seventeen. She nodded at what Charles was saying, but her eyes were
fixed on Shawn.
At the first rehearsal she came and sat next to him, laying her hand
on his arm, laughing and tossing her hair. She was very pretty, with
soft, full lips and large dark eyes, but when I asked Shawn if he liked
her, he said he didn’t.
“She’s got fish eyes,” he said.
“Fish eyes?”
“Yup, fish eyes. They’re dead stupid, fish. They’re beautiful, but their
heads’re as empty as a tire.”
Sadie started dropping by the junkyard around quitting time, usually
with a milkshake for Shawn, or cookies or cake. Shawn hardly even
spoke to her, just grabbed whatever she’d brought him and kept
walking toward the corral. She would follow and try to talk to him
while he fussed over his horses, until one evening she asked if he would
teach her to ride. I tried to explain that our horses weren’t broke all the
way, but she was determined, so Shawn put her on Apollo and the
three of us headed up the mountain. Shawn ignored her and Apollo.
He offered none of the help he’d given me, teaching me how to stand in
the stirrups while going down steep ravines or how to squeeze my
thighs when the horse leapt over a branch. Sadie trembled for the
entire ride, but she pretended to be enjoying herself, restoring her
lipsticked smile every time he glanced in her direction.
At the next rehearsal, Charles asked Sadie about a scene, and Shawn
saw them talking. Sadie came over a few minutes later but Shawn
wouldn’t speak to her. He turned his back and she left crying.
“What’s that about?” I said.
“Nothing,” he said.
By the next rehearsal, a few days later, Shawn seemed to have
forgotten it. Sadie approached him warily, but he smiled at her, and a
few minutes later they were talking and laughing. Shawn asked her to
cross the street and buy him a Snickers at the dime store. She seemed
pleased that he would ask and hurried out the door, but when she
returned a few minutes later and gave him the bar, he said, “What is
this shit? I asked for a Milky Way.”
“You didn’t,” she said. “You said Snickers.”