Another Kind of Cowboy (8 page)

“You're dating Ms. Reed?” Alex said finally, trying to work some enthusiasm into his voice.

“One of the men in this family has to get a little action.”

Alex's mouth took off on its own before he could stop it. “Don't worry. I'm seeing someone, too.”

“That right?” His father sounded surprised.
How dare he sound surprised!

“Yeah. This girl from the barn. She goes to Stoneleigh, actually.”
What was he talking about? Why couldn't he shut up?

“Well, you old dog, you,” said his father, smiling.

“She's cute. Rich, too.”

Mr. Ford beamed. Then he chortled, “Don't get her knocked up.”

He must have seen Alex's horrified look because he tried to explain. “Your grandpa. That's what he used to say to me every time I went on a date.”

“That's, uh…” Alex struggled to find the right description. “Good advice.”

“And the other thing your grandfather always said to me was, ‘You want I should get you some protection?' He always said it with an Italian accent. Even though we weren't Italian.” Mr. Ford's voice was wistful at the memory.

Alex felt himself start to sweat. Was his dad about to give him the dreaded Talk? Or worse, some protection? Was he going to hand over a condom, warm from his pants pocket,
a condom meant for Ms. Reed
?

“That's great, Dad.”

His father looked at Alex searchingly.

“I mean I don't need any protection,” Alex clarified.

Mr. Ford laughed, then stepped closer and clapped him on the back.

“Okay, son,” he said. “No protection for you.”

SEPTEMBER 28

“
CLEO O'SHEA
—you have a phone call on the common phone.”

All the girls in the TV room looked over at me, surprised. The bitches. But I was already out the door, headed for the phone alcove.

On Friday nights the academic girls study in their rooms or hang around the library. The horse fanatics clean tack or brush their horses or something. The party girls sneak out and go into town. The rest of us watch TV. I am seriously considering becoming a party girl, just for the stimulation and because we never watch the shows I want.

The only person I can relate to at all in the Friday TV–watching crowd is Phillipa. I've been feeling sort
of bad about leaving her to train with Svetlana while I go off to Limestone. I've been surprised by how much I miss riding with her. Phil's pretty easygoing and much more agreeable than Alex. Lucky for him that he looks like a model for an Eastern European clothing line, or I might get tired of his attitude.

“Hello?” I said, breathless from my dash to the phone.

“Uh, Cleo?”

It was him! I'd done it! I'd used my powers to will him to call. Sometimes I amaze even myself.

“Yes?” I said, pretending I didn't know who he was.

“Hi, it's Alex. Um, Alex Ford. You know, from the barn.”

“Oh,
Alex
,” I said, loud enough so anyone listening would hear. Too bad he has one of those androgynous, could-be-a-boy-or-a-girl names. “
Alexander
. Hi!”

He sounded nervous—that was
so sweet
.

“Yeah, so I'm, um, free on Saturday,” he continued. “If you still want to get together.”

I
knew
he liked me. Girls have instincts about these things.

I considered saying I had to check my schedule, you know, making him sweat a bit. But I couldn't. I was totally accepting this date.

“Great,” I said.

“So you're free?” His voice dipped almost like he was disappointed. Maybe I should have made him wait.

“I think so. But, uh, not till later.” That's it—I would play hard to get. But only moderately hard to get, as opposed to extremely.

“Later?” he asked.

Why later? How much later? Why was I such a spaz? You'd think I was from around here or something.

“Like not midnight or anything. But not early. We have dining hall at six. So how about seven?” Was seven o'clock later? I didn't even know at this point. I was starting to lose it.

“Okay.”

“Why don't you come here? Pick me up. Then we'll go to your place.” I wanted everyone to see me with him. To see me with any boy, actually, but especially one with big, sad eyes and curly brown hair.

“On second thought, how about you pick me up
at six-thirty? That's probably better for me,” I said.

Alex was quiet on the other end of the phone. Finally, he gave this defeated little “Okay,” like I'd just told him he had to put his cat to sleep. I did not understand the tone of that “okay”
at all
.

“Great! See you then.”

I hung up the phone and began jumping up and down and making the V for victory sign in the hallway.

I know Alex is the guy who's going to help me redeem myself in the romantic department. I am perfectly capable of having a
normal
relationship with a nice, noncriminal guy who likes me for myself, no matter what my parents say.

SEPTEMBER 30

ALEX DIDN'T LIKE
Cleo, at least not
that
way. So why was it taking him so long to find something to wear? He had to look nice, but not so nice that she would be overcome with lust. Alex had had a dread of uncontrolled female desire ever since that incident in the third grade when Lucinda Watts got him alone in the music room and asked him if he wanted to go steady. Lucinda had skinny arms and legs and large, rubbery lips that she slathered with sparkly pink Lip Smackers. When he turned her down, she kissed him anyway.

Thinking of pink goo, he put on his third-choice outfit and made his way downstairs to the kitchen to get Grace's and his sisters' approval.

As Alex came down the stairs he heard Grace say, “Maggie, I recognize that as a young teen you have a lot on your mind, but have you ever considered the effects your sallow skin may be having on your self-esteem?”

“We aren't sallow,” answered May, because Maggie was too busy constructing a fake wound on her arm to reply. “You told us so that time you put the cloth around our heads and pretended we were bald.”

“Yes, but I'm more educated now and I've decided your skin tone is sallow. It's just your luck that I have a new cream that will revolutionize your life by helping with jaundice.”

“You mean that medical makeup you got for people who are getting chemo?” asked Maggie, finally looking up from her wound making, the tubes and jars and brushes for which were scattered all over the counter across every inch of space that Grace's cooking mess hadn't already taken.

“That's what the cosmetics are
designed
for,” said Grace. “But they work well for other people, too. I need to practice before I go putting them on someone who might be a bit irritable due to having a touch of cancer or kidney failure or whatever.”

“I think you should just focus on your cooking,” said Maggie. “And cleaning your hand.”

As part of her new passion for all things East Indian, Grace was attempting to cook vegetarian Samosas. Earlier in the day she'd henna'd one of her hands very badly. It looked as if she'd cut it off and left it outside on the lawn by itself all summer.

May stared at the purply red blotches on Grace's hand.

“You should've done a foot,” she said.

“Then you could put a sock over it,” said Maggie.

“You might want to consider wearing a glove on that hand,” said May.

“A silver one, like Michael Jackson!”

“You could tell people you have that skin disease that makes you look white!”

“I am white. Unfortunately. You two have no sense of appreciation for other cultures,” said Grace, fiercely stuffing fresh herbs into mashed potatoes.

Alex cleared his throat at the doorway. Three heads swiveled around.

“The suit was too much,” said Maggie.

“But a tracksuit is too little,” finished May.

“It's not a tracksuit,” Alex explained. “It's casual wear.”

“Alex, it's a tracksuit,” said Grace. “I can see the Adidas symbol. What are you—the missing Beastie Boy? Where are you taking this girl, anyway?”

Alex cringed. This was all such a charade. He felt as though someone had installed a neon
FRAUD
sign on his forehead.

“If you both ride horses, why don't you wear something riding related?” suggested Grace.

“Breeches?”

“No, cowboy stuff. You were the cutest little cowboy,” said Grace, dropping one of the Samosas on the kitchen floor. She absently picked it up and put it back on the tray. Alex made a mental note to avoid the Samosas.

“He can't wear cowboy clothes. He rides English now,” said Maggie.

“Dressage,” said May, looking very satisfied with herself. “He's gone back to his first love. Dressage riding.”

“Just remember you have to drop us off at the dojang first,” said Maggie.

“And pick us up,” said May.

“And make sure the
N
is on the car to warn everyone else that the world's least experienced driver is behind the wheel,” said Grace, fishing around under
the counter for another fallen Samosa.

Alex slowly climbed back upstairs to his room, where he decided on an outfit of jeans and a blue shirt and sweater. Then he went outside to put the
N
for novice driver symbol on the car. The IROC was the least appropriate vehicle possible for someone who liked to wear sweaters. He was sure a little part of him died every time he had to drive it. And now he had to drive it to the most exclusive private school on Vancouver Island.

Five minutes later the twins emerged from the house. He watched through the rearview mirror as they staggered along under the weight of various swords, gloves, mouth guards, and long and short sticks. They pulled open the sticky passenger door, pushed forward the front seat, and piled themselves and all their equipment into the backseat.

“One of you can sit up front,” he told them.

“Actually, you can drop us off
after
you pick her up,” said Maggie.

“What?”

“We'd like to meet her.”

“And we don't have to be at practice right away,” said May.

Alex cranked his head around to look at his
younger sisters crammed in the backseat behind a bristling fence of weapons. They grinned at him. Alex considered arguing with them but they were too heavily armed.

“Shouldn't you have all that, you know,
weaponry
in a bag or something? What if we have an accident?” On second thought, having an accident wouldn't be so bad. It would save him from having to go through with this date.

“F.E.I.,” said Maggie, whose grasp of acronyms was weak, “Grace took our equipment bag to that hairstyling competition on the mainland and it never came home.”

“Oh,” Alex said, then started the car.

He drove the rumbling muscle car around the RV as slowly as possible, nervous even though his father's truck wasn't in the driveway.

“Don't worry. He's not home,” said May.

“I think he's out with that rich lady again,” said Maggie.

“Have you
seen
her?” asked May. “She needs Hair Club for Men like no woman I've ever seen.”

“She's rich, though,” said Maggie. “I'm hoping she'll want to adopt us. I think it would be a good move for us financially. If she does adopt us, I'm
going to ask for a motorcycle.”

“My guess is that we'll be too busy holding Ms. Reed's hand at her hair transplant surgery for you to have much time for motorcycles,” said May, who was more practical than her sister, but not much.

“I bet the doctors could take the hair from Dad's chest and graft it onto Ms. Reed's head!” mused Maggie. “Then Grace would just have to dye it.”

“What's that smell?” asked May, who wasn't one to give much notice before changing subjects.

Alex didn't answer. His rapidly intensifying headache made speaking seem like a bad idea.

“Is that Stetson?”

“Lawdy, lawdy,” yelled May, “Hawg ain't a cowboy no more, but he sure smells like one.”

Alex hunched lower in his seat and put on his signal for the turn coming up a mere half mile away.

 

In spite of their offer to accompany him, Alex left the twins in the car and walked to Stoneleigh's main building by himself. He slowly followed the woman who answered the door down the hallway. The floor was old linoleum and the dull green wall paint looked like it dated back to the 1970s. Stoneleigh might be a private school for the wealthy, but it was dowdy.

“I can wait here,” Alex protested, as the plaid-skirted woman with swollen ankles and hair in an untidy bun started to lead him into the dining hall.

“That's fine, dear. Cleo asked me to bring you right in.” The woman lowered her voice and leaned in, bathing him with her cigarette breath. “I think she wants to show you off.”

She pushed open fake wood-paneled double doors to reveal a cafeteria that seemed to be on the edge of a riot. Girls' voices and laughter and shouts and shrieks echoed around the room. Dishes crashed and scraped, and cutlery clanked. The place smelled like boiled hot dogs and old gerbil cages.

After she opened the door, Alex's escort stepped aside, leaving him completely exposed. A sea of darkblue school sweaters shifted, and a hundred, two hundred, a thousand heads turned to look at him. There, in the middle, sat Cleo—a patch of bright green—
Dear God, what on earth was she wearing?
—in a sea of navy-blue school sweaters. The cafeteria went quiet.

From where he stood, Alex saw a little smile curl onto Cleo's lips. She made no move to get up.

He started to panic. She had another thing coming if she thought he was going to impersonate
Richard Gere in
An Officer and a Gentleman
and stride over and carry her out.

Luckily his heavy-ankled escort took pity on him, perhaps sensing that he was about to cut and run.

“Miss O'Shea. You have a visitor,” she announced.

Slowly, Cleo rose from her seat, causing her green paisley blouse to billow and ripple around her. She wore a very small white denim skirt. It looked like she'd raided some family's closet and had the mom's clothes on top and the little girl's clothes on the bottom. Head held high, she moved toward the door.

“Hey, O'Shea—you forgot your tray!” said a long-faced girl with brown hair, smirking at the other girls at her table.

Cleo turned, grabbed her meal tray, and set it firmly down in front of the girl who'd spoken.

“Drop that off for me, would you, Bronwen? I've got a date.”

Then Cleo, finally smiling, strode to meet Alex. And in that moment, Alex felt like he could love Cleo O'Shea.

 

The feeling only lasted until Cleo got in the car, or rather until Cleo threw herself into the car. She must have been a little keyed up, because she nearly hit the
roof when one of the twins gave a discreet little cough in the backseat. Cleo twisted around to stare at the twins. Alex suddenly saw his sisters through Cleo's eyes: two identical females with brown hair in tangled ponytails, wearing white pajamas and carrying…knives? Swords? Sticks? Weaponry of some kind. He considered being embarrassed, but then decided he was too tired. He fit the key into the ignition and the IROC's engine resisted once, twice. On the third try it turned over and roared to life.

Maggie leaned forward and stuck a hand over the seat at Cleo. “Hi, I'm…”

Her voice startled Alex into remembering his manners.

“These are my…” he said, raising his voice over the engine, so that he was almost shouting.

“Hi, I'm…” bellowed May.

“You must be…” yelled Cleo.

“Maggie.”

“Sisters.”

“May.”

“Alex's sisters.”

“I think I saw you guys at a horse show once,” said Cleo, cranking her head around. “I just didn't realize you were Alex's sisters.”

“That's because we're allowed to roam freely over a wide area,” said May. “But we are available should a situation arise,” added Maggie mysteriously.

“I'm sorry, I didn't catch that,” said Cleo.

The twins' reply was lost beneath the roar of the car's engine as Alex drove slowly out of the Stoneleigh parking lot.