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“Tiny little thing,” I whispered.
“Dr. Harmon said it’s about the size of a lime.”
“That’s hilarious,” I smiled wide, tracing my fingers over the tiny outline.
I looked up and saw Cricket staring at me.
“What?” I asked.
She swallowed hard. “Uh, n-nothing.”
Chapter Eighteen
Before we went home that afternoon, we stopped by the local bank. I was forced to rely on Cricket’s kindness once again when I asked if she would be willing to get the safety deposit box put in her name to store all the checks we’d gotten cashed right outside of Salt Lake City. She obliged, but if she was surprised by how much cash we had, she didn’t say anything. Little did she know that was just the tip of the iceberg.
“You messed up again. You weren’t careful. She knows how much you have,” Piper told me, stretched on her side beside me on the bed. Her head rested in her hand.
“So what?” I asked, turning over onto my stomach away from her.
The bed covers slipped to my waist, so I tugged them up a little farther.
“Too bad,” Piper purred in reaction, making me recoil. “I like your back. I like your front even more. Turn over for me.”
“Get out of here, Piper.”
“She knows how much you have,” she repeated.
“Again, so?”
“What if she tells the others? What if they want what you have?”
“She wouldn’t do that.”
“She could.”
“Even if she did,” I said, losing my temper, “they wouldn’t take it.”
“How do you know?” she asked.
“Because they’re good people.”
“There’s no such thing.”
“There is! You have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Everyone has a little leech in them, Spencer. Don’t be naive.”
The alarm rang out at four thirty the next morning once more, and once again, I realized that I was indeed not dreaming. When I was dressed in my new clothing, I asked Bridge if she thought I looked like a tool. In perfect seriousness, she said, “Dude, you look like you belong here,” which made me happy as shit. Jonah picked Bridge up again, but this time Cricket didn’t meet me halfway down the drive, much to my disappointment. This is good, I kept telling myself over and over.
Jonah and I repeated cleaning out the stalls much as we did the day before but this time, we placed a bag of something called “bedding pellets” down. We laid the bags down in the corners of the stalls and with a knife, cut a cross section, tucking the flaps into the inside of the bag. What happened next fascinated me because we poured an entire bucket of warm water into the bag.
“Leave it,” Jonah told me. “We’ll come spread the bedding after breakfast.”
“What will happen to the pellets?” I asked him as we made our way up to the main house.
“They spread. That entire bag will turn into at least twelve cubic feet of extra pine bedding. It has the consistency of sawdust, is soft on the horses, better for their allergies, and even increases the rate of urine absorbency, making it more sanitary. We use one to two bags a week, depending on how often the horses use the stalls.”
“Cool.”
