Cowgirls Don't Cry

CHAPTER ONE - KATIE

Despite the sweltering heat of the midday sunshine, and the endless rows of harvest-ready crop stretched out in front of me, the day was sweet and almost enjoyable, marred only by the bitter tang of the last day of the summer holidays. And not just any summer holidays, but the very last one before high school, a day that was arriving sooner rather than later. The blazing Georgia sun beat down on my back as I swiped at each tobacco stalk, my dad's old John Deere cap offering little respite from its penetrating rays.

All the farm's tobacco needed to be cut and harvested before the weather turned, before curing, housing and stripping later on in the season. This meant Dad and our neighbour, Jack Chandler, had all the kids out in the fields every afternoon after school, and almost all day on the holidays and weekends.

The Chandlers farmed tobacco, while we ran cattle, and in exchange for letting our herd roam their grassy bottom paddocks as well as our property, we worked in their fields for half the year. Dad and Jack had once attended the local high school together, and inherited our neighbouring farms well before I was born. Our families had always been close, and so my brother and I had grown up with the six Chandler kids, working and playing side by side for as long as we could remember.

Even now, waist-deep in ripe tobacco plants, I could see the four boys working their way up the rows in front of me, swiping and cutting in perfect rhythm, and their older sister just even with me, as she paused for a swig of water. Their youngest sister had just turned five, and wasn't old enough for field work, alone for the first time since my nine-year-old brother, Georgie, had graduated into tobacco cutting with the rest of us. Almost as if he'd heard my train of thought, Georgie spoke up from somewhere in the row beside me.

"Ain't it quittin' time yet?" he grumbled. "This row's longer than a school day, and the heat's killing me!"

It was his first season out in the fields with us, and to be fair, we had been working since five-thirty, when the sun was just dawning and the air was cool and sweet, and it was now almost midday. I was sick of the endless rows of tobacco too, and silently cursing Dad for his tough love philosophy, although I knew better than to complain aloud.

"It's almost twelve, Georgie," I glanced up from my row to check on the wiry kid working wearily along his row, a fair way back from the rest of us. "Nearly knock-off. Reckon you can handle another ten minutes or so?"

Georgie nodded tiredly. "My back hurts, Katie," he complained, standing up straight to stretch his sore back. "And it's so hot, it feels like we're in the sun, not under it!"

Someone chuckled good-naturedly ahead of me, and I turned to see my best friend, Jesse Chandler, standing up in his own row, lifting his cap with one hand and running the other through his mess of dark-blonde hair. With his blue eyes and curls, Jesse was the spitting image of his mom, Maria Chandler, just like his older brothers.

"You're not wrong there, Georgie," he admitted, resuming cutting as he talked. "But that's Georgia for ya,"

"Well, Georgia should learn the meaning of Winter," Georgie grumbled, and Jesse and I laughed.

At only nine months older than me, he and I had been best friends since preschool, working and playing side by side for as long as we could remember. As kids, we'd always told people we were brother and sister, a believable lie with our matching blue eyes and blonde hair. The only thing to give us away was the fact that almost everyone in this little town knew our parents, and so they never fell for it. People on the rodeo circuit often did, however, seeing as we'd usually travel together with Jesse's oldest brother or Dad, and we were as close as any set of twins.

Rodeo was our families' favourite sport, whether it was bulls or barrels, and our fathers made sure we lived up to the legacy they'd left behind in the height of their glory days. As a matter of fact, it was our whole town's favourite sport, right up there along with football. The local high school always put together a junior rodeo team, and Jesse and I had been waiting years to be eligible to join. And as of Monday, it seemed that day had finally come, with high school just around the corner. Soon we'd be riding the bus every day to the biggest - and only - high school in Hudson County, alongside two of Jesse's older siblings and the few other kids we knew from elementary.