Free The Pillow Friend by Lisa Tuttle Page A

monotonous, low, locust-hum that seemed the voice of the heat. A jay screeched overhead and she could hear a fluttering in the branches. She felt tired and thirsty. “Is it much farther?”
    “You're not tired already?”
    She was, already terminally tired and bored. She imagined the next two weeks without company, with nothing to look forward to but the next book, and dull despair settled on her like a smothering blanket. She wished she'd never come. At home, at least, the boredom was familiar and known, and cool, unlike these dim, stifling woods.
    “When we get in we can have a good old talk about what you've been up to since I last saw you.” For the first time Marjorie's voice was kind. “Are you still mad about horses?”
    “Horses?”
    “That was all you could talk about the last time I saw you. Did I know how to ride, had I ever had a horse, could I talk your parents into buying
you
a horse. . . .” She laughed warmly. “I understand completely—I went through a horse-mad phase myself, but we were so poor I never had a chance.”
    The closest Agnes had been to a horse was a ride on a weary Shetland pony tethered in a ring somewhere when she was about six. All she knew about horses had come out of books, and now she remembered that the last time she'd seen Marjorie she'd been in the midst of reading a series of books about a girl learning to ride and becoming a championship show jumper. It had been a brief, literary passion, and although she had occasional fantasies about owning a horse, she hadn't pursued it. If she'd really wanted it, her parents might have agreed to riding lessons. There was a stable with a riding school not far away—she knew a girl who went there. The truth was that she found this girl, like the specialized vocabulary surrounding riding, intimidating; the truth was, she was lazy. The fantasy of riding a horse like the wind, responsive to her every touch, was like the fantasy of being a brilliant dancer—they were what she imagined while riding her bicycle, or skipping around the living room to the strains of “Swan Lake.” She had no wish to spoil the fantasy with the real, hard work of ballet classes or riding lessons.
    But she didn't want to say any of that to Marjorie, who was sounding more like her usual, interested self, so she said, “Yeah, sure, I'd love to have a horse, but where would I keep it? They're expensive to stable, and the backyard isn't big enough, as my dad keeps telling me, so I don't guess I'll ever have one.”
    “Agnes. You can have whatever you want—have you forgotten that already?” Marjorie had stopped walking and now turned on her the full force of her brilliant blue gaze.
    Agnes shrugged uneasily and continued walking.
    “Hey, where are you going? We're home.”
    She had been aware of a building on their right but hadn't paid any attention to it because it was an old empty shack. Now she gave a little half-smile. “Oh, sure. Right.”
    “This is where I live.”
    “You're kidding!”
    Marjorie frowned and shook her head. “What's the matter?” She hoisted the bags out of the wagon and said, “Well, you can stay outside if you want, but I need something to drink, myself.”
    She couldn't believe her eyes. An old, unpainted, weather-beaten wooden house with a tar paper roof, it looked as if it would fall down in the next high wind. How could that be home? The high windows were screened and curtained, but there were no other signs of civilization: no neighboring houses, no driveway or paved road, not even a mailbox or a telephone pole. But Marjorie was going inside, so Agnes went up the steps after her.
    Inside, though, it was different, obviously lived in. It was a real home, decently if sparsely furnished, clean and tidy, with pale painted walls and wooden floors that smelled of the polish her mother used at home. It was a square box partitioned into four rooms of roughly the same size, with no connecting passages. The living room opened onto a