Pony Jumpers (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 2)

by Claire Svendsen

  "What is with you today?" she asked. "You're rushing your transitions, you have a death grip on this poor pony's face. You are not riding like yourself at all."

  "I don't feel well," I lied.

  "Well, let's call it a day then. I don't need you passing out in this heat. Go cool off."

  I walked Bluebird back to the barn feeling sick but not because I was ill. It was because I'd just lied to get out of riding. That had never happened to me before. I was the one who would do anything. Ride anything. Jump over anything. I had no fear. But Ethan's words were stuck in my head. The girl who'd ended up in the hospital. The one who had never been able to ride again. I didn't want that to be me. If I was ever going to jump Bluebird, I had to find out the truth.

  "You want to do what?" Mickey squeaked.

  We were sitting in our usual shady spot, waiting for the last of the camp kids to leave before we could sweep out the barn.

  "I want to go over to Jess's barn and see if they have any records on Bluebird. I have to know where he came from and who this girl is that he supposedly hurt."

  "I thought you didn't believe it anyway," she said.

  "I don't but I have to know for sure."

  "But why?"

  "I just do," I said.

  I couldn't tell Mickey the truth. She’d never believe it. I hardly believed it myself and I was mad that Jess probably got just what she wanted. She'd driven a wedge between me and my pony. One that now stood in the way of everything I wanted to do with him. I wasn't going to let those plans get flushed down the toilet just because of a lie.

  "So how are we going to do this? We can't exactly stroll in there and ask to see his papers," Mickey said.

  "We'll have to sneak in," I said.

  "Sneak in? As in break in? Like burglars?"

  "Well we're not going to steal anything," I said. "I just want to look."

  "But it's still breaking the law," she said.

  "I know. But what else can I do? I have to know the truth."

  Mickey was silent for a moment, then she jumped up.

  "I have an idea," she grinned.

  That sounded like trouble to me.

  Mickey had found out online that Jess and Amber were having a party. Apparently Ethan had been talking about it on Facebook and he sort of casually invited Mickey and me to go along. Of course she had politely refused but still, an invitation was an invitation.

  "Don't you think it's a great idea?" Mickey asked the night of the party as she slathered some kind of pink goop onto her lips. "We pretend like we're there to dance and have some fun and then we sneak into the barn and look at the records. If anyone catches us, we say we got lost looking for the bathroom."

  I raised an eyebrow.

  "What?" she said. "It works in movies all the time."

  "This isn't the movies," I said. "And if Jess catches sight of us she'll toss us out of there so fast our heads will be spinning."

  "She can't. Ethan invited us."

  "She can. It's her party."

  "Fine. Let's not go then. I'm only trying to help you."

  Mickey flung her pink lip gloss down on the dresser. I knew she didn't know why I was mad and I didn't want to be. It was just that I couldn't help it. I wasn't allowed on Facebook. Mom had blocked it from family computer and I didn't have a fancy phone I could use either. I had one of those old flip phones that the face was nearly falling off. Sometimes I had to stand on a chair to get a signal. So you see I hadn't been able to be friends online with Ethan while Mickey had and I hadn't been invited to the fancy party, even though she swore that Ethan insisted she bring me along.

  "I don't have anything to wear," I groaned.

  "Wear something of mine," Mickey said, still sounding hurt.

  "Thanks," I grumbled.

  But standing in front of her closet, I knew it wouldn't work. Now if I could have gone in riding clothes, it would have been fine but everything else Mickey owned seemed to be either pink, too short or too tight. None of that stuff looked good on me. I wasn't that kind of girl. In the end I opted for a pair of jeans and a black top with glittery sparkles and even then I felt way overdressed. Mickey was wearing a hot pink dress.

  "You don't exactly look very stealthy," I told her but she just shrugged.

  Mickey's mom dropped us off at the end of the drive.

  "Pick you girls up in a couple of hours?" she asked.

  "Sure. I'll call you if we're ready sooner," Mickey grinned.

  I just felt sick. I didn't want to stay there a couple of hours. I wanted to get in and get out as quickly as possible so that there was less chance of getting caught or running into Ethan.

  "I think this is a really bad idea," I said as we walked towards the blaring lights.

  "But it was your idea," she said.

  "The sneaking around part not the party part."

  "Well I think it's going to work out great," she said, sounding confident.

  But I had a million bees in my stomach. This was way worse than a horse show. I didn't go to parties, in fact I couldn't even remember the last one I had been to. I think it may have been when I was seven and all I remembered of the whole ordeal was leaving with custard pie on my dress and tears in my eyes. It had been full of girls like Jess and Amber. The mean girls. I didn't fit in at parties. Why couldn't Mickey see that?

  "Come on," she said, and started to walk away.

  I stood there, frozen. I wanted to leave. As much as I needed to clear Bluebird's good name, I couldn't go through with it. Mickey was in her element. The dress, the makeup, she lived for things like that. In fact standing there in the darkness, I wasn't even sure why I was friends with her at all. We were both so different. But then she spun around and grabbed my hand.

  "Come on," she grinned. "I've got your back."

  And right then and there I knew she did. Mickey would walk through fire for me and I'd do the same for her. It didn't matter about the makeup or the clothes or the money. We were two best friends about to embark on a secret mission to grab illegal documents. The bees in my stomach had gone. I clenched my teeth and followed Mickey's lead.

  CHAPTER TEN

  For once Mickey was right. We followed the path around the huge, stone house to the back patio where a million twinkle lights lit up the deck around the pool and there were far too many people there for Jess to ever notice us. There were kids from our school and a bunch of people that I didn't know so they obviously went to Amherst Academy, the private school that Jess, Amber and Ethan went to. There was a DJ playing music and a whole array of food.

  "Look," Mickey whispered. "A chocolate fountain."

  "We don't have time to stop and eat food," I said through clenched teeth but it was too late. Mickey was already pulling me through the crowd.

  I was jostled and bumped as we made our way across the makeshift dance floor. People shouted hello and Mickey waved back. She was the popular one at our school. I was pretty sure that none of them even knew who I was, except Ethan who just happened to be stuffing a large piece of pineapple into the never ending stream of chocolate.

  "You made it!" he said as he saw us.

  "Yeah, we did,” Mickey said, shoving me towards him.

  "Hey," I said lamely.

  "Hey yourself," he grinned. "It's a cool party, don't you think?"

  "The best," Mickey smiled. "Isn't it Emily?" she nudged me.

  "Well we only just got here," I shrugged.

  Mickey rolled her eyes. After a few more minutes of stilted conversation, Ethan drifted back into the pulsing crowd.

  "What's the matter with you?" Mickey shouted over the music.

  "I don't know," I said. "But can we go to the barn now?"

  "Fine. But when we get back, I want to dance."

  When we got back, all I wanted to do was leave but I figured I could fight that battle later. I only cared about getting to the records.

  "This way."

  Now I was the one pulling Mickey towards the barn. We followed a pat
h lit with solar lights that led through a manicured garden. In the darkness I could just make out creepy looking statues watching me.

  "We should have brought a flash light," I whispered.

  "I did," Mickey said, pulling one out of her bag. "You know I'm always prepared for anything."

  She flicked on the light and we followed its yellow beam past pristine paddocks and an arena with brightly colored poles glinting in the moonlight. As the beat of the music got further away, the sound of nickering horses and smell of hay and shavings greeted us.

  "This is better than any stupid party," I said as we stepped into the barn.

  It was a small barn with roomy stalls and a wide aisle. Soft black noses came to the bars to greet us, first Beauty and then Belle. I pushed my fingers through and let one of the mares lick the salt off my hand. I didn't know which one it was. They were both so alike, identical horse twins.

  "Jess doesn't deserve you," I said.

  The mare let out a soft sigh as though she understood.

  "Come on," Mickey said. "We don't have time for this. We have to look for the office."

  Other than the first two stalls, the rest of the barn was empty.

  "Why did Jess ever want her parents to buy Sand Hill when they have this amazing place all to themselves?" I said.

  "Because she's just greedy I guess," Mickey said.

  But the nagging feeling in the pit of my stomach told me it was more than that.

  "Look at this."

  Mickey shone her flashlight up on the wall where there was a dry erase board filled with instructions. There were supplement dosages and vet schedules for joint injections. There was also a riding schedule.

  "Look," Mickey laughed. "Jess has flatwork five days in a row. I wonder what she did to make Andre mad?"

  "Probably smart mouthed him or something," I said.

  Andre was the trainer at Fox Run Farm where Jess, Amber and Ethan rode but he also made exceptions and travelled to train his best students at their own barns. I was pretty sure that Jess wasn’t one of his best students, just one of the richest.

  "Amber has jumping every other day. She must be doing something right," Mickey said.

  "I guess. What do you think this means?"

  I pointed to a section on the board where there was a list of times. At the top it had two columns. One was water. The other said time out.

  "Maybe he makes Jess stand in the corner?" Mickey laughed.

  "I don't know," I said. "Let's just look for the file and get out of here."

  The barn office was bigger than my living room and had a large oak desk, bookshelves and a giant leather chair. Mickey flipped on the light before throwing herself down on some soft cushions.

  "No," I screeched and turned it off. "What if someone sees?"

  "No one is going to see it. No one is looking down here. Everyone is having a good time, just like we should be, up there at the party."

  "Well help me find the file and then we can get out of here," I said.

  The filing cabinet was stuffed into a corner. The top was covered with gleaming trophies that chinked together when we opened the drawers.

  "Do you think they really won all those?" I asked Mickey.

  "On their push button horses? Sure. That's what they pay the big bucks for."

  We took piles of files and looked through then with the flashlight. There were old feed bills and vet bills and a million other kind of bills.

  "Their parents sure spend a lot of money on this stuff," I said, tossing aside a bill for a custom saddle that was five thousand dollars. "Their saddle cost more than my pony."

  "Here," Mickey suddenly shouted. "This is it, isn't it?"

  The file had been stuffed right in the back. Inside were the records of a chestnut pony with white socks and a blaze. The photograph showed a fat happy pony with a little girl on his back. She had a big grin on her face and the pony had a grand champion ribbon fluttering from his bridle.

  "Is it Bluebird?" Mickey asked.

  "I'm not sure," I said. "I think so."

  The file was full of show records.

  "Look at all these wins," I said, giving Mickey some of the papers.

  "Yes but none of them were with Jess. They were all with this other girl."

  The beaming girl with the grand champion ribbon. Was she the one who'd been hurt and had never ridden again?

  "There has to be something else in here," I said.

  "Here is an old coggins," Mickey said. "Look, Bluebird's real name is Carson."

  "He doesn't look like a Carson," I said. "Is there anything else?"

  "This is weird," Mickey said, giving me a scrap of paper. "It's another one of those funny schedules. Water and time out. What is it supposed to mean?"

  "I have no idea," I said, shoving the piece of paper into my pocket. "Let's get out of here."

  We put the papers back in the file and tried to make everything look as neat and tidy as it was before we found it. I didn't think we did a very good job but it was too late to make it any neater as there was a rustling out in the barn.

  “Did you hear something?” I asked Mickey.

  “No,” she said. “You’re just being paranoid.”

  With one last look around the office, we left and shut the door. Standing out in the dark barn, I thought I heard it again.

  “Over there,” I said. “In that stall.”

  “Another horse?” Mickey asked.

  “You did say that you saw a trailer that one day, remember?”

  We stood by the bars of the black stall but no velvet nose came to the bars. Then I heard the stomp of a hoof. Something was definitely in there.

  “Shine the flashlight,” I said.

  As Mickey did, the light shone across the back of the stall. There stood a pony no bigger than Bluebird, a pretty roan who had her head tied up in the back of the stall. She looked at us with sad eyes and nickered softly but her head was tied too high for her to really see us.

  “Why is she tied up like that?” Mickey asked.

  “Why is she tied up at all?” I said. “This is ridiculous.”

  I unlatched the stall and stepped inside. My hands were shaking as I undid the rope and set the pony free. She put her head down with a sigh, then went straight to her water bucket and drained the whole thing.

  “She’ll make herself sick,” Mickey said.

  “Sicker than being dehydrated?” I asked. “I don’t think so. Jess is the one who is sick. We have to tell someone.”

  “Tell someone what? We don’t even know what’s going on here.”

  But before I had a chance to answer, the lights flicked on and there stood Jess, her face red and angry.

  “What do you think you’re doing in my barn?” she snapped.

  “What do you think you’re doing to this pony?” I snapped back. “Tying her up without access to food or water? Just what kind of monster are you?”

  “What are you talking about?” Jess stomped down the barn aisle in her glittery purple high heels and grabbed the pony. “Why would she be tied up in her stall? That’s ridiculous.”

  “She was tied up,” Mickey came to my defense as I slunk out of the stall, the piece of paper still snug in my pocket.

  “Well it must have been a mistake. Andre must have forgotten when he put her away for me.”

  Jess put her arm around the pony who backed away until she was standing back in the same corner she had been tied up in.

  “What do you need a pony for anyway?” I said. “You already have a great horse to ride.”

  “It’s none of your business and why are you even here anyway? You weren’t invited. I should call the cops.”

  My face flushed red. She was right. We were gate crashing and we were trespassing. If Mom got wind of this I’d be grounded forever and I could forget about her turning a blind eye to the pony I bought without her permission. I was just about to beg for mercy when Amber, Ethan and a bunch of other kids showed up at the end of the barn.
This was going to be worse than I thought. A public execution.

  “You were taking so long, we thought we’d better come and find you,” Amber said nervously.

  “Look who I found snooping around our barn,” Jess slammed the door to the pony’s stall shut. “I was just about to call the police.”

  “The police?” Ethan choked on a laugh.

  “Well they’re trespassing,” Jess fumbled over her words.

  “No they’re not,” Ethan said as he came down the barn towards us. “I invited them.”

  The look on Jess’s face was priceless as Ethan stuck his arms through mine and Mickey’s and walked us out of the barn and back to the party.

  “You totally just saved us,” Mickey said.

  “Yeah, thanks,” I added.

  “No problem. Don’t mind Jess, she was born with a stick up her butt.”

  Mickey laughed and even though being caught in a criminal act had just been one of the scariest things in my whole life, I managed a smile.

  “What were you guys doing down there anyway?” he asked.

  “Trying to clear Bluebird’s name,” I said.

  “And freeing a trapped pony,” Mickey added.

  “What? Hold on. Back up. You were doing what?” he stopped and looked at us like we were both a little crazy.

  The words all came jumbling out as we told Ethan about Bluebird’s file and finding the new pony tied up without water. By the time we were finished I had the feeling that Ethan wouldn’t be inviting us to any more parties anytime soon.

  “If you want to find out if Bluebird can jump, you should just try and jump him,” Ethan finally said. “And the pony thing was probably just a misunderstanding.”

  “Leaving a pony tied up without access to food and water is a misunderstanding?” I said.

  Ethan’s face fell a little. “I guess you’re right. It’s not exactly a misunderstanding but maybe a bad judgment call? The most important thing is that you set it loose and Jess knows that people know about it. She can’t keep doing it now, can she?”

  “I guess not,” I said but I wasn’t so sure. “We should get out of here,” I added.