Sixteen and Dying by Lurlene McDaniel Read Free Book Online Page B

God, / Nor visitedin heaven; / Yet certain am I of the spot / As if the checks were given.’ ”
    “Is that why you come to the church? To contemplate poetry?”
    Anne looked over her shoulder toward the simple white frame building. “No. I come to find peace.”
    Morgan thought her answer baffling, but on one level, he understood it perfectly. “If you find it, share it,” he said. “I’ve always wondered what peace would feel like.” Her eyebrows knitted together, but before she could ask him a question, he took her elbow and said, “Come on. We’d better start back before Maggie rings the dinner bell. On the way, we can talk about the picnic Skip’s planned for next week. You are coming, aren’t you?”
    Anne sorted through her closet in vain. “It’s no use,” she grumbled to the empty room. She didn’t have a single thing to wear on a picnic.
    “What’s the big deal?” Marti had asked that morning. “You throw on some jeans and a T-shirt.”
    The “big deal” for Anne was spending all afternoon and evening with Morgan. Ever since he’d caught her at the church, ever since he’d touched her cheek, listened to her talk about poetry, ridden home with her, and studied her so solemnly with his blue eyes, she’d been unable to think of anything else.
    She’d never known anyone like him. All the boys back home in her school were like children compared with Morgan. He was guarded and mysterious. She yearned to know what motivated him, what made him so secretive and distant. “Forget it,” shetold herself. “Just have fun with him.” She attacked her closet again.
    Anne was still trying on outfits when Marti arrived. “Aren’t you ready yet?” Marti wailed.
    “Almost. Which looks better—the blue shirt or the red one?”
    “The blue. Now, let’s go. The guys are waiting down by the corral, and we need to get saddled up.”
    Hurriedly, Anne changed shirts and tugged on her boots. At the corral, she slipped Golden Star a lump of sugar and tossed a saddle over the horse’s back. She tightened the cinch and swung her leg over. “What’s keeping you?” she asked Marti.
    “I’m all thumbs with this saddle,” she complained. “How do you do it so quickly?”
    Anne didn’t tell her that her speed came from wanting to be with Morgan. “Lots of practice.”
    They rode through the yard to the edge of the fenced property near the barn and corral. Blond-haired, blue-eyed Skip couldn’t take his eyes off Marti as they rode up. Anne noticed that Morgan smiled at her, but there was no gleam of adoration in his eyes like the one in Skip’s.
    They fell into a slow pace, with Skip and Marti riding in the lead. The sun beat down on Anne’s back, and the air smelled like newly mown hay. “I thought you might be riding the bay by now,” Anne remarked, noticing that Morgan was astride his regular quarter horse. “I’ve seen you working with him, and he looks tame to me.”
    “I ride him, but my uncle’s giving me grief. He says that the horse spooks too easily and that he’ll never make a work horse.”
    “Isn’t it all right to have the horse just because he’s beautiful? Just because you like him?”
    “A horse has to earn its feed. That’s my uncle’s philosophy. As for me—I agree with you. I’d like to get the bay to the point where he’s show-worthy.”
    “Have you done that kind of thing before?”
    “I ride the rodeo circuit in the late summer, before we have to bring the cattle into the winter grazing range. When rodeos hit the small towns around here, people turn out for the fun. I’d like to exhibit the bay, ride in the parades.”
    “You really ride in rodeos?”
    Morgan grinned. “Bronc busting’s my favorite event.”
    “You actually ride a horse that wants to throw you?” She remembered the time she saw him tossed around the corral by the bay. He’d hit the ground with such a thud, she’d actually ached herself.
    “It’s good money.”
    “Aren’t you afraid