CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
The walk in clinic was full of coughing, sniffling people just like me. There was also a guy with a bandaged hand that had blood oozing through the gauze, a girl with a bag of frozen peas on her wrist and some people that looked just fine. They were the hypochondriacs. Or maybe they just had a stomach ache or something else that you couldn’t see. Not all wounds were visible, even I knew that. We sat down next to one of the less sick looking ones while Dad checked me in.
“I hope no one throws up,” Cat whispered. “Because when other people throw up it really makes me want to throw up too.”
“I’m sure no one will throw up,” I told her but I wasn’t convinced. A couple of the people looked a little green and then a woman came in holding a sick bag.
“See,” Cat said, turning away.
“Well you just jinxed yourself,” I told her.
But it didn’t matter anyway because the nice nurse who was taking vital signs at the front sat me down and took my temperature, blood pressure and then listened to my lungs. She shook her head.
“You must be feeling pretty awful,” she said.
“I’m okay,” I mumbled.
“She’s an athlete,” Dad said. “She has a show in less than a week. Just fix her.”
The sweet nurse looked a little horrified at my cold hearted father but it wasn’t his fault. He just wasn’t good at all the touchy feely stuff, which I think was why he looked so grateful when Cat offered to go back to the room with me while he sat out there in the waiting room with the sick people.
“I thought that nurse was going to have a heart attack when your dad told her to just fix you.” Cat laughed.
I was sitting on the table, the disposable paper sheet that kept it sanitary for the other patients rustling beneath me. I was starting to feel a bit nervous. The nurse had seemed worried. Maybe I should be more worried too. What if there was something really wrong with me?
“You don’t really think I’m sick, do you?” I said between coughs.
“You are just as stubborn as your father is,” Cat said. “But don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll just give you some antibiotics or something. That is what all doctors do.”
“Great,” I said.
And no sooner had she said the words than the doctor came into the room, carrying a clipboard. He looked at my file and listened to my lungs and then said, “I think you are going to need some antibiotics but I want to take a chest x-ray just to be sure.”
Cat looked at me and laughed.
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
I left the walk in clinic with a prescription for some antibiotics and strict orders to rest for at least a week. That was a joke. The show was days away. But it turned out that it wasn’t just a cold. The doctor had looked at the x-ray of my lungs and declared that I had walking pneumonia.
I wasn’t exactly sure what that was but it didn’t sound good and I knew that it definitely didn’t feel good. The doctor told me I was lucky because the walking part meant that I didn’t have to go to the hospital but he seemed to hint that if the antibiotics didn’t work or if I got worse then I would have to go to the hospital and I knew that would cost a lot more than the hundred or so that my father had just shelled out at the clinic. He couldn’t afford for me to go to the hospital and I couldn't afford to miss the show.
“So, back to work then?” Dad said when we got back in the truck.
“Absolutely not,” Cat said. “Unless you want her to end up in the hospital, she needs to rest and take her medicine. No riding.”
“Until the show,” I added.
There was no way I was missing the show. I’d worked really hard to get where I was and I wasn’t about to have it taken away from me. Not from Jess or a missing horse or a stupid case of walking pneumonia.
My father grumbled that in his day girls rode with flu and colds and pneumonia as well as broken arms, legs and backs. I wanted to remind him that he hadn’t ridden with his busted ankle and even once it had healed it had still been a while before he got back in the saddle again but I knew that he wasn’t in the mood and he would never force me to ride. Besides, it looked like Cat wasn’t going to let him anyway. She’d suddenly become my grand defender and she shuffled me up to bed as soon as we got home with the promise of a toasted cheese sandwich and a hot cup of coffee.
I sat in bed looking out the window. I felt pretty sick but I hated being forced to rest just as much as my father hated it. I wanted to be working my horses. Instead I was forced to watch from behind the glass. Outside I could see Bluebird in the field with Arion and Hashtag. The wind lifted their tails as they grazed and Arion heard something that made him spook. He took off across the field and the others went with him, gray, chestnut and bay galloping together and circling the field a couple of times before settling down to graze again.
Jordan was out there working on the fences. Bourbon and Bailey were in the back field and the foal, Chantilly and Bandit were in the little paddock. The rest of the horses were in the barn. I slunk down below the window ledge, not wanting Jordan to see me. Not that he could from that far away anyway but I’d seen him stop what he was doing and look up to the house. Look up to my very window. It was like he knew I was in there, watching him and that I wasn’t out there looking for Wizard.
Straining my neck I looked over to Jess’s farm. Now that the grass was dead and the trees were bare, I could see more than I could before. A corner of the barn. A couple of horses out in the fields. No black ones though. Jess would never be brazen enough to turn Wizard out when she knew that we were looking for him.
“You need to stop worrying about that horse,” Cat said when she brought up the food. “You’ll worry yourself half to death.”
“I can’t help it,” I said. “What if we never get him back?”
“You can’t think about it right now.” She put the tray on the bed. “You just have to concentrate on getting better.”
“I will be better after I’ve taken the antibiotics,” I said. “Worry has nothing to do with it.”
“Worrying can slow your recovery,” she said.
“Thanks nursemaid,” I said, lying back on the pillow. “I just want to pretend that this is a cold or something and I want it to go away so I can get back to riding as fast as I can.”
“And you will,” Cat said, holding out a fat white pill. “Just as soon as you take your medicine.”
“Yes Mom,” I said with a grin, taking the pill.
Neither of us mentioned the fact that my own mother was somewhere in the house, ignoring me.
Later, I saw Jordan come up to the front of the house where his motorbike was parked. I watched as Cat went out to talk to him. They stood there for a while, her talking and moving her hands about while she did and Jordan nodding every now and then. For a moment I felt a pang of jealousy like maybe Cat was taking advantage of the fact that I was out of action and was swooping in to steal Jordan from me. But then I remembered that he’d never really been mine in the first place and that she was probably just telling him that I was sick. He looked up to my window as Cat walked back to the house. This time I knew that he could see me but he didn’t wave and neither did I. Then he got on his bike and rode away.
Later, when Cat came up to check on me, I pretended to be asleep. I didn’t want to hear what Jordan had to say. I knew that with each passing day, the likelihood that we would find Wizard was getting less and less. He was slipping away from us and as he did, Jordan was slowly slipping away from me and Taylor was going to sue us and that would be the end of Second Chance Farm.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
It turned out that being sick was pretty boring and being forced to stay in bed was even worse. I slept more than I thought I would and I was coughing less but maybe that was just because I was nice and warm in my blanket fort and not out in the freezing cold weather riding horses and mucking stalls.
I spent a lot of time staring out the window, watching my horses graze and play. I ca
ught Cat sneaking out to spend time with the foal when she thought that no one was looking, taking him out of his paddock and away from the mare and miniature. She had his little halter on a long lead rope and she walked him around and let him graze and then took him further and further away until she had him all the way up by the ring and out of sight. I was impressed. She may not have known what she was doing but she was actually helping to wean him away from the nurse mare, which was really going to help him when the time came for her to go back to the clinic.
Molly came out and worked both her horses. Cora snuck in and out when my father was at the feed store but I didn’t think that she managed to get Oscar out of his stall because she just went into the barn for a little while and then came out again and left.
Jordan came back and finished the fencing but he didn’t come into the house to see me. He probably wouldn’t want to see me ever again. I sunk back on my pillows feeling sorry for myself.
To pass the time I watched show jumping rounds with my laptop balanced on my knees as the great riders of the past completed complicated courses and amazing jump off rounds. I tried to soak up everything I could from the way they rode. It wasn’t as good as riding myself but it was better than nothing. When I got too tired, I closed my eyes and imagined myself riding Bluebird at the show. I could see our round clearly in my mind's eye even though I didn’t know the layout of the course. His ears pricked as we cantered over the fences easily, head high as we galloped in the jump off round. I knew that this time our team would do better. This time we wouldn’t come away with our tails between our legs. This time we would win.
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
The day before the show, I was finally allowed out of bed. I’d stopped coughing up gross looking stuff and my lungs didn’t hurt as much anymore so that was good enough for me. I ran down the stairs and out into the fresh air like someone who had been cooped up for months, not just a few days.
I threw my arms out wide and twirled around a couple of times for good measure, gulping in the fresh air. Then I coughed. Maybe I wasn’t quite up to twirling just yet.
“Ready to get back to work?” Dad said.
“Of course.” I grinned.
I grabbed my pony from his field and quickly tacked him up. Bluebird was so happy to see me that he kept nuzzling my arm though that may have been more because he had missed his treats than that he had missed me.
“I’ve only been up in the house,” I told him. “I didn't go anywhere. I’ve been watching you.”
I ruffled his forelock as he rubbed his face on my arm. He was looking scruffy and a little hairy but I wouldn’t have time to clip him. Now Macaroni would look better than my own pony. I just hoped that Duncan wouldn’t give me a hard time over it. Perhaps if I made his braids look extra nice, maybe he wouldn’t look as bad.
Out in the ring my pony was fresh and full of himself. He let me know that he was ready to work by throwing in a couple of bucks before we even got started.
“Steady boy.” I stroked his neck to get him to settle.
We had a good lesson. I knew that we would. It wasn’t like Bluebird would suddenly forget what he was doing. In fact I think that the extra few days off had been good for him.
“What about Arion?” I said when we had finished. “Can I get a lesson on him too?”
“I think you can school him yourself,” Dad said, looking at his watch. “I have somewhere to be.”
“Where are you going?” I asked him, jumping to the ground and giving Bluebird a sugar cube.
“Never you mind,” he said as he walked off.
Dad was still holding his secrets close to his chest. I couldn’t get him to talk. Maybe he didn’t trust me. Maybe he thought I was still just a little kid. Maybe I always would be in his eyes. I put Bluebird away and got Arion out of the field. I didn’t need him to give me another lesson anyway. I could take everything he’d told me and apply it to the ride on my gray horse and besides, I knew what I was doing.
I think Dad thought that taking Arion to the show was a bad idea. A distraction. But just because he wasn’t a team horse, didn’t mean that he shouldn’t go to shows. In fact I needed him now more than ever. I needed to make some money and that meant that I really needed to win.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
Duncan sent everyone lengthy text messages, telling us that we’d better get to the show at the crack of dawn or we’d be in deep trouble. There was a team schooling session scheduled for nine in the morning and I already knew that my class with Arion was at ten thirty. It was going to be cutting it really close. After I’d finished riding Arion, both him and Bluebird got long baths and then they went in their stalls to dry because I didn’t trust them not to roll, especially Arion. There was nothing a gray horse liked to do more after a bath than roll in the dirt and I didn’t have time to bathe him twice.
This meant that Socks got to go out in the big field where he ran around like an idiot, spooking and snorting at the other horses. You’d think that he never went outside at all. I guess he was finally feeling better now that his sheath had returned to normal horse size instead of super-sized. And I worried about the fact that he wasn’t my team horse anymore. When Missy found out would she want to take him back? In the back of my mind was the excuse that he could be my back up horse if anything happened with Bluebird like he threw a shoe or got a stone bruise or something but deep in my heart I knew that Arion was actually good enough to be my back up now and so I didn’t really need Socks anymore.
“You guys behave,” I told my two show horses as I gave them hay to keep them busy. “And no rolling in your stalls.”
But luckily both Bluebird and Arion were pigs so they wouldn’t even think about doing something like that until they had finished their piles of hay and by then they’d be dry anyway.
“Are you sure you are well enough to go to the show?” Cat asked me.
She was standing in the doorway to my bedroom, watching me pack my clothes later.
“I feel a lot better,” I told her. “Thank you for making me go to the doctor.”
“Well you can’t win if you don’t feel your best,” she said with a grin.
“It’s not just about winning,” I said, folding up a pair of breeches. “It’s about not letting the team down.”
“And winning.” She smiled but then her face fell. “I’m sorry we didn’t find Jordan’s horse,” she said.
Wizard. I’d done everything I could to block both him and Jordan out of my mind but it was Valentine’s weekend and that made it hard. There were chocolates and hearts and declarations of love everywhere and the only person I’d ever really felt a connection to was the very same person I’d let down. And more than that, I worried for Wizard’s safety. It was almost better to think that someone had stolen him because then at least he would be fed and taken care of. The alternative was too horrible to think about. That one day someone would come upon his lifeless corpse out in the woods or half buried in some swampy piece of land. I couldn’t let myself think that had happened and I refused to, otherwise I’d fall apart and never make it through the show.
“I just hope he is okay,” I said with a sigh.
“I’m sure he is,” Cat said. “Besides, you can ask people at the show if they’ve seen him.”
“Yes,” I said. “That is a good idea. I will.”
But I didn’t really think it was a good idea because Jess would be there and I still believed that she had Wizard locked up in her barn and that night I was going to prove it. I was going to go over there and sneak another look and if he was inside their barn, I’d call the cops and Jess would be forever labelled a horse thief and everyone would finally know how horrible she really was.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
I had to wait until everyone was asleep. I lay there staring at the ceiling, knowing that if I wanted to be any good at the show tomorrow then I should be sleeping too. But my gut told me that Jess was up to something and that Sam had been covering for her
boss. Of course there were lots of reasons that she could be doing so.
Jess and her father were underhanded. I wouldn’t put it past them to drug their horses or rap them when they were jumping, having someone hold the pole and then raise it up as the horse jumped so that no matter how well he cleared the fence, he hit his legs and next time jumped higher. There were a million and one shady techniques, most of which were illegal and could get you banned from showing for life. And I didn’t really want to know what other horrible things Jess might have been up to but I just had to know if Wizard was in her barn or not. I couldn’t face her at the show tomorrow unless I knew for sure.
It was well after midnight when the house finally fell silent. All I could hear were the noises the old house made, groaning to itself as its plumbing rattled and rumbled. Meatball was asleep by my feet and when I tried to move them, he grabbed a foot and dug his claws through the blanket.
“You can have the whole bed to yourself,” I said as I extracted my foot from his grasp. “I’ll be back later.”
The orange cat looked at me, his amber eyes blinking in the dim light, sighed and then curled himself up into a tight ball, almost instantly back asleep. He couldn’t be bothered with silly humans who got up in the middle of the night to go trespassing on other people’s property and I knew that I shouldn’t let Jess get to me again but I couldn’t help myself. I had to know.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
I made it down the creaky stairs and out into the dark night without anyone hearing me. The moon was full and it cast eerie shadows across the farm. I’d grabbed my jacket and a flashlight but I still shivered, more from nerves than anything. I knew what I was doing was wrong. If Jess snuck over onto our farm in the middle of the night I wouldn’t stop until she’d been arrested but that was because I would have known that she was there to harm our horses. I didn’t want to harm anything, I only wanted to look.
Heart Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 27) Page 6
