struggling to survive on the next-to-nothing wages her mother made as a waitress at Suze’s. Actually, it had been three girls, not women. Kelsey was only twelve, and their mother had never acted much like a grown-up. Sarah had played the part of the adult in the family up until Roy swept all three of them out of their trailer-park life and moved them to his small ranch at the edge of town. To some people, it might not have looked like much, but to Sarah it was heaven. Not only did she have a dad now, she had a horse.
And it was one heck of a horse. Roy had been a horse trader all his life, but Chromium Flash was his biggest, best buy ever, a quarter horse stallion from champion performance stock with explosive speed and gorgeous conformation. Roy wanted to stand him at stud for a steady income, but first he needed to prove the animal could perform. He thought the horse would be good at barrel racing, and he wanted Sarah to ride him.
Sarah loved the speed of the race, the excitement of taking the tight turns at top speed, the shotgun run for the finish. She practiced every day in the small corral beside the barn, but Roy said she needed to work out in a regulation-sized arena. So that afternoon, they were taking Flash to the Humboldt outfit outside of town.
She’d practically leapt off the bus and flown to the house that day, tossing her backpack on the floor in the entryway and rocketing up the steps to her bedroom. She was excited to train in a regulation arena, but the best part would be spending time at Humboldt’s.
“Hurry up,” Roy hollered. “We’ve got to get Flash over there before four so you can practice. You want any time to talk to that Humboldt boy you’re so sweet on, you’d better run.”
“I’m not sweet on him,” she hollered. But she could feel a blush warming her face. She’d always been shy with boys, but talking horses with Brian Humboldt was like talking to a friend. Maybe even a boyfriend. “I have to change.”
“Well, change fast.”
Though Roy had way more bark than bite, she changed as fast as she could. It wasn’t like she had to decide what to wear. She’d thought through half a dozen outfits during algebra class, settling on a sparkly T-shirt that would glitter in the sun as she let Flash out of the trailer. Maybe Flash would rear and prance a little. She’d told Brian how hard he was to handle, and she’d seen a spark of admiration in his eyes.
But when she scanned herself in the mirror, turning right and left, she looked disappointingly childish. Brian was a senior. He’d never ask an unsophisticated freshman tomboy out on a date.
Makeup. That’s what she needed. Opening her underwear drawer, she rummaged around and found a bag that held her meager supply of beauty aids: a sample of foundation from the Clinique counter at the Casper mall, an almost-empty tube of mascara she’d nabbed off her mother’s vanity, and a compact of brush-on blush. Leaning into the mirror, she dabbed foundation in her T-zone, just like it said in Seventeen magazine, and brushed a little blush onto the apples of her cheeks.
She was just about to open the mascara when Roy pounded on her bedroom door. “You ready yet? We need to get that horse in the trailer.”
“Just a minute.”
For once, she was glad Roy was just her stepfather. A real dad would have charged right into her room and seen what she was doing, probably yelled at her for wearing makeup. But Roy always respected her privacy.
“I’ll load him,” he grumbled.
She heard him thump down the stairs and turned back to the mirror, opening her eyes wide to stroke on a coat of mascara as she thought about how Brian would fall in love with her new longer, blacker lashes.
She was on the second coat when a high-pitched shriek pierced the quiet afternoon. It was followed by a clanging, pounding racket and then another scream, lower this time. A man’s scream. Flash. Roy.
She dropped the mascara brush and ran down the stairs. Flash was high-strung and nervous, and he hated the trailer. She’d always coaxed him in with treats, letting him take his time. He’d do anything for her, and secretly, she enjoyed the fact that he wouldn’t behave for anyone else. Roy told her she was spoiling him, but