I left her pulling the ribbons she’d won off the wall. I wasn’t going to stay and watch and besides, she’d made it very clear that she wasn’t going to listen to a word I said. All that time I’d waited for my best friend to wake up. Imagined what it would be like to share our lessons together again and go to the shows. Early mornings in Esther’s truck with hot coffee and secret looks that we shared because we knew each other so well. But I didn’t know the girl in that bedroom, ripping her old life off the walls. In fact I didn’t know if the old Mickey was still in there at all.
THE END
COMING SOON
SHOW JUMPING DREAMS BOOK 6: LAST CHANCE
All Emily wanted was for her best friend to wake up from a coma but now that she has, nothing is the same. Mickey is giving up riding for good and even though her parents are considering selling Hampton to Jess, she won’t change her mind.
Meanwhile Emily has finally heard from renowned show jumper Miguel Rodriguez. After riding in his clinic, she’s been waiting to hear if she made the junior jumper team but it seems that Miguel can’t make up his mind. He’s calling back the best riders to stay at Black Gate over spring break only this time they won’t be allowed to bring their own horses. This time they’ll ride whatever Miguel puts them on.
But when Miguel gives Emily the rank new prospect to ride, she suspects that maybe he doesn’t want her on the team after all. She can’t make the pony jump, he won’t canter in a straight line and Emily needs to figure out how to ride him fast because this is her last chance to make the team. And how can she persuade her best friend not to give up on riding for good when she’s not even around?
LAST CHANCE: CHAPTER ONE
People always say that absence makes the heart grow fonder but I think it’s just a lie they tell themselves to feel better. The longer Mickey stayed away from the barn, the worse I felt. There was nothing fonder about it. And Hampton? Well he didn’t even seem like he cared. Other riders had come to try him out but none of them managed to make him go as well as Jess had. It was like they just clicked on some level and he really liked her. Maybe almost as much as he liked Mickey which was bad. Really bad. If Mickey didn’t change her mind soon, she wouldn’t have a horse to come back to.
“Have you heard from Mr. Eastford?” I stuck my head in the office.
Esther was sitting at her desk but she wasn’t working. She was staring off into space which was never a good sign.
“What?” she looked at me like she hadn’t even heard what I said.
“Have you heard from Mr. Eastford?” I repeated.
“No,” she shook her head. “But I expect to any day.”
“Don’t forget, Jess wanted that jumper up in New York.” I leant against the door frame wearily.
“It doesn’t matter,” Esther said. “He has the money to buy them both. You know that.”
“It’s not fair,” I sighed.
I’d tried every trick in the book to get Mickey to come out to the barn, even stooping so low as to tell her that Hampton was sick, which I felt really bad about because it seemed like tempting the fates. But it hadn’t worked. She just said that whatever the emergency was, Esther could handle it. Then she hung up the phone. What kind of horse person doesn’t dash out to the barn at a hundred miles an hour if they get a phone call that their horse is sick?
Esther said that I should just give up. That the more I tried to push Mickey into it, the harder she resisted. She was probably right but I wasn’t the kind of person who just gave up on someone. I was stubborn like that.
“Want to saddle up for a ride?” Esther asked.
“I suppose,” I said but my heart wasn’t really in it.
Bluebird was standing in his field under the shade of a tree. It was spring already and the temperature was rising. Soon it would be too hot to ride much during the day. People in the north were still cleaning up from the last snow storm and we were getting out our bathing suits. It hardly seemed fair but then they didn’t have to deal with mosquitos the size of garbage trucks and hurricanes.
“Want to go for a ride?” I called out.
Bluebird looked over at me and then turned his butt in my direction. I took that as a no. I knew it wasn’t up to him and that I should make him work anyway but I didn’t feel like it. I still hadn’t heard anything from Miguel Rodriguez. He told us that he would make the selections for the team in one month and it had been a month already. At first I thought I hadn’t heard because I hadn’t been chosen and I’d moped around the house for days before Mom suggested that I ask Becka if she’d heard anything. She hadn’t and she was a really good rider so there was no way that we both hadn’t been chosen. She said that she’d heard Miguel was having a hard time choosing. If that was true it meant that he had his pick from a bunch of really great riders. I didn’t know if I even stood a chance.
I sat on the gate watching the sun turn my bare arms pink, then wandered back inside. Esther was tacking up Princess for a lead line lesson, the little girl with the oversized helmet on her head standing back and looking scared. Her mother gave her a gentle shove towards the pretty black pony. I had to hand it to Princess. She may have had a mean streak and a mind of her own but she knew how to reel the little kids in. She looked like she’d just stepped out of a fairy tale forest with her flowing mane and the forelock that reached down to the end of her nose.
“Hold your hand out like this,” I showed the girl my outstretched palm. “Make sure it’s flat now, don’t curl your fingers or she might think they are carrots.”
The girl gave a nervous giggle. I fished a lint laden sugar cube out of my pocket and placed it on her palm. Princess sniffed it just to make sure it wasn’t poisoned and then gently lipped it up. The girl grinned. The mother grinned. And Esther took them out to the ring for a lesson that would probably be the first of many. It wasn’t hard to make a little kid a repeat customer if the parents could afford it because lessons often turned into kids wanting ponies of their own.
I vaguely remembered the day Dad brought home fat little Pudding for me. As soon as he unloaded the scruffy pony I ran right over and latched onto his leg. No one had to teach me not to be scared. Dad just laughed, pried me off the pony’s leg and tossed me up on his back. I often wondered what happened to that sweet pony. Where did he go? All I knew was that after Summer’s death, her pony and mine had disappeared. I liked to think they had found happy homes somewhere. I didn’t like to think about all the bad things that could have happened to them.
“What about you?” I asked Hampton. “Want to go for a ride?”
He came to the bars and sniffed my fingers, licking up the sugar crumbs. I purposely didn’t look at Harlow’s empty stall. Even though he’d gone to live a life of luxury with Liesl as a massage demo horse, I still missed him horribly. The way he would nicker for his grain and his pretty gray face. Esther would soon fill the stall with another boarder and that would be better. At least then I wouldn’t see the echo of him standing there.
Ethan came into the barn while I was still trying to decide whether to ride or not. Since the weather had warmed up, he’d been spending more time at the beach and his hair was already sun-bleached, his skin a golden brown.
“Someone is riding Faith’s pony,” he pointed out to the ring.
“You know your sister doesn’t care one hoot about Princess,” I laughed. “That pony is a means to an end. She’s waiting until I outgrow Bluebird and then she’s going to be all over him like an ant to a cookie.”
“True,” he grinned. “Your days are numbered.” He leant against Hampton’s stall. “Still no Mickey?” he asked.
I shook my head. When other people asked, I felt like I was the one who was a failure because I hadn’t been able to convince her to come back. There were a few awkward moments of silence where I found myself looking at Ethan’s lips out of the corner of my eye and wondering what it would be like to kiss a boy and then he broke the spell.
“So are you going to ride then
or what?”
“I thought I’d take Hampton out,” I said. “Bluebird already told me he’d rather just stay under his tree.”
“Cool,” Ethan grinned. “Come on, I’ll tack up Wendell and we can go out in the jump field. “
“All right,” I said.
Since the weather had turned warmer, we’d spent more time than usual out in the field where it was easier to catch the breeze.
In the tack room, I rummaged through Mickey’s trunk for her martingale. Hampton had been tossing his head and generally acting unruly lately what with all the different people coming to try him out and Esther had suggested that he go back in it. Only I didn’t know what Mickey had done with it. I knew she’d had it at the last show but I couldn’t find it anywhere. I tossed out wraps and bits and spare halters until I finally found it in a dirty pile at the bottom of the trunk. I struggled to free it from the tangled mess and when it finally came loose a piece of paper came with it, fluttering to the ground beside my feet.
I picked it up thinking it was nothing. An old show entry or prize list but as I read the words Mickey had written, I really wished I’d never looked for that martingale at all.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Claire Svendsen fell in love with horses at age two when she got her first pony. The only trouble was that it wasn’t a real horse, it was a rocking horse. From that day on she begged, pleaded and bribed for lessons, riding clothes and a horse of her own. She had to wait and work really hard to finally get her first real horse but when she did, it was a dream come true. Over the years she has trained horses, given lessons and even run her own stable.
No longer able to ride due to injury, Claire lives vicariously through the characters in her books. When she’s not busy writing, you’ll find her hanging out at the barn with her retired Thoroughbred Merlin who loves carrots, apples and bowing on command.
STAY CONNECTED
To keep up to date on all the Show Jumping Dreams news and to learn about horse and pony care, you can follow my horse Merlin on Facebook. He is the only one with the inside scoop. Plus he’s really cute!
https://www.facebook.com/showjumpingdreams
COLLECT THEM ALL
Other books in the Show Jumping Series by Claire Svendsen
#1 Secret Rider
#2 Pony Jumpers
#3 Winter Blues
#4 Star Pupil
#5 Sale Horse
(Coming soon) #6 Last Chance
Table of Contents
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER TWELVE
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY ONE
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
CHAPTER THIRTY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE
CHAPTER THIRTY SIX
COMING SOON
LAST CHANCE: CHAPTER ONE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
STAY CONNECTED
COLLECT THEM ALL
Sale Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 5) Page 11
