by Leigh Perry

~ ~

I didn’t even want to go riding. I’d rather have spent the day relax- ing at the hotel until the convention began, but Sid had a hankering to go on a horse, and obviously he couldn’t go alone.

Sid is a skeleton.

Unlike most skeletons—at least those without skin and flesh—Sid is alive. Ish. He’s alive enough to walk, talk, and be my best friend, but not enough to be seen in public.

That’s why I couldn’t take all of him with me. Instead his skull, one hand, and his phone were in my bag, which enabled him to see, hear, talk, and text. The purple satchel had decorative sugar skulls on both sides and while it was often admired, nobody had realized that the eye- holes were black netting for Sid to peer out of.

I’d gone riding once or twice as a kid, but didn’t even remember how to mount properly. Eve, the resort’s wrangler, almost stifled her sigh while helping me climb onto the black horse, but didn’t try as hard when I insisted on tying my bag to the saddle horn.

My boyfriend, Brownie, was already in the saddle, looking annoyingly comfortable. Though he hadn’t ridden since his parents’ carnival ran a pony concession, apparently riding a horse was like riding a bicycle.

I wished I were on a bicycle.

After a few minutes of instruction, I managed to stay on as we ambled around the corral, which reassured Eve more than it did me. “Don’t worry, Georgia. Minnie here is used to new riders.”

Minnie turned her head and sneered. Clearly being used to new riders and liking them were two different things.

Eve opened the gate and mounted her own horse. “Just yell if you have any trouble.” She and Brownie rode off.

I squeezed my legs as I’d been instructed, but Minnie only went five steps before stopping. I squeezed again. Nothing. I jiggled the reins. Nothing. “Giddyup?” Worse than nothing. She took a lazy 180-degree turn and headed back toward the stable.

“Whoa! Whoa!”

Minnie ignored my existence as she went through the open door, walked straight to a stack of hay bales at the far end of the building, and began noshing.

Dismounting went no better than mounting had. My foot got caught somewhere it shouldn’t have been, maybe because I was trying to hold onto the sugar-skull bag, and both the bag and I tumbled onto the straw-covered floor.

From ground level, Minnie looked alarmingly tall, and I scuttled into an empty stall before she could step on me, stopping only when I collided with something I thought was a sack of oats or other horse-related supply.

It was Sid who realized what it really was.

“Coccyx, Georgia!” he said from inside the bag.

I looked behind me and saw a man, lying on one side. He wasn’t moving.

…