Sale Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 5)

by Claire Svendsen

  SALE HORSE

  BY

  CLAIRE SVENDSEN

  Copyright © 2014 Claire Svendsen

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental.

  For Liz & Blythe

  CHAPTER ONE

  “I want to see her. Why won’t they let me see her?” I moaned.

  “They’ll let you see her when they think the time is right,” Mom said.

  We were sitting at the kitchen table. She was trying, unsuccessfully, to mend a hole in my breeches. Cat was sitting with us, eating a sandwich. I don’t know why she just didn’t go home. The longer she stayed with us, the more miserable she seemed. Today she was wearing a shirt that showed you how to sign language swear words.

  “Even if she does wake up, your friend is going to be a vegetable,” she said.

  “Don’t say that,” I shouted. “She’s not. She’s going to wake up and be just fine and everything is going to go back to normal.”

  “You’re delusional,” she said. “Don’t you know that nothing ever goes back to normal?”

  She got up and left us sitting there. Mom looked at me apologetically. Since Cat had moved in we had actually managed to mend a little of our broken relationship but just like Cat said, some things could never go back to normal and unless Mom divorced Derek, they most certainly would not.

  “Don’t worry,” Mom said, reaching out to pat my arm. “I’m sure Mickey will be fine. Just wait and see.”

  But it had been three days since I got back from my big clinic with renowned show jumping champion Miguel Rodriguez and found out that my best friend was in the hospital. I thought she wasn’t answering my texts because she was mad at me and the whole time she had been lying there in her hospital bed in a coma. And to make matters worse, the last time we’d spoken we were mad at each other. Fighting over something stupid, the raffle that she rigged so that I would win the new saddle I needed. She tried to help me and instead I’d been horrible to her and if anything bad happened, I’d have to live with that for the rest of my life.

  “How is Bluebird doing?” Mom asked, obviously trying to change the subject. “Has he settled back in with all the normal horses after being a star?”

  “He’s fine,” I said. “Esther thinks that it will be okay to ride him tomorrow.”

  “That’s good,” Mom said. “It will give you something else to think about.”

  I’d given Bluebird time off since we got back from the clinic because I knew he was tired but the real reason was that every day I hoped I would be allowed to go and visit Mickey at the hospital and I didn’t want to miss my chance. Esther said that Mickey’s parents were going to sell Hampton but I couldn’t let that happen. I needed to talk to them and tell them how important it was for Mickey to have her horse when she woke up. She would be devastated if she found out that they’d just sold him like that. I couldn’t do anything to make her better but I could certainly do everything in my power to make sure things were the same when she finally came back to the barn.

  “Do these look any better to you?” Mom held up my breeches.

  There were big cobbled stitches across the front. I probably could have done a better job myself but at least she tried.

  “They’re fine Mom,” I said.

  “They’re not really,” she laughed. “Why don’t you let me take you to that tack shop that opened up in town and we can get you a new pair?”

  “Maybe,” I said.

  “Maybe? I offer to take you to a tack store and actually buy you horse things and you say maybe? Okay, where is my Emily and what have you done with her? This girl must be an imposter.”

  She reached out and put a hand on my forehead like she was checking my temperature.

  “I’ll think about it, okay?” I smiled, trying not to hurt her feelings too much.

  The tack store was the place where Mickey and I had come to blows over the saddle. I just didn’t think I could face going back there right now even with the offer of new breeches dangling in front of me like a carrot.

  “I think I’m going to go to bed,” I said.

  At school, nothing was the same without Mickey. I drifted from class to class, not paying attention to anything the teachers said. Everyone knew that she was my best friend and they also knew that she was in a coma, so that meant that people I didn’t even know would randomly come up to me and say things that they thought were probably comforting but were totally not.

  “What if she wakes up and can’t remember her own name or anything about her life?”

  A girl had grabbed me on the way to math class and was holding me prisoner against the lockers. She had bad breath and crooked bangs.

  “It happened to my aunt,” she carried on. “She was in this car accident and was in a coma for years. Then one day, just before they were going to pull the plug, she woke up and started speaking Italian. She didn’t even know who she was or who any of us were. It was totally crazy.”

  “I, um, have to go,” I said, darting under her arm and making a beeline for the bathroom.

  Locked in a stall, I started to cry. I couldn’t help it. At the barn I had to be strong and at home there was no way I was showing my weakness, especially with Cat around. But I just couldn’t take it anymore. If I could just see Mickey then maybe I would feel better.

  “I heard she was going to meet Rock Simpson.”

  There were footsteps and voices. Two girls came into the bathroom talking. I tried to muffle my sobs so they wouldn’t hear me.

  “Rock Simpson?” the other girl said. “No way. I heard it was that new kid Jordan and he’s like, a total stud. But I don’t know what he would see in her. ”

  “I don’t know but it doesn’t matter now anyway. I’m sure he doesn’t date vegetables,” she said. Then they both laughed.

  I burst out of the stall I had been hiding in.

  “She’s not a vegetable,” I screamed at them before running off.

  When I got home from school, I changed my clothes as quickly as I could and rode my bike to the barn. Bluebird was in the front field and when he saw me he cantered over, ears pricked and face happy.

  “Are you glad to see me or your carrots?” I asked him as I reached over the fence and gave him one.

  He nickered softly and then followed me up the drive. I dumped my bike at the barn and ran back to his field where he shoved his head into the halter eagerly.

  “Are you ready to ride too?” I asked him.

  I couldn’t wait to get back in the ring but as I stood in the barn with that saddle in front of me, I suddenly didn’t feel like riding. Mickey helped to get me that saddle. Now every time I rode, I would think of her. Even on the back of my own pony, I couldn’t escape the horrible thought of her lying there.

  “Ready to ride?” Esther asked, coming out of the office.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I should wait.”

  “I thought you were dying to show me everything you learned at the clinic?”

  “I was,” I said. “But, I don’t know.”

  She came over and put her arm around me.

  “Not riding won’t make Mickey better,” she said. “What do you think she would want you to do? Sit around and pine for her or get
your butt out there and ride.”

  “I think she’d want me to go to the mall and get her lots of get well presents,” I said.

  “True,” Esther nodded. “But after that?”

  “I guess she’d want me to ride.”

  “Of course she would. Now come on.”

  Bluebird was fresh after his days off. He pranced his way to the ring and I couldn’t help but grin. It didn’t matter how bad I felt, riding always made me feel better and I soon forgot about the saddle and Mickey.

  I turned Bluebird this way and that, using the dressage movements that Miguel had shown us to get his focus and loosen him up.

  “Very nice,” Esther called out as we managed a perfect half pass across the arena.

  She set up some jumps and as soon as Bluebird saw them, his ears pricked up.

  “You don’t care about all that boring flatwork, do you boy?” I patted his neck. “You just like to jump, like me.”

  I steadied him for the first line, a simple cross rail with four strides to a vertical, trying to remember everything Miguel had said. Don’t collapse on his neck. Use an automatic release. But as we took the jumps, I forgot everything and just let my body do the work.

  Esther directed us over other jumps and combinations and when we were done, she had a grin on her face as big as I did.

  “Well, you certainly did learn a lot,” she said. “I’m impressed.”

  “Thanks,” I smiled, leaning down and hugging Bluebird’s neck.

  But through my upside down view of the world I saw it. Sitting up again, I had to be sure. Yes. There it was. My mom’s car heading towards the barn. There was only one reason she would be here to pick me up. They had finally agreed to let me see Mickey.

  CHAPTER TWO

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had been in a hospital. I think it may have been when I sprained my ankle during gym class or maybe when my friend Casey broke her leg while I was sleeping over. She was kind of a daredevil and fell off the roof. My mom wouldn’t let me go over to her house anymore after that.

  “You’re sure you are going to be okay?” Mom said.

  “Of course,” I said.

  I’d been waiting for this moment ever since I got back but I didn’t really know what to expect. It wasn’t like I could just bounce up to Mickey’s room with a balloon and some chocolates and have a good laugh about how silly she’d been. This was different.

  “She will be able to hear me, won’t she?” I asked.

  “Honestly?” Mom said. “I don’t know. “But your sister was in a coma before she died and I like to think that she heard us when we told her we loved her.”

  Mom reached out and grabbed my hand, then squeezed it. I let her. I wasn’t so sure I could do this on my own.

  The hospital was gray and clinical with big round windows that looked out over the sprawling parking lot. Inside everything was white and the heady stench of bleach and sickness hung in the air.

  I wrapped my arms around myself as the first blast of air conditioning hit us. The place was like a refrigerator. It was also a labyrinth. We got lost three times, ending up in elevators that wouldn’t go to the floor we wanted or corridors that suddenly just ended.

  “Is this a test?” I said, starting to get frustrated. “I feel like a rat in a maze.”

  “Here,” Mom said. “This way.”

  We walked past rooms with coughing people and rooms with crying people. Some were just quiet, the shades drawn even though someone was in there. You could tell that those were the sickest people, the ones who were too ill to make a fuss. But Mickey couldn’t make a fuss. She was on the critical care ward, each patient in a private, glass walled room so that it wasn’t really private at all. And she was in a coma.

  “That’s not her,” I shook my head as we stopped outside room number eleven.

  “It is,” Mom said.

  She was right. There were Mickey’s parents, standing over her bed but even from where I stood out in the hallway, I could tell that Mickey wasn’t there. Sure her body was, that mound under the blankets connected to a million machines that bleeped and buzzed but the body was an empty shell. Mickey had gone somewhere, I just didn’t know where.

  Mickey’s mom saw us and came to the door.

  “I’m glad you could come,” she said.

  She was pale and thin, like she hadn’t eaten in a week. I wanted to tell her that everything was going to be okay just like my mom had told me but I couldn’t make my mouth form the words. After all, for all I knew, it could be a lie.

  “Only two people are allowed in at a time,” she said, and reached out to take my hand. Even though I didn’t want her to, I let her. The coolness of her skin felt like tissue paper in my sweaty one.

  Mickey’s dad walked out and went to sit in one of the chairs across the hall in the waiting room. My mom went with him. I kind of wished that she was the one who was going in with me instead. She had experience with this kind of thing. I didn’t.

  Mickey’s mom went and sat in a chair by the bed. There was one on the other side but I just stood there, not sure what to do.

  “Is she going to be okay?” I asked.

  “The doctors said we’ll just have to wait and see,” Mickey’s mom smiled weakly.

  I wanted to go over there and shake her. To tell her that of course Mickey was going to be fine. That she was tough and strong and one of the bravest people I knew.

  “Can she hear me?” I said.

  Mickey’s mom just shrugged.

  I took my best friend’s hand in mine and sat on the bed next to her. She didn’t look anything like the women in the made for TV movies with the fanned out hair and sleeping smile. Her hair was slicked back and greasy and she most certainly wasn’t smiling. There were too many tubes for that.

  “Mickey,” I said. “I want you to listen to me. You have to get better. Okay? I mean it. This isn’t funny. Hampton is back at the barn waiting for you. He needs you.”

  Mickey’s mom coughed and then shook her head.

  “Your parents want to sell him,” I continued on. “Do you understand? If you don’t wake up soon they’ll sell your horse and you won’t have him anymore. We won’t be able to go to shows or take lessons together. Nothing will ever be the same. So wake up.”

  I waited for her to squeeze my hand. For her eyes to flutter open and for everything to be okay. But the machines beeped on and nothing happened. Just the steady rise and fall of her chest as the tubes pumped air in and out of her.

  “We’re selling that horse,” her mom stood up. “He’s going to go and that is final.”

  “You can’t,” I stood up too. “Mickey needs him.”

  “She needs to concentrate on getting better and she’ll never ride again.”

  “You can’t do this,” I cried.

  Mom was suddenly there, pulling me out of the room. Shaking her head and apologizing for my behavior.

  “They can’t sell Mickey’s horse,” I sobbed as she dragged me down the hallway.

  “I know,” she said. “But there is nothing we can do about it.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  It was Saturday before I felt like riding again. I couldn’t get the image of Mickey lying there out of my head. I spent my evenings researching coma’s online but it turned out that the brain was a mysterious beast, not unlike a horse. Sometimes people made full recoveries, other times they just laid there indefinitely. And it turned out that the stupid girl at school was right. Sometimes people woke up speaking a foreign language, not recognizing their loved ones at all.

  “Did you see her?” Ethan asked.

  We were standing outside of Hampton’s stall, both of us kind of lost without Mickey there. Our troublesome trio now reduced to a duet.

  “Yeah,” I said. “But it was like she wasn’t even there.”

  “That sucks,” Ethan shook his head.

  “I know. I don’t even think her mom believes she is going to get better and they still want to sell Hampton.
”

  “I think my parents know better than to try and sell Wendell,” he said.

  “Knowing Derek, he’d talk my mom into getting rid of Bluebird before I even made it to the hospital,” I said.

  Esther came into the barn with Faith. Ethan’s little sister was having weekly private lessons on Princess and she’d improved a lot since the last show where she fell off and completely lost it.

  “I jumped a triple!” she cried.

  “A triple of what?” Ethan said. “Cross rails?”

  “No,” she crossed her arms angrily. “Tell him Esther. Two of them were really big jumps.”

  Esther held her hand about one foot off the ground behind Faith and we all started to laugh.

  “Hey,” she said. “It’s not funny. Why are you laughing at me?”

  “We’re not,” I said, swallowing my laugh. “You’re doing a really great job.”

  “I’d be jumping higher if I had a better pony,” she sighed. “Princess doesn’t like to go very high.”

  “Now you know,” I said, putting my arm around her. “I’ve ridden Princess before and you want to know the trick to her?”

  “Oh yes please,” she said, her eyes wide.

  “Well,” I said. “You have to bribe her with treats and not give them all to Bluebird.”

  “You saw?” she hung her head in shame.

  “I see everything,” I cried, starting to tickle her.

  She started to laugh and the more she laughed the more I tickled her until she was laying on the ground, begging for mercy.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, getting up and wiping the tears from her eyes. “It’s just I love him so much.”

  “Save the treats for the pony you’re going to ride,” I told her as she ran off to help Esther untack Princess.

  “You’re fighting a losing battle there,” Ethan said. “Your pony is all she talks about. She’s completely obsessed with him.”

  “That’s because he’s so cute,” I said.

  “Besides,” he said. “Shouldn’t you follow your own advice?”

  I had a carrot halfway between the bars of Harlow’s stall before I realized what I was doing. The big dapple gray had his neck stretched out as he gently took the carrot from my hand, then shook his dark mane.