by Kate Lattey
Pete had seen it before I had, and a long time before my parents had. How the intense pressure was damaging my enjoyment of the sport. That I didn’t love my ponies the same way that I’d used to, when I was small. I’d cried for hours when Dad sold my first pony, and my second. Even my third. But over the years I’d become used to it. If the ponies weren’t winning, they moved on. We only kept winners on our truck. Dad had convinced me to sell Springbok at the end of last season, because the feisty little chestnut had been struggling with the bigger fences, and at the age of eighteen, it wasn’t fair on him to keep asking him to push his body to the extreme. I’d fought for him, convincing Dad that Bok’s day wasn’t yet up, but after we’d had a couple of bad crashes, I’d had to accept that it was for the best. We’d found him a new home in the Far North, taking a young rider around the lower heights. I’d owned Bok since I was nine years old. He’d been my first real show jumper, and despite the unconventional jumping style that had earned him his name, he’d taken me far. I owed him a lot. I missed him even more, and I hoped he was happy in his new home.
Now they wanted to do the same thing to Teddy, but I wouldn’t let that happen – not if I could help it. Teddy was Pete’s pony. He’d been handed on to me when my brother had grown too tall and too old to campaign him anymore, and I’d been thrilled by the privilege. And we’d had our share of success together. Teddy had always been a bit quirky, but he used to help me out. He used to jump from anywhere, never used to flinch at the height or width of the jumps or the ride I gave him into them. We’d made a good team – at least, I’d always thought so. Teddy didn’t seem to agree.
Not lately, anyway.
But I wasn’t going to let them throw Teddy away like they’d done with Pete. A year and a half ago, my parents had cut my brother out of our lives completely. Well, Dad cut him out, and Mum followed suit, because she always does as she’s told. Nobody talked about Pete anymore, much less to him. It was as though he’d died, not moved to live with a great-uncle in South Africa. I couldn’t condone what he’d done, but I missed my big brother. He was the only one who’d ever listened to me.
Dad took a gulp of red wine and cleared his throat. “I did mention to Steph that we’d be interested in that little chestnut she has. She said she’d think about it, but she’ll be aging out of Young Riders soon and as soon as it goes on the market, we’ll snap it up. What do you think?”
He wasn’t even asking me. He was looking at Mum expectantly, and she returned his gaze with a thoughtful expression. “Mmm. Pretty mare, and she’s won a lot. I could see Susie riding her,” she said, her eyes going dreamy and faraway.
I set my cutlery down on my plate and pushed it away from me. “May I be excused?”
“Ultimately, it was the ineptness of the British generals and their refusal to listen to their subordinates that led to thousands of unnecessary deaths on the Gallipoli peninsula during World War One,” I wrote. “But the solidarity created between soldiers from Australia and New Zealand carries over into modern times, and is now considered by many historians to have marked the birth of both nations’ identities. For this reason, the ANZAC campaign is remembered by both countries at memorial services on the 25th of April every year.”
I skim-read back over my History essay, hoping that would be a sufficient summary. Too bad if it wasn’t. I was too tired to do anything more tonight, so I saved the file and sent it to print. While the printer warmed up, I logged onto Facebook and opened my news feed.
For a long time, I’d taken myself right off social media, unable to handle the comments and messages people had been sending me. Cyber bullying, the experts called it. I wished my detractors would’ve just come up to me and punched me in the face instead. It probably would’ve hurt less. At least the bruises would fade. The things they’d said were still with me, still haunting me. The taunts, the threats, the words that had slashed like a knife.
You make me ashamed to be human.
If you ever show your face at a horse show ever again, we’ll make you sorry.
You deserve to die for what you did.
I hadn’t even done it, hadn’t had anything to do with it, but that hadn’t mattered to them. I’d protested my innocence until I was blue in the face, but it hadn’t made an iota of difference. So I’d tried to ignore them, and when that hadn’t worked, I’d deleted my entire Facebook account and tried to disappear.
I’d only started it up again a few months ago, and I was very careful about who I friended now. Even then, I still made occasional mistakes. It turned out that even people you thought were your friends were just waiting for you to let your guard down before they attacked. I’d learned that the hard way, more than once.
I dragged my fingertips down the touchpad to scroll down the page, scanning the comments and pictures that other people had posted. My cousin’s dog on the beach. Bridget posing for a selfie in front of her bedroom mirror. AJ’s grey pony pulling a face as she tempted him with peppermints. A bulletin from ESNZ, with an update on Samantha Marshall’s condition.
I clicked on that one, and waited for it to load. I’d been as horrified as everyone else when the news of Sam’s accident had broken a couple of weeks ago. Accidents happened in equestrian sports, everyone who was involved in them knew that. It wasn’t a case of whether you fell off, but when, and how badly it would hurt. Bones were broken, heads were concussed, bodies were bruised and battered. Horses went lame, got injured, coughed and colicked and knocked themselves about. You just did what you could to keep yourself and your horses safe, and hoped that the worst things never happened to you.
But the worst had happened to Sam, and as I read the article, I felt a coldness settle over me. Paralysed from the waist down. Permanent damage. Unlikely to ever walk again.
I couldn’t imagine how her family were feeling. I couldn’t begin to imagine how Sam was feeling, and I shuddered. I clicked on the comments section and read through people’s commiserations, wishing I could add to them but not daring to try. I was blinking back tears as people reminisced about seeing Sam ride - as a child, as a teenager, as a young woman, making her way to the top. Always smiling, always with a positive attitude, never letting the small stuff get her down. Whenever anything like this happened, the person involved was always deified, becoming a saint overnight as everyone conveniently forgot all of the bad and focused only on the good things they’d done. It was human nature, I supposed. But even though I didn’t know Sam well, had only met her a handful of times, I couldn’t for the life of me think of a single time I’d seen her do something wrong or horrible. She was one of those people that everyone liked, and who liked everyone. I wondered what the future held for her, trapped inside a body that no longer worked. I wondered if her positive outlook on life would last.
A message popped up at the bottom of my screen, and I glanced down at it nervously, anticipating an attack. Then my heart started pounding a staccato beat, and I forgot all about Sam Marshall and her troubles, because one of mine was staring me right in the face.
It was a message from my brother.
Hey sis.
I hadn’t spoken to him in over a year, my self-enforced exclusion from all social media making it difficult for him to get in touch. My parents wouldn’t talk to him, and I’d deleted my email account as well, when the bullying had got out of hand. So when he’d sent me a friend request on Facebook a few days ago, I’d accepted immediately. My parents didn’t know I’d set up this account, so they wouldn’t know if we got in touch. But every time I’d started to compose a message to Pete, I hadn’t known what to say, so I’d stayed silent. Waited for him to get in touch with me.
He hadn’t…until now.
You there?
I swallowed hard.
I’m here.
The speech bubble popped up, showing that he was typing. I waited nervously, feeling my palms begin to sweat as I heard footsteps on the landing outside my bedroom. If my parents caught me on Facebook, they’d be furious
. If they knew I was talking to Pete, their anger would know no bounds. But I couldn’t bear to click away. Not yet.
Hows life?
So casual, as though we hadn’t talked in over a year because we were too busy, not because we’d been forbidden to do so.
Same old. How’s Sth Africa?
His reply was swift. Hot. Crowded. Keeping busy tho.
I wanted to ask what he was doing. I wanted to know where he lived, and if he’d made friends, and whether he was getting along with Adriaan. I wanted to tell him about Teddy, and ask for his advice on what to do, how to get him to jump better, how to get Dad to realise that we couldn’t possibly sell him. But I could hear my mother’s footsteps coming closer, and I knew that I didn’t have much time to say anything.
G2G mums coming.
I heard her rap on the door, saw the door handle start to turn as Pete’s speech bubble popped up again. Our time was up. I typed one last message, hit Enter, then closed the window and shut the laptop as Mum walked into the room.
“All done with your homework?”
I nodded, getting to my feet and miming a yawn. “Yeah. I’m just heading to bed.”
“Good idea.” She came into the room and unplugged my laptop, then carried it back to the door. My parents didn’t allow me to sleep with any technology. Their theory was that it would prevent me from getting a proper night’s sleep. Usually I couldn’t have cared less, but tonight it mattered. But I had no choice, and arguing with her would only make her suspicious. I watched my mother step back onto the landing, pulling the door ajar behind her.
“Good night, darling.”
“Night Mum.”
I changed into clean pyjamas, went into my ensuite and brushed my teeth. Washed my face twice, then applied the acne cream that didn’t work nearly as well as the advertising had promised. I heard Dad’s heavy step coming up the stairs, and I slipped into bed and switched out my light so that he wouldn’t come in and ask me what I was still doing awake.
Lying in the dark, staring up at the ceiling, I thought about my brother. I was glad I’d sent that final message, even if I was going to have to wait to find out what he’d been typing out to me. I wondered if it was the same thing. The only thing that had really mattered, the one thing that I’d wanted to say for so long, ever since he’d disappeared out of my life.
I miss you.
* * *
I shortened Teddy’s reins, sunk my weight down into my heels, and moved him up to a canter. Fixing my eyes on the jump ahead, I committed complete focus to the task at hand. Hands low and steady, lower leg still, weight all the way down into the stirrup. My heel sank deeper than I’d ever thought possible before I’d started taking lessons with Bruce and he’d drilled me on it for hours. Back flat, shoulders square, eyes up. Seat slightly out of the saddle, upper body tilted slightly forward, staying in balance with my pony.
Perfect balance. Complete commitment. Total focus.
I counted the strides as we come out of the turn, Teddy’s neatly shod hooves digging into the arena surface. We’d had it upgraded over winter, and the footing was perfect. Bruce leaned against the jump stand and watched as we cantered down to the fence. Teddy jumped it, but he rattled the back rail.
“Come again!”
I looked left, shifted my weight, circled Teddy back towards the jump again. We’d already jumped the fence three times off each rein as Bruce drilled me over and over on finding a good distance. Training my eye until I could do this without even thinking. Teaching me to sit and wait and stay quiet with my body, instead of overriding like I used to.
“Ride forward, come in on a longer stride.”
I closed my legs against Teddy’s strides, and his pace quickened. I eyed the fence, made the turn. Then Teddy tripped, pitching forward onto his forehand. I waited for him to regain his balance, but he didn’t. He went all the way down, face first into the dirt. I was thrown over his head, and braced myself as I landed hard on my upper back. The breath was knocked right out of me, and tears pricked the corners of my eyes as I struggled to breathe.
I could hear Bruce swearing, and I forced myself to sit up and show him that I was okay. But he wasn’t looking at me. He was crouched next to Teddy, who was still on the ground. Lying on his side.
Not moving.
I staggered to my feet and stumbled over to them, dropping to my knees next to Teddy’s head. It was a moment before I could speak.
“Is he okay?”
Bruce shook his head slowly, then placed a large hand on Teddy’s damp neck and looked at me sadly. “No, he’s not. He’s dead.”
CHAPTER TWO
“Well I want to know what happened, because perfectly healthy ponies don’t just drop dead!”
I listened to Dad yell down the phone at the vet, demanding an explanation for why I was lying on my bed crying, and Teddy was lying in the arena, dead. I tried to block out the sound of his voice as I stared up at the blurred ceiling, my fingers picking at a loose thread on the quilt that my Ouma made for me when I was little. Mum hated that blanket, hated its uneven stitching and the way the edges weren’t square and the colours didn’t match, but I loved it. It felt like comfort, and acceptance, and unconditional love.
Bruce said it was probably a major coronary, that he’d seen it happen before, and that Teddy would’ve been dead before he hit the ground. That it was, at least, a fast and relatively painless way for a horse to go. But I couldn’t get the image out of my head of my pony sprawled on his side on our arena dirt. I had stayed with him for several minutes while Bruce went and broke the news to my parents. I’d sat down by his head and run my fingers through his soft forelock, stroked his small, curved ears, gently touched the scar above his eye. The one my brother had put there in a fit of rage when he was my age and Teddy hadn’t jumped well enough in Pony of the Year. My heart ached for Teddy then, for everything we’d put him through. Despite it all, he’d been a fighter. He’d jumped his heart out for us both.
He wouldn’t have to fight any more. He lay still, the sunlight shining off his pale coat, his tail fanned out behind him and his legs positioned as though he was still cantering. Maybe he was, somewhere. I wondered what heaven was like for him. Would he be running and jumping, or would he be relaxing, taking comfort in the fact that nobody could try and force him to do anything he didn’t want to do, ever again…
And then he’d twitched, and moved, and my heart had leapt into my throat. For a moment, I’d thought that we’d been wrong, that he was still with us, that he was still alive. That he’d just been playing one huge prank on us. His legs moved, and a strange groaning noise escaped his throat, and I’d almost leapt to my feet, almost yelled for help. Almost believed. But it was just the last of his death throes, his body going into spasms as the nerves twitched, muscles contracted and relaxed. I’d closed my eyes, unable to watch, and kept my hand on his cheek, stroking it until Mum had arrived and made me stand up and walk away.
Now Dad wanted him to be cut into pieces, just so he could be sure to claim the insurance. I stood up suddenly, and marched across the landing.
Dad sounded angrier than ever. “What do you mean, too busy? This is an urgent call! Yes I realise the horse is already dead, but I’m not leaving him in the arena and I’m not waiting for another vet to come. Who else can I call? Who can come tonight?”
I walked up to Dad and touched him on the arm, making him jump.
“Just bury him,” I told my father. “Just let him go.”
Dad looked at me with a frown and shook his head, then turned his back to me.
I knew that whatever I said wouldn’t be listened to. I started to go back to my room, then turned and went downstairs, and back out to the arena. Teddy’s body was still there, mostly covered with a bright blue tarpaulin, but his nose still poked out from one end. I crouched down next to his head and gently pulled the covering back. I pulled the scissors out of my pocket, then carefully cut a lock out of his mane, and a bunch of hairs from h
is tail.
I stood and looked at him one last time, then went back to the house and shut myself into my bedroom. Lay back down on the bed, looking back up at the ceiling, trying to feel nothing.
* * *
I was allowed to take one day off school. Just one, because he was only a pony. It wasn’t like a family member had died or anything, my parents reminded me. It was shocking and upsetting to us, but other people wouldn’t understand if I grieved too much over an animal.
So I stood and watched as my mother agonised over writing a note to my school explaining my previous day’s absence. Other people would understand, I wanted to tell her. Other people do actually care about their animals. But I hadn’t fought her when she’d told me that one day was more than enough. Losing Teddy was no excuse at all for skipping out on my education.
I could’ve told her that I still had a sore head from my fall and that I felt dizzy when I stood up suddenly, but I didn’t. I didn’t want to stay home anyway, surrounded by memories. I didn’t want to be there when the digger came.
So I went to school and sat behind desks and talked to my friends, who weren’t really my friends but they pretended to be, for appearances’ sake. It wasn’t that they were horrible people – not most of the time, anyway. But they were shadow friends. I was too busy riding on the weekends to hang out with them, and although they still tolerated me in their group, I wasn’t close to any of them. I existed on the fringe of their clique, part of the group but not. Nobody invited me especially to parties, or sleepovers, or just to hang out. If I was there, it was a group event. The other girls had best friends within the group, although those chopped and changed so often that sometimes I could hardly keep up with who was speaking to who anymore. But I didn’t, and never had.
I didn’t even tell any of my friends about Teddy. Just said I’d had a migraine yesterday and couldn’t come to school. They commiserated briefly, then launched into stories of their own migraines, which were mostly the result of hangovers after wild nights out partying. They swapped stories, each more dramatic than the last, shooting me occasional pitying glances because I hadn’t been there and so I didn’t really know. I sat and listened to them, trying to appear rapt, wondering how it was possible to have known people for most of your life, and have nothing in common with them at all.
