assignments were always interesting. She was the smartest girl—the smartest person—in their whole regional high school, and that probably included the teachers.
“What are you doing here?” he asked. And in a long, silky dress. She always wore slacks or jeans to school, with bulky sweaters and funky lace-up knee boots. Or clunky Steve Maddens, which raised her height to over six feet, when she was in a mood to kick butt. Idly he lifted his fingers, shaping a square to frame her, and wished he had his camera. It was the first time he’d ever realized Zoe was more than funny looking. Snckk. He took a mental photograph.
“Is there anybody out there?” Zoe nodded toward the café. “Anybody from school, I mean?”
“Some jocks and jock-bunnies, eating supper before the dance.” The dance that Zoe must be going to, also, Sean realized with quickening interest. He didn’t know she had a boyfriend. Who would be sharp enough to keep up with her?
“Shoot. I’m dying for a cup of coffee.” She sagged back against the opposite wall.
“Then come have one with me.” He was astonished at his own daring—then his heart sank as he remembered. Crap! He had less than a dollar left.
“Thanks, but…” She shook her head. “I’m not in the mood for company.” Her eyes sharpened on his face. “I mean the kind of company in there.” She crossed her forefingers between them. “No clowns tonight. Not one more.”
“Oh.” He had clowning down to an art form, but he didn’t think she meant him. Still, Sean felt like a bozo, with nothing more to say. “I guess you’re going to the dance?” He threw out the question at random.
“I guess I’m not.”
“But you’re all…” He waved his hand, taking in her finery. She even had boobs, he realized, stealing a peek at the gap between the long lapels of the coat that matched her party dress. Not honkers, but somehow right for Zoe. Her clothes had always disguised them before.
“The creep stood me up—okay?” she said between clenched teeth.
“Or maybe he had car trouble,” Sean suggested, wanting to wipe that look of angry humiliation off her face. She didn’t deserve to be stood up just because she was too tall and too smart for her own good.
“No, I finally called his house. His little brother told me he had a date with Amanda Clayton and that he’d already left.” Zoe stared blankly down at the toes of her green high heels.
Amanda Clayton? A babe, if Sean had ever seen one. Little and brunette and cuddly. And dumb as a post. Her longtime steady had rolled his car after a party last weekend, Sean had heard, and was in the hospital down in Durango with both legs in casts. High school dances were like a game of musical chairs, he’d always thought, and this time poor Zoe was left standing. Stork ablaze. “So why didn’t you just…” Call me? He’d have been happy to help her out.
“Stay home? Right, and tell my dad why? He’d have stomped down to the gym and dragged Bobbie out by his ear. Or maybe shot him. I have enough to live down without that, thank you. So I—” Zoe shrugged and turned toward the fire exit. “I’ve got to go.” She spun back again, tottered on her heels, and braced one long arm out against the wall. “Oh, and Sean, do me a favor? You never saw me.”
She must be just riding around, he realized, killing time till it was safe to go home. “Then how about a favor for a favor?” Her embarrassment made him feel bolder. “Could you give me a ride out to the ranch? There’s no hurry,” he added, as she opened her mouth. “You could drop me at my turnoff out on the highway—any time tonight at all.”
She closed her soft pink lips and cocked her head, studying him. Being Zoe, he knew, she saw more than he wanted to show. He shrugged and held her blue-eyed gaze with an effort.
“Yeah, I could do that,” she said thoughtfully, her eyes turning inward in that look that usually ended in another crazy assignment for him—like the time she’d hidden him in the ceiling above the teachers’ lounge to take candid photos. “I’d be happy to.”
TWO HOURS OF CRUISING around in Zoe’s baby-blue antique Mustang. Sean had held his breath when they drove past the small sign out on the highway that said Ribbon River Dude Ranch, 4 miles, Guests Welcome, but Zoe had given him a sideways smile and had kept on driving. All the way to Cortez, where they bought hamburgers and French fries—Zoe’s treat—at the drive-through window in the McDonald’s. They ate in the parking lot while they punched the buttons on her car radio, ceaselessly scanning the airwaves for anything but country music. Sean preferred hard rock, golden oldies, songs that reminded him of the West Coast; Zoe liked anything with a Latin sound. Her mother had been Hispanic, Sean remembered her telling him once while they developed film in the school darkroom. That was another thing they shared, besides their impatience with small-town life: they’d both lost a parent; though Zoe’s mom had died ages ago, when she was six.
Driving back, they passed the Ribbon R again. “You don’t want to go home yet,” Zoe said, and it wasn’t quite a question. She drove almost halfway to town, then flipped on her blinker as they neared the turnoff to the private airport that lay a few miles to the south. Sean felt his stomach jump, then swarm with butterflies. Surely she couldn’t mean to—
But she did. Zoe chose the left-hand fork in the road, which wound around the back side of the airport, and stopped at the far end of the north-south runway, where the road skirted the edge of a bluff. She parked facing the dropoff, with the far-off lights of Trueheart twinkling in the thin mountain air like diamonds scattered in the snow. Two other cars were parked at discreet intervals along the overlook. Sean stole a glance at the one on his right, but its windows were too steamed up for him to see anything.
“I come here in summer to watch the planes take off,” Zoe said, ignoring their neighbors. “Did you ever do that? They zoom right overhead. It feels like they’re going to snap off your antenna they fly so low—then whoosh—they’re out there beyond you and gone.”
“Wow.” His throat was too dry, and his mind a blank. What did she want from him?
“I’m going to fly away like that one of these days. Soon. I just got admitted to Harvard—early admission. Did I tell you that?”
She hadn’t, but he’d heard. The whole school had been abuzz with the news last week. Nobody from their school had ever been admitted to Harvard. And Zoe Montana was the baby of her class, a year younger than the next youngest senior—not even seventeen yet, since she’d skipped a grade of school back in elementary.
“That’ll be neat.” For her. For him it meant he’d have zero friends next year, instead of one. “I wish I could fly away.” His mother’s last letter from the health spa had said he should be patient, finish the tenth grade in Colorado. But after that, surely she’d agree that he belonged with her. If he belonged anywhere.
“Yeah,” Zoe murmured without conviction, then said it again, louder and brighter. “Yeah! Boston…Harvard…Everything’s going to be different then. Better.”
He glanced at her, surprised. What was wrong with her life now? She had an overdose of brains. A grudging respect in the school, if not popularity. A rich rancher daddy who loved her—he must love her to have given her this wonderful car. And she was escaping Southwest Colorado, going off to the real world where exciting things happened. She was practically grown up, practically free, while he—he was trapped here in Nowhere City. Trapped by his own age—couldn’t drive, couldn’t drink, couldn’t vote, couldn’t
