Blue Ribbons

by Kim Ablon Whitney

  Contents

  Complete Guide to Contents

  Blue Ribbons

  About the Author

  Excerpt: The Perfect Distance

  Blue Ribbons

  Kim Ablon Whitney

  Copyright © 2014 Kim Ablon Whitney

  All Rights Reserved.

  www.kimablonwhitney.com

  Cover photo by Caranine Smith/www.bigeq.com

  Chapter One

  * * *

  “I want this last summer.”

  I was in my usual eavesdropping spot when I heard Mom. In our apartment there’s a hallway right outside Dad’s study and it has this little nook where someone can stand unnoticed and listen in.

  “Don’t say ‘last summer.’ We don’t know anything yet,” Dad said.

  Although I couldn’t see into the room, I could picture the scene: Dad behind his desk, glasses resting on the table, his right hand rubbing his beard. Mom would be standing—she never liked to sit still—looking at him with her intense blue eyes.

  “It’s true,” Mom said. “He’s for sale. Susie texted me.”

  A moment’s silence, and then Dad’s voice again: “Don’t you think two ponies are enough? She’s only thirteen.”

  “This one’s different. It’s the best pony in the country. They’re only selling it now because the girl shot up in height and has to move on to a horse. You can never buy a pony like this at the beginning of the season. And plus, she’ll be outgrowing Drizzle after this year so we’ll have three just for the summer.”

  I leaned closer to make sure I was hearing right. The best pony in the country. Woodland’s Tried and True. Everyone on the show circuit had heard the rumors that he was going to be for sale.

  Mom hadn’t mentioned buying him to me, but we’d watched Tyler, a beautiful bay, win over and over at all the shows we went to. He’d won the grand pony hunter championship at Devon just a few weeks ago. I’d gotten good ribbons in the smalls with Drizzle and the mediums with Sammy, but Mom lingered ringside, watching the award presentations. And I’d seen her talking to Susie after one of my lessons last week. Even then I’d already known. Now, almost shaking as I strained to hear more of their conversation, I wondered how I could be feeling absolute dread. How could I not want something that anyone else would have loved to have? Who wouldn’t want to own Tyler? Who wouldn’t want to win at every show? It was every pony rider’s dream to show a pony like that. So it had to be mine, too. Plus, it was my mom’s dream.

  My gift. My blessing. My miracle. My baby. My angel. These were just some of the things Mom called me. She wasn’t like every mom. For one thing, she was this amazing businesswoman. All that money that bought my ponies? Most of it Mom made. She worked for a big skincare company for a long time before founding her own line of cosmetics, ProduX. She grew ProduX until it was in almost every department store and then sold it for millions back to the company she had left. How cool was that? In her office were framed photos of her featured in all the big business magazines: Fortune, Business Week, Working Woman. Of course she was so busy working all those years she never had time to get married or have kids. And then when she got around to it and met my father, she wasn’t, as she likes to say, “a spring chicken anymore.” Or as I heard her say to her best friend, Wendy, when I wasn’t supposed to be listening, “a fertile myrtle.” And people who aren’t fertile myrtles don’t always have the easiest time having babies. To make matters worse my dad was sixteen years older than her. That’s why I was her gift, her blessing, her miracle, her baby, her angel. And that’s why she’d do anything to give me what I wanted, which sometimes seemed more like what she wanted.

  Chapter 2

  * * *

  “I want to go look at the pony next week,” Mom told Dad.

  “What about Regan? Have you even asked her?”

  “Of course she’ll want to. Are you kidding?”

  Dad sighed. “What if we didn’t show that much this summer? What if we enjoyed some time away from the shows? Maybe we could take a few trips as a family, go to the Vineyard, or even Europe if you want to. Remember that place we stayed in the South of France?”

  “You make it sound like we can just take off for Europe for weeks at a time,” Mom said. “You know we can’t—not now.”

  Not now. I wasn’t supposed to know what they were talking about, but I did. Mom was sick again. I’d had my suspicions from whispered conversations, late night phone calls, and the way Dad kept asking Mom how she was feeling and giving her concerned looks, but now I knew for sure. I pushed my back up against the wall, letting the molding edge dig into my shoulder, to feel something other than scared. Moms weren’t supposed to be like a pony, owned or leased for a few years until you outgrew them. They were supposed to be for life.

  “So we could go for a few days at a time,” Dad tried. “Or the Vineyard? We’ll rent a place?”

  “This late in the season? We won’t find anything. Just say yes to this so I can make the arrangements.”

  “Do I even have to sign off on this? You’re going to do what you want anyway.” Dad’s voice wasn’t angry, just resigned. He had endless patience, especially with Mom.

  “So say yes,” Mom said. “Be on my side.”

  “How could I be anything but on your side?” Dad answered.

  I didn’t have to listen any longer to know Mom would get her way. She always does. Plus, I didn’t want them to come out and see me. Then we’d have to have the what-did-she-hear-how-much-does-she-know conversation. I might do something heinous like cry. Any good eavesdropper knew the trick was to vamoose before the conversation got even close to wrapping up.

  I tiptoed back to my bedroom and texted Hailey right away. I typed as fast as I could, pushing Mom’s reoccurrence out of my mind: u won’t believe it. mom wants us 2 go look at tyler . . .

  Hailey wrote back: woodland’s tried and true????

  yup.

  It was a moment till she texted back. wow.

  will u come with?

  It took a lot longer for her response: have 2 ask my mom, but want 2.

  I felt like there was more Hailey might be thinking, but maybe they were things she felt she couldn’t say to me. Hailey had a really nice pony, but he wasn’t fancy like my ponies, and certainly not fancy like Tyler. She never said as much, but I knew Hailey wished she had a different, fancier pony to ride. But her younger sister rode, too, and her parents were divorced and they didn’t have all that much money to spend on ponies. And there was also Hailey’s singing. She had an amazing voice and had been taking voice lessons since she was eight. Someday she wanted to have a career as a recording artist.

  cool, I typed back. c u at the barn 2moro.

  I crawled into bed, knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep for a long while, and also knowing Mom would be coming in soon. She came in every night to kiss me. Sometimes I pretended to be asleep so I didn’t have to talk to her. Sometimes I was asleep, but I still knew she’d been there. Sometimes I thought if I didn’t need her it wouldn’t hurt as much if she died, but that was probably entirely stupid.

  This time it was a half hour later. I didn’t pretend to close my eyes.

  “What are you still doing up?” she asked.

  “I don’t know. Just thinking.”

  “About West Salem?”

  “I guess.” West Salem, our first big show after Devon, was two weeks away. But if anything, I’d been thinking about Mom’s doctor’s appointment this past week and how from listening to her and Dad I now knew for sure she’d lied to me about what her oncologist had said: “You know, the usual, a few things to keep an eye on . . .”

  Would it be so wrong to just be honest with me? Every day the headlines were filled with terrorist plots and school shootin
gs, what was a little cancer?

  Mom leaned close to me now and I could smell peach from one of the ProduX wrinkle reducers. “I have something to tell you, but I’m not sure I should tell you now because then you’ll never be able to sleep . . .”

  I wondered, could Mom actually be about to tell me the truth? I sat up a little and looked straight at her. I took a deep breath—did I really want to know?

  “Your father and I’ve decided we should go look at Woodland’s Tried and True.” It was pretty dark in the room, but I didn’t need to see her to know she was smiling. She grabbed my hands. Suddenly she seemed more like Hailey than my mom. “Can you imagine? Riding Tyler?”

  “That would be amazing,” I said, but I wasn’t sure my voice was excited enough. I should have been squealing, almost bursting. Like she was.

  “You’re scared of the pressure,” Mom said. “I know the pony’s won a lot . . .”

  “That’s not it.”

  “Then what is it?”

  “Did the doctor really say everything was fine?”

  “Regan, come on, you’re always so serious. Let’s talk about ponies, okay? Don’t you want to try Tyler?”

  “I guess so.”

  “See,” she said, poking me gently in the side. “I knew it. And if we end up buying him you’ll have so much fun. Just think—you and Tyler? You’ll be unstoppable! This summer is going to be the greatest ever.”

  I let her kiss me. I could have called her on it. I could have demanded she tell me the truth. I could have said I knew this summer wasn’t going to be the greatest ever. That, at best, it would be the summer the cancer came back. That, at worst, it could be the summer my mother died.

  Chapter 3

  * * *

  Mom arranged to use the company’s private plane to go try Tyler. When she sold ProduX, they hired her to stay on in a consulting role, which means she still gets some of the perks. We drove from our apartment on the Upper East Side of Manhattan to the barn in Pound Ridge where we picked up Hailey and my trainer, Susie.

  The moment I got out of the car all the barn dogs, mostly Susie’s, came running. A few initial barks turned into wagging tails. I patted heads, accepted lick-kisses, and picked up Squirt, a dachshund-pug mix. I had fallen in love with Squirt when he was a rescue dog Susie was fostering. I’d begged my mother to let me have him. I’d even snuck him home once in my backpack. But she said no and Susie ended up keeping him, so at least I got to see him a lot.

  Jane was already on a pony, even though it was just past eight o’clock on Saturday and most kids were still under the covers. Hailey and I went to say hi to Jane while Susie got her stuff together. Jane rode up next to us and swung her leg forward in front of the saddle to tighten her girth.

  “What time are you supposed to be there?” She pulled her girth up a hole.

  “Eleven.”

  “Did you see the photo of Ike on The Chronicle website?” Jane asked.

  I exchanged glances with Hailey. We’d both seen the photo and agreed not to say anything to Jane about it. Jane had brought Ike, whose show name was Impromptu, along from a ragged green pony that had a bad habit of veering left at the jumps, trying to jump the standard, to a polished, consistent winner who always jumped the middle. She had her heart set on showing him at Devon, but her dad had sold him weeks before. With his new rider, Ike had been medium pony champion. In the photo, his new rider was grinning and the championship ribbon fluttered from Ike’s bridle. There was no mention of Jane and how hard she’d worked with Ike anywhere in the article that went with the photo.

  “Yeah, we saw it,” I admitted.

  “That should have been me.” Jane shrugged, but I could tell that she was just trying to act strong.

  Jane’s dad, Tommy, came out of the barn and called to Jane as he walked into the ring. He had on his usual Tommy uniform—he always wore jeans and a polo shirt, a different color for every day. One time when we were hanging out at Jane’s we snuck into his room and looked in his dresser and there they were, about twenty different polos in a rainbow of colors. Today’s was a deep blue.

  Jane’s dad was a trainer and also worked out of the farm. He and Susie started sharing some clients and now they worked together a lot. Jane’s father bought green ponies really cheap and brought them along, had Jane show them, and when they got good he sold them for much more than he bought them for. Riding lots of different ponies had made Jane a really good rider, but she never got to keep a pony very long—the minute it started winning, they sold it. Like Ike. I would have invited Jane to come with Hailey and me, but Tommy would never let Jane take a day off to go look at a pony he wasn’t going to buy.

  Tommy dropped a vertical down a few holes. “You ready to jump, Janie?”

  “Have fun,” Jane whispered before she moved off the rail and departed into a canter.

  From the barn, we drove over to the Westchester airport. Hailey had never been on the plane before and I saw her eyes get real big as we stepped aboard. Sometimes I forgot that things I was used to were totally ‘wow’ to other people. Inside it was not like a regular plane. Instead of aisles of cramped seats there were just two rows of chairs facing each other. There was also good food like fresh fruit and really yummy chocolate-chunk cookies.

  “Do we have to put on our seatbelts?” she asked.

  “Just for takeoff and landing,” I told her.

  Susie sat down next to Mom in the row across from us and they started chatting. Since I’d started riding with Susie, she and Mom had become pretty good friends. Mom said she and Susie had more in common than people thought. Even though Mom graduated from one of the top business schools in the country and Susie didn’t even go to college, they both started their own businesses. Susie had been renting stalls at the barn in Westchester, but she hoped to someday buy her own barn, and Mom often counseled her on how she could get the funds together. I wondered if Mom would tell Susie about the cancer before she told me.

  The engine started and we headed off down the runway. The pilot’s voice came over the PA, but it was nothing like being on a real airplane with stewardesses demonstrating how to pull down oxygen masks or making sure your seat belt was on and your seat was in the upright position. All he said was, “Cleared for takeoff. It’ll be about forty-five minutes till we land. Relax and enjoy it.”

  “That’s it?” Hailey said.

  “Yeah, isn’t it cool?”

  She looked a little nervous and her voice quivered as she said, “I guess.”

  “Are you scared?”

  “Nah,” Hailey said.

  It seemed impossible that Hailey was scared. Hailey was the bravest person I knew. She always said whatever was on her mind, which sometimes wasn’t so nice, and she had sung the national anthem at last year’s Pony Finals, the biggest championship show for ponies each year. When it came to riding, Hailey was equally fearless. Susie said she was probably going to be a great jumper rider. Her only problem was that sometimes she was too bold and overrode things. Susie was always trying to get her to calm down and be subtler.

  “You are totally scared. I can’t believe it!”

  Hailey frowned. “Okay, maybe a little.”

  “If you’re going to be the next Beyoncé, you better get used to flying.”

  Hailey shot me a look and stuck out her tongue. “Beyoncé? More like Debbie Harry.”

  Hailey was really old school when it came to music and Blondie was one of her all-time favorite bands. That was the only reason I even knew who Debbie Harry was. “Okay, well, Debbie must have flown everywhere, too.”

  “I know,” she said. “It’s just this plane’s so small. Ever heard of the song ‘The Day the Music Died’?”

  “Nope.”

  “It’s about the day Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper died in a plane crash after a concert.”

  “The big who?” I asked.

  Hailey shook her head. “Forget it.”

  She put her hand onto the seat next to
me and even though it felt kind of dorky, I grabbed it. “Squeeze as hard as you want,” I told her. “If you’re scared just squeeze, okay?”

  Hailey squeezed really hard, jamming my fingers together. “Ow!” I squealed.

  “You said squeeze hard!”

  “Yeah, but don’t kill my hand so I can never ride again.”

  “Then I’ll have to ride Tyler,” Hailey said, still squeezing.

  We both started laughing and pretty soon we were in the air.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  For the rest of the plane ride I kept Hailey’s mind off the fact that we were a few thousand feet off the ground by going over the details for the raffle baskets we were organizing to raise money for Hailey to enter the lip sync at Pony Finals to benefit Danny and Ron’s Rescue.

  Danny Robertshaw and Ron Danta were two trainers and judges, who were also life partners. After the big hurricane down South, they helped find homes for lots of displaced dogs. Then, they turned those first few hundred adopted dogs into a full-fledged rescue organization. That’s where Squirt came from. Since they’d started, Danny and Ron placed thousands of dogs. Hailey had two dogs from them and Jane had one, and I would have had at least one if there was any way on this earth to convince my mother to let me get a dog. Believe me, it wasn’t for lack of trying. I’d begged, pleaded, argued, negotiated, and no luck. Mom liked horses, but she’d been bitten by a dog as a girl and was terrified of them. When Mom got sick the first time I stopped bothering her about a dog for a while. Then she got better and I started in again. I guess now I needed to lay off.

  Everyone goes to watch the lip sync during Pony Finals. Hailey had been runner-up in it last year in her age group. In order to be in it you have to get sponsors and in addition to a trophy for the best act, there’s also an award for the most money raised. An amateur rider, Kim Kolloff, came up with the idea for the lip sync as a way to encourage kids, especially the privileged ones of the show circuit, to learn about giving back. I loved doing work for Danny and Ron’s. There was nothing I cared about more than animals and it was so cool to be able to raise money to help them. You might think that kids would have a hard time getting donations, but so many people in the horse show world are well-connected, and when kids ask them to help out they have a hard time saying no.