Free Cryer's Cross by Lisa McMann

Stanford. Now I’ve messed up his chances at a scholarship.” Her voice quivers. “Did he seem mad?”
    Kendall remembers the scene in the truck and presses her lips together. “Not more than usual,” she says lightly.
    “Oh, God. I feel so bad.” Marlena starts crying.
    “Aw, shit,” Kendall says, going over to her, sitting on the floor. “Come on, Marlena, it’s not your fault. Nico’sgone too. We’ve never lost two players at a time, and we were already down one from last year. It’s not just you.”
    Jacián comes into the house and heads straight down a hallway, still wearing his cleats. Kendall hears a door shut and then the sound of water rushing through pipes on the other side of the wall as he turns on the shower. Her mind wanders for a minute and she shakes her head, embarrassed.
    Marlena stares off out the window, a forlorn look on her face. Kendall laces and unlaces her fingers, holding each position to the count of six. When the phone rings, she stretches to reach it from the coffee table and hands it to Marlena.
    “Hello?”
    Marlena listens for a second and then says, “He just came in; he’s in the shower. Have him call you back?” She pauses again and says, “Okay. Bye.”
    Kendall looks at Marlena, mildly curious.
    “His girlfriend,” she says. “Back in Arizona.”
    “Ah.” Kendall picks up a magazine and pages through it idly. How Jacián managed to get a girlfriend is beyond her comprehension. “Is he always so ornery?”
    “Nah. He just hates it here.”
    “So he tries to make everybody else’s life miserable too?”
    Marlena sighs. “I guess. But seriously, since we movedhere, nothing has gone right for him. Back in Arizona he had a weekend job at an indoor soccer arena, which he loved. He had a summer job at a soccer camp in the mountains that he had to give up because my parents made him work here on the ranch. He had his girlfriend, and a huge class AA school with a terrific soccer team.
    “We finished school there and moved here, and within a week Sheriff Greenwood and the state police were knocking at the door and insinuating all sorts of crappy things. And then Grandpa put Jacián to work chasing down cattle and delivering meat. We didn’t have a clue what we’d be doing here.” She shifts, trying to get more comfortable. “He was pretty happy about the soccer team once he saw you all play, ‘cause most of you are not bad, and it was so cool that Coach was doing so much to get a scout to come out to Bozeman for a game. But now that’s over too.” She sets the phone on the coffee table again. “And he’s fighting with his girlfriend.”
    “He’s fighting with everyone,” Kendall says. The water shuts off.
    Marlena shrugs. “He’s really not a bad guy. He’s actually got a very sweet side.”
    “Well, what about you?” Kendall asks. “What did you leave behind? Do you hate it here too?” Kendall feels a bit of protectiveness bubble up. She knows very well that Cryer’s Cross is an odd kind of town and that things movea little slower out here than they do in big cities. She knows that riding your horse into town is unheard of in the rest of the country, but here it happens now and then with one of the old-timers.
    Marlena smiles. “Me? Oh, I love it out here. It’s so pretty with all the mountains, and the air is so clean, and you can see the stars. I’m glad we got to move here. Living in the hot, dirty city—it just wasn’t my gig.”
    “Well, that’s cool. Do you think your parents will stay out here? Like, for a year, or indefinitely?” Kendall hears a door open, and a moment later another door closes.
    “I think we’re here forever, as long as my grandfather is. It’s kind of tradition with our culture, you know? It’s very important to my mom that we take care of Grandpa now that he needs help.”
    “That’s cool. I like that.” Kendall hugs her knees and rests her chin on them. She likes Marlena. It’s actually not bad having a