Second Chances (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 25)

by Claire Svendsen

  “So, where is everyone else?” I asked.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Everyone had gathered in the tack room on the fancy benches which were in front of the polished lockers. Well Jess and another girl had, their legs stretched out on them so that no one else could sit there. A pale, thin girl had given up and was sitting on the floor and a guy was standing over by the water fountain.

  “That is Scott,” Andy whispered. “And he is really good.”

  “What about the rest?” I whispered back. “I see Jess but who are the others?”

  “The girl on the bench is Francesca,” Andy said. “She is the alternate and some kind of friend of Jess’s.”

  “Yes, that is the girl she wants to replace me,” I replied. “And her?” I pointed to the girl in the corner who looked like she was waiting for the floor to swallow her up.

  “That is Rose,” Andy said. “And I don’t know anything about her.”

  “Well she doesn’t seem like she is in Jess’s clique and that makes her okay in my book,” I said.

  I was just about to suggest that we go over and befriend Rose when our trainer came in. He was tall and lean, as most horseman were and had tanned skin and a broad smile.

  “Welcome to the Junior Olympic team,” he said. “Thank you for coming. I’m Duncan and I'll be your trainer for today's session and the December show. Now I don’t want you to get all nervous. This is just a sort of get to know each other session.”

  “I’d rather not get to know certain people at all,” Jess mumbled under her breath.

  “Well then you can always be replaced by the alternate,” Duncan told her cheerily.

  Jess’s face turned bright red. One of the instructors may have played bridge with her father but I was pretty sure that it wasn’t Duncan and he obviously wasn’t going to take any of her nonsense. I liked him already.

  “As I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted,” he carried on. “We have our first show next week. Since it is Christmas, this is going to be a charity event so there won’t be any big money prizes. Instead any winnings will go to the charity of the team’s choice so I want you all to think long and hard about where the money should go but for now, let's get your horses tacked up and we’ll meet in the outdoor ring in thirty minutes. Sound good?”

  We all nodded and Duncan left.

  “Hey Emily,” Jess said. “Maybe your farm could be the charity that the money goes to. I heard that it is all sad and falling down and hardly fit for horses at all.”

  “We’ll take any free money we can get,” I replied with a sweet smile before waltzing out of the tack room.

  I wasn’t about to let Jess get to me. Not yet anyway. I had more important things on my mind, like making sure that Socks and I got noticed. In a good way.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  As seasoned show riders, we were all pretty expert at getting our horses ready and out to the ring with little fuss or bother. All of us except Jess who liked to create attention and drama and spent most of her time pushing Valor out of the way because she said he was crowding her when in reality the horse was just standing perfectly still and she was the one who was buzzing around the stall.

  “Let’s go,” I whispered to Andy, not wanting to see her escalade to hitting the horse, which I knew she was perfectly capable of.

  “I can’t believe she made the team,” Andy whispered back. “Whatever happened to good sportsmanship?”

  “I think it died when it saw Jess,” I said.

  We both laughed as we walked past and Jess glared at us.

  “You’ll be laughing on the other side of your faces when you get replaced by the alternate,” she snarled at us.

  “Who is this alternate and why does Jess think that she is better than we are?” I asked Andy.

  “I have no idea,” he said.

  But the alternate, Francesca, had a big strapping horse with rippling muscles and bright eyes. He looked like he could jump over a house.

  “I don’t think she made alternate,” I said. “Her horse did. Who wouldn’t want a beast like that on their team?”

  The horse made Mousse and Socks look like little ponies and I was suddenly grateful that I didn’t have Bluebird with me because even though I loved him more than anything in the world and even though I believed that he could easily jump just as well as all these other horses, I knew that we would have still been a laughing stock. Scott had a nice, normal looking chestnut gelding with a white face and the shy girl Rose had a sweet gray mare that didn’t seem like she was a powerhouse at all but I suspected that she was one of those horses that managed to jump like a cat.

  “Alright everyone,” Duncan said when he joined us out in the ring. “Now someone tell me why you are all just standing around instead of warming up?”

  No one said anything, we all just found a spot on the rail and got to work. I guess being on the team was a lot less like getting private lessons and a bit more like being yelled at in the warm up ring at the last minute before you went in the show ring.

  Socks was fresh. He always was in a new place and now there were other horses around to test out his fabulousness on. I tried to hold him together without actually holding him together and making him mad, which resulted in a trot that was a cross between a canter and a sideways jog.

  “You.” Duncan pointed at me.

  “Emily,” I replied.

  “Yes, Emily. Can your horse not stay on the bit and trot nicely around the ring like everyone else?”

  I looked at all the other horses trotting politely around the perimeter as Duncan beckoned us into the center. Five minutes in and we were already about to be made an example of and not in a good way.

  “He’s not a hunter,” I said defensively. “He’s a speed horse and besides, he’s just getting settled in.”

  Duncan tapped his crop against his boot and for a moment I thought that he was going to pull me off Socks and try and ride him himself, which would only make my horse mad and impossible to do anything with. But he didn’t. Instead he just sighed.

  “Well settle him quickly,” he said. “Attention is good on the team. Negative attention is not.”

  As I quickly trotted Socks back to the rail I heard Jess snicker. She was smiling at Francesca. I think she thought that her best friend, the alternate, already had it in the bag.

  “Come on Socks,” I whispered. “Don’t let me down now. Please.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Socks began to settle once we started working at the canter and I didn’t feel like my horse was out of place. He fit in nicely with all the other fancy horses and when Duncan set up the first simple gymnastic exercise, Socks bounced through it first without any problems. He didn’t even try and run away with me after, for which I was super grateful.

  Andy gave me a wink when I came back to the group and Jess just glared. I guess that her nice act was well and truly over now. It hadn’t worked anyway. Well maybe it had worked for a second but deep down I’d known that she would never really change. A leopard couldn’t change its spots just like Jess couldn't change her nature.

  Mousse went through the jumps with Andy nicely and all the other horses did too, which wasn’t really surprising. If we couldn’t manage a simple gymnastic exercise then we had no business being on the team in the first place.

  Duncan took it easy on us. Raising the fences and then adding new ones until we were going around a decent sized course. Socks loved it. The jumps, the atmosphere. Some of the students from the barn had come to watch and were hanging on the fence. Every time one of us went clear they cheered and Socks puffed up even bigger. Francesca’s horse didn’t like the attention though. He got all spooky in the corner where the kids were and in the end she yelled at them to clear off.

  “They can stay,” Duncan shouted over to Francesca. “Do you think that there will never be people watching you at the shows? Of course there will be and your horse had better get used to it.”

  Francesca’s face
turned bright red under her helmet and Jess made a face. She didn’t like it that her protégé was being singled out.

  “Emily has her stirrups too long, don’t you think?” Jess said loudly.

  Duncan looked over at me. My stirrups were the same length that they always were when I rode Socks. I needed to be able to wrap my legs around him when he took off because the last thing you wanted to do was get all up in his face. You had to ride him by your seat but I couldn’t explain all that to Duncan sitting there in the ring under the hot sun with everyone's eyes on me.

  Duncan looked at me for a moment. “They look fine to me,” he said with a shrug. “Look, your job as a rider is to figure out what works for your horse and maybe that might be something unconventional but as long as it is not illegal in the show ring and it gets the job done then I don’t really care. And I want you to stop sniping at each other. You are supposed to be a team. You are here to support each other, not tear each other apart.”

  “That will be the day,” Andy whispered to me.

  “Tell me about it,” I said. “What next? My breeches are the wrong color or my helmet doesn’t have enough sparkles on it?”

  “I can bedazzle your butt if you like,” Andy said. “And make your saddle pad match.”

  “I might have to take you up on that,” I said. “Or maybe you could bedazzle Jess a new personality.”

  “I think that is beyond my skill set,” Andy said.

  “Too bad.” I sighed. “I’m not sure how I’m going to make it through today let alone a whole show with Jess and it's not just the show it’s for the whole season. I’m starting to think that joining this team was a big mistake.”

  “Don’t say that,” Andy said. “If you weren’t here I don’t think I could take it.”

  “Well at least we have each other,” I said. “And I’ll stay if you do.”

  “Unless both of us get kicked out,” Andy said.

  “If Jess has anything to do with it, that could be a distinct possibility,” I said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Lunch was food from a little bistro down the road that served things like tiny salads and portions of chicken or fish that were the size of my pinkie for twenty dollars. Such luxuries were well beyond my budget and I was glad that I’d remembered to bring a sandwich. Andy had brought one too. Not because he couldn’t afford the silly food but probably because he didn’t want to make me feel bad and also because he had a giant appetite. He had packed two sandwiches, a jumbo bag of potato chips, an apple, an orange and three power bars.

  “Exactly how many people are you feeding?” I asked him as he tipped all the food out of a brown paper bag onto the picnic table under the trees.

  “I get hungry,” he said with a shrug.

  “But you are so skinny,” I said. “How is that even possible?”

  “I don’t know. I guess I have a fast metabolism,” he said.

  “You are so lucky.” I sighed, looking at my pitifully squashed tuna sandwich and tub of fat free yogurt.

  I knew that being obsessed with your weight was a bad thing and when I’d still been at school there had been plenty of girls who spent their whole lunch hour staring longingly at the girls who did eat while they crunched on a cup of ice cubes. Then there were the ones who ate everything that was packed in their bag and then immediately regretted it and spent the few minutes they had left before class throwing up in the toilets.

  I had no desire to be either of those types of girls but even I had to admit that the lure was there beneath the surface of my psyche. I wanted to be slim and pretty like the girls in my tack catalogues. The ones who modeled the size zero breeches with their long legs that went on forever and slim arms. Even if the rational part of me knew that they’d never have the strength to pilot a thousand pound animal over a four foot six oxer.

  “Do you think we should ask Rose to sit with us?” I said as the willowy girl stood there looking lost.

  “Why not,” Andy said. “She looks just as sad as we are.”

  “We’re not sad,” I said as I beckoned her over. “We’re special and interesting.”

  Andy just rolled his eyes and it took a bit of convincing but eventually Rose came and sat with us.

  “Hi,” I said in what I hoped was a cheery but non intimidating voice. “I’m Emily and this is Andy.”

  “I know who you are,” she said, looking at us like we were rock stars or something. “I’m Rose.”

  “I like your horse,” I said. “She’s very pretty.”

  “Thanks,” Rose said. “I’ve had Noelle for three years now but we only just started competing at this level recently. I sort of lost my nerve a while back after a bad fall and it took a bit of time to work my way back up again.”

  “It happens to the best of us,” I said. “My sister died in a riding accident.”

  I wasn’t sure why I said it but the words came spilling out of me. Maybe if I was more open in talking about Summer then my family would start to be as well. Some secrets couldn’t be kept hidden forever. It wasn’t healthy. They rotted you from the inside out and I was done with that.

  “I’m sorry,” Rose said.

  “It’s okay,” I replied. “It was a long time ago.”

  “So what is the deal with you and that mean girl?” Rose said. “She really doesn’t like you.”

  “You don’t know the half of it,” I said.

  Andy and I spent the rest of the lunch hour telling Rose all about Jess and her bid to see me fail at everything horse related. I even told her about how Jess had poisoned Bluebird because I wanted her to watch out for her own horse and not have to go through the same horrible ordeal that I had. I wouldn’t put it past Jess to poison any of the other horses on the team just so that she could get her new best friend Francesca out of the alternate status and onto the real team.

  Rose, who kept her mare at home and had led quite a sheltered life, was shocked to realize that such things went on and I think by the time lunch was over, she was beginning to question whether or not she should have joined the team at all.

  “You’ll be fine if you stick with us,” Andy said. “We look out for each other.”

  “Okay,” she said. “But you couldn’t stop her pony from getting poisoned.” She pointed at me.

  “She has a point,” I said. “It is going to take more than just sticking together to make sure that Jess doesn’t do something really dumb.”

  But it turned out that Jess had her own problems. After lunch Valor decided that he didn’t want to work at all and he was happy to just stay in his stall thank you very much. Jess had to fight just to get him out to the ring and then he wouldn’t let her get on him.

  “Someone has finally wised up to Jess’s tricks,” I whispered to Andy.

  Duncan stood there looking exasperated until he finally yanked the reins away from Jess.

  “This is not acceptable,” he said. “Team horses need to be willing and able to work at any time of the day or night.”

  “I know,” Jess said through gritted teeth. “He is just out of sorts today. I don’t know why.”

  She glared at me like maybe I’d had something to do with it when I hadn’t even been anywhere near the horse. I just looked away. I wasn’t getting roped into that argument.

  Duncan adjusted the stirrups on Jess’s saddle and hopped up in one swoop and soon had the big horse cantering around as nicely and quietly as a beginner’s horse.

  “Well I don’t know what the problem is,” Duncan said as he jumped off and handed the reins back to Jess. “Because he seems fine to me.”

  “The problem is Jess,” Andy whispered.

  “And that horse is going to find himself for sale as soon as Jess gets him home,” I replied.

  “But then she’ll get kicked off the team,” Andy said. “You have to ride the same horse, remember?”

  “I’m sure she’ll find a way around that,” I said with a sigh. “As far as Jess is concerned, rules are meant to be broken.�
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  Jess got up in the saddle with a sour look on her face and smacked Valor with her crop when she thought Duncan wasn’t looking. I was pretty sure that Valor wasn’t going to be getting any carrots when he went home tonight and I didn’t have room in my barn for any more of her rejects. I hadn’t even told my father yet that I thought Hashtag would be far happier as a hunter and that meant that I was down another horse and I liked Valor but he was big and kind of a bully. I knew he would never be the horse for me. I liked them quick and handy and fast like a racehorse with minds and personalities of their own. Jess just liked them to do as they were told.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  After her horse had embarrassed her, Jess was rougher with Valor than she needed to be and the big horse finally decided he’d had enough when he slammed on the brakes in front of a decent sized oxer and she went sailing over his head without him. She hit the ground with a loud thud and lay there for a second, obviously stunned. Valor came trotting over to us and I grabbed his reins before he decided that maybe it might be fun to take a joy ride around the farm and down the road, never to be seen again.

  He sniffed noses with Socks and then stood there quietly. My horse pinned his ears as though he was telling Valor that he’d better not try any funny business and that was that.

  Duncan went over to check on Jess. She sat up and he made her stay there for a few moments, checking that she was really okay. The surge of adrenaline after a fall could easily mask the fact that you had a broken bone or a bad sprain but I knew that if Jess had anything like that she would have been screaming her head off by now. She was fine. Valor wouldn’t be though. If he was going to be in trouble when he got home before then he was really going to be in the dog house now. In fact I wouldn’t have been surprised if he ended up being sent off to be turned into dog meat, no matter that he had been imported from Europe and had cost a fortune.