Free Cream of the Crop by Alice Clayton Page B

Why, what’s up?” Leo asked, tucking into another meatball. “Watch what you’re doing there, Sugar Snap, don’t unravel one of my favorite tees. I only saw the Pixies play live once.”
    â€œI was just thinking it might be fun for Natalie to see that, to watch you moving the cows,” Roxie answered, still picking at his T-shirt. Leo absently put a hand over hers, stopping her from unraveling the whole thing. I couldn’t blame her; what a grand sight that’d be.
    â€œSure thing, you want to come tomorrow around noon?”
    â€œAnd get the opportunity to say I literally saw the cows come home? I wouldn’t miss it.” I turned toward Polly. “I’m going to meet a moo cow tomorrow, want to come along?”
    â€œThey’re not moo cows, they’re Guernseys and Brown Swiss.” She blinked. “And I have school tomorrow.”
    â€œAh. Of course,” I replied. Speaking of schooled . . . “Okay, so tomorrow I’ll swing by the farm after my meeting with Chad. Sounds like a plan.”
    â€œSounds great,” Roxie said, grinning broadly.

Chapter 6
    A nyone who tells you a good night’s sleep in the country is a cure for all ills has never actually slept in the country.
    Between the crickets, the owls, the wind howling, the trees scraping against the windows, and the creakiest, squeakiest bed in America, I barely slept a wink.
    And just when I’d gotten the tiniest bit used to the cacophony of sound going on outside in the Wild Kingdom, everything stopped. The wind died down, the trees stopped scraping, the crickets and owls agreed with each other that it was time to take five, and it was like the world outside went on permanent mute.
    The world inside dwindled down to the occasional creak from my bed, the ticktock of a grandfather clock downstairs, and my breathing, which sounded loud in the silent room.
    Where was the hustle? Where was the bustle? Where were the sirens and the horns honking and the people, for Christ’s sake, that you could always count on for background noise at all hours of the day and night?
    Silence pressed in on me from every direction, convincing me that Roxie had faded away and it was just me left alone tobattle the shadows from a thousand nearly empty trees outside, silhouetted by an angry pumpkin moon gazing down on this land that time forgot.
    When it’s quiet in the country, it’s all too easy to imagine a man in a plaid shirt striding out of the woods. Peering at your farmhouse from across the field, wondering if there was a buxom city girl curled up in a squeaky bed upstairs, too pretty to be killed off at the beginning of a horror movie, but kept alive for something truly terrible somewhere near the end of the third act.
    Yeah, sleeping in the country isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

    â€œHow’d you sleep?” Roxie asked brightly as I staggered downstairs the next morning, following the smell of coffee that beckoned like an olfactory pied piper.
    â€œI hate you,” I muttered, pushing my hair back from my bleary face. She rolled her eyes and handed me a cup of coffee, which I grasped like a talisman. “I love you.”
    â€œYou’re so dramatic.”
    â€œI agree.” I sighed, sinking into a chair at her table. “How long did it take you to get used to sleeping with all that racket?”
    â€œWhat racket? I didn’t hear a peep.”
    â€œYeah, that’s the other thing. It’s either as loud as Mardi Gras out there, or the sound of silence. What’s up with that?”
    â€œI grew up with it so I barely notice it anymore. Of course, I don’t sleep much anyway.”
    Roxie had had insomnia since she was a kid. “That getting any better?”
    A content look crossed her face. “It’s funny, but ever since Leo and I, you know . . .”
    â€œStarted fucking?”
    â€œStarted seeing each other