Can't Live It Down

Casey was sitting in her window seat trying to reread Lord of the Flies again before school was supposed to start the next week. She wanted to make sure she didn’t forget anything that first day. It was hard to concentrate in the stuffy room so she opened the window to let in some cooler air. Open windows and air conditioning were the only ways to survive Alabama in August. That feels great, Casey thought.

“Casey Mae,” said the one voice that could make Casey’s blood boil. She peered out of the window, hoping that it wasn’t who she thought it was. Unfortunately, she was right. There was the green eyed boy she hated more than anyone else standing in the middle of the dirt road in front of her house.

“What do you want, Jacob Elliot?” she hissed.

Jake glared at her. “Don’t use my full name.”

“Then don’t use my full name,” she said before leaning back against the window frame. “But seriously, what do you want?”

“What?” he said. “I can’t pay my dear neighbor a friendly visit?”

“Jake, I have never gotten a friendly anything from you,” Casey said bitterly.

He smirked. “You’re right. That’s because I’ve never had a reason to be friendly toward you, Casey."

Casey was about to make just as snide a comment back at him but her mom cut in. “Casey," she yelled throughout the house. “I need you to go and feed the horses. And remember to put the food back when you’re finished. Unlike last time.” Casey groaned and saw that Jake was still smirking at her. She stuck her tongue out at him and pulled on her boots before hurring downstairs to talk with her mom.

“Casey, why do you look so flustered?” her mom said when she got to the kitchen.

She rolled her eyes. “Jake again,” she muttered.

Her mom was confused. “Jake? The neighbor boy? What you think a boy like that could have done to you, I will never know.”

“Mom, he is not sweet. He’s evil. He just knows how to sweet talk.” With that, she was out the door and headed toward the barn. When she reached the large structure, she grabbed the bag of horse food, consisting of corn, barley, oats, linseed, and bran, and poured a decent amount into each horse’s feeder, petting them as she did so. Once that was done, she made sure that the food was just shy of its proper place and grabbed a brush. “Good girl, Abby," Casey said to her horse. It was the tall black one that she had gotten for her birthday from her grandparents the year before.

After a while, she got so caught up in a mix of brushing her horse and thought about what was going to happen at school the next week that she hadn’t realized how long she had been out there. Or that her mother had been calling her.

“Casey Mae!” her mom screamed. “Did you not hear me?”

Casey blinked. “Umm… no. I’m sorry, Mom. I was taking care of Abby, just like you keep telling me to do. And I also fed the horses, as I was told.”

Her mom frowned at the fact that Casey was right. “Well, get inside. We’ve all sat down to dinner except for you. So hurry up,” she said before heading back to the house.

Casey rolled her eyes and put the brush away before following her mother. She looked toward the only house relatively near theirs and saw that only one light was on in the second floor: Jake’s. Suddenly, she wished she had some eggs.