The Heartbreak Horse

Because the Wall Outside Her Bedroom is Very Hard to Climb.

It isn’t easy. First Kate’s dad says no, screaming something like “That girl is the reason we’re in this mess, and I am not paying for her to get rewarded for it!” Then, of course, Cyan says no—that I’m crazy—that Riley hasn’t ridden in years, and she wasn’t that good to begin with. But Zoe shakes her head and reminds Cyan that Riley is “nothing short of a horse whisperer,” and at hearing that, Kate agrees to it.

Kate’s dad still doesn’t look convinced, but he’s clearly one of those dads who just wants what’s best for his daughter, so he leaves the room to discuss it on the phone with her mother, who is a flight attendant and is currently on a plane (otherwise she’d be there; Kate’s mom is as devoted a parent as her dad). When he leaves, Kate explains to us that her mother loves horses, especially Mirage, and will certainly agree to it.

In the end, Kate’s dad and even Cyan are relatively easy to deal with, compared to what I’m in for that night when I go to Riley’s.

Her mom is home, but so is she, which is a little surprising. Then again, I suppose she can’t avoid her mother every night.

I know I can’t ring the doorbell, because her mom might answer, and you can’t really forget a face like mine when you live in Ocala. The thought of me with her daughter is a worst nightmare for a woman like her, so chances are, she wouldn’t let me up if I did. 

I don’t really know what drives me to this point, but I find myself devising a plan, regardless. I can park on the street; her mom won’t recognize the Camaro even if she looks. I can climb the bricks. Some stick out more than others; I remember because we used to climb them for fun, and Jesse would always yell at us, saying, “The horse jumping is dangerous enough; now you want to climb a three story house, too?”

Jesse was very protective of Riley. If he knew what she was like now—driving motorcycles; juggling guys…

I shake this thought away as I exit my car, walk over to her house, and face the bricks.

I groan in frustration at my own stupidity as I begin to climb.

It isn’t as graceful as you might expect—you know, from the movies, or whatever. I fall once, and at one point a car drives by, and I truly fear they’ll call the cops, because, hell, I look damn sketchy. Finally, I reach her window, where I spend about an hour trying to figure out how to knock without falling. When I finally manage to knock, nothing happens. I try to picture the inside of her house, and I’m pretty sure I have the right room, so, cursing my stupidity again, I rap harder on the window.

She replies this time, but I almost wish she didn’t.

“Go away.”

Well, that could mean any number of bad things. Maybe guys knock on her window all the time, and she isn’t in the mood. Maybe only one guy does, but she isn’t in the mood to see him. Or maybe guys don’t do this often, but she’s so depressed that she doesn’t care.

I knock again. Sorry, Riley. I’ve gotten this far.

“I’m serious, Dom,” she shouts. She sounds… scared? Her voice is sort of shaky—defiant, but shaky. “I’ll call the f*****g cops on you. You don’t believe me, but I will.”

Well, that’s an option D. She has a stalker?

“Who’s Dom?” I shout back.

The blinds finally open. She looks surprised, to say the least. Gorgeous, too—her face, at least. No makeup and messy hair. But she’s wearing this lacy thing that shows a lot of skin, and I know you don’t believe me, but I don’t find it attractive. I mean, her bones seriously look like they’re going to pierce through her skin. It makes my stomach churn.

Once she gets over the initial shock of seeing me, her expression grows sort of bored, and she says to me as if I were a lost puppy or some s**t, “Go home, Joey.”

My arms are really starting to hurt. “I climbed all the way up here and fell once. I deserve in.”

She doesn’t look very sympathetic. “Should’ve climbed the tree on the side of the house and shimmied around the corner.”

Fabulous.

“Riles,” I whine.

She sighs. “Call me Riley, and I’ll let you in.”

Annoying. I would persist, but my arms really hurt. “Okay, Riley. You win.”

She smiles very unhappily and opens the window. I start to climb in and am sort of dumbfounded when she extends her tiny, little arm.

I stare at it for a second. It’s bare except for a leather armband with a gold plate on it. I can’t make out the engraving, but I remembered what it says: Mon Amour. My Girl.

Jesse’s girl.

“Well?” she asks impatiently.

“Sorry,” I say; “I just don’t really want you to pull me up. That twiggy little arm might snap right off.”

“I’m stronger than I look,” she growls. “Try me.”

I don’t really believe her, but I remember from earlier how important it is to her to be strong, so I reluctantly take her hand and, sure enough, she pulls me in. I topple onto the floor sort of ungracefully, but she doesn’t seem to care.

“Knock on the door next time,” she suggests.

“Your mom hates me.”

She laughs wryly. “She’ll be happy I’m hanging out with you again—trust me.”

Great to know I did all this for nothing.

“You are kinda stronger than you look,” I offer weakly.

“Yeah. I’m working on getting bigger, but apparently if I eat too much too fast, I’ll die, or something.”

“You… what?”

She shrugs nonchalantly. “I don’t know. Med students. I don’t know if he’s pulling my chain or not, but he’s a drama queen, so whatever. Why are you here?”

I’m so confused. Why did Patrick the med student tell her not to eat too much too fast?

“Did you have an eating disorder?” I ask her abruptly and kind of rudely.

“Not exactly. If I did, it definitely wasn’t self-induced.”

What is that supposed to mean?

“Who,” I ask again, “is Dom?”

She seemed carefree enough until then, but now she looks pissed. “I’m going to ask you one more time before I throw you out on your ass. Why are you here?”

I suppose I should get on with it. “Kate’s horse—Mirage. She wants you to ride him until her leg’s better.”

I can tell by her expression that she isn’t going to be naïve about this. “Well, sure,” she says sarcastically. “I’m the reason she fell. She’s never seen me ride. She probably doesn’t even know my name, but it makes total sense that she’d personally request that I ride her horse.”

“The sarcasm’s really becoming, you know.”

“And I was just screaming for your approval.”

I sort of grin. I can’t help it; this is fun, and she’s sort of adorable. “She asked me to,” I admit. “But I said you’d be better, and Zoe agreed. She said you were nothing short of a horse whisperer.”

Riley tries to act like that doesn’t matter to her, but I can tell it does.

“Weren’t you going to come back anyway?” I ask her.

“No.”

I don’t believe her. “I saw you watching him. Heartbreak. I don’t care how much you hate facing your past—you want to work with him.”

“I didn’t say that. I didn’t say anything. I was just admiring him.”

“We can work with him,” I told her. “Together. I’d be happy to. And while you’re there, you can ride Mirage.”

She frowns and sits on her bed, again not inviting me to join her. She’s considering it.

“Mirage has a lot of potential,” I tell her. “When Ol rides him, he does pretty well. But Ol won’t ride him every day, and Thoroughbreds do better with girls, anyway. You could get him to where he should be. You don’t know how much you’d be helping Kate.”

That does the trick, I can tell. She wants to help Kate after what she thinks she did to her. But she’s still thinking about something.

I find myself looking around her room again. She used to have so many posters—classics like Queen, Bowie, and Zeppelin; punk like the Ramones and the Clash; alternative I made fun of her for; indie I never heard of. She discovered bands like the Decemberists and Belle & Sebastian before anyone else I knew. We saw Andrew Bird in concert together once. She insisted. I wanted to see System of a Down (I used to be into hardcore bands like that; I’m not any more), but she said Bird would be more memorable, and she was right.

What I really remember is her Beatles love. She had one poster on her ceiling, and it was the Revolver album cover. I lost count of how many times we stared at that poster, at the collage of faces of people we never met. She always said how small she felt compared to them, and I understood exactly what she was trying to say. The poster was signed by every member of the Beatles. It was Jesse’s most prized possession. It was worth a fortune, but he never would’ve sold it.

“Why do you hate the Beatles?” I ask her suddenly.

“What?”

“Did you sell the poster?”

She looks away. “No.”

I nod. Good. I didn’t really think she could. “But you said you hate them. After all the times we defended them when Cyan attacked them. You loved them.”

“They’re idealistic. They lived these drugged-up, spoiled lives, and loved it. Their music was idealistic and fake. They didn’t know the real world.”

“Maybe you’re looking at it the wrong way,” I suggest. “I mean, maybe they were being inspirational. Maybe they wanted to tell miserable people like you that it’s okay to be happy—that it’s better to be happy.”

“Being happy is being naïve,” she refutes, “and even if you can manage to, it’s probably a delusion, induced by drugs or pheromones. I Want to Hold Your Hand, All You Need Is Love, Happy Just to Dance With You? They’re happy because they’re ignoring the facts. Trying to only see what’s good in the world when doing so makes them half blind.”

“Maybe they do know the facts, and they aren’t half blind, but they choose to be happy despite all that. If that were true, they’d see more than even you.”

She smiles sadly. “No one sees more than me.”

She’s so small. In more ways than one.

“Riles,” I say. “What happened to you?”

But all that does is get me kicked out.