The Wild Path Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Sarah R. Baughman

  Cover art copyright © 2020 by David Dean. Cover design by Jenny Kimura. Cover copyright © 2020 Hachette Book Group, Inc.

  Hachette Book Group supports the right to free expression and the value of copyright. The purpose of copyright is to encourage writers and artists to produce the creative works that enrich our culture.

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  First Edition: September 2020

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Baughman, Sarah R., author.

  Title: The wild path / Sarah R. Baughman.

  Description: First edition. | New York : Little, Brown and Company, 2020. | Audience: Ages 8–12. | Summary: Twelve-year-old Claire struggles to cope while her eighteen-year-old brother, Andy, is treated for drug addiction and her family prepares to sell her beloved horses, but finally accepts that change can be good.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2019056786 | ISBN 9780316422475 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780316422444 (ebook) | ISBN 9780316422451 (ebook other)

  Subjects: CYAC: Brothers and sisters—Fiction. | Horses—Fiction. | Drug addiction—Fiction. | Rehabilitation—Fiction. | Family life—New Hampshire—Fiction. | New Hampshire—Fiction.

  Classification: LCC PZ7.1.B378 Wil 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019056786

  ISBNs: 978-0-316-42247-5 (hardcover), 978-0-316-42244-4 (ebook)

  E3-20200716-JV-NF-ORI

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  TO MATTHEW, MY PARTNER ON THE PATH

  CHAPTER 1

  Walking to our mailbox always feels longer than walking back. I take the same path both ways, past fields and fence line, but steps can’t measure how fast I want to get there. It’s the wanting, not the distance, that matters.

  Everything around me is set to change. The maples covering the mountains started to pop, little bursts of red, yellow, and orange poking through green. I saw my breath this morning, a puff of smoke. The wind smells almost like snow. And when I wrap my sweatshirt tight, the envelope pressed to my chest crinkles like dry leaves.

  Dear Andy,

  Guess what?

  That’s how my letters always start. They’re not like texts, where you get right to the point. There’s more waiting. Not only in the time it takes to stretch whole sentences across a blank page, but in the trip that page takes from my desk to our mailbox and all the way to the Starshine Center in New Hampshire, where Andy can pick up a pen and write back.

  I can’t text him anyway, even though Mom and Dad got me a phone for my birthday this month, one of those simple ones with no apps at all, only their numbers and my best friend Maya Gonzalez’s already programmed in. Andy doesn’t have a number anymore. His cell phone’s just one thing they took away, and they won’t give it back until he’s done with what they want him to do, until he figures out how to get better. “Getting better” is probably like walking to the mailbox—wanting to reach somewhere so bad but no matter how hard you try, you feel like you’re wading through fallen leaves.

  Still, I like Andy the way he is—how he wears his baseball cap crooked and sets up a tent in two minutes flat and pretends to steal my nose with his finger and thumb even though I’m twelve and he just turned eighteen. Will he still do those things once the Starshine Center has made him new?

  Mom thinks Andy’s homesick, even though he never says it. “He misses things we take for granted,” she tells me, knotting her fingers together, her eyebrows pinching into that space above her nose that’s always wrinkled now. “Tell him about those things.” So I write: Sunny sneezed while I was brushing her face so now I have horsehair AND snot all over my shirt.

  I write what I know will make him smile. Because even though he wasn’t doing much of it by the time he left, Andy loves smiling.

  Proof: His letters back always start with a joke.

  WHAT DO RACEHORSES EAT?

  He hides the answer, written upside down at the end, to keep me reading. It’s not like he has to—I already hold each of his words in my head as carefully as I hold Dad’s homemade anise candies on my tongue, trying to make them last.

  LOVE,

  ANDY

  It’s bright today, and a little cold; stalks of corn shiver and shine like the sea. But the air feels good too, so I tip my head back and squint into the blue. I was born on a morning like this. That’s how I got my name: Claire. In French, it means “bright and clear.” “That’s what you were from the beginning,” my parents always say. “You still are.”

  They don’t see how my insides flutter when I think about Andy, or school, or how to keep Sunny and Sam safe in our barn instead of sending them to a new one.

  They don’t see the birds in there.

  Sparrows that soar over our barn can actually fly to the tops of clouds, then plunge back to earth. And that’s exactly what my flutter feeling is like: It sweeps in from a place beyond me and gets under my skin, shaky as wings.

  I don’t know exactly where my sparrows go when they leave. But they visit more and more now that Andy’s gone.

  By the time I get to the mailbox, my hair’s tangled under my chin. I brush it back, pull the metal door until it squeaks open, slip the letter in. Next comes my favorite part. It was Andy’s favorite too. He was the one who explained we had to tip the red flag up with our fingers so that Mr. Meyer, who’s been driving mail around our back roads since Mom was my age, knew he needed to stop and take what we’d left inside.

  Dad says we used to fight over who got to put up the flag, but by the time my memory kicks in, Andy was already letting me do it every time, lifting me at the waist so I could reach as high as I needed.

  I raise myself a little on my toes now, even though I don’t need to anymore, and push the flag up myself.

  Dear Andy, I wrote this time.

  Guess what? I miss you.

  CHAPTER 2

  “Back from the barn already?” Dad’s frying eggs and potatoes at the stove. He doesn�
�t need to turn around to know I’m on the front porch, stamping driveway dirt from my boots.

  “Just mailed a letter. Came back for my hat.” I grab it out of the basket by the door and tuck it over my ears.

  In the living room, Mom pushes her chair back from the desk. She’s spent a lot of time there lately, staring at the computer, looking for jobs. But now she bends her head around the doorway to the kitchen and wags her finger at me. “Told you it was cold.”

  I hold up my hands. “You might have been right. This time.”

  Mom laughs, then wraps her hands around the mug of coffee Dad offers. She sighs, and the wrinkles that scrunch up her forehead go soft and smooth. “Just what I needed,” she says. Dad kisses her on the cheek.

  “Ugh.” I push the door halfway open. “See you guys later.”

  “We know not to wait.” Dad stretches a set of metal tongs toward me, and I grab the strip of bacon hanging from them before heading back outside. Saturday breakfasts are always the best because Dad uses cooking as a way to procrastinate before settling into his living room chair with stacks of history essays to grade. He says food always turns out just the way he expects it to, unlike most other things in life.

  Still, I’d rather keep my plate warm in the oven and take my time with morning chores. I can’t ever squeeze enough minutes out of school days to groom Sunny and Sam with the currycomb plus both the hard and soft brushes, or to smear baby oil over the burrs tangled in their tails. But on weekends, time widens somehow.

  Now I want to stretch it even further. Ever since Mom lost her accounting job when Kroller’s Auto closed last spring, she and Dad have been worried. He teaches, and does tutoring in the summer, but it doesn’t feel like enough. They both say it doesn’t make much sense to keep horses anymore.

  Dad says he’s sorry. Mom says it will hurt her too. But they still hope to sell before winter comes, so they must not see how Sunny and Sam hold my skin and bones together, all in one piece. They don’t see my heart quiet and calm when I’m braiding manes and picking hooves and squeezing my heels against soft flanks, pushing to go faster, cold wind in my hair.

  There’s always warmth in the barn. I slip into the hush of it and let my eyes adjust to the gray light of the big, airy entry that holds our hay wagon and tractor. From behind the latched door leading to the separate area we call the “horse stable,” lined with stalls and a tack room, I hear Sunny and Sam shifting on their bedding, pushing wood shavings into piles with their big hooves.

  When I walk past their stalls, they swing around to face me and hang their heads over the doors. I twist the strands of their chestnut forelocks in my hands and bring both my curved palms to their noses. Their whiskers tickle my skin.

  Sam’s a little bigger than Sunny, and a little sweeter too. When I move into his stall to get his feed bucket off its hook, he sways to the side, ears flopping, eyes half shut. Sunny has more opinions. She nods her big head up and down and noses my palm.

  “Don’t be rude,” I say. I push my shoulder against hers until she scoots and I can pull her bucket out too.

  The fact is, I love them both.

  Today I’m riding Sam. A few days ago I worked Sunny on the lunge line, guiding her in circles, making her trot and canter. If I don’t give her enough practice out of the saddle she gets prickly, shy. Holding a horse’s attention while you’re standing on the ground makes riding sessions work better.

  But it’s easy to get lazy and skip lunging Sam. No matter how many too-busy weekdays keep us away from our trails in the woods, Sam stays calm. If anything, he needs an extra nudge to get past a walk. When Maya comes to visit, she likes to ride him. She can’t have a horse at her house in town, but she says being friends with me is close enough.

  “Sam’s more my style,” she told me last time. “I bet he even likes to sleep in, just like I do.” Then she leaned back, closed her eyes, and fumbled around for an imaginary snooze button. Maya always knows how to make me laugh.

  I shake dust from a thick woven saddle pad, then bring out the saddle and bridle. Each piece has a name: horn, cantle, stirrup, cinch, headpiece, broadband, throatlatch, bit. Leather locks with metal and fits just right.

  Sam follows me out of his stall, his nose at my elbow. Once I fasten cross-ties on either side of his halter I brush his thickening coat. I’m hurrying, filled with a tremor that’s nothing like the sparrows. Instead of feeling like I’m going to break apart, I’m putting myself back together.

  I work my fist between the saddle pad and the bony ridge of Sam’s withers like Andy showed me, making a space where nothing pinches. Then I hook the right stirrup over the horn, swing the saddle up and set it gently down, pull the cinch swinging under Sam’s belly, then tighten it. Next the bridle: bit slipping between teeth, reins gathered in my hands.

  And then we’re ready, gone, out into sunshine made more blinding by the barn’s dimness. I blink slashes of light away and lead Sam down the path to our arena. It only has two walls front and back, with open-air sides, but the roof keeps too much rain and snow from getting in. We have a tiny circle I can ride in by myself well into the winter if I can’t convince anyone else to trail ride, since I’m not allowed to do that alone. It’s better than nothing. Every time I start moving Sam around the arena, I can see the hoofprints we left from last time leading the way.

  “Ready, Sam?” I tighten the cinch one more time, then latch my left foot into the stirrup and swing my right over his back. Settle in. Here we go.

  From the saddle, I see so much: the middles of mountains, the mailbox a little speck in the distance, its red flag the size of a pinprick. Everything on the ground looks smaller, matters less. My shoulders roll back, my muscles shift. Inside, I’m warm and strong.

  Heels down, reins clutched in my gloves, eyes pointed straight ahead to where I’m going, I can do anything.

  When I lead Sam back into the barn, I see Mom there, brushing Sunny. She’s been coming to the barn during my chore time more often lately.

  “Hey, you,” she says. “Thought we could exercise both horses together, head out into the woods a bit. That way you can eat breakfast sooner.”

  Mom knows I can wait for breakfast. She’s here for the same reason I am: because the barn’s dark enough to make dirt look pretty, quiet enough for a crowded brain to think, softer to look at than a glowing screen. Because problems sink through the grooves in these wood-plank walls and get swallowed whole.

  My heart swells a little. Maybe riding Sunny and Sam will remind Mom that they need to stay here.

  Mom must see the hope rise into my cheeks, all rosy and warm, because she’s gentle when she says, “We talked about this, Claire. We need to take care of Sunny and Sam as long as we still have them, and that includes exercise.”

  I feel the sparrows race in then, pecking my swelled-up heart. They tickle my throat, making it hard to talk. I’m losing everything that matters, a voice inside me whispers. And I’ll never get it back.

  Sunny and Sam aren’t supposed to belong to anyone else. They’re ours. And I don’t care if Mom says I can still ride her friend Marcy’s horse anytime. It’s not the same.

  “I already rode Sam,” I mumble. “In the arena.”

  “It can’t have been for very long, though,” Mom says. “A little more won’t hurt. And Dad’s got so much grading to do. I’ll never be able to drag him out here. You’ll come, right?”

  I always want to go into the woods. This is the best time of the year for it, the bugs finally gone and the damp smell of fresh leaves turning all around, mixing with the spice of cedar and pine. When crisp air fills my lungs, it stills the sparrows too. I smile just thinking about it, and Mom sees.

  “I’ll take that as a yes.” She rubs Sunny’s neck and unclips the cross-ties. “This girl’s all set. Ready to go?”

  Mom leads Sunny toward the door, and I turn Sam around to follow.

  “When do you think Andy will be home?” I whisper against his neck. “Not too long, huh?”


  It seems like he’s been gone forever, but Mom marks the days with Xs on the feed-company calendar she tacked on the barn wall, so I know it’s really only been a month. August 27. That day, I followed Andy out of the car and up the steps of the Starshine Center, my tongue a block of ice refusing to melt in all that summer heat, keeping words too far down to speak while everything inside—my throat and ribs and flip-flopping stomach—screamed at him not to go. I knew why he was there. We had already sat down as a family the week before and I’d listened to Mom and Dad explain. Andy’s voice cracked as he told me himself that there was such a thing as too much medicine, that he needed help to stop taking the pain pills a doctor had prescribed after he hurt his back snowmobiling. He’d taken too many, for too long. I understood what the therapists told us, that Andy has a problem he’ll need to work on, that it’s called addiction. I remembered how empty Andy’s eyes had started to look, how he’d been staying out later and later at night and sometimes didn’t come home at all. But I also knew that wasn’t the real Andy. It couldn’t be. When we camped on Pebble Mountain, he brought graham crackers and marshmallows and bars of chocolate. He lit fires without matches and whittled sticks to sharp points. He didn’t need pills.

  Sam looks at me from sleepy eyes, his ears flopping every which way. He’s relaxed. I cup my hands under his nose, and he breathes into them, his whiskers tickling my palms.

  He doesn’t have any answers for me.

  But with horses, and questions, you have to be patient.

  CHAPTER 3

  As I’m leading Sam toward the arena, my phone buzzes with a text. I stop, squint at the screen.

  Whatcha up to?

  It’s Maya. When I’m talking to her, or even just listening, the same peaceful feeling I get in the barn works its way in and holds on. I slow down. The sparrows flit away. Now my breath fogs the tiny screen as I type back.

  Trail ride w/ mom.

  It won’t be what Maya wants to hear. On weekends when she and I can get someone to drive us over to the other’s house, we hang out. Not today, though. Dad won’t want to leave his “grading chair” until every last essay’s marked, which won’t happen until dinner’s gone cold, and Mom already said she needed to ramp up her job search over the weekend.