Chapter One of Shy Roan

She got me mums. They were waiting on the windowsill, the rust and mustard pompoms wobbling their little homecoming cheer from a foil-wrapped plastic pot that shot disco rays over the bedspread. In the spirit of fresh starts and a bushier tail, I braced myself against the snarky gut instinct to graciously regift them to the dumpster. Let the record show, however, that mums are the dandelion’s cousins of privilege.

I hold this truth to be self-evident.

I much preferred wild flowers, or roses. But those were for glamor moods, when I felt like running a midnight bath in heels, Chet Baker Sings on the gramophone—not that I’d had the drama of a midnight bath, or heels, or a gramophone, which I wouldn’t know from a phonograph or a record player. It just sounded nice. But roses were lavish and baby’s breath appropriated by the indie bridal market, so I’d have to grin and bear the mums from Costco. They would test my patience, the perky bastards, with their tart reminder that she and I were practically strangers who knew nothing but birthday card sentiments of each other, but I could tolerate them if only for the challenge of moral betterment. More than that—and bravado aside—I could appreciate the friendly gesture.

As for the rest of the room, I couldn’t decide what looked sillier: the flowers, glaring pep in intrusive technicolor, or the eggshell walls, bleach carpet and ivory bedspread. The décor could have recreated sanatorium living. No Touch. It was the opposite of my bedroom back home, where I’d cultivated an old-fashioned library vision of books, paintings, candles and rugs patterned in greens, blues and maroons of English brooding and passion.

I tested the bed with a ginger press of my knee and almost started to find the give of a mattress, having expected a plank on coils.

It was a long day. Unpack, I told myself. I unzipped my suitcase and tossed sweaters into the ancient walnut bureau opposite the bed. An oval mirror quivered on top to the jerk and scuff of each drawer, and out the corner of my eye I caught flashes of my own movement, along with travel-frazzled hair and road red skin.

I’d find a new room for that mirror, hang a canvas in its stead. I could paint something new, pitch my easel somewhere local. The neighborhood threaded a series of forested hills that were bound to see an incredible sunrise on their lakeside descent.

Or leave it blank.

An empty, square canvas would really play up the stark charm of the place.

It shouldn’t have bothered me. I should have put my stuff in order without complaint and gone to help my mother in the kitchen, but I didn’t drive all this way, building up the fantasy of a blank slate, only to be find myself dragging baggage from Dad’s or lobotomized by Mom’s.

It was a stupid problem, aggravated by eighteen hours of overcast highway and criminally unkempt gas stop bathrooms, blown further out of proportion by the fucking mums. I considered dragging my half-empty suitcase back to my trusty Chevy Spark and curling up under the pitted windshield.

I’d pegged too much on the day, hadn’t I? It was just one of an unknown quantity, stuffed rancid with expectation. This wasn’t a substitution of persons and lives, after all. It was just a homecoming.

I could be prickly. When the mood struck, I could spin outrage into a lovely little hobby and manage to prick myself like some thin-skinned hedgehog overlooked by natural selection.

“Dinner!”

Ugh.

Like that. Mom’s voice wobbled down the hall in a singsong that set my jaws winching like a vise.

The thick, frenchy smell of roast chicken wafted into the bedroom. It made me see Mom in a pink frill apron, the antithesis of her usual stiff angles and bleeding colors. Mom worked at a library where the dress code seemed to be gothic-owlish-chic.

“In a minute,” I called. With a kick of the suitcase under the porcelain dust ruffle, I finished unpacking. There. It was like I’d lived there my entire life. A plain, perhaps unhinged, life.

Prophetic or fitting?

We ate dinner cold by the time I sat down, with chirps of small talk between scrapes of silverware. Mostly toasts to the future, to my goals for the coming school year. It felt like New Year’s at a great-aunt’s house, just questions and answers volleying back and forth over the mashed potatoes. Just as I remember, with the rosemary and garlic.

“You’re sure your credits have transferred?”

“Yes.”

An icy yes. We had had this conversation at least once a day for the past two weeks.

She chewed her green beans in silent suspicion, then relented. “Exciting first day tomorrow.”

I looked out the window, past our upright reflections, toward the primly pruned houses across the street. “I can’t really picture a lot of high schoolers living here. It’ll be fun to confirm their existence.”

“I know lots of people with kids your age.” Mom sounded surprised, mildly indignant.

“Any neighbors?”

“Not immediately. Across the start are the Dunnes, and they just sent their son to college. Well-spoken guy, good-looking. Wants to be a surgeon.” She looked at me as if I should be taking notes. I smiled and forked some green beans into my mouth.

“Through the living room you’ll see the Melbournes at 401 and out your window, across the garden, there’s the Livingstones, 398. They have twins in the second grade and, let me tell you,” she said, raising her eyebrows meaningfully, “if you want to crack the babysitting business, start on the other side of town.”

I grinned. “Are they the neighborhood menaces?”

Mom pursed her lips as if she’d said too much. As if we were gossiping church marms with tea and embroidery instead of store-bought rotisserie between us. “Devon’s a good little guy, but Winnie’s got an attitude. She doesn’t mind and talks back. The mother lets her run wild.”

“She’ll burn out.”

Mom watched me like an egg about to roll off the counter. “We’ll have to see. When she comes around with the cookie clipboard, you be the judge.”

I was a Girl Scout, once upon a time. Sort of. We were the Daisies, the youngest troop they offer, and rather than the scouts’ brown or green vests, we wore blue smocks. Dad wanted me to meet other girls my age, but I was in it for the adventures they’d printed in the fliers around school. Camping, volunteer trips, crafts and games. I joined Troop 304 with a lunchbox stuffed for sharing and high socks for the wilderness.

Troop 304 never left the classroom.

We did girly things. I mean, 1950s housewifery things, from folding napkins to answering the phone. Anything in the eye of polite society and mild creativity we did with aplomb until we were crying with boredom.

After fulfilling the one-year minimum—Dad hellbent on teaching me responsibility and commitment—I defected with another girl, my ferocious best friend Maya. Her family owned a barn off the interstate. That’s where I fell in love with riding. Dad would never have been able to put me through lessons. The rates were criminal. They made sense, given the expense of caring for the horses, there was all the additional bullshit—blazers and boots, personalized tack, membership fees, competition buy-ins. With a twisted sense of humor, they made you pony up.

Hanging out at Maya’s, though, I got to learn with her. We’d groom and muck stalls, and in between classes we’d exercise the horses. My riding was a service to the barn. And I rode well. You never saw a bent or backward gate with me in the saddle. They lent me gear and sponsored me through the barn while I won ribbons and showed all of Guthrie, Oklahoma that Larkspur Farms made champions.

I learned to ride on a plain and dull roan named Roger. He had a feisty attitude and a penchant for knocking his riders’ legs into the fenceposts. And then there was Hestia.

“Tom?”

I blinked. Mom was looking at me. “What did you say?”

“I said, Are you looking forward to your first day?”

I gave a responsibly nervous answer. Secretly, I looked forward to school. Maybe it was some perverse curiosity, a starvation for adventure or gluttony for embarrassment, but I couldn’t help feeling a little excited at being the new kid. It wasn’t really the attention that appealed to me, but the possibility and the lack of pressure. I didn’t know the kids, or the school, so I could pretty much act how I liked and blame it on my Oklahoma upbringing. I could be the weirdo that didn’t know any better, some gunslinging hick with tobacco teeth.

I’d need a better excuse, though. I didn’t want to draw attention to the life I’d left behind. Easier if less people knew about it.

Easier, still, if I forgot.

I did the dishes, scalding my hands to angry red scales, and I went back to my room to pick an outfit. I was over the flash of first impressions, which for me didn’t matter. It was the second ones that were worth a damn, when you learn whether people really fit their first pose. I ended up with a white long-sleeve top, jeans and boots. Simple was the way to go. Nothing to see.

Then I saw the missed calls on my phone. I’d missed Nel, twice. I desperately needed a shower, and all I wanted was to flake like a sundried worm into bed, but I couldn’t leave him high and dry. Not Nel.

The line rang once, then clicked. The silence on the other end meant I’d have to grovel.

 “Hey, Nel,” I said.

“That bad, huh?”

“You know I missed you the second I left the driveway.” This was depressing. I did my best to perk up my voice. “I’m tired is all.”

“Betrayal does that to you.”

 “Then what’re you doing, taking a traitor’s calls, huh?”

But I wasn’t in too much a gloating mood. Nel was probably calling from his usual duvet sprawl. I wondered if Dad was listening from downstairs, his ear through the banister like a dog’s pining snout.

“How is he?”

“He reorganized the spice cabinet. Now he’s watching the John Wayne VCRs. It’s only a matter of time before the photo albums.” The line went quiet, crackling with his breaths. I pictured Dad going about his Sunday, grasping for distraction. “We miss you.”

I closed my eyes. Nel was my best friend. I’m not sure I was his, but I knew that no matter how I reasoned with him, and how much he extended me the benefit of the doubt, on some gut level he must have thought I abandoned him.

I had left him just today at the foot of the driveway, a red hoodie in the predawn dark. “I’m sorry,” I said.

“Just come back.” I could feel the rip of longing and hurt his throat. It broke my heart.

“Come on, Nel. By the time school starts, you’ll be so busy with cross country and general menacing, you’ll forget all about me.”

“I wouldn’t,” he said, biting, as if I were doing just that to him and Dad.

We said our goodbyes. I kicked some tossing room into my toe-crushingly tight sheets, set an early alarm, and took half a NyQuil for a long, dreamless sleep .            

Nel was right.