by Terri Farley
Hoku trotted up the beach, veering away from Kit and Babe.
The sand burned Darby’s feet, and she needed both fists tight on the lead rope to control her horse.
Kit stalked alongside the sorrel, as near as he could get, as ready to help as he could be without further scaring the filly.
The cowboy looked like he had plenty to say, but he didn’t speak first.
“Was that Duxelles?”
Hoku spooked and shied at Babe’s voice. Darby nodded.
“I’m so sorry, Darby. She has no idea about horses.”
A single glance away from her horse told Darby that Babe looked as cool and stylish as ever. But Babe’s fingers were interlaced as if she were praying when she added, “I wanted to offer you free board here for your horse, instead of trailering her back and forth while you’re doing water training, but I suppose that’s out of the question.”
“Yeah.” Darby hoped her tone conveyed she didn’t blame Babe, because just then Hoku reared, shining with saltwater. Her forelegs pawed the air. They seemed almost pinned together as they rose to hide the white star on her chest.
Even when she came back to earth, the mustang rolled her eyes. She lunged from side to side, slamming against the end of her lead rope with such strength, Kit had to help Darby hold Hoku until seawater had turned to sweat and she stopped fighting out of weariness.
Finally, the filly bolted into the trailer.
“I have to talk to her,” Darby said. She knew how that sounded, like she believed she could converse with her horse. But on some level Darby knew it was true.
Against his better judgment, Kit allowed her to go inside the trailer with her horse. He held the back door open and kept watch.
“You’re more mad than scared, right, girl?” Darby whispered to Hoku.
The filly glared at Darby, then moved her muzzle out of reach when Darby tried to touch it.
“I took you someplace you thought was safe—and I thought it was, too—and then a scary thing happened.”
Hoku blew hot breath through her nostrils. Darby was shivering and the filly’s warmth comforted her. If only Hoku wasn’t stamping, urging Darby to leave.
Thank goodness I wasn’t riding her when it happened, Darby thought.
At last Hoku accepted a pat on her neck, and Darby decided that was the best time to leave.
As she walked away from her horse and down the ramp, Darby knew that Duckie’s prank had fractured Hoku’s trust in her. As Kit locked the tailgate, he glanced to where Babe still stood and muttered, “You are a saint. If I’d been you out there—” Kit broke off, shaking his head.
Once they climbed into the truck, he continued angrily, “Sure as sunshine, I would’ve taught that girl a lesson. She coulda gotten you all killed.”
Still shivering, Darby couldn’t think of anything to say. Kit had only driven a few yards when he stopped the truck, turned it off, and walked back toward the hotel.
What was he going to do?
Darby had no idea, but she didn’t look back. She just listened as Kit Ely’s spurs rang. When he came back out of the hotel, he brought along a cup of hot cocoa.
And even though it was April in Hawaii, even though the sun shone on the sand, making heat snakes waver up from its surface, Darby was freezing. She needed the warm drink, and Kit knew it.
The cowboy remained quiet as they drove, and Darby had drunk half the cup of cocoa when she managed, “Did Hoku look okay to you?”
“She’s fine,” Kit said. “Hoku had a grand ol’ time. Rub her down good when we get her home, and look at every nook and cranny, but I’ve got no worries about that filly. Why, the way she came marching onto the beach, water swooshing off her—I promise, she’s just mad.”
“That’s what I thought, too,” Darby said.
Kit shook his head, and suddenly Darby saw him shut down his anger.
Just like that, he switched it off and opened up a new topic of conversation.
“I’ve been thinking I want a horse of my own,” Kit said.
Darby was more than happy to play that game with Kit. They lived in the midst of hundreds of horses, both wild and tame, and there was a horse for every taste and task.
“That palomino gelding in the three-year-old pasture, I bet you’d get along with him,” Darby said.
“No. Now, he’s a nice horse, but I’ve got no…hankerin’ for him. You know what I mean, like what ya see between Jonah and Luna. That’s what’s growin’ between you and Hoku, too.”
Darby nodded. Now that they’d reached the highway, the motion of the truck was as soothing as a rocking chair.
“I bet you’ll pick one of the wild horses,” Darby suggested, and Kit’s somber face lit up.
“Ya got good instincts,” Kit told her. “And yeah, my horse is all picked out. Have you seen my brother’s horse? This one kinda reminds me of her. Not in looks, but she’s by golly a witch.
“I don’t know what your grandfather would say—or what kinda smarts it would show, if—well, let’s just put it this way. There’s a limit to how many bones a man oughta be willing to break in a lifetime.”
Kit drove with both hands positioned at the top of the steering wheel, and Darby would bet he didn’t even notice the fingers of his right hand were rubbing his ruined left wrist.
Had he been hurt, helping her hold on to Hoku? Or did the memory of bronc-broken bones make it ache?
“Even though my contract with Jonah is just a handshake, he asked me not to rodeo while I work for him,” Kit went on. “And takin’ on a mustang as my pet horse might not be real different from ridin’ broncs.
“I’ve about worn us both out with all my talk,” Kit said then. “Why don’t you see if you can catch a nap before we get back to the ranch.”
The rest of Saturday and all day Sunday, Darby worked and read and did homework within sight of Hoku. She’d talked to everyone on the ranch, and Ann, about the filly’s scare with Duckie, and everyone agreed keeping company with the mustang was the best cure.
It wasn’t that Hoku had stopped liking her. The filly watched Darby attentively all the time, but it was clear that they’d lost ground.
On a hunch, Darby tucked her new red tank suit into her backpack on Monday morning. If Coach Roffmore mentioned trying out for the swim team one more time, she’d be ready to jump in.
“You look deadly,” Ann told Darby as she found her seat in English and slid into it five minutes early.
“Just deadly serious,” Darby said.
“Planning your revenge on Duckie?”
Darby just shrugged. Her plan wasn’t exactly foolproof, so she’d better keep it to herself for now. But Ann looked so frustrated, Darby flashed her friend a smile and asked, “Hey, why don’t we ever go riding together?”
“We’ll have plenty of time once you get expelled,” Ann told her. She waited a second. When Darby just kept smiling, Ann said, “Okay, you don’t want to talk about Duckie, so here’s the deal. All you’ve gotta do is ask me to show up on a horse and I’ll be there,” Ann said. “You should probably ask Jonah first, though. I have this reputation, which is only half true, but some people, Jonah being one of them, can’t decide whether they should admire me or ban me from their property.”
“Thanks for the warning,” Darby said. “And, I don’t think I’m going to be kicked out of school. In fact, if my plan works, Duckie and I may have a whole different relationship soon.”
The first thing Darby noticed when she walked into P.E. was that Coach Day was missing. Darby wondered if her favorite teacher was talking with the dean of discipline about Duckie’s accusation that Darby had tripped her.
This would be such a great school if not for Duckie. And why did they have to be related?
Darby sighed. Maybe it wasn’t too late to change her class schedule. And get her DNA rewired.
But no, she thought as she double-knotted her shoelaces, her plan would work.
“Eyes on me,” Coach Roffmore barked.
Darby straightened up in time to hear Duckie mutter, “Stormbird is an ugly colt. When Phillipe gets back, he’ll get rid of him.”
Darby tried not to answer, but she couldn’t help explaining, “He’ll be a big horse, and he has to grow into his ears and legs.”
“Carter!”
“Sorry, Coach,” she apologized.
What she really wanted to do was ask how Duckie could babble endlessly and never get caught, while she always did.
“Even Jan said it was good luck the colt went overboard. He looks like a gremlin or a gargoyle, or one of those things.”
“If you don’t want to run more laps, Carter, give me your full attention.”
“I don’t want to do more laps, Coach Roffmore—”
“Do you know what his new nickname is? Shark Bait. He’s always wandering toward the water. Who’d know if—”
“Keep quackin’, Duckie!” Darby shouted, but this time when the coach told her to run laps, she refused.
“What?” he yelled.
Darby had read about people in trouble finding the calm stillness inside themselves. For just a second, she thought she had it.
Her calm could be from lack of oxygen, because she’d been hyperventilating in fury. Or maybe she was just holding tight to the hope that she, the flea, could make big Duckie sorry she’d ever met her. Most of all, though, she realized that Duckie, without meaning to, had improved Darby’s plan about 100 percent.
“I said, no, Coach. I—may I please swim laps instead of running them? For a change.”
There were giggles all around her.
I’m a good kid, Darby thought for a second. She could not believe one girl and one little horse had turned her lifetime of perfect citizenship grades upside down.
But she shook her head. If things went the way she hoped they would, life would start improving tomorrow.
Coach Roffmore looked surprised, and almost pleased.
“Sure, show me what you’re made of, Carter,” he said as he made a note on his clipboard. “Come in at lunch and you can have your own special detention.”
“Coach!” The squeaky voice belonged to Selena. “Don’t give up your lunch break. Just let her swim laps against us.”
Another setup, Darby thought. She’d be swimming against the swim team.
“What do you say, Carter? The offer to run laps is still open,” the Coach said, teasing her.
“Thanks, Coach,” Darby said, “but I’ll swim. See you after school!”
Chapter 18
The only open lane in the swimming pool was the one next to Duckie.
It was probably no accident, Darby thought as she walked out onto the concrete deck surrounding the swimming pool.
On the days she’d watched the team practice, there’d been more gossiping and giggling.
It didn’t feel like a regular practice day. If the rest of the team saw her as an intruder, a bad girl who was only here for detention, would they have left a lane open for her?
Knock it off, Darby told herself. She was just projecting her own tension onto the others.
But then two girls she didn’t recognize passed by. One flashed her a thumbs-up and the other pretended to be speaking into a microphone as she said, “Lehua High presents the first annual Water Babies grudge match!”
Water Babies. She’d heard about a Water Babies fund-raiser on the school announcements. Was that what the team had nicknamed themselves?
She glanced over to see Duckie ease out of the water onto the pool edge. She leaned back, sunning herself.
She doesn’t look like any kind of baby, Darby thought. With her metal-bright hair and toned muscles, she looked like an adult athlete.
Darby waited for Duckie to do something corny like draw a finger across her throat or pretend her hand was a gun and shoot it silently across the pool, like she was signing, You’re dead.
But she didn’t, and Darby knew why. The other girl was at home here. More than that, she was queen here. She didn’t need to put on a milk-chugging performance to earn attention.
Duxelles Borden gazed across the dancing aqua water with total confidence. The real show would be in the pool.
Darby swallowed hard. She was doing this for Hoku, even though no one knew it yet.
She could almost hear her mother’s frustrated voice say, Does everything have to be about horses?
Yes, Mom, she thought. I guess it does!
The concrete was hot under Darby’s bare feet, but the water was cool.
She did a lazy warm-up. She didn’t give the team members much to talk about, because she did nothing fancy. No butterfly or breast stroke. Those strokes took up room, and she didn’t want to lift her head to look up too often.
Just often enough to avoid a head-on collision, because she’d bet Duckie’s thick skull could inflict major pain.
Darby’s muscles slid and reached just as she’d hoped they would. Maybe ranch work and riding counted as cross-training, she thought, smiling. Still, she felt a little lonely without Heather swimming beside her.
An ear-piercing whistle made her grab the edge of the pool and look toward the fence.
The entire girls’ soccer team waved. And Coach Day stood with them, so they must be delaying practice until…
She jumped at the sound of Coach Roffmore’s voice, but he only said, “Sync up, girls. Don’t sprint while the person next to you is doing kick drills.”
It sounded familiar. It even felt familiar.
Concentrate on that, Darby told herself, not on the audience at the fence or on being a feisty flea set on payback.
“When you’re ready, Carter,” Coach Roffmore said, “just show me what you got.”
“Get ’er done, cowgirl!”
Nervous as she was, Darby smiled at Ann Potter’s shout, then laughed out loud when Ann followed up with an unself-conscious “Yee haw!”
Half her tension vanished while she waited to stop laughing. A girl could drown trying to swim and laugh at the same time.
And then she was swimming.
At the wall, tight tuck, knees to chest—yes! Her first push-off was a monster. The instant her feet left the wall she was halfway across the pool.
Streamline.
It wasn’t a race, and no one had scheduled a competition, but she felt Duckie swimming beside her.
Streamline, Darby reminded herself again, as if the pleading, demanding, promising voices of every coach she’d ever had were standing at poolside, shouting.
Hands together, shoulders against ears, eyes looking down.
But how close was Duckie? Don’t look ’til your turn. Don’t lift your head like Superman going for a spin across the sky.
That’s like putting on the brakes. Just streamline.
For a few seconds she got that spacey feeling of seeing herself from above.
Breathe right, she ordered herself; but how long would they keep this up?
Whoever had been in the lane on her other side had vanished, but not Duckie.
Rhythmic as a robot, she moved down the next lane.
I can go faster and farther, Darby thought.
Tight tuck. Knees to chest.
Jet-powered off that wall!
Head down, shoulders against ears—not jaw, dummy! Shoulders against ears.
Good form shaves off seconds. Do it right. Streeeamline.
Darby didn’t realize she was swimming blind until she made a turn and heard Coach Roffmore’s whistle screeching about two inches away from her head.
She stopped, tried to put her feet down, and grasped the fact that she was in deep water only after she went under.
Then she bobbed up, made a few weak strokes to the side, and looked around.
She was the only one in the pool, but there were lots of people watching.
Darby gulped in air, then thought for the first time all day, maybe all week, about her asthma.
Her next breath tested her lungs. They passed!
Then Coach Roffm
ore’s hand reached down to help her out of the pool.
It didn’t take long for Duckie to phone.
Darby had fallen asleep on her bed before dinner.
Tired as she was, there’d been no chance to nod off in Kimo’s truck when Aunty Cathy had picked up her and Megan, because Megan had been bouncing around saying, “You’re number one!” and “Watch my lips, you broke the school record and Duxelles’s all-time record.”
“Record for what?” Darby had managed. “It must be her best time. It couldn’t be distance.”
“I don’t know! I just heard him click his stopwatch like you were a racehorse he was timing, and say, ‘By George, that’s a record.’” Then Megan had leaned forward from the backseat and asked, “Mom, Coach Roffmore isn’t English, is he? Doesn’t that sound kind of—”
“I have no idea.” Aunty Cathy had laughed, then turned to Darby and asked, “So are you going to do it? Join the swim team?”
“No—”
“Of course you are! You have to!” Megan insisted.
But Darby crossed her fingers, yawned, and hoped she wouldn’t have to.
Darby didn’t really have much idea how she’d gotten inside, on her bed, but now Jonah was bellowing from her bedroom doorway.
“You, Sleeping Beauty,” he said, smiling. “You got a call from your cousin.”
The bed seemed too soft to push off of, but Darby managed to get to her feet.
“Thanks,” she said, wobbling down the hallway.
Before he let her pass, Jonah joked, “Then dinner on the lanai, with your fans, you little record-breaker, you.”
“So, are you going to change your mind and join the team?” Duckie demanded before Darby finished saying hello.
“I told you I didn’t have time,” Darby said. Collapsing into a chair at the kitchen table, she smothered a yawn, but kept the phone to her ear.
“Roffmore practically kissed your feet.”
It was true, Darby thought. The same man who’d picked on her since she’d walked into his P.E. class had actually said he’d quit coaching if she didn’t join.
“He exaggerated about how well I did. You know that.”
Darby looked up. Megan had come to lean against one side of the kitchen doorway, openly eavesdropping.
