“Not unless you want us to get sued by concerned parents who didn’t sign up for nip slips with every bounce on that horse.”
“Jesus, Renee.” I rolled my eyes at her. She wasn’t quite old enough to be my mother, but there was still something off about hearing her talk aboutnips. “What are you saying?”
“Suck it up.”
“Your pep talks are incredibly inspiring.”
“Noah, you don’t need inspiration. You need to be slapped across the back of the head with a reminder that this is the job you signed up for to pay for the job you actually want. You have a whole lot of people rooting for you, sosuck it upand focus on the end goal.”
Two more years. I had to cling to that. Two years wouldn’t get me quite to the finish line, but I’d have my family’s old ranch fixed up enough for me and the horses to move in.
“Fine,” I muttered, “but next summer, at least find an Annie Lou who isn’t afraid of horses.”
“She’ll be great. I have a feeling about this one.” Renee grinned and winked at me before breaking off and returning to the emails on her phone.
Yeah, I had a feeling, too. The foreboding kind.
Chapter Six
MOUNTAIN PASS RAILROAD
The road to Bravetown has never been easy. Many adventurers have tried and failed to cross the dangerous mountain pass. Nowadays a railroad leads straight into town, but don’t be fooled. Passage won’t be smooth. The mountain terrain is steep, and dangers still lurk around every sharp turn. Be prepared to encounter wild animals, sudden rockslides and menacing bandits.
ESRA
My right hip shot a sharp dagger up my side with every step from the park to the staff housing grounds. I’d made sure to wait until Renee and Mr. Grumpy Cowboy had rounded a corner before I’d hobbled back.
Okay, so maybe I had underestimated just how badly this could go for me.
As it turned out, falling off the horse wasn’t the only thing to be concerned about. Being thrown on to it? Also not something my joints enjoyed.
Where other people had naturally resistant tissue around their joints to secure them and keep them in their sockets at safe angles, my tissues were weak, and my body juststretched every which way. Joints weren’t meant for that lack of support. Back home, I had a whole variety of braces for my wrists, ankles and knees, which were always the first to cause issues, but how the hell was I supposed to stabilize my hips?
Even though everything desperately needed a wash, I squeezed myself into my tightest yoga shorts, followed by a pair of leggings and my snuggest pair of jeans. I’d survive walking around with a coffee stain on my right thigh.
The compression actually helped the pain, and a glance in the mirror confirmed that the layering did wonders for my ass. Win-win. I’d just sweat like a pig.
Definitely not a problem big enough to derail my perfect summer of freedom. If I’d even mentioned so much as a new, unfamiliar twinge in my hips to my parents, they would have already booked me in with my doctor and found a way for me to never go near a horse again. As if I wasn’t able to deal with a little bit of pain after all these years.
Plus, even with the jeans plastered on like a second skin, I still managed to slide my priority park pass in one of the heart-shaped back pockets. That was basically fate, right?
Wrapped up tight, I waddled my way back to the park. My first stop was a popcorn cart disguised as a Conestoga wagon, where white cloth covered modern machinery. The delicious smell of sugar and butter had beckoned me closer even from outside the turnstiles. The man inside the wagon greeted me by name. He’d probably been at the saloon for the big on-stage welcome. I only smiled and nodded, and thanked him when he handed me a sparkling pink plasticbucket shaped like a cowboy hat, with a matching pink lanyard to carry it around my neck. It was the most perfect popcorn bucket ever. The other option, besides paper boxes, would have been a boot-shaped-bucket.Thiswas much better.
Smiling to myself, I wandered along Main Street, shoveling down handfuls of the best popcorn I’d ever tasted. Possibly made better because it was (a) free, (b) from a glittering hat and (c) the first thing I’d eaten all day.
Despite the summer-season opening still being two weeks away, crowds began filling the shops and the attractions. Kids ran around in Western costumes, horse balloons tied to their wrists, swinging horseshoe-shaped pretzels through the air. I’d need one of those later. Meanwhile their parents snapped pictures and pointed between buildings and the park map in their hands.
I had a map saved on my phone, alongside a PDF with information on every attraction and character in the park, thanks to Vivi from the main office.
Between the slow crowds and my own standing-and-reading outside buildings, my hips got a fair amount of rest. By the time I made it to the far end of the park, where the deep ochre mesa formation jutted into the sky behind the railroad station, I even felt good enough to be thrown around on a tiny high-speed train.
The staff members here were dressed like old-timey train conductors, in dark blue uniforms with gold buttons. After checking my pass, they waved me past the main line and into the train station through a separate line. Just like the inside of the saloon, everything in here was perfectly on-theme. Old suitcases were piled into a corner, trainschedules hung on the wall and aWantedposter at the end of the queue warned people of Ace Ryder and his gang of bandits.
I was almost at the roller coaster when annoyed exclamations behind me made me turn.
“I’m so sorry. I’m just here to make sure my little sister doesn’t have to ride alone.” Sanny apologized to the family behind me as he climbed over the banister. His arm curved around my shoulders to prove to a red-faced mother that we really did belong together. Still smiling, he turned to me, brows raised. “Something you want to tell me?”
Wow. Word spread fast. Hadn’t expected Noah to be that much of a gossip. Instead of confessing to my new job, I blinked up at Sinan, all innocence and fluttering lashes. “Did you know that the mountain pass is completely artificial? The park was built on flat land. They just built a mountain for the roller coaster.”
