Free Gift Horse by Dandi Daley Mackall

telling M all about my mom. It was weird. I kept talking and talking, telling stories about horses she’d gentled, about mares we’d seen foal. I guess M didn’t talk, didn’t keep asking me questions out loud, but I felt like I was answering them all the same.
    As I talked about Mom, I felt that familiar stab in my chest. But as much as it hurt to talk about her, it also felt good to remember, to picture her and know she was still a part of my life. I wondered if that’s what Ralph’s prophet guy was warning Mary about, that her heart would hurt and feel good at the same time.
    When Lizzy was little, she used to talk about good hurt and bad hurt. Bad hurt was falling off her bike and skinning her knee. Good hurt was getting a splinter taken out or feeling the sting of antiseptic.
    â€œMy dad didn’t have anything to do with Mom’s horse business in Wyoming,” I continued. “I was pretty sure he didn’t even like horses. That’s why it was really something when he came up with the idea for me to be Winnie the Horse Gentler here. I thought he was starting to like Nickers and appreciate the other horses I worked with. Now I don’t know.”
    When I finally shut up, M nodded, as if I’d answered all his questions. I studied his face, which was too wrinkled for an eighth-grader, his black ponytail, his black eyes that let me see myself in them. My mom would have liked M.
    He walked out of Nickers’ stall and back to Gracie and rested his head against her side. “Hey, small horse. I’m M. How’s it going in there? We’re out here getting ready for your coming-out party. But you take all the time you need. We’ll be right here.”
    â€œCookies!” Lizzy swept into the barn with an aluminum-foil-covered plate. The warm, sweet aroma mixed with the great smells of hay and horse.
    â€œI’m starving, Lizzy!” I shouted. “What kind of cookies?”
    â€œHot-dog cookies!” she exclaimed.
    Nickers snorted. I did the same. I’d tried Lizzy’s oatmeal pie, tuna squares, beef candy, and peanut-butter-and-jelly, three-layer cake. But I have my limits. “Elizabeth Willis, that sounds totally—”
    â€œâ€”creative,” M finished. He lifted the foil and sniffed. “Definitely hot dog.”
    â€œGeri said that Steven said that his brother said Catman said you liked hot dogs.” My sister was talking trotter speed. “But it’s not all that creative. True, I may be the first to develop an edible hot-dog cookie. But Geri told me about this place called Mad Martha’s on Martha’s Vineyard in Massachusetts or one of those old states, which is where Geri got to go visit her aunt who has all this money, even though the rest of the family doesn’t. Anyway, Mad Martha’s had hot-dog ice cream on the menu! Geri didn’t try it, so we don’t know if it was any good.”
    M ended up eating four cookies on the spot and taking the rest home with him.

    Tuesday after school, Catman took a turn at helping me exercise Gracie. He loved leading the mare outside in the cold of the paddock. He would have kept it up for hours if I hadn’t stopped him.

    Wednesday both M and Catman came over after school. We trimmed Gracie’s hooves and gave her a horse massage.
    In the evening, we stopped over at Barkers’ to check on the puppies. Granny, Mr. and Mrs. Barker, Barker, Matthew, Mark, Luke, Johnny, and William were all decorating the biggest Christmas tree I’d ever seen. I didn’t have to touch it to know it was real. The whole house smelled like pine.
    Mrs. Barker brought out Christmas cookies, which Catman and M downed in two minutes, while Macho, Johnny’s black-and-tan hunting dog, watched, his tail thumping the wood floor in time to the Christmas music piped through the house. Luke’s Chihuahua yapped, while Matthew and his bulldog, Bull,