Chapter One
THERE ARE LOW points, and there are low points. This—rattling down an endless stretch of interstate in a Greyhound bus toward the middle of farm-country-nowhere a week after barely graduating high school—was my low point.
I didn’t understand why “barely” graduating high school was indicative of how I would do in art school in the fall—high school was designed to torture teenagers, not teach them—but Mom thought otherwise.
If the art school in Seattle I wanted to attend didn’t cost a fortune and a half, I wouldn’t have given a damn what Mom thought. She was on the road so much I was lucky to see her one day a week. Even on that one day, she was usually in and out so quickly you would have thought my brand of “freak” was contagious. I didn’t understand why a woman who had ignoring her one and only spawn down to a science was putting her foot down when it came to funding my future.
I’d been accepted into the art school I’d been dreaming about since I’d given the proverbial finger to Home Economics in eighth grade and taken Art 101 instead. I’d never been so excited about anything in my life. But that didn’t matter to Mom. She wouldn’t foot the bill for school unless I convinced her I could step up to life’s plate and prove myself a responsible member of society, unlike the drain to it she was convinced I was.
So where, in all the possible places, could I prove myself to dear, suddenly-concerned, checkbook-holding mom?
Willow Springs Ranch, smack in the middle of Hickville, USA.
That’s right. A ranch.
I’d never been on one, but I didn’t need to in order to know ranches and Rowen Sterling should stay on opposite ends of the universe. I was a city girl who’d never been around anything four-legged other than dogs or cats. I believed wide open spaces and starry nights were overrated and only idealized so the country music industry could stay afloat. I thought rural was synonymous with hell.
I was the lucky girl who’d be spending my entire summer up to my knees in “rural.”
I wasn’t sure how I’d do it, and I sure as hell didn’t want to do it, but I had to. Three months in hell was worth four years of art school. My life had never been easy, so I knew I could handle whatever waited for me at Willow Springs. A long time ago, I’d learned I was good at “handling” life. I didn’t excel at it, and I certainly didn’t thrive at it, but I could handle life and everything it had thrown at me.
My secret? I’d simply accepted that life was pain.
There wasn’t a rhyme or a reason to the universe and those who occupied it. We were here. Some of us for long durations and some of us for not so long, but the one thing we humans could depend on from life was pain.
Accepting that had somehow made living easier. I’d stopped looking for happiness and, in so doing, wasn’t living in a steady state of let-down anymore. I didn’t let myself hope either. That was the real poison that put the vacant expression in so many people’s eyes.
I accepted.
That was the only reason I was about to hop off the Greyhound bus in western Montana. I’d accepted that if I wanted to go to art school, I’d have to pay a pain price to get there.
After twelve hours on the road, everyone practically bolted out of their seats the moment the bus came to a stop. Even though “Big Sky Montana” wasn’t anything to bound out of a bus toward, it was more appealing than hanging back in the recirculated air that had gotten especially rank the last hundred miles. The middle-aged guy who’d snored his way through the whole trip leapt out into the aisle without a look or word my way. After shouldering my purse, I tucked my hair back into my hoodie and slid the purse strap over my head.
I took a few steps toward the aisle and waited for someone to let me into the line. I was sitting in one of the first few rows. Surely the entire bus wouldn’t have to offload before I got to. Part of my strategy for getting a seat in the front of the bus was so I could sneak off at the earliest opportunity.
As the line of bodies continued by me, it became obvious I would be the last one off. I wasn’t invisible to the other passengers. They just treated me like I was. I was familiar with that act.
Moms steering cartfuls of kids and groceries through the store would shoot me sideways glances like they expected me to roll my sleeve up and shoot up right there in the middle of the cereal aisle. When I’d passed my peers in the hall, they narrowed their eyes because I had the audacity to take up space on the planet.
People had never ignored me, but they wished they could. They wished people like me would just disappear or fall off the face of the earth so they wouldn’t be reminded their little lives were so fake and full of shit.
As one guy about my age passed me, his attempt to ignore me faltered. Giving me a quick once-over, he shook his head and mouthed Yikes before he went on his Abercrombie-wearing, cheerleader-screwing way. I was tempted to give his back the bird, but for once, I controlled myself. Besides, that was nothing new. I lived that at least a dozen times a day back in the lowest form of purgatory known as high school.
I’d worn so many different labels I lost count. People liked to label things; it made them feel like the world made some sense. Like, if I was one thing, they were the other. I guess that made people feel better about themselves. If they focused on how screwed up I was, they could pretend they weren’t just as screwed up.
I’d been labeled a goth, an emo, a druggie, a loser, and my personal favorite only because it showed just how ignorant people were: a freak.
I’d been called a million and a half other colorful names, but those were the most popular. However, labeling me a goth or an emo was just an insult to actual goths and emos. I didn’t want a label; I didn’t want to fit into a certain crowd. I was who I was, wore what I wore, and did what I did because that was who I was. Or at least the person I’d convinced myself I was.
I wasn’t overly mysterious like a goth or exceptionally sad like an emo. I’d done drugs, but I’d never wandered into first period stoned off my ass like the hardcore druggies. I wasn’t sure “loser” fit either, since I was a conscientious objector to all things that made conventional “winners” and “losers” out of people. So maybe out of all of those labels, the one that fit me best was freak.
A few more people shuffled by, and their attempts and immediate failures to ignore me confirmed I did freak well. As I fell in line behind the second to last person, my belief that people basically blew went up a few conviction levels.
Montana was bit warmer than Portland; that was the first thing I noticed as I stepped off the bus. The next thing? It already smelled like cow shit. Not overwhelmingly so, but that pungent tinge was in the air, along with the sweet note of grass and the not-so-sweet note of a sucky summer to come.
I almost sighed. I came so close.
But I didn’t.
I didn’t sigh anymore. Sighing showed disappointment, but I didn’t hope anymore . . . thus eliminating disappointment from my life.
But I came pretty darn close when I examined the landscape. I’d been right. Wide open spaces, no building in sight taller than two floors, and nothing remotely resembled something I was familiar with.
“This must be your bag, young lady,” the Greyhound employee said as he held out my bag.
“Why would you assume that?” I snapped, ignoring the man’s overdone smile. “Because it’s as dark and dilapidated as my clothing?”
That overdone smile fell quicker than my GPA in middle school. Apparently Montana and I were already off to a rocky start.
“Ehhh . . . no,” the man said, clearly flustered. “It’s the last bag in here.”
I glanced at the storage compartments. Empty.
Well, crap.
“Oh.” I took my bag from him. “Sorry about that.”
“I meant no offense.” The man dusted his hands off on his pants before closing up the compartment doors.
“Me, either,” I said as I headed away from the bus. “It just comes naturally, unfortunately.”
My bag had to weigh almost as much as I did. I wasn’t exactly a light packer, and sporting a black hoodie in the heat of a Montana summer day while attempting to haul my huge bag was my bad. I didn’t make it far before giving up my one-woman trek toward the parking lot. Tossing my beast of a bag on the ground, I plopped down on it. I couldn’t tear out of that hoodie fast enough.
I was supposed to meet one of the ranch hands from Willow Springs in the parking lot. I couldn’t remember his name, just that it began with a J and was one hundred and ten percent a cowboy name. I was supposed to link up with some total stranger, after driving across a couple state lines on a Greyhound bus . . . and that was the first step toward proving my responsibility to my mother?
Yeah, that was f**ked up.
Tilting my head back, I searched the sky, half expecting buzzards to be circling.
Man, even the sky was different. Too big and too blue. Where I came from, the sky was gray on most days, and on the rare day the cloud cover did shift, the sky was never quite blue. Almost as if it couldn’t let go of the gray consuming it more days than not.
I was just about to close my eyes for a quick siesta and let Mr. Ranch-Hand-With-A-Gritty-Cowboy-Name wait when a figure passed by me.
On a typical day, I was passed by hundreds, if not thousands of people. Passed by, passed over, passed something, so I don’t know why that particular figure caught my attention. Leaning up, I shielded my eyes from the sun and watched the “figure” I couldn’t ignore. After a second, I understood why.
The guy was wearing positively the tightest, most painted-on jeans I’d ever seen a guy slide into. And my generation thought guys sporting skinny jeans was socially acceptable.
However, that cowboy, in what I could only assume were a pair of faded Wranglers, had just secured the sash and crown in the Tightest Pants in the Universe title.
“Excuse me, sir?” Tight Pant Boy tapped the shoulder of the employee I’d snapped at. He waited for the employee to turn around and acknowledge him before continuing.
“Yes?” the employee said, shaking Cowboy’s hand when he extended it.
“Is this the bus that came up from Portland?” Cowboy Tight Pants glanced up at the windows like he was looking for someone.
“Sure is. Last passenger just got off a few minutes ago.”
The cowboy’s back was to me, although his back wasn’t exactly what I zeroed in on. My attention had nothing to do with ogling, lusting, or wanting to run my hands all over it . . . I just couldn’t wrap my mind around how those stitches were holding strong with pants two sizes too small cupping those butt cheeks.
“Was there a young woman on board? A girl about my age?”
“There were lots of young women on board, son,” the employee replied, doing a better job of masking his sarcasm than I would have. “Do you have a description? Maybe a name?”
“I think she’s blond, maybe strawberry blond,” he began, tilting his head to the side. “Petite, I’m guessing . . . I don’t know. I’ve only seen a picture of her that’s ten years old.”