Page 124 of Friends Don't Kiss

Ahead of us, slowly crossing the road, is a cow. A big cow. The size of Daisy. Except this one is…

Purple.

Colton brings his truck to a slow stop so we don’t skid.

“Oh—fuck. Is thatDaisy?”

The truck merely six feet from Daisy, Colton takes his phone out and snaps a picture. “Sure looks like it,” he mutters. His phone wooshes with the sound of a text going out.

Daisy is staring at us, nostrils billowing with plumes of her angry exhales. “Isn’t it kinda cold for her?” I ask.

Colton’s phone rings. “It’s Dec. Can you call the farm?”

He means King Knoll Farm, where Daisy lives. Where she constantly escapes from. Where she’s driving the whole King family crazy since, apparently, she found out she was not a Jersey like their other cows, and that her breed—Angus—was raised for meat. “Hey, Lynn,” I say, talking over Colton’s discussion with Declan.

“Honey, what’s wrong? Did you need to talk more? I’m sorry we left already, we were bone tired—”

“Thank you, Lynn, but that’s not why I’m calling. I-we came upon Daisy—”

“Again?” Lynn interrupts me, sighing. Clearly she’s gotten used to her now-pet cow’s escapes, if this is no longer a topic of panic like it used to be. Granted, there aren’t many flowers to graze on in December.

“Y-yeah. She’s on Spruce, you know where it dips before the big oak tree?”

“Oh dear,” she sighs. “Boys!” Her holler is muffled by her hand on the phone, but loud enough that I can hear it. Then her voice comes back clearer as she has me confirm the location, relaying it, I assume, to her two younger sons, Hunter and Logan. “They’re on their way. Are you with Colton? Shannon just heard from Ms. Angela that he called it in. You’re with him, right?”

“Yeah, he was-we were driving home.”

“Oh good, good. Welp, the boys are out, should be down there in a little bit. Call me if you need anything!”

We spend the next ten or fifteen minutes daunted by the vision of Daisy, eerily detached against the white backdrop, her purple paint turning dirty as the falling snow melts it away, her eyes glinting in our headlights.

Headlights come from behind us, right as a snowmobile and a horse come down the hill. The car behind us stops, and so does the snowmobile, shutting its engine off. Only the horse and her rider walk toward Daisy.

A knock on Colton’s window startles us. Declan is scowling at us. Colton opens his window. “Hey, Dec.”

Declan clears his throat. “How did this happen?”

“She’s been here the whole time. Staring at us.”

“Tell me you didn’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“Paint her purple.”

“Seriously?”

“I have to ask.”

“Do you really?”

“The two of you are always where trouble happens. Always the only ones to see it hap—”

Leaning over Colton, I try to interrupt Declan. “We didn’t see it happen.”

Declan ignores me. “—and the ones to report it. No one there to corroborate the facts.”

Colton waves between us. “We corroborate each other.”

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