Abandon - Meg Cabot [14]
“I’m all right,” I lied. I was shivering so badly, my teeth were chattering a little. “I was wondering. Do you know where we are?”
“Oh, yes, dear,” she said with a huge smile. “We’re getting on the boat.”
I didn’t even know how to respond to that. Was this a dream? But if it was, how was I able to wring the water from my scarf and actually feel the drops as they squeezed through my fingers?
“Where is the boat going?” I asked.
“Oh, I don’t know,” the old lady said, with another sweet smile. “No one will tell us anything. But I do think it must be somewhere wonderful. Because look how badly everyone over there seems to want to get into this line over here.”
She pointed at the longer line, a few dozen yards from ours.
It was true. The people in that line, apparently having heard the same thing the old lady had, were almost rioting in an attempt to escape their line and get into ours. Some of the bald, tattooed men in the black leather coats were having to hold them back, like bodyguards at a rock concert trying to contain unruly fans.
“Hey,” the guy in line behind me said. He was older than me, but younger than the old lady. Maybe in his twenties. “Can you get any service?” He was holding up his cell phone. “I can’t get any service.”
I patted my coat pockets. They were empty. Of course I didn’t have my phone. This was usually how my nightmares went.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t —”
That’s when I saw him. The tall man dressed all in black — black boots, black leather gloves, black leather coat — cantering towards the riot on a huge black horse.
I recognized him at once, even though it had been so many years. A rush of relief surged through me. Finally, a familiar face.
Maybe that’s why I didn’t hesitate — not even when I saw that everyone else had scattered, giving him a wide berth — to duck out of the line and head towards him.
“Oh, dear, I wouldn’t if I were you,” the old lady called after me.
“It’s all right,” I said over my shoulder. “I know him!”
“Crazy,” I heard the guy behind me mutter (I had no idea at the time how often I’d be hearing this later). “She must be trying to get herself killed.”
They hadn’t put it together. Neither had I.
Not then.
Not everyone is comfortable around horses, I told myself as I ran towards him across the sand. That’s why they, unlike me, were so afraid.
And this wasn’t a horse like my best friend Hannah’s, Double Dare, whose comfortable placidity — he was starting to balk at even the smallest jumps — might have been one reason Hannah now preferred spending time on the school basketball team, hanging out at the mall in hopes of catching sight of some of her older brother’s friends, or even going to nightclubs instead of the stables. Double Dare’s name was starting to become a bit of a joke. There was nothing daring about him anymore, really.
This horse, on the other hand, seemed to be daring you just to look at him, let alone to come close.
Which was probably why my doing so spooked him.
All I said was “Hey” in an attempt to get his rider’s attention…just as he was shouting at everyone in the other line to stay where they were — an order they seemed cowed by the harshness of his tone into obeying.
I had no idea such a brutal tone could come from the sweet man I remembered — the one who’d made a bird come back alive — from my grandfather’s funeral. I stood there paralyzed with fright…
…until the next thing I knew, charcoal black hooves were slashing the air just inches from my head as the horse reared, snorting in outrage.
Then I ducked, afraid for my life, throwing my hands over my face to protect my eyes. A second later, those enormous hooves came exploding down again, spraying bits of sand everywhere, and I was diving for safety.
That’s when a noise like the loudest thunderclap I’d ever heard filled the cavern. I wasn’t sure if it was a real thunderclap or the sound of the horse’s body as it crashed onto the beach, one of its back legs