Page 6 of Lost and Lassoed

“Stupid fucking piece of shit!” I shouted at my sewingmachine—a vintage Brother Coronado that—until this moment—was my pride and joy. I was trying to fix the giant (three-inch) tear that the Devil’s Boot closet doorknob had ripped in my favorite jacket, but the mint-green sewing machine had other plans.

“I thought you were supposed to be runningfromthe demons,” Emmy had said with a laugh when I told her what happened in the basement. “Not straight into their arms.”

“Okay, first of all,” I said, “I wasn’t inanyone’sarms”—even if they were annoyingly nice arms—“and I feel the need to make thatveryclear, considering you’re engaged to Meadowlark’s biggest gossip. And second of all, are you finally admitting that your brother Gus was sent from hell?”

“Hell in general? No,” she responded with a small smile. “But your own personal hell? Maybe.”

I couldn’t decide which was worse: the fact that I’d gotten stuck in a closet with Gus or the fact that my sewing machine was screwed up. Every time I stepped on the pedal, thread waspiling up, getting tangled, and creating something akin to a bird’s nest on the underside of the fabric. I’d done everything—rethreaded the machine, tried different thread, checked that the bobbin was seated correctly, reset the tension settings—but no dice.

I dropped my head onto my sewing table. It met the wood with a resounding thud. I could try to sew the tear by hand, but the vintage suede was too thick for me to get the neat, unobtrusive stitches that I could with the machine.

The thought of not being able to repair my jacket brought tears to my eyes.It’s just a jacket, Teddy.

But it wasn’t.

It was my jacket. I’d had it since I was sixteen. I had dragged Emmy out of bed before sunrise—she was not a morning person—and we’d driven to Cody, a big city compared to Meadowlark. It was the end of the summer, so all of the seasonal workers had dropped their stuff at the thrift stores, and they left a lot of good stuff behind. We dug through bin after bin. I encountered a lot of questionable stains, and Emmy nearly came to blows with an old woman over a Wrangler vest with the Marlboro Man stitched into it.

But then I found this jacket. I cleaned it. I cared for it. I made sure it didn’t smell weird and vintagey.

I gave it a new life.

I loved this jacket. It was timeless, unique, and…Teddy. And now I didn’t know whether I could wear it again without causing more damage.

I wished I could blame Gus for this, but I was the one who’d been running from demons in the basement.

Tears poked at the back of my eyes. I know it sounds ridiculously dramatic that I was crying over a jacket, but I wasn’t justcrying over the jacket. I was crying over what it meant to me, and the memory attached to it, one of the many moments when Emmy and I had been completely in sync. Partners in crime. And, truthfully, it hadn’t felt like that in a while.

I had been so excited when Emmy moved back home, but I didn’t get to spend a lot of time basking in that feeling because she and Brooks got together almost immediately.

Emmy’s my best friend, so I was thrilled for her, but it’s been weird to watch the way our friendship has changed—for me, not for her, I don’t think—in the two years since she came back from Denver. I’m still reckoning with that—a life where it’s not just her and me against the world.

Emmy didn’t really come to me anymore—I went to her. A lot of the time we spent together now was at her house—sometimes it was just us, sometimes Brooks was there, which I generally didn’t mind. But we didn’t do things together the way we used to. I did things on my own, and when I wanted to spend time with Emmy, I prioritized where she was at instead of where I wanted to be—like at a thrift store in Cody.

Coming to terms with that has been more difficult than I thought it would be. I was happy for her but sad for me.

It’s just weird to be happy for her and sad for me at the same time.

I contain multitudes and all that shit, I guess.

But now it felt like this jacket was just another piece of my life that was going to get left behind, another part ofmethat was going to get left behind.

The other day, one of the girls I work with at the boutique announced that she was pregnant, and my first thought was that we weren’t old enough to get pregnant—especially on purpose.

My second thought was to ask her if she knew who the father was.

And then I remembered that we’re in our late twenties, and she’s been married for nearly five years.

It just feels like everyone is moving on…without me. Even Luke Brooks—former manwhore extraordinaire—is settling down, for Christ’s sake. And here I am, twenty-eight, working at the same boutique I’ve been working in since I was twenty-two, in the same small town I grew up in, with no change in sight.

Growing up, I was always ahead of everyone else. I made my own path, and I forged ahead fearlessly. I was the leader in my life.

In fourth grade, I thought it was bullshit that we only got pizza every other Friday in the cafeteria, so I organized a recess protest—nearly the entire first-grade class, except Kenny Wyatt, the fucking coward, stayed outside when the bell rang until the principal agreed to hear my complaint. It took a petition that I stored in the back of my math binder and a lunchroom cleanup assignment, but the next year, we had pizzaeveryFriday.

When I decided I liked clothes in junior high, I went all in. I taught myself to sew. I saved money for supplies by walking people’s dogs or babysitting. I wanted to learn a craft, and I got good at it.

I was the girl who all the other girls came to for advice—what to wear (everyone loved my style), whether they should break up with their boyfriend (almost always yes), how to talk the sheriff out of calling your parents if you got caught at a party (cry—cry a lot). It was my way of taking care of the people around me and taking the lead.

Growing up, it was always Emmy’s goal to leave Meadowlark. She felt stifled here—like our small town was sitting on her lungs. Me? It felt like the only place I could take big, true breaths. I left for college, fucked around Europe on my own for a little bit right after, but I always had every intention of coming back home. I just…I loved it here. It was the place my dad chose for us, and that meant something to me.

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