that any more than I did.

But I'd promised Tim. I promised him. So I shoved that thought right back out of my head. And also there was that little tiny part—another one of those horrible parts of me—that knew I could protest about Tim not being my boyfriend till the cows came home. But truthfully, that was beside the point, because I
wanted
him to be my boyfriend. No matter if he wasn't interested in me that way. No matter how much Allie liked him.

“Allie,” I said, using the stern but careful voice I used with Pandora when she tried to graze with the bit in her mouth. “I didn't say anything because I didn't want you to be mad. But nothing is happening between Tim and me. I promise you. We're just friends.”

She softened a little at this, but I could tell she didn't 100 percent believe me. Then she said, “Well. If that's true, did you ask him if he liked me?”

I figured she was already so mad I might as well get this
part out of the way so maybe we could all move on to a less complicated existence. “I asked him if he liked anyone in particular, and he said he didn't like any girl at Williamsport High.”

That dark look came back. “Any girl but you, you mean.”

“Any girl at all,” I said firmly, still not able to figure out how it could be my fault if he
did
like me. Even though he
didn't
. But Allie just flounced away and avoided me the whole rest of the week, the longest we'd gone without talking in our lives. And guess what? By Friday she was dating Devon Kelly.

*   *   *

The next week I went to the hospital to have my hand checked out. James has privileges at Williamsport General, so every other Monday he came out to see me for a special appointment. Luckily for me, the time he had free was early in the afternoon, so I missed school instead of rehearsal.