Show Time (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 17)

by Claire Svendsen

  The day before the show the craziness hit an all-time high. Or low, depending on your point of view. I felt like I was the only one who wasn’t completely losing it. People were yelling at their horses for not standing still during bathing and mane pulling or at each other as they accused people of stealing their brushes and their special shampoo.

  I tried to keep out of it. The lesson horses and ponies were ready. I’d done my job of mane pulling and whisker trimming and Henry was bathing them all later when the mad rush for the wash rack had died down. I’d already bathed both Encore and Bluebird and they were standing in their stalls with scrim sheets on and the threat of no treats ever again if they even dared to think about getting dirty.

  I decided to give them the day off. They had both been working really hard. I knew that they’d both try their hearts out at the show and that afterwards Encore would go to his new home. I would miss him a great deal but I’d accepted the fact that I couldn’t do anything about it and had made peace with the more unpleasant side of the horse business, which was horses you liked being sold to people you didn’t.

  But now that the commission money was a sure thing my father was suddenly extra cheerful. I wanted to warn him that the money wasn’t in his pocket yet but I didn’t want to put a damper on his spirits. He was so happy. Whistling as he went up and down the barn aisle helping people. I hadn’t seen him like that in a while and it was helping to lift the spirit of the barn. I think the fact that he’d had a cloud hanging over his head the whole time had in turn put a cloud over the entire farm but things were looking up. The Equestrian Federation had accepted his packet on the tainted supplement and there was apparently a second sample of blood that was being run through the system. It was a super long shot but if that sample came back clean then they would have no choice but to drop the charges and end the suspension, which meant that he could start competing again and we would have a whole summer of awesome shows to look forward to. I couldn’t wait.

  But of course that didn’t solve the problem of Missy. She was out there in the ring working Socks. She’d ridden him every day for the last week. He didn’t need another schooling session. What he needed was a break from her.

  I knew that if I beat her in the mini Grand Prix then that whole summer of shows wouldn’t be the amazing time I imagined it would be. Instead it would be me and Missy, battling it out in class after class until one of us gave in.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  That night Dad announced he was ordering pizza for everyone who was still at the barn working on their horses or cleaning their tack. Everyone cheered but I just couldn’t help thinking that pizza for everyone was going to cost a lot of money, which was money that he technically didn’t have yet. I couldn’t help wondering when I’d suddenly become the sensible adult in the family.

  “You don’t need to pay for pizzas for everyone,” I whispered to him.

  “Of course I do,” he said with a smile. “And here, I have something for you.”

  He beckoned me into the tack room where a box sat on his desk wrapped in dark blue paper with a purple ribbon on top.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Why don’t you open it and find out?”

  He handed it to me and I held the box in my hands. I was filled with so many mixed emotions that I didn’t know what to do. All these years I’d longed for a father who would buy me gifts and teach me to ride and take me to shows and now I had that. This box represented all the missed Christmases and birthdays. The times when I’d waited by the phone for him to call and he never did. And now that I had all that, instead of enjoying it I was worried about how much the gift had cost and what would happen if Encore’s sale didn’t go through. I was just a kid but even I knew that he shouldn’t be spending money that he didn’t have yet.

  “Go on,” Dad said again. “Open it.”

  I tossed the bow off and ripped into the paper, then opened the box. Inside were two leather bracelets with nameplates on them. I lifted them up and held them in my hands. One was engraved with Bluebird in fancy scrolled letters and the other said Arion in a more mature block script. I stood there speechless as my eyes welled up with tears.

  “Well?” Dad said gently. “Do you like them?”

  “I love them,” I cried, turning around and hugging him tight.

  They were the perfect gift and he knew it. And now I knew that even if he couldn’t say out loud that he was on my side, he really was. I knew it was hard for him. Missy was his girlfriend and they had a child together now. He loved her. But in a different way he also loved me and when we didn’t get along, I knew that it must have been awful for him. And I wanted to like Missy. In fact I did like her. I liked her a lot. I just didn’t like the way she was trying to keep me a child, bogged down in the pony classes where I wouldn’t pose a threat to her.

  “You’re going to do great at the show tomorrow,” he said as I put the bracelets on my left wrist. “And no matter what happens, I want you to know that I am proud of you.”

  “Thanks Dad,” I said.

  Only I wasn’t so sure he’d be proud of me after I’d entered the mini Grand Prix behind his back, especially if I ended up beating Missy.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  The pizza party was a success. So much so that Dad declared we should have one the night before every show. The pizza guy had arrived struggling under the weight of ten towering boxes of pizza and the cinnamon sticks Dad knew I loved so much. We found paper plates and napkins in a cupboard in the office and soon we were all sitting on the barn aisle floor eating.

  “This is the best,” Faith sighed as she stuffed a giant piece of pizza into her mouth.

  “It actually is.” I grinned.

  We leaned back against the stalls and let our horses watch us eat for a change. By the time we’d done everyone was far too full and sleepy to be stressed about the show the next day.

  “If I win my class tomorrow, Macaroni is going to get a whole week off,” Faith said.

  “Yeah right.” I poked her in the arm. “You’re such a liar. You couldn’t stay away from the barn for a whole week if your life depended on it.”

  “I know,” she said, laughing. “But I’ll still come out and play with him. He’s learning some new tricks.”

  “Well just don’t teach him anything that will get him into trouble,” I said.

  “I won’t,” she replied, sighing dramatically like I was a stick in the mud old person who didn’t know what fun was.

  But I’d been at Sand Hill when Macaroni first arrived and I still remembered the rush of panic when we showed up at the barn only to find all the horses loose morning after morning. Of course I’d wanted to blame it on Jess but it turned out that it hadn’t been her at all. It had been cheeky little Macaroni, who turned out to have quite a few tricks up his sleeve, including opening stall doors.

  “Besides,” she added. “Ethan said that I can always ride Wendell.”

  “He did not,” I said, looking at the big chestnut horse that was standing in his stall across the aisle, all looming seventeen hands of him. “You’d be like a little tick up there on his back. He’d think you were a fly or something.”

  “He would not,” Faith said, sticking her nose in the air. “You don’t know how strong my legs are.”

  “I’m sure they are very strong,” I said, trying to be diplomatic. “But going from Macaroni to a big horse like Wendell isn’t a little step, it’s a giant one.”

  “But I don’t want to just ride ponies,” she said. “I want to ride horses too, like you.”

  I knew I was heading into dangerous territory. Faith was emulating me at an alarming rate and I was supposed to be a good role model for the younger students. Someone they looked up to and admired. Not someone who made them want to ride horses that were above their skill level. And what would happen when Faith saw me enter the mini Grand Prix against my father and Missy’s wishes? Would that encourage her to break the rules too? I swallowed the last
of my pizza, feeling a little sick.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  I lay there in bed that night, staring up at the dark ceiling. I’d excused myself early, saying that I wanted to get a good night’s sleep since we had to leave at five the next morning. Missy and my father hadn’t even really noticed. She had been pouring over old courses from previous shows, trying to plan for the mini Grand Prix even though old courses wouldn’t help her.

  We all knew that Harold Wainwright had been brought in to design the course. He was doing it as a favor to the organizers and he was one of the best. The course would be tough but fair and the one thing you could always count on a Harold Wainwright course to be was difficult and different.

  You got to know most of the course designers, who liked to add tricky bending lines and which ones would try and fool you with their distances but the one thing you could count on Harold for was to make every course unique. He didn’t have a favorite style, he favored them all and that meant that you never knew what you were going to get until you got to the show and walked the course.

  As I listened to the mumble of their words, I tried to think up a plan to get Bluebird out of the pony class but I couldn’t come up with one. If I said he was sick or lame then Dad would want to examine him. Maybe even get a vet to look at him if they had one on the grounds. Then they’d soon see that he was fine and Dad would think that I was just freaking out and being ridiculous, just like I’d told Faith that she was being when she was worried about Macaroni.

  I thought about going in and pulling Bluebird away at the first fence. Refusals would get us eliminated but might mess with his head. My pony would wonder what on earth I was doing and the last thing I wanted was to teach him that it was actually okay to duck out at the last minute. Bad habits like that were hard enough to break. I didn’t want to start encouraging them myself.

  Of course I could always fall off but I just couldn’t see myself going through with it. What if I landed wrong and really hurt myself? That would probably happen knowing my luck. Or people would think I was a sucky rider. I was hoping to pick up a couple of catch rides in the future to make some extra cash. People wouldn’t pay a girl who fell off her own pony to ride theirs.

  No, the only way it was going to work was if I rode Bluebird in both classes. I tried to tell myself that it wasn’t that bad. Hunters went in several classes over fences and on the flat and didn’t bat an eyelid. This would be no different. Except it would be. If Bluebird went clean he’d have to gallop around in two jump offs. I knew he was fit. I knew he had the stamina. I just hoped that I wasn’t asking too much of him.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  The Easter show was important. A really big deal. Everyone was going to be there. There was no way I was going to sleep through my alarm this time. So I set three of them to go off five minutes after each other and I placed them all around my room so that I would actually have to get up to turn them off and not just stick my arm out to hit the snooze button and then roll over and go back to sleep. It worked.

  By the time my Dad appeared at the barn I had my two horses touched up and ready to go. I’d even braided them both. My stuff was in the trailer. I was feeling pretty organized.

  “Well this is a first,” Dad said.

  “I know,” I replied with a smug smile.

  My entry form for the mini Grand Prix was still safely tucked in my show jacket bag. I’d filled it out and I had the cash to pay for the entry fee. Nothing was going to get in my way now. And unlike the shows over the winter where we’d had rain and fog and generally damp unpleasant weather, it was supposed to be warm and sunny. Well technically it was going to be hot but at least we wouldn’t be freezing to death.

  Henry started to load the horses, walking past with Ballycat who snorted at the stuff piled up in the aisle that was still waiting to go in the trailer, buckets and full hay bags and grooming boxes.

  “You’ll be okay,” I told him but I knew it wasn’t true.

  The Easter show would be the busiest of the season so far. It would be crowded. Filled with people and horses and ponies galore. A dream come true for someone like me and a total nightmare for a pony like Ballycat who’d lost his nerve.

  I took Bluebird out to graze for a little while before he was loaded up. He looked amazing. Fit. Healthy. With muscles that would rival even the biggest horse. But I was worried that I was asking too much of him. Putting myself first. I wanted to ride in the mini Grand prix more than anything. To prove to Missy that Bluebird and I could beat her and all the other entrants with their big expensive horses.

  But standing there in the dark with the last stars finally fading from the night sky, I knew that I wouldn’t put my needs above his. If he acted tired or sore or just didn’t have enough gas left in his tank, I knew that I wasn’t going to push him. I’d withdraw from the mini Grand Prix and call it a day. There would always be another show, even if it sometimes didn’t feel like it.

  As I watched Socks walk up the ramp and into the trailer, I could see the heaviness in his legs and the tiredness in his eyes and vowed that I would never do that to Bluebird or to any horse for that matter. Missy knew better so I didn’t know why she had done it either. There was no excuse for bad horsemanship no matter how badly you wanted to win to prove yourself or to make your big comeback.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  We got to the show grounds in the dark and unloaded the horses under the lights. Bluebird and Encore were stabled next to each other, which made my life easier. The stalls were nice and roomy with adequate bedding, even though we’d brought our own just in case. You never could tell what you were going to find when you got to a show. It made me think back to when I first got Bluebird and he wouldn’t even go into a stall and had to spend the whole horse show tied to the trailer.

  “Look at you now,” I told him as he went into the stall with a sigh and sniffed around. “It’s like you’re a different pony.”

  And he was. Now he was a show pony. He was used to going away to shows and competing in big classes and I was so proud of him that my heart almost felt like it was going to burst.

  “Don’t go getting all sappy before the show even starts,” Dad said as he set down one of the tack trunks.

  “How do you know I was getting sappy?” I said.

  “I’ve seen that look before,” he replied. “Now come on, help me get the rest of this stuff unloaded and leave your pony alone. He won’t get any rest with you standing there staring at him the whole time.”

  “Fine,” I said, a little annoyed that my father knew me better than I thought he did.

  We unloaded our stuff in the dark and by the time we were done the light was just starting to break over the horizon. Everyone had been quiet and sleepy, bundled in hooded sweatshirts in the damp morning air but as the sun came up it somehow breathed life into the show grounds. A mobile food truck started cooking breakfast and people were lining up for coffee and hot tea.

  “Want anything?” I asked Dad.

  “Not right now,” he said. “But can you ask Missy?”

  “Sure,” I replied, wishing I hadn’t asked in the first place.

  I’d been trying to stay out of Missy’s way, off her radar and undetected. I thought she looked a little pale in the truck. A funky shade of green like maybe she was going to throw up or something. Perhaps she really had lost her nerve just like Mickey did after she got hurt falling off Hampton. I didn’t know what she was so worried about. If she just relaxed and tried to have a little fun then Socks would totally have her back just like he’d had mine. She was just making him crazy and really mad. She was in his stall now, braiding his mane.

  “Do you want anything from the food truck?” I asked her. “You know, breakfast or some coffee or something?”

  She startled at the sound of my voice and nearly fell off her stool, sending a glare in my direction.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m just going to get food and Dad didn’t want anything
but he said to ask you because he thought you might.”

  My voice rattled on for much longer than I’d intended. Missy was making me nervous. What would she do when she found out that I was going to be competing against her? I didn’t know but I was sure she wasn’t going to be happy about it.

  “No, I don’t want anything,” she finally said, then added, “But thanks for asking.”

  “Okay,” I said and slipped away before I could run my mouth off anymore because if I did I’d probably end up telling her everything.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  I don’t know why but show food always tasted better than regular food. There used to be a time when I was too nervous to eat at shows but that time had passed. Now I knew that my body needed fuel if it was going to make it through the day and that fuel just happened to be an egg and bacon muffin and an extra-large cup of coffee. I was standing there just about to sink my teeth into the juicy food when two people jumped on me.

  “You’re here!” they cried.

  It was Andy and Alice, my two friends from the clinic. Andy with his freckles and Alice with her thin figure wrapped in an oversized hoodie like it was still freezing cold when it wasn’t at all.

  “We told you we would be here,” Andy said.

  “How is Bluebird?” Alice added.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “Better than fine.”

  “And Encore?” Alice asked.

  “Encore is great,” I said. “But did you know that Tara is buying him?”

  “What?” Alice said.

  “I know.” I sighed. “It sucks. She couldn’t ride him at all the first time she tried him out but her mother made her come back the next day and take a lesson with my father.”

  “I bet she didn’t like that very much,” Andy said.