The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls by Anton DiSclafani Page B

seeing Sam hurt. I tried very hard to remember another time but could not. I had broken my arm, twice, and bruised myself more times than I could count. That was what happened when you rode horses. But Sam did not court danger. It was not his way.
    He turned his head as if he had heard something, and he probably had: the rustle of an animal in the bushes. I saw his profile in the moonlight. We both had Father’s nose, which was strong but handsome. I thought for a second that he could feel me watching him. I put my hand to the window.
    “Sam,” I murmured.
    He peered down at something, and I knew he held one of the infant squirrels; how unmoored he was, how badly I must have hurt him, was confirmed. Because how many times had he told me not to touch a baby wild animal, that if I did, it would become accustomed to human scent and, once released into the wild, be unafraid of humans. And wild animals needed to be afraid of us, to survive.
    “Thea?” Sissy asked. “Have I lost you?”
    I looked sideways at her. She did not know the dark recesses of my heart. I knew Sam thought of me as often as I thought of him; that when he was not asleep I was on his mind. On it, threatening to displace everything else like a weight dropped in water. But he could not imagine my life here, which might be a curse or a blessing. I did not know.
    Soon we arrived at the barn and parted ways. I took a deep breath: the smell in a barn was always the same, hay tinged with manure. It was a smell you either liked or did not. A groom—the handsome one Eva had mentioned my first night here—showed me to my horse: Naari, a flea-bitten gray mare with a pink muzzle.
    “Thank you,” I said to the groom, “I’ll tack her up.”
    I clicked my tongue and Naari looked up from her hay. There were hundreds of brown dots scattered across her white coat, hence the term, which I’d always thought was an ugly way to describe such a beautiful pattern. I was excited, though I tried not to be. I did not want to get too attached to Naari, because I would have to leave her here when I left.
    After I had tacked her up, I stood in a single-file line with the other girls in my group, the horses so close Naari’s muzzle almost touched the reddish tail of the chestnut in front of her. Leona stood at the front of the line, the de facto leader of my group. Her gelding was huge, like his owner. He was beautiful, a big bay with white stockings and a white blaze down his face. I also recognized him from the picture.
    Sissy was in the intermediate class; I could see her in the next ring on a skinny Appaloosa, her brown bob flying in her face as she posted. I was in the advanced class, with twenty or so other girls, among them Gates, Leona, and a girl named Jettie, who sat at my dining table. The advanced class was the smallest class, and the privilege of being in it was enormous: you did not have to share your horse. All the other horses were shared except for ours.
    Sissy was the weakest rider of her group. I realized it would be easier to be friends with her because I was better, much better, on a horse.
    I watched Mr. Albrecht shout out instructions in his quiet, firm way. I liked him. Mother had taught me less and less about riding as the years passed, and though she occasionally offered advice now, I mainly schooled myself. Mr. Albrecht was a jumping master trained in Germany, he had won an individual bronze medal in the 1920 Belgium Olympics, and a team silver. He had already helped me with my seat, taught me a new way of sinking into the saddle that I found most effective. The Yonahlossee horses were all purebred; our courses designed by a jumping consultant, a friend of Mr. Albrecht’s from Germany; the barns were almost nicer, at least as nice, as our cabins, their corridors lined with bricks, the stalls with two windows each for ventilation and thick, sturdy shutters for the winter. Despite Mrs. Holmes’s best intentions, the rest of our education was secondary