Wild Horse Spring Read Online Free PDF

cry as heat crept up my neck and face. The laughter of Matt and his friends followed me out of the room, burning my ears.
    Another time I got dropped off from cheerleading when Mama and Barry were out, and Matt and his friends were drinking beer in the basement. I hadn’t told Mama. I could imagine what Matt would have said to me then.
Crybaby! Tattletale!
After that, I stayed away from Matt. I wanted to tell Daddy. I had the perfect chance to tell him at brunch after church that day. I could’ve asked him then if I could live with himand Lynn. But I chickened out. I was afraid of hurting Mama’s feelings. I was afraid Daddy would say no.
    Then the chance passed, and I went back home to Mama’s house.
    Now I had a whole week with Daddy and Lynn. If everything went okay this week, I promised myself I’d ask them.
    Diana came out onto the porch. She didn’t say anything, and her eyes were still dark and angry. She leaned on the railing a few feet away from me, looking down at the porch below. I could see her measuring the distance from this porch to the one below.
    She glanced sideways at me. “Let’s sneak out tonight and find the horses,” she said. “If we wait till Mom and Norm go to bed, they’ll never hear us.” If I was going to ask Daddy about living with him this week, I wasn’t going to take any chances of getting into trouble. “No way! Remember how much trouble we got into last summer?”
    “How could they catch us? We’ll be back before they wake up. They’ll never know.”
    “I don’t want to get in trouble.”
    “I don’t want to get in trouble.” Diana mocked me in a baby voice then. She looked at me and shook her head with disgust.
    Just then someone came out onto the beach from thepath beside our house. It was the skinny, dark-haired boy who had been riding the red ATV. He wore beat-up running shoes with no socks, longish nylon shorts, and a sleeveless hoodie. Diana and I watched without speaking as he went down to the hard, dark sand near the edge of the water, did a few stretches, put in his earbuds and then took off running. Like a soldier, he pounded down the beach.
    “How old do you think he is?” I asked.
    “Fifteen? Sixteen? He’s fast,” Diana said.
    Diana joined our school cross country team this year, at Daddy’s urging. Daddy told us everybody should try one sport a year. Diana tried to quit after the first week of practice, but Daddy wouldn’t let her.
    Turns out she was good. The stands were always full for our football and basketball games, but hardly anybody went to cross country meets. At the first meet, Dad, Lynn, and I basically stood around the finish line with a few parents and siblings. After we waited what seemed like forever, the leaders burst out of the woods. All the really fast boys came thundering across the finish line, panting and soaked in sweat. And moments later, there came Diana, with her thin, white legs; spiky, strawberry blonde ponytail; and flaming red spots on her pale, freckled cheeks. Even without decent running shoes, Diana was the fastest girl. I wasshocked to see her first, especially since she claimed to hate it so much.
    I couldn’t believe how much Daddy and Lynn cheered for her. I wished they would cheer half as much for me when I was at a cheerleading competition. I mean, I’m balancing on people’s fingertips, and she’s
running
.
    Anyway, Daddy and Lynn took her out after that first meet and got her some good running shoes with blue and orange stripes. By the end of the season, she had put all kinds of miles on those shoes, and she’d come in first for the girls at every meet. She still complained and said she hated it, but she admitted she loved the way running helped her mood.
    I looked over at Diana, who was watching the boy. He had run so far down the beach by now that he was a tiny moving dot. The late afternoon wind had picked up, whipping our clothes and hair.
    “Hey, want to go for a walk on the beach?” I asked