“Cool!” Jenny exclaimed as she slid into the dirt next to me. “I had no idea they were going to do that.”
The animals completely lost their minds. I had never heard anything like it — the clucking, the oinking, the… whatever it is that sheep do was deafening. In seconds they were on the move, pouring out of the gates of their pens. Most of them headed right for the Henrys’ huge and beautiful home. Candles flared throughout the house and I could imagine what was going on inside: a confused jumble of Henrys shouting over the squeals of the animals, trying to get dressed, reaching for guns.
“Um, Jenny, I think we better get out of here.”
Just then the back door opened and Will came running out in his underwear, a shotgun in one hand and a flashlight in the other. He was joined by a mix of relations, a group of much older brothers and a small girl with blond hair I guessed was his sister.
The animals made right for them, a tidal wave of flesh that curled around their legs, knocked them off balance, then scattered out in all directions. The smaller ones leapt onto the fine white porch and covered everything with a layer of mud and panicked excrement. A few even made it through the back door and into the house, eliciting a chorus of screams and smashing pots and pans. But the bulk of the animals tore right into the woods, crushing through the brush and disappearing. Caleb emerged from the house and shouted at the others to get after them. Will tried to comply but right then a particularly terrified sheep knocked him into the mud.
“Yes!” Jenny said. “Mission accomplished!”
“Hey! Who’s there?!”
The beam of a big flashlight was coming Jenny’s way. It would hit her any second.
I leapt up out of the brush. “Bow down to your new masters!” I yelled. “Fort Leonard forever!”
The flashlight jerked away and we took off into the woods, laughing just as a shotgun exploded behind us. We ran flat out, leaping over streams and dodging walls of thornbushes, pausing only long enough to fling ourselves up over the fence before racing on again. Even when the sounds of the stampeding livestock and the panicked Henrys were lost in the thicket behind us we kept running. Jenny was ahead of me when the barn appeared in front of us.
As we crossed the clearing, I gave a burst of speed and was right at her heels. I grabbed hold of her arm and tried to pull her back, but our momentum sent us both careening into the wall, landing hard enough to make the whole barn shudder. Jenny hit first and I piled into her, trapping her with my arms. She twisted around so her back was pressed up against the wall.
“I still won,” she panted.
Her cheeks were bright red from the cold and slashed with strands of black hair.
The next thing I knew, we were kissing. I don’t know if she started it or I did. My elbows collapsed, making a cage around her, pressing our bodies together so that when we fought for air our chests crashed together.
Her hands clasped around my back, pulling me in tight. My hand found her hip, then rose up until it touched the smooth fault line of her scar.
Her skin felt like it was on fire beneath my fingertips.
TWENTY-ONE
When I woke it was barely light out and freezing. Winter had finally arrived. Even in my sweater, flannel shirt, and jeans, I shivered as I pushed myself up on my elbows. Jenny was sitting on the floor of the barn, dressed in jeans and a black sweater, scribbling away on her sketch pad. “Aren’t you cold?”
She shrugged, focused on the paper in her lap, sketching, frowning, erasing, and starting over again. In the sunlight her black eye from the day before looked even worse, an oil slick spread of blue, black, and gray. I turned on my side and watched her, pulling the blanket up over my shoulder.
“What are you doing?”
“Drawing,” she said without looking up.
“What?”
“You.”
“Think you could make me taller?”
Jenny smiled. I turned on my back and rubbed the sleep out of my eyes.
“What do you do them for? The drawings. Do you sell them or trade them or something?”
“Oh yeah, I supply the entire town with moody line drawings.”
“Seriously.”
“I don’t know. Violet found this set of drawing pencils somewhere and gave them to me. Everything seems a little quieter when I draw. Nothing else manages it. If I didn’t, I think a lot more people around here would be sporting black eyes.”
I looked up and traced the dusty lines of the timbers stretching across the ceiling, wishing I had something like that, something that would still the nameless feeling that was growing inside of me like a storm cloud, like something just barely forgotten.
Dad.
It was the first night of my entire life that I had spent apart from him. And for what? I thought bitterly, memories of the night before swarming in. So I could run around having fun while he lay there alone in that house? What if our little prank made things even worse?
I closed my eyes and saw a glint of gold shining in the dark. My grandfather’s fist falling from the sky. Alive or dead, he was still there. His voice still in my ear. Our survival was all on me — and what was I doing about it?
I drew myself up out of the bed.
“What are you doing?” Jenny asked as I slipped one boot on and hunted for the other. “Uh, hello? Question here.”
“I should be out looking for supplies,” I said. “Making camp somewhere.”
“Funny, it seemed like you were making camp here.”
My fingers froze on the strap of my backpack. I stood there stupidly, unable to move. It was like all the bones had tumbled out of my body. How could I make her understand?
“Talk to me, Stephen,” Jenny said quietly. She was looking up at me over the edge of her pad. Her eyes, liquid and sharp at the same time. It was like she was always one step ahead of me. Grandpa had told me a hundred times to keep quiet. To keep things to myself. But I couldn’t anymore.
“I just… I keep thinking I’m going to be…”
“What?”
A white star, crowned in gold, fell, and I shook from its impact. “… punished,” I said.
“For what? Having fun? Being with me? Why would you think that?”
Jenny’s pencil clattered to the floor as she charged across the room and knocked me back onto the bed. She threw her legs over my chest, holding me down.
“Jenny…”
She took both my wrists in her calloused hands, pinning me. Her hair fell down around us like a curtain, blocking out the rest of the world.
“No one is going to be punished for something as dumb as stampeding some pigs or wrestling with me. Not by God, not by anybody.”
“Jenny, let me up.”
“The world is not all on you,” Jenny said, pushing me down, suddenly fierce. “I know it feels that way, but it’s not. Not anymore.” She dipped her head down and kissed me. “Not for either of us. Okay? Now say that the world isn’t going to end if Little Stevie Quinn has some fun.”
“Jenny—”
“Say it! I mean, you did have fun blowing things up and kissing me last night, right?”
Fun wasn’t the word. Not even close. Suddenly Grandpa and that flash of gold seemed far away.
“Say it,” Jenny repeated, a whisper, her face inches from mine. “The world isn’t going to end.”
I watched her lips move and matched them carefully, syllable for syllable. Something about it felt secret and shameful, but I said it anyway.
“The world isn’t going to end.”
Jenny’s lips fell onto mine, and then we lay there gazing dreamily up at the high ceiling for I don’t know how long. One of us would laugh and then the other, for no reason we could put a name to. Thoughts entered my mind and I said them and they all seemed to make sense to her.