Bloodless Day

Dancer's Lucky Shamrock

There's no such thing as a life changing moment. There's never that one moment that completely turns everything around, and there never really is change. Moments just have a funny habit of building up, one after the other, and each one makes a person slightly different. And though a moment by itself can be taken as the most miniscule of differences, by the end of the year you can look back and you'll see that 365 days ago, you weren't different in yourself so much as you were a completely different person.

Which is terrifying, in a way. Nearly everyone likes themselves as who they are. Sure, there's flaws to fix, but no one likes to think that thirty years they'll have a completely different mindset, personality, because then where did the person they are now go?

The way I see it, it's like the body. Not a single molecule will remain on the body you have now in forty years. You'll have regenerated a completely different body. Maybe what's inside the body is like that too. One thought, one atom, at a time is replaced. And then one day you realize, BAM, nothing you say or do is what you would have said or done five, ten years ago.

So when Lilac and I played tic-tac-toe all the way too Aqueduct that weekend in the backseat, Lilac's father and brother in the front, I didn't realize that each mile that spun beneath the car's tires was taking me to my next moment. One that would help craft me into the person I would become.

Bloodless Day rattled in the last stall of the four-horse slant we pulled. Holiday Break was in the second stall and Shamrock in the first, an entire space left between the slightly nutty stallion. Trailing behind us was Jack and Ned with a two-horse, lugging along Tact and some maiden filly. The fun car. Lilac had begged to go with them, but her father had refused, on the grounds of "I want to spend some quality time with my daughter. She's growing up when I'm not looking."

He'd launched into a deep and complicated sounding conversation about the most recent racing regulations or some bull with Derek and hadn't acknowledged mine or Lilac's presence, except to ask what we wanted at Wendy's. A chocolate frosty and fries.

"You suck at this, Anna," Lilac said when I lost for the thirtieth consecutive time in a row.

"I know," I said, frustrated. "Can we go back to playing that line game? With the dots?"

"I beat you at that game too."

"Not the once."

We bickered our way upstate, until Lilac's father tired of us and kicked us out and into Ned and Jack's truck, where music was blasted and Lilac and Ned made out in the back seat while Jack and I exchanged nervous glances and turned the radio up to its limits in the front seat.

Reaching the racetrack was a relief. We'd left fairly early, so it was still daylight when I jumped out of the cab and landed on the now familiar Aqueduct land. Our regular shedrow- how quickly I had become part of Piperson's 'our'- loomed in front of us, waiting. Derek and Mr. Piperson had arrived a few minutes before and were nowhere in sight, but then Derek came striding from the shedrow.

"That's that. We have our stalls at the ready, if we'll start unloading."

I started towards the four-horse trailer, intending to retrieve Bloodless Day from it, but Lilac's brother stepped in front of me. "I know you've been getting along fairly well with him this week, but this is a new place and I don't want you getting hurt. Despite all of your advancements within the farm, you're still new to this."

With that pronouncement, Derek turned to the trailer, deftly undoing the hooks and levers that shut the door. I stared at him, shocked. Heat reddened my cheeks, but I couldn't tell if I was embarassed or mad.

A hand lightly touched my shoulder as Jack said, voice low in my ear, "he'll get what's coming to him. But pick your fights with someone who doesn't write your paycheck."