Sky Rider Read online

  J. G., Sector Supervisor

  In the house, Dusty found the man from Alcoholics Anonymous resting in an armchair but her father nowhere in sight. “He’s sleeping,” the AA man reported. He was a coveralled, tobacco-chewing garage mechanic, could not have been more different from Daddy except that they were both drunks. Well, this guy was a recovering alcoholic and Daddy had turned back into a drunk. There was a difference. “He’s sleeping in his bed for a change. When he gets up, he doesn’t know it yet but he’s going to get showered and shaved and get his butt to work. You got someplace you can lay low?”

  “I’ll go to school.”

  She took the bus, then once she got to school she couldn’t concentrate. All day she did nothing but think of Skye and track down kids who had known him. Boys who had ridden bikes with him, mostly. Not that many kids. She found out that Skye had a younger brother her age, but he was taking a week off school. Just as well; she would not have wanted to hurt him with her questions. She spent the day passing notes in class, talking with kids in the echoing cafeteria at lunch. Talking about Skye.

  Except when she was interrupted by Katelyn. “How’s your father?” Katelyn asked, yelling to be heard above the noise.

  Dusty shrugged. She didn’t want to talk about her father. Her father had been sober for a year and now he was drinking again and there didn’t seem to be anything she could count on or anything she could do about him.

  “Aren’t you going to eat?” Katelyn wanted her to sit with her as usual.

  “No.”

  “God’s sake, at least sit down and have a cheese cracker.”

  “No, thanks.”

  Katelyn scowled and tapped her purple plastic fingernails against the table. “What’s it with you and that dead kid, anyway?”

  “I just want to find out what he was like.” Dusty wanted to know, and somehow it made her feel better to talk about him.

  “You think your father did it,” Katelyn said, just loud enough so that Dusty could hear. “You think he did it, don’t you?”

  Dusty wanted to hit her. Hard. But her back hurt, and Skye was dead, and how would hitting help anything? Dusty turned away, biting her lip, and went to talk with a boy she barely knew about Skye.

  Skye was nice, he said. That was what everyone said. Skye had been a nice kid who lived over the hill from the Nisleys. Did crazy things sometimes, like ride his dirt bike over a railroad trestle. Liked to go fast. Liked animals and nature. Liked to get out in the woods and ride.

  When Dusty got home that afternoon, her father’s Bronco was parked in the driveway but the house was empty. A scrawled note left under the salt shaker on the kitchen table told her that Steve (the AA guy) had dropped her father off at his office and would pick him up and bring him home.

  Dusty wandered down to the fence and stood for a long time just looking at the horses. She thought of Katelyn, Ms. Purple Plastic Fingernails, then pushed the thought away. Whether to forgive Katelyn for what she had said was the least of her worries. She tried to give herself a break for a minute, tried not to think of anything at all, shifting from foot to foot to try to ease her aching back. She wanted to go lie down.

  It kind of seemed as if she had spent the past couple of years lying down.

  In the pasture there were two chestnut mares, mother and daughter. There was old Pinocchio. There was a seal-brown Appaloosa without any spots. The mares had been for pleasure riding, the Appaloosa had been Mom’s jumper. All were just expensive lawn ornaments now, and if the grass got thin Daddy threw them some hay. The vet came twice a year. Other than that, nobody bothered with them much.

  But Tazz … Razzle My Tazz had been different. Where was he now?

  Where was Skye?

  She had told him to go away. She had been afraid of him. What would he do if he found out it was … it was her father who had killed him? Which it was. No use pretending it wasn’t.

  Funny, she felt more worried about Skye than she did about her father.

  She couldn’t go lie down. She had to do something.

  But what?

  “What am I supposed to do?” she said softly to Pinocchio. “I’ve got to help somehow. Whatever happens to Skye, it’s forever.”

  The old pony lifted his shaggy little head and looked back at her. His eyes were midnight deep, indigo witching glasses.

  Dusty said, “I told him to go away. I guess I ought to go find him.”

  Pinocchio’s gaze told her nothing, yet everything. She turned and walked back to the house as quickly as she could. She grabbed the keys from her father’s dresser and headed out.

  She took the Bronco.

  Driving without a license. Underage. Automobile theft, grand larceny, maybe.

  I’m as crazy as Skye was.

  As crazy as my mother.

  It felt good.

  And it wasn’t hard. Driving on the country roads wasn’t that different from driving around the farm. Barely any traffic. And she didn’t have far to go. Within five minutes she had navigated a rutted gravel road and parked in front of the red metal gate with its nasty KEEP OUT sign. Leaving the car, she walked into the woods.

  “Skye?”

  No answer.

  Because her errand was so strange, the familiar trail seemed strange. And something had changed. The yellow police tape was gone from around the crime scene. It was just another patch of woods now.

  “Skye? Tazz?”

  They weren’t there.

  They really weren’t there. I’d know it if they were here. I’d feel it even if I couldn’t see it.

  The woods stood sunny and placid all around. Dusty turned and walked back to the car.

  Okay. She knew Skye considered himself a ghost. Where else would he be hanging around?

  His family? His home?

  On the other side of the hill from Nisley’s, kids had said. Dusty started the Bronco and bumped her way out to the hard road, gritting her teeth against the pain in her back. She drove slowly, looking for a mailbox that said Ryder.

  Even though they lived just over the hills, less than a mile away from her house, the road wound around for three or four miles before she found the Ryders’ place. There it was. She turned in at the unpaved lane without giving herself time to think. If she thought about it, she knew, what she was doing would scare her so badly she would head home to her room and lock the door and never come out again. Yet it did not feel wrong. It felt crazy and deeply right.

  Why? She could tell within a moment that Skye wasn’t there.

  It was one of those prefab houses set down on a concrete-block foundation plopped onto a scalped piece of former cow pasture, dirt still raw around it, no grass, no trees, no history or memories. Not the kind of place a ghost would haunt. Skye probably hadn’t lived here more than a few months before he died.

  On the stark new patio a man, a woman, and three boys sat staring at her.

  Dusty realized that she had turned off the Bronco and was just sitting in it. She also realized that any sensible person would turn it back on and roar out of there. Instead, she opened her door and heaved herself upright. It was hard to stand up.

  “You lost, honey?” the woman called. Skye’s mother. She had his dark hair and shadowy eyes. A sweet tone in her voice. Probably a sweet smile, though Dusty could see that right now she could not smile; she had the haggard look of someone who was just hanging on.

  Dusty had some idea how she felt. She remembered how it had felt after her mother died.

  The three boys, Skye’s brothers, all looked like him, too. Or like subdued, earthen versions of the spirit Dusty knew. The father was a sandy-haired man who looked at first as if he didn’t fit in until Dusty saw his chiseled chin and the anger in his eyes.

  “Can we help you?” the mother asked.

  “Maybe,” Dusty said, limping toward them. “Well, no.” And she wasn’t sure whether she could help them, either.

  “You looking for somebody?”

  She nodded. But she cou
ldn’t just say the name of the person she was looking for. It would hurt them. Instead she said, “Please don’t get mad at me. I don’t mean to bother you. Please don’t think I’m some kind of nut.”

  Now the father was scowling at her. His scowl was just like Skye’s.

  She said, “They thought my mother was kind of nutty. She saw spirits. Now it’s happening to me, too.”

  Maybe she was nuts, talking with these people. But she couldn’t just go away. The urgent heartbeat in her chest would not let her.

  The father said, “You’re that Grove girl.”

  She nodded to him. She said, “I’ve seen Skye.”

  Chapter Six

  The father’s face flushed angrily. He sat up straight to tell her she’d better leave. But as he drew his breath and opened his mouth the mother’s voice came flying like a dove. “Where? How? Tell me!” Each word quivered like a swallow’s wings. “Did he talk to you? What did he say?”

  Dusty turned to see the woman stretching shaky hands toward her, face lifted toward her, leaning forward in her chair so far it looked as if she would fall. Dusty grabbed her trembling hands. “Shhh, Mrs. Ryder. Yes, he talked to me. Shhh, I’ll tell you everything.”

  “Then—he’s a troubled soul.”

  Dusty nodded.

  “He hasn’t found peace.”

  “No. Not yet.” It was dusk, Dusty realized. She had been talking with the Ryders for hours. At some time she had sat down on the concrete by Skye’s mother’s feet. The boys had crowded their chairs around, listening—they were handsome, silent, with eyes that spoke for them; had he been that way? Mr. Ryder had brought her water in a tall glass with ice cubes. He sat listening, too, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest.

  “He needs to be at peace,” Skye’s mother said softly. “How can he find it? What can we do?”

  Dusty sighed. She didn’t have an answer.

  Mr. Ryder spoke up for the first time, his voice quiet but harsh. “Dusty. Who put that cable across the trail?”

  She looked down. “I don’t know.”

  “I think you do know.”

  Turning as if every movement were an effort, his wife told him, “Hush.”

  “I can’t hush. Our son is dead.”

  “Have mercy,” Mrs. Ryder said, her voice muted. Both of them spoke so softly that Dusty did not feel they were quarreling. She sensed that they craved comfort, but in such different ways that they could not console each other.

  “Mercy? No one had mercy on Skye.”

  “Dusty can’t help that.”

  “I think she can help.”

  “How? She didn’t do it.”

  “Maybe not, but talk about troubled souls, look at her! She knows who did.”

  There was a breath of silence. Then, gently enough, Mr. Ryder said, “Dusty.”

  She managed to raise her head and meet his gaze.

  He said, “Look, I believe you really do want peace for Skye. But the way I figure, there can’t be peace till there’s justice.”

  Dusty mumbled, “I really don’t know anything.” That was the truth. She knew nothing for sure. But she was thinking of her father, and her heart hurt.

  “But you really have been seeing Skye’s spirit?”

  “Yes!”

  “Don’t you figure there’s a reason for that?”

  Staring at the patio floor again, Dusty felt Skye’s mother’s hand settle like a butterfly on her hair. “Honey,” she told her husband, answering for Dusty, “I figure, yes, there is a reason for that.”

  Silence.

  Something seemed settled, but Dusty was not sure how or what. Thinking of her father, she felt a pang that echoed the grief around her. “I’d better get home,” she said, her voice faltering. She started struggling to her feet.

  Skye’s father stood up, reached down, and lifted her to her feet as if she were a little kid. He was strong. “I should have given you my chair,” he grumbled. “You sitting on that hard concrete, what the heck was I thinking of? I’m getting senile.”

  The boys actually smiled, almost laughed. Their names were Canyon, Craig, Leigh. Dusty wasn’t clear yet about which ones were older and which ones were younger or how Skye had fit in.

  Skye. They had to miss him so much. “I’m sorry,” she said to all of them.

  “Don’t be sorry.” It was Mr. Ryder. “I hope you’ll come back. I don’t know what to think of all this spirit stuff, but—”

  “Tell us if you see him again.” It was one of the boys, low-voiced Canyon.

  “At least he has the horse,” Mrs. Ryder said. “That’s really something. I bet he loves that horse. Now I’ll have a picture in my mind when I try to sleep tonight.” She smiled, and yes, she did have the sweetest smile in the county. “Instead of picturing him in that grave, I’ll think of him riding that horse. Out there under the stars.”

  When Dusty got home, her father was there alone, and he was not drinking. He was not doing anything but slouching in an armchair and staring at the living room wall.

  “Hi,” Dusty said.

  His eyes barely flickered to glance at her before they fixed on the wall again. “Where you been?”

  “Out driving around.”

  Dusty stood there, waiting, almost hoping. The kind of father he used to be, he should want to know a lot more about where she had been for four hours without leaving a note, and he should have a lot more to say about her driving illegally to get there. But he did not react to what she had said at all. He barely seemed to hear her.

  She sat down across from him, in front of his patch of wall. “Did you have something to eat?”

  His eyes focused on her slowly.

  “Are you hungry?” she tried again. She was hungry. When she was a kid—heck, she was still a kid; somebody ought to feed her. Somebody ought to ask about her, how her day had been, and offer her hot food. Roast chicken. Pot pie. Soup.…

  Her father shook his head. Stared some more.

  Dusty asked, “Are you all right?”

  It took him a moment to come back to her. “What?”

  “I asked, are you all right?”

  His lips pressed together. “Just let me alone.”

  She got up and headed to the kitchen to find herself something to eat.

  There wasn’t even a can of tuna. Obviously Daddy hadn’t gone grocery shopping lately. Where’s that maid? Dusty joked sourly to herself as she put together an unsatisfactory meal of ketchup sandwiches on toasted stale bread. What’s the use of that lazy maid? To eat, she sat down where she couldn’t see her father sitting in the living room and staring.

  I wonder what’s going on in his head.

  But she found she didn’t have a clue. She didn’t know him well enough. He didn’t talk to her, or not that way. He had all the usual good, fatherly feelings for her, she could tell, but he would never say so. He didn’t like to talk about feelings. Didn’t want to talk about Mom, either. He worked hard, came home, was tired, went back to work the next day. She barely understood what he did there. On weekends he watched sports, mowed grass, read the Wall Street Journal. He talked about baseball or complained about government and the high prices of everything. When was the last time she had really talked with her father? Had she ever?

  They’re gonna take him away and stick me in a Home For Hapless Children.

  The thought was an attempt at a joke, but it turned her cold to the core. Ever since Mom had died, Dusty had been afraid that she would be left with no one.

  It was not a fear she had ever spoken to her father.

  Why hadn’t she tried harder to talk to him? Was she really kind of like him? Somebody was saying she was like him; who had said that? She couldn’t remember.

  There he sat, yet …

  Heck, I might as well be an orphan.

  Dusty stood up, leaving her unfinished “dinner” on the table, and fled to her room. But closing her door couldn’t shut the problems out. Like ghosts, problems traveled through doors
. Went wherever they wanted. Haunting her.

  Dusty looked at her homework with no more comprehension than her father had shown when he had looked at her. Then she turned off her light and stood at her window. Downstairs, her father was staring at a wall. Upstairs, she was staring into the night.

  As her eyes adjusted to the darkness, she began to see colors. Green-black sheen of the pond in the pasture bottom. Teal velvet pasture hills. Deep indigo infinity between the stars. The window glass became annoying, a barrier between her and the night.

  Skye was out there. Somewhere.

  At the thought of him, Dusty felt her chest swell with wanting. Needing. She needed to see him. She needed to look upon his shining shoulders, his beautiful, fiery face and try to gentle him with her voice, like trying to gentle a proud colt. To see him, talk with him, tell him that his mother loved him, his father, his brothers, they all missed him and loved him. Tell him—

  Whoa.

  It was mainly that he was in danger, wasn’t it? Skye was in terrible peril. Not sure how she could help, but …

  “Have to find him,” Dusty muttered, and she headed downstairs and out, grabbing her ketchup sandwich on the way, not even turning to see whether her father noticed as she left.

  The Bronco, too, would have been a barrier between her and the night. Cars needed to stay on roads. Dusty headed out on foot, cross-country, without a flashlight. It was a good feeling. Back when she had still been able to ride horses, sometimes she had ridden out at night, no flashlight—light would have gotten in the way—and she remembered the feeling, how she had become part of the horse and the horse had become part of the night. She tried to feel that sure, that powerful, as she strode down the first long pasture slope and past the pond.

  Her mind felt oddly sure. Her heart felt sure. But her body felt not sure at all. Her back hurt, and the pain weakened her. With every step on the uneven ground her back hurt more. When her foot came down on an unseen rock or in an unseen hollow, her back hurt atrociously.