The Scorpio Races

CHAPTER FIVE

I don’t think that I sleep, but I do, because in the morning my eyes are sticky and my blankets look like a mole has tunneled through them. The sky outside the window is the blue of almost-daylight, and I decide that no matter what time it is, I’m awake. I spend too long standing shivering in my sleeping top – the one with the straps of lace that are just a little itchy, but that I wear anyway because Mum made it – staring at the contents of my dresser, trying to decide what to wear to the beach. I don’t know if it will be cold after I’ve been riding for a while and I don’t know if I want to go down there dressed like a girl when Joseph Beringer is probably going to be there looking at me like hur, hur, hur.

Mostly I’m trying not to think grandiose things like: You will remember this day for the rest of your life.

In the end, I just wear what I always wear – my brown pants that won’t chafe and my chunky dark green sweater that Mum’s mother knitted for her. I like to think of Mum wearing it; it gives the sweater history. I look into my spotted mirror and make a fierce face under my freckles, my eyebrows straight across over my blue eyes. I look messy and cross. I pull some of my hair out of my ponytail, across my forehead, trying to look like someone other than the girl I grew up being. Someone people won’t laugh at when they see me arrive on the beach. It doesn’t work. I have too many freckles. I draw my hair back into the ponytail again.

In the kitchen, Finn is already up, and he is standing at the sink. He is wearing the same sweater as yesterday, and he looks like a man who has shrunk in the night while his clothing pooled around him. Something smells sort of brittle and carbon-like, almost good, like steak or toast, until I realize that it’s actually a bad smell, like burned paper and hair.

“Gabe awake?” I ask. I peer uncertainly into the cupboard, to avoid having to look at Finn. I’m not sure I want to talk. Looking in the cupboard, I’m not sure I want to eat, either.

“He’s already gone to the hotel,” Finn says. “I… here.” And with this, he sets a mug with a spoon standing in it down on the table. It’s got stains of whatever’s in it on the sides in such a way that I just know it’s going to leave a ring on the table, but it’s steaming and I suspect that it’s hot chocolate.

“You made this?”

Finn looks at me. “No, Saint Anthony brought it to me in the night. He was very put out I didn’t give it to you right then.” He turns back around.

I am shocked, both by the reappearance of Finn’s humor and the gift of the hot chocolate. I see now that the counter is an absolute mess of pots that Finn used to distill a single cup of cocoa, and I’m certain now that the odor hanging on the air is the smell of milk spilt on the hot burner, but it doesn’t matter in the face of his intention. It sort of makes my lower lip not quite sure of itself, but I clamp my teeth on it for a moment until everything’s steady. By the time Finn sits down on the other side of the table with a mug of his own, I’m normal again.

“Thanks,” I say, and Finn looks uncomfortable. Mum used to say he was like a faerie; he didn’t like to be thanked. I add, “Sorry.”

“I put salt in it,” Finn tells me, as if this eliminates the need to be grateful.

I try it. It’s good. If there’s salt in it, I can’t taste it around the floating islands of partially stirred cocoa. They dissolve in my mouth in not-unpleasant lumps of powder. I can’t remember if Finn has ever made cocoa before; I think he only ever watched me. “I can’t tell there’s salt in it.”

“Salt,” Finn says, “makes cocoa sweeter.”

I think this is a pretty stupid thing to say, because how could something not sweet make something sweeter, but I let it pass. I stir my cocoa and mash a few of the lumps of cocoa against the side of the mug with the back of the spoon.

Finn knows I don’t believe him, though, and says, “Go and ask at Palsson’s, then. I watched them make the chocolate muffins. With salt.”

“I didn’t say I didn’t believe you! I didn’t say anything at all.”

He mashes a spoon in his own cup. “I know you didn’t.”

He doesn’t ask me how long I’ll be gone today, or how I’m going to get a horse to ride, or anything about Gabe. I can’t decide if I’m glad not to talk about it or if it’s driving me crazy that he’s not. We just slurp down the rest of our drinks, and when I get up to put my mug in the sink, I finally say, “I guess I’ll be gone most of the day.”

Finn gets up and puts his mug next to mine. He looks very serious, his neck skinny and turtle-like poking out of the oversize sweater. He points to the counter behind me. Among the wreck of pots and dishes is a cut-up apple, with a bit of crumbs from the counter stuck to one of the cut edges. “That’s for Dove. I want to come with you today.”

“You can’t come with me,” I say, without even stopping to think about how his words make me feel.

“Not every day,” Finn says. “Just today. Just the first day.”

I battle momentarily with the image of myself emerging on the beach proud and lonesome, versus the reality of arriving with one of my brothers to watch from the sidelines and see how it’s done. “Okay. That would be good.”

Finn gets his hat. I get my hat. I knitted both of them myself, and mine is patterned in white and two different shades of brown. Finn’s is red and white. They’re lumpy, but they fit.

In our hats, we stand among the wreckage of the kitchen. For a moment, I see the room like anyone else might see it. It looks like everything around Finn has crawled out of the mouth of the kitchen sink drain. It’s a mess, and we’re a mess, and no wonder Gabe wants to leave.

“Let’s go,” I say.