Deanna’s whole town was in love with horses. Everywhere smelled of manure, impossible to track to a single pair of shoes. We flew by yellow road signs warning not of children playing, but of hidden horse trails just out of sight. People plucked coarse hair from their flannel as they shopped, and let it fall without thought.
I walked among them in embarrassingly new sneakers, smelling of nothing but sandalwood; a cheap and generic signature in a world so full of caricatured scents. We had only gone to the store for a citronella candle to save me at the barbeque that evening, where her father would comment again on my fair skin and how red mosquito bites make it.
His expression would say what his mouth wouldn’t speak aloud. That his daughter was dating a woman was one thing; that his daughter was dating a wimp was near unforgivable.
The kid in front of us in line maintained eye contact with the faded skull design printed on my shirt. He picked his nose with his horse-scented hands, and put everything on his fingers directly into his mouth. He was gripping his mom’s jacket, the knees of his pants nearly worn to nothing. I studiously observed a display of fly traps to avoid the cringeworthy reality of my pre-torn jeans.
“That’s not what skulls look like.” The kid informed me, his tone condescending.
Beside me, Deanna grabbed the back of my shirt to shake me in silent amusement.
“You see a lot of skulls?” I asked before I could think better of it.
“Yeh.” The kid replied.
I glanced at his mom. She was ignoring him and me both. Could have been worse. People like me don’t always get the good grace of being ignored by parents.
“Mine looks like this.” I told him with a shrug, pointing at my own shirt.
“You only got six teeth, then,” he said.
Walking back to the car, Deanna told me: “I’m calling you six teeth from now on.”
“Aren’t horse people supposed to be all about not looking in mouths?” I tried to joke.
It wasn’t a good joke, but I was still thinking about the horseshoe hanging above the automatic door of the Dollar General. It made me feel…off. Strange. Like going on a swingset when I was a kid–That heavy rush of blood in your head on the arc down, where your body can’t quite figure out how to compensate for the force around you.
The car was filling up with the citronella and sandalwood smell, burning from chemicals and the too-cold AC. It made me miss the scent of manure and the too-warm box store. Deanna was drumming on the steering wheel, even though the radio was off, like she was hearing something I couldn’t. At the time, I kept thinking about her hand on the back of my shirt, just over the line of my belt, shaking me in silent amusement as a child who ate boogers judged my fashion sense. Now, when I remember it, I remember her drumming. One two three four, one two three four, one two three four.
“I’m not supposed to be here,” I said. It was so stupid that by the time I finished the sentence I was already trying to take it back. “I mean, not that I don’t want to be here! Your family’s been really cool, and it’s– There’s– Trees are nice?”
She didn’t laugh. Her lips twitched up, like she knew she was supposed to smile. Then her cheeks hollowed out as she sucked on her own tongue, or the tobacco she’d been chewing since we got there. I hated the flavor, so she’d carried gum in her pocket to cover it up. I loved her too much to tell her that the coverup tasted worse than just the tobacco would have. Her car thumped over something hard, and lurched, but by the time I whipped back to look, she was already snickering at me.
“Trees.” She repeated after me, gesturing. “The roots get under the roads. Buckle the pavement.”
“Ah,” I said, trying to think how to say ‘I miss potholes, those made sense’ without digging my hole deeper. There was no way to say it. I held my tongue and became hyper-aware of the chemical scent of my deodorant, of the way the candle smell was making my pulse pound in my head. I wanted to ask about the Dollar General’s horseshoe. I wanted to ask her why things were like this–why she was like this.
“Sorry,” I said instead after a while. “I’ll try to…To enjoy this. It’s your home.”
She didn’t say anything. Her lips pursed a little, and her cheeks were still hollow, but her eyes stayed focused on the road. Calm. She wasn’t drumming on the steering wheel anymore.
“Just come on one ride with me,” she said. “That’s all I ask.”
Her voice was different there, in that town. I knew that I knew her– I’d known her for years– but that place made a stranger of her. I looked out the window, and saw shapes moving in the trees. For a moment I almost spoke up to alert her, but they weren’t rare, pale deer. Just horses moving through the trees, just beyond the two-lane road. There must have been a riding trail back there. With all the stop signs, slow downs, and trail crossings she’d been pausing for, they were nearly going faster than we were.
And, I realized as she lifted two fingers in a hello while waiting for a girl on a pony to trot across the road, she was already very, very familiar with them. It was only strange and fey to me, because it turned out what I thought was strange and fey was just someone else’s Dollar General.
Seven different people said some variation of: “Better than that city Barbecue, right?” to me that evening while I hovered by the citronella candle like a mosquito on opposite day. I ‘Mmhmm!’d around mouthfuls of dry chicken because I’ve never eaten red meat but I would have died before telling her family that. And my dead skull would have had six teeth. Embarrassing.
I wanted to put my headphones on and wander off, but this wasn’t one of my family gatherings, where they would say “She’s just like that” and I would get to go. This was her family. Her family, clustered as close to her as I was to the mosquito repellant.
Her mom looked over, and I summoned a smile. I was wearing powder, because I like my powder, but I felt naked without the rest of my makeup. The powder was bad enough. It marked me pale and other among those people, who wiped sweat onto their sleeves while taking turns at a grill I would only fuck up if I tried to take a turn. There was a horse pun on the flag outside her parent’s house, which was right there, but for some reason everyone wanted to be outside that evening. There weren’t even stars. It was cloudy.
But no one went past the “Nothing Like a STABLE Home!” flag to head inside. Mostly not even to piss. The guys wandered off towards the woods instead of into the perfectly good house. There were a lot of people, but I don’t know if everyone there was related to her. I was too afraid to ask.
“Better than that city barbecue, right?” said the eighth person, and I took a big mouthful of meat so I only had to smile and “Mmhmm!” in answer.
“For God’s sake, stop suffering.” Deanna said, laughing as she appeared. She shouldered Mr. Eight out of the way, with a good-natured huff, took my plate of dry chicken, and said: “Come with me.”
I went with her.
She grabbed a bottle as we walked, and poured something heavy, yellow, and sweet-smelling over the chicken, then ate it herself as we walked further and further from the light and the talking.
“We don’t have to go.” I said. “You’re having fun. And everyone’s being really nice.”
“Next time put some sauce on your meat, you weirdo.” She accused instead of answering. She had a dot of that sauce on the corner of her lips, mustard yellow. I wanted to lick it off. I don’t know why I didn’t. I would have if we were at home. No one could have seen us out in the woods– no one would have cared– but I still didn’t. My knees were showing through my expensive, torn jeans. They were so pale it was like they were glowing in the dim light. I felt watched, judged, found wanting.
“This is weird.” I told her. Then quickly added: “Not because of you.”
“I like that you’re different.” She said, holding the empty paper plate by her side, chewing on the plastic fork.
“I don’t.”
She didn’t answer for a while. She walked easily, like she wasn’t scared of stepping on anything, even though the grass was sort of high, and things kept crunching, and moving. Gravel, I realized at last, something tight unleashing in my chest. There must have been gravel under the grass. It must have been gravel.
“I guess I just thought we spoke the same language,” I said, which was dumb, but also true. “Like, I knew we were different, but now I think maybe I’m just…”
“You’re just what?” Her voice was doing that thing it’d been doing since we arrived. I’d never heard her talk in such a monotone. It wasn’t bad. It was cute, honestly. But I didn’t know which one was the mask. Which one was the chameleon changing color to blend in, and which was the real her.
“I don’t even like horses.”
It wasn’t what I wanted to say, but it was close enough. She was limitless, a thousand things I’d never seen before, and I didn’t even like horses.
She stopped walking, so I stopped too. I didn’t know where we’re going anyway.
“Ever met one?”
The citronella smell was gone, and the mosquitos had found my soft skin, worming sharp mouth-parts into me and taking what they wanted. It made me feel like squealing and scrubbing my hands over my arms in discomfort. I wanted to tell her ‘I don’t care if I’ve met a horse or not; they’re stupid, and I don’t like animals, and you knew that when we started.’
I wanted to ask if she expected me to change, like my mom did when she set me up with boy after boy. I wanted to ask if she was hoping I’d just meet the right horse some day. The thought made me stifle a laugh. It also made me feel a little sick. Or maybe that was the dry chicken, and the three beers, and the eyes of two dozen people I [didn’t know, seeing ripped jeans and a powder-pale face, and skinny knees.
Instead I said: “No,” wishing she’d left me by the picnic table with the candle and the dry chicken, and the horse-pun flag disappearing in the dusk until only the word ‘STABLE’ still stood out in its hokey cursive.
“Then come on.” she said, and turned back to walking.
The fireflies made me anxious. I couldn’t slap the mosquitos on my arms anymore, because if I squished a firefly I’d feel like shit. They danced thick in the night, not hurting anybody, and I still managed to hate them. We walked through three screaming gates to get there, swinging open and shut wide around our small bodies. She stopped to re-tie each one closed behind us.
When we arrived at the stable, it surprised me that she flicked a lightswitch outside and a bunch of lights came on. It wasn’t like we’d entered the dark ages. It made sense that stables would have lights. It still felt weird.
Things moved inside. Things lived inside.
“They open gates?” I asked, gesturing back towards the gates she tied shut. It felt safer to ask now, with the lights on all around us.
“They might.” Deanna shrugged. “That’d suck.”
“Sure.”
“Ever seen a horse get hit by a car?”
I blinked. The floor was churned mulch, soft and yielding. The barn was full of soft, hushed noises I didn’t recognize.
“No.”
“Me neither.” She opened the door, “I’d like to keep it that way.”
I don’t know what I was expecting when she opened it. I’d seen the sort of movies she likes. Horse-heads peeking over stable doors to say hello to the teary-eyed college girl coming home. She didn’t get teary, though, and the horses didn’t peek.
It smelled like manure. That smell had been my favorite part of the whole trip, and I hated that about myself.
“They’re just animals, I guess, really.” She left my side to go to the third stall. The first two were empty when I looked. “Like them or don’t. I like them.”
“Okay.” I said, following after her. She looked like she didn’t know what to do with the paper plate, so I took it from her. She let herself into the stall. There was a horse inside. It was big. That’s about as much as I could tell about it. It was big, brown, and it didn’t move as much as I’d thought it would. It just stood, head down, drowsy. I watched her lean against its side with the same feeling about her that she had when she dropped onto our couch; a sort of hedonistic relief.
“Come on. He’s gentle.”
“I’m fine out here.”
“Coward,” she said. Not teasing. Fact.
“Who do you really want to be here with?” The words boiled as they came out of me. I’m always boiling when I feel left behind. “Doesn’t seem like it’s me.”
“It’s you,” she confirmed, solid. “This would be good for you. Get in here.”
“I’m going back.”
She sighed behind me, as disappointed as babushka was the last time she saw me. My eyes were too hot, and my body was too hot, and the heavy, wet air outside did nothing to cool me. The main house wasn’t even a blur in the night, just a distant porch light through the woods, flickering as the dumb flag twisted in front of it. In the distance, there was lightning, out so far over those flat pastures that it didn’t make a sound. There was no rain in the forecast. It was just heat lightning.
I’d always liked how people could put words like ‘just’ and ‘lightning’ together in the same sentence. It didn’t give me a lot of joy that night, though. I remember thinking: “This was a mistake.” Maybe more than that. Maybe I had been a mistake for her. Her robust body, and her happy family and their easy acceptance of all the pieces of her. It didn’t mesh with a person like me.
I could hear her starting to close the barn behind me. My shadow stretched before my feet, and any second it would get swallowed up by all the other darkness when she turned off the barn lights, and I would be alone until she came to find the path. I would be alone, without even the stars, because it was cloudy, and hot, and awful, and I was–
Something big moved in the pasture. My head jerked up, staring towards what I thought was just more nothing. Or, not, ‘nothing,’ but normal. Just the nighttime being dark. But as my eyes tried to focus on the movement in the shadows, I realized the dancing fireflies didn’t show there. There was a gap in the night, a big thing, standing. More still than I thought it would be.
“Hey,” I said, and my voice sounded…weird. Like it wasn’t supposed to be there.
The something was still for a moment. Then it turned, and started to run.
There’s this instinct thing that happens to me sometimes. It happened when I saw a building on fire on campus. I just ran to it. It was stupid. Deanna had called me a dumb moth afterwards, chasing the light. No one got hurt but me. It should have taught me a lesson.
But her voice in my head was saying “Ever seen a horse get hit by a car?” and I could see headlights where the road was. They danced with the fireflies, and the absence of fireflies in the dark charged towards them. I’d felt small and stupid the whole time we were there. I didn’t belong in her home, with her people. I didn’t even like horses, but fuck– I vaulted the fence– fuck I didn’t want to see a horse get hit by a car. I didn’t want to see the car after. I didn’t want to know what would happen to the people inside.
Deanna was yelling behind me, but she’d been yelling behind me at the fire too. The absence of fireflies in front of me moved with all the drumming thunder that the distant lightning lacked, one two three four, one two three four, and my feet churned across the field behind it.
“Stop!” I yelled at it, as if a horse was a dog– as if that would work on dogs even.
There was the sound of a gate screaming open behind me. There was the yelling of other voices. I just chased the absence of fireflies in the dark, further and further from the light of the barn, closer and closer to the road.
A human can’t catch up to a running horse, but it must not have been running as fast as it could, I thought. Maybe this was a game to it. Maybe it just didn’t expect a scrawny thing like me to be carrying trackstar credentials. Headlights screamed through the dark, and fireflies danced on the roadside, and I grabbed long, heavy hair in the absence of fireflies and pulled.
The car passed. The run stopped. My hands got colder, and colder, and colder. In the tail lights, I saw my breath cloud. I saw the absence of fireflies, and it saw me. In the emptiness of its eyes, I saw a boy eating boogers saying: ‘I know what skulls look like.’ I saw the translucent darkness crawling over my hands.
Cold slipped through my fingers, and I let it go. Thunder was approaching behind me. Cold touched my cheek, soft and slow. I know what it looked like. The thing that touched my cheek. I know what it was. It knows what I am. It took a slow, hollow, whistling breath against me, then jerked in place, nose lifting from my cheek, body turning back the way I came. There was a screaming, animal sound–a whinny piercing the night. I jolted in place, and the absence of fireflies was gone, across the road in complete darkness, without a headlight to be seen. Maybe, I thought, I’d saved it. Maybe.
Deanna threw herself off the big brown horse she had ridden bareback to me. She wrapped her arms around me, talking too fast for me to understand. She took my freezing, shaking hands and pulled me with her. She wrapped my arms around a warm, solid weight. The horse’s neck. It bent its head over my shoulder, hot, heavy breath pouring down my back.
“That wasn’t a horse.” I said aloud, monotone.
“Hug him.” Deanna ordered. I made a sound in my throat to tell her I heard. “Did it touch you?”
I made another sound. “I touched it first.”
I tried to make it a joke. It wasn’t. My numb fingers twined into the wiry mane of the big, breathing thing in front of me. It was warm.
“My hands.” I corrected myself. “My face.”
She grabbed my chin. It wasn’t gentle. She slid her hands up, cupping my face. Her palm burned where the absence nuzzled against me.
“Fuck,” She whispered, and leaned in to kiss me. Hard, and steady, beneath the head of the enormous horse that was basically keeping me upright. “Fuck. Next time I tell you to hug a horse, you hug a horse.”
“Who was she?” I asked, voice raw. “What did she want?”
“Doesn’t matter.” Deanna answered, going to one knee by the big brown horse’s side. “Step up in my hands and hop up. We’re taking you home.”
Everyone in her family looked at my hands and face. I didn’t then, and I still don’t now. I know what it looks like. I know I don’t have six teeth.
Deanna’s mom gave me a necklace braided out of horse hair. It was itchy. I bowed my head to accept it from her. I’m still wearing it now. The big brown horse from the stable stayed at the barbeque, standing close by while I huddled against it by the table with the citronella candle. Deanna sat beside me, and rubbed my thigh, up and down.
Her whole hometown is in love with horses. I always smell like them now.
