Grows That Way Read online

  “How was school, Sylvie?” says Auntie Sally, turning around to look at me in the back seat and almost clipping a car parked at the side of the road.

  “Mom! Pay attention!” says Taylor from the passenger seat.

  “Taylor tells me your dad is on the rampage,” says Auntie Sally. “I’ll have to have a word with your mom the marriage therapist again.”

  “Oh I don’t think so, Auntie Sally, we should wait until—”

  “Your mom may have lots of university education, but frankly it’s all theory, and with only one marriage under her belt there are some things about men she just won’t understand.”

  Taylor swings around to look at me. “I’m going to practice some new animal communication techniques with Spike today. I’ve been reading a book that says if I go into a kind of meditative trance while standing beside him, and keep my mind blank, I can pick up his thoughts.”

  I look from one of them to the other. In profile, they show the identical angle where their noses meet their foreheads. They think the same too. They are both so certain about what they know. I wish I could be like that. I wish I could know things with certainty instead of being unsure about almost everything. Why couldn’t I have inherited that gene?

  chapter

  five

  Kansas isn’t at the barn when Auntie Sally drops us off. Her truck is in the parking lot, all her horses are present and accounted for, but her dog Bernadette is missing too. My guess is that they’ve gone for a walk.

  Taylor has a different idea. “I bet Declan picked them up. I bet they’re on a hot date.”

  It’s difficult for me to imagine Kansas on a hot date, but Taylor knows more about this sort of thing than I do (granted, that isn’t saying much) so I guess she’s right. Declan is our farrier. He does all our horse shoeing. He doesn’t talk much and he wears T-shirts that are too small and Kansas goes silly whenever he’s around.

  Kansas used to be very attentive and supportive whenever I saw her, but then she met Declan, and then she adopted Bernadette. Fortunately she taught me a lot before she became distracted, so I am competent around the horses and don’t need her all the time.

  Taylor could use more guidance (particularly around Spike’s biting issues), even though she never actually rides him. She’s much more interested in developing a “relationship” with him. Taylor says Kansas actually interferes with this because she has so many conventional horse-training ideas. Taylor says Kansas’s consciousness needs to be raised. I don’t know what she’s talking about. I think Kansas is brilliant and if her consciousness were any higher she’d be living on the space station.

  I leave Taylor to commune with Spike and I tack up Brooklyn.

  Brooklyn is fourteen hands and he looks like a little warhorse. He thinks he’s one too. Kansas figures he’s part Andalusian or maybe Kiger Mustang but we’ll never know for sure because the previous owner is in an extended-care facility and he’s got dementia even worse than my grandpa (which is saying something) so he can’t remember which of his horses came from where and no one can find any registration papers.

  Not that I care.

  I ride Brooklyn around the ring a few times, but it gets boring. Kansas doesn’t like me jumping on my own, she says it’s too dangerous, and what if something happened, dot dot dot? Not that anything would happen. Brooklyn takes care of me. He’s an excellent horse.

  I put Brooklyn on a loose rein and let him wander where he wants to go. He heads to the out-gate and I think, what the heck? I lean over, spring the latch, then grab the top bar of the gate and urge Brooklyn forward. As though he’s reading my mind, when the gate swings open Brooklyn walks through and pivots so I can keep my hand on the rail the whole time and slam it shut, exactly like the pros I see in trail class competitions on YouTube. I can hardly believe it, because we’ve never practiced this sort of thing. I pat his neck and tell him he’s a very good boy. I love this horse. He is so smart.

  I leave Brooklyn on a loose rein. I want to see where he’ll decide to go. Kansas has taken me on some trail rides where she rode Hambone and I rode her lesson pony Electra. Kansas wanted me to spend the first month or two on Brooklyn in the ring to be sure we knew each other before heading out on the trails. It’s been over a month now, and Brooklyn and I are like soul mates, but Kansas has been too busy for trail rides. Too busy with Declan. Too busy with Bernadette.

  Brooklyn takes the trail up the outside of the paddock and across the unfenced field beside Kansas’s property. His ears are perked forward and his steps are quick. He’s happy to be out of the ring. So am I.

  I straighten my helmet on my head. It’s a bit looser than it should be since I carved out a piece of the liner. I did this in the summer, when I was taking the growth hormone, and fell off my bike, and ended up with a lump in the middle of my forehead. For a while I wondered if I was growing a horn like a unicorn. I had a dream that Logan Losino grew a horn too, so it really freaked me out the first day of school when he was wearing that silly cap pulled down over his forehead. I have a very fertile imagination. Or I did until recently. I’m more mature now. From now on I have resolved to be logical whenever possible, and not get carried away with fanciful ideas. This should make life a lot easier for me.

  I say, “Brooklyn, you can trot if you want.” He picks up a trot. I shorten the reins slightly, and look over my shoulder in case Kansas has appeared back at the barn. She’d be upset if she saw me trotting off alone towards the woods. So would my parents. Too bad.

  Besides, I’m not alone. I’m with Brooklyn.

  I love being in the woods. It’s better than hiking, because I’m higher up, so I can see above the undergrowth. I don’t need to be afraid of anything, because Brooklyn can outrun a dog. Or a bear. Or a man. Thinking about all the things that might need to be outrun frightens me a little. I need a joke to bring me back to normal, so I tell myself that Brooklyn could also outrun a non-identical twin, which makes me laugh out loud.

  Brooklyn hears me laughing and picks up the pace, then breaks into a canter. This is fun! There’s a small tree down across the path, and he jumps it like it’s nothing. Wow. We’re riding cross-country. This is exactly what I used to do in my lucid dreams, except this is real. Boy oh boy.

  We round a corner and there’s some great crashing noise in the woods. Brooklyn bounces a big stride sideways and stops. I barely manage to stay in the middle of the saddle and not land up on his neck. Brooklyn stares into the woods. A deer stares back at us. Brooklyn figures this out the same time I do and launches himself back onto the path at a trot. He’s having as much fun as I am.

  We come to a fork in the path. When I’m out with Kansas she takes the left branch which circles around back to the barn. Brooklyn opts for the right one. Virgin territory. Ha ha again. A virgin on virgin territory. Double virgins. Triple if you count Brooklyn who is a gelding and in all likelihood a virgin too. I’m definitely turning into a jokester, just like Logan Losino.

  Brooklyn lengthens his trot so it feels like we’re flying. Tears stream out of my eyes we’re moving so fast. The footing is perfect and cushions every footfall. We round a bend, plunge down a short hill, and suddenly we’re at the river.

  Brooklyn stops. We both study the water bubbling and gurgling around an expanse of exposed boulders. Brooklyn takes a few tentative steps into the melee until all four feet are in the water. He is such a keener. We will be an unbeatable team when it comes time for competing cross-country. I sit back so I interfere as little as possible with his balance, and that’s when I see the huge animal beside the far river bank.

  chapter

  six

  Between the sounds of the rushing water, and the muffling of Brooklyn’s hoofsteps in the soft ground, the animal hasn’t heard us.

  At first I think the obvious. This is a bear. A large bear, huddled in the water, fishing maybe. Except it’s not bl
ack enough. We only have black bears here, no brown ones, no grizzlies.

  Brooklyn sees it too. His body tenses, and then I feel his heart pounding right through the saddle. Holy crap. He raises his head and blows a trumpet call out his nose, sounding like a bull elephant.

  The creature leaps straight up in the air, exactly like I saw the werewolves do in that movie, with incredible strength. When he lands, he crouches in the water and turns to look at us. He doesn’t swivel his head on his neck like we would, but twists his shoulders to bring us into view. He’s at least twenty metres away, so I can’t see him with absolute clarity, and I only have a few seconds before he turns away, but I sure don’t think he has a werewolf face. Was I imagining? Because it almost looked more like a monkey face, on a head with no neck, kind of like Franco but even more so. If not a werewolf, then what kind of bear would this be?

  The creature wades smoothly out of the boulder-strewn river. He bounds gracefully up the bank and stops and turns his whole body and looks at us again. I notice something else: he isn’t a he. He’s a she, with large hairy breasts. I’ve watched a lot of Animal Planet and National Geographic, and I’ve never seen a bear with breasts before. It makes me feel sick, as though I’m seeing something I’m not supposed to see, or possibly something that isn’t supposed to exist. I want to be logical and I don’t want my imagination to become overactive again, but seeing this creature makes me think that I’d be much better off if a unicorn leapt out of the bush and sprinkled us with fairy dust.

  Brooklyn blows another elephant call; the creature steps effortlessly over a fallen tree then walks into the woods and disappears. On her hind legs. Not like a bear at all.

  Immediately it’s as though she was never there, as though I imagined everything. Except that Brooklyn is still vibrating beneath me. He trumpets yet another challenge. I give him a squeeze with my legs as a request to return his focus to me, and gently urge him to bring his head around so we can turn and get back home. He is only too eager to oblige, and takes off at a gallop out of the water. He has surprised me, so I’m not in balance and for a moment it’s all I can do to hang on and avoid low-hanging branches as we head up the path. He grunts beneath me, pushing for speed, pushing for home.

  I tell him to whoa. He ignores me. This has never happened before. I take a grip on the reins and pull. If anything he goes faster.

  I’m on a runaway!

  I wonder if he’s going too fast to make the corner where the trail branches, whether the soft footing will give way and leave us sprawled in a heap, with me on the bottom, where my grieving parents will find my body some days from now. They will never forgive Kansas. My dad will kill her after he’s finished killing Brooklyn, and then he’ll spend the rest of his life in prison, leaving my mom all alone with only Auntie Sally and her memories to comfort her.

  Somehow I recall Kansas talking to me about using a pulley rein to stop in emergencies. We never practiced it much because she said it was too hard on the horse. We’re quickly coming up on the fork in the trail. I try to remember what Kansas taught me. I grab some mane in my right hand along with the rein and hold tight. I slide my left hand forward on the other rein, take hold and pull up and back with all my might.

  Brooklyn bounces to a jagged trot, and finally he walks. He’s quivering and sweaty and I vault off because he feels like he’s ready to misinterpret the least movement from my seat as a cue to explode into another gallop. I flip the reins over his head and tell him he has to walk. Maybe by the time we reach the barn he will have cooled off and no one will suspect what we’ve been up to.

  He prances beside me.

  He’s not frightened. He’s excited. He’s been having the time of his life. There’s a whole other side to steady dependable Brooklyn that I never encountered in the riding ring.

  We take the fork that will lead us most directly back to the barn. I figure I have about twenty minutes of walking time to put together a plausible story about what I’ve been up to which will stop me from being in deep trouble with my parents and with Kansas. We’re about a hundred metres along, and I’ve come up with exactly nothing when ahead I see Taylor, walking beside Spike. Taylor is chattering away like a little bird and doesn’t notice me at first though Spike’s ears wobble into an upright position when he catches sight of his pal Brooklyn.

  I take a deep breath. There are so many things I have to avoid talking about. For the sake of my sanity, there are also things I need to avoid even thinking about. I was trail riding by myself, and I know better and I shouldn’t have. My easy-going reliable horse ran away with me and I barely managed to bring him under control with an emergency pulley rein stop. But the most difficult thing is that I saw something unimaginable. That’s the part I don’t want to think about. My brain folds in on itself any time I retrieve the memory of that creature. How can I possibly explain any of this to Taylor? I will never be able to find the right words.

  As it turns out, I needn’t have worried. Taylor is busy in the psychic world and out of touch with the perilous planet we are actually occupying.

  “Oh this is where you got to,” she says. “We had a feeling you’d be here. I’ve been communicating with Spike and he told me to come this way.”

  They are blocking the path to home. Spike has his usual semi-annoyed look, his great ears half-cocked. He nuzzles Taylor’s pocket then grabs a bit of fabric with his teeth (something I’d never let Brooklyn get away with). “Okay, you were right,” she tells him. “There’s your reward.” She gives him half a carrot.

  “It’s getting late, we should probably head back,” I tell her.

  “Oh sure.” She turns Spike halfway around and he plants himself crosswise on the trail, sniffing the air in the direction of the river. His ears point forward. He stomps a front foot.

  Taylor places a hand on his neck and closes her eyes for a moment. When she’s done communicating she turns and translates for me. “Stinky dog, he says. Over and over. Stinky dog stinky dog stinky dog.”

  Some dog, I think, but I’m not about to correct him. I just want to get out of here.

  Spike stomps his foot again. Taylor gives him a pat, then tugs on the lead rope. Spike ignores her. Taylor pulls on the rope as hard as she can and Spike braces against it, staring steadfast to the river. I figure we’re stuck here forever, where we can be breakfast lunch and dinner for the hairy monster and her family, but then Brooklyn reaches forward and head-butts Spike on his hip, knocking him sufficiently off balance for Taylor to get the front end moving back onto the path where they walk happily in the direction of the barn. And safety.

  “Did you go for a swim?” she calls over her shoulder. “Brooklyn looks kind of wet.” She hasn’t noticed that he’s also breathing hard.

  I can’t tell her what really happened. If it gets back to my parents I’ll never be allowed to ride again.

  “It was deeper than I thought,” I say.

  “Silly goose,” says Taylor. She scratches Spike between his ears then loops her arm over his withers, the lead rope slack in her other hand. “Animal communication is easier than I thought. I bet I could teach it to you.”

  Is she not even going to ask why I’m on foot and not riding?

  “I know you don’t think of yourself as being very spiritual, but I think all of us are born psychic, then most people forget. It’s kind of a mass psychic amnesia.”

  I wouldn’t mind a little amnesia right now. I keep seeing in my mind the image of that creature’s face and it freaks me out and makes me feel sick again. I’ve seen something I shouldn’t. I can’t make sense of it. It’s almost like the time that Taylor and I were trying to haul Bunga out from under Auntie Sally’s bed so we could clip his toenails and we found her vibrator, and I thought it was some special kind of curling iron so Taylor had to explain it to me so then on top of feeling mortified and embarrassed I also felt really stupid. I had t
o work hard at not imagining Auntie Sally with a sex toy. Which is probably what I should do now: I should work hard at not picturing that creature. I should tell myself I just imagined it.

  “Spike says to tell you that you don’t need to be frightened, because he will protect us,” says Taylor.

  I draw in a breath then slide my fingers up under Brooklyn’s mane and hang onto the crest of his neck. “What would I be frightened of? Animal communication?” There’s a sneer in my voice that reminds me of Franco, and I’m not proud of it. Taylor is, after all, trying to be helpful.

  “I’m just telling you what he said,” says Taylor. “Spike is very intuitive. Plus donkeys and hinnies and mules are used as livestock protection animals. I’ve seen a video on YouTube where a mule kills a cougar.”

  There are some crashing sounds from the bushes, then a deer bounds across the trail ahead of us. I break out in a fresh sweat. The deer is nothing to be frightened of, but what if something was chasing it? Something tall and hairy that moves with the grace of a werewolf and has the face of an ape? Have I discovered a were-ape?

  Taylor is humming. Taylor who is usually afraid of everything, and here she is in the woods with wild animals all around us and she’s contented and relaxed and totally oblivious.

  “Sing with me,” she says. “Let’s do Sound of Music songs.” She launches into the title track.

  I don’t want to sing, especially not Sound of Music songs. I’m not retro like Taylor but it occurs to me that the more noise we make, the better chance there is of scaring off the unclassified wildlife. So I draw a deep breath and join her, and when I can’t remember the words I la-la-la as loud as I can. Taylor stops singing and looks back over her shoulder at us, then carries on with another verse.

  When we reach the barn, Auntie Sally is waiting for us. She’s sitting in her car reading a home decorating magazine.

  “We went for a walk,” explains Taylor. Then, almost as if she knows something is going on and wants to distract Auntie Sally, she says, “You know, Mom, Sylvia can really sing. She has a voice like yours once she gets going, with bells in it.”