Forever Read Free

majority of that same time, she thought he was kind of a dork.
    At Christmas time in fifth grade, Scott gave her a very sweet card. She took it, looked at it, let out an annoyed sigh and grabbed a random piece of cardboard off a table and scrawled:
    “Merry Christmas Scott. I hate you. Love, Roni”
    As he sat in the middle of the barracks on this rainy March night nine years later, that piece of cardboard still sat in a box in his closet back in Wild Horse. Another time, he gave her a little ring with her ruby birthstone for her birthday. He later found the box in the trash. But he also found out she kept the ring.
    Roni had beautiful, long, light brown hair, a softly perfect figure, and those eyes. It took until probably seventh grade until Scott really put his finger on just what it was that drew him to her. Roni had the most striking baby blue eyes; they were like nothing he’d ever seen. It seemed she could look right into his soul with those eyes and read him to the core.
    Roni’s family members were direct descendants of the McIntyre brothers who helped found Wild Horse back in 1878. Her dad and grandpa owned the biggest Pontiac-Olds-GMC dealership east of Denver and her family lived on 40-acre spread north of town. Their huge classic house had wrap-around porches on both levels. Roni and her sister, Brooke, had horses and the family were all avid skiers.
    Roni was one of the most attractive girls in school; she always hung out with the “cool-crowd” in elementary and junior high school. She participated in sports and choir and never missed a class party; but then in ninth-grade she discovered two other interests: sex and older guys.
    Ironically, Mark Carson had been her first – of all the guys to lose his virginity first, Mark was the last person anyone thought it would be. But thereafter, it seemed Roni was more drawn to guys with cars and money. And, of course, for this attention, those guys expected sex.
    It really wasn’t as if Roni drifted away from the rest of the crowd (which was also Rick and Maggie and Mark and Scott’s crowd), but she stopped playing sports as a sophomore, and dumped most of her clubs by her senior year. Other than her horses, her main interest was her art. Roni was the best artist in school.
    She painted, drew and sketched. When they were juniors, riding in the back of Chris Ohrt’s station wagon on the way to Denver to see James Taylor in concert, she sat silently scribbling on a notebook page for about 60 miles. Just as they hit the city, she looked up at Scott and said, “Yeah, you are kind of cute sometimes.”
    She turned the notebook around and showed Scott a profile picture of himself, with the car window in the background and soft smile on his face. “Is that for me?” he asked.
    “Mmm, no,” Roni said. “I think I’ll keep it.”
    But Scott never thought he was in Roni’s league, insofar as dating. As friends, no problem. But dating, again his damn shyness just kept biting him in the ass.
    They had talked about lots of things over the years. She told him how she always wanted to work for a design or architecture firm, using her artistic talent to remake Colorado. She was accepted at Colorado University and was going to major in architectural design. She and Betsy Collins were going to room together.
    But right after graduation, she told Scott she’d changed plans. Instead of CU, she had decided to go to Greeley and maybe major in art education. Scott and most of the rest of the people who knew her couldn’t understand the sudden change, and no one could pry the reason out of her. She was, as always, an enigma.
    Although UNC isn’t a large school, hardly anyone ever saw her on campus. While most of the Wild Horse gang lived out on West Campus, Roni lived on Central Campus. She spent a lot of time in the art building. Maggie had a couple of classes with her the first year-and-a-half, and she and Scott had coffee in the Union a few times. She did come to Doug