Rodeo Royalty
Christina F. York
Published by Tsunami Ridge Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2011 Christina F. York
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
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Rodeo Royalty
Table Of Contents
Rodeo Royalty
Most people would think living in Grant, Washington, would be the pits, since it’s in the middle of nowhere, and there aren’t any big cities close by. We don’t have a mall or a multiplex with stadium seating, or even a real downtown.
But for me, Tyler Forrester, Girl With A Plan, Grant is just fine because we have the Round-Up, which is a totally tight rodeo. They have a rodeo queen, and rodeo princesses, and that is the first part of my Plan, to be the rodeo queen — which is practically a family tradition since my mom and her mom were both princesses, and Gram met Gramps at the Round-Up, and my Aunt Sheila was rodeo queen — and get the attention of the hottest junior cowboy on the planet, Brad Young.
Oh, the Plan is bigger than rodeo queen. Even bigger than Brad Young. I also plan to go to Washington State University and be a veterinarian.
It’s what I have always wanted to be, even before I wanted to be rodeo queen, which was when I saw Aunt Sheila ride into the ring when I was a little girl.
Of course I never got to see Mom or Gram when they were princesses — not being born yet, and all — but I have seen their pictures, even if it is impossible to believe Mom was ever young enough to be a princess. But there it is, in living color.
Gram’s pictures are really old. They didn’t even have color back then — not in cameras that real people could buy, anyway, even though Gram says there were color movies.
Anyway, it all goes together, since the rodeo is all about horses and cattle, and they need vets, and I want to be a vet and take care of animals, especially horses.
So, when Amee Haller — my so-called best friend — said we needed to get our applications in, I assumed she was talking about the rodeo court applications. And we all know that old joke about what assume does, don’t we?
I had sent mine in as soon as I could, so I figured Amee had left hers until the last minute, like she usually does with deadline stuff, like her homework.
We were flaked out on the twin beds in my bedroom, where we hung out a lot, since Amee liked my house better than hers, which probably had a lot to do with my older brother, the dorkus brotherus, Greg.
It might not have been so bad. I might have figured out that she meant something else, if I hadn’t been totally distracted by the picture of Brad Young in the Grant Sentinel, which is the local rag they call a newspaper. At least it has pictures of the local spring rodeo events, and even with half the rodeo ring on his jeans and a serious case of hat hair, Brad was a definite hottie.
Brad was part of the Plan, even if he didn’t know it yet, but it would happen, just as soon as I was a rodeo princess. Sure, hotties like Brad Young didn’t usually notice freshmen, but I would be almost a sophomore when they announced the rodeo court at the Round-Up early in September, and I would make such an excellent princess that he was sure to notice me, and a senior could notice a sophomore, couldn’t he?
So I went right on staring at the picture of Brad, and just said, “Yeah,” to whatever it was Amee thought we should do. We’d end up doing it anyway, since I pretty much do whatever Amee wants, because she is supposed to be my best friend, and it’s usually what I want, too.
I was still staring at Brad’s picture, and trying to figure out exactly the best way to get his attention, and Amee was flipping through one of my horse magazines. Without looking away from Brad, I said, “Do you think I should change my hair?”
“Nah,” said Amee. “Besides, you get a princess makeover, so why not let the experts fix you up?”
I nodded. Amee had the right idea. That way I wouldn’t have to pay for a new look, and free stuff was always a good idea, or at least I thought so when she said it.
Amee got up from the bed and walked over to my computer, which she uses almost more than I do. She is a real computer wonk — since her dad was, like, some Microsoft millionaire before he decided to become some kind of hippie and move to Grant — and she knows all my passwords and stuff and can make the computer do stuff that I don’t even know what it is.
Don’t get me wrong, I know all about technology. I can use a computer just fine, I carry my phone with me everywhere, even in the barn where I keep my horse, and I have a tablet in my backpack for school. I’m just not the kind of computer geek Amee is.
I leave that stuff to her. She’s really good at it, and I don’t mind her using my computer. Her parentals have tons of restrictions on her surfing the Net and doing things online, which is weird since that’s where her dad made all his money, but trying to figure out parentals would make your brain itch, and not in a good way — so I didn’t think anything of her tapping away at my keyboard.
Even though I should have.
Sometimes, you know the exact moment when your life is in the dumpster, which for me was Saturday, May twenty-seventh — the worst day of my life.
Saturdays are supposed to be good days. You know, a reward for getting through another week of school, and a time to do the things you want to, not the things you have to, and hang out with your friends, and figure out ways to get people like Brad Young to notice that you’re alive.
Well, that might be the way it is for other people, but not for me. Saturdays are the days I have to do ranch chores and help my mom around the house, and I am such a Cinderella, without the stepsisters, evil or not, and without the fairy godmother, unless you count my buddy Frank. But that’s another story.
So on the worst day of my life I put on my ratty jeans, cleaned the fireplace — honestly, how clichéd is that? — and did some laundry before I headed for the barn.
I liked to hang out in the barn, except there were always a million chores that needed doing, but at least I had Misty, my old mare, who is a total sweetie. She’s the horse I’ll ride when I’m rodeo queen.
Misty was always glad to see me, and if I finished her stall fast enough, we could sneak in a quick ride. We weren’t supposed to, because the parentals had rules about when I can ride, and one rule was no riding until homework was done and chores were finished, which, okay, made sense when I was ten. But I was sixteen for heaven’s sake, and you would think I could handle my own schedule, right?
Okay, I wasn’t sixteen, quite, but I was fifteen and eight-twelfths, which reduces to fifteen and two-thirds, and that that rounds to sixteen, right? So I was close enough to sixteen for it to count.
Mom and Dad knew I wanted to ride almost as much as I wanted to be rodeo queen, and a rodeo queen has to be a good rider, so I was practicing, not just having fun. They ought to appreciate my dedication.
But like all the adults around me, they saw this as an opportunity to “motivate” me, which really means blackmail and abuse of power, two things that parentals are really good at, if you ask me.
It wasn’t like they had to worry about my grades, either. To be a rodeo princess, I had to have good grades, because that was important to the committee that picked the rodeo court. I knew girls that were really pretty and really good riders, and they did all the community service and stuff and volunteered at all the events, but they could never get on the court because they didn’t have good grades.
That was enough motivation for me, thankyouverymuch, and I got almost all As, except for Mr. Sauby’s advanced algebra class, which wouldn’t be such a big deal, except I knew what I was doing, but Mr. Sauby was so lame about following the rules and showing your work, and he knew I got all the right answers, he just wouldn’t give me credit for it, because he thought marking me down for not showing my work would “motivate” me.
I hatehatehate being motivated.
Pulling on a pair of high-top rubber boots, I slipped into Misty’s stall. She bumped her nose against my chest in greeting, and I reached up to scritch her between the eyes, which she likes, and she shook her head a little in the way that says, “Hi, it’s good to see you.”
She had trashed her stall, again, so I grabbed a pitchfork and got to work. Sweet or not, Misty produced an enormous amount of what my dad politely called “horse manure.” Amee called it horse shit, which was a word I didn’t dare use at home, because my dad would totally have a cow, which also produces “manure,” and whatever you call it, it smelled.
Misty was cranky as I rushed through mucking out her stall, but I was in a hurry, because there was a lot to do and not a lot of Saturday. She wanted to go for a run, and, to tell the truth, so did I, but Amee and I had plans.
Barn work and homework came first, unless I wanted to tick off the parentals, which wasn’t a good idea, because then they would come up with a new set of rules, because they knew What Was Best For You. It was that whole motivation thing again.
Misty wasn’t happy when I tossed down an armload of straw and led her back into the stall instead of getting her tack and taking her out for a run.
“I can’t go right now, Misty. Amee’ll be here in half an hour, I have homework, and then we’re going to practice for our princess interviews, and you know how important that is. Besides, if I get to be princess, you get to ride in the ring, too, and have everyone see how beautiful you are.”
I thought she was beautiful, since she’s been my horse since I was a little girl, and I tell her that all the time, and she seems to like it, even though Greg, the dorkus brotherus, says she doesn’t understand a word I say, but I know she does.
Misty just rolled her eyes and pulled her lip back, even though I told her she was beautiful. She didn’t care whether I was a princess, she just wanted to run; and no matter how much I did for her, she didn’t get that sometimes other things were more important.
Now, I don’t want to say that Misty did it on purpose, but sometimes I don’t trust her when she doesn’t get her way, and this may have been one of those times.
She put her head down, snuffling in the hay, looking for the apple I hid for her as a treat, but I had been in a hurry, and hadn’t put one down yet.
There are lots of apple orchards in Central Washington. A couple of the neighbors let me pick up the windfalls after the harvest, and we keep a barrel by the barn door, which Misty knows, because it’s part of our little ritual.
I dashed out of the stall to grab an apple from the barrel, telling myself I hadn’t really forgotten, I just hadn’t got it yet.
Of course Misty knew better, and what with my not taking her for a run, she was getting ticked off. She’d get over it, but hanging around with a ticked off horse is not a fun way to spend an afternoon and I didn’t have time to deal with her sulking, so I tossed the apple under the hay for her to find, gave her neck a final pat, and edged past her to the stall door.
That was when she got even — no, she got ahead.
Somehow, as I started to close the stall door, it bumped Misty’s hind hoof, swung out of my grip, banged against the doorframe, and bounced back off the latch.
I wasn’t ready for it. It caught my elbow, throwing me off balance.
I grabbed for the door to stop it from hitting Misty, because hitting a ticked-off horse with a swinging door is not a good idea. I kept the door from hitting her, and yanked it back, trying to get out of the stall at the same time.
The next few seconds were in slow motion — not slow enough for me to actually do anything about it, but that weird slowed-down-time that you get when something really bad is about to happen, and you can’t stop it? Like that — because I was already off-balance, and when I grabbed the door it swung away, and dragged me with it. Instead of letting go, I held on for the ride.
Bad idea.
The door dragged me out of the stall, and right into the pile of dirty straw, spilled feed, and horse manure I had just cleared from Misty’s stall, which was still in the aisle because I hadn’t hauled it out of the barn yet.
I tried to hang on, but it was no use, except I managed to land on my butt, instead of my face. Considering the smelly pile, I should have been grateful, if I had been in the mood to be grateful for anything. Which I wasn’t.
I crawled out of the pile, and stopped myself before I wiped my hands on my jeans, which were pretty well covered with horse manure and gross hay. At least I had on gloves, which was another thing I should have been grateful for — not!
I went back to the house after I hauled the pile out of the barn, and I stopped in the laundry room on the back of the house to slip off my crusty jeans. The phone started ringing, not my cell, but the house phone, but somebody else would have to answer it because I was a little busy at the moment.
Mom came to the door of the laundry room with the cordless in her hand. “It’s for you, Tyler.” She held out the phone to me, like she expected me to answer it, standing there with my butt covered with horse manure.
“Mother!” Couldn’t she see I was busy? “I really cannot answer the phone right this minute. In case you haven’t noticed, my butt is covered with horse shit.”
There was a muffled squawk from the phone in her hand, but I didn’t really care. I didn’t much care about mom’s raised-eyebrow, watch-your-language-young-lady look either, since it was obvious that I had more important things to worry about than some lame-o phone call, which I probably didn’t even want to take anyway, since my friends all knew my cell number, so it couldn’t be anyone I wanted to talk to, could it?
“Well, it is,” I said. I know my voice was sulky, but how would you feel, standing in the laundry room in your underwear, with a pair of horseshit-covered jeans in your hands, and your mother waving a cordless phone in your face, and you know it isn’t anybody important to your life?
I dropped the jeans into the hamper reserved for really gross barn work clothes, like manure-covered jeans and stuff, and pulled on a pair of clean gym shorts. Mom was sighing impatiently, but I wasn’t talking to some stranger in my underwear. Even if they couldn’t see me, I didn’t know who it was, and talking to someone in your underwear is reserved for close friends, and a girl has to have some standards.
Mom handed me the phone, with a look that told me we would have to “talk” later, because the parentals were almost as big on talking as they were on motivating. They had talks for all kinds of things, no matter whether they were important or not, and being a smart-mouth, as my dad would call it, was definitely on their important talk list.
“Hello?”
“Tyler? Tyler Forrester?”
“Who’s calling?” I asked.
“This is Marcia Jolley from Teen Heartbeat magazine. Is this Tyler Forrester?”
What the heck? Teen Heartbeat was one of those lame-o rags that clustered around the checkout counter in the grocery store — you know, the kind that always has some superhot actor or musician on the cover, with giant print screaming at you, “What Jason REALLY Wants in a Lady,” and what is a “lady” anyway, because I am thinking that Jason does not want someone who is the kind of girl my mom would call a lady — and there was no reason to waste my time with this. “I don’t subscribe to magazines, but thank you for calling.”
It was a lie, but a polite lie. I had plenty of subscriptions — to magazines like Horse & Rider, American Cowboy, and Horse World — but not to ones like Teen Heartbeat, and I didn’t really mean it when I thanked her for bothering me while I was dealing with the whole horse manure issue.
I hung up.
I didn’t need a pit check to know I needed a shower, not after my trip through the manure, so I carried the phone back to its cradle in the hall, and it rang again, so I answered it, even though I really needed to get to the shower.
“Tyler? I need to talk to you.” It was the Teen Heartbeat woman, calling back.
“I’m not interested.”
Click.
When the phone rang again, I slipped it into its cradle and let it ring — the machine would pick it up, and whoever is was could leave a message — and ran into my room to grab a robe for after my shower.
The ringing stopped, I heard the machine click on, and when I came back out of my room, I heard Mom’s voice telling the caller they had the Forrester residence, and to leave a message.
“Tyler?” That Teen Heartbeat woman sure didn’t take “No” for an answer. “Tyler, I know you’re there, and I need to talk to you. I am totally not selling anything.”
I hate adults who try to use slang — it sounds stupid, and they never get it right — and I knew she was selling something.
It just wasn’t what I expected.
“We need to talk about your entry in the Princess-for-a-Month contest. The one you entered online? The one that includes a princess makeover and a month in Europe?”
Okay, that was totally weird, because somebody else had mentioned a princess makeover recently, but I didn’t remember who, I didn’t remember anything about a magazine contest, and I definitely didn’t remember a month in Europe.
“Oh, and the scholarship? Did I mention the scholarship?” There was a pause, and she said something under her breath. I couldn’t hear the exact word, but I could guess she was swearing. It had that swearing tone that turns any word into a swear word, even when it isn’t really, but it’s all in the tone and not the actual word.
“Tyler, please pick up. This is important, believe me.” Her voice wasn’t as confident as it had been, and she sounded almost scared, and somehow it was my fault, and I would feel guilty the rest of the day if I didn’t talk to her. Besides, I wanted to know how she got my name and number.
I picked up the phone.
“This is Tyler.”
“Tyler! I am sooo glad to talk to you.”
I shrugged, knowing she couldn’t see me. “I’m listening,” I said. I didn’t mean for it to sound rude, but it probably did. Even though I was trying to be nice to this strange woman, I still wanted to know how did this weird person get my number.
“Yes, well.” I could hear a clicking noise that sounded like computer keys, and her voice got back to its I’m-so-cool-and-hip-so-you-should-talk-to-me tone. “Just let me verify the information we have here.”
She read off my address, birthday, school, a whole bunch of stuff that wasn’t anybody’s business except mine, and it was really freaking me out that she knew all this stuff about me.
“Is that correct?”
I didn’t want to just say “Yes,” without knowing where she got the 411.
“Where did you find out all that?”
“It’s on your entry form. It was submitted from…” a few more clicks, and she read off my email address.
I nodded, but I still wasn’t saying anything.
“Can you hang on a minute?” I needed to get to my computer, to check out what was on there, if anyone had been messing with it — like the dorkus brotherus — as if I could tell if anybody had been messing with it, since even though I’m pretty good with it, I am not a computer genius like Amee.
“Why don’t you call me back?” She sounded almost relieved, now that I was listening.
“I suppose so. Let me get a pencil.” I set the phone down, dashed in the bathroom and tossed my robe on the counter.
That caused a minor avalanche of shaving stuff my dorkus brotherus had left on the counter, and I left it all where it fell, because if Greg couldn’t be bothered to put away his stuff, I couldn’t be responsible for what happened to it.
I went back to the telephone table, grabbed a pencil and paper, and picked up the phone. “Okay.”
The Teen Heartbeat woman reminded me that her name was Marcia, and she rattled off a phone number that started with 212. No 800 number? She expected me to call her on my own quarter?
“Just call when you’re ready, and I’ll call back. No reason to make you pay for the call,” she said.
“Cool.” I didn’t bother to tell her my cell was free on weekends. I just wanted to get off the phone and find out what was going on.
I could hear Mom coming, so I ducked into the bathroom and started the shower, which would give me a little longer before I had to face her “language” talk.
It only took a few minutes to wash my hair — I kept it long and straight, which meant not a lot of upkeep: just wash it, squeeze out the water, and pull it into a ponytail — and scrub the barn smell off of me.
I am big on not-a-lot-of-upkeep, and what goes for the hair, goes for the clothes — good jeans for school, ratty ones for the barn, sweaters in the winter, tees and shorts in the summer. I don’t need much else, but I think there’s a dress in the back of my closet that I haven’t seen since Aunt Shelia’s wedding, and she’s been divorced two years.
When I stepped out of the shower, I realized the bathroom smelled — no, it reeked — big time, and it wasn’t the horse manure.
There was a big wet spot on the bathroom rug, where Greg’s aftershave had leaked all over the floor, and it stunk up the place, which meant so much for leaving Greg’s mess to him.
The shaving cream was okay, it was in a can, but the aftershave was in a bottle, what was left of it, and the cap was on the floor a few inches away from the bottle. I put his junk on the counter, put the cap back on the aftershave, and I opened the bathroom window to save myself from suffocating on the stink of his latest favorite.
I rushed through the towel and deodorant thing with my eyes watering from Greg’s putrid aftershave, thinking if I didn’t get out of here, I was going to puke, and at least I was in the right place for it.
I whipped on my robe and opened the bathroom door, which let the stink leak out into the house, but at least I could breathe again.
The note with Marcia’s number was still on the telephone table in the hall, so I picked it up on the way to my room.
The computer sat on my desk. Its power light was dark since I hadn’t even turned it on yet this morning. Which was another one of those motivation-rule things, because I couldn’t do e-mail before chores, no matter how critical it was.
Get caught breaking that rule, and the computer was moved into the den for a month, which was truly gross, having to answer personal, private, email with dorkus brotherus hanging over your shoulder, and trying to see what you were typing.
I only did that once.
I turned on the computer, letting it boot while I got dressed in a semi-ratty pair of jeans, a tee, and sneaks, which is the standard Saturday-at-home-after-chores wardrobe. By the time I was through, the computer was blinking its message-waiting light, and I sat down and looked at the list of headers, but there wasn’t anything important. I trashed a couple things that got past my spam filters, but the rest could wait.
I ran a quick search for Teen Heartbeat, and they had a Website — Duh! — and I clicked on it.
The home page came up, and bright pink letter danced across my screen. “Welcome back, Tyler!!”
Pink? Get real! And I knew I had never, ever been on this site. Why would I? So how could I be back?
But there was clearly a cookie buried somewhere, because after the welcome message danced for a few seconds, the screen changed, and the new screen was for a contest entry, with “Entries Closed” stamped across the entry form, and text scrolling along the bottom of the page.
“Thanks for entering Princess-for-a-Month. Our contest is closed, and the names of the winners will be posted soon. In the meantime, watch this space for our next great contest, A-Date-With-Danny!”
I wasn’t sure who Danny was — probably some lame-o boy band backup singer — not that it mattered, because what mattered was that here was the Princess-for-a-Month junk, and their computer seemed to think I had entered.
Well, if I understood cookies, it thought someone had entered from my computer.
I tried to read the entry form underneath the “Entries Closed” stamp, where there were spaces for all the stuff Marcia had asked about on the telephone, and they had been filled in. That explained where she got the 411, even if it didn’t explain who put it there in the first place.
I backed up to the home page, and looked for a contest link, which was a button for “Our Contests” — of course — I clicked on it, and got more dancing hot-pink letters.
Their Web designer must think teenage girls were all Barbie-wannabes — and that might be true. I mean, she has everything, like the beach house, the Corvette, a dozen cool careers, and she even got to be a veterinarian, which I did want, but I didn’t want it in that evil pink.
The career was as far as I went.
So forget the pink and look at the rules, which were lots of legalese, which, when you read it all, boiled down to a computer version of pulling names out of a hat.
Buried about halfway down was the list of prizes for Princess-for-a-Month, with a bunch of small prizes — magazine subscriptions, posters, movie passes, boy band CDs — and the Grand Prize Package, which is what they called first prize, with lots of strings attached.
Still, the GPP was pretty cool — a “princess makeover,” a month in Europe as a “temporary princess,” and a hefty college scholarship.
That was the part that caught my attention.
Mom and Dad had given me the “college talk” a few weeks earlier. Like I said, they were big on “talks” on lots of stuff, like the language talk Mom would give me when she caught up with me. The college talk was pretty serious, about money, and how dorkus brotherus was older, and they had to put him through school first, even if he didn’t have a Plan and I did.
I knew we weren’t rich, but I always figured there was no question about college, because there was the Plan to go to Washington State over in Pullman, and IMHO they were the best pre-vet school around. There wasn’t really any other choice, if you ask me.
Anyway, the money-for-college talk had been pretty depressing, local junior college depressing, because Greg was starting at the junior college next year, and by the time I was ready in three years, he’d be at the University.
There was no way my folks could pay for two kids at the University, and I should consider myself lucky they could even afford the j.c. because a lot of kids from Grant would never go to college at all.
Which totally sucked, because the classes I needed to get into the Honors Program were at the University, and I couldn’t do the honors program at the j.c. So the scholarship had my attention.
But there were still all those strings attached, like spending an entire month in Europe, with a chaperone — who would have to be some total geek to spend a month hanging around with a teenager in a tiny European country, and not even a cool country, like Monaco, which at least had the Riviera — and like letting them mess with your hair and clothes, and agreeing to abide by all their rules, which they would give to the winner, but they didn’t really tell what they were.
I was still reading the fine print when Amee walked in.
I had forgotten our plans while I tried to figure out what was going on with Marcia and Teen Heartbeat, but when she came in and I remembered our plans, I also remembered where I had heard the words “princess makeover.”
I glared at her. “You did this.”
It wasn’t a question. I knew Amee, and I knew she could do something like this and think it was cool, because that was the way her so-called brain worked, and I decided it was totally possible to hate your best friend.
“Did not.” Amee couldn’t see the computer screen, and she came across the room to look, as if she didn’t have a clue what I was talking about, even though I was sure she did. “What?”
She tried to look innocent, but I didn’t buy her act, because why else did she say she didn’t? I mean, she didn’t even know what it was, and she was denying it? To me that was totally guilty, without any question, and besides, no one else used my computer, since dorkus brotherus had his own, and so did my parentals, and the nice thing about broadband was, you could share a connection and everybody’s happy.
Everybody but Amee, who didn’t have high-speed, because she lived too far out of town to get it, and her parentals were really weird about the computer, so she used my computer a lot.
Maybe too much.
“What’s your difficulty?” Amee said, as she peered over my shoulder.
“Princess-for-a-Month?”
“What about it?” Her voice squeaked, the way it always did when she lied, and I knew I had her.
“You did do it. I knew you did.” I turned around and looked up at her. “What the heck were you thinking?”
Amee backed up a couple steps. She put her hands out in front of her, like that would protect her. Fat chance!
“Uh…” She stammered a little, but she knew she was caught, and she would have to fess up, and I watched her try to think of another lie, but nothing was coming.
“I, uh, I thought you’d like to go to Europe?”
“Nice try, dorkus. Do I look like I belong in some stuffy castle, drinking tea and hanging out with a bunch of stuck-up royal guys?” A thought occurred to me. “Or are you just trying to eliminate the competition for rodeo princess?”
Amee’s eyes went wide. “As if! You are totally going to be a princess. How could you not?”
That made me smile because she really believed it, and no matter what she did, she was still my best friend. But she didn’t get all the politics and special circumstances that go into choosing the rodeo court.
How could she? Amee and her family had only moved here a couple years ago, when her mom and dad had changed their names — to Sunflower and River, and they told her to call them by their names instead of Mom and Dad, and how weird is that? — and decided to “get back to the land.”
So they bought this old dried-up ranch with no water rights, and thought they would bond with nature or something. The only thing I could see they were bonding with were a few scraggly pine trees and some dirt. Which is nature, I guess, but you would think they could find something nicer for bonding purposes.
Anyway, Amee was forced to live out in the boonies where she barely had dial-up Internet access, and no cable, and River and Sunflower — they said they didn’t need last names, and we should all call them by their first names, which is way gross for your friend’s parents — let her keep her horse, at least, because they thought having an animal “partner” was good for Amee’s development, or something.
If you ask me, Amee would have developed just fine in the Seattle suburb where her dad had made gobs of money off of some kind of research, and which was where she was used to. But they didn’t pay any attention to what Amee needed, like malls and stuff, and dragged her out into Central Washington.
Don’t get me wrong, I love it here, and I would hatehatehate to have to live in the city, but Amee grew up in the city, and that was where she belonged. Oh, she was trying to fit in and learn how to act, and even though Salome — is that the worst name for a horse, ever? — wasn’t a barrel pony, Amee loved her.
Amee had to pasture her with neighbors who did have water rights, and she had to clean stalls in return for her pasture, but at least she got to keep her. Even though her dad had money in a zillion different places, he said she needed to learn the value of hard labor.
If you ask me, her dad needed to learn the value of water rights — what good was two hundred acres without irrigation? Sheesh, a ten-year-old would know better.
Anyway, Amee was still my best friend, even if she did have some strange ideas of what was cool — like spending a month in Europe — and even if she didn’t understand about rodeo court, which I suppose I better explain.
Okay, so if you live in the city, and you want to be a BWOC — Big Woman On Campus, because why should only guys have special titles? — you got on the cheer squad, and cheer squads got cool uniforms, and they got out of class for all kinds of stuff, and they went to competitions all over, and they got the football stars, which are the same as rodeo stars in places like Grant, which brings me back to Brad Young, whose picture got me into this mess to begin with.
In ranch country, rodeo court made cheer squad look like a pair of deuces next to a royal flush. There were girls who made a career out of rodeo court competitions, traveling from one event to another, until they were old, like twenty-five or something, and they had to quit.
A lot of them married cowboys, and popped out junior rodeo princesses — kind of like the way some families send their kids to Harvard, or whatever. A legacy, I think they call it.
So there are the legacy princesses, which is what people were going to call me, no matter how good I was. I didn’t like it, but the pictures of Mom, Grandma, and Aunt Shelia were on the wall under the grandstands, and I couldn’t change that. When I explained how unfair this was to Mom, I got the standard Mom answer, “Get over yourself.”
Did I mention that I hate it when adults try to use slang? It is soooo lame.
Besides the legacies, and there were a lot of potentials in that group, there were the pros, you know, the ones I told you about, that go to every show in five hundred miles.
There were always a few clueless wannabes; girls who didn’t even have horses to ride in the Grand Entry, or who hadn’t worked on the rodeo for a gazillion years, like I had. That was the real secret to a legacy, that your family put you to work as a volunteer — spelled S-L-A-V-E — for the rodeo committee as soon as you could walk. I am serious here — some of the runners, I swear, are first-graders.
“Hello? Planet Tyler? Are you gonna stay ticked off forever?”
I shook my head. Amee couldn’t help it if she was clueless.
“I’m not ticked. I just needed to know how that Marcia woman got my phone number.” I shrugged. “Guess I better call her ba—”
“WHAT??” Amee shrieked.
I grabbed my ears, trying to protect them from Amee’s squeaking, which is something she does when she’s excited. She squeaks, like some people hyperventilate. It‘s a truly strange noise, and she can’t help it, even though she gets totally embarrassed if any guys are around, and especially the dorkus brotherus.
“I need to call her ba—”
“She called you?”
“Duh! Would I need to call her back if she didn’t?” Was she really that thick?
“But … But … But…” Amee couldn’t seem to say anything else.
I was starting to think I would have to slap her, like those hysterical women in old movies, and not that she’d say “Thank you” or anything, she’d probably just deck me instead. So I settled for putting my hand against her mouth.
The shrieks let up. A little.
“Some woman named Marcia called, and she said she was from Teen Heartbeat, and I was supposed to call her back after I checked some stuff. Like how she got my phone number, but I know that — now.”
Amee looked embarrassed, so I dropped it.
“So I have to call her, but I can’t do it if you are going to continue geeking out at max volume while I do.” I looked at her, still squeaking slightly behind my hand. “Are you?”
“Am I what?” She didn’t seem to be following my clear and precise logic. I could not make a call with squeaking going on.
“Are you going to keep geeking out?”
Amee stopped squeaking, and poked out her chin. “I was not geeking out. I was simply excited about the good fortune of one of my favorite people. That,” she said, lifting her chin even farther, “is so not geeking out.”
Amee got all formal and adult-speak whenever I called her on geeking out, which she was doing, even if she said she wasn’t.
“It’s geeking out,” I said. “It is geeking out so totally that the geek-meter is pegged.”
Amee plopped down on the bed with a sigh. “Fine. Whatever you say.”
I wasn’t going to argue with her, not when she was busy being all I’m-so-noble-and-misunderstood. I still had to call that nutso woman from Teen Heartbeat, and I didn’t know what it was she really wanted, because for all I knew, I’d won a lameoid subscription to her lameoid magazine.
I turned my back on Amee and picked up my cell, which was another thing Amee’s dad wouldn’t give her, a cell phone. I don’t get that, because she lives in the exact middle of abso-freaking-lutely nowhere, miles away from town, and she doesn’t have a cell? What is with that?
River insists that it’s to teach her to unburden her soul with the trappings of thingness, but I just think he’s a cheap jerk who doesn’t care if his only child’s safety is jeopardized. Not to mention being a complete social outcast because people can’t get hold of her, thankyouverymuch.
I dialed the number I had written down for Marcia, and the phone started ringing, and I wondered what kind of a lameoid magazine made people work on a Saturday, but I already knew what kind of magazine Teen Heartbeat was, and I wondered if her boss was trying to motivate her.
I was about ready to hang up — not even voice mail, if you can believe that — when Marcia picked up, and she was kind of out of breath, and I could hear music in the background, which sounded like the workout tapes Mom used.
“Hi, Tyler. Hang on a sec.”
The music stopped, like she’d just hit the mute button on her remote. “Better,” she said. “Thanks for calling back. I got your number on the cell here. I’ll call you right back.”
Before I could tell her she didn’t have to, I was listening to the giant echo of dead air, and a few seconds later the phone started ringing again.
“Hello?”
“Marcia Jolley. Is this Tyler?”
Like it would be somebody else?
“Yes, this is Tyler.” I didn’t know what to say next, so I waited for Miss Teen Heartbeat Marcia to go on.
“I’m calling, as I said before, about the Princess-for-a-Month contest. Can we confirm our information, please?”
“Yeah.” Brilliant response, Forrester, could you be any more rude if you, like, tried?
Marcia ignored my attitude — almost like she didn’t get it, which most adults would, they’re sensitive that way — and went ahead with all stuff I had seen on my computer screen. “Is that all correct, Tyler?”
“Yes.” Would she ever get to the point?
“Tyler, I am so pleased to be able to tell you that you are the winner of our Grand Prize Package.” She stopped, like she was waiting for me to start squeaking, which Amee would have, but I didn’t. Besides, I wasn’t going to accept it anyway.
When I didn’t say anything, she raced ahead. “I know this is probably a huge shock, and you probably don’t know what to say.” She giggled — ugh! — grown women should never, never giggle.
“You don’t need to say anything right now, Tyler. Take a little time to catch your breath, and to talk this over with your parents.” She stopped, and I heard keyboard clicks again.
“Daniel and Patricia, right? There should be a courier delivery for all of you on Monday morning. List of rules, contracts, stuff like that. Oh, and a passport application. It says here you don’t have one, and we’ll need that application ASAP.”
“That should be enough for now, but we will call back on Monday to talk with your parents about who will act as your chaperone.
“Do you have any questions right now, Tyler?”
I wanted to scream “Yes,” and to ask how the heck I could get out of this, but my brain was trying to explode, and Amee was sitting behind me, all hoping it was “good news,” which had a way different meaning for her than it did for me. I couldn’t think of anything to say that didn’t sound completely stupid and geeky, and possibly rude.
“No. No questions right now. Thank you,” I lied. It was all that my scrambled gray matter could come up with.
“Great. Great. It was super talking to you, Tyler. Congratulations! You’re going to be a princess! Gotta go. Talk to you Monday.”
For the third time that day, she left me listening to dead air. Sometimes grown-ups are entirely rude — no, make that most of the time — like being almost sixteen made me invisible or something, and they didn’t have to pay attention to how I really felt, or what I thought.
I turned around and looked at Amee — hard, what-the-heck-were-you-thinking hard — like I wanted to go all X-Men on her, and burn a hole right through her. Her eyes were all puppy-dog sad, and she wouldn’t look at me. She knew she’d screwed up, even if she didn’t understand exactly why, because she thought cities were cool, and cities in Europe were extreme.
“Why, Amee?” I kept my voice low — no drama queen time here, because Amee truly did not get it, and going postal on her wouldn’t do any good for either of us — just a cool girl, asking her best friend a simple question.
“Why’d you do it?” Okay, the voice was squeaking a little. Chill, Forrester. Deep breaths — good air in, bad air out. Let it go.
“Well,” Amee looked up and caught my eye.
I didn’t breathe fire or anything, so she went on. “You told me about the money-for-college talk — you know, the whole ‘Greg’s tuition comes first’ thing, like being older, and a guy,” she kinda made it sound like a bad word, “makes him all entitled and everything.”
Amee stopped and took a deep breath. Her cheeks were pink, and her lips quivered just a little, like she was trying not to cry, or scream. Or squeak.
Amee didn’t agree with her parents on much — would you agree with someone who changed her name to Sunflower? Didn’t think so — but she did have her fem moments.
Amee told me once that Sunflower — ugh! I cannot get used to saying that! — got all misty about how she hadn’t been old enough to burn her bra in the 60s — ancient history, anyone? — but she — Sunflower, not Amee — wished she had been.
Sunflower was real big on the women’s rights thing, and Amee bought into it totally, and I think she’s right. But sometimes she sees attitudes that aren’t there. Like, Mom and Dad had laid it out — two years apart was a disaster for paying tuition, and it didn’t matter whether Greg was a guy or not, if I had an older sister, she would have aced me out for tuition.
I just shrugged. That was Amee’s thing, not mine, and I didn’t want her to go off on a tangent.
“I know I told you about that, and it’s totally twisted, but what does that have to do with this?” I waved back at the monitor, with the rules still displayed in tiny letters.
“There’s a scholarship.”
Like that explained everything. Not.
“And?” I leaned forward a little, pushing her to finish her explanation.
“A scholarship. Duh!” She stood up, getting all righteous. “You need money, I found some. It was really pretty simple, once I figured out the search parameters.”
I tried not to think about what she meant, but there was a huge pit in the middle of my stomach that told me I knew what she meant, because Amee knew how to make a computer Do Things.
I looked back over my shoulder at the monitor — like, what? Was it going to suddenly go all burning-bush and give me answers to everything? — but it just sat there, staring back at me.
Amee gave a disgusted snort and shoved over in front of the keyboard. Her fingers tapped on the keyboard, too fast for me to follow, and in a few seconds, the display changed to a list of some kind, which made the pit in my stomach turn into a bottomless hole — like one of those movies where the stalker turns out to be the hero’s best friend — and I felt kinda sick.
“There are lots of these contests, Ty. They’re everywhere.”
I could believe that, looking at the list she was scrolling through.
“I did some searching, looking for scholarship contests.” She kept watching the screen, not looking at me. “I found a lot of them, so I had to set up some auto scripts to make the entries.”
I looked over Amee’s shoulder. I couldn’t help watching her, she was good at this stuff, and it was kind of like watching a scary movie where you know something bad is going to happen, but you can’t stop looking.
“I filtered out anything that made you buy stuff, or write essays, or anything.”
Okay, I admit it — she had me hooked — I wanted to know all about this project of hers.
“But, Amee, when did you do this? And why?”
Amee blushed, and she wouldn’t look at me, but I could see her ears turn red.
“The week after you told me about the college-money talk. I slept over, remember?”
Yeah. There had been a school dance, and we’d hung out together, and Greg had driven us because it was the only way Dad would let him take the truck. But when the dance was over, he wanted to go with a gang of other seniors to drink milkshakes and hassle the waitresses at the local truck stop, and he sure didn’t want to drive Amee back out to the middle-of-freakin’-nowhere, where River and Sunflower were waiting with organic tea and whole-grain cookies.
Not that I blamed him. I’d made the mistake of trying one of Sunflower’s whole-grain cookies — which were disgusting — and they would practically be standing in the dirt driveway — because it’s natural, don’t you know? — with their so-called treats, and there was no way to avoid them without hurting their feelings.
They were all about feelings — the feelings of the animals, of nature, of Amee’s friends — not that any of us wanted to share our feelings with anybody’s parents, much less with anybody’s parents named Sunflower. Or River.
So, since Greg didn’t want to drive Amee home, she called River and told him she was staying at my house, and one thing I will say for him, he says he trusts Amee to “honor herself,” which I think means she won’t act like a slut, which she never would, with or without honor.
Yeah, I remembered that night. Brad Young had danced with half the girls in the school — he was that popular! — but I wasn’t one of them, and when we got home, Amee and I had spent hours going over his every move — not that Amee much cared, but I cared a lot — and Amee went on forever about the dorkus brotherus.
“I remember that night. But …” I stopped and waited for her to finish explaining. Amee kept staring at the computer, and for some reason, she didn’t want to look at me, and her voice sounded funny when she talked.
“Ty, you’ve been my best friend ever since I moved here. Even when you found out how weird my mom and dad were.” I noticed she didn’t call them River and Sunflower, but I didn’t point it out, since I think she did that on purpose.
“I really appreciate that. A lot of people take one look at the Volvo, and their clothes, and figure I’m as insane as they are, and won’t talk to me. You weren’t like that.”
Amee finally turned around, and I could see she was practically crying, with her eyes all scrunched up funny, and her nose puffy, and her cheeks all spotty, the way your face gets when you’re all emotional.
“Okay,” she said, wiping her eyes. “So maybe I am PMSing majorly today, and I’m feeling weepy. But I really needed a friend. And I thought there was a way I could pay you back — by finding you the money for college.”
I couldn’t help getting all weepy myself, and I didn’t have PMS for an excuse, which was probably a good thing, because PMS didn’t make me weepy — I went psycho — so it was lucky for Amee I wasn’t.
I hugged her. “You are a total dork, but you’re a sweet dork,” I said.
“Gee, thanks so much.” Sarcasm wasn’t one of Amee’s best tools, but I gave her props for trying.
“You’re welcome.”
I let her go, and she turned back to the computer. Now that she knew I wasn’t mad, she couldn’t wait to show me all the techie stuff she’d done.
She lost me in the first three minutes, somewhere between her search engine modifications and writing automated scripts with all the 411 in them, but I got what was up, which was that she had entered me in about nine billion contests, give or take a couple million, with scholarship prizes.
A lot of the contests were already over, but there were still some that would go on for weeks, or months, so this wouldn’t be over for a while, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ask her if there was some kind of logfile or whatever that would tell me when.
But that wasn’t all, because she had also set up a schedule thingie, and the computer had been checking for new contests every week, which totally pegged my weird-meter.
“You just won the geek-of-the-year award. Nobody is ever going to beat this.”
“No big deal. I started doing this stuff when Da — River was working in high tech. We had computers all over the house. I started programming and writing little auto scripts and stuff. He seemed to think that was cool, so I kept trying to impress him.” She shrugged, in a way that said it was a big deal, that she wanted to impress her dad, and to have him think she was cool, but she wasn’t going to say so, because he’d gotten so weird.
“He doesn’t seem to notice now. But since we’re on the planet’s slowest dial-up, I have to find ways to make things happen faster online.
“I’m getting pretty good at it.” She said the last part as if I was going to argue with her. Not that I ever would, at least not about techie stuff, because Amee is the hottest computer wonk in the entire school, and I happen to know that some of the guys are jealous of how good she is, because I heard them talking one day when Greg didn’t know I was home.
Not that I was going to tell her that. She’d have to find out for herself that some guys though girl wonks were hot, and besides, she would just tell me I was lying to make her feel good — which I would totally do, if I thought I needed to.
“So you found all this?” I waved at the list on the computer — there had to be twenty of more places listed — and she nodded her head, and tapped a couple keys, and the screen started scrolling, so I could see that there were a bunch more places.
“Yeah. From there it was easy. I figured if I got you into enough contests, you were bound to win one.” She was smiling now, looking really proud of what she had done. “The trip to Europe is just, like, a bonus!”
I groaned and collapsed on the bed. There was no way I could spend a month in Europe. No way I could miss out on four full weeks of rodeo volunteering, not if I wanted to ride into that ring in September wearing a white leather outfit and princess boots, and looking so hot that Brad Young would trip all over himself to get to me and ask me out.
Even with the scholarship, there was no way I could possibly accept the Grand Prize Package of Teen Heartbeat’s Princess-for-a-Month contest.
No way.
Did I mention that there was no freakin’ way I was going to spend a month in Europe? I couldn’t be away from home during the prime rodeo volunteer months. Summer was the time when the stuff you did got noticed.
Sure, the committee claimed they paid attention to what the princess candidates did all year, but somehow the girls that were busiest in June and July and August were leading the parade into the ring come September.
Just a coincidence.
I am so sure.
What I hadn’t planned on was the campaign my parents started when they heard about the Princess-for-a-Month Grand Prize Package.