HORSE OF A DIFFERENT COLOR

INTERCONNECTED FLASH FICTION | CAROUSEL TOWN

When Leia moved into the motel with her mom, the first person she met was the red-haired girl named Estella who told her about the old lady with the horses. She said they all had names, and they were all different colors, like the guard in the Wizard of Oz said. Meaty was red and Eloise was blue, and Tourniquet was teal. And she let all the kids in the neighborhood come over and pet them and ride them in their pen until they tired because her horses were old and didn’t go very far. And that’s when Leia started scheming on how to see these fantastical horses for herself.

But it turned out, no scheming was necessary because almost as soon as her mom got a job at the church with the creepy pastor, she left Leia alone all the time during the day, since Leia was six and could take care of herself until school started. And almost right after that, her mom got a nasty boyfriend named Tegan and she barely noticed when Leia left at night too, to sit with her legs in the motel pool with Estella and lay back on the concrete and point out stars. That one, that one there, always sure and also not sure at all that they were really talking about the same ones.

Estella’s mom worked nights and left her with a babysitter who was old and fell asleep watching Dateline, so they didn’t even have to pick their night too carefully, just one that was slightly cooler than the others when the long walk in their jelly sandals wouldn’t be as bad as the other hot sticky nights. And when that night came, they set off, holding hands as long as they could before sweat made them slide apart.

Leia saw the house before she saw the pen. It was big and flat and colorful, like a bunch of giant boxes pushed together, except they weren’t boxes, they were pieces of a house. There was a windchime that tinkled a little in the barely there breeze and there was a front porch swing and a roof lined with colorful feathered things with hooks that Estella said were for catching fish, even though there wasn’t any water for miles.

They walked to the back of the house carefully and quietly even though they knew the old lady was supposed to be nice and let kids ride the horses. But it was more fun to pretend she was an evil witch in a colorful box house.

Leia liked the look of the house so much, it took her way too long to realize what she was seeing in the pen.

“They aren’t real?” Leia asked Estella incredulously.

“What, you thought she had blue horses?”

Estella looked smug, like she was waiting for this. But also maybe something else.

“You said she lets kids ride them,” Leia said.

“She does.” Estella put her arms across her chest, covering up the stain on her t-shirt from when she had a really bad nosebleed and her mom bleached her shirt to get the blood out, making it look like a bad tie-dye job.

“But they don’t go anywhere,” Leia said. “There’s nowhere to ride to.”

She felt like she’d said something bigger than what she actually said. She had this feeling sometimes, like she was talking about one thing, but really, she was talking about a lot of things or maybe one big thing that held all the other things together underneath it.

Leia reached up her hand to touch one of the carousel horses, one that had the pole running through it and everything, with its white mane and red saddle and she pet it like it really was a horse.

She wanted to ask Estella what this one’s name was, but just as she was about to, the old lady with the horses came out of her house and yelled, “What are you kids doing out there?” and Leia grabbed Estella’s hand and they started running and shrieking with laughter and they didn’t stop until they got back to the motel.

But when they got back, even though Leia’s mom was still with her nasty boyfriend, Estella’s babysitter was not exactly where they left her. The babysitter had woken up while Estella was gone and when she didn’t find Estella at the pool or the laundry room or any of the stairwells, she got worried and called her mom and then Estella got in trouble.

It was a while before they could figure out a time to go back to the old lady with the horses and actually get on one, since the first time didn’t really count. Because instead of sitting at the pool together or doing anything fun, they sat in Estella’s room and when her babysitter started to doze off, they threw the peas Estella was supposed to eat with her TV Dinner at the babysitter, trying to get one in her extra-large nostrils, which turned out to be harder than they thought it would be, especially because the babysitter kept waking up and chasing them around the room, yelling “You little snots.”

Eventually they found their opening when Estella’s babysitter was sick and her niece had to watch them, and left early when she thought they were sleeping to go meet up with her boyfriend.

Estella and Leia walked hand-in-hand away from the motel, down the street with the crack den and through the big fields of wheat until they came to the flat colorful house made of boxes and the pen behind it.

And this time, they climbed into the pen and this time, they took turns helping each other onto the horses and they pretended they were cowboys. And even though Leia saw a ripple in the curtain of the house, and even though she was pretty sure the old lady knew they were out there and she was watching them from inside her colorful boxes, Leia didn’t say anything and neither did the old lady.

Because sitting on that carousel horse with Estella, Leia felt the highest up she’d ever been in her whole life. Higher up than if she were riding a real horse, even though she was sure a real horse was bigger. But there was something about it being a total sham that made it grander somehow. She guessed maybe that’s what people really meant when they said ‘larger than life.’