by Kate Lattey
The stuffy room felt oppressive, the air pooling thickly around me. I could feel my own lungs straining slightly, and wondered if this was close to what Buck felt like. Ms Bryant continued to make sympathetic noises about my pony’s predicament, while I felt sweat beginning to bead on the back of my neck and under my arms.
“Don’t you have air conditioning?” I asked.
Ms Bryant smiled, as though she was used to the question. “I do, but unfortunately it’s broken. There’s a fan over there that you can switch on, if you like.”
I looked over at the wobbly fan, standing forlornly in the corner of the small room. Ms Bryant didn’t seem bothered by the lack of airflow, despite her flushed skin and short-sleeved shirt. She took a sip of water from a glass on her desk and smiled at me.
“So what’s good with you right now?”
“Huh?”
“What’s going well in your life? What are you working towards, what goals do you have for the year?”
“Um. You mean academically?”
“If you like, but I meant in general.” She opened her arms, spread them wide. “Anything. You have a leave application in for the Horse of the Year Show, which is coming up soon. You must be looking forward to that.”
I nodded. “Yeah, I guess.”
I didn’t want to talk about my chances in Pony of the Year. I racked my brains for something to deflect her with, and landed on Ireland. “There’s an international team competition coming up that I’ve applied for,” I told Ms Bryant, trying to put the excitement into my voice that I couldn’t muster for Pony of the Year. “I think I’ve got a decent chance at being selected.”
“Ooh, how exciting!” Nobody could ever accuse Ms Bryant of lacking enthusiasm. “When is it, and where will it be held?”
“Ireland, in June. It’s a show jumping team event, and they’re taking six riders from New Zealand to compete in three shows against the British and Irish home teams. And possibly some Europeans at the last one, I don’t really know.” As I spoke, I found myself starting to get excited about it. I really wanted to be on the team. Not only for the travel opportunities – I’d never been to Ireland – but being selected for a team would make me feel as though I was part of the show jumping scene in a way I never had been before.
“Sounds wonderful! When do you find out if you’ve been picked?”
I shrugged. “Soon, I guess. The team will be announced before the end of the month. Then they’re running training camps every month through to the competition, so it’s pretty intense but it’s a great opportunity.”
I’d spent a couple of hours on Facebook last night, chatting with Katy as we’d both read up on the competition’s rules and format. Details were still light, but the prospect was thrilling. As Katy messaged me into the night with any number of plans and predictions, it was hard to remember that we hadn’t been friends at all only a few months ago. In her mind, we were as good as selected. But I wasn’t willing to get my hopes up too far. There was still a chance, as outside as it seemed, that someone else would beat one – or even both – of us into the squad.
“Brilliant. Well, good luck!” Ms Bryant said, threading her fingers together and resting her chin on her knuckles. “Is there anything that the school can do to help you get there? Any fundraising, or publicity?”
I winced at the thought, although I appreciated the sentiment. “Um, I don’t think so. And I haven’t been picked yet, so…”
“Of course.” She glanced at her watch, and frowned. “You’ll keep me in the loop though, won’t you?”
“Okay.”
“Promise?”
“Yeah.”
“Good. Now. There’s another reason that I wanted to talk to you today.”
I shifted uneasily in my seat, waiting for the barrage of questions that I didn’t want to answer, but she surprised me by opening a file on her desk and pulling out a piece of paper, then handing it to me.
“Do you recognise this?”
I scanned the page, then looked back at her with a frown. “Yes.”
“Mrs Kilbourne passed it along to me at the end of last week,” she explained.
“I got Merit for this,” I pointed out, looking back down at the poem I’d written for English. I’d left it until the very last minute, when I’d found myself sitting in front of my laptop with only a few minutes to midnight, desperately trying to think of something to say. I’d spent the evening trawling through Facebook, looking at photos from Nationals, trying not to notice the comments that people had posted. But when I’d come to one of Anna riding Star, my traitorous eye hadn’t been able to avoid seeing my name. And once I’d seen it, I’d had to read it.
Anna and Stacey had engaged in a spirited discussion about Star’s merits, which they rated highly, and Stacey’s recent purchase of the mare, which they considered to be a relief in the face of the possibility that she had almost been sold to me. Anna, in particular, continued to profess her horror at the thought, as though Stacey, who tended to drop her horses at the base of the jump and operate on a ‘when in doubt, speed up’ policy, was going to do better than I could have. But it was Connor’s comment that had stung the most. He’d only written one, but it was enough.
Haha I knew the fastest way to sell Star would be to make the rest of the world feel sorry for her and want to save her from that fate!! Never wouldve gone thru with it don’t worry
I’d clicked away then, but I hadn’t been able to erase the words from my mind. For the next two hours, as I lay in bed trying to fall asleep, I was plagued by memories of the things I’d said and done in the past to make them all hate me so much. And finally, as the clock ticked towards midnight, I’d sat up, flipped my laptop open, and written my poetry assignment.
Sometimes I step outside myself and watch the things I do
I judge her from afar, that girl, and know that you do too.
I want to tell her ‘stand up straight’ and ‘wipe away that frown’
I want her to be welcomed in and never get let down.
I know inside she’s hurting and she just wants to belong
I know deep down she’s smiling but her face just shows it wrong.
I know what you all think of her and the prejudice you hold
I know you want to make her pay for the things you have been told.
But trust me when I tell you that the guilt is always there
The pain, regret, the scars inside and most of all the fear.
She is most afraid, that girl, that you might look inside
You’ll see past her exterior and what it is you’ll find.
She wants to be deemed worthy, to be held up to the light
She wants her trespasses absolved but cannot make things right.
Because deep, deep down inside herself, she still doesn’t know for sure
If she is any good at all
If she’s worth fighting for.
I felt my face flush hot as I re-read those embarrassingly emotional words. But surely the rest of the class wrote poetry like that too – didn’t they? Were teenage girls actually capable of writing poetry that wasn’t emotional and depressing? Maybe the rest of the class had been smart, and written a witty limerick, or taken Callie’s advice and just scrawled out a few random words and left it to Mrs Kilbourne to make sense of it.
Too late now. I handed the poem back to Ms Bryant, who returned it to the folder on her desk. I wished I’d ripped it up.
“I’m sorry that you feel that way, Susannah.”
“It’s just a poem.”
“Is it?” The bell rang, and I stood up quickly, overcome with relief. Her smile was slightly rueful. “Always so eager to leave.”
I shrugged as I picked up my bag. I couldn’t wait to get out of this stifling room. “Well, I’ve got Bio now, and it’s all the way over the other side of the school, so...”
“Of course. Well I’m going to leave it up to you whether you come back and talk to me again. You know that my door’s
always open.”
Sure it was. “Thanks.” I opened the door and felt a rush of cooler air brush against my overheated skin. Relief. “Maybe when the weather’s cooler and it’s not so stuffy in here,” I told Ms Bryant, trying to deflect her with a joke.
But this time, she didn’t smile. “You could’ve turned the fan on.” She fixed me with a serious look that I couldn’t quite read. “You don’t have to sit there and take it when things in life make you uncomfortable, Susannah. You just have to make a decision, then follow through with it.” She picked up the folder containing my poem and slid it into the filing cabinet behind her desk. “Don’t be afraid to go after the things you want.”
Ms Bryant pushed the filing drawer shut, then leaned over and switched on the fan. It whirred into life, and she smiled as she let it blow air across her, cooling her skin. I realised then that she hadn’t been any more comfortable with the sweltering heat than I had been. So why sit there and do nothing? She could’ve stood up and turned the fan on herself.
So could you.
I couldn’t help feeling as though I’d just failed a test I hadn’t realised I’d been taking. Ms Bryant closed her eyes as she stood in front of the fan, and I stepped out into the hall, leaving the door open behind me.
* * *
“Will there be boys there?”
“It’s not being held in a convent,” I told my father at dinner that night. He narrowed his eyes at me as I stabbed my fork into the green beans on my plate. “Yes. There will be boys at the party. But Callie’s parents will be there too, and it’ll be well-supervised.” I had no idea whether that was true, but it sounded good.
“What about alcohol?”
“It’s a party, Dad.”
“It’s a party that you’re not going to, then. Don’t forget that you’re underage.”
I was tempted, for a moment, to ask him where his concern had been when he’d let me go off unsupervised to Connor’s truck at Nationals, but I bit my tongue. He didn’t need to know any of that.
“What if I promise not to drink?” I offered.
I didn’t want to drink anyway. I hadn’t liked the way it had made me feel, fuzzy and slow to react. I wanted my wits about me if I was going to Callie’s party. I wasn’t sure that I really wanted to go anyway. A small part of me relished my father’s refusal to let me go, and I rehearsed breaking the news to Callie inside my head. My dad won’t let me go. He’s stuck in the dark ages. I imagined her irritation, and sympathy.
“Of course you can go to the party, darling,” Mum said, sipping her wine and smiling at me.
Dad glowered down the table at her. “I just said she couldn’t.”
“Well maybe it’s not up to you.” Mum looked at me. “Do you want to go?”
“Yes,” I lied, though I wasn’t sure why.
“Then you can go,” Mum said determinedly, slicing calmly into her salmon fillet and ignoring my father.
“Since when do you get to overrule me?” he asked, his voice dangerously quiet.
“Since when do you get to make all of the decisions?” Mum snapped back, startling us both. “Susie’s almost sixteen, and if she wants to go to a well-supervised party at a friend’s house, I’m not going to stop her. You let Pete go to parties when he was her age.”
Dad’s expression froze at the mention of his estranged son. I could see him battling between continuing to refuse to acknowledge that Pete even existed and the desire to rebut my mother’s comment. His predilection for arguing overruled, just as I’d known it would.
“Well, it’s different for boys.”
Mum rolled her eyes. “Maybe in your day.”
“Are you arguing with the statistics?” Dad challenged her. “Because I read-”
I stood up, my chair scraping on the tiles. “May I be excused?”
Their heads swivelled in my direction. Dad spoke first. “No. We’re discussing your request to attend this party, so if you want a verdict you’d better sit back down and listen.”
“It’s not much of a discussion if I don’t even get a say,” I pointed out. “And you’re not discussing, you’re arguing. Again.” The last word killed me to say aloud, but it was true. If my parents weren’t avoiding each other lately, they were bickering, sniping at one another constantly. I didn’t know where it was going to lead, but my money was on ‘nowhere good’.
“Fine. Let’s hear your side. Why should I let you go to this party?”
“Why shouldn’t you?” I countered. “I already told you that I won’t drink. You can breathalyse me at the end of the night if you want to, I don’t care. But this is kind of a big deal for me.” I rested my hands on the edge of the table and stared at the new glass salt and pepper grinders sitting in the centre. “I’m finally making friends at school – proper friends who want to see me outside of school. Do you realise how long it’s been since I last had that? And Callie asked me to come, and she was actually disappointed last weekend when I couldn’t, because it clashed with Taihape. So now she’s really excited that I can go because I’m not showing this weekend, and if I don’t go, she’ll think I don’t like her and I’ll be friendless again.” I winced internally at how pitiful I sounded.
“You’re not friendless.”
“Aren’t I? How often do I have friends over after school? How many of my friends can you actually name?”
“You’ve got the ponies to ride after school, you don’t have time to have people over,” Dad argued. “And I can name three. AJ, Katy, and…er…”
I rolled my eyes so hard that it actually hurt, but I couldn’t help myself. “Thanks for making my point. Besides, they’re horse show friends. And they’re great, but they don’t go to my school. I’m lonely, Dad. I like having friends. I want to have more friends. Please don’t keep making this so hard for me.”
He said nothing, just stared at his plate for a moment, then looked across at my mother. She seemed torn between expressing pity towards me and shooting smug looks at my father. As though she hadn’t been as bad as him for most of my life. Keeping me on lockdown after school and at shows, vetting all of my friends to make sure that their parents were socially acceptable in her own limited circle, organising playdates with her friends’ kids while quietly manoeuvring anyone she considered undesirable out of my life. Why had it taken me so long to realise that, and so much longer to take a stand against it?
“Fine.” Dad set his knife and fork down on his plate and stood up, abandoning the remnants of his meal. “I give up. You can go. But no drinking. And no smoking.”
I nodded. “Does marijuana count?”
The slightest flicker of amusement crossed his face, but he reined it in. “What do you think?”
“I’ll be good,” I told him. “I promise.”
* * *
I checked the time and clicked Refresh, feeling my palms sweat as I watched the computer screen reload. The team for Ireland was supposed to be announced at 5pm, and it was ten past five and still no word. I scrolled down my Facebook feed again, searching for any alerts from ESNZ. In this world of social media, they’d decided to announce the team on Facebook. It seemed strangely unprofessional to me, but as neither Katy nor I (nor anyone else she had talked to) had heard anything from the selectors since the confirmation email that our applications had been received, it seemed that they’d decided to do away with social niceties in favour of social media.
Still nothing. I hit Refresh again, and then suddenly there it was. The ESNZ logo on the left, and the text underneath that was about to tell me whether I was going to Ireland – or staying home.
We are thrilled to announce the New Zealand Young Rider team who will be travelling to Ireland in June to represent our country. The team will be: Senior (U21) Imogen Davis-Blake & Ellie Warren, Intermediate (U18) Charlotte Yeats & Anna Harcourt; Junior (U16) Katy O’Reilly…Continue reading.
I clicked those last words, pleased for Katy’s success as my own hopes soared. The text took a moment to load, and I
crossed my fingers and toes even tighter until the rest of the message appeared.
…& Lily Christianson. Chef d’equipe will be Maureen Yeats, and Dennis Foxhall-James will coach. Congratulations to our successful riders. Non-travelling reserves will be named shortly.
There was more, but I stopped reading. Sat still and stared at the words on the screen for a moment, then closed my eyes, letting the disappointment sink in.
I heard my father’s footsteps cross the landing from his bedroom, and he stopped in the doorway of my room. “Any word yet?”
I took a breath before I opened my eyes and at him, dreading his reaction.
“Yeah, they announced it.”
He was frowning, sensing the bad news. “And?”
“They picked Katy,” I said, doing my best to sound pleased for my friend. “And Lily.” The bitterness that I was trying not to feel slipped off my tongue, betraying my emotions.
Dad was, predictably, livid. “WHAT?!”
I stood up, unable to face the barrage of criticism that he was about to unleash. He wouldn’t start out by blaming me. At first it would be the selectors at fault, then the coaches of the team, then Lily’s parents, who probably bribed the selectors in the first place. But soon enough, the focus would shift, and it would become what I could’ve done better. Where I’d gone wrong. And I couldn’t face it. My own disappointment was bad enough, without having to deal with his as well.
I pushed my way past him and ran down the stairs towards the front door, my thoughts whirling. What was it that Katy had said, sitting in her truck at Taihape? If they put that kid in the team, then I’d pull out. I’m not even kidding.
But she had been kidding. No way was she going to reject the opportunity of a lifetime in protest the team’s selection. I didn’t expect her to, and I wouldn’t want her to. This was my loss, not hers. I grabbed the handle of the front door, pulled it open and almost collided with Mum, her hands full of wallpaper samples.
“Careful!” she told me, but uncharacteristically for her, she didn’t seem mad. “Give me a hand to bring this stuff in, would you?”
