Charlie Franks is A-OK

by Cecily Anne Paterson

  ‘They’re just glad you’re not dead,’ said Ness. ‘As am I. It would have been awkward explaining that one to your mum and dad.’

  She sat me down on a camp chair next to the float. ‘Tessa’s sorting out Cupcake. She’ll get her a drink. I think we’ll go home after that. You need a rest.’

  Rob was fine to let me go home once he’d taken my blood pressure and poked me in different places to make sure I wasn’t somehow turning into a paralysed mess. Ness let me lie down on the back seat, with Tessa in the front.

  ‘You okay?’ said Tessa, constantly, turning around to look at me. ‘I couldn’t believe it when I saw you go off.’

  ‘Give her a break, Tessa,’ said Ness. ‘Everyone comes off sometime.’

  ‘I know. But not Charlie.’

  It was a long trip home, mostly because Ness didn’t want to drive too fast and jolt me, even though I assured her I wasn’t really bruised, but the further we went and the more I stiffened up, I knew I was definitely going to come out in black, blue and green the next day.

  Despite me protesting, Ness and Tessa said they’d look after Cupcake, getting her into the paddock and putting her stuff away in the shed, and would drop me off at the house on the way. They even offered to walk me in, but I refused.

  ‘It’s okay.’ I didn’t want any fuss. I limped in, my bag on my back and my jacket a dishevelled mess, hanging down off my shoulder.

  There was fuss.

  ‘What happened to you?’ Coco noticed me first. She swung her head around like she couldn’t believe what she was seeing. I must have looked pretty terrible, because I can’t ever remember her face looking quite so shocked at my appearance, not even the time we were supposed to go to a party in year six and I chose my oldest t-shirt and worst shorts, because they’d said we were having a water fight. Coco made me change to a dress and a stupid pair of sandals that kept making me slip on the wet tiles.

  ‘Did you get run over by a truck?’ said Josh. His face looked amused. ‘Like, a big truck. With hay falling out of it?’

  ‘Dad, look at Charlie,’ said Coco, still with disbelief all over her face. ‘What happened?’

  I found my words. ‘I was chucked off.’

  ‘Chucked off?’ said Coco. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Chucked off my horse.’

  ‘By Cupcake?’

  ‘Who else?’

  Dad stood up, like he’d just realised something was happening. ‘Charlie? Are you hurt?’

  ‘No.’ But then something happened to me. Tears came welling up out of my eyes, without any warning, and without any stopping. ‘I’m fine.’ But there was water all over my face and my nose was starting to run.

  ‘Sit down,’ said Dad. ‘You’ve had a shock. Did you get checked over by someone? Do we need to take you to hospital?’

  ‘I’m not going to hospital,’ I said fiercely, and stopped, surprised by myself. ‘The ambo guy, Rob. He said I was okay. Is Mum here?’

  ‘Mum’s in bed. She had a headache this afternoon and needed to sleep. Here.’ He held out a tissue to me. ‘You’ll be fine.’

  ‘I know.’ I held it up to my eyes, but the crying didn’t stop. I blinked hard and managed to stop the tears coming out of my eyes, but I could feel them making puddles in my throat.

  I looked over at Coco, who seemed stunned, just sitting on the edge of the sofa, almost frozen. ‘I just came straight off the back of Cupcake. Landed right on my back.’

  Coco swallowed hard. ‘Were you calm enough? If you’re calm, she’ll do anything for you.’

  I looked at her and blinked, and the pool of tears in my throat turned into a volcano that came pouring out of my mouth.

  ‘Calm enough? Of course I was calm enough. And even if I wasn’t calm enough, it wasn’t my fault. You said you’d be there at every event if I rode Cupcake. Maybe if you’d been there, like you promised, this wouldn’t have happened.’

  Coco’s face went white and then red, but my words wouldn’t stop.

  ‘Or maybe if you spent enough time with Cupcake in general, she’d be a better horse. You’re supposed to have this amazing bond and everything, but I hardly see you out there with her, and I’ve got to be super calm all the time, even though everything else is going wrong, and Baylor and my ribbon, and then stupid Jake Smith turns up?’ Now I wasn’t even making sense. I took a swipe at my eye with the tissue. ‘Far out. It’s hard enough just to ride, let alone look after an edgy horse.’

  My voice was loud and Dad was just kind of standing there, looking like he didn’t know what to do. Coco, on the other hand, knew exactly what to do. She launched in at me, her face red and her words breathless.

  ‘Sounds to me like someone didn’t pay attention to what they were doing. Can’t blame Cupcake for that, can we? And Baylor, again. I told you that you should have sorted that out, but no, you said you were fine. Fine, fine, fine. You’re not fine. And if you were fine, and the great rider and champion and winner that you keep wanting to be, why can’t you keep your mind on what you’re doing?’

  I gasped. ‘I am good. You know I am. It wasn’t my fault.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t my fault.’ She shook her head at me. ‘And it wasn’t Cupcake’s fault either. If you don’t want to ride her, don’t.’

  ‘I wouldn’t have chosen her, you know that,’ I nearly yelled. ‘But Fozzles is pregnant. And that’s not my fault.’

  ‘Well, it’s not my fault that Fozzles is pregnant either,’ yelled back Coco. ‘I shut that gate.’

  There was a silence. On the other side of the room, I saw Josh raise his eyebrows and grin.

  ‘You what?’ I said.

  Coco swallowed. ‘I said I shut the gate. The gate between the two paddocks. The one with George Michael in it.’

  I looked at her. ‘So it was you.’

  She hung her head, then she sat down. She looked white in the face. ‘Maybe. I don’t think so. But maybe. I always shut it, but then one time I noticed it was swinging a bit. I had to go back and do it again. Maybe George Michael got in that time and got Fozzles, you know …’ Her voice drifted off.

  ‘Pregnant.’ I said the word. ‘Got Fozzles pregnant.’

  ‘Fozzles might have chucked you off,’ tried Coco, lamely.

  ‘She never would have. Not ever.’ I walked over to the kitchen bin and put my wet tissue into it. ‘And I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.’

  I stomped outside onto the deck. Mum was still asleep, or at least, pretending to be. I don’t know how she could have kept sleeping through my outburst. Through the window to the lounge room, out of the corner of my eye, I saw Josh take out his phone and Coco sit back on the sofa. She looked like she was out of breath. Dad still looked lost.

  I would have to be fine. There was only a month to the Inter-schools event. Not only did I still need to train, now I’d have to recover from whatever horrible bruise I woke up with tomorrow morning. I’d have to also totally put stupid Jake Smith out of my mind, and I’d have to get my Championship ribbon back from Baylor somehow.

  All that in just a month.

  I ran through the timeline I’d been focusing on for the last few weeks. I needed to win at Inter-schools if I wanted to get to State. If I could do that, I’d be on track. Then, more training. Two weeks after Inter-schools, the baby would be born, and then, finally, I’d get Mum back, just in time to get to State.

  I sat down gingerly in the deck chair. Things hurt—my arms, my back and my bottom. There would probably be more pain tomorrow. It hadn’t been a good day, and it was going to be a hard month. The only good news in the whole thing was that Fozzles’ baby was nearly here. Sometime in the next three weeks, Ness had told me yesterday. She had already set up the foal alarm on Fozzles, and had the buzzer next to her in bed at night. She’d promised she’d call me when it went off.

  I stood up and moved carefully to the other side of the deck, where I could see Fozzles and Cupcake both grazing in the paddock down the hill. Fozzles, all roly poly enorm
ous, was flicking tails with Cupcake and I felt cross. They shouldn’t be friends. No one should be friends with Cupcake.

  ‘I hate her.’ The words formed on my lips without me even trying to say them. ‘I hate Cupcake,’ I said to myself, even though I knew I had to ride her again. Cupcake was my only option for getting to Inter-schools and beyond. But I didn’t want to touch her. I didn’t want to get up on her back. I didn’t want to jump with her.

  Not ever again.

  17

  Chapter 17

  Coco came into my room later. I was in bed, still cranky, and getting more and more achy every hour.

  She closed the door behind her, and then stood next to it, against the wall, like she didn’t want to intrude. ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘I know.’ I shifted my position and set off a dull pain in my back.

  ‘No, I really am.’ She came over and sat on my bed. ‘I’m actually apologising to you, okay? So don’t pretend it’s all fine and it doesn’t matter. This is a totally authentic Coco Franks apology. Dad didn’t even make me do it. You should enjoy this.’

  I looked at her through narrowed eyes. ‘Alriiiight …’

  ‘Here it is. I’m sorry I didn’t stay with you and Cupcake. I should have. I should have known Cupcake needed me there. I said I would and I didn’t, and this is what’s happened.’ Her voice was rushed and her face was flushed and I could tell from the way she was pulling her lips over her teeth, something she only did when she was nervous, that she was genuine.

  ‘It’s okay,’ I began, but she rushed in again, over me.

  ‘I’m also sorry for the other thing.’ Her face got redder.

  ‘What other thing?’ I said, puzzled.

  ‘You know. Getting Fozzles pregnant.’

  I laughed. ‘Um, you didn’t?’

  She hung her head. ‘I didn’t shut the gate. I knew I didn’t shut it. Ness told me not to let George Michael in that other paddock one time, and I totally didn’t do it. I only remembered it when it was too late.’ She made a face. ‘Obviously.’

  It clicked. I grinned. ‘That’s why you were so quick to offer Cupcake, isn’t it? It seemed really unlike you to be so generous.’

  Coco seemed offended. ‘I’m always generous. James says I am.’

  ‘James is in love with you.’ I laughed at her. ‘I’ve lived with you for fourteen years.’

  She sniffed. ‘Well, anyway. Out of my apparently un-generous heart I’ve just apologised to you. A double apology. So you can take it or chuck it. Your choice.’

  I sat up and hugged her. ‘I take it. But my back hurts, so don’t touch me. I’m going to be all colours of bruises at school on Monday.’ But the thought of school made my face drop. ‘Can you see my bag on the floor over there?’

  She leaned off the bed, stretched out to pick my bag up for me and dumped it on my knees. I winced, and lay back on the pillows. ‘Ow. Can you check in there for something for me?’

  Coco dug into the bag. ‘What is it?’

  I turned my head to the side so she wouldn’t see the embarrassment on my face. ‘It’s that ribbon I won. The Champion one. Purple and gold.’

  If Coco gave me a look I didn’t see it. I just waited, looking at the wall, while she sorted through my stuff.

  ‘Eeewww,’ she said, pulling out an old t-shirt and chucking it at my face. ‘That stinks.’

  I threw it back at her, without looking. ‘I’m putting it in the wash later.’

  ‘Yeah, but that’s really bad. Anyway, why are you still even wearing it? I thought we got rid of that one like, two months ago. We went through your clothes, remember?’

  I did remember. She’d insisted on making two piles of my things, one for keeping, and one for getting rid of, passing her own unique Coco-judgement on about five t-shirts of mine that were still perfectly fine. She put them in a bag for Dad to take to the op shop later but what she didn’t know was that I took the bag back quietly once she’d moved her passion for fashion onto some other victim (poor James) and put the shirts back in my cupboard without telling her.

  ‘Whatever. I don’t know. Is the ribbon there though?’

  Coco emptied the entire bag all over my doona and shook her head. ‘I can’t see it. But you have some filthy rubbish in here. Plus it smells like horse. You seriously need to clean up more.’ She clucked over the contents of my bag, picking out dirty socks and separating notebooks from horse brushes. I didn’t care, though. My ribbon wasn’t in the bag, and it definitely wasn’t in my room. There was only one place it could be, and I didn’t know how I was going to get it back.

  Not from Baylor.

  ‘You okay?’ Coco’s voice cut into my thoughts. She must have noticed I’d gone quiet.

  ‘Yep,’ I said, automatically. But then, ‘No. Not really.’

  ‘Your back?’

  ‘That. Plus other stuff.’

  ‘What stuff? Not being able to put your dirty socks away?’ She laughed at me, and I knew, right then, that Baylor was something I’d have to handle myself. Coco wouldn’t get it. She’d rush in, make a big fuss and create a ‘thing’ out of something that didn’t need to be anything. No, I’d do it myself.

  ‘Mostly tiredness. I forgive you for George Michael, but only if you put my stuff in the wash. I need to sleep.’

  She grinned and collected not only the dirty socks off my bed, but the sweaty t-shirt I’d thrown at her, plus some jodhpurs and a jacket off the floor.

  ‘I’m glad you’re not dead,’ she said, as she went out the door. ‘Oh, and I forgot to ask you.’ She stuck her head back in, grinning. ‘You said Jake Smith was there.’

  ‘Pffft. So what? It didn’t do me much good.’

  ‘I’m going to introduce you. I’m going to find a way.’

  ‘I’m going to kill you. I already know a way.’

  She laughed and turned out my light. ‘Go to bed, injured girl.’

  I slept. It wasn’t hard. With all the pain and the fatigue that was taking over my body, I simply shut my eyes and, bam, went straight to sleep land.

  But it didn’t last. Two seconds later (at least, that’s what it felt like, although it must actually have been hours later, because it was really dark) Dad was in my room, shaking my shoulder. ‘Charlie, Charlie, get up.’

  I waved my hand around my head like I was shooing away a fly. ‘No, no,’ I garbled. ‘I asleep.’

  He didn’t give up. ‘Charlie, you need to get up.’ He walked over to the light switch and flicked on the lights. The brightness in my eyes felt actually physically painful. I sat up in dismay, and then groaned. Everything still hurt, and even more now that I was stiff.

  ‘Are you …’ I would have added ‘crazy’ but something stopped me. After Coco was so rude to Dad last year, and I saw how upset it made him, I’d sworn to myself to never to be rude to him. It seemed my brain could even manage manners in the middle of the night. I blinked a few times, and then it came to me. ‘The baby. It’s coming.’

  Dad looked confused for a second, but then I saw understanding flash over his face. ‘Yes, the baby foal. Ness rang me. The alarm went off and she’s on her way up. She told me to wake you … and hurry.’

  I scrambled out of bed, even though scrambling in this case was more like stiffly creaking my arms and legs out from under the doona and wobbling off the bed. Getting dressed felt terrible. All my clothes felt like I was trying to fit thick wooden boards to my body, expecting them to be comfy. After a short fight with track pants and a jumper, I pulled on the easiest thing I could find—Mum’s dressing gown that I’d stolen from her room two months ago, mostly because it wrapped around me almost as well as one of her hugs. Plus, it was warm. I could tell the night air was going to be cold.

  Dad and I pulled on boots, and he grabbed a flashlight from the laundry.

  ‘It might be over already. They’re pretty quick, if everything goes well.’

  A shiver went through my shoulders and I boosted my speed behind him. We hardly needed the fla
shlight, the moon was so bright, and I was able to see my way down the farm through the clumpy grass, all the way to a small pen Ness had set up in the paddock just last week.

  In the pen, Fozzles was lying down on her side.

  ‘Ssssh,’ said Ness when she saw us coming. Her longest gumboots were pulled on over her jeans and she had what looked like rubber gloves on her hands. ‘No noise.’

  I tried to tiptoe, but it was hard with boots and sore legs and a bruised back. ‘Can we pat her? Is she okay?’

  ‘She’s fine.’ Ness’s voice was a whisper. ‘She just needs to be left alone. If she needs help, I’ll pull the baby out. You just stand over there.’

  Dad and I parked ourselves five metres or so from the side of the pen and stood, shivering and watching in the dark.

  ‘Do you think she’s too cold?’ I whispered to Dad. ‘I can’t see much.’

  ‘You’ll see everything in a minute,’ he said. He was right. Fozzles stood up with a grunt and turned around so that her tail was closest to us. Poking out of her, just below her tail, was a white, weird looking something, almost like a balloon.

  ‘Oh!’ I said, with surprise. ‘What is that?’

  Ness appeared beside me so quietly I nearly jumped. ‘That’s the first part of the foal. The front hooves and the head come out first. The rest will come soon.’

  ‘Front hooves? Seriously?’ I put my arms up so my hands were near my face and tried to imagine sliding out of somewhere in that position. ‘That’s so cool.’

  Fozzles gave another grunt, turned around twice, and then sat down heavily on the grass and straw Ness had put out for her.

  ‘This will be it,’ said Ness. She stepped forward, watching intently. I grabbed Dad’s hand, almost without realising.

  Fozzles started to take a breath, and then kind of pushed on the breath out, one after the other, in a regular rhythm. Every time she pushed, a bit more of the foal came out.

  ‘But it doesn’t look like a foal,’ I whispered. ‘That stuff’s all over it.’ I let go of Dad’s hand and pointed at the white balloon thing, which now looked like an empty, wet water balloon, clinging to the foal. I had a sudden, terrified thought. ‘It’s not going to suffocate, is it?’