by Sarah Price
What Readers Say …
… a fun, positive girl-power book. Not just encouraging girls to chase their dreams but to pay no attention to the haters out there. The message is clear: concentrate on the inner circle of people you know who care about you genuinely. Even if it’s a small, supportive group. I wish I had read something like this at thirteen. An untapped genre for empowering young women. This was just begging to be written.
~Barb Russell
Book Reviewer & Avid Reader
Sarah Price takes readers through a modernly relatable and hilarious journey. Throughout the story, I was delightfully engaged and biting my nails to find out what would happen next! Sarah did a dazzling job of capturing the mind of a teenager and the sorts of issues they experience.
~Sam Van Fleet, Champion
Youth Mustang Makeover 2016, Northeast Region
This story brought me right back to being a kid in middle school again—minus the technological advances. At that age, every little thing seems like a life-or-death situation. I related to the characters and found myself envious of their innocent outlook on life. Sarah Price injects the reader right into the lives of today’s youth and the challenges they face. Of course, with the addition of horses and rodeos, it’s bound to be a real hit!
~Rob West, Horse Trainer
Extreme Mustang Makeover Top 10 Finalist 2016
(Massachusetts and Virginia)
Cowgirl Cat
Sarah Price
Copyright © 2016 Price Publishing, LLC.
All rights reserved.
ISBN-13: 978-1505474695
ISBN-10: 1505474698
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted either electronically or in printed format without the written permission of the author.
http://www.sarahpriceauthor.com
Discounted volume purchases are available for homeschoolers, book clubs, schools, events, or fundraisers.
Printed in the United States of America
To Cat,
who turns every day into a great
and funny chapter in my book of life.
Remember that real cowgirls train mustangs. <3
Table of Contents
Aiden Quinn
Happy Birthday!
Leslie Murphy
The Moment of Truth
Quadrupled!
The Cafeteria
Twitter Overload
Low-Profile Time
Summer at the Barn
Rodeo Rage
Brooke to the Rescue
Partner in Crime
Countdown to Topsfield
Topsfield at Last!
Mob Scene
Betrayal
Redemption
Marcus
Nora
Cowtown!
Trouble
The Big News
Dallas!
Dexter
Another Mob Scene
Enjoy the Ride
Say What?
Mom’s Surprise
PROLOGUE
Aiden Quinn
The light barely filtered through the lowered blinds that covered his bedroom windows. The sun had not fully risen yet. The house was quiet, the sounds of morning apparently still sleeping along with the inhabitants. In the bed, under a pile of blankets, fifteen-year-old Aiden slept beside his border collie, Jackson, both of them completely and blissfully oblivious to the emerging dawn.
As a rule, mornings were Aiden’s favorite time of day, except the part about having to go to school. Studying was not the highest priority on his list. Horses, however, were. He never needed reminding about that. Most days, Aiden awoke well before sunrise so that he could spend at least an hour taking care of his horses. Sometimes he even saddled up for a ride along the trail behind his house, hoping to sneak up on a herd of deer grazing near the river.
Colorado mornings were like that: perfection.
Today, however, was not one of those days.
The previous night, he’d gone to a family reunion outside of Denver. By the time they’d gotten home to their ranch on the outskirts of Westcliffe, it had been well past midnight. He had been looking forward to sneaking in an extra hour of blissful sleep before his alarm went off.
But the bliss ended abruptly when Aiden’s cell phone buzzed on the nightstand and began vibrating against the lamp. As if the fact that someone texted him so early in the morning wasn’t bad enough, the noise, sharp and jarring, was a rude awakening from what had been a not-long-enough sleep. Again.
Rolling over, Aiden covered his head with his pillow. Beside him, his dog, Jackson, groaned, complaining at the movement and shifting his outstretched legs so that his paws pushed against Aiden’s back. Ignoring the border collie, Aiden started to drift back to sleep. After all, it was too early to wake up. Whoever had just texted him needed to just go away. Far away, so that he could return to his dream: winning the Denver Rodeo-All-Stars in team roping with his buddy, Clayton Wade.
In just a few weeks, spring would slip into summer and he’d spend the entire season working on the ranch with his father and riding the trails with his friends. They’d have overnight camping trips (on horseback, of course) and some adventures trying to herd the cattle in for sale. And of course, making his cowboy-in-training videos for YouTube.
But that was still a long way off. Today was Monday and that meant school. Summer couldn’t come quick enough for him.
After a few minutes of quiet, the cell buzzed again.
“Stop texting me!” he shouted at the phone as he threw the pillow off the bed and ran his fingers through his hair, making the dark curly strands stick straight up.
His phone buzzed again.
“Come on!” Lifting his head, he could barely see. Only after blinking a few times could he focus on the small screen where a photo of his best friend stared back at him.
“Leave me alone, Clayton!” he muttered as he grabbed the phone and flopped back into his pillow. It wasn’t even 6:30. He had another fifteen minutes to sleep before he needed to get up and make his way to the barn. While there was no time for a ride this morning, the horses still needed to eat.
As he swiped his finger across the screen, Clayton’s text message popped up. It took Aiden a minute to focus on the words:
Yo, bro!
Congrats on 2000! You da man!
Best friends or not, Clayton was pushing it, sending cryptic texts so early in the morning. Aiden’s brain wasn’t awake yet. Especially with it being a Monday.
Monday’s school schedule sucked with geometry and chemistry, otherwise known as the “What’s he talking about?” and “Do I really need to know this?” classes. And, of course, after lunch, his third least-favorite class, modern European history (and honors, at that!), rounded out the day of torture. He reminded himself to ask that girl Annie who sat behind him in class if she had read the book assignment. If she did, she’d give him a quick summary so he could sound intelligent if asked any questions. At least his last class was gym and that would end the day on a good note.
Leaning back into his pillow, he sighed as his fingers rapidly tapped at the small keyboard on his phone, sending a quick text back:
Dude! WTH?
Don’t you have some
horses to break?
Across the room on his desk, his laptop made a noise. Another message. This one to his email. Then, within a few seconds, his phone buzzed again with Clayton’s response.
Your IG, idiot
.
Instagram ... Just one of the social media apps he’d begun since January. He knew that other kids at school had been using it for a lot longer, but he hadn’t really paid too much attention to it. However, Aiden began to make short videos of training one of his horses. Sometimes he’d even post videos of himself trick riding and playing pranks around the barn. Between Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter, he was more than busy with social media.
But recently, he had noticed more kids at school who were following his Instagram account. In fact, just the previous week, a few girls began asking him when he would be posting his next video. He had joked with his buddy that he felt like a real celebrity.
With a big yawn, he texted Clayton back:
And I repeat, WTH?
Another buzz from his computer just as he tapped the send button on his phone. Indeed, he thought. WTH?
“Aiden, you up yet?”
He heard his mother knock on his door. In the silence of morning, her voice was loud.
“Yeah. Barely.” Aiden rubbed his face with his hand, yawning again as he tried to face the day.
“I’m making pancakes,” she said through the door. “So get your chores done right quick, you hear?”
Pancakes? Now that was motivation. “Thanks, Mom!”
She must have walked away because he heard her mumble something through the bedroom door to his older brother, Randy. It was almost impossible to get him up. If Aiden hustled, he might get lucky with an extra helping of triple stacks!
Another text from Clayton popped on his phone:
Check your IG, dude!
Your video got featured!
Featured? Aiden didn’t need that explained to him. Immediately he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Tapping at his phone, he pulled up his Instagram account. When it finally displayed on the screen of his phone, it took him a minute to comprehend what he was seeing: over two thousand new followers since the last time he had checked on Friday.
“Oh, snap!”
He scrolled down and noticed one of his last videos had more comments and likes than usual, and most were names of people he didn’t know. He read through some of the comments and caught his breath. Having a few friends comment here and there was one thing, but this was incredible. His following on social media was always larger than most of his friends, probably because of being so active at school. But having two thousand people view his video and follow his account was something entirely different. Things like this didn’t happen. Not to him, anyway.
“Randy!” Aiden called as he jumped out of bed. He had to tell someone, and in the early morning hours, that someone was his older brother.
Racing into the hallway, Aiden called out for him again. “Randy!” His bare feet made a soft noise on the area rug that covered the hardwood floor, but his body slamming against Randy’s door did not. It flew open with a loud bang as he burst into the room. “Dude! You totally have to see this!”
“You totally have to go away,” Randy grumbled, lifting up his arm to deflect Aiden when he tried to jump onto his bed. “I swear I’m going to deck you.”
Undeterred, Aiden picked himself off the floor and managed to bypass Randy’s second block. Leaping onto the bed, he thrust his phone under his brother’s face. “Look at this. My Instagram. Two thousand new people followed me last night on Insta!”
Swatting at the phone, Randy rolled over, his brown hair covering his eyes. “Good for you. Now get out!”
“Two thousand!” Aiden laughed, ignoring his brother. Two thousand. The number seemed enormous. There weren’t even two thousand students at his school! “I don’t even know most of these people!”
A pillow flew through the air and hit Aiden aside the face. “Get out!”
“A simple ‘cool’ would have sufficed,” Aiden shot back, then darted out of reach from his brother’s hand.
“What’s all this racket?”
Aiden practically bumped into his mother as he hurried out of his brother’s room. She was totally playing the stalker mom role this morning, although he didn’t mind, not with the smell of pancakes filling the air and two thousand new followers on Instagram.
“Mom, you’ve got to check this out!” Aiden shoved the phone in her face.
She glanced over his shoulder, her eyes scanning the bedroom and saw Randy still in bed. “You need to get up now! Your father’s waiting!”
Dodging back and forth, Aiden blocked her view. “Forget about Dad! Look at this!” He pushed the phone even closer so that she didn’t have a choice but to look at the screen. “How cool, right?”
His mother took the phone from him and held it out so her eyes could adjust. Without her glasses, she was all but blind when it came to reading anything. “What exactly am I looking at?”
“My Insta!” He pointed over her shoulder. “Look at that! Over two thousand people followed me overnight. Two thousand!”
She squinted as she peered at the small screen. “Hmm, I can see that.”
“Two thousand, Mom!”
She handed the phone back to him and smiled. “That’s wonderful, Aiden. Really. It is.”
“That was in one weekend! This is ... like ... huge!”
“Get dressed, sweetheart. Your father’s already in the barn.”
“Two thousand!”
Randy groaned and pulled his comforter over his head.
Aiden hurried back to his room, quickly changing into his jeans and T-shirt before he stole a few minutes to sit at his laptop. Sure enough, he had five new messages from his friends, each one commenting about his latest video and the fact that it was listed as a Featured Video of the Weekend.
Stunned at this unexpected fifteen minutes of fame, he shut his laptop and hurried downstairs, knowing that he was going to beat Randy to the barn. If there was one thing his father would not tolerate was one of his sons skipping out on the chores.
His father was already filling water buckets when Aiden ran through the barn door. “Morning, Dad.” Aiden climbed the ladder to the hayloft and, without being asked, started tossing down bales of hay.
“Dad, guess what?” Aiden called. “I got two thousand new followers this weekend.”
“Followers?” His father scratched his head. “On what?”
Laughing, Aiden stood at the edge of the loft. “Instagram, Dad. Cool, right?”
“I guess ...”
“They liked my video of teaching Dexter to sit on the hay bale.”
His father leaned against the stall door, holding the hose and pouring water into the horse’s bucket. “The one where he hit you with his head and you fell?”
Aiden nodded. “Yeah, that one.”
“No wonder. It was funny.” For his father to admit that, Aiden knew it must have been good.
“Look!” Aiden pointed to his cell phone screen. “Another hundred followers! What the heck, man?”
“I have faith in young people now,” his father said, a teasing tone to his voice. “If they like your videos, there’s hope for our future.”
Aiden rolled his eyes.
“Now your two thousand followers ...,” his father began.
“You mean two thousand one hundred new followers,” Aiden corrected with a grin.
“... need to wait until you get these chores finished.” His father gave him a stern look. Clearly he meant business. “And I’m driving to town after breakfast, so if you hurry, I can drop you boys off.” He glanced at his watch. “Probably a good idea since you’re apt to miss the bus anyway.”
But Aiden wasn’t listening to his father. His attention had already returned to his cell phone. Another twelve followers. Just in the past few minutes. He scrolled through the comments, his eyes scanning the names as well as the remarks.
By the time Randy finally shuffled into the barn, Aiden was mucking stalls. Setting his pitchfork against the wall, he pulled his phone out of his pocket as he leaned through the open door and called out, “Hey, Randy! You’ve got to read some o
f these comments! ‘OMG U R so hot!’ Ha!” Holding the phone in one hand, Aiden thrust it at his brother. “Randy, I’m hot! Amy Pollard said so!”
“Who the heck is Amy Pollard anyway?” came the muffled voice of his brother.
Aiden laughed again. “Look at this comment. ‘Just kill me now U R so freaking cute.’” He glanced at his father and grinned, batting his dark eyes. “So cute!”
His father shook his head. “Don’t let it go to your head. And remember, horse training videos or not, your schooling comes first.”
Aiden covered his ears, pretending to block out his father’s voice as he spun away from him. “Ahhhhh! Not again! How many times do I have to hear this?”
Wesley frowned and peered over the top of his glasses at Aiden. “You did finish all of your homework, right? Or were you too busy hanging out with Clayton yesterday?”
“Look! This one says she loves me!” Aiden said, ignoring the question and returning his attention to the comments. “Loves me, Randy! Beat that, bro! I’m like a modern day Romeo according to this other girl.” He began to laugh, his eyes crinkling as a big smile broke out onto his face. “Romeo.”
“And who are these girls posting that stuff anyway?” Wesley leaned over his son’s shoulder and peered into the small cell phone screen. “Do they know how old you are?”
“That’s not really the point, Dad.”
Placing his hand on Aiden’s shoulder, Wesley winked. “Well, two thousand plus new followers on your Instagram is great, Aiden. You’re working hard at those horse videos so I’m not really surprised. Now, finish getting these stalls cleaned so we can get some breakfast, Romeo.”
“That’s ‘Mr. Hashtag Romeo’!” Aiden shot back with a huge grin on his face.
“I bet we never hear the end of that one.” Randy rolled his eyes and pick up Aiden’s discarded pitchfork.
“Hashtag So Jealous!” Aiden laughed as he looked back at the cell phone, scrolling down through the comments.
