The Summer of Lightning

The first thing I noticed about Miller Ranch was the silence. Or maybe it was the dust. Or my cousin Maya staring at me like I'd grown a second head during our entire car ride from the city.

"So," Maya said, leaning against the fence, her beat-up cowboy boots kicking up dirt. "You ready to milk your first bull, city boy?"

"That's not how it works," I muttered, sweating through my Vintage Tee. "And I'm pretty sure bulls don't give milk."

"Whatever." She tossed her hair, perfect waves that somehow survived ranch life. "Just don't get yourself killed. Uncle already said you're basically a liability."

That night, a lightning storm rolled across the valley, the sky cracking open like someone taking a baseball bat to the heavens. I sat on the porch, nursing my third soda, watching the show when something moved at the edge of the yard.

A fox. Bright orange against the dark grass, its eyes catching the lightning flashes like golden coins. Just standing there, watching me with this weirdly human expression.

Then old Buster, the family dog, hobbled out and sat beside me. The two animals just stared at each other through the fence, like they were having some conversation I couldn't hear.

"Yeah," I said to the fox. "Same here, dude. Everyone here thinks I'm soft."

The next morning, Uncle John handed me a bucket of supplements. "Vitamin regimen for the horses. Don't mix 'em up, or you'll have a very constipated mare on your hands."

Maya watched from the barn door, arms crossed, smirking. "Great. You're on poop detail again."

"Better than being a horse girl," I shot back, and she actually laughed. Like, surprise-genuine laughter.

Three weeks later, I'd survived my first bull ride (a young one, but whatever), learned to rope (terribly), and discovered that Maya wasn't actually mean—just terrified of being stuck in this town forever.

"You ever think about leaving?" I asked her, sitting on the hay bales, watching another lightning storm dance across the horizon.

"Every day," she whispered. "But someone's gotta take over this place."

The fox appeared again at the edge of the field, Buster trotting beside it now like they'd reached some truce.

"They're not so different," I said. "The fox and the dog. They just want different things."

Maya looked at me, really looked at me, for the first time all summer. "You're not as soft as I thought, city boy."