Lead Change (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 29)

by Claire Svendsen

  “Well, take a look.” Duncan passed around the piece of paper.

  It turned out that after lunch there were going to be some mounted games. An egg and spoon race, a pole bending class, a flag race. It sounded like crazy fun.

  “That stuff is for kids,” Faith said.

  “That stuff is what having horses is all about,” Duncan told her. “It’s not all about jumping and ribbons. Where is your sense of adventure?”

  “I think she lost it when her pony refused to jump,” I said.

  “This looks great,” Rose said, looking at the paper. “I wish I’d brought Noelle now.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said, sitting up. “We have all these horses here and they obviously all have more energy than they know what to do with since they are being so naughty. Why don’t we all enter?”

  “I don't ride in kid’s classes,” Andy said.

  “Chicken,” I told him.

  “You know, I think it's a great idea,” Duncan said. “You are all entering or you’re off the team.”

  “No,” Andy cried. “That’s not fair.”

  “That’s life,” Duncan said with an evil grin. “I competed in my fair share of mounted games when I was young and it was great. Where is your sense of adventure?”

  “I don’t have one,” Andy mumbled.

  But when Duncan said we had to enter or we were off the team, it turned out that he was serious. There was no talking him out of it and I actually thought it was brilliant. We all needed some fun after everything we’d been through and what would be more fun than galloping your pony around the ring, holding an egg and spoon?

  CHAPTER FIFTY ONE

  And so it was that we entered the mounted games, giggling like little kids hopped up on sugar as we figured out who was going to do which class. And it turned out that I didn’t mind sharing my horses with my friends after all, even though I’d thought I might.

  “Can I ride Sunny?” Rose asked, stroking the mare’s soft nose.

  “Sure,” I said. “You and Faith should totally do the toilet paper race.”

  “Ewwww, toilet paper.” Faith giggled.

  “So you want to?” Rose asked her.

  “Okay,” she replied.

  Andy claimed Socks for the flag race because he said that the bay gelding had bolted from the ring so fast that there was no way they wouldn’t win. And I was going to ride Arion in the egg and spoon race because he’d been so slow and quiet that I figured it would be easy to keep my egg in the spoon while I was riding him. Bluebird was sitting the mounted games out because his class was right after them and I didn’t want him to be too tired. Dad just shook his head as we made our plans but I think he knew it was all in good spirit and that having horses didn’t always have to be about fancy shows and being proper all the time, though I could imagine that if the girls at the rated show could see me now, they’d think that I’d totally lost it.

  It just so happened that my class was first. We were lined up so five of us would go at a time and then the winners would face off against each other in a final race for the blue ribbon. I collected my egg and spoon and secretly drew a smiley face on the hard, white shell.

  “We’ve got this smiley, right?” I whispered.

  “Are you talking to your egg?” Dad said as we stood by the ring waiting to go in.

  “No,” I replied.

  He just shook his head. I knew that he thought I was now a completely lost cause. But smiley egg, Arion and me totally nailed that first heat. I held the reins in one hand as we easily cantered down to the end of the ring and back while the others in my heat trotted, bounced and lost their eggs or walked so slowly that we’d passed the finish line before they even made it down to the other end of the ring. Granted some of them were only about five years old but there were a couple of teenagers like me and in the second heat there were two adults so I didn’t really feel bad. It wasn’t my fault the class didn’t have an age limit.

  “Good boy,” I said, patting Arion on the neck.

  I’d already pulled his braids out because I’d thought that he was done for the day and his mane was all curly, his gray coat soft beneath my hand as we waited for the second heat to finish. And while I’d been cantering with my egg, I hadn’t been thinking about jumps and broken poles or any of that stuff. Duncan was right, sometimes you just needed to find the fun again.

  “You ready?” I asked Arion as we stood in line, ready to race against the other finalists.

  He tossed his head, probably wondering why we were just cantering up and down with no jumps but he didn’t seem to mind. The woman next to me was on a speedy little Arabian. She gave me the evil eye before the volunteer blew her whistle. I knew that she’d be my competition. In the end I was right. We were neck and neck as we cantered down to the end of the ring and circled our cones. Arion didn’t like that very much. After all, he was an ex-racehorse. In the end he put on one final burst of speed and we crossed the finish line in the lead.

  “We won,” I cried, patting Arion on the neck.

  He didn’t seem sure that we’d won anything until they pinned the blue ribbon on his bridle and then he got all silly and pranced his way around the ring like he’d just finished the biggest show jumping course in the world. But I loved my silly horse and I kept my smiley face egg, not giving it back to the volunteers. It was my lucky egg. It helped me to find the fun again and I was keeping it.

  CHAPTER FIFTY TWO

  Andy won his flag race because Socks was on fire. He blazed around the ring picking up and dropping off the flags like a maniac and I think Socks had just as much fun as Andy did.

  “I want this horse,” he said as he came out of the ring grinning.

  “Hands off,” I told him. I didn’t add that Socks had never really belonged to me and I could lose the ride on him at any time if Missy decided to take him back.

  We all sat on the fence to watch Faith and Rose. I really hoped that Faith would get her blue ribbon too but Falcon and Sunny were the two least experienced horses and to expect them to work as a team was something that I was sure required a lot of practice. Still, Faith seemed to be having fun. She giggled as the volunteers handed out the toilet paper. The goal was to go through the line of bending poles as fast as you could, following one another without breaking your piece of toilet paper.

  “Those two don’t stand a chance.” Andy shook his head.

  “Don’t say that,” I told him.

  “Just look at them though.” He pointed to where Sunny was spinning in circles and Falcon was going backwards. I had to admit that it didn’t look good.

  But the thing was that Rose seemed to have a calming effect on the new mare. She talked to her quietly and patted her neck and even though Falcon was being naughty, he was still tired from his schooling session that morning. I crossed my fingers behind my back and hoped that they’d at least get some kind of ribbon. And they did. Second.

  “It’s your first ribbon,” Faith said with tears in her eyes as they came out of the ring with the red ribbon. Falcon, of course, tried to eat it.

  Sunny looked pretty proud of herself too. She’d been the one who had led them to victory, going slow and steady under Rose’s guidance and stopping Falcon rushing ahead because with her big, broad butt in front of his face, there was nowhere else for him to go.

  “You could always tell your parents that you won it in the jumping class,” I told Faith as she untacked Falcon and put him back in his pen.

  “No,” she said. “They’d know I was lying and besides, I’m proud of our toilet paper ribbon.”

  “And so you should be,” Duncan told her, which made Faith get all embarrassed because she was still a little intimidated by the team trainer. I think she had been hoping to impress him enough to get on the team one day.

  “Do you think we can concentrate on the real classes now?” Dad said, sounding a little exasperated but I think he knew it had all been in good fun. Fun that we’d badly needed.

  Both
Dad and Duncan schooled me and Bluebird in the warm up ring before my class. Unlike how he and Walter had clashed, Dad and Duncan actually made a pretty effective team and the other riders who were schooling kept looking at me like I was some kind of super star because I had two trainers.

  “One is my dad,” I told one girl who was riding by, looking green with envy.

  I don’t think that fact made her feel any better and Bluebird was in top form. He was jumping feet above the warm up jump, tucking his knees with his ears pricked, happy to be back doing what he loved and I was happy to be doing it with him.

  CHAPTER FIFTY THREE

  The class was pretty simple because this was a schooling show after all. Not too many difficult lines, only one rollback and a double instead of a triple combination.

  “You’ve got this in the bag,” Duncan said.

  Which only sort of put more pressure on me because he was basically saying that if I screwed this class up then I was a lost cause. Only he must have seen my panicked face and put his arm around me.

  “You remember the fun you had in the egg and spoon race?” he asked me. I nodded. “Well this is just an egg and spoon race but with jumps in-between. Okay?”

  “Okay,” I said even though I knew it wasn’t true.

  We trotted into the ring, Bluebird fresh and looking as handsome as ever. My pony puffed up like a big horse and my heart swelled because how could I ever imagine not letting him do what he was born to do. What he loved more than anything in the whole world.

  Duncan had told me to just concentrate on going clean and also keeping my eyes open. I didn’t think he’d seen that I had them closed halfway around the course with Sunny but of course he had. Duncan saw everything.

  We cantered over the vertical and then five strides to a small oxer, over to the jump with the hay bales and the one where there were some muck tubs underneath it filled with straw. This was a schooling show after all. There were no fancy fillers or real flowers. There were a couple of faded plastic plants and a fake grass roll top that all the grass had been worn off but Bluebird jumped them all and before I knew it we were cantering through the finish line clean.

  “You did it!” Rose cried as we came out of the ring.

  I was patting Bluebird with tears in my eyes. I knew that there would be a jump off and for a moment I thought about pulling out. Finishing the show day on a good note and just going home but I couldn’t let Bluebird down. He deserved his blue ribbon too.

  And in the end there were only two of us clear, me and a boy with a weedy looking black horse who was really fast. They went first but his horse was really amped up and they had a rail down. Four faults.

  “All you have to do is go clean,” Duncan told me. “Don’t worry about galloping.”

  I thought of Grace. How she’d been tired. How I’d pushed her on. Or had I? The mare wanted to jump. She loved it just like Bluebird did. But today I didn’t have to worry about pushing my pony. As long as we went clear that was. If we had four faults and were slow then the other boy would win but second wouldn’t be so bad either. Faith had seemed pretty happy with her red ribbon and I could be a good sport and be happy with one too.

  But Bluebird was having none of my second place thoughts. He cantered into the ring and knew it was a jump off course. He knew what he had to do without me even telling him. All I did was point him at the jumps and he jumped them. We were clear and now I was the one with tears in my eyes as my pony and I galloped around the ring with the blue ribbon pinned to his bridle.

  CHAPTER FIFTY FOUR

  It turned out that Dad’s class wasn’t the walk in the park that he thought it would be. A lot of the local adult riders had turned up to try and win the prize money and several of the local trainers had entered as well. The only thing was that Canterbury was in a league above all of their horses and Dad had been putting some extra time into him lately.

  They blazed around the course like pros, leaving everyone else in the dust and even though there were four in the jump off, there was not a chance that any of them would catch my dad and his chestnut horse.

  “Not bad,” Duncan said as my father won his class.

  “I think he’s trying to impress you,” I said.

  “Consider me impressed.” Duncan nodded. “A father, daughter team in the making.”

  I smiled but a small part of me felt jealous, like Dad was trying to steal my thunder. I was the one who was hoping to make it to the Olympics and at this rate Dad wouldn’t be selling Canterbury, he’d be making a bid for the Olympics himself, a thought which made me rather sick.

  But the show was a success. Faith’s parents came to pick her up and she proudly showed them her red ribbon with just as much excitement than if it had been blue. She didn’t tell them that it was won in a toilet paper race and I didn’t blame her. I also thought she was wrong. They couldn’t tell if she was lying or not. It was how she got away with so much.

  Rose and Andy left. I hugged them tight and thanked them. I was pretty sure that if they hadn’t shown up, the day wouldn’t have been as much of a success and it certainly wouldn't have been half as fun. Duncan left amid warnings that I’d better keep practicing and he’d see me at the team show next month. And Dad took half the horses home while I waited with my three, feeding them carrots and telling them how proud I was of them, even if they had all acted like silly idiots to start with.

  CHAPTER FIFTY FIVE

  It was late in the day by the time we got all the horses back to the farm. Jordan was mucking stalls as I unloaded my stuff into the tack room.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey,” I replied, feeling awkward.

  When I didn’t see him for a few days then the butterflies came back and I got all nervous around him again. I wanted to ask how his trip had been but I couldn’t find the words.

  “Looks like you did well,” he said, pointing to my blue ribbons.

  “In the egg and spoon race?” I said. “Yes, I was brilliant.”

  He cracked a smile, showing his dimples. I hustled past before I said anything else embarrassing.

  Dad and I settled our horses back in and since they hadn’t exactly had a very grueling day, I turned mine out in the field but not before kissing Bluebird on the nose.

  “Thanks for not letting me down,” I whispered.

  He shoved me with his head and ran off. He was just a pony after all but not just a pony to me.

  It was dark in the house when Dad and I finally trudged inside, tired and hungry.

  “Where is everyone?” I said.

  By now Cat would usually be in the kitchen nuking something in the microwave and my mother would be hovering by the window, watching out for us and worrying that we’d had some deadly accident. Instead only Meatball was waiting for us, winding around my legs and purring.

  “Hasn’t anyone fed you yet?” I asked him, tipping dry food into his dish and pushing Patrick away before the two of them got into a massive fight. He sniffed it and then looked up at me with his amber eyes and cried.

  “I know, you like the wet food better but we’re out,” I told the fat cat. “You’ll have to wait until we go to the store.”

  He walked away with his nose up in the air and Patrick gobbled it all up in three bites.

  “I guess they are still in their rooms sulking,” Dad said. “Shall we order a pizza?”

  “Definitely,” I replied. “I’ll tell Cat.”

  I ran up the stairs, my head full of all the things I wanted to tell Cat. How Sunny and I had sucked. How Rose had ridden her in the toilet paper race. How I found my nerve and my love for the sport and horses again and more than that, I remembered how fun it could all be.

  But Cat’s door was open. Her room empty. I stood there looking at the bare walls and empty drawers. Cat had gone. I ran down the hall to tell my mother but as I stood in her empty room, I realized that she’d gone too.

  THE END

  COMING SOON

  SHOW JUMPING DREAMS #
30: TWO STRIDES

  Cat and Emily’s mother have gone. They haven’t left a trace behind. Not one clue of where they might be and while Emily tries to pretend that she doesn’t care, deep down it hurts that her own mother would rather run off with her step daughter than stay home with her real one. After all, they gave up a life at a really good barn to take care of her and now it looks like all that was for nothing.

  But Emily has other things to focus on. The team show is in a few weeks. It is their last chance to get a spot in the semi-final and Emily doesn’t want to let Duncan, the team coach, down, especially after he helped her so much. She’s also still trying to do right by all the horses at Second Chance Farm, helping Faith with Falcon, training Sunny and trying to find someone to lease Hashtag.

  But when a trip to Fox Run to drop off a horse turns into something else entirely, Missy and Emily will finally have the fight that has been brewing all along, leaving the fate of Socks hanging in the balance. And a horse that Emily thought she left in good hands has disappeared. What has happened to Four and can Emily get him back before it’s too late?

  TWO STRIDES: CHAPTER ONE

  “They have gone,” I told Dad.

  I’d gone back down to the kitchen, feeling sick again. It was a feeling I was starting to feel more often than not. I wondered if I was getting an ulcer.

  “They probably got fed up and went to get food,” Dad said, looking at his phone as he ordered the pizza for us.

  “No,” I said, my voice flat. “I mean they’ve actually gone. They’re rooms are empty. They’ve taken their stuff. They’ve gone. Cleared out. Left us.”

  Dad looked up at me. I could see the words sinking in.

  “They can’t be gone,” he said. “They don’t have anywhere to go.”