Nacho Figueras Presents Read Online Free PDF Page B

night, the breeze would come in from the desert and it smelled like sage, and warm sand, and the enormous hedge of rosemary that grew out back.”
    “ Qúe paz ,” he said.
    She nodded and smiled. “It was.” Without thinking, she settled in a little closer to him. “Anyway, what I loved most of all was that just down the road, there was an enormous ranch. And they kept horses. A whole herd of scraggly, half-wild little mustangs that were basically allowed to roam free from sunup to sundown, feeding on scrub brush. In fact, I don’t think I ever saw them get called in. I used to go down there every day after school. My mom was always either painting—that was her ‘red period’ as she called it—and didn’t want to be disturbed, or sleeping, because she was usually out all night.”
    “She left you alone?” said Enzo. “But you were so young. Weren’t you scared?”
    She shrugged. “I was used to it. Anyway, I’d always bring some carrots or an apple to the ponies, and at first I’d just stand at the fence, hoping the horses would come to me, but they were skittish, you know? I couldn’t get them to trust me, so I’d throw the food over the fence and watch them eat from afar. But one day, this little black and white spotted mare came up close enough to grab a carrot and run, and then after that she came back for an apple.”
    Enzo smiled. “The smartest one, eh?”
    Noni nodded solemnly. “She was, for sure. So I fed her every day for about a week, and pretty soon she was letting me pet her and scratch her, and then, not long after that, she’d actually come running every time she saw me walking down the road.”
    Enzo smoothed a lock of hair from her cheek and tucked it behind her ear. It immediately slipped back.
    Antonia smiled, remembering.
    “I’d never had anything that…needed me like that, you know? My mom had a life of her own that had nothing to do with me—her art, the men. I couldn’t have any pets because we moved around so much, and I never really made any friends because I never lived anywhere long enough to get over how shy I was. This little horse, I felt like she had singled me out. She made me feel special. Maybe for the first time in my life…”
    Enzo nodded. “Horses are good at that.”
    “Anyway, one day, I couldn’t stand it anymore. I wanted to ride her so much that it hurt, so I slipped under the barbed wire and came over to her side of the fence.”
    Enzo chuckled. “Somehow I knew this part was coming.”
    “She was a bit surprised, I think. And then even more surprised when I basically scrabbled up her back and grabbed hold of her mane. I’d never been on a horse. I had no idea what I was doing. But I was determined to try.”
    “And she bucked you right off, correct?”
    Noni grinned. “Close. She ran to the nearest tree and scraped me off. Knocked the wind right out of me.”
    He laughed. “Of course.”
    “But I didn’t care. I got right back on. And then I fell off again. But then the next day I did it again. And again, and again, until I was finally able to keep my balance, and she finally let me stay on, and then I was really riding.”
    She looked up at Enzo, smiling. “Oh, Enzo,” she breathed, “it was the best feeling. Bareback on a pony that you love. I felt like it just erased all the bad stuff in my life. I didn’t worry about whether or not my mom had spent our grocery money on art supplies again or if the kids at school were going to notice that I was wearing the same outfit every day because I didn’t have anything else. I didn’t wonder why my father never came to see us. I didn’t think about any of the stuff that I usually spent all my time worrying about, you know? I just…flew. I just flew away from all of that rotten stuff when I was on that little mare. She made everything okay.”
    She shook her head, momentarily lost in the memory.
    “And so, when my mom woke me up one night and told me to pack…I knew the drill, you know?