Surfing Midland (Complete/ First draught).

Chapter 6

"Hey mom, just letting you know I made it safely to Montana. There's no reception out at the ranch, so I guess you'll have to ring the house." Not knowing what else to say I said goodbye and hung the phone back on the receiver. I felt a little disheartened that my mom hadn't answered her phone, but then she had told me she might be travelling.

Going back into the kitchen, Trisha and Declan were still standing around. When Declan saw me he straightened a bit, "come on; I'll finish giving you a tour and introduce you to some of the staff and the guy you'll be working for." Nodding, I still couldn't believe that I had to work, but I kept it to myself.

"You might want to...oh never mind, come on." Declan stopped whatever he was thinking of saying when Trisha gave him a sidelong glance. Obviously, they had an unspoken language and whatever was meant by the look stopped Decland from finishing whatever he wanted to say.

Following Declan outside I sighed, the reality of this being my home until the end of high school was finally settling in, and the idea of it all was a little depressing. I would have to live here, travel to school god knows how many minutes each way and on top of all that there was no ocean.

"So we live in the main house, that's my vet practice in that building over there. I can only treat small animals; they need dealing with then we go down into town. Not to Great Falls, there's a smaller town called Butte not too far away, and the local high school is there. That's where you'll be going to school next year, down at Butte high." I was glad to hear that there was a town closer then Great Falls and at least it was a little closer.

"So do I get to go to school on Monday?" The question seemed to trip Declan up. Apparently, he hadn't been expecting it and floundered a few moments as he tried to think something up.

"Well there's only two weeks of the term left, we figured you would want to start with the new school term after the summer break. We can enrol you on Monday and then you can start Tuesday if you want?" I nodded before Declan had even finished speaking, there was no way I would begin working two weeks early just because they didn't want to overload me or something.

Sure I'd had that panic attack less than twenty minutes ago, but school was school. It was the same no matter where you went, work was different and varied depending on where you went. Looking down at my heels covered in fine dust I wondered how many other girls down at the high school would be dressed similarly to me.

"Yeah, that'd be great Declan. I'd rather go to school than sit around here all day and do nothing." The way Declan looked, he looked like he wanted to correct me meant I was probably not going to be sitting around all day doing nothing.

"Okay, I'll talk to Trish. You can go down with her on Monday, or I might be able to take you down. I gotta go into the Butte office on Monday anyways, yeah I'll do it." It seemed Declan liked talking to himself a lot; he probably didn't get a lot of social interaction if he was a sort of travelling vet. At least that's what I got from his occupation; I'm sure people travel all the way to his ranch just to have a cat or dog treated.

"Thanks. So what does a ranch do?" I asked, changing the topic. It seemed that awkward situations bloomed between Declan and me, I was still adjusting to being around adults all the time or at least having two around that kept checking to make sure I was okay...I think Declan was just trying to figure me out a little more.

"Well it depends on what stock animals are on a ranch, we run cattle and breed horses out here. Well, Trisha does with the help of a few hands, it's not full-time work, but our stud is asked after a fair bit in this area." The change of topic seemed to completely erase the awkwardness and Declan walked off in one direction as he explained things. I followed off after him as rattled off a few interesting facts about horses and breeding and typically told me things I didn't want to know.