If Only by Jennifer Gilmore

Author:Jennifer Gilmore
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-06-22T00:00:00+00:00

If Only

Montana

Ziiip. Her face is covered in black hair, shaggy, no haircut in, what, years, it seems. I still trim her bangs. Crooked.

“Hey,” she says.

I lean back into my book. I shrug.

She climbs out of the tent and comes over to the little table we’ve got set up here. I have no freaking idea where we are. Somewhere cold and blue and lonely.

She shoves her hands into the pocket of her hoody, tucks her hair into the hood. She looks like a superhero or a criminal. Rubs her hands together like there’s a fire she’s warming over but there’s no fire here.

“What’s for breakfast, Ivy?”

I don’t look up, slide over some cereal bars we picked up at a Target—where, in the last town? Bozeman. Butte? I don’t know and I don’t really care either.

“Lovely,” says my mother. She looks over at the green Coleman stove on the table. Cold. We got cereal bars but we did not get Sterno. Don’t ask.

I glance over at her. Watch her open the wrapper with her teeth and then look up. She smiles at the sky or the tips of the trees. They’re turning now. Either way, whatever she’s looking at, it will be cold as all get-out soon.

“I’m thinking we’ll go back to the ranch. What do you think? You can go to school again.”

I ignore her. We spent last winter there and I went to school and it sucked. The school sucked and being new and a sophomore sucked and it was both too big and too small for me. I was all caged up and also it was like I was all free, too. You know? I mean it could have been that if I had friends. But the ranch is a good place. Huge. Our own room. People cooking for us. Jonathan. He is the one thing about going back but he won’t care anymore. He might be gone by now anyway. Nothing is permanent on the ranch.

My book: Black Beauty. It’s my TV, internet. It’s all I get out here, really. I love horses.

Mom looks at me. “Hello?” She flips her hair out of her face, her shock of blue.

I look at her. “Hello.” Like a dare.

“Remind me how we got here again?” She kicks at some fallen leaves. She uncovers a bunch of feathers. A huge pile. She kneels down.

Does she mean, like, the hitchhiking? With the professor, the mother of twelve, the truck driver? No one was safe. Did you know that? No one. Or does she mean it, like, not in a physical way, like how did we get here, on this earth, in this forest, doing time in this tent night after night? I used to love it. The sleeping bags zipping together, a gift from Gloria, who runs the ranch we’d been working at each summer. Now just the sound of it—ziip—makes me want to flee.

I get up. “I’m going for a walk,” I say.

“Be careful,” she says.

I just start walking. The trail out from the site leads to a small rise, and I can make out the mountains.

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