But it turned out that all the food was good. Really good. So good that we didn’t even talk because we were so busy shoveling it into our mouths. When our plates were empty, Dad sat back and rubbed his stomach.
“I ate too much.” He groaned. “It was so good.”
“It was good,” Missy said softly.
“Thanks,” I said. “Now you guys get to clean up while I go down and ride.”
“Hey,” Dad said. “That’s not fair.”
“Of course it is,” I said. “I cooked and you clean. What could be more fair than that?”
“I guess,” Dad said.
He was used to leaving us girls to clean up, usually retreating to the couch and whatever game of football was playing on the TV.
“Come on,” Missy said. “It won’t take long. We’ll just shove it all in the dishwasher.”
“But that means someone has to empty it later,” Dad groaned.
I left them debating the merits of the dishwasher versus hand washing and which was more effective and slipped out of the house. It was warm. Too hot for Easter really. We’d already had a couple of afternoon thunderstorms and soon they would be a daily occurrence, interrupting riding time and turnout time and pretty much doing anything at that time. Florida was the lightning capital of the world and it wasn’t worth the risk of getting struck. When a bad storm hit, you just had to wait it out.
I had Easter carrots for all my kids, including the projects. I hadn’t managed to change Missy’s mind about taking Ballycat to the show. All I could do was try and work with him as much as I could so that the show wouldn’t be such a shock to his system. If things went the way I suspected they would then the kid wouldn’t even be able to get him into the ring let alone compete.
I was hanging out in the barn doling out carrots when I heard a motorbike rumble down the drive. I looked up angrily. Who was breaking the rules? Everyone knew we were closed. It didn’t happen very often. There were only a handful of days when we asked everyone to stay away and yet there was an idiot in a black leather jacket with a silver motorbike and no helmet. Only it wasn’t an idiot. It was Jordan.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
“Nice bike,” I said.
“Thanks.” He grinned. “It’s Mom’s. She kind of doesn’t know I took it.”
“Then why did you? What are you doing here?” I said.
“I wanted to see you,” he said. “And to give you your Easter present.”
“Please don’t let it be a life size purple plush bunny,” I said.
“Oh no,” he groaned. “You guessed it.”
“Well if that was it then it must have flown off the bike somewhere between your house and here.”
“You know what that means?” he said. “Somewhere there is a big bunny lying in the middle of the road.”
“It could get run over,” I said. “Or maybe it bounced off some old lady’s windshield and gave her a heart attack.”
“Good thing there was no bunny,” he said.
“Good thing you know me well enough to know I wouldn’t want one.”
Jordan was easy to talk to and we had this back and forth banter thing that made him fun to be around. We walked into the barn where I showed him how well Arion was doing and how great Bluebird’s legs had healed up. Then I showed him the projects.
“You’re not riding those things at the show, are you?” he said.
“Hey,” I cried. “They have feelings too. So maybe they don’t look like jumpers. Doesn’t mean to say they aren’t.”
“So you are riding them then?”
“No.” I shook my head. “At least I don’t think so. Missy wants to take Ballycat but I’ve told her he’s not ready.”
“Then why is he going?” Jordan looked at the pretty pony.
“Because Missy doesn’t listen to a word I say.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” he said. “My mom doesn’t listen to a word I say either.”
“But Missy is not my mother,” I said.
“But she probably thinks she is. She’s your dad’s girlfriend and she lives with you. What else does that make her?”
“Anything but that,” I said. “Besides, she’s like half his age. There is no way she could ever possibly try to be my mother.”
“Big sister then?” he said.
“That’s what I thought.” I sighed. “Up until now.”
I told Jordan about the show, after all he was going to be there. Maybe he could help me. When I was done he shook his head.
“She can’t hold you back,” he said. “It’s not fair.”
“That’s what I said.”
“Well what does your dad have to say about it?”
“He kind of has a lot on his mind right now and me going to shows is kind of at the back of it.”
“Well you’re entering that mini Grand Prix,” he said. “Even if I have to shove you into the ring myself.”
“Thanks,” I said. “I think. Hey, now that you’re here. Do you want to go for a ride? I’ll let you take the pretty little pony for a spin.” I pointed at Ballycat.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “My feet would drag on the ground.”
“Yes, I’m kidding.” I laughed. “But not about the riding thing. Come on.”
I put him on Popcorn, who wasn’t a pony and had seemed to have lost the will to dump people off. At least she’d lost the will to dump me off anyway. Jordan would be a test. Plus she wasn’t a pretty, fancy pony, she was a tomboy Appaloosa and totally Jordan appropriate.
“You know,” he said as he groomed Popcorn and I ran a brush over Arion. “I’m riding in the show too and if this monster dumps me off and I get hurt, you’ll be in big trouble.”
“You’ll be fine,” I said.
But I secretly warned Popcorn that if she dumped off Jordan, who was my not quite boyfriend, then he would become my definitely not boyfriend and she would end up on the naughty list forever. And ponies that ended up on the naughty list went to live at places like western summer camps where a million little kids galloped them around barrels all day long and made their previous cushy lives seem like a walk in the park.
“We’ve just got to find you a helmet,” I said.
“No thanks,” he replied.
“Have to. It’s the rules. If my father sees you riding without one he’ll have your head on a platter. Besides, don’t you know what can happen to your brain if you fall off without one?”
“Yeah, I’ll end up forgetting all my vowels or talking backwards.” He laughed.
“It’s not funny,” I said. “I know helmets aren’t cool or whatever but it’s kind of hard to be cool if you’re dead or in a coma or something. Remember Mickey?”
“Yes, I remember,” he said.
He let me pick out a helmet for him and put it on without any more protests which was kind of a relief because I didn’t exactly know how I was going to force him into one if he hadn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
We rode around the property and I kept watching Jordan out of the corner of my eye. When I first met him he’d been in a band and although he helped out at his mother’s tack store, he’d hardly seemed bothered about horses at all. Then all of a sudden he was riding and not only riding but competing in the jumpers as well. I wasn’t sure if he was bluffing or not, which was part of the reason I’d put him on Popcorn. Despite her current flaws she was a lesson horse at heart and so if it turned out that he couldn’t ride at all, at least he wouldn’t get carted off into the sunset by a runaway horse.
But Jordan could ride. He even managed to sit the cow hoppy chicken dance that Popcorn did when he first mounted to see if she could try and dislodge him and laughed about it. And when she figured out that she wasn’t going to be able to dump him off she gave up and we had a nice ride.
Arion was completely hyper. I’d been taking it easy on him since he started his ulcer treatment. I’d probably been taking it too easy on him. He was fresh and full of himself, dancing about beneath
me as I tried to settle him and hold him back. But his jigging walk was evidence that my resistance was futile.
“I don’t suppose you’d fancy a canter, would you?” I asked Jordan.
“Sure,” he replied eagerly.
So we headed for the loop where Arion took the lead, surging ahead into what was more like a controlled gallop than a canter. I kept glancing behind me, making sure that Jordan was still managing okay and that Popcorn hadn’t run him into a fence or something but he was fine. In fact he had a big smile on his face, which made me smile too. When I felt Arion start to tire a little I asked him to walk and he did so without any fancy footwork.
“That was great,” Jordan said, pulling Popcorn in alongside me. “Mom’s farm is only a few acres. There is barely room to get a good canter going let alone a flat out gallop.”
“That wasn’t really flat out.” I laughed, shaking my head. “And if anyone asks, we never galloped at all, okay?”
“Why not?” Jordan asked.
“My dad doesn’t think I should be galloping Arion. He thinks it is bad for his training, him being an ex-racehorse and all. He thinks that he should just forget about going fast.”
“But he’s going to need to go fast if he’s going to be a jumper, isn’t he?” Jordan said.
“Yes,” I said. “But I don’t think my dad thinks he is going to amount to much of anything anyway and Missy just wants to send him away.” I patted Arion on the neck, feeling a little sad. “No one believes in him except me.”
“I believe in him,” Jordan said. “Because I believe in you.”
And my heart did this funny little pitter patter in my chest and I got all choked up and couldn’t reply.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
Jordan left me with a chocolate bunny and the promise that he would help me at the show. He said that he’d make it his mission to see that I rode Bluebird in the mini Grand Prix. I wasn’t sure why he was being so nice to me but I needed all the help I could get if I was going to pull this off, especially since it turned out that Mickey wasn’t going to be there for moral support.
“What do you mean you have a dentist’s appointment?” I asked her.
She’d just told me on the phone and I was sitting on my bed surrounded by school work and the feeling that my best friend was throwing me to the wolves.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I told my mom I wanted to go to the show. I said that you needed me but she said that I’ll be taking up enough weekends with my own dressage shows and that I couldn’t go to all of yours as well.”
“But the plan,” I said, lowering my voice. “You were going to help me.”
“I know,” she said. “But I don’t know how to get out of it.”
I knew that when we split ways and Mickey took up dressage instead of continuing to ride in the hunters that meant we would be going to different shows. I just didn’t think she would skip out on the one show that I really needed her at. After all, I’d been to her last dressage show, even if it had ended up a sort of disaster.
“Well it’s a good job that Jordan is going to be there then,” I said. “And he said he’d help me.”
“He did, did he?” Mickey said, her voice all suspicious.
“Yes, as a friend. I need someone at the show on my side.”
“You’ll have Faith,” Mickey said. “That kid is sneaky. I bet she could probably get you into the class without anyone noticing.”
“She also can’t keep a secret to save her life,” I said.
“True,” Mickey replied.
We talked for a bit about school work and her debate team, who were apparently killing it and headed to nationals. I wasn’t sure why she was so excited about it. Things like that only took away from riding and horses and anything that did that was a complete waste of time as far as I was concerned. But Mickey was much more well-rounded than I was and not an obsessed crazy horse person so she didn’t see anything wrong with it.
When we’d hung up I sat there for a while thinking about Jordan. He said he would help me. Did that mean he’d want something in return? Would he want to go to the movies or hang out in a non-horse way because if he did, I wasn’t really interested. I’d loved our ride together and hanging out in the tack store but I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to go any further than that and I didn’t want to lead him on but I needed his help.
At least if Mickey had been going to the show I’d have known that she was helping me because we were best friends and she knew that I’d return the favor one day by getting her out of one scrape or another. I had no idea what Jordan would want in return but I just had to hope that it wasn’t something that I couldn’t give. And if things went wrong I could always turn to Faith for help, only I knew that would have to be a last resort because the kid had been kind of hyper lately.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
In fact it turned out that Faith wasn’t just hyper about the show. She was over the moon. She took her riding very seriously, which was actually something I admired about her but she was kind of even more obsessive than I was about it. If that was even possible.
“I think he’s walking funny,” she said one evening as she was getting ready for a lesson. “Do you think he’s walking funny? Oh if he goes lame before the show, I’ll just die.”
“He won’t go lame before the show,” I told her.
“But what if he does? He did that one time before, remember? When he got that horrible abscess? What if he gets another one?”
“Well he will if you keep poking at his feet,” I told her as she prodded his sole with her purple hoof pick. “Leave it alone and don’t mention the A word again around here before a show. Okay?”
“But really,” she said, her eyes welling up with tears. “What would happen if he was lame?”
“Then I’m sure Missy would find another pony for you to ride. You’ve been working really hard. We wouldn’t leave you behind.”
Faith threw down her hoof pick and barreled into me, enveloping me in a bear hug.
“You’re just so nice,” she said, her voice all muffled. “I wish you were my sister.”
“Okay, that’s enough,” I said, finally pushing her off. “If you’re late out to the ring then Missy might just punish you and you know what that means.”
“She won’t let me go to the show,” Faith shrieked, grabbing her helmet and Macaroni’s bridle.
I watched as she dragged the dun pony out to the ring and he wasn’t lame at all. It was just Faith’s pre-show nerves and she wasn’t the only one who had them because they seemed to be spreading through the barn like wildfire. It seemed like everyday someone was asking my father to check their horse or questioning their ability and the classes they were entered in. It was kind of weird. Usually everyone at Fox Run figured that they were a sure thing. We were a show barn which meant we went to a lot of shows and our riders won a lot of ribbons. But the Easter show somehow had everyone off kilter.
And day after day Missy was out there working Socks. I watched him go from an eager, excited horse who loved his job to one she had to drag out to the ring with pinned ears.
“Maybe if you jumped him in the field instead of the ring,” I said as Socks dug his heels in and balked at the arena gate.
“He’ll go in the ring when I say he goes in the ring,” she replied through gritted teeth.
“I’m just saying that maybe you should give him a break. He’s been working really hard. I know how he is.”
“And so do I. He used to be my horse, remember?”
She pushed and pulled until Socks finally relented and trudged out to the ring. I watched them go with a heavy heart.
“I’d stay out of that one if I were you,” Dad said.
He’d come to stand beside me, watching as Socks acted out.
“Can’t she see what she’s doing to him?” I said.
“No, she can’t,” he replied.
“Well can’t you tell her?”
Dad laughed. “Very funny. I’m no
t getting in the middle of that. He’s her horse. She knows what she’s doing.”
I didn’t think she knew what she was doing at all. In fact the more she acted like a crazy person, the less I was worried about her beating me in the mini Grand Prix and the more I was worried about her safety and that of her horse.
Later, when she’d finished and put Socks away, I slipped into his stall. He was standing in the back corner looking like he was feeling sorry for himself. When he heard someone open his stall door, he pinned his ears.
“Hey boy,” I said in a low voice. “It’s not that mean old lady, it’s me.”
At the sound of my voice his ears pricked and he came over, nuzzling his face into my hands, looking for treats.
“What’s the matter?” I said. “Doesn’t she give you anything when you’re good?”
I gave him a piece of carrot and he crunched it eagerly then checked my pockets for more.
“Or maybe you’ve just been too naughty?”
I rubbed his white blaze and straightened his forelock.
“I know Missy is being kind of crazy right now but you have to be a good boy, okay? If you don’t at least try then who knows what she’ll do. Maybe you’ll be the one she sends off to the cowboy ranch or maybe she might even try and sell you. I couldn’t bear it if she did that.”
I threw my arms around his neck and breathed in his heady scent. Unlike Encore, who still only tolerated my affections despite the fact that he liked me now, Socks had always lapped them up. He wrapped his neck and head around me, returning the hug.
I thought how awful it would be if Missy got so mad at Socks that she sent him away because even though he wasn’t mine, I loved him just the same.
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
Show Time (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 17) Page 7
