Page 12 of Love Is a War Song

The heat and humidity hit me like a tidal wave as I walked outside.

It had to be at least eighty degrees. I could already feel sweat forming along my back.

Lottie led everyone to a golf cart at the side of the house next to the cellar.

A real cellar. I didn’t know why that was cool to me.

Probably because it looked just like the old cellar Dorothy couldn’t get open during the tornado in The Wizard of Oz .

I was a theater kid, what could I say? But now I was thinking about tornadoes in Oklahoma.

“How do you know when to prepare for a tornado?” I asked.

“We check the weather reports. We’re nearing the end of the season, but it’s June so we do gotta be alert,” Red answered with his slow Okie drawl.

There were many reasons that I wished I still had my phone.

I was dying to text Chelsea about all of this and check my Instagram and Twitter follower numbers (I wanted to keep my sponsorship deals).

And now I wanted to constantly check the weather report.

I did not want to be caught up in a tornado.

We didn’t have those in Los Angeles. What did you even do if you were outside in a field and a tornado manifested out of nowhere?

This was a lot to consider and think about before it was even seven in the morning.

Lottie sat in the driver’s seat next to Red. Davey sat in the back, the seats behind the front ones faced out backward. Lucas and I were left standing, staring at the one empty spot left.

He motioned with his chin—again with the chin pointing. “Go ahead, I know where they’re headed. I’ll walk.”

I bit my lip and nodded back, because that seemed to be how these people communicated.

I sat next to Davey, my butt barely hitting the seat before Lottie backed up, accelerating like a bat out of hell.

Davey grabbed me to keep me in the seat.

It felt like she shifted into drive without even braking from reverse.

We zipped past Lucas and down the small slope of a hill toward the barn.

“You ever been around animals, Miss Holly wood ?” Davey teased me. Hollywood contained too many o ’s the way he said it, extending the “wood” for an extra couple of seconds.

“I once worked with the monkey who was in the second Pirates of the Caribbean movie,” I offered.

I had to let her sit on my shoulder and it was cute and all, but seeing a monkey that close to my face was unnerving—her eyes and expressions were a little too human for me.

That monkey was never meant to perform to the whims of people.

She should have been free in a jungle somewhere.

She loved her trainer, clutching him during breaks on set like a little baby, but there were moments doing take after take where she looked so sad and tired.

Not all that different from me and the other kids on that shoot.

But I had the ability to say no, not that it would have mattered anyway.

“No shit! You know Jack the monkey?” Davey used the end of his left arm to bump my shoulder. His playfulness made me smile; it felt like I had a friend in Davey, because he was actually nice to me. It made me feel less of an outsider.

“No, I know Chiquita the actor monkey.” I used my shoulder to nudge Davey back.

The golf cart came to an abrupt stop and once again Davey had to keep me from falling out.

“Inside we have fifteen stalls, but since it’s summer and breeding season, all our horses sleep in the eastern paddock. We board a few horses as well and those are in the western paddock, both geldings and mares,” Lottie said while getting out of the cart.

I needed a notepad. What was a gelding? Were those the babies?

I hopped off the golf cart and could feel my breakfast start to come up. Next time I was going to walk. Once I got my bearings, I started to follow everyone into the barn. But then I noticed the horses.

Big horses, huge, nibbling on the grass next to the fence.

I was skeptical about loving horses just because it was “in my blood.” That gene must have skipped my generation, because I was frozen in place, terrified to get any closer. The closest horse to me chuffed and I took another step back, worried that it was horse speak for Get out of my territory .

Red came through the open door of the barn carrying a pitchfork—an actual pitchfork. I’d only ever seen those in movies. Behind him, an out-of-breath Lucas pushed a wheelbarrow full of hay. He must have jogged down the hill.

“Come over here, Miss Avery.” Red waved me over, walking to the horse-with-an-attitude. He used the pitchfork to hitch the hay over the fence. All the other horses came over for the fresh food.

I shook my head. “I’m good here.”

“Feeding the horses is the best part. Well, apart from actually riding them.” Red smiled at me encouragingly.

“Forget it, Red. Princess here is too scared to get her hands dirty,” Lucas said, dumping the remainder of the contents of the wheelbarrow on the ground. Then he started pushing the barrow back toward the barn, not even sparing me a glance.

I had enough of preconceived notions about me and my character. I marched up to Red, yanking the pitchfork out of his hand. How hard could it be?

“So what do I do with this? I just scoop it up like an oversized fork?”

Red lifted his hat and scratched his forehead. “Yeah, but you gotta make sure you aim right or—”

The hay didn’t make it anywhere close to the other side of the fence. Instead, the flakes of hay rained over my head as I lost my balance from the awkward weight and length of the pitchfork. I slipped and fell back into the gate. Red had the decency to stifle his laugh.

“How about I show you my technique?” Red reached for the pitchfork and I gladly handed it over. I blamed Lucas.

Red placed both hands on the pitchfork, gripping one closer to the fork-end and the other farther up the handle, and flung the scoop of hay over in a beautiful arc, where it landed softly on the dirt on the other side.

Four horses already started nibbling. I pantomimed the motion with my own hands, confident my next try wouldn’t be as bad as my first. Then I felt a tug at the back of my head, as if someone was pulling my hair.

On impulse, I swatted my hand back and felt slobber and a hot mouth.

I yelped. A horse was eating my hair! I tried to yank my ponytail out of its mouth, but it held on tight and then my head snapped back.

This was how I was going to die. I was going to be eaten by a big Shamu of a horse chewing on my ponytail.

There would be nothing left of me, this is what the tabloids would remember.

The headlines flashed before my eyes:

Disgraced former child actor turned pop star died in a freak horse accident. This is the most recent case in modern history of a person being eaten alive by a horse.

“Whoa there, Peso, spit it out. That’s it.” Red coaxed my hair from the demon’s mouth. “There you go, all free.”

I snatched my hair back, trying to feel through the saliva and chewed-up hay just how much of it was gone.

The end of my ponytail was inches shorter and jagged.

It was hard to imagine a day worse than yesterday, but now I could add being nearly eaten to death to my long list of Shit Avery Has Experienced, and today was looking like it would top the bus ride from hell.

“Oh shiiit! What happened to you?” Davey laughed, pushing another wheelbarrow full of hay with his one hand out of the barn.

“Be nice, Davey. Peso tried to eat her hair.” Red was scooping more hay and throwing it over.

“Not tried, he was successful,” I sobbed, though no tears came. It appeared I’d cried everything out on the bus. Which was for the better, as I didn’t want Know-It-All-Lucas seeing me cry. Again.

“Horses love hay, you shouldn’t put it in your hair like that,” Davey offered, unhelpfully. Some new friend.

“I didn’t— You know what, no. I’m not even going to acknowledge that. There has to be something I can do that doesn’t involve these beasts.” I swatted at the loose hay that was falling down my face and sticking to the thin layer of sweat that coated all my exposed skin.

“This is it.” Davey spread his arms out wide to show that the horse ranch was in fact all about horses.

“Run on into the barn, there’s a hat you can borrow to tuck in the rest of your hair,” Red said with a smile as he leaned on the handle of the pitchfork.

I nodded my thanks and headed for the barn, deciding that Red was the only person on this godforsaken property I liked.

I was about to step through the door but paused.

Five feet away, Lottie was brushing a horse and cooing sweet nothings to it, calling it “beauty” and “lovey.” Straight up, I thought the horse was kind of weird-looking.

I could see its big ugly chompers as it munched on the long grass in exaggerated circles.

It looked friendly enough as it nudged Lottie’s face with its snout, but those teeth looked like they could take off my whole hand.

And since Peso out there made a meal out of five inches of my hair, I would take no chances.

There had to be something I could do that didn’t involve me getting close to these animals. Staying inside and cooking meals was sounding better and better.

“Avery, step in from the door.” Lottie waved me over without looking at me, as if she could feel my presence. “You’ll freak out the horses hovering like that.”

I’d scare the horses? That was rich. These things outnumbered us all and I didn’t trust a single one.

To make Lottie happy, I stepped through the open door and was hit with that animal-and-hay smell. It wasn’t bad. It wasn’t great either. Maybe I just wasn’t used to it. I glanced at the walls, seeing if there was a coatrack or something with this promised spare hat.