She stared at the label, lifted her eyes to Colin’s, looked at the label again. “Colin, I love this,” she said in an almost reverent whisper. Then, looking at him again, she said, “You would never get rid of me this way.”

He grinned. “Pretty soon you’ll have to accept the fact that no one wants to get rid of you. And I’m not exactly suffering, having you here. Besides, she has Denny to run the farm and I’m almost ready for another trip. This time I’d like Jilly to come along.”

“You mean that?”

“Why not? Of course I mean it. And I can tell, you like it here.”

She grinned right back at him. “God knows I love this kitchen.”

By a week after Halloween, Courtney was astride a horse. Blue. She’d already learned to feed her, brush her, walk her around the pen and then the pasture. She wasn’t quite brave enough to clean out her hooves or groom her tail, but she was beginning to not only trust her, but love her. And she would never admit to anyone—not Lief or Lilly—but being in the saddle made her feel huge! She’d grown so tired of feeling puny and childlike.

Gabe Tahoma had only to say, “Good job, Courtney! You’re getting the hang of it!” to make her feel like Miss America.

Just a couple of weeks into November brought a slight change in her appearance. Lief had taken her to buy boots and jeans. She then needed shirts, down vests, gloves and a new jacket. He threw in a hat for good measure. Courtney gave up the black nail polish and total noir leggings, ankle boots, skirts and tight tops. She found she liked wearing jeans and boots to school. Not many of the girls dressed in that cowgirl way. They were a little less country and more into fashions they saw on internet fashion sites. Courtney found their more middle class–trendy couture far less intimidating than that Rodeo Drive stuff she’d been up against in L.A, which was a comfort.

And she was letting the color fade and grow out of her hair.

“Ach! I hate my hair!” she complained to Lief as he drove her to school one morning.

“Really?” he asked, apparently completely confused. “What in the world could you possibly hate about it?”

“It doesn’t know what color it is! Letting color grow out is worse than anything! It’s torture!”

“I see,” he said. “Anything I can do to help with that?”

“Yes! I need a haircut! Is there anyone within a thousand miles who could give me a decent haircut?”

“Undoubtedly,” he said tiredly. “I’ll ask around.”

Next thing she knew, she was sitting in Annie Jensen’s shop in Fortuna with Annie herself caving in to not only a cut but a color that might wend her back to where she started before the pitch-black and hot pink began. She blew Courtney’s hair dry into a nice, sleek, smooth and more grown-up style.

“I’m sure that’s not exactly what you’re after, Courtney,” Annie said. “But I’m willing to keep trying.”

“It’s kinda…nice,” Courtney said, running a hand over her hair.

“I hope it’s okay…”

A couple of days later when she was at her lesson, Gabe said, “Whoa, Courtney, that’s a new look for you. The hair. You’re getting almost hot.”

Her hand went to her hair and she blushed.

“Now, don’t flirt with me,” he said, laughing. “I have a girlfriend.”

“I know that,” she said. But of course she hadn’t known about the girlfriend. What she did know was that she had an impossible crush on him, and she absolutely knew he would never really notice her.

But he liked the way she looked. That made her feel beyond good.

There were a few things that, slowly but surely, she began to admit to Jerry Powell. Not because he was any good as a counselor or therapist, but because she was pretty sure he was even more capable of keeping her secrets than Amber was. So when he said, “Are you building some muscle there, Courtney? Or is it just the different clothes that make it look that way?” she didn’t snark back.

“I might be,” she said carefully. “I can’t really tell, except my muscles are all sore! All of them. Even my toe muscles are sore. And when I complained, Lilly said it was kind of amazing how many muscles you could use riding. Then she flexed her thigh and told me to punch it—it was like a rock! She said that right now I was likely building muscle, but one day I’d probably use riding to keep my weight down and my body toned.”

“Does it feel good?” Jerry asked.

“To build muscle? No—it hurts!”

“No,” he laughed. “Riding. Is riding fun?”

“Well…the riding part, sort of. A lot of it isn’t such fun…”

“Like?”

“Like it’s going to take me four more inches taller and twenty pounds heavier before I can get that saddle on by myself. But meanwhile, if Lilly is busy doing something else, sometimes Gabe helps. And watching Gabe put on a saddle…” She rolled her eyes heavenward.

“I take it Gabe is handsome?”

“They named handsome after Gabe!”

Jerry chuckled. “Are we thinking about naming boyfriend after him, as well?” he asked.

“I wish. He’s eighteen, in college and has a girlfriend. But,” she added, blushing slightly, “he said I was kind of cute.”

Jerry lifted a brow. “Is that a fact? Did that feel good to hear?”

“Now what do you think?” she asked him. “Of course, even though it doesn’t really mean anything…”

“It could mean he thinks you’re kind of cute…”

“Yeah, in a little girl way. We went on a short trail ride, a bunch of beginners. Lilly, Annie and Gabe took us, except all the other beginners were little girls like in fifth and sixth grade, and I’m in high school but look like I’m in sixth grade!”

“Well, what did your mom look like? Was she a small woman?”

“Sort of. Not too small, but she was thin. Not skinny—just thin. But she looked like a woman!”

“Are you worried about that?” he asked her. “About looking like a woman?”

“I’d settle for looking like a freshman!”

“You know that you’re not the only teenager who comes here for counseling, right?” Jerry asked her. “You know that’s my specialty, right?”

“Right,” she said.

“Well, I don’t think I’d be breaking any particular confidence if I told you that almost every teenager I know is unhappy with some aspect of their appearance, and also that between the ages of eleven and nineteen, sizes, shapes and other specifics vary widely. One year I had a sixth-grade client with five o’clock shadow and a sophomore client who could’ve been mistaken for a sixth grader. Almost to the last one, they lament that they just can’t ‘be like everyone else.’ And none of them is like everyone else. There doesn’t seem to be an everyone else.”

“Well, from where I’m sitting, there are lots of everyone elses! And why do you use words like lament with me?”

He smiled patiently. “Because you know what it means.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” he said. “Absolutely sure. Now, how are things going with your dad these days? The two of you getting along any better?”

She shrugged. “We do all right sometimes. I can tell he prays every day that I’ll disappear. We have to go have dinner at his girlfriend’s house tonight. He’s begging me to be nice to her.”

Jerry sat forward. “That statement, Courtney—he prays that you’ll disappear? What makes you say that?”

“Well, I’m not what he had in mind, you know.”

“Explain, please?”

She sighed heavily. “We did okay when my mom was alive. He loved my mom so much, but so did I, and she loved us both and so… Well, we had a good time together. Taking care of me without my mom around—it isn’t what he thought he’d have to do.”

“I’m sure,” Jerry said. “Just as you didn’t think you’d be living with him without your mom. But how does he make you feel he’d like you to disappear?”

“I disappoint him a lot.”

“How?”

“You know how,” she insisted. “It’s obvious. I looked like a freak, my grades were bad, my friends were bad… I let him down. I wasn’t easy.”

“Was, was, was,” Jerry said. “What’s changed?”

“I changed my hair for one thing. You should’ve seen his face—he thought he’d won the lottery. I wear riding clothes because that’s what I have now. That sort of thing.”

Jerry’s lips moved as though he tried not to smile at her. “I bet if you dug around in the closet, you could find those old Goth clothes. If you root around in the bathroom, you’ll find the black nail polish and lipstick. Which leads me to a question—how long have you been Goth?”

“You act like you know what Goth is!” she said with derision.

“I know you think you’re a complete original,” he said with a laugh. “How long?”

“A year, I guess.”

“A reaction to your mother’s death?” he asked.

“I don’t understand the question,” she said immediately.

“Yes, you do. A reaction to your mother’s death? Did your adoption of the Goth style have something to do with your mother’s death?”

“Sort of, I guess…”

“You guess how?”

She looked down into her lap. “Everyone was ready for me to get over it, that she died, and I couldn’t.”

“Everyone?”

“Lief was getting over it—he wasn’t up prowling the house all night, wasn’t staring so hard he looked like a dead body. He laughed on the phone, went to meetings about his scripts. My friends at school didn’t want to hang out anymore—they said I was depressing. Everyone was getting over it. But me.”

“So…?”

“So I thought if I just dressed in black, in Goth, I wouldn’t have to put on some show about being all happy when I wasn’t all happy!”

“Ah!” Jerry said. “Brilliant!”

“Brilliant?”

“Absolutely brilliant! What a perfect solution! You know, Courtney, you are definitely not the weirdest kid who comes to see me, but you might be the smartest. You know exactly what you’re doing.”

“Yeah, that’s what you think…”

“At fourteen, knowing exactly what you feel and why you feel it is still a process. But you’re acting on instinct to defend and protect your feelings, and that’s a leap ahead of your peers.”

“I’d rather be five-six and stacked,” she said with a pout.

He couldn’t help but chuckle. “All in good time, Courtney. I’m confident that will come. Let me get back to something important—the disappearing thing. Have you ever wanted to disappear?”

She shrugged and thought for a second. “Back when I was living with my real dad, Stu. Yeah, I was kind of hoping I’d just die.”

“And now?”

“Oh, I don’t want to die,” she said. “I’d never do anything like that. I’m only a little crazy, you know.”

“Actually, I don’t find you crazy at all. I think you’re quite stable. Now, about dinner tonight…”

“What?” she said.

“This girlfriend of your dad’s…”

“Some woman visiting here from the Bay Area. Visiting for a long time, like she might even stay. She’s a cook of some kind. He likes her and he really wants me to like her.”