Summer Rider (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 31)

by Claire Svendsen

  I wanted to add that she’d missed me too but Esther just looked hot and mad so I waved goodbye and rode my gray Thoroughbred back home. Now that he was tired I let the reins hang loose on his neck and stretched my feet out of the stirrups. He’d done a good job today and I told him so as I patted him on the neck. He proceeded to thank me by spooking at nothing and nearly dumping me off. I guess he wasn’t quite so tired after all.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “How was your ride?” Dad asked.

  He was in the barn with Jordan. They’d managed to pick up some more stall fronts and our barn was expanding nicely. It may have been a bit mismatched and homemade but I didn’t even care anymore. Hurricane season was already here and if we couldn’t bring all the horses in if and when a storm hit, I didn’t know what I’d do. I guess Esther would squeeze the leftover horses into her barn but she had horses coming in from Europe. I didn’t even know if she’d have any stalls left after that.

  “It was great,” I said, not telling Dad that Arion nearly unseated me. “Esther gave Hanna and me a lesson.”

  “Is she good?” he asked.

  “Esther?” I said,

  “No, the other girl. Is she good,” he said again.

  “Yes,” I said. “She is.”

  “As good as you?” Dad probed further.

  “Maybe.” I shrugged. “Why?”

  “Well maybe you shouldn’t ride with her then,” Dad said.

  “Why not?” I said, feeling hot and annoyed. “She’s the only friend I have left around here and we push each other to be better.”

  “If you say so,” Dad said. “But don’t be surprised if she tries to prove she’s better than you.”

  “She wouldn’t do that,” I said, pulling Arion’s stinking, sweaty tack off with a huff.

  “People will do anything to get to the top,” he said. “Even if that means climbing over their friends and stabbing them in the back.”

  “Hanna isn’t Jess,” I said. “You don’t know her.”

  “Neither do you,” Dad replied.

  He didn’t say anything else and I took Arion out to the wash rack where he spent far too much time playing with the hose rather than actually being bathed by it. I didn’t laugh like I usually did when I sprayed his face and he flapped his lip in the stream of water. Now I just felt uneasy. Dad had planted seeds in my mind that were growing bigger by the minute. Would Hanna really stab me in the back? I was pretty sure she wouldn’t but then again Dad was right. I didn’t really know her at all.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Working horses in the summer in Florida was what I had to imagine torture might be. You had to make sure that both you and your horses didn’t overheat. That you both stayed hydrated and you also had to contend with flies, mosquitos and the endless sun beating down on you. Despite using a ton of sunscreen, my arms were still a toasty brown color and yet when I peeled my sweaty clothes off at the end of the day, the rest of my body was a pasty white color. The so called farmer's tan and the least glamorous look ever. It was a good job that I didn’t care about stuff like that. Mickey did though. I wondered if she laid out in the sun after she rode in her bathing suit to even out the tan or secretly used a spray on because she never looked as bad as I did.

  But despite the heat, the thunderstorms and the fact that my mother had tried to ruin us. Things were looking up at Second Chance Farm. Jordan and my dad made a good team. They worked together without hardly saying a word, cleaning stalls and spreading manure while I fed and worked the horses and made sure no one got rain rot or fungus or any other coat nasties that always seemed to pop up in the summer. And it was apparently now my job to work Wizard for Jordan and Falcon for Faith. My white board was looking a little more crowded and a lot messier but I loved having my days full of riding. I may not have been living the show life dream but I was still living a pretty amazing dream of my own.

  Faith, on the other hand, wasn’t so happy with how her summer was going.

  “I hate my parents,” she said as she tacked Falcon up the next day.

  It was early, I’d tried to convince her mother that the earlier she brought Faith out to ride, the easier it would be on the girl and her pony. Faith’s mom hadn’t sounded very enthusiastic at the idea of getting up super early and mumbled something about how she thought they got rid of the pony with heat issues. I was glad that Faith wasn’t around to hear her mother say that because I knew that it would have broken her heart. She still missed Macaroni and kept talking about how she was going to get to go and see him next month. I just told Faith’s mother that if she didn’t want her daughter fainting off the back of her pony then she should bring her out as early as she could. So even though it wasn’t really right of Faith to say that she hated her parents, I knew why she said it, even if she didn’t mean it.

  “No you don’t,” I told her, putting boots on the pony to speed things along because Faith was dragging her feet.

  “Yes, I do,” she said, her voice firm. “Just like you hate your mother.”

  She had a point. I couldn’t exactly tell her that things between my mother and I were all rainbows and sunshine and she was too smart for me to lie to her.

  “That’s different,” I said.

  “How?” she said.

  “My mother has done horrible things to us. All your parents want is a better life for you. If you go to school and become a lawyer or a doctor, think of all the money you’ll have to buy really great horses and travel to fancy shows. You know there is no money to be made in the horse world. Look at us.”

  She looked around our half-finished barn but I could tell she didn’t care.

  “I don’t care,” she said, confirming what I already knew. “If I have to spend my whole life cooped up in an office, I’ll just die. I want to be with horses every second of every day just like you. Not just on weekends.”

  “It’s not as glamorous as it sounds,” I told her. “Do you know what I had to do this morning?”

  “What?” she said.

  “Clean sheaths and scoop poop out of Bourbon’s feed tub again. It’s not all about riding and going to shows.”

  “I know that,” she said sounding all stubborn again. “And I don’t care.”

  “Well come on then,” I told her. “It’s already fifty million degrees outside so let's get on with this lesson so that you can be a world famous show jumper.”

  “Sounds good to me,” she said, grabbing her helmet and her crop.

  The lesson went about as well as to be expected, which was to say not really that well at all. Faith and Falcon were still figuring each other out. He was a strong pony, both mentally and physically and it took all of Faith’s energy and strength to control him and get him to do what she wanted. I’d set up a little gymnastic exercise for them, a grid of bounce fences ending in a small oxer and I’d place guide poles so that Falcon would stay straight and sort of be funneled into them as he had a tendency to wiggle. He also had a tendency to put in much more effort than he needed to and jump Faith out of the tack. As a result, she kept collapsing on his neck. It wasn’t a pretty sight.

  “It’s a good job you’re not doing the hunters,” I told her as I let her walk to catch her breath.

  “Well we’re not,” she said defiantly. “We’re doing the jumpers and no one cares what we look like.”

  “That is true,” I told her. “But if you’re collapsing on your pony’s neck the whole time, you can’t focus on the next fence. It’s easy enough when you are just jumping in a straight line but what about when you have to jump a course?”

  “Well how do I get him to stop jumping so big?” she said.

  “Do you really want to?” I asked her. “Squashing his talent down to meet yours isn’t exactly fair on him is it? I thought you wanted to advance not go backwards.”

  “I do,” Faith said, her face all determined again. “So tell me what to do.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  In the end I shortened Faith’s stirrup
s and went to get a neck strap from the tack room. When I came back with it, she looked unimpressed.

  “Neck straps are for babies,” she said.

  “Neck straps are a training tool,” I told her, fastening the leather loop around Falcon’s neck. “Now when he jumps I want you to wait for him, grab the neck strap and try to keep your body nice and tight in the saddle. Really push those heels down. Got it?”

  “Okay,” Faith grumbled. “But I still think neck straps are something beginners use.”

  “Did you know,” I told her. “That some people can ride their horse using only a neck strap?”

  “What, without a bridle?” she said.

  “Without a bridle.” I nodded. “They can jump and do dressage and everything just controlling their horse with that one strap around his neck. Now that’s not something a beginner would do, is it?”

  “No way,” she said. “That is so cool. Do you think we could teach Falcon how to do that?”

  “How about we teach him how to jump in a straight line first?” I told her.

  “Alright,” she said with a sigh.

  But the neck strap and the shorter stirrups worked, as did me yelling heels down at her every five minutes.

  “You know,” I said when the lesson was over. “I have to agree with you. Your mother really should be bringing you out here every day to ride. It's the summer. Now is your chance to really get a handle on riding your pony. By the time school starts again, you’ll be behind if you don’t.”

  “See?” Faith said. “Can you tell her? Please?”

  “She doesn’t really like me very much,” I said. “Maybe Dad can talk to her about it.”

  “Awesome, thank you,” Faith said, letting Falcon rub his slobber on her shirt as they walked back to the barn.

  The only problem was that I was pretty sure Faith’s mom didn’t like my dad any better than she liked me. I’d have to talk to him about it though. I left Faith hosing down her very sweaty pony and went looking for him. I finally found him in the kitchen on the phone.

  “Yes, I think that would be a very good idea,” Dad said. “Thank you for giving her the opportunity. Goodbye.”

  I went to the fridge and poured a glass of orange juice. “What would be a very good idea?” I said.

  I knew that he had to be talking about me. Who else would he be talking about. And I didn’t like the fact that people were talking to my father about me. Why couldn’t they just call me? It wasn’t as if I didn’t have a phone and I was always professional. I couldn’t wait until I wasn’t considered a child anymore. I guess people thought I needed my dad’s permission before I did anything and it was really annoying.

  “I know you were talking about me,” I said. “So you might as well spill it.”

  “Yes, I was,” Dad said. “Sit down.”

  “Wait, is this good news or bad news?” I said, all thoughts of talking about Faith forgotten.

  Now I could only think that maybe something bad had happened. Like Grace, the mare with the broken leg had been put to sleep and he didn’t know how to tell me. That maybe he was going to send me away so that I didn’t have a nervous breakdown over it or something. Everything was going so well. I had my whole summer planned out. I didn’t need any bad news. I literally couldn’t take any more.

  “Don’t worry,” Dad said. “It’s good news.”

  “Really?” I said, my palms still sweating.

  “Really,” he replied.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  I thought the good news would probably be something boring. Dad was good at making dull things sound like they were fantastic. I still remembered when he tried to make me look on the bright side after dropping my ice cream. Of course I was only five at the time and there was no bright side. It was clearly the end of the world. So I thought maybe it was someone wanting me to ride their horse or a new boarder coming in, a kid like Faith who I could teach and as I waited for him to tell me, I thought that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if Faith had another girl her age to ride with like I now had Hanna. Only it wasn’t that at all.

  “Have you heard of Rae Willingham?” Dad said.

  “Of course I have, who hasn’t,” I replied.

  Rae was the daughter of some big real estate mogul who had lost all his cash when the housing market crashed. She’d been the darling of the hunter circuit as a child, winning everything on her pre-made ponies and then as a teenager she’d set her sights on the medals and of course she’d won them too. When you had lots of money and a little talent, you could go further than someone with lots of talent but not enough money to even get to the shows. And when her father’s money had run dry, she’d fallen off the face of the earth.

  “I guess she couldn’t hack it without the money,” I said. “No one has seen her for a few years now.”

  “That’s because she’s been building her own string of jumpers,” Dad said. “Competing in Europe.”

  “Great,” I said. “Good for her.”

  But I didn’t say it like I thought it was good for her. I said it like I was annoyed because I was. Yet another rider had gone off to Europe and found themselves while I was stuck here. How was I ever going to make it when I couldn’t even afford a plane ticket?

  “What happened? Did her father win the lottery or something?” I tapped at the table with my nails feeling angry and sullen.

  “No,” Dad said. “She’s been making it on her own but look, if you don’t like her then I might as well not even tell you.”

  “It’s not that I don’t like her,” I said. “I don’t even know her. It’s just that I don’t like the idea of her.”

  “Well you’d better get over it,” Dad said. “Because she wants you on the road with her for a month as a working student.”

  “Wait, on the road, like, leave here for a whole month? No way,” I said.

  “You would have been gone for three weeks if you went to Europe,” Dad said.

  “That was different.” I put my hand down to rub Patrick’s face feeling sulky.

  The black dog had come to sit beside me and nudged me with his nose as if to say that it was okay. He could always tell when my emotions were about to get the better of me.

  “This will be different too,” Dad said. “You’ll be travelling to some of the best summer shows in the country. Getting to see what real show life is like. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  “I guess,” I said.

  And it was. I just wasn’t sure I was ready and I didn’t want to leave my horses behind but I knew I couldn’t exactly take all of them with me.

  “Do you think maybe she’d let me take Bluebird?” I asked him hopefully.

  “I think the idea is that you help her out by riding her horses,” Dad said. “And doing a million and one other things. You’re not going to have time to goof off.”

  “I don’t want to goof off,” I said. “But I don’t want my pony to have a whole month off work either. If I can’t take him then I’m not going.”

  “Fine,” Dad said. “I’ll ask but can’t you just be excited about something for once in your life?”

  “I’ll be excited when you tell me I can take Bluebird,” I said.

  But the more I thought about it as the day went on, the more I realized that Dad was right. This was an amazing opportunity. I wanted to go to the big shows and I knew that right now we didn’t have the money to do so. Quite frankly I wasn’t sure if we ever would. This would be my way in. Getting my foot in the door. Mingling with all the top riders. And Rae had asked for me. How did she even know about me? It was like the planets had aligned or something and finally the world was going to give me my chance and I was just about to tell Dad that I would sacrifice a whole month with my pony just this one time when he came over with a grin on his face.

  “She said you can bring your pony along,” he said.

  “Really?” I yelled, jumping up and down. “Thank you, oh thank you.”

  “Don’t thank me,” he said as I hugged h
im. “Thank Rae.”

  “I will,” I said. “I can’t wait to meet her.”

  “I thought you didn’t like the idea of her,” Dad said, teasing me now.

  “I’ve changed my mind,” I said.

  “That happens a lot.” Dad shook his head.

  “Well I am a teenager.” I shrugged. “I’m still figuring out what I want.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  That evening I tacked up Bluebird. I was going to ride him over to Sand Hill and tell Esther the good news. Now that it had really sunk in, I was super excited to be going. I knew that Dad had Jordan and they’d be able to take care of the running of the farm. Dad would teach Faith while I was gone and I was going to ask Hanna if she’d be able to come over and ride the other horses while I was gone. Not every day but if she at least kept them ticking over for me while I was gone then they wouldn’t be in such a mess when I got back.

  “This is going to be so great for us,” I told Bluebird as I fastened his throat latch. “We’ll get to mingle with all these really amazing riders and I guess we might even get to show as well. How cool will that be?”

  Bluebird swished his tail and looked bored. As I buckled his boots, Meatball came over and rubbed against me, begging to be petted. Since Patrick had arrived, he’d been spending more time in the barn, which was where Dad said cats should really live anyway but I missed having him around in the house all the time. The only bonus was that the rat population was quickly dwindling to nothing. I still hadn’t got over the day when I opened the grain bin and a rat jumped out at me. I have no idea how it even got in there in the first place but now I had to knock the lid off with a broom handle just so that I didn’t have a heart attack.

  “I’m sorry you don’t like Patrick very much,” I told the fat orange cat as I scooped him up in my arms.

  He started to purr and I scratched the spot under his chin that he always liked to have rubbed.