“Can you tell me what was going on the girls’ restroom?” Rose looked down. Her mouth was dry. “I know you weren’t to blame. I know, Rose,” she said more emphatically. “Those girls, Carrie, Lisa, Brianna . . . they . . . they’re . . .” She seemed to be searching for a word. Was she going to say “difficult”? A nice word to use for ugly stuff. “Dangerous.” A darkness seemed to invade her gray eyes. It was as if she didn’t want to say that word but had to. Rose saw from the hard look in Ms. Elfenbach’s eyes that she had no regret. “They always have to have someone to pick on. I know. I was one of their victims last year.” Rose said nothing. “You heard, I suppose.” Rose nodded. “Look, Rose, I know it’s hard for you coming here to a new school, a new city, to live with your grandmother. Do you feel that you would like to speak to someone about this? It might help. Ms. Fuentes, the principal, is concerned. It must be so difficult to lose your only parent.”

Oh great, I’m becoming a cause. Lincoln Middle School’s favorite orphan. She bit her bottom lip lightly and shook her head. “No thank you.”

Somehow she got through the rest of the day. When she walked toward her bus, she saw Calvin waving to her.

“Calvin? What are you doing here? I don’t have an orthodontist appointment.”

“No, Rose. Not orthodontist. Horseback riding.”

As if this day could get any worse. “But I said that I didn’t want to learn how to ride horses.”

“Your grandmother must have forgotten. But there’s really no saying no to her anyhow.”

“C-could . . . c-could . . . couldn’t we just drive around and pretend I went horseback riding?”

Calvin’s shoulders slumped, and he suddenly looked much older. He had told her he’d just turned sixty, and Rose said that she read that sixty was the new forty. They had joked about it. But now he looked almost seventy.

“Rose, you’re not really asking me to lie to your grandmother, are you?”

“Well, just sort of a fib.”

“It’s not the truth, Rose. Call it what you may.”

They drove through the gates of the Hunter Valley Riding Academy.

“It’s hardly a valley,” Rose muttered.

“Not many valleys in this part of Indiana, but if you go down to the southern part of the state—Brown County—it gets a bit hillier.”

“Look, every car here is an SUV and lots have trailers attached.”

“Folks trail their own horses.”

“But I don’t have a horse to trail. So shouldn’t that disqualify me?”

“Don’t worry, your grandmother has leased one.”

“Leased one already! She doesn’t even know if I can ride.”

“She has great faith, your grandmother. Don’t you know that?”

“No, how would I? Sometimes she doesn’t even know who I am.”