She Died Too Young by Lurlene McDaniel

Author:Lurlene McDaniel [McDaniel, Lurlene]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-77637-2
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2010-10-27T04:00:00+00:00

Now, as they plodded up the looping trail, Chelsea felt herself growing apprehensive. The sight of the memorial and the memories it evoked might be too sad. What if they all started crying? What would Jillian think?

“This way!” Katie called. A small piece of faded yellow material Amanda had tied to a tree marked the ascent up the mountainside.

Jillian brought her horse alongside Chelsea’s. “Boy, does it feel good to be riding again.”

The effortless way Jillian rode, as if she were one with the horse, impressed Chelsea. “You ride like a cowgirl,” she said. “I never rode until this summer, and my fanny hurt for three days.”

Jillian laughed. “Daddy had me sitting on a horse from the time I was a baby. Even though I was sick, he bought me my first pony when I was three. DJ had a matching one, and the two of us learned to ride together. Of course, DJ got better at it because he did it more often. When we were ten, we got quarter horses—mine is a roan. I named him Windsong. DJ has a chestnut he calls Cochise. He rides him in rodeo competitions, and no one can chase down a calf and tie it down faster than DJ.”

She sighed, and some of the sparkle left her eyes. “That’s something else I want to do when I get a new heart. I want to ride in the rodeo.”

Chelsea couldn’t imagine such a thing. Plodding along on a horse as tame as the ones at Jenny House was about as much adventure as she could handle. “I hope you get to do it.”

“When we both get these operations behind us, you can come out to our ranch in the summer. I’ll teach you how to ride and rope and cut cattle.”

“Are those marketable skills?” Chelsea asked with a laugh. “I always thought I’d like to be a teacher. Or a guide and lecturer in a museum of art.”

“Why would you want to be around people all day? Give me the wide open spaces anytime.”

“I guess because I’ve never been around people. I’ve been stuck off by myself most of my life. I get lonely.”

Jillian shook her head. “Don’t you know you can sometimes be lonely even in a crowd of people?”

“Are you? The way your family rallies around you, it’s hard to believe.”

“Sometimes. Maybe it’s because of my medical history. Hospitals have a way of making a person feel less than a person.”

Chelsea knew that much was true. Some of her hospitalizations had been positively dehumanizing. “Sometimes they treat you as if you were a machine with a bad gear.”

Chelsea laughed as Jillian told her a story.

“What’s so funny?” Lacey called over her shoulder.

“Just hospital stories,” Chelsea replied, wiping the sleeve of her coat across her eyes, which teared with her laughter.

“Nothing’s funny about hospitals,” Lacey insisted.

Up ahead, Katie had stopped and tied her horse’s reins to a tree. When the others arrived, Katie said, “We’ll have to go the rest of the way on foot.

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