Wild Card (North Ridge #1)

“Are you still coming over?” Shane asks me, hooking his thumbs under his backpack as we leave Mrs. Robson’s class. School is done for the day.

“Of course I am,” I tell him, giving him a smile.

He watches me carefully. He’s always watching me. I don’t mind. It makes me feel good to know I’m interesting to him, that I’m something he thinks about, cares about. Sometimes that feeling, the one in my chest, the one I get from looking deep into his eyes, erases all the bad stuff in my life. It makes me forget.

Sometimes, in the morning, when all I feel is shame and disgust, when I look at myself in the mirror and hate everything I see, I remember that Shane likes who I am, likes what he sees when he looks at me. And if he can feel that way about me, I can’t be that bad.

“You’ve just been quiet lately,” he says as we walk outside to his school bus. We live on opposite sides of town so when I’m not on my school bus, I’m on his. My mother works as a librarian so she’s always working after school, and my dad, well, I’m glad he’s usually working too. The funny thing is, neither of them care where I am. I guess because I’m always with Shane and they trust him and the Nelsons. They always know where to find me.

“I don’t know,” I tell him. “I’m just…” How do I even explain to him what’s been going on? I couldn’t. I can’t. “I guess I’m not sleeping well. It’s fine. So, what do you want to do today?”

He stares at me for a few moments as if he doesn’t believe me or something. But as we get on the bus, he lets it go.

“We could go for a ride,” he says.

“It looks like it might storm.” I glance out the window at the dark clouds moving in from the west.

“You love storms.”

“So do you.”

“Okay, well maybe we can borrow some dusters in case it rains.”

“I don’t care about the rain,” I tell him. Honestly, I don’t care about much except for him. We can do whatever, muck the stalls, collect chicken poop for Jeanine’s compost, paint the barn—as long as I’m with him, it doesn’t matter. We’ll have fun.

“Okay, we’ll go for a ride then. Maybe check out that old barn, the spooky one by the pond.”

I shiver. That barn is like a hundred years old and I think Shane’s dad said it used to be a shelter during the gold rush days. I think it’s haunted.

“Maybe,” Shane says with a cheeky smile, “we can have a sleepover there one night. Do you dare?”

I let out a nervous laugh at the thought of sleeping next to him. Of course, that could never happen. My parents would never allow it. Our hours together after school and on the weekends are all I’ll ever get.

I love being around Shane. I love being around his brothers, his grandpa, even his grumpy father. I love the horses, the ranch, the wide open spaces. It’s across town but it feels like it’s a world away. The river separates my life at home from a life with Shane and when we cross over it, all my troubles melt away.

The bus drops us off at the foot of the long, dusty drive, and though it’s early June, it’s already super hot and we’re both sweaty and gross by the time we get to the house.

Jeanine opens the front door, wiping her hands on a dish towel.

“Are you guys hungry?” she asks us. “I can whip up some snacks.”

Shane looks to me in question.

“I’m fine,” I tell her. Jeanine is always trying to get me to eat, says I’m just skin and bones.

“We’re going for a ride,” Shane tells her as we toss our backpacks onto the porch, our heavy books thudding against the floorboards, nearly knocking over the stack of cowboy and rubber boots lined up against the wall.

Jeanine purses her lips at the sight. “Okay, but be careful. It might storm later. And be back in two hours.”

“Yes, ma’am,” we tell her in unison before turning around and running down to the stable.

The stables are my favorite place to be in the whole world. I wish I could bottle the scent of manure and hay and wood and smell it every time I was feeling down. Shane kind of smells the same way, but combined with fresh air and sunshine. I would never tell him that I like the way he smells—he’d probably think that’s weird or creepy, but it’s true.

The stalls are empty because it’s summer and the horses are out to pasture, so we grab their halters off the hooks and run out into the field. I usually ride Teddy, a short and stocky quarter horse that’s this funky red roan color, like he’s been dipped in rust and sprinkled with icing sugar, while Shane has this gorgeous Arabian called Moonshine. He’s completely black except for a star at his nose and looks exactly like the horse in that old movie The Black Stallion.

Sometimes getting the horses is easy. Today it’s hard. They’re keeping their distance and acting all spazzy.

“Maybe it’s the weather,” Shane says as he tries to approach Moonshine before the horse starts trotting in the opposite direction. “I heard horses can sense all kinds of shit.”

Luckily it doesn’t take me long before I round up Teddy. He’s old and what Hank would call “bomb proof.” Then Shane eventually corners Moonshine, talking to the horse in calm, easy tones like he’s some kind of horse whisperer. But it works and I’m impressed. Is there anything he can’t do?

It’s not long before we’ve got them saddled up and are heading out to the right of Cherry Peak, riding down along the river for a bit before we take them up through a forest that skirts along the side of a ridge.

We don’t normally go this way because the ground is all rocky, and there’s not a lot of open space to gallop and really let the horses fly, but this is where the old homesteader’s barn is located. Even the trail there is somewhat spooky, with lots of undergrowth in the forest and low hanging trees.

Finally, we come to a clearing on the crest of a hill. The trees have tapered off and right below us are the remains of the old barn, vines overtaking the dark, splintered wood, knee-high grass surrounding it. Beyond the barn you can see the river far below, like an icy blue thread as it joins an arm of Kootenay Lake. I grew up in a town north of Edmonton in Alberta and we never had anything as beautiful as this.

And we never had a boy as beautiful as Shane.

“So, are you feeling brave?” Shane asks me, leaning against the horn of his saddle and looking like a cowboy. He flashes me a smile and somehow that makes me feel more afraid.

Afraid of my feelings for him.

“You really want to go inside?” I ask warily.

He shrugs. “Only if you want to.”

But it feels like a challenge and I’ve never been one to back away from one.

“Let’s check it out.”

We ride the horses down to the barn and hop off, tying them loosely to a rotted post just as two ravens sail out of the barn.

I let out a yelp as they fly above us, their wings making this incredible whooshing sound. We watch as they disappear over the ridge, calling to each other as they go with deep, rumbling caws.