Unlike the farm Walter Grey had rented where we rode along a bridle path sandwiched between fancy farms and expensive horses, here we took a longer trail along a wooded path. Hanna rode Hemi and I was on Bluebird while five of Rae’s students tagged along. She was in front on the big gray, Infanta. The mare was adorable, a real sweetheart in the stable, unlike some of the client’s horses who acted like they might kill you if you looked at them wrong. But Infanta reminded me of Arion and I missed my big gray gelding and all the other horses.
I’d been texting Dad everyday just like I promised I would and he’d usually reply with an okay or a good job but he never told me what was happening back at home and by the time I got a free minute to call him, it was usually too late. I longed to hear his voice and to know how everyone was doing. Had Falcon jumped out of his paddock again? Was Phoenix accepting his new life as a gelding. Had Sunny been okay on the lunge line? These were the things I thought about before I drifted off to sleep but since I was so exhausted, it usually wasn’t long after my head hit the pillow that I was asleep and then in what felt like five minutes we were getting the now familiar knock on the door before dawn to wake us up.
“I’m so tired I could just fall out of my saddle,” Hanna said.
She was lagging behind on Hemi. Her bay gelding being silly and fresh. He’d already spooked at a bunch of weeds and almost unseated Hanna who was holding the reins in one hand and not wearing her helmet. Rae hadn’t made her. In fact, a lot of the time she didn’t wear hers when she was schooling either. I wanted to tell both of them that it only took one wrong fall to put you in a coma but I knew that Hanna would just scoff and tell me I was being a baby and I didn’t have the nerve to dare say anything to Rae. After all she was my boss and I was sure she knew what she was doing, even if she wasn’t setting a very good example. Lots of people didn’t wear helmets when they rode and even though that didn’t make it right, I wasn’t brave enough or bold enough to go around telling them all that they were taking an extra risk every time they rode without one.
“At least we’re finally getting off the farm,” I told Hanna.
“Whoopdedoo,” she said, rolling her eyes.
“What is the matter with you?” I said, not able to take it anymore. “If you didn’t want to come then why did you? This is supposed to be fun.”
“Fun?” she said. “I don’t feel like cleaning stalls from dusk until dawn and taking orders from rich people is fun.”
“Well what did you think a working student was?” I asked her.
“Nothing like this,” she said.
She kicked Hemi and he took off at a ragged canter. I let her go on ahead, not willing to let her ruin my good mood.
There were fluffy clouds in the sky and it was maybe three degrees cooler than it had been. A breeze rustled through the trees and cooled my flushed skin and the weathermen had promised rain for later. Rae wanted us to school at the showgrounds and then get back before the storms hit. The first classes started tomorrow and most of the students were entered. Rae hadn’t said anything about us riding yet but I was still hopeful. And I wanted to cheer Hanna up and get her out of her funky mood only I didn’t know how.
CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN
By this point one showgrounds pretty much looked like any other. You had the stabling, both permanent and temporary depending on how big the show was, the class rings, the warm up rings, the concession stands and the tack tents. If it was a really big show you had more of those things and if it was smaller you had less and since our barn was modest and the trail to the show grounds was basically through dense abandoned woods, I’d expected to come out on the other side to a smaller, quieter show. I couldn’t have been more wrong.
We hacked down the trail and out of the woods into one of the biggest shows I’d ever been to. There were horses and riders everywhere. A loudspeaker was announcing that all riders needed to check in and get their numbers and that you weren’t allowed in the rings without one. There were flagpoles by the main ring with real flags flapping in the breeze, snapping against their strings as they billowed back and forth and music was playing somewhere in the background. A Jumbotron was positioned in the far corner of the ring, raised up on wooden legs so that everyone would be able to see all the action that was broadcast, a cameraman filming the rounds and livestreaming them up onto it. I felt like we were movie stars or something.
“Wow,” I mumbled.
“Impressed?” Shelby asked.
She was riding a client’s horse over, a plain bay with one sock and looked completely at ease whereas I suddenly felt like a small fish in a very big pond.
“Yeah.” I nodded, looking around and trying to take it all in.
“Don’t worry.” She grinned. “We came here last year and I felt exactly like you do now.”
“Overwhelmed?” I asked.
“And excited,” she said.
“Did you get to compete?” I asked her as we all followed behind Rae at a walk.
“Well I didn’t bring my own horse,” she said. “But I did get to ride in a class when one of Rae’s students got heat stroke.”
“Did you win?” I asked her.
“Hardly,” she replied. “I was lucky to get round in one piece. The riders here are really good. You may think you’re good but these shows will knock you down a peg or two.”
I wondered if that was why my father and Esther had been so keen for me to come and why Hanna hadn’t been so happy about it. It was one thing to win at home but at big shows out on the road? That was another thing altogether. I’d wanted to prove myself in Europe but suddenly I realized that maybe it was more important to prove myself at home first.
Julio had driven over in the golf cart with Theresa and a bunch of supplies. They met us at the warm up ring with our numbers, buckets of water for the horses and bottles of water for us. They had also brought a helmet for Hanna, which she took reluctantly.
“It’s so hot,” the youngest of Rae’s students moaned.
Trixie was only seven and had a spunky buckskin pony who reminded me of Macaroni. And although she was spoiled I think she knew that she was lucky to be riding with Rae, who usually only took on teenage and adult clients.
“Go and stand in the shade,” Theresa told her. “I’ll look after Peter Pan.”
We all took turns standing in the shade while we waited for Rae to tell us when we could ride. The warm up ring was crowded and there was a steward at the gate who was controlling the amount of horses that were in there. Traffic jams were apparently a real thing at the big shows and I guess the last thing the organizers needed was expensive horses crashing into one another.
Hanna was talking on the phone as she waited. I wondered if she was speaking to Esther. I wanted to find out but since Hanna and I weren’t exactly on best friend terms right now, I left her alone. Instead I talked to Shelby, trying to find out how best to get on Rae’s good side.
“Do what she wants when she wants.” Shelby shrugged. “And if you can do it before she even asks you to then you’ll get extra brownie points.”
I watched as Rae jumped over one of the warm up fences with her big mare. Infanta grunted as she launched in the air and then landed with a buck.
“She’s fresh,” I said.
“Rae can’t afford to get the best horses,” Shelby said. “Not anymore. Now she has to buy the troubled castoffs that no one else wants.”
“Talented cast offs,” I said as Infanta jumped at least two feet higher than she needed to over the next jump.
“True.” Shelby nodded.
“I want to be just like her one day,” Trixie said with a sigh.
“Me too,” I agreed.
And I didn’t feel at all awkward admitting that I wanted the same thing as a seven-year-old.
CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT
Hanna was upset by the time she got off the phone. She handed Hemi’s reins to me and stormed off to the bathroom. When she finally came back, I pulled her to one side.
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“What is wrong with you?” I asked her. “Don’t you want to be here?”
“No,” she said, tears filling her eyes. “I don’t.”
“But why not?” I whispered so that no one else would hear. “I don’t understand. This is a really great opportunity for us. I thought you wanted this. Why are you blowing it?”
“I wanted to come as a real student, not a working one,” she sobbed, the tears now spilling down her face. “Esther promised that she’d pay for me to come and ride with Rae and then at the last minute she said that I had to be a working student because you were and now she won’t even come and get me.”
The realization that Esther’s father must have left her more money than I could have imagined hit me like a ton of bricks. That was why she’d been able to buy Sand Hill and renovate it. How she was able to import horses and not have to worry about getting in boarders and teaching lessons. And she’d promised her niece that she’d pay for her to train with Rae and gone back on her word because I was going to be working my tail off and Esther probably didn’t want me to feel bad about it. No wonder Hanna had been so mad at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “If it's my fault, I truly am sorry but look around you. Look where we are. At least we’re lucky to be here and we have to make the best of it.”
“Do we?” she said, wiping her nose on the back of her hand. “Because I just want to go home.”
I knew that if Esther had said that she wasn’t going to come and get Hanna then she meant it and I knew that my father would have said the same thing. He would have told me that I had to honor my word and see this thing through to the end and that was what Hanna was going to have to do as well.
“Come on,” I told her. “Look, Rae is calling us over. I bet we’ll get to ride now. Maybe she’ll even give us a few pointers.”
“Do you always have to look on the bright side of everything?” Hanna asked me as she took Hemi’s reins back.
I just laughed because up until a few weeks ago I’d been a girl who found it really hard to look on the bright side of anything and I knew that the dark side was still lurking inside me. She’d never really go away but for now I’d put her in a box because I was going to enjoy my summer no matter how hot it was or how hard we had to work. We were on the road with a top rider and we were here at a show that I’d never have been able to afford to go to on my own and I was going to make the most of it no matter what happened.
CHAPTER THIRTY NINE
Rae let us ride in the warm up ring and even gave us a few tips. It was really hot and that meant Bluebird was too tired to be naughty. I’d seen him eyeing the flags and I knew that he’d wanted to spook and show off. Even now he had his thick pony neck arched as we approached one of the warm up jumps.
“More leg,” Rae called out.
I wasn’t sure Bluebird needed any more but I did what she said and my pony popped over the fence with more spring than I’d expected. I asked him to walk and snuck a look over at Rae to see if she was impressed by my jumping pony. If she was, I couldn't tell.
Hanna was having trouble with Hemi. I don’t think that the gelding had ever been to a show like this before. He was acting up and when Rae told Hanna to jump him over one of the smaller fences, he ran out. Hanna was red faced and not just because of the heat. I knew she was mad that she had to be there as a working student and now I knew she was mad at me too. Hemi was feeding off all her raw emotions. It wasn’t his fault.
She circled him and asked again but he was having none of it. In the end Rae told her to let the horse walk and that they would school him back at the barn. She had other students to teach, paying students. I knew that she couldn’t spend all her time babysitting Hanna and her horse. She moved on to Trixie and her little pony Peter Pan, who was quite the little jumping machine but even he had a refusal. To Trixie’s credit she circled her pony and made him jump the fence and even though he knocked it down, Rae clapped and told her that she’d done a good job.
“Alright everyone,” Rae finally said. “It’s really hot and the horses have had enough. Let’s get them back to the barn and cooled off.”
We walked along the trail back through the woods. At least it was shady, a nice break from the relentless sun. There were a few other people on it now, coming and going to the show grounds and it was only going to get worse. There was also a traffic jam in this one spot where we had to cross a stream and there was only one place where the ground was high enough to do so safely.
“Forget this,” Hanna said. “I’m not waiting any longer.”
“You’re going to go through the water?” Shelby asked, looking horrified. “But there could be a gator in there.”
“It’s not my fault there is a bottleneck,” she said. “And I don’t care.”
She kicked Hemi and he trotted through the swampy water. I was more worried about snakes than gators. A bite from a water moccasin would be just as deadly and I wasn’t taking any chances with my pony.
“Should we follow her?” Shelby asked.
“No,” I said. “Let her go. She’s just mad, that’s all.”
“It’s the heat.” Shelby said. “It drives people mad.”
“I don’t think that is the only thing driving her mad,” I said.
But I knew that it couldn’t be helping. Hanna came from Sweden, the land of snow and ice, at least in the winter anyway and she wasn’t used to the oppressive, humid heat of Florida. Even I was struggling not to overheat and I’d lived here a long time. But when the heat finally hit it was like it took all your energy. It sapped your strength so that you barely had enough to get through the day and while most of the population of the state were able to spend it in cold air conditioned buildings, we didn’t have that luxury.
“Do you know if the next show is going to be somewhere cooler?” I asked Shelby as the traffic jam cleared and we crossed the stream.
“I hope so,” she said, wiping the sweat from her eyes. “But I doubt it.”
CHAPTER FORTY
The storms swept in that afternoon, thunder and lightning crashing all around us but just because it was raining, that didn’t mean that we got to stand around. Most of the horses were entered in classes tomorrow and that meant Julio had compiled a checklist of who needed their bridle path clipped or whiskers trimmed up. Most of the horses needed some kind of touch up and so we went from stall to stall and made sure that all the horses would look their best.
Rae was on the phone most of the time when she wasn’t riding, talking to clients back home and arranging for new horses to come in. I stole looks at her out of the corner of my eye whenever I could. I’d had this fantasy that we would become the best of friends and that she would take me under her wing and declare that I was the best young rider that she’d ever seen and of course she would train me for free. The reality was that she’d hardly said two words to me since I’d been there other than the day when we first met her and I don’t think she was impressed with me at all. Maybe riders like me really were a dime a dozen and maybe she had seen a hundred ponies jump as well as Bluebird did. I guess it turned out that on the road we weren’t that special after all but I was still a lot happier to be there than Hanna was. She was still sulking and it wasn’t helping her situation any. Being miserable wasn’t going to make the time go by any faster.
I was already done with all my horses but Hanna was still in one of the stalls having trouble. I was used to preparing horses for shows and I knew that Hanna was too. It wasn’t like she was some novice who’d never done this before but because of her sour attitude, Julio had given her all the difficult horses to deal with while he’d given me the relatively easy ones. I guess I was on his good side after all.
“Need some help?” I asked Hanna as the chestnut mare she was trying to trim tipped up on her back feet and tried to rear.
“No,” she said through gritted teeth.
“That one needs a twitch,” Julio said as he walked past and saw the disaster unfolding.
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br /> “Would have been nice to know before,” Hanna said under her breath but Julio was already halfway down the aisle and he couldn’t hear her anyway.
“I’ll get it,” I told her.
I ran to the tack room to fetch the twitch and then held both it and the horse so that Hanna could trim up her bridle path.
“If one of these horses doesn’t kill us before we’re done, I’ll be surprised,” she said.
“I’ll finish up for you if you like,” I told her when we were done with the mare.
“Really?” she said. “Okay.”
She handed me the list of horses she still had to do and left without even saying thank you.
“You know, you won’t help her out by doing her work for her,” Rae said.
I hadn’t known that she was in the barn and my face flushed red as I realized that she was talking to me. I was on Julio’s good side but maybe I wouldn’t be now and Rae didn’t seem that amused either.
“She’s homesick,” I said.
“She’s lazy,” Rae corrected me.
“I don’t mind doing the work,” I said with a shrug.
“This business is tough enough as it is,” Rae said. “Do you want to be a groom all your life or do you want to be a rider?”
“I want to be a rider,” I said.
“Then start acting like one,” Rae told me. “I think you have talent but you’re just going to waste it if you let people walk all over you.”
Her phone rang and she answered it, walking off and leaving me standing there. I wanted to help Hanna but I didn’t want to seem like a pushover and now that was what Rae thought I was and I guess she was right. Just because Hanna was in a grumpy mood, didn’t mean that she should be able to get out of her work. Esther wouldn’t have approved either.
I found Hanna lounging on her bunk, her boots leaving a muddy trail to her bed. She had her hands behind her head and her eyes closed as she listened to music through her headphones. I prodded her and when she opened her eyes, I handed her back the to-do list.
Summer Rider (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 31) Page 9
