Cowgirls Don't Cry

CHAPTER FOUR - KATIE

"How was school, sweetheart?" Momma called from the kitchen as Georgie burst through the front door ahead of me, after trudging through the heat down our lengthy driveway from the bus.

"Great! Joey has a Peyton Manning card, and he said he'd bring it to school tomorrow to show me!" Georgie slung his bag over the nearest kitchen chair, before racing off to his bedroom to retrieve his own collection of cards. "He said he doesn't have DeMarcus Ware, and I told him I had it, and he wanted to see!" Georgie called as he bounded up the stairs.

Momma and I laughed at the overexcited nine-year-old springing upstairs, chatting animatedly the entire way, and she dried her hands with a dish-towel before turning to face me.

"Well, Kat?" she asked, leaning on the cabinet and crossing her arms. "How was your first day of high school?"

"Actually really good, Momma," I replied honestly, and sat down at the table, my book bag discarded next to Georgie's. "I met a couple of really nice girls from the circuit, who are in my homeroom and most of my classes, and then sat with them at break, with Jesse and a couple of other guys he knows. Aimee and Sierra are really nice, and Sierra even has the locker next to mine! This guy, Ben, is on my other side, and he seems pretty cool, too,"

"Woah, slow down, hon!" Momma laughed, holding her hands up in front of her. "That's great, I'm glad it worked out well for you. So have you met Sierra or Aimee before, seeing as they ride the circuit as well?"

"Well, I've seen them and maybe spoken once or twice, but I was never really friends with them until today, if that makes sense?" I replied, and Momma nodded in agreement.

"Yeah, I can understand that. When Maria and I competed together, we were never close with the other girls because we always had each other, but it'll be great to get to know those girls over the season," she said, just as a loud bang came from somewhere upstairs, presumably one of the typical consequences of living with Georgie. "And I need to check on your brother,"

She laughed, a little worriedly, and I joined in, well-used to the mayhem that comes from sharing a house with an enthusiastic, forgetful and somewhat-lacking-in-common-sense nine-year-old boy.

"You're welcome to head down to the creek or over to the Chandlers, if you like," Momma called as she headed up the stairs. "There's home-made cookies in the fridge if you do,"

"Thanks Momma!" I hollered after her, and made my way to the fridge, pausing to glance out the window as I did so.

The afternoon light glimmered over the golden paddocks like a kaleidoscope, glancing off the water tanks and filtering through the trees in a pretty painting framed by the glass. I could just see the glint of sunshine bouncing off the creek beyond the trees, to my favourite spot on its shaded banks. The cattle were fanned out over the pasture, scattered between the occasional tree or rock, and gathered around the huge steel water trough at the fenceline. I made a mental note to check its levels when I walked down to the creek in a little while.

That creek was the borderline between our farm and the Chandlers', and beyond it, though I couldn't see from here, I knew there'd be the rows of tobacco fields and grassy pasture that fuelled their crop, fringed by trees and fencing. Both our land was hand-me-down property, our granddads having bought out the land a few generations ago. Dad and Mr Chandler had grown up as Jesse and I had, only a few paddocks away and best friends their whole lives.

I guess it's pretty rare to have a pair of neighbouring best friends marry two other best friends, forming two families so close they could have been related, but that was pretty much the Morgans and the Chandlers in a nutshell. Not that I was complaining; it was like having six other siblings, instead of just me and Georgie. We'd work in the fields together, cutting tobacco or working cattle, swim in the creek and dam together, compete and ride together, and attend school together.

Jesse could have been my brother, to anyone who didn't know us well enough, and it had certainly felt that way as we'd grown up. Even now, after fourteen years, we were as close as we'd been at age five, or seven or twelve.

I tore my gaze from the window, the memories made in that scenery almost as vivid as the afternoon itself, and checked my watch. It was just past four, and I wanted to head down to the creek before yard chores at five-thirty.

I pulled open the fridge door and slipped two of Momma's cookies into a plastic container. I shoved it into my bag and quickly ran upstairs to change. A dress, and a white one at that, wasn't quite the type of clothing suitable for meeting up with your best friend at the creek. One pair of cut-offs, a sweater and a belt later, and I was jogging down the stairs and out the front door, hollering a quick goodbye to my momma, who was still somewhere upstairs with Georgie.

The track down to the creek was a beaten-down trail of flattened grass and dirt, cutting straight through our upper pastures and past the water tanks. Molly, our family dog, bounded along ahead of me as I followed the track down to the cool flow of water on our lower fence line. Scrambling down the last embankment past the tree line, I was met by a volley of barks and yaps as Molly leapt into rough play with the Chandlers' two dogs, Harley and Finnick.

That meant Jesse was already down by the water, not surprising given this was our one day of freedom before we were called back to tobacco cutting most days after school.

"Hey, Kat," Jesse greeted me easily from his seat on our big, flat rock on the bank of the creek. "Glad we ain't out tobacco-cutting?"

"More than I can express!" I laughed, sitting down cross-legged next to Jesse.

He shifted so we were sitting back-to-back, our favourite way to converse on afternoons like these.

"Well, what do you think of HCHS?" he asked, and I thought for a moment.

"It's.... different," I replied, considering. "Not bad, just new. How about you?"

"I like it," Jesse said honestly. "I like having new teachers, new friends in every class. More freedom, more information,"

"I'm glad. I think I like it, too," I decided, thinking of all the people I'd met and befriended just that day, from Aimee and Sierra, to Luke and Alex, and even Ben, my locker neighbour. "It was a good day, then?"

"A very good day," Jesse leant back, and we sat in comfortable silence for a while.

"Excellent?" I asked, smiling a little.

"Outstanding," Jesse replied, catching on with a smile of his own.

"Fantastic,"

"Marvellous,"

"Extraordinary,"

And on it went, the echo of a game we used to play when we were little, a contest to see who could find the most synonyms, taking it in turns to stretch our then seven-year-old vocabularies to outdo one another. Of course, the games went on much longer now, having had double that many years to improve our mental dictionaries.

Eventually we fell quiet again, content in one another's company, until Jesse broke the silence, turning to face me.

"D'you reckon we'll still be friends, say, ten years from now?" he asked, tilting his head slightly like he always did when considering something.

"Ten months, ten years, ten decades - it doesn't matter," I replied. "I'll be your best friend as long as I live. You ain't getting rid of me that easy, Chandler,"

Jesse laughed, and leant back on his hands.

"Good. I'd hate to lose you, Kat, I really would,"

I smiled, but his question had made me wonder. Would we grow apart over the years? We were both older now, not quite the same kids we'd been a few years ago, sleeping out in a fort or truck bed in the paddock, swimming in the dam and riding our horses all over the farm. Would things change between us as we aged? And surely if he or I got a girlfriend or boyfriend they'd have to come between us, wouldn't they? I mean, how many people would be fine with their date hanging with another girl or guy pretty much twenty-four-seven, no matter how sibling-like they were?

Sitting there on that rock by the creek, the afternoon sunshine washing over me, I just didn't know. I couldn't predict how the future would turn out, but I was sure about one thing; losing Jesse just wasn't an option.