Second Chances (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 25)

by Claire Svendsen

  “He is ready,” Dad said. “He’s always been ready. You didn’t need Socks. You never did.”

  And hearing that from my dad was like the biggest boost of confidence that I could have got. I unloaded the trailer, which I’d already packed with Socks’ stuff and repacked it with everything that belonged to Bluebird. I chose the breeches that I’d worn when I last won on Bluebird and I packed my lucky socks but the show wasn’t just about winning. It was about winning as a team and that meant working together, something that none of us were very good at. At least not Jess and I anyway. I’d rather work with anyone else but her but I wanted to be on the team more than anything too so what choice did I have but to buckle down and make it work.

  “Do you think that after the show we could go Christmas shopping?” I asked Dad. “I still have a bunch of stuff to get.”

  “Sure,” he said but he seemed distracted.

  He was looking at mail in the kitchen and hurriedly stuffed it back in the envelope when he saw me coming. That was never a good thing. Dad was the kind of person who swept stuff under the rug and didn’t tell anyone until it was too late to do anything about it. Too late to fix what he had broken and I liked our little farm and I didn’t want anything to jeopardize that.

  “Is everything okay?” I asked, sitting down at the table.

  “Fine,” he said with a fake smile. “Just fine.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  Bluebird practically launched himself into the trailer the next morning, he was so happy to be going somewhere.

  “You’ve missed the show life, huh boy?” I asked him as I patted his neck.

  He’d been to the last show we went to, a little schooling affair where I’d just ridden him in the flat classes but I knew he’d been bored. He was born to jump just like I was and I didn’t care anymore that people thought he was just a pony and that ponies couldn’t jump as high or wide as horses could. The proof was in the drawer full of blue ribbons I had in my bedroom and the fact that the committee had seen my pony jump and knew that he could hold his own on a team of horses against teams that would surely be full of other horses. Let people laugh and say that we’d never make it. I didn’t care because I knew that we would.

  “You got everything?” Dad said.

  “Yes.” I nodded. “At least I’m pretty sure that I do.”

  “Well you know you are going to have to really let out all the stops today,” Dad said.

  “Yes, I know,” I said.

  We drove to the show in relative silence. Dad wasn’t going to stay. He said that he had stuff to do and since this was a team show then I didn’t need him because I’d have the team trainer, who was Duncan. I wasn’t too sure about being left to the wolves with just my pony by my side but I didn’t really have a choice.

  This was it. Time to put my big girl pants on and face the fact that it wasn’t just about me anymore. If I really wanted to make it to the Olympics, it was about teamwork too and as we pulled into the show grounds, the sun just starting to lighten the sky, I got a warm feeling in the pit of my stomach and it wasn’t nerves, it was excitement. Excitement over the fact that I was at a show with my pony. The one I loved the most because even though I loved all the others, Bluebird was still my heart horse. My soul pony. The one that would always get me and I would always get him and we would be together forever, jumping the moon until the day he told me he no longer could.

  All those thoughts about retiring him or letting him teach lessons had been silly and foolish and my way of trying to protect him after what had happened over the summer but I couldn’t protect him from the thing he loved most just like my mother couldn’t protect me from it. We were born to ride and jump and gallop like the wind. That was just the way it was and whatever happened when all was said and done happened and that was that.

  “Good luck,” Dad said after he had unloaded my stuff.

  “Thanks,” I replied. “But I don’t think we’ll need it.”

  And as I watched him drive away I knew that I already had all the luck I would ever need and his name was Bluebird.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  “You can go in the stall on the end,” Jess said in her snotty voice.

  I knew that she was only saying that because the stall on the end was the smallest and she was trying to make a point that Bluebird was small too and didn’t need a big stall, which I guess was technically true but still felt like Jess was trying to get to me already.

  “Who died and made you queen of the stalls?” Andy asked her, popping his head out of Mousse’s stall. “Duncan assigns the stalls, not you, because he is the team leader.”

  “I know,” Jess said, rolling her eyes. “But I’m the stand in leader.”

  “No you are not,” Duncan said, appearing with a clipboard in his hands.

  He looked at me and Bluebird in the same way that he had looked at all the other riders and horses and for once I didn’t feel that we were small and insignificant.

  “Emily, you are in stall number eleven,” he said.

  “That’s next to me,” Andy said happily.

  “We can take the small stall if you want us to,” I said, trying to sound like I didn’t care.

  “That is the tack stall,” Duncan said. “And Jess knows better.”

  I walked Bluebird into the stall next to Mousse and slipped off his halter with a smile. Duncan was no fool. He may have been young and fit and extremely handsome but that didn’t mean that he was going to fall for Jess’s fake charm and smiles. He’d probably been around the circuit several times and knew all about girls like Jess with their rich daddies and imported horses. Jess didn’t like Duncan, she didn’t even fancy him. I knew that she just wanted to use him to make me and my pony suffer and I didn’t really care what she did to me but I had to make sure that she never hurt Bluebird again.

  “That was awesome,” Andy said, leaning over the door of our stall.

  “I like Duncan,” I said.

  “Well it is nice to know that our leader is actually looking out for all the team members and not just the rich ones.” Andy nodded.

  “Yes it is,” I said. “And that if they have to bend the rules for Jess then they have to bend them for everyone because otherwise I wouldn’t even be here.”

  “Bluebird sure looks glad that he is,” Andy said.

  “He practically galloped into the trailer.” I laughed. “So what horse does Jess have?”

  “Some weird looking Cremello,” Andy said.

  “Really?” I replied.

  Cremellos weren’t very common on the jumper circuit and their cream colored coats and blue eyes made them stand out, which was probably what had drawn Jess to the horse in the first place. If she couldn’t have the best jumper then she had to have the prettiest horse. Personally I thought Bluebird was the cutest chestnut I’d ever seen but there were a million chestnuts out there. Cremellos were quite rare and I’d never actually seen one jump.

  “Is it any good?” I asked Andy.

  “I guess we’ll find out,” he replied with a grin.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  The Cremello gelding stood there in his stall looking like a million bucks. His blue eyes regarded us coldly as we peeked in as if to say how dare you even look at me.

  “Well he has the right attitude,” Andy said. “He’s looking at us just like Jess does.”

  “Blue Morning Mist,” I read off the clipboard on the front of his stall. “Sounds fancy.”

  “Sounds like a mouthful,” Andy said.

  “I like it,” I told him. “And the horse can’t be that bad otherwise Duncan wouldn’t have let Jess ride him.”

  “That’s what you think,” Andy said. “Have you seen this horse on the circuit at any shows before?”

  I shook my head.

  “In fact have you seen Jess ever ride him at all?”

  “No,” I admitted.

  “Exactly,” he carried on. “They let you ride Bluebird because they’d seen you rid
e him before. No one has ever seen this horse at a show. No one even knows where he came from.”

  “Europe probably,” I said. “Just like all Jess’s horses. Imported from the best and ruined in months.”

  “Or weeks,” Andy said.

  I thought about Hashtag back at our farm, another of Jess’s cast offs, and how I was going to have to figure out what to do with him. Dad had let me keep him for now but I knew that he wouldn’t let me keep a horse that wasn’t a jumper anymore forever and the horse liked the hunters. He’d do well with a rider who wanted to go in that direction. And he deserved the life he wanted, not the one I wanted for him.

  “What is it?” Andy said, looking at my frown.

  “Nothing.” I shook my head. “Come on. We have to get going with these decorations or we’ll never have them finished in time.”

  Because this was a Christmas show and a charity event there were all sorts of extra things going on like prizes for the best decorated stall and a costume class. But since Socks didn’t like anything to do with flapping things or billowing things or things that weren’t proper tack, I hadn’t bothered to plan one. Bluebird didn’t care but I hadn’t had time to think of a costume and in a way I was kind of glad. I already felt like we were out of practice in the show ring and I just wanted to concentrate on our jumping. But Andy had a whole Elf costume thing going on for Mousse, who looked very unimpressed, especially with the pointy ears and together we decorated the stalls because no one else wanted to.

  “Tinsel or garlands?” Andy said, rummaging through the box of decorations that Duncan had brought.

  “Garlands,” I said. “Tinsel is tacky.”

  “Hey,” he said. “Our tree has tinsel on it.”

  “Okay,” I said. “It’s not tacky.” Tossing the silver strands back at him. “But the garland is more horsey and look, we can put these fake frosted apples in it and it will look all cool and stuff.”

  “Until the horses eat them,” Andy said. “Because that wouldn’t be cool at all.”

  He was right.

  “Well we’ll just have to hang it so that they can’t reach,” I told him.

  It took us ages to get the decorations just right. The horses could reach further than you would think and Blue Morning Mist had a neck like a giraffe.

  “If that horse eats a fake apple then we’ll never hear the end of it,” Andy said, pulling the garland away from the cream horse’s mouth.

  “It would be payback though,” I said. “For what she did to Bluebird.”

  But I didn’t want to see another horse get hurt, even if it was a horse that belonged to Jess. I reached out and let him sniff my hand and he snorted and then licked it.

  “What are you giving my horse,” Jess screeched.

  She’d come around the corner and caught me with my hand out and her horse slobbering all over it.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I was just saying hello to the new team horse. Being friendly, you know?”

  “Well I don’t want you being friendly to my horse,” she said, shoving him in the neck so that he jumped to the back of his stall, snorting in the darkness. “I don’t want you going anywhere near him. You got that?”

  “What is going on here?” Duncan asked.

  He’d appeared to find Jess and I in some kind of standoff even though I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about. Mind you, if I’d caught her anywhere near Bluebird, I would have freaked out too but then again I didn’t have a history of poisoning ponies or trying to destroy other people’s careers.

  “She was touching my horse,” Jess said, sounding like a three year old who didn’t want anyone to play with her toys.

  “I was just saying hello,” I said, trying to defend myself.

  “Well I don’t know what the big deal is,” Duncan said. “You might as well all get used to each other’s horses because in the second class today, you have to switch mounts.”

  “What?” Jess and I both shrieked at the same time.

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “There is no way she is going anywhere near my pony. She poisoned him you know. She’ll probably kill him if she rides him.”

  “And I don’t want her riding my horse either,” Jess wailed. “She’ll mess him up. He’s very delicate and besides, she hates me so she’ll try to ruin him.”

  “I’d never try to ruin any horse,” I yelled at her. “I’m not like you.”

  “Girls please,” Duncan said. “Stop it right now or you’re off the team.”

  People had stopped to look at us and I felt my face flush red. I’d sworn that I wouldn’t let Jess get to me at this show but she was and we hadn’t even ridden yet.

  “But…” Jess started but Duncan interrupted her.

  “One more word and you are off the team,” he said.

  I had my mouth open to say a few choice words when Andy grabbed my arm and dragged me away.

  “Let’s take a walk,” he said.

  “I don’t want to,” I told him, trying to pull away from him.

  I wanted to have this thing out with Jess once and for all and I suddenly couldn’t care less about the team because there was no way I was letting Jess ride my pony.

  “Come on,” Andy said. “Let’s go.”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Andy pulled me away from the horses and the barns. I knew he was trying to stop me from getting kicked off the team but right now I didn’t even care. I’d quit before I let Jess ride Bluebird.

  “She can’t ride him,” I said as Andy sat me down on a bench.

  “Just breathe,” he said as I started to hyperventilate.

  “You don’t understand.” I shook my head. “You don’t know.”

  “What is she going to do to him in the middle of the ring in front of the judges? She won’t be able to hurt him and besides, they pull names out of a hat. There is a good chance that she won’t even get Bluebird.”

  “She’ll get him,” I said. “I know she will. Why didn’t anyone tell me about this switching thing?”

  “I thought you knew,” Andy said. “It has always been a team thing to switch horses.”

  “But not today,” I said. “I would have let her ride Socks but not Bluebird.”

  “Then you’ll have to quit the team,” Duncan said, coming over and sitting down next to me.

  “You don’t know what she did,” I said. “She poisoned my pony and he almost died. And she admitted it. She is cold and calculating and no, just no. Not now, not in a million years.”

  “She won’t be able to hurt him in front of the judges,” Duncan said, echoing what Andy had told me but I didn’t care.

  “You don’t know her. She will.” I sighed.

  I knew I sounded like a spoiled brat. The kid whose pony was too special to be ridden by anyone else and I did feel like that. Bluebird was special. I didn’t like it when other people rode him. I felt like a piece of my soul was being violated but I’d let Cat ride him because I’d been supervising and I would have let Andy ride him because he was kind and had soft hands. The other members of the team, maybe. I mean I didn’t know them and I wouldn’t have liked it but Jess? Just the thought made me sick to my stomach.

  “You have to decide,” Duncan said. “If I’m going to pull you and replace you with the alternate, I need to know now.”

  It was what Jess had wanted all along, to have me replaced so that Francesca could ride and it looked like she was about to get her wish.

  “Fine,” I said. “Pull me. I don’t care.”

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  Andy tried to talk me out of it but I wouldn’t listen. I went and got Bluebird, who was in his Christmas stall looking all festive and jolly and I put his bridle on. He looked surprised but didn’t fuss about it. I pulled him out of the stall without looking at anyone else, grabbed my helmet, and then I sprang up onto his back and rode away. We couldn’t go far. It wasn’t like I could actually leave but we rode away from the madness that was the team barn and found a quiet spot. I hacke
d him for a while and then put him through his paces. He was fresh and full of himself and I knew that he was expecting to jump today.

  There were a couple of logs set out, probably for some pony camp or an eventing team. Bluebird flew over them like they weren’t even there and I clung to his neck and tangled my fingers in his mane and wondered what I was even doing here. We weren’t made for this. We were meant to jump but not like this. I just couldn’t do it.

  But I thought of the disappointment on my father's face when he found out that I’d thrown my golden opportunity away made me feel ill. And word would spread. I wouldn’t be invited on other teams in the future and the Olympics? That was a team too. Had I really just thrown my entire future away just because of Jess?

  I lay on Bluebirds neck and hung upside down, watching the clouds. It was cooler today and I wished that I’d brought a coat but it was back at the barn with the rest of my stuff and I wasn’t ready to go back there, not just yet anyway.

  We wandered over to the warm up ring where people were starting to get their horses out and about. There were a few jumps in there that had obviously been set too high. They were massive. I trotted Bluebird into the ring and then cantered around a couple of times. I looked around guiltily but no one was watching so I pointed my pony at the jumps.

  For a moment I thought they were too high but I knew Bluebird could do it. I never, ever doubted him for a second. And because I didn’t doubt him he flew over the fences like they were cross rails and tossed his neck afterwards, his mane loose and free because I hadn’t braided it yet.

  I walked out of the ring as people started to come in and saw Duncan standing there by the fence. He had a look on his face. One that said he couldn’t quite believe what he’d seen.

  “You’re in,” he said. “I didn’t pull you.”

  “But ...” I protested.

  “Don’t worry, Jess won’t ride your pony. She’s the one who is out. I pulled her instead.”