A Horse of Her Own

by Annie Wedekind

  What Jessica Didn’t Say

  Yowch,” Jane exclaimed, bending down and blinking her streaming eyes, trying to dislodge the hay dust that had come down along with the cobwebs she was sweeping from the corners of Lancelot’s stall. Then, as she stepped back straight into a large pile of manure, “Argh!”

  “Is this some sort of new dance move?” In a blurry squint, Jane made out the features of Ben peering into the stall, laughing down at her.

  “No,” she said grumpily—why, oh why, did he always see her looking her worst?—“I just got something in my eye, then stepped in a big pile of … Hey!”

  “Um, that doesn’t look like hay you stepped in there, Jane.”

  “No, I know, it’s … never mind.” She mopped her face with a relatively clean edge of her T-shirt. She wanted to ask Ben something, but though they were definitely friends now, it could still be difficult to form the right words around him.

  “What were you going to say?” Ben persisted.

  “Well, I was just thinking about taking Red out to the big field again … .” Amazingly, she didn’t have to finish.

  “I’ll tack Professor up as soon as I get Lady Blue ready for the farrier,” he said easily.

  “Shouldn’t Liz be doing that?” Jane felt renewed annoyance at the other girls’ sloughing off of the care of their horses to Jose and his family.

  “She’s swimming,” Ben said neutrally. Jane rolled her eyes, and he smiled. “I don’t mind. I like Robbie and Doc.” Robbie was the farrier, a lanky, raw-boned man with a shocked brush of curly hair and a curling mustache, and Doc was his wiry terrier mix who lived for chewing hoof trimmings. “There’s his truck,” Ben said, and Jane could hear the rumble of the engine as the battered Chevy pulled into the curve of the drive near the barn.

  “I’ll help,” she offered, and, scraping off as much of the muck from her boot as she could, Jane tossed the last of the dirty sawdust into the wheelbarrow and pushed it from the stall to the compost pile outside the barn, waving to Robbie, who was laying out his tools on the tailgate of his truck. He was a virtuosic whistler and was now piping “My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean.” He reminded her a bit of an Irish sailor, with his weather-worn face and his sparkling blue eyes, made lighter and bluer by his deep tan. She hadn’t seen him since the previous summer, and he called to her that he wouldn’t have recognized her, she had grown so tall, except for the filthy clothes.

  “Thanks,” she said sarcastically as she joined him and Ben and Lady Blue.

  “A compliment to hard work,” Robbie said, doffing an imaginary cap to her.

  “Or to slovenly personal habits,” Ben remarked. Jane raised her eyebrows pointedly at his own grubby jeans.

  “Yeah, but you actually pay to do this,” Ben said, and Jane, childishly, tried to kick his shin. He avoided the blow gracefully.

  Lady Blue stood quietly as Robbie inspected her hoof and Jane and Ben sparred amicably. Luckily, Liz’s horse only had a loose nail, and Robbie mended it quickly, apologizing to Doc that there wouldn’t be any hoof treats today.

  After saying good-bye to Robbie and petting Doc, Ben and Jane returned Lady Blue to her stall, and Jane fetched Lancelot from the paddock. Ten minutes later, she met Ben, already astride Professor and waiting for her. “Which way do you want to go?” he asked.

  “We can just go through the fields again, like last time,” she said, and blushed. The idea had struck her suddenly in the stall, taking Lancelot out to the site of the cross-country course to look around, but now she remembered their earlier ride, with its uncomfortable silences and Jane’s unwelcome acknowledgment that Ben thought of her as a friend, and only a friend.

  But Ben seemed unperturbed, as he had, for the most part, then. They swung the horses out toward the gate, and Lancelot bounced happily next to Professor. He was full of pent-up energy, as Jane had had to skip the morning lesson to teach a class of midgets whose counselor had a bad cold.

  They followed the familiar route down the gentle slope, and Jane took a reading of her horse. He was lively, but he seemed to be listening to her, and moved easily between a trot and a walk, not fighting her as he had before. “I’m going to try a few of the jumps that are out here,” she announced.

  Ben looked at her with surprise. “They’re not all out here anymore,” he said. “I mean, some are, like the old log, but Granddad and I are building new ones. I don’t think you want to try those.”

  Jane looked at him stupidly. New jumps. Why didn’t I think of that?

  “For the course, of course …” Ben grinned at her, and she smiled back, though she felt a sinking disappointment. She’d wanted to try Lancelot out here, in the fields, but practicing the new jumps before the others did was cheating. Wasn’t it?

  “Has Advanced I done any of them yet?” she asked hopefully, but Ben shook his head.

  “Nope. Just like in real eventing. They’ll get to walk the course, of course, beforehand, but it’ll be the first time for their horses. Want to see some of them? There’s a real doozy we’ve made out of barrels.”

  “Darn!” Jane burst out in frustration.

  Ben stopped Professor. “What’s wrong?”

  Jane fought several internal battles at once. Did it really matter if she got a head start? After all, she already faced very long odds at winning as it was. It dawned on her that Ben could actually help her, if she dared to ask him, and to trust him. And if he didn’t think she was crazy.

  “Can you keep a secret?” she asked, feeling her cheeks heat up.

  “Sure.” He looked at her curiously, shoving his black hair behind his ears.

  “Even from … from Jessica?” She could barely keep from gritting her teeth while saying it.

  It was Ben’s turn to blush. “From Jess?” Jess? Jane silently gagged. “Sure, I mean it’s not like we, like I tell her … you know, everything,” he said lamely, stumbling over his words.

  Jane wrestled her stew of jealousy, nausea, contradicting desires, and second thoughts into submission. She told him everything. (Or almost everything.)

  When her words ground to a halt, and he still hadn’t spoken, except for an initial startled exclamation, they’d reached the paddock and the shrubbery.

  “So,” she finished, feeling a wave of shyness, “I could really use your help, if you have time … .” As she spoke, she realized that he very well might not. “And if you don’t mind not telling anybody …” Which he very well might. She waited, distracting herself by making a show of petting Lancelot and not looking over at the boy next to her.

  Suddenly, Ben laughed. “Like National Velvet!” he exclaimed.

  “Well, it’s hardly a steeplechase,” Jane objected.

  “No, but you’re still doing something you’re not supposed to be able to do, and you’re enlisting the aid of a kindly stable boy to help you.” His eyes were alight as he answered, teasing but not, so far, chastising her or shutting her down.

  “I don’t remember the stable boy,” Jane said, thinking, “but then again, I’m probably one of the few horsey girls in the world who didn’t really like that book.”

  “I only saw the movie, but Mickey Rooney was definitely some kind of stable hand,” Ben argued.

  “Now I can see the resemblance,” Jane said seriously. “You’re just about his height, too.”

  Ben made a face at her. “I don’t know why I’d help such a brat, but basically you want me to spy on the other girls’ lessons and tell you what they’re doing? And not tell Susan or my grandfather or, well, anyone else?”

  Jane nodded, glancing at him warily.

  “I’ll start tomorrow.” He grinned, mischief crinkling his eyes up in the way that made Jane’s heart do a trapeze flip in her chest.

  “Thanks” was all she could think of to say.

  “No problem. Now you want to see some of the new jumps?”

  “That would be cheating.” Right?

  Ben paused. “Yeah, I guess it kinda would. But it wouldn’t be much
worse than me telling you guys about that.” He pointed at the gloomy mass of hedge in front of them.

  Jane looked at him, confused. “What are you talking about?”

  “You know, at the beginning of camp. You haven’t forgotten jumping that thing, have you?”

  “Of course not, but what do you mean you told us about it?”

  Now Ben was confused. “I told Jess how big it had grown and told her to warn you guys. I thought Susan was nuts having you jump it. And I thought Jess was going to kill me for telling on Alyssa and Jennifer for skipping it. Maybe I shouldn’t have, but Susan asked how everyone had done, and … I guess I have that honest thing that you’ve got. And Jess didn’t care, she thought it was funny … but now they hate me, and that kinda makes things weird.”

  The simple pieces of the puzzle snapped together. This was why Ben had been so embarrassed the last time they stood in this spot. And how Alyssa and Jennifer had planned together to avoid the enormous jump, and why Jessica was so sure they had. And perhaps how Jessica, prepared, had cleared it on her first attempt. But Jessica, again probably because she thought it was funny, didn’t tell her two friends that Ben would be watching. And she hadn’t told Jane anything, anything at all.

  “Jane? Earth to Jane?” Ben waved his arm at her, snapping her from her thoughts.

  “She didn’t tell me,” Jane said simply. “She told the others, but she didn’t tell me.” She looked him straight in the eye, then turned Lancelot away from the paddock.

  “I’m just going to canter around the fields,” she called over her shoulder, not caring if he followed, not caring about much of anything except for the horse beneath her, who didn’t lie, who didn’t pretend to be friendly when he wasn’t, who was incapable of dishonesty, of plotting and conniving. She didn’t hear any hoofbeats behind her. A wave of disgust, of outright horrified anger and hurt, flooded through her. Jessica’s behavior wasn’t new, she realized. She had never, it seemed, been on Jane’s side. Jane suddenly remembered Jessica’s mysterious comment, it felt like years before, that the others were intimidated by Jane. It was a game, wasn’t it? For surely this proved that Jessica had always thought of her as beneath contempt, wanted actively to keep her at a disadvantage. Well, maybe you’re the one who’s intimidated, “Jess,” she thought fiercely. But how to square this with the Jessica on the porch that night, the Jessica who had actually seemed proud of Jane’s ride? She urged her horse to greater speed as they ate up the ground beneath them.

  They ran for a minute more, then Jane slowly pulled Lancelot back to a canter, watching for signs of fatigue that didn’t appear. They kept an even pace up a gentle slope and down the steeper opposite side. Jane opened up her seat and let the reins slide through her fingers, allowing Lancelot to find his own balance and stride. Her thoughts flickered back to Ben; she hoped he knew she wasn’t angry with him. But what must he think of her, that Jessica hadn’t even thought she was worth warning?

  She took Lancelot through the shallow part of the creek, then trotted him down and up the bank that had worried Beau. She reined him up and circled him back to do it again. Once, twice, three times Lancelot made the leap down and up, never hesitating.

  He trusted her. And she didn’t go looking for any of the new jumps.

  Jane spent the rest of the afternoon with Lancelot, then, when he seemed impatient with her company, alone. She let him out in the pasture with Professor, and the two ambled down to a shady spot together to swish flies. Jane headed to the cabin and, ignoring the girls sprawled on the floor in the common room, playing cards, she grabbed Listening to Your Horse and her sketchpad and started for the lake.

  Glancing automatically inside the barn as she walked by, Jane saw the person that her eyes always seemed to unconsciously seek out, but whom at that moment she wanted to avoid. He was there, leaning against the tack room door, his back to her, apparently deep in conversation with someone Jane couldn’t see. She sped up, but then heard her name and looked back to see Robin, stepping in front of Ben, waving to her.

  “Where have you been?” Robin asked. “Ben was just telling me that you told him. I think it’s great, as long as he doesn’t get in trouble. I mean, he does work here.”

  It was like Robin to think of that first, and Jane felt a little ashamed of herself. She lingered by the barn door and didn’t answer. Robin gave her a funny look.

  Reluctantly, Jane glanced quickly at Ben. “I don’t want you to get into trouble,” she managed. “Don’t do anything you shouldn’t.”

  “I could say the same thing to you … if I was totally lame,” he replied, and despite herself, Jane smiled.

  “No one has to find out I did anything,” he continued. “And besides …” he stopped, his voice cracking a little. He cleared his throat and finished determinedly: “I really want to see you win.”

  Jane stood rooted to the spot. The words, and the emphasis he put on the words, filled her with a liquid warmth.

  Robin saved her from a complete sentimental breakdown. “We’ve got a week,” she said, matter-of-factly.

  “Yeah,” Ben said.

  “Yeah,” Jane echoed.

  Chapter 15

  Stormy Weather

  A new mood seemed to sweep over the whole farm, not just Jane and her friends. Everyone was under pressure, and it showed. Susan stalked the farm like a guard dog, yelping at and shepherding and instructing everything that came in her path. Mrs. Jeffrys was constantly consulting with Jose and Maria about preparations for the incoming parents, and wondering out loud if these competitions weren’t such a good idea and perhaps should be postponed for next year, comments that made Susan turn interesting hues of puce. Finally they seemed to sort out their main scheduling hassles: The Intermediate riders, whose “event” was a written exam, a stall and tack inspection, and a halter competition in which they’d lead their horses around the arena and be judged by the horses’ appearance and grooming, would take place on Friday, before the parents arrived. Advanced II’s show, hacking and jumping, would take place on Saturday, after which their parents could take them home, or they could stay on for Advanced I’s event on Sunday, and “get a ride home however you can.” Mrs. Jeffrys threw up her hands. “And now I’ve got to call all the parents again, and figure out where the judges are going to stay!”

  “The judges?” Shannon almost spat out her cereal. It was Tuesday morning, and all of the campers were having breakfast and listening to Mrs. Jeffrys’s harassed explanation of the schedule.

  “Yes, dear. For your shows. You remember—Susan invited Jill Grabel from Long Run and Tom Cumbler from Windsor Farm to help judge, but where they’re going to stay is beyond me at the moment … . Maria, do we have a plan for the food yet?” And with that, she rushed from the kitchen.

  Jane looked around at the other girls at her table. All of them wore the same uncomfortable look. It was obvious that everyone, Jane included, had forgotten what Susan had indeed told them nearly six weeks before.

  “Well, I’m sure they won’t have to be here to grade our exams or to judge our hoof-picking,” a girl in the Intermediate class muttered crossly. Many of the younger campers were disgruntled that they weren’t going to get to ride in a “real” show.

  “Grooming and barn management are very important,” Alyssa said in patronizing tones. “When you’re a more advanced rider, you’ll do more advanced activities.” The girl nodded, but when Alyssa turned back to her cereal, she stuck her tongue out at her.

  Alyssa seems to get that a lot. Jane smiled to herself. And she’s one to talk about “barn management,” considering that she leaves hers to Ricky and Gabriel. She’d noticed that Megan didn’t seem to be complaining about their test; in fact, the day before, she’d asked Jane to teach her how to braid Beau’s tail, and Jane had happily complied, giving her the tip to use Vaseline to make the short hairs at the top stay smooth.

  The events weren’t the only scheduling problems the farm faced, however. It turned out that the ailing c
ounselor had bronchitis, and Susan and Jane both had to fill in for her classes and reorganize the times, which had been rather free-floating and subject to the trainer’s moods to begin with. Now, with the pressure of the impending shows, they were set firmly and allowed Susan barely a free minute throughout the coming days.

  Poking her head into Lancelot’s stall, she apologized to Jane that she wouldn’t be able to work one-on-one with her anymore. “But you’ve done a great job with this horse, Jane. He’s improved tremendously. I don’t think you’ll have any problem with the show, especially the jumping. You’ll have to watch him during the flat, though.”

  Jane nodded. Lancelot still had problems working in the ring with the other horses, pinning his ears back and sometimes charging or attempting a nip if he were passed too close by anyone except Bess, or kicking if a horse came up behind him. Jane wasn’t worried about it, because she’d decided not to ride in either of the Advanced II shows. But she wasn’t ready to tell Susan that yet. It was actually quite convenient to have Susan so busy, even if she did lose out on valuable training with her. It gave Susan even less opportunity to notice the other training Jane was doing. No matter how hard her trainer liked pushing her, Jane didn’t think she would’ve let her out on a cross-country course, and she probably would dismiss her intense dressage work as premature.

  Ben, citing his and Jose’s belief that Susan would encourage Jane to do anything difficult, asked her why she didn’t just ask Susan directly if she could be in the Advanced I event. Jane considered it, but the risk that Susan would refuse her was too great. After all, she hadn’t bumped her up to the top group despite Lancelot’s progress. More important, she had something to prove to Susan, as much as to the other girls and to herself. It was difficult to put into words, this feeling, but it was bracing, burning steadily within her, despite her fears. Jose had said it weeks before: This summer was her test.

  It was risky—all of it. Telling Ben, training away from everyone’s eyes, betting that when she showed up for the dressage course on Sunday that Susan would even let her in the ring. She was counting on surprise, and the fact that Mrs. Jeffrys would do anything to avoid a scene in front of the parents and trainers from the other barns. She was probably putting her favorite people in a tough position, but after everything that had happened, she thought it was worth it … and she prayed they’d understand.