He walked off toward the big doors without seeing June. She stood with the show stick in her hands and her face turned toward the steer. Then she dropped the stick, put her forehead against the steer's broad black neck, right below its ear, and her shoulders started to shake.
The steer swung its great head around and blew on her hair.
June knew she should leave. She took a step backward and knocked over a galvanized bucket with her heel, and it rang on the concrete like a church bell.
Shelby's head came up.
For a second their eyes met across the stalls, and June saw Shelby's face completely open, wet and red and young, younger than June had known a fourteen-year-old could look. Then it shut, like a screen door slamming in the wind.
"What are you looking at?" Shelby said. Her voice was raw. "Huh? You spying for your grandma? Get out of here."
"I wasn't—"
"Get out." Shelby picked up the show stick. She didn't come any closer. "You tell anybody, Halvorsen, anybody, and I swear to God I will make the rest of your fair so miserable you'll wish you'd stayed home on your stupid dying farm."
June left. She walked fast up the aisle, past the Simmental and the Herefords and the Charolais, out into the light, and she didn't stop walking until she was all the way back at the camper with her heart going like she'd run a mile. Linh was awake and eating a spring roll cold out of the sack.
"What happened to you?" Linh said.
"Nothing," June said. Then, after a while: "Did you know Shelby Kruse's mom left?"
Linh considered this with her serious face. "No," she said. "But it makes sense."
"Why?"