Total pages in book: 43
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 40966 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 205(@200wpm)___ 164(@250wpm)___ 137(@300wpm)
Then… well, now that I’m not fixated on dyin’ of heatstroke on a barren highway, my mind drifts to Savannah.
Always Savannah.
It’s always been Savannah.
The angel to my demon.
I was fourteen the first time I ever got her all to myself. She was twelve. She found the old grain silo on her pony, I was on my bike. It was a regular place for me. Situated somewhere right along the boundary of ours and theirs.
Which makes us sound like neighbors, and technically, I guess we were. But there were twenty acres of Kane land and about three hundred of Ashby land between the two parcels. Let’s just say, our mailboxes didn’t stand side-by-side on the road.
So I’d found that old silo years before she ever had the pony, or permission, to get herself out exploring that far from home. It was late summer, the time of year when the heat hangs so thick you can taste it. My BMX had a rusted frame and brakes that only worked when they felt like it. The chain slipped if you pedaled too hard, so I learned to ride gentle even when I wanted to tear through the world.
I wasn't looking for anything that day. Just moving along. Getting away from the trailer because my teenage life was a fuckin’ mess. Step-dad, Deacon, was working double shifts and my mama was home, pregnant with my middle sister, Destiny.
The idea of my baby sister, Mercy, wouldn’t appear for nine more years.
It was a weird time. Still an only child, but not really. Deacon didn’t take much notice of me. I’m not sure why. Maybe I’m just uninterestin’. Maybe I was just never worth his time. Whatever it was, he left me alone.
Not my mama, though. He bullied her pretty good and by the time she was pregnant and I was fourteen, I’d had enough. Started mouthin’ back. I wasn’t big, not yet. But Deacon could see the writing on that wall. I would be big. And he didn’t want any part of that.
It wasn’t that I didn’t care about the way he treated my mama, it was just a consequence of her own choices. She was a grown woman, for fuck’s sake. I was a child.
She knew better than anyone that Deacon was an asshole.
But sometimes, when life is cruel, ya just hold your nose and make due. The cold, hard fact is that she needed his money. Asshole, yes. Deadbeat… I mean, I hate to say it. I’m not a Deacon supporter, but the man always kept a job. And nah, he didn’t make good money. But at least he paid the bills.
Anyway. On that day, the day I first had Savannah Ashby’s full attention, I went out to the old silo because there was a creek there that actually ran—trickle of a thing as it was.
There was a pony tied to the fence post when I got there. Buckskin, with a saddle that look both old and expensive at the same time. I don’t claim to be a horse expert, but it’s pretty easy to identify the ones that worked hard and slept under the stars and the ones that didn’t. Lots of kids out here had horses and ponies. Most of them caked in dirt, even when well cared for.
This little buckskin was shiny and clean.
I don’t remember its name. Savannah had lots of ponies and horses over the years. They came and went, most of them.
But this was the first of them for me. It was just standin’ there, right outside the cutaway door in the old metal silo, grazing on scrub.
Inside the silo, Savannah was singing.
That’s how it all started.
Me and my BMX, her and her pony.
And that voice. Like an angel.
She didn’t hear me, or if she did, it wasn’t enough to make her stop singing. When I stepped inside the silo the sunlight was streaming through the cracks cuttin’ the dust into thin gold blades and Savannah Ashby was sitting on the upper platform, legs dangling off, her dress ruffles fluttering as she swung her feet. She was even wearing white. Dress, cowboy boots, and the cowboy hat on her head were all soaking up the dusty sunlight like she was the definition of a good girl.
The song was Ave Maria. I’d heard it before, but never like this. I almost backed out of the silo without sayin’ nothin’ because kids like me didn't breathe the same air as kids like her.
But she’d already seen me. She stopped singing and said, "Ain't it loud in here with nothin' in it?"
Her voice was all Ashby polish wrapped around long vowels. And these sounds hung in the air—or, at the very least, in my mind—like church bells that vibrate long after they’ve been rung.
"Yeah," I told her back, because I couldn't think of anything smarter to say.