Finding Somewhere by Joseph Monninger

Author:Joseph Monninger [Monninger, Joseph]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
ISBN: 978-0-375-86214-4
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2011-11-07T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 6

WE WOKE TO WHITE FIELDS.

“I’m freezing,” Delores said first thing when she felt me moving.

I couldn’t see her. She had the sleeping bag over her head.

“Start the engine a little,” I said. “I’m going to check on Speed. It snowed.”

“Did not,” she said, sitting up and looking around. She looked sleepy and confused.

“Holy moley,” she said, sliding back under the sleeping bags. “Let’s keep sleeping.”

“Get the truck running. I’m starving for real.”

She didn’t budge. I punched her hip a little with my hand,but she didn’t move. So I made an annoying squeaking sound I knew she hated, until she finally shoved up and jumbled the sleeping bags toward me.

“You are such a brat,” she said.

“I’m cold and I’m hungry,” I said. “Now get moving.”

I pushed out of the truck and nearly fell. Ice coated the road. I heard the truck clatter a little, then turn on. The horses looked up, their ears twitching to check us out. I opened the gate and stepped through.

I saw him right away.

A stone rolled through my guts, and I opened my mouth to try for air.

“No, no, no,” I said, and I ran.

The closest horses to the gate spread at my approach, spooked by my sliding, spastic run. I fell once onto a knee and shot back up. I yelled for Delores but doubted she heard me. I yelled again anyway, because Speed lay on the ground, his body a black line in a white field, the snow and sleet covering him.

“No, no,” I said, and slid down on my knees next to his head.

I knew better than to put my arms around his neck so suddenly, and he jerked up, frightened, his cheek slamming into my nose. A bright light cracked in my skull, and Speed waved his hooves against the ground. I fell backward, stupefied, and the pain of his thick head hitting me climbed down into my neck, then my shoulders, and would have kept going if a bright red stream of blood hadn’t suddenly spouted onto my coat.

“Easy,” I said, but whether I was talking to him or myself, I couldn’t say.

I sawed the back of my hand across my face, and it came away bloody. I arched my head out like a chicken pecking, trying to keep the blood off my coat, at the same time trying to see what had happened to Speed. He looked horrible, glazed with ice and suffering. Steam came off his body. I reached out my hand and put it on his head. Ice shucked under my fingers when I ran my hand down his neck. He had moved just enough at my hug to show me a snow horse, a shadow of his shape blocking out the snow.

I ran back to the truck.

“Delores!” I yelled, and she finally came out, stepping out of the driver’s side and looking over the roof at me. I watched her take in the blood, her face puzzled. Then she leaned a little to her left and saw past me to Speed.

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