“You know why I did it?” Brody asked as I rinsed a plate and handed it to him, not fully trusting that he would get the job done correctly.
I shrugged like I didn’t care, not wanting to let on that I was curious.
“Just to prove my point.”
“What was your point?”
“You like Lila.”
He made it sound like I was in love with Lila or something. I scoffed. “No, I don’t.”
“Sure you don’t.” He snickered. “That’s why you punched me in the face. You wanna hear the funny part?”
“No.”
“She thinks it was you.” He cracked up over that one. Unfortunately, it was true. Brody had started the rumor and I’d gotten the blame for it.
Nobody seemed to care that she had come after me and kicked me in the shin. Just because she was a girl, she got away with it. How was that fair? When I’d laughed in her face, it had only made her angrier.
Her little hands balled into fists. “I’m going to punch you, Jude McCallister.”
“Punch me. I won’t even feel it, Minnie Mouse.”
She’d punched me and I laughed even harder. She was so funny when she got all fired up and sometimes I just pushed her buttons to see what she’d do. Getting Lila all riled up was one of my favorite forms of entertainment. She never failed to deliver.
That night after Brody fell asleep, I hid all the nightlights in the attic where he’d never venture. I didn’t know why he was such a big baby about the dark.
In the middle of the night, he woke up screaming and crying and covered in sweat. Dad was the only one who could calm him down. I’d never seen my dad so angry with me as he was that night and I didn’t even understand why. All I’d done was hide the nightlights. It was payback for what Brody had done at school, not to mention making me drop a plate. Seemed only fair.
Dad told me that Brody had been through a lot of bad stuff in his life and I needed to keep that in mind before pulling pranks. Nobody bothered telling me what kind of bad stuff he’d been through. I was just expected to understand something that made no sense. But after that, I made sure we always had a nightlight in our room.
I guess you could say that Brody was like a brother to me. Annoying as hell, but he was family. Whenever he got in fights at school, which was often, I was right there by his side. I always had his back, no questions asked. And whenever I needed to work on my passing skills, he spent hours in the back yard with me, going long to catch a pass without once complaining about it.
And as for Lila… it turned out that Brody was right. I did have a crush on her. But it took me years to admit it or even realize why I acted the way I did around her. In my defense, I was just trying to look out for her like I would for any friend.
The fact that she happened to be a girl made everything a whole lot more complicated.
Chapter Four
Lila
“Jude McCallister, you are the bane of my existence,” I shouted, slipping into the barn and sliding the heavy wood door shut before he could reach me. Leaning my back against the door, I panted from the exertion of running. The only reason I’d beaten him was because he had a limp after getting hit with a foul ball. Served him right. He’d been too busy causing trouble for me to keep his eyes on the game. It wasn’t like him to get so distracted but when he took the pitcher’s mound he redeemed himself.
My gaze settled on Brody. “How come you weren’t at the game?”
“Had to clean out the barn.” He was chewing on a long piece of straw as he saddled up Whiskey Jack, the quarter horse he practiced barrel racing on.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
He shrugged. In Brody speak that was a no. A few weeks ago, his mom had come back and caused a scene. Now she was fighting for custody. “What are you going to do?”
Another shrug of the shoulders followed my question. “Uncle Patrick told me to speak my own truth. But I don’t want to get her into trouble, you know?”
“Yeah,” I said, although I didn’t know. Not really. “Do you want to… I mean, do you want to live with your mom?”
He shook his head and my relief was instant. I didn’t want him to go, I didn’t want him to leave us. “I don’t want to go back to the way things were. But I want her to be okay.”
I nodded, not exactly sure what to say about that. Patrick said his sister was an unfit mother who didn’t deserve her son. I agreed. From what I’d overheard, she’d been a bad mother. She had locked Brody in a closet and left him there for days with no food or anything. He’d ended up in foster care and thankfully the social worker tracked down Patrick who went to get him. We didn’t know what all Shelby did to Brody but I guessed none of it was good because my mom sat me down and lectured me about drugs and how bad they were.
“What’s Jude done now?” he asked, making it clear he didn’t want to talk about his mom or the custody battle.
“Doesn’t matter.” It was nothing compared to what Brody was going through and it was good to remind myself that people had bigger problems than I did. I pushed off from the door and walked over to the stalls, sizing up the black and white Appaloosa, Raven. A wild horse if there ever was one. Brody had begged the McCallisters to buy this horse from the ranch owner and as payment he was doing extra chores.
“Mind if I ride with you?” I didn’t usually ask for permission, but ever since Shelby turned up, he’d been wanting more time alone and I didn’t want to intrude.
His eyes scanned my tank top, shorts, and Converse. “You need to put on some jeans.”
“I’ll be fine.” It wasn’t the first time I’d ridden in shorts.
“You can ride with me. I set up the barrels.”
I smiled at the invitation. “Yeah, I saw.”
He narrowed his eyes on me as I stroked Raven’s head. The horse’s eyes flared and he nickered, tossing his mane and showing his teeth. I dropped my hand to my side and took a step back. “Not that one, Lila.”
“I’m a good rider. I can handle him.”
“He gets mean and ornery. I’m the only one who can ride him.”
Normally, I’d argue if it weren’t for the fact that it was true. Kate called Brody a horse whisperer and said he had a gift.
“How’d you learn to be so good with horses?” Nobody could handle a horse like Brody could. At fourteen, he wasn’t that same scrawny kid I’d first met either. He was still lean and wiry but he had muscles now. And it didn’t go unnoticed by the girls at school either. Girls drooled over the McCallister boys. It annoyed me to no end.
“Dunno. Just comes naturally, I guess. Like Jude and ball sports.”
“Yeah.” I smiled, forgetting that just minutes ago I was calling Jude the bane of my existence. He pushed my buttons like nobody else did. But man oh man, did he ever have a gift when it came to football. He played football, basketball, and baseball and he was good at all of them. Not just good. Really good.
Even though he was only thirteen, two months shy of fourteen, everyone was already saying he was destined to go all the way to the pros. When I asked him if playing in the NFL was his dream, he said no. He wanted to enlist in the Marines just like his dad had done. It was all he ever talked about. Sometimes I wished he had a different dream. I didn’t want to think about him fighting in a war. But I didn’t tell him that. It would make it look like I cared about what he did. And I didn’t. Not even a little bit.