Show Time (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 17)

by Claire Svendsen

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  “You won! You won!” Faith came skipping into the barn as I was putting Bluebird away.

  “I know! I know!” I replied.

  I’d decided to put standing wraps on Bluebird’s legs with a healthy slathering of liniment so that they would hopefully feel fresh for later. The upside of the pony class had been that the height of the jumps were much lower than what we were used to jumping at home so it really had seemed like a schooling exercise and almost hardly fair to the other competitors.

  “Can I hold your cup?” Faith asked, her face pressed excitedly against the bars.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  She promptly took my cup and held it up next to hers in the light.

  “Yours is bigger,” she finally said.

  “Don’t worry. You’ll win that one next year.”

  “Do you really think so?”

  She put the cups down and came back to watch what I was doing.

  “I know you will,” I said.

  “That would be so awesome.” She sighed dreamily. “Plus you get a check and everything.”

  “You got a gift card to the tack store,” I said.

  It seemed that the show organizers had something against handing money to small children, even if it was only in tiny amounts.

  “But it’s not the same as real money,” she said.

  “It’s kind of the same though,” I said, finishing Bluebird’s last wrap and standing up to survey my work. “You get to spend it on really cool horse stuff. What else would you want to buy anyway?”

  “I’m saving up for a car,” she said.

  I started to laugh.

  “Seriously,” she said. “I am. I already have three hundred dollars.”

  “You could probably buy some old junk car for that,” I said, thinking how sad it was that Faith now had more money than I did. “And anyway what do you need a car for? You have years before you’d even be able to drive it.”

  “Because I’m saving up for a nice car not a piece of junk,” she said. “And maybe if I save up enough then I’ll get a truck and a trailer and you’ll be the one begging me to take you to shows.”

  “I bet I probably will,” I said.

  I was trying to hold back the laugh that was building up inside me because Faith was sometimes very serious about adult things that she really had no business being serious about and she most certainly didn’t like it if you laughed at her seriousness.

  “Well, I have to get Encore ready now,” I said.

  I went into his stall where I released my laugh into his mane, using the hair to muffle it, which he didn’t appreciate very much because he thought I was trying to give him a hug and although he liked me now he still wasn’t overly fond of hugs and kisses.

  CHAPTER FORTY NINE

  It turned out that I actually had plenty of time before my class with Encore so I slipped away from Faith’s watchful eye and went to watch Ballycat. I’d noticed that his stall was empty. Missy must have taken him out with her student. That meant that it was nearly time for their class. It also meant that there were about to be some major fireworks.

  I heard the commotion before I saw it. Raised voices and a general ruckus. There was Ballycat, spinning around like a little demon in the warm up ring, smashing into other ponies and girls whose perfectly mannered little hunter ponies were wide eyed in disbelief at Ballycat’s actions.

  The little girl who was on his back was hardly bigger than Faith. It was ridiculous of Missy to even think that she stood a chance. If she’d been a little bigger and older with legs that actually wrapped around his sides then she would have been able to send him forward but as it was all she could do was cling to his neck while Missy yelled at her to sit up and kick on.

  “That girl has no business being on that pony,” I heard someone say as I rushed past. “What a disgrace.”

  I found Missy, red faced and flustered. I didn’t want to say I told you so but it was sitting on the tip of my tongue. I bit it back. Those words wouldn’t help now.

  “What can I do?” I asked her instead.

  “Maybe if you warmed him up a little bit, he’d be better?” Missy said, her voice wavering.

  She beckoned her student over but the girl couldn’t get Ballycat to do anything she wanted, which included bringing him over to us. In the end I hopped the fence and dodged the other girls and ponies until I got to the middle of the ring where Ballycat was now standing frozen in fear, his lip quivering. The little girls lip was quivering too.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her, grabbing the pony’s reins.

  “Yes.” She nodded, then burst into tears.

  “Do you want to get off?” I asked her gently.

  I didn’t want to just go out there and embarrass her, demanding that she get off right away but it was clear that she was well out of her depth.

  “Yes please,” she said.

  “Come on then.”

  I led Ballycat over to the fence where Missy was standing and the girl slithered to the ground and stood there looking embarrassed.

  “It’s not you,” I told her. “It’s him. You know how you get scared and bees start buzzing around in your stomach and your palms get all sweaty?”

  She nodded.

  “Well that is what happens to him.” I ran down her stirrups and patted Ballycat on the neck. “He gets scared too and because he can’t talk he has to let us know in other ways.”

  “So he wasn’t being naughty?” she said.

  “No, he wasn’t being naughty,” I said.

  Missy was standing there sort of frozen just like Ballycat had been in the middle of the ring. Her helmet was sitting on the fence. I grabbed it and slammed it on, looking at her and then shaking my head. She was being completely hopeless. Who was the trainer? She was supposed to be so I didn’t know why she wasn’t doing her job.

  I got up in the too small saddle, feeling Ballycat tight as a spring beneath me. If I wasn’t careful he was going to go up because there was nowhere else to go.

  “It’s okay,” I told him in a soothing voice. “You remember me, don’t you? You can do this. You just have to trust me.”

  His ears flicked back and forth at the sound of my voice and I found a quiet corner of the ring where I asked him to walk and then trot. At first he fussed and fretted, trying to go up or backwards or any which way except the one I was asking him to go in but eventually he settled. The foamy sweat on his neck started to dry and his sides no longer felt rigid and stiff.

  When they called one of the classes the warm up ring cleared a little and I trotted him over the warm up cross rail. First one way and then the other. Then I let the reins fall loose on his neck and walked him over to the fence where Missy and the girl were still standing.

  “Well he’s settled,” I said. “But I still don’t think she should ride him. No offence but he’s just going to lose it again when he gets in the show ring.”

  “That’s okay,” the girl said. “I’d rather just watch anyway.”

  “Watch what?” I said.

  “You.”

  “Me?” I said, jumping to the ground. “We’ll I’m done with him now.”

  “No, you’re not,” Missy said. “I think you should take him in the class.”

  “Are you serious?” I laughed. “You just saw that little exhibition. You want to see it again in front of the judges? No thanks.”

  “But don’t you think it would be good for him?” Missy said. “A good experience? Because I think you are the only one who can help him right now and you were right all along. He wasn’t ready. I should have listened to you.”

  I almost couldn’t believe what I was hearing. Missy had admitted that I was right and she was wrong, which meant I didn’t really have much choice but to take Ballycat in the class instead of her student.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  The class was one of those that didn’t have an age limit but I still felt ridiculous amongst a sea of seven and eight year
olds. Not that I had much time to think about it. Ballycat felt explosive beneath me and I was barely holding him together. It wouldn’t take much to set him off. Luckily the class was simple enough. Walk, trot, canter one way, reverse, rinse, repeat. The trouble was that the other little girls knew the drill, which was that time in front of the judge got you noticed so they would make circles in that area, coming off the rail and trotting around, trying to show off their perfect equitation. Which meant that just as I would get poor Ballycat settled a pony would prance around him in a circle and make him think that the world was ending.

  But despite all that he didn’t explode like a case of firecrackers and he didn’t rear or bolt or buck. Not that I think that had anything to do with my marvelous skills. It was more due to the fact that he’d plain worn himself out in the warm up ring and literally didn’t have the energy to do anything else bad.

  When they called us all to line up in the middle of the ring, we were forth. The judge came down the line, pinning ribbons and congratulating people and when he stopped in front of my naughty pony, I just felt embarrassed.

  “We don’t need to place,” I said. “He just blew up in the warm up ring and the little girl who was supposed to be riding him couldn’t control him. This was just a schooling exercise really. I don’t want to take this ribbon away from the other riders.”

  “Nonsense,” the judge said.

  He was an older guy with a moustache and a peaked hat, probably the father or grandfather of one of the riders at the show. He looked like he’d been riding and judging horse shows his whole life.

  “There is nothing in the rules to say that you can’t place. The note of the change was made before you entered the ring,” he said. “And you earned this ribbon.” He pinned it on Ballycat’s bridle. “Besides, the ones who didn’t place couldn’t even get their lead changes.”

  “Well thank you then,” I said.

  I still slunk out of the ring sort of hoping that no one had noticed. But of course they had. There were Alice and Andy, cheering and whooping like I’d just won the biggest class in the whole world.

  “Thanks guys,” I said. “You can stop now.”

  “No way,” Alice cried, snapping a picture of me on the tiny pony with her phone. “This is going online.”

  “No,” I moaned. “You can’t do that to me.”

  “Maybe we should save it,” Andy said, nudging Alice in the ribs. “You know, to bribe her with later.”

  “Maybe,” Alice replied with a wink.

  So Ballycat was returned to his stall, his good name somewhat restored and the white ribbon was hung on the door because the fact that he got a ribbon at all was a miracle and that made the white one just as precious as any blue.

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

  After my little side detour on Ballycat, sitting on Encore felt like riding a giant. His stride was huge and everything on the ground looked so far away.

  “Want to go back to pony club land?” Alice called out as she cantered past me.

  “Maybe.” I laughed.

  Then Encore spooked at a horse that came galloping by too close and I figured that if we were going to have a chance in a class that was supposed to be easy for us, then I’d better start paying attention. My father was standing over by the side of the ring watching. Next to him stood Tara and her mother. They’d just shown up at the last minute, Tara in breeches like she expected to just hop on Encore and go in the ring. My father had quickly dispelled that notion, telling her that the sale hadn’t been finalized and that I was going to be riding Encore in the class. Tara had glared at me but her mother hadn’t seemed phased.

  “It’ll be fun to see him in action before he’s finally yours, don’t you think?” Violet had asked her daughter with a smile.

  “No,” Tara had replied.

  I knew that I had to do well because my father was counting on me and on the commission from the sale and if I screwed up or Encore did then Violet could just as easily turn around and decide to buy a different horse, which was almost why I suspected she had come.

  But Encore was the sort of horse you could count on. That was why he was worth his weight in gold. He never got flustered or upset and he didn’t need you interfering with him at all. You just had to sit there and not get in his way and he’d get the job done. He may not always be the fastest but he was one of the most careful horses that I’d ever ridden. He hated touching poles like some horses hated puddles or plastic bags and he’d do anything in his power not to knock a rail down. I didn’t know how much Violet was going to be paying for him but whatever it was, it wasn’t enough.

  “Clean and clear,” Dad said as I went into the ring.

  “I know,” I replied.

  Really I knew that there wasn’t much I could do to mess it up. And I was right. We cantered around the course that was actually much less technical than the pony jumper course had been and it was just like we were schooling at home. In fact Encore seemed half asleep and I was glad that I’d worn my spurs because I was going to need to wake him up for the jump off, especially since speed wasn’t really his thing.

  When we finished clean and the bell rung out for the jump off round, I egged him on. I think I egged him on too much. He pinned his ears and I had to back off a little. He knew his job but he didn’t always realize that going fast was what won the class. Still we went clean in the jump off and I couldn’t fault him for that. I came out of the ring patting his neck.

  “Good job,” Dad said, meaning that I hadn’t done anything to screw up the sale.

  “Oh he’s just so lovely,” Violet said, reaching out her manicured nails to pet Encore’s muscled neck.

  She took a mint from her bag and held it out for the big bay horse but he sniffed it and just turned his head away, disappointed.

  “He likes ginger snaps,” I told her as I jumped to the ground.

  “Really?” she said. “Well we’ll just have to make sure we keep a supply of those handy, won’t we Tara?”

  “Whatever,” Tara said.

  She was the least grateful person I’d ever met. Even Jess, with all her rich entitled attitude, had at least shown excitement over getting a new horse. Tara might just as well have been getting a new pair of socks or a toothbrush for all she seemed to care.

  I hung around to watch Alice ride and she was really on her game today too. It seemed like the horse show Gods were smiling on everyone along with the beaming sunshine. Brookside was clean in the first round and she totally nailed her jump off round too, blazing across the finish line three whole seconds faster than we had been.

  “We beat you,” she cried as she came galloping out of the ring, scattering the crowd.

  “Too bad you’ll be in the next town over by the time they call your name to come and get your ribbon,” I called after her as it took three laps of the parking area for her to get Brookside under control.

  “What on earth did you give him to get him all riled up like that?” I asked her when she finally brought a prancing Brookside back to the ring.

  “An extra helping of alfalfa cubes,” she said sheepishly. “I didn’t know he was going to go quite so mad.”

  “Well it worked anyway,” I said. “You’re still in the lead.”

  But there were a lot of entries in the class. It seemed like all the people who couldn’t get into the mini Grand Prix due to the fact that they weren’t comfortable with fences that high or simply the fact that the class was full, had decided to enter our slightly easier class, where the competition was turning out to be just as fierce as ever. And when the dust had settled and the final rider had gone, it turned out that Alice was second and Encore and I had finished fourth.

  “This is turning out to be our color for the day,” I said as the same judge from Ballycat’s class pinned the white ribbon on Encore’s bridle.

  “That was a lovely ride,” he said. “And a lovely horse. Much more suitable than the last one I saw you on.”

  “Thanks,” I said. �
�He’s just been sold.”

  “That’s too bad,” the judge said, patting Encore on the neck before moving on to the fifth place finisher.

  I felt a wave of sadness wash over me as I realized that I would never ride Encore in another show. I’d grown much more attached to him than I’d realized and I had to fight back tears as we followed the others in our victory lap around the ring, his ribbon fluttering from the bridle and his neck arched and pretty with all the braids I’d painstakingly done to make him look extra special. Because he was extra special and if Tara ever did anything to ruin him, I’d have to hunt her down and kill her.

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  The show day meandered on like time was somehow trapped in a vacuum. Usually shows sped past and you were on the trailer and home again before you even really knew what had happened but today was different. Maybe it was because we were all having such a good time or maybe it was because I was waiting to hear if I’d made it into the mini Grand Prix or not. I’d been to see the show secretary a whole bunch of times already and she still couldn’t tell me if I was in or out. In fact I got the feeling if I asked her one more time she’d say that I was out for good, just because I was being so annoying.

  We camped out under the shade of a big oak tree and ate burgers that we bought from the food truck along with the assortment of other random stuff that people had brought. We spread it all out on a horse sheet that someone had laid on the ground and it became a game to try and eat all the food before the ants could. We ate half melted popsicles that were pretty much the best thing ever and then dunked our heads into what was left of the melted ice in the cooler. Andy grabbed a handful and threw it at me and before we knew it we were having an ice fight, running around the big trunk of the tree and trying to dodge the flying pieces of ice because they may have been melting but they still hurt when they hit you in the head.