“You don’t have to act like you’re so smart all the time,” Valerie said.
“If you leave your stuff out like this.” I pointed to my things. “Then next time you’ll be ready too.”
“Show off,” Bridget mumbled.
“No,” I said with a sweet smile. “Just trying to help.”
“She’s right anyway,” Valerie said. “Next time I’m leaving my stuff out.”
And Socks and I went out to the grass field feeling not only prepared but mature as well because instead of stooping to their level, I’d tried to be nice and even if it hadn’t worked that great, I still felt better about myself anyway.
CHAPTER FORTY SIX
“This morning Trevor taught you the importance of flexibility and gymnastics,” our trainer said. “This afternoon you will learn how to put all that together into a course. I am Alec Ross and I want to learn all about you.”
Where Trevor hadn’t even really cared to know our names, Alec made us all step forward and tell him about ourselves and our horses. It was like being the new kid in class but I didn’t mind and while I didn’t really like talking about myself, I loved telling people about the horses I rode and I was sure to tell Alec that Socks actually belonged to Missy and that once she had been on the Junior Olympic team too. And of course the real one. That got a few stares out of Bridget and Valerie. Jess just made a pained sort of face like she wanted to roll her eyes but couldn’t because she was still playing nice Jess. Of course it didn’t help that Alec actually knew Missy.
“Missy Ellison?” he asked and I nodded. “We rode together on the Nations Cup team in Germany. Best season of my life. You are lucky to have her as one of your trainers.”
At this Jess turned a little green, Bridget and Valerie had their mouths open and Andy was laughing.
“Who is the popular one now?” he whispered.
“Knock it off,” I whispered back but it didn’t matter because I was having the time of my life.
Alec was a gentler, kinder trainer than Trevor had been. He had us all warm up over a couple of small jumps and corrected flaws with our positions and technique and then he showed us the course we were going to jump.
“But we haven’t even walked it,” Bridget wailed.
“You have eyes don’t you?” Alec asked. “Don’t you look for your distances as well?”
“No,” she mumbled under her breath. “That is what my trainer is for.”
“When you ride a course,” Alec continued on, ignoring Bridget. “You have to feel it. How is it riding? Are the lines short or long? Has the course designer tried to trick you and your horse in any way? Are there places you can take time to set up for the next fence better or corners you can cut if you are tight on time? These are all the things you should be thinking about as you ride. Getting to the end with all the jumps up and inside the time allowed is your goal but I want you to think about the act of getting there as well because in the end that is what determines how well you do.”
“Is he going to talk us to death or is he going to let us ride?” Valerie whispered.
Only her whisper was pretty loud and Alec heard her.
“If you are getting impatient,” he said. “Please, feel free to show us all how it is done.”
Bridget snickered under her breath.
“And you can go next,” he told her.
She choked on her snicker and glared at him like he’d just told her to go and jump off a cliff.
“No volunteers this time,” Andy said as Valerie reluctantly pushed Adagio into a trot.
“That’s okay,” I said, stroking Socks on the neck. “We can wait our turn.”
CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN
In the end we went last. Everyone had failed somewhere out on the course. It was trickier than it looked and if I’d been sitting on Bluebird, I wouldn’t have been worried but Socks was essentially a speed horse and this course required careful turns and soft lines. I didn’t know if we’d make it around clean or not but we were sure going to try our very best.
“Off you go,” Alec said and I let up on the reins as Socks burst from a trot into a canter.
“Easy boy,” I said. “Nice and slow.”
But telling Socks to go slow was like telling a firework to just shoot off a little and I knew the more I tried to fight with him, the worse it would be so in the end I just let him go. But because I was so relaxed and wasn’t nervous at all, Socks didn’t run off and act all crazy. He cantered easily over the grass, taking the fences in stride. There were a couple of difficult lines but I practiced things like this all the time at home. Here was no different. I didn’t need to walk out the jumps or have my trainer tell me how many strides I should be getting. I knew that those were the things I figured out on the course where I could tell how my horse was going and adjust him accordingly.
“Very nice,” Alec said as we came back to the group with a clear round under our belts. “Very nice indeed.”
And instead of the others hating me for doing well, they clapped at my round and on our way back to the barn they asked me if I’d be able to give them some pointers.
“Sure,” I said, still not convinced they weren’t going to kill me in my sleep. “You just have to relax.”
“Fat chance of that,” Valerie said with a sigh. “I even tried my mother’s chamomile tea this morning and it didn’t help one bit. I’ve been a nervous wreck all day.”
“Doesn’t your mother have anything stronger?” Bridget said.
“Not that she’d let me anywhere near,” Valerie replied.
We walked our horses around the property to cool then down after our lesson, watching other people ride in the rings. The place was fancy and filled with expensive horses but when you stripped all that away it was still just a farm where people came to learn to ride. I could see that now. There was a girl in the ring on a flashy hunter who kept grabbing her horse in the mouth right before every fence. Another out in the smaller ring kept jumping ahead, much to the dismay of her trainer who kept telling her to sit up. I’m sure there were great people who rode there too. Those who went to the top shows and competed on the A circuit but there were just as many of them like us, not perfect and yet trying our best.
“You know, I think I’m finally starting to get the hang of this whole horse show life,” I said to Andy as we trailed behind the others.
“What is there to get?” Andy asked in typical boy fashion. “It’s just supposed to be fun, isn’t it?”
“Sure,” I said. “In a cut throat kind of way.”
In ballet girls had been known to put glass in their competitors pointe shoes, in gymnastics maybe the spotter would turn away to tie their shoe as you slipped and fell off the uneven bars. Competition brought out the worst in people. It always had done and always would and equestrians were not immune to backstabbing, lies and deceit. People would be happy to clamber over your cold dead corpse to get a place on a team or win that blue ribbon. And getting on an Olympic team? Only four riders were chosen once every four years. You’d probably have more luck finding a unicorn. Still, it didn’t make the dream any less real.
“I heard there is going to be a jump off tomorrow,” Andy said as we turned back to the barn.
“What kind of jump off?” Valerie asked, looking pale again.
“I don’t know.” Andy shrugged. “The fast kind I expect.”
And suddenly tomorrow sounded like it was going to be a fantastic kind of day.
CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT
That evening Trevor, Alec and Hilton Myers put on a riding demonstration for us. We all sat out by the ring, our tongues practically hanging out of our mouths as the masters made their horses soar over impossible heights. It was like being at a show and watching the best because they were some of the best. And not only did they put on a show for us, they explained what they were doing too, coming over and telling us why they added more leg or what changed their mind about a certain distance.
“One day that will be us
,” I said with a sigh as Trevor and Alec rode their horses over the course together, making it look easy for two giant horses to jump side by side.
“One day that will be you,” Andy said. “In fact it practically is you now.”
“It is not,” I said but I couldn’t help smiling because I almost felt like it was.
Sure I wasn’t the best rider out there in the world and I certainly didn’t have the most expensive horses but I worked hard for what I did have and I knew that riding was in my blood. I’d been blessed with a gift and that didn’t mean that I could just sit back and slack off. I still had to work hard. It just meant that I had a slight advantage over everyone else.
We slept in the sleeping bags in our barn. One of the female grooms, a stocky woman with braided hair, was our chaperone. She had a cot that was set up in the corner and seemed pretty used to sleeping in the barn, probably doing it on nights when horses were sick or new arrivals came in. She pretty much ignored us as we chatted about our day and made hot chocolate but eventually even we tired of telling stories about our best and worst rides and one by one we fell asleep. Before I did, I went out to check on Socks. He was lying down, his nose pressed into the deep bedding. I wanted to hug him and thank him for being good but I didn’t want to disturb him. His eyes were closed and every now and then his legs twitched. Maybe he was dreaming of jumping in the Olympics too.
“Goodnight Socks,” I whispered and then I went back to bed.
CHAPTER FORTY NINE
I woke early and for a moment, I couldn’t remember where I was. Then I felt the hard floor beneath me and a cramp in my leg as I stretched in the sleeping bag and I remembered. It was still dark and the others were sleeping. I’d taken the space nearest the door and I was a light sleeper so I was pretty sure that no one had snuck past me in the night and I thought that Jess would have been insane to try anything while one of the grooms was babysitting us but I got up anyway and crept through the barn to check on Socks.
He was up on his feet and gave a soft nicker. I gave him a flake of hay from the bale that we’d brought and then sat on it to watch him eat. He seemed fine. Wasn’t acting funny at all and I gave an inward sigh of relief. I thought Jess would have been stupid to try the same thing twice but desperate people did stupid things, just like I was going to do if I called her out on it. Accusing someone of something that I had no proof of would only make me look stupid. Missy had been right. I had to put the whole poisoning thing behind me.
By the time the others were up I’d already showered in the barn bathroom and was cleaning my tack. Socks had eaten his breakfast and I’d groomed him as well. I was so ready that it wasn’t even funny.
“You cheat,” Andy said, rubbing his bleary eyes. “If you were going to set your alarm for the crack of dawn, you could have at least woken me up too.”
“I didn’t set my alarm,” I told him. “I just woke up and besides, you looked so cute in your sleeping bag, snoring your head off.”
“I don’t snore,” he said.
“Sure you don’t.” I laughed.
But everyone seemed in better spirits after a good night’s sleep. Valerie and Bridget were chatting away over a breakfast of eggs and toast that had magically appeared.
“Do you think I should use more leg?” Valerie asked me.
“I don’t know,” I said. “Depends on how you feel your horse goes.”
“Like a slug,” she replied.
We all laughed. Everyone except Jess. She was quiet. Too quiet. Nice Jess should have been joining in and pretending to be normal. The old Jess would have told the other girls that they shouldn’t ask me for advice because I was an idiot. But this Jess just sat there not saying a word, her face a blank slate.
“What do you think Jess?” Bridget finally asked as we discussed the merits of figure of eight versus flash nosebands.
“I think we should get our horses ready before we are late again,” she said.
She got up and walked out and Bridget and Valerie made faces behind her back.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of their sleeping bag,” Andy said.
I just nodded. I didn’t want to get involved. I didn’t care why Jess was the way she was. Nothing I did could ever change her and I knew we would never be friends. I’d always have to watch my back around her. She was like the weather, constantly changing. Her moods swinging from happy to mad in a matter of minutes and at the end of the day, the only person she was going to end up sabotaging was herself.
“So what do you think this jump off thing is about?” Andy asked.
“I don’t know,” I replied. “But I can’t wait to find out.”
CHAPTER FIFTY
Hilton Myers called us to the ring that they had all ridden in the previous night. Their course was still set up, it had just been squashed down a bit. The oxers not as wide, the verticals not as tall but it was still the most intimidating course I’d ever seen.
“They don’t expect us to ride over that, do they?” Valerie whispered.
“I think that is exactly what they expect us to do,” I replied.
“Today is show day,” Hilton said. “You will treat this as you would any competition. You will have time to walk the course, braid your horses and then get your numbers. The order of go will be pulled out of a hat. The time allowed will be posted and those who go clear and within it will then proceed to the jump off course. The winner will walk away with a scholarship to come and train with me in Europe next year. Some of you will be picked for the Junior Olympic team. Others may leave here with nothing.”
We stood quietly listening to the man who held our fates in his hands.
“I wish I could pick you all but this is life and in life there are winners and losers and you can’t be both so do your best and you’ll have no regrets. Good luck.”
Hilton left us standing there in the ring. Valerie and Bridget looked pale.
“What should we do first?” Bridget said. “Walk the course or braid?”
“Braiding takes me ages,” Valerie told her. “My barn has a braider who does our horses at shows. I haven’t braided since I was in pony club. He’s not really going to grade us on our braids, is he?”
“I think he’s going to grade us on everything,” I said.
Jess walked off back to the barn without saying a word, Bridget and Valerie trailed after her. If they were expecting her to help them, they’d have another thing coming. The only thing Jess was interested in was helping herself.
“What do you think?” Andy asked. “Walk the course now or later?”
“Definitely now,” I said. “Before those guys come back and start asking us how to count strides. I don’t think they are used to doing all this without their trainers holding their hands.”
“It’s a brave new world,” Andy said.
“You can say that again.” I laughed.
“It’s a brave new world.”
“All right smarty pants.” I dragged him towards the first fence. “Let’s see what kind of torture lays in wait for us.”
CHAPTER FIFTY ONE
Having watched our trainers ride over the course the night before, I had a good idea of what was in store for us. Sure their horses were professionals and so were they but I’d paid attention to where they had to ride stronger and the places they’d taken back on the reins and they’d told us all those things too. I just don’t think any of us had expected to have to use them today. Maybe the others hadn’t been paying attention to all that stuff but I had.
“These jumps are huge,” Andy said. “Look.”
He stood next to the first fence, a bright blue vertical with wavy planks. It was almost as tall as he was.
“These guys aren’t messing around,” he added.
“We’re not little kids anymore,” I said. “This isn’t the pony jumpers. These are real jumps. This is the big league.”
“What is that supposed to mean?” he asked.
“It means that we have to ride lik
e our lives depend on it,” I said.
We walked the course three times, each time learning something new about its nuances. The lines would suit Socks and Andy didn’t think that Mousse would have too many problems either. The jumps were pretty scary though, much flashier than we were used to seeing at our local shows, filled with shapes and flowers and cutouts. I knew that it would back the horses off and we’d have to ride really forward to get over every fence. That wouldn’t be a problem for Socks. He liked going forward. And a jump off wouldn’t be a problem either. Socks and I had been lucky lately, picking up quite a few blue ribbons in our speed classes. It should be a walk in the park for him, if I didn’t mess it up.
Andy and I walked back to the barn feeling pretty confident. The others didn’t seem like they were. They were fighting over braiding supplies and how many braids to do in order to make their horses look their best. I just grabbed my stuff and got to work. I’d braided Socks enough to know that he looked best with fat braids and since they were the quickest to do, that worked for me.
“We’ll show them,” I whispered to Socks. “I know that you can do this.”
And I did. I had complete confidence in my horse and myself. Sure I didn’t know if we would really have a clean round and make it to the jump off but I knew that we would try our best and that was pretty much all we could do. I also knew that we were going to have fun doing it and looking around at the others as they fussed and fretted, I got the feeling that we were going to be the only ones who were going to have a good time out there on that course with Trevor, Alec and Hilton watching.
CHAPTER FIFTY TWO
We stood next to our horses while our names were put in a riding helmet on little screwed up pieces of paper. I really didn’t care if I went first or last. Usually I’d want at least a couple of people to go ahead of me so that I could see how the course rode but we’d all seen the professionals ride it last night and other than being squashed down a bit, it was basically the same. I’d walked the course. I had my game plan and I was going to stick to it. Nothing that anyone else did would change that.
Jump Off (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 22) Page 10
