Saige Read online

  “When would we start having classes?” I asked, suddenly feeling excited. “And who’s going to teach?”

  “Whoa, slow down,” Mimi said. “We have to raise the money first. We have a barbecue arranged for the fiesta, but no bake sale yet. That would be a good project for the PTA to take on. Your mom’s a member, right? Maybe you can talk to her about it.”

  “O…kay,” I sighed, feeling deflated again. Bake sales are all right, but not nearly as much fun as art class.

  Mimi smiled at me. “I know, all this just to get an art class,” she said. “But getting where you want to go takes time and effort.”

  I nodded, thinking of Tessa. “Ten thousand hours,” I said. When Mimi raised her eyebrows questioningly, I explained.

  “Tessa is exactly right!” said Mimi. “Putting in practice time is just as important as having talent. Sounds as if Tessa learned and grew a lot at music camp. I’m glad for her.”

  A picture of Tessa and Dylan in their matching shirts flashed through my mind. “Me, too,” I said, trying to mean it.

  Mimi must have heard the uncertainty in my voice. “You need a dose of horse,” she said, “and then we’ll get to work painting.”

  I followed her out to the shady three-sided shed where the horses were sheltered from the heat of the day. When I stepped in among them, Picasso turned his head toward me politely.

  Mimi’s horses are Spanish Barbs, an ancient strain of horse brought to America by the Spanish conquistadors, soldiers and explorers from the 1500s. Spanish Barbs are rare—there are fewer than a thousand of them left. But Mimi owns five and is doing all she can to help preserve Spanish Barbs.

  Picasso seems to know he comes from noble blood and always acts like the perfect gentleman. He blew his warm, sweet breath over my face, making my skin prickle. His almond-shaped eyes looked wise and kind.

  I reached up under Picasso’s long white mane and gave him a scratch.

  “Hey, he’s sweaty!” I said, glancing at his sides. Picasso is white, flecked all over with dark speckles. Today the hair on his back was rough and damp. “You were riding him?” I asked. Usually Mimi rides the younger horses, who are all still in training.

  Mimi said, “Picasso and I are coming out of retirement for the fiesta. We’re going to dust off some of our old rodeo tricks.”

  I raised my eyebrows. Mimi is a young-looking and young-acting grandmother, but she’s over sixty, and Picasso is twenty-seven, which is pretty old for a horse. When they were younger, Mimi did trick riding on him. I’d seen pictures of Picasso galloping around an arena while Mimi stood in the saddle or leaned down to pick a handkerchief off the ground. There’s even a picture of her jumping him, bareback and without a bridle, through a flaming hoop.

  “Really? The flaming hoop and everything?” I asked.

  Mimi shook her head regretfully. “We’ll do something a lot less dangerous,” she explained. “We’re not quite the athletes we used to be. There’s a parade, too. Do you want to lead the parade on Picasso?”

  “Lead the parade?” That sounded scary, to be out there in front of the crowd all by myself.

  “Picasso is the most experienced parade horse around here,” Mimi said. “Don’t you think he belongs in the lead?”

  I looked deep into Picasso’s eyes. There’s an old Spanish saying that Barbs are both “fire and feather.” That’s Picasso. He’s high-spirited and hot-blooded, yet as easy to handle as a feather. I’ve ridden him since I was very small, and he takes care of me. Plus he’s beautiful. If I rode him in the parade, people wouldn’t be looking at me. They’d be looking at Picasso.

  “I’d like that,” I answered.

  Mimi smiled. “Good! He’d like it too,” she said, patting Picasso’s side. “You’ll need to start riding a few afternoons a week so that you both get into shape. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. First, I’d like to get back to the studio and start that painting. I don’t paint as much when you’re not around, Saige. Did you know that?”

  “You don’t sit still long enough,” I said. Mimi is always doing something with horses, or gardening, or fixing fences on the ranch—always moving, and moving fast. But during the school year, I come to Mimi’s most afternoons. Then Mimi sits, and we both get a lot of painting done.

  Back in the studio, I looked at the painting I’d left on the easel three weeks ago. It was a portrait of Picasso, and I didn’t like it anymore. It looked crude to me, babyish. I was sure I could do better.

  Should I start over? Or try to fix it? I wondered. That’s the cool thing about painting with oils. A lot of times you can cover up mistakes. I sat and stared. What did I like about the painting?

  The eyes. Somehow I had gotten that Picasso expression, the wise yet fiery look. So, keep the eyes, I told myself. And the ears, and the nose. And the neck.

  So what exactly was wrong with this picture?

  The jaw, I decided. I’d messed up the perspective, so Picasso’s jowl seemed to flare out. I could hide that by deepening the shadow on his neck. I squeezed some paint onto my palette and stepped close to the painting again.

  Later—fifteen minutes? An hour?—I heard a sigh from Mimi. I surfaced from my painting trance, put my palette down, and walked over to see what she was doing.

  I’d been expecting Mimi’s painting to be naturalistic, to look like horses really look. Mimi does that so well, people sometimes mistake her horse paintings for photographs.

  But this painting was pink, the deep ruby-hued pink of the Sandia Mountains at sunset. The horses were closely grouped together, so their ears, necks, backs, and rumps made one continuous line, like…I looked out the window.

  Like the mountains. “Mountain horses!” I declared.

  “Yes, I might just call it that,” Mimi said, sounding pleased.

  “It’s amazing,” I said. It was hard to pull my gaze away from the painting.

  Mimi stood up and walked to my easel. “Hmm,” she said thoughtfully.

  “There’s too much shadow on the neck, right?” I asked.

  “How would you fix that?” Mimi asked.

  “Um, I could darken the other shadows, I guess,” I said, reaching for my palette again.

  At that moment, Rembrandt barked, which meant my dad was here. I looked around for my backpack.

  Dad walked in, still looking crisp in his pilot’s uniform. He’s short and wiry, just like Mimi. “Hi, Ma! Hi, Saige!” he called to us. “How was your day?”

  “Great!” I said and then laughed. I wouldn’t have said that two hours earlier, but the lost sparkle had come back to the day. School hadn’t started the way I’d hoped, but school wasn’t everything. And anyway, Mimi and I already had a plan to make it better.

  I shared Mimi’s fund-raising idea with Mom over dinner. “I think it’s a great idea,” she said. “I was just reading about how students get better grades when schools devote enough time to the arts. It’s worth fighting for.”

  Mom paused to scoop corn onto my plate and then said, “Why don’t you write the PTA a letter and get classmates to sign it? I can bring it to the meeting next week. Make sure to ask who wants to help sell cookies at the fiesta!”

  “I’ll donate balloon rides,” Dad volunteered. He’s always looking for more reasons to fly his balloon.

  “Yes! You could even make it a raffle,” Mom suggested. “Sell tickets, and the winner gets to go up with you in a mass ascension during Balloon Fiesta.”

  “Good idea. I’ll need a ticket booth…” Dad said, staring into space. He may be a detail-focused airline pilot by day, but he is Mimi’s son, so he has his artistic side. He came out of his daydream long enough to turn to me and say, “I might need some help, Saige.”

  “Sure!” I felt good about all of this. I’d gotten things rolling, and tomorrow I’d get Tessa to help me write the letter. She’s better with words than I am. Then sometime soon, we’d have after-school art classes.

  The next morning I was outside walking Sam, listening t
o distant dogs barking at distant hot-air balloons, when Gabi’s front door opened.

  “Hi,” Gabi said, coming down the walk. “May I say hello to your dog?”

  “Sure,” I said, giving Sam the “sit” command.

  Gabi crouched down beside Sam. She didn’t pat him on the head or stare into his face, as most people do when they greet a dog. She didn’t look at him at all. She turned her head toward the mountains and held out her clenched fist so that Sam could smell it. He checked it out and then looked up at her face. Only then did she look down.

  “Hello, Sam. What beautiful eyes!” she said soothingly.

  Sam leaned against her leg, something he usually does only with family. He was already devoted to her.

  “Wow,” I said. “You really understand dogs!”

  Gabi nodded. “I taught our old dog to do tricks,” she said, “like helping Mama pick up after the baby. I’d like to be a dog trainer when I grow up.”

  “Cool! My grandmother trains horses,” I said. “She has a horse she does tricks on.” I told Gabi about Picasso, and her eyes lit up, like Tessa’s when she talks about music.

  “I go out to my aunt’s ranch every summer,” Gabi said. “We trained one of her horses to do tricks this year. It was really fun.”

  “Wa…” I began. I was going to say, “Want to come out and meet Picasso?” But going to Mimi’s was something I usually did with Tessa. I was hoping Tessa would come out sometime this week, if she had time. “Want to walk to school together?” I asked instead.

  Gabi turned pink, suddenly seeming shy again. “Okay,” she said.

  “Great!” I said, turning back toward my house. “I’ll come get you in about half an hour.”

  A short while later, we were walking to school instead of running cross-lots the way I usually did. I learned that Gabi had a best friend back in the South Valley named Renata. They talked every night on the phone, but Gabi wasn’t sure they’d stay best friends now that they couldn’t see each other every day. Renata was already planning a sleepover at someone else’s house.

  I knew how Gabi felt. I was hoping that today everything would go back to normal between me and Tessa. Maybe Tessa would be tired of the ten-thousand-hours thing, tired of Dylan, ready to help me write the PTA letter, and free to come out to Mimi’s in the afternoon.

  But when we walked into the classroom, Dylan and Tessa were already there making faces—their jaws hanging slackly and their eyes wide. They looked ridiculous, actually.

  “We’re pretending we have rubber corks at the hinges of our jaws,” Tessa told me happily. “It helps you relax your mouth—”

  “So it’s as big as a cathedral,” I snapped, louder than I meant to. “I know!”

  Tessa closed her mouth, and I caught a glimpse of hurt in her eyes. I instantly wished I could take back my words, but class was starting, and there was no more time to talk.

  At lunch, I tried to make things better by telling Tessa all about the art fiesta. “I have this letter to write to the PTA,” I explained. “Could you help me with it?”

  Tessa shook her head. “Dylan and I are doing our math homework right after we eat,” she said. “We’re going to try to get our homework done during the day so that we have more time for lessons and practice after school.”

  Dylan tapped Tessa’s shoulder, trying to get her attention, but I pressed on. “Could you help me tomorrow, maybe after school?” I asked.

  Tessa looked torn. “Tomorrow I have a voice lesson,” she said, “and Thursday there’s piano.”

  “What about tonight?” I asked. “Could you come out to Mimi’s?”

  I saw Tessa and Dylan exchange a glance. Did she need Dylan’s permission now before she made any decisions?

  Apparently so. Dylan gave Tessa one of those looks that means You know what you have to do, and Tessa raised her hands apologetically. “I have to practice, Saige,” she said.

  “Well, when will we get together?” I asked. Suddenly things were looking completely hopeless.

  “I don’t know,” Tessa said. She looked a little frustrated, too. Then her face brightened. “I know! Maybe we can go to a movie Friday night. Do you want to?”

  I nodded. Friday night movies were something Tessa and I did a lot—at least last year.

  “Okay, then,” said Tessa. “I’ll ask my parents.”

  Then she turned to Dylan to talk about—what else?—music. A teacher at camp had told Tessa that she had perfect pitch. If somebody struck a piano key, Tessa could identify the note and sing it.

  Dylan wanted to test Tessa’s pitch using a piano app on her cell phone. Sure enough, Tessa aced the test.

  “Do it again!” said Dylan.

  When Tessa got another perfect score, Dylan sighed admiringly. Then I saw Tessa give Dylan a playfully smug cat smile.

  But that was our smile! Why was Tessa sharing it with Dylan? And weren’t they supposed to be doing homework? That didn’t look like homework to me.

  “Tonight won’t work anyway,” I said to Tessa’s back. “I forgot—Mimi and I will be riding.” That ought to get her! Tessa loves horses. But she hardly noticed.

  The person who did notice was Gabi, who listened at the edge of our group with shining eyes. She was dying to come out and meet the horses, I could tell. But she didn’t ask about that. Instead she said, “I could help you with the letter, if you want.”

  I nodded, feeling confused. Tessa always helps me with writing things. Why did it feel as if everything was changing?

  When I arrived at the ranchita, Mimi had Picasso and Georgia, the beautiful four-year-old bay mare, saddled. After lemonade, we rode out—Mimi on Georgia and me on Picasso—across the hot pasture and into the Bosque, the woodland along the banks of the Rio Grande. It was cooler there and breezy. The river glittered in the spaces between the trees, and we heard ducks quacking.

  Georgia pointed her ears toward the sound. This was her first time in the Bosque. She danced and sidestepped beside Picasso, startled by every shadow. Picasso glided along with his long-striding walk, ignoring the shadows—and ignoring Georgia, mostly. But when she seemed to be holding her breath, ready to explode, he reached out and nudged her shoulder. Georgia relaxed a bit, matching her stride to his.

  Mimi and I smiled at each other and rode quietly, side by side, in the dappled shade. When she was on horseback, Mimi looked young. And on wise Picasso, I felt mature and seasoned, as if Mimi and I were the same age, or as if age didn’t really matter. What mattered was what people thought about and cared about, and in that way, Mimi and I were alike. So what if she was fifty years older than me?

  On Thursday Mimi showed me her trick-riding routine for the fiesta. First she warmed up Picasso, circling the ring at a walk and a slow jog. When he was ready, she rode him over to the fence, reached forward, and slipped the bridle off Picasso’s head. She handed it to me. “Now watch this,” she said, grinning.

  She picked up two pieces of red fabric from the fence rail. They were long rectangles of light, floaty cloth, streaked with flame-like orange and blue. She took one cloth in each hand, put both fists on her hips, and turned Picasso away from the fence, using just her knees to guide him.

  Out in the middle of the ring, Mimi did something else. I couldn’t see what it was, but Picasso changed. He held himself proudly, arched his neck, and began a powerful, slow prance around the ring. The flame-colored cloths rippled at his sides, tracing patterns in the air. It was beautiful.

  Suddenly Mimi’s loud cowboy whistle split the air, and Picasso burst into a gallop. Mimi raised her arms high above her head in a perfect V, and the cloths streamed wildly out behind her. Picasso circled the whole ring. Then Mimi guided him in a fast figure eight with her knees.

  “Que bonita!” called Luis, Mimi’s neighbor, as he approached the ring and leaned against the fence beside me. He’s tall and sturdy and always wears black and silver. Today he wore a silver bracelet on his wrist and silver conchos—round disks threaded onto a leather st
ring—on the band of his black cowboy hat. Luis is an artist like Mimi. He works with all kinds of metal.

  “I come over for a dozen eggs, and I get a Wild West show,” he said, smiling.

  Leaning back in the saddle, Mimi brought Picasso to a fast, skidding stop and then walked him over to the fence. Picasso’s nostrils flared red, and his sides heaved.

  “What’d’ya think?” Mimi asked me with a grin.

  “That was awesome!” I said, giving her a thumbs-up.

  Just then Mom’s car appeared at the end of the driveway. “See you tomorrow?” Mimi asked.

  I shook my head. “Tomorrow I’m going home with Tessa,” I said.

  Mimi must have known just what that meant to me, because she answered with one word: “Good.”

  I used to know Tessa’s room almost as well as my own, but when I walked in on Friday afternoon, I saw that it had changed. Music was everywhere—posters, books, a guitar, sheet music, and CDs.

  “Wow, your room looks so different from…from the last time I saw it,” I stammered. When was the last time I’d been there?

  “Yeah, Dylan gave me some posters when we got back from music camp,” said Tessa. “She has the same ones up in her room.”

  Dylan again. I tried not to grimace.

  It was easy to smile, though, when Tessa’s mom walked through the front door. She immediately gave me a hug. “Saige! Good to see you, sweetheart,” she said. “Let me get out of these shoes, and we’ll go get us some green-chile cheeseburgers.”

  I love Tessa’s mom. And I loved my green-chile cheeseburger, going down the street to the theater, and sitting in the velvet-covered seats, sharing hot buttered popcorn with Tessa. We watched a dog movie, an adventure, and it was really bad. The scary parts made us laugh, the sad parts made us laugh, and the funny parts made us groan, they were so lame. But it all felt good. Finally, everything seemed back to normal.

  On the ride home, Tessa started humming a cowboy song under her breath. I joined in, singing the words. Dad listens to old-time Western singers with scratchy, nasal voices, and Tessa and I like to imitate them. “I ride an old paint,” I screeched, making my voice break on purpose. Tessa didn’t join in, so I did just one verse and the chorus.