Second Chances (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 25)

by Claire Svendsen

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  As we got closer to the barn, I could hear Jess’s voice. She was throwing a fit, just like I knew that she would. She’d had it out for me all along but with Duncan now pulling her from the team instead of me, I knew that it was only going to make things a million times worse.

  “If she wasn’t going to hurt my pony before, she will now,” I said.

  Duncan looked up at me, sitting on the bare back of my pony and just grinned.

  “You jumped those fences bareback without a second thought,” he said. “And your pony cleared them.”

  “I wasn’t showing off,” I said, starting to feel embarrassed.

  What if Duncan thought I’d forced Bluebird to jump them in order to show off? What if he thought I’d planned it all along so that he would keep me on the team? But he just smiled.

  “I know,” he said. “You couldn’t help it.”

  “Exactly,” I said.

  Duncan got me. He knew how it felt to see the jumps set up in the freshly dragged ring, the poles with dew on them glistening in the sun and to feel the pull of the thrill. The need to jump them no matter what. Not for ribbons or cups or glory but for the sheer joy that was soaring through the air with your pony as one.

  “Those fences were higher than any of the ones that we will face in the show ring today,” Duncan carried on. “Your pony is an asset to the team. That Cremello that Jess has? I’ve never seen him jump. For all I know he couldn’t clear a cross rail. Her father pulled strings to make that switch happen and it was nothing to do with me and that is the reason I’ll be using to pull her and replace both her and her horse with the alternate.”

  “Jess did really want Francesca on the team,” I said with a grin.

  “Well I guess she got her wish then,” Duncan said.

  “Which is all very well,” I added. “But I’m still worried about Jess lashing out at Bluebird and me.”

  I had to be honest with Duncan. It was the only way. He’d been kind to us and I was starting to trust him but the truth was that I had no idea what Jess was going to do now.

  “Don’t you worry,” Duncan said. “Jess is now the alternate but if she wants to stay on the team then she needs to play nice. She puts another toe out of line and she is off the team for good.”

  “I’m not sure she’ll really care about that,” I said.

  “She should,” Duncan said. “The Junior Olympic finals are in Paris and I know there is no way that a girl like her will want to miss something like that.”

  “Paris? Really?” I said.

  Maybe the whole team thing wasn’t going to be so bad after all.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  “My father will hear about this,” Jess was yelling when we made it back to the barn. “He’ll call his lawyer and you’ll be sued. Both of you.”

  Jess pointed at me and Duncan.

  “Go and tack your pony up properly,” Duncan said. “That goes for all of you,” he said loudly so that the other members of the team could hear. “Horses tacked and in the warm up ring in ten minutes.”

  The other team members had been standing around probably hoping to see some big blowout. Even members of some of the other teams kept slinking by. We were better than a reality show on television. All we needed now was to have an actual fight and then for someone to faint or get punched in the face and need an ambulance.

  But Duncan wasn’t about to have his team embarrassed any more than it already had been. He ushered Jess into the tack stall and closed the door. I could hear him in there talking to her but not what he was saying. It was going to have to be something really good to calm Jess down because once she got going she was sort of like a wildfire, you just had to wait for her to burn herself out.

  “What do you think he is saying?” Andy whispered through the slats in the stall walls.

  I was running a brush over Bluebird’s copper coat before I put his saddle on and Andy was doing the same to Mousse.

  “I don’t know,” I said.

  “That was smart,” Andy carried on. “Showing how good your pony was like that.”

  “That wasn’t what I was doing,” I said.

  “Then what were you doing out there?” Andy said.

  He didn’t get it like Duncan did and that was okay. I didn’t expect him to. I didn’t expect him to understand how jumping cleared my mind and lifted my spirits.

  “Really, what were you doing?” Andy asked again.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said.

  “It will matter to Jess,” Andy said.

  “I know,” I replied.

  I quickly put some button braids in Bluebird's mane. They weren’t the best I’d ever done but they’d have to do and I was thankful that we weren’t expected to do hunter braids because that would have taken forever and I didn’t have time for that. In fact I barely had time to run a brush over my own hair and braid it so that it would fit under my helmet.

  “Are you ready?” Andy asked as he brought Mousse out into the bright sun, the gray horse gleaming.

  “I guess,” I said.

  I didn’t feel ready. In fact I’d never felt less ready for a show in my whole life but Bluebird was ready and that was all that really mattered.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  Jess was allowed to warm up with us because she was still the alternate after all and who knew if one of the other horses might throw a shoe or something and not be able to compete. She kept sending me glares from the back of her fancy horse as I prayed that every horse out there had really competent farriers and that they didn’t grab a heel. In fact I was so busy looking at all the other horses to make sure that they weren’t lame that I almost ran into Scott’s horse.

  “Watch it,” he said, glaring at me.

  Which made me wonder if he was a friend of Jess’s after all. Rose gave me an encouraging smile as she rode past on Noelle, her mare looking good under saddle. She’d seen Bluebird before, the night that Faith had run away and fallen off and so she hadn’t been surprised to see me here on a pony but the others were. I could see it on their faces even though they hadn’t said anything. They didn't think that Bluebird was good enough but Duncan did and that was all that mattered.

  He called various team members out on some sloppy riding but mostly he was an encouraging trainer and since this was a show warm up, it would have accomplished nothing to strip us down and destroy our confidence.

  “Over the warm up fences one by one,” Duncan said when he was satisfied with our flatwork. “Emily, you can sit this one out since your pony already jumped.”

  I nodded, feeling slightly disappointed that I wouldn't get to show the rest of the team how great my pony was but knowing that they’d see soon enough.

  Jess cantered her cream colored horse over the fence and it looked like it took every ounce of strength she had to do so. He backed off so much at the tiny vertical that I thought he was actually going to start going backwards. Even if Duncan hadn’t pulled her from the team, I was pretty sure that he might now. Blue Morning Mist scrambled over it all legs and hooves and knocked the rail down. Duncan shook his head.

  “Jess, again,” Duncan said.

  Jess gathered her reins, her face all scrunched and mad. This time she used her crop before the fence and the cream horse slid to a stop. She hit him with her crop again and he went backwards so she hit him three more times. The sound of the crop against his sides reverberated around the warm up ring and Blue Morning Mist had wild eyes and a foam flecked neck. He was now frozen, his legs planted, not sure if he should go backwards or forwards.

  “Enough,” Duncan yelled. “Come here, right now.”

  “Now she’s gone and done it,” Andy said. “If she’d done that in the show ring, she’d have been eliminated. Excessive use of crop. It’s a rule and she just broke it.”

  “Somehow I don’t think she cares,” I said. “She wants to break that horse’s spirit. That is how she wrecks them.”

  I felt bad for t
he horse I didn’t even know. The pretty horse with the blue eyes that looked scared and confused. Duncan made her get off and he looked over at me. I looked at my hands, willing him not to call me over to ride the horse because I’d already dug myself into a deep enough hole with Jess and riding her horse now and doing it better than her would just be the final nail in my coffin. So when Duncan adjusted the stirrups and swung up into the saddle himself, I let out a sigh of relief.

  “If your horse won’t jump,” he said, obviously using Jess’s shortcomings as a teaching exercise. “It is because you are doing something wrong. It is your job to guide him over the fence and to make sure you set him up correctly to do so. If you do your job right then so will he. If you don’t, well then you saw what can happen and I don’t want to see any of you ever use your crop in that manner. Understood? A crop is an aid. An extension of your leg. It is not a tool for punishing your horse when you think he has done something wrong.”

  Jess was looking at her boots, scowling. She probably hated Duncan just as much as she hated me now. Maybe even more. After all he had just embarrassed her in front of everybody. She’d come back from her summer in Europe so put together, all nice and kind and riding well. I had to wonder how it had all fallen apart so quickly but the old Jess was back, there was no doubt about that.

  Duncan trotted the horse a little to calm him down and patted his neck when he got a quiet, collected canter out of him instead of the strung out mess that Jess had got. He finally circled and pointed him at the jump and Blue Morning Mist hopped over it like he should have done with Jess. Quietly. Calmly. Nicely. Duncan jumped the other fences for good measure just to show Jess that it wasn’t a fluke and then the horse was back in her hands.

  “Should I do it now?” she snapped, adjusting her glove.

  “No,” Duncan said. “Take him back to the barn and untack him. You are done for the day.”

  “But what if you need an alternate?” she spluttered.

  “If we do it won’t be you,” he said. “Not today.”

  “So I’m off the team then?” she shrieked, her face all red and blotchy.

  “You are off the team today,” Duncan said, his voice all calm and diplomatic. “As far as the rest of the season? Well we’ll just have to see. I guess it will depend on your behavior and your attitude.”

  “This is the most ridiculous thing ever,” Jess said, spinning on her heels. “You can all go and suck it. I don’t need you.”

  “She’ll need us when she finds out about Paris,” I whispered to Andy as Jess dragged her reluctant horse behind her back to the barn.

  “What about Paris?” Andy said.

  “You’ll find out eventually,” I said, knowing that Andy was a boy and wouldn’t care about things like shopping in Paris, the things that were important to Jess. And shopping wasn’t important to me either but seeing the world and competing in it was. I wanted to get the experiences that Jess had when she was over there and I wanted to better myself and my pony and obviously this team was the way to do it.

  “You and your pony are up first,” Duncan said as we left the warm up ring and the next team went in. “We are counting on you to set the standard.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, patting Bluebird on the neck. “We’ve got this.”

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  We’d walked the course with Duncan as a team. We knew what we had to do. There were five of us competing but they would only keep the top four scores. I knew that Duncan was counting on us to go clean and set a good example. I had a good feeling about the course. It was pretty straight forward and maybe even a little too easy but I wasn’t complaining because this was our first real show back and Bluebird had already proved that he was more than capable of doing this. It was his job and mine to go around and make it look as easy as I felt like it was.

  “Watch out for the turn from jumps four to five,” Duncan said as we passed him. “But you’ve got this.”

  “I know,” I said.

  We stood there for a second in the ring. Saluting the judge and surveying the course. I trotted Bluebird over to the one jump that I thought might scare him, a purple oxer with a bunch of flowers and frogs beneath it. Someone had definitely gone overboard on the course decorations. In fact most of them were Christmas themed. There were some pine trees and a few snowmen and lots and lots of tinsel but I knew that wouldn’t bother Bluebird one bit. It was the purple flowers and the creepy frogs he wouldn’t like.

  He snorted when he saw them and looked sideways. I gathered my reins and trotted him around the jump until the bell rang and we had to start.

  “I won’t let those frogs get you,” I whispered as I patted his neck. “I promise.”

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  Some courses are designed to put you and your horse down. To trick you and make you realize that you were never as good as you thought you were but this course was not like that at all. You could tell that it had been put together by trainers that wanted to challenge their teams but also to nurture them. After all, this was our first team show.

  Bluebird cantered easily over the first jump, a white vertical with snowmen on either side. We popped over the Christmas tree jump, the frozen lake water and the turn from four to five that Duncan was worried about. I knew that stuff wouldn’t bother Bluebird but the purple frog jump was coming up fast and I could already feel him backing off.

  “Oh no you don’t,” I said, applying my legs.

  A rider like Jess would have resorted to using their crop, smacking my pony and scaring him instead of instilling him with confidence. Duncan was right. There was always a time and a place to use your crop just like there was a time and a place to use spurs but I knew my pony and I knew that he knew his job and he didn’t need to be yelled at. He needed to be encouraged.

  “Come on boy,” I called out.

  We found a long spot. It wasn’t the one I would have liked but just getting him over the scary jump was really all I cared about. And he did it, reaching across it with his short legs, straining to make sure that he tucked his hooves and didn’t catch the top rail and we finished the course clean to a smattering of applause.

  “Well done,” Duncan said. “Good job.”

  But I barely heard him. I was too busy patting my pony on the neck and wondering why I ever thought that I could do this without him.

  CHAPTER FORTY SEVEN

  I held onto Bluebird while the other members of our team and members of the other teams competed. I could have put him back in his stall. That was what everyone else did with their horses when they were done, coming out either elated or disappointed with their round and going back to the barn before coming back to watch. But Jess was back at the barn. Lurking. I didn’t know what else she was up to and I didn’t care but there was no way I was going to let my pony out of my sight.

  “Here,” Andy said, lugging a bucket of water over to the shady spot we were standing in. “And this is for you.” He tossed a bottle at me. “If you are going to be all barn shy we can’t have you getting dehydrated.”

  “You know why I won’t put him back there,” I said.

  “I know,” Andy replied, flopping down on the grass. “It’s okay.”

  By now word had spread of the feud between me and Jess and I’d already had several people from other teams come up and tell me how wonderful my pony was and that they’d never seen one with such spirit and such a powerful jump. Each time they complimented Bluebird, my heart swelled and I got all red and embarrassed and mumbled my thanks because I wasn’t sure what else to say. I’d always seen Bluebird’s greatness but now it looked like everyone else could see it too.

  And our team was doing well. Andy and Mousse had been clean. So had Scott and his chestnut. Rose had an unfortunate rail down at the purple frog jump and Francesca, the supposedly amazing alternate racked up twelve faults. Hers would be the score that we dropped. I could tell she wasn’t too happy about that. She stomped off back to the barn to no doubt complain about
it to Jess.

  By the time the first rounds were over it was almost lunch and our team was in second place.

  “I just realized that I forgot to bring food,” I said as my stomach grumbled.

  “I don’t think you need to worry,” Andy said. “Apparently Duncan brought a barbeque and he’s going to cook for us.”

  “Really?” I said. “Cool.”

  “I bet Jess won’t think it is cool.” Andy laughed. “There is no way she is going to eat food off some barbeque grill that Duncan cooked.”

  “True,” I said. “But she probably brought her own caviar and oysters anyway.”

  “Yes and really tiny spoons,” Andy said, making a scrunched up face as he pretended to spoon an imaginary oyster into his mouth with his pinkie finger sticking in the air like royalty.

  It felt good to laugh and to have a friend at shows again and for a moment it was just like the old days when Mickey and I had shown together. But there was a part of me deep down that felt bad for making fun of Jess because even though she was a horrible mean person, it still felt wrong and I didn’t want us to feud. I wanted us to get along. Maybe not be friends but I wanted us to be able to compete on the team without trying to kill each other. But she’d ruined that over the summer and I knew I’d never trust her again. I’d been that stupid once but I wasn’t going to let my guard down this time.

  “At least Bluebird will get to go in his stall while we eat,” Andy said.

  “Only if I’m sitting right in front of it,” I replied.

  CHAPTER FORTY EIGHT

  Duncan cooked an amazing array of food for us. There were hamburgers and hot dogs and vegetarian ones for the people who didn’t eat meat. Andy was right, though. Jess wouldn’t go near the food. Not even the organic potato salad or the yummy homemade coleslaw. She sat off by herself, not even talking to Francesca. I guess since she got to ride and Jess didn’t, she wasn’t talking to her either.