New to town

  Sheryl stood under the awning of the general store, watching the cars go by, wondering why here parents would stick her here of all places for the year. She hadn’t even seen her cousins in, what, maybe 3 years. They’d never been close and, from what she could figure out, they didn’t even like her. Her eyes drifted to the street across from her and the three girls on it. Oh that can’t be them, she thought, can it?

    The oldest was a tall tan girl with light brown hair, wearing cut off overalls, a white t-shirt tied at the side with an elastic band, tall tan cowgirl boots, and a tan cowgirl hat with a brown cord around the base of the top. Next to her were a shorter blond, wearing blue jean shorts a white t-shirt and a pink and black plaid shirt, with a scowl on her face. Hugging the tallest girls leg was another younger blond, also wearing cowgirl boots, like the other two, and a white sundress. They were watching the cars go by. Finally the oldest nudged the other two and they ran across the street and were next to her. The eldest spoke first.

   “Why the heck are you just standing there? We’ve got to go!”

     “I-I didn’t know if it was you or not”

      The second girl rolled her eyes, “Well who’d you think it was, the Pistol Annies?”

      “Um, well, who?”

      The oldest scoffed, ”Forget it, let’s go”

        She followed the three girls across the street and to the right towards the railroad. As they neared the edge of town they came across a group of African-American children playing near a house facing the railroad. One waved to the eldest girl and yelled to come play with them. Wren, the eldest girl politely yelled back that they would have to decline. They crossed in front of the house and the girls exchanged greeting with the old man sitting on the porch. They went up the other side of the house were an old dirt country road was. They walked a long while, past large steel gates and long stretches of barbed wire fences. Behind each different scenes played out in the distance: farmhouses large and small with different designs, other structures, like barns and stables, scattered around the wide-open fields. Finally they came to a large steel gate with a house a few ways away.  Kait, the middle child, placed a key in the small keyhole in the top left corner of the gate, turned it, and then pushed a bit on it causing it to swing open. They led her down the worn dirt path towards the house.

  The house was a large two story red brick farmhouse with a large, white, wooden porch that took up the entire front of the house with a balcony of the same size and design on top. Sheryl followed them up the porch and through the big wooden doors into the downstairs hallway where they left her lost and confused as to what to do.

   “In here,” called a woman’s voice from the kitchen.

   Sheryl turned and dragged her suitcase into the closest doorway to the left, which she happened to remember from her last visit.

  Her aunt was a tall, thin, light skinned; despite her daughters’ tans from being in the sun so much; with dark hair and eyes, and a kind smile.

  “Sorry about them”, she said, “They’re just a bunch of eager beavers”

  “Yeah, I guess”, Sheryl mumbled. The back door shut.

  Sheryls aunt, Jane, walked over and picked up the suitcase. “Here, I’ll take this upstairs for you, and you can go help the girls tend to the horses.”

  Sheryl walked out side to the barn, a small wooden building painted red.

The interior was a large room with four stables all occupied by horses. Above them was a nice loft space. In the second stable to the right, the three sisters were each working with the horse. Wren looked up from brushing the horse and at Sheryl.

  She frowned. ” Come over here and continue brushing Country while I start on black beauty.”

  Wren moved on to the next stall while Sheryl began brushing just as she had learned in the horse care book she had read. Unfortunately she did not register Wren calling to her, telling her not to brush the head as she was not familiar to the horse. She had only gave one pull of the brush on the horses cheek, when the horse started freaking out. 

  “Wren. Wren! WREN!” Sheryl through herself against the stable wall.

  Before Wren could stick her head around the wall in between the two stalls Kait rushed in front of the horse, grabbing the reigns and trying to soothe the horse.

 “Woah, woah girl!!!”

  Before Sheryl  could even start to understand the situation, Wren was there, scowling at here. She spoke in a low, menacing tone.

 “What did you do?!”

 Sheryl was able to see the other two standing by the now calm horse with the same looks on their faces.

  “N-nothing”

  “Nothing”, she was yelling now. “I specifically told you to let Kait brush the horses head. Country gets spooked when strangers brush her head!”

  Country snorted when she heard her name.

 Now it was Sheryl’s turn to get angry. “I’m sorry if I didn’t hear you, but I was distracted. If you hadn’t noticed my parents dumped me here without a good excuse!”

 “Please! You’re so shallow that getting out of your popularity based school and spending some time with people who won’t dump you for popularity would be good for you!”, Kait shouted.

 Sheryl, forgetting herself, stomped her foot. “I am not shallow!”

 “You are to!” Kait  retorted.

  Sheryl pushed a surprised wren out of the way so that she and Kait were nose to nose.

“Am not!”

“Are too!”

“Am not”

“Are too!”

Wren quickly intervened. “Whatever! Sheryl go away! You are of no use here!”

“Fine!” Sheryl yelled and stomped out of the barn and towards the house.