Free The Boy I Love by Nina de Gramont Page A

didn’t believe me. Everyone always thinks we’re rich because of our horses and property. Little do they know. But if Tim needed any convincing as to our nonwealth, he sure got it when we reached the top of the driveway. Something I hadn’t seen in a long while, anunfamiliar horse trailer, was parked in front of the house. Daisy came running up to greet me and to menace Tim, but even over her barking we could hear Dad loud and clear.
    â€œYou’ve got no business bringing him here,” Dad was yelling at my mother. He doesn’t get mad too often, but when he does, look out. I could feel my face go red, and on top of everything else I thought that if only I were a more loyal friend, I would be witnessing this all alone instead of with Tim standing beside me.
    â€œPlease,” Mom said, her voice full of tears. The man who must have brought the horse stood off to the side with his arms crossed, staring down at the ground like he wished he were anyplace else in the world. I guess the horse was lame, because its back leg was bandaged and Dad was yelling about vet bills.
    â€œYou think you’re doing this animal a favor,” he finished, “but it’s going to end up out on the street along with the rest of us!”
    I figured Tim had heard enough. I touched his elbow and said, “Come on.”
    We walked across our west field toward the barn. Tim didn’t say anything and neither did I. When we got to the barn, I brought him straight over to Pandora. She looked over her stall door all calm and at home, like she couldn’t imagine ever living anywhere else. Last year Mom had gotten an adoption offer for her and turned it down. “Iwon’t give away Wren’s favorite horse,” Mom had told Dad, by way of argument. She had said the same thing when someone wanted to adopt Sombrero, even though he was actually her favorite horse, which Dad knew as well as I did. The way Mom loved her horses was one of the things he loved best about her, and I figured we must be in deep trouble for him to be hollering about it.
    Pandora snuffled her nose at my pocket. Usually I would have brought a sugar cube or carrot for her. “Sorry, girl,” I said, and ran my good palm over the tiny white mark between her eyes, then pressed my nose into the space between her nostrils, the softest thing in the whole wide world.
    Tim petted Pandora’s neck. “She’s beautiful,” he said. I could tell he didn’t plan on saying a word about what we’d just seen, and I felt grateful for that.
    â€œAll the horses are beautiful,” I said. “They’re bred to be fast and strong and beautiful, and people just want to throw them away when they can’t make money anymore, or if they don’t perform the way they wanted them to. If it weren’t for my mom, these horses would be bottles of Elmer’s Glue or cans of Alpo. She’s not being irresponsible. She just wants to save them.”
    Tim didn’t say anything. He just kept petting Pandora’s neck in a way that showed he wasn’t used to horses at all. I introduced him to Brutus, and also Sombrero, whose back was kind of sweaty, with marks from a recent currycomb, soprobably Mom had been riding him that afternoon. As we walked by the tack room, I noticed Dad had left one of his rifles leaning against the wall. This is the kind of thing that infuriates my mother, so I went in and took the key from her desk. “Mom won’t let him keep these in the house,” I told Tim as I put the rifle back in the gun case with the others. I had to hang it up one-handed on account of my bandages. Even though my hand had stopped hurting so bad, it made doing the most regular things just a little bit more difficult.
    â€œWow, look at all those rifles,” Tim said. “My parents don’t have any.”
    â€œDad doesn’t hunt,” I said. “He just likes to shoot at targets that he