8=======D, she imagined Om drawing.
Camping turned out to be a specific kind of hell Greta had never experienced. It was her first time in the woods. They were expected to do physical labor, which Greta wasn’t used to, and to sleep on the ground. They’d each been assigned their very own horse. Greta’s horse was called Honey. Greta was to spend six days with Honey, riding, feeding, and brushing her, but Honey was no dummy. She took one look at Greta’s shoes—Vans high-tops—and knew that Greta was a phony, an interloper. Once Honey was onto Greta, she had trouble taking Greta seriously, and who could blame her? Greta remembered climbing onto Honey’s saddle and making the giddyup noise she’d practiced for hours. Honey stubbornly stood still, looking over her shoulder at Greta with bland hatred in her eyes. Sometimes Greta would attempt to lead Honey away from the other horses so that they might bond in private, but Honey wouldn’t have it. She seemed to have two moods: quiet, seething rage or extreme sadness. Greta could tell by the way Honey chewed that she was deeply unhappy. For a while, Greta thought maybe Honey had drama with one of the other horses, like maybe she had a crush on one of the males, or maybe it was one of the females, you know, maybe she was gay.
At the time, Greta was just beginning to understand that human relationships were pure folly, because nothing was ever perfectly mutual. One person always liked or loved the other person a little more than they were liked or loved, and sometimes it was a lot more, and sometimes the tables turned and you found yourself on the other side, but it was never, ever equal, and that was pretty much the only thing you could count on in life. This went for relationships between friends, siblings, lovers, spouses, even parents and their children.
“And I’m guessing it went for horses, too,” Greta said.
She paused again to watch Om scribble in his notebook. Gay horses, she imagined him writing, or maybe just Gay!!!
“Go on,” Om murmured.
“Yeah, so, Honey broke my heart a little,” Greta said. “But she also broke my foot in two places.”
Om stopped scribbling and looked at Greta. “Which foot?”
“The right one,” Greta said. “With the glass in it.”
Ding, ding, ding. Om went back to scribbling. He seemed fully engaged, on the edge of his seat. All this horse and foot imagery, she imagined, was a wet dream for someone writing a book.
“What’s your book about?” Greta suddenly asked. “You never talk about it, which isn’t like you.”
“I’ll tell you later,” Om mumbled. “Tell me how Honey broke your foot.”
They’d been on this grueling five-mile ride. The trail was dusty, full of obstacles and switchbacks. They passed a series of mirrored gems—alpine lakes with inverse images of snowcapped peaks—but apparently the lakes were too cold to swim in. The trail seemed much too advanced for thirteen-year-olds, even those with experience. It was rocky and extremely narrow, and they rode in a long line, eight girls on eight horses, plus the two camp counselors on their horses. Greta and Honey were near the middle of the procession. Greta didn’t know how they were going to make it five miles. Honey seemed miserable and exhausted, and Greta was filthy and fed up with horses. She’d stopped taking in the stunning scenery. All she could focus on was the horse’s ass ahead of her, the way the poop came out cubed like the ice-cream scoops at Thrifty’s.
Bowel obsession syndrome, Om wrote.
At one point, there was a large tree branch growing over the trail. The girls ahead of her ducked under the branch like it was no big deal. They simply hugged their horses’ necks and went right under it. But Greta was afraid to hug Honey. So, she grabbed the branch instead and held on, and Honey kept walking without her. Greta dangled, horseless, from the branch, which turned out to be kind of high off the ground. She reluctantly let go of the branch and landed on her feet. The camp counselors told her to stop horsing around and get back on her horse, she was holding up the line, they had a lot of ground to cover. Greta went to mount Honey, but they were on an incline, and Greta was downhill. She should have mounted from the other side, but she didn’t. That’s when Honey decided to step on Greta’s foot. She stepped on Greta’s right foot with one of her back feet and then rested her massive weight on it, because she hated Greta’s guts, and she wouldn’t budge, even though Greta was pounding on her side and screaming.
“That must have been traumatizing,” Om said casually.
But it was also a blessing, because now Greta was unable to ride or walk. So, the counselors found this guy with a boat. Greta couldn’t remember if the counselors knew him or not. Her guess was no. He seemed to be a random guy who happened to be boating on the lake that day. They asked him to take Greta across the lake and deposit her at the head of the trail, where they would eventually meet her in about, oh, three or four hours, and the guy agreed.
“They left you alone with him? For three hours?” Om asked. “Or someone went with you?”
“It was just me and the guy,” Greta said. “And his boat.”
Om said nothing and continued scribbling.
The guy’s name was Diego, and he had an Italian accent. Greta never knew Italians could have blond hair and blue eyes. He was dressed in white, and his boat, a large skiff, was also white. Greta’s clothes were filthy, her unwashed hair full of dust, but he treated her like a princess and helped her onto his boat. He made a bed for her from a pile of blankets, propping her foot on pillows, and they set off. He seemed happy for the company. On the lake, away from the horses, Greta could see that they were surrounded by dramatic granite cliffs, and that Diego was the most visually stunning man she’d ever seen in person. She asked if he was famous, and he said why yes, in fact, he was. She asked which movies he was in and he reached into a basket and pulled out a fancy brass pepper grinder. “I manufacture these,” he said. Then he passed Greta a tuna sandwich and a cold root beer. He drank real beer and ate several tangerines, one after the other, tossing the peels into the water. The combination of colors—the bright orange with the turquoise blue of the lake, his white shirt and teeth—opened a door in Greta’s mind, a door she usually preferred to keep shut and locked, but now she let herself cross the threshold and roam around. It’s not so bad in here, she thought. Maybe she’d spend more time in this room from now on.
“What room?” Om said.
“The future,” Greta said.
“Had you started menstruating yet?” Om asked.
“Yeah,” Greta said.
Om went back to his notebook. Period blood. Promised land.
They took their time crossing the lake. Diego gave Greta binoculars and talked about birds. He seemed obsessed with this mafioso-like female bird called a brown-headed cowbird. The cowbird laid her eggs in the nests of other birds, such as warblers, who don’t look anything like cowbirds, making sure there were other eggs in the nest before depositing hers, but anyone could see that they didn’t belong. Cowbird eggs are large and spotted. The warbler’s eggs are small. The cowbird spied on the nest to ensure that her eggs weren’t rejected by the warbler. If they were, she killed the warbler’s children by destroying everything, the nest and the nestlings. If the eggs were not rejected, she went on vacation for the winter. Greta asked about the male birds. “They go along with this,” Diego said.