“Well now I’m going to tell you something that you’re not going to be happy about,” Mickey said.
“Can you just not and let me be happy for five seconds?” I said.
“If you like.” There was silence on the line for exactly five seconds and then Mickey said, “Jess and Amber are going to be there.”
“Whatever,” I said. “I don’t even care. They can come. The beach is big enough for everyone.”
“Wow,” Mickey said. “I’m impressed. I thought you’d flip out or something.”
“I would have if you’d told me that my stepsister was going to be there but Jess and Amber? I can handle them any day.”
“Cool,” Mickey said.
“So, are you going to ask Esther if you can bring Daisy along?”
Daisy was the big Arab, Percheron mix that Mickey had been riding when she could be bothered to actually show up at the barn.
“Maybe,” she said. “Not everyone is bringing horses though so I wouldn’t be the only person without one.”
“Do you think we could actually camp on the beach?” I said, getting all kinds of fantastic ideas. “Sleep out there under the stars with our horses? That would be so awesome.”
“And have them all run off in the middle of the night?” Mickey said. “Yeah, sounds totally awesome.”
She was probably right but I still thought it would be a good idea. We said goodbye but not before I made Mickey promise that she’d ask Esther about taking Daisy to the beach ride. Some people may have been going without horses but I didn’t want my best friend to be one of them, especially when Jess had Hampton back at her barn just sitting there not doing anything.
I went downstairs, still thinking about how awesome a beach ride would be but my joy was instantly squashed when I saw Cat out of her room and actually sitting at the kitchen table like a normal person. Her feet weren’t even up on the table edge or anything and she was wearing normal looking clothes that didn’t have any rips or safety pins in them. Obviously she was trying to set a good example, which meant she was probably up to something. I ignored her and grabbed a plate.
“I was just going to call you to come down,” Mom said. “I’ve made shepherd’s pie.”
“Yuck,” I said. “That sounds disgusting. What is it exactly? A pie with shepherd’s inside? Gross.”
“It’s not gross, it’s really good. Just give it a try. You never know, you might like it.”
“And we don’t waste food in this house, young lady,” Derek said.
“Don’t call me young lady,” I mumbled under my breath.
He was sitting at the table next to Cat. They both had plates of food that they hadn’t touched yet and napkins were on their laps like they were eating at a fancy restaurant or something. I was beginning to think I had stepped into the twilight zone. My mom was cooking and Cat and Derek were being civil and polite. It was totally weird. I kind of preferred it when they were yelling at each other.
I sat down with my plate full of shepherd’s pie, which actually looked like ground meat and potatoes with some carrots and peas thrown in for good measure. It had nothing to do with sheep or shepherds at all.
“Don’t forget the gravy,” Mom said, pouring the runny brown stuff all over my plate. “Yum.”
“Yes, yum,” I said sarcastically.
We ate in silence. I had to admit that the cooking classes were paying off. The days of microwave meals and frozen pizza were obviously behind us and the shepherd’s pie wasn’t half bad either.
Everything was so nice and normal. Too normal. I kept glancing at Cat out of the corner of my eye, waiting for her to say something or start a fight. Instead she just smiled sweetly back but I knew she was faking it. She was up to something really big and I wanted to know what it was.
“That was great, Mom.” I put down my knife and fork with a sigh. “Really great.”
“Yes, thank you,” Cat said.
There was an awkward silence. None of us had ever heard Cat actually thank anyone before.
“Thank you, Catherine.” Mom smiled at her.
I knew they were all thinking that their punishment had worked and that Cat had magically been reformed into some model citizen but I knew better. She was playing them.
“So Mom, can I ask you something?” I said, hoping to strike while she was still in a good mood.
“Sure.” She put down her napkin on the table and smiled at me.
“Well you see, I’ve been invited to this beach party and you get to bring your own horse and we’re going to ride on the beach and stuff and I can go, right?”
All my words ran together as I tried to get them out and I felt my face flush red. I shouldn’t have asked in front of everyone. I should have waited until I had Mom alone but it was too late now. I dug my fingernails into the palm of my hand as I waited for her to say something but Cat was the one who spoke first.
“Oh, I’ve been invited to that party too,” she said.
CHAPTER TWELVE
You know how in the movies everything goes into slow motion when something bad happens and the main character can’t speak or move? Well that’s what happened to me. I could see people’s mouths moving but it was like they were talking underwater. I couldn’t understand anything they were saying and I couldn’t even open my mouth at all. I could see Derek moving his head up and down but I couldn’t tell if he was agreeing or disagreeing with the fact that Cat wanted to go to the same beach party that I did. And anyway, she was grounded, wasn’t she?
Finally Mom noticed that there was something wrong with me. I felt her shake my arm.
“Emily?” she said. “Are you alright?”
“I think I need to go and lie down,” I finally managed to whisper. “I don’t feel very well.”
“Alright dear,” she said. “We’ll talk about this beach party later. Okay? You look white as a sheet.”
I got up from the table on legs that felt like jelly. Cat was telling Derek all about how her new riding friends had invited her to go and even though she knew she was grounded, that she hoped he could make an exception because her friends came from really wealthy families who just might be interested in investing in Derek’s Destinations.
And that was the moment that I knew she had him wrapped around her little finger. Her friends and their parents couldn’t have cared less about his stupid little taxi service but she’d dangled the bait right in front of his face like a carrot on the end of a stick and there was no way that he wouldn’t take it now. Cat was going to the beach party and there was nothing that I was going to be able to do about it.
I texted Mickey and begged her to meet me at the barn early the next morning. Then I lay there staring at the ceiling, wondering if maybe I should just be the one to run away from home instead.
The next morning, Mickey wasn’t impressed.
“What was so important that you made me get up and come out here at the crack of dawn?” she moaned.
“Brush the horse,” I told her, shoving the grooming kit in her direction. “We’ll talk when we ride.”
Mickey opened her mouth to say something and then closed it again. She grabbed the brush and started dragging it through Daisy’s tangled tail. I had to tell her about Cat but I couldn’t do it here in front of Esther, who was hanging around being all weird. For all I knew, she’d think it was a great idea that my stepsister wanted to ride. After all, that would be more income for Sand Hill and even though I didn’t want Sand Hill to close, the last thing I wanted was Cat hanging around at the barn. At my barn.
“Have a nice ride girls,” Esther called out after us as we left the barn.
“We will,” I called back, then turned to Mickey. “Can you believe she actually asked if I wanted to ride Saffron this morning instead of Bluebird? That mare nearly killed me yesterday and I was only trying to lunge her.”
“Is that what you dragged me out here to tell me?” Mickey said.
“No.” I sighed. “It’s worse than that. Way
worse.”
We rode along the trail in silence as I tried to find the words to tell her. They all sounded petty and stupid in my head. I was probably the only one who thought that it was horrible but Mickey would understand. She had to.
“Cat’s been invited to the beach ride,” I finally blurted out.
“Cat?” Mickey said, looking confused.
“Cat. My stupid, horrible stepsister. The one who hates me. The one who ran away and hooked up with a Grand Prix rider and now says she wants to ride because she knows it will ruin my whole life forever.”
I looked down at Bluebird, his little chestnut ears and his soft mane, all mine and mine alone, for now. And then I just burst into tears.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“I don’t know what you’re worried about,” Mickey said.
I had finished sobbing into Bluebird’s mane and we’d stopped in the woods. Daisy was taking a nap and Bluebird kept looking around for the fox he knew was hiding in there somewhere.
“You don’t know what I’m worried about?” I said. “I’m worried that she is going to ruin everything. I don’t want her here or at the beach ride or anywhere around horses.”
“You know she’s not even going to be able to ride,” Mickey said sensibly. “And if she thinks she can, then she’s going to end up falling flat on her face. Then we can all laugh at her and she’ll go home with her tail between her legs and never mention horses again.”
“Or,” I said, “Maybe she’s got some natural talent that she doesn’t even know about. Then what?”
“Why do you always have to imagine the worst?” Mickey said.
“Because that’s usually what happens.” I sighed.
“So what do you want to do?” Mickey said.
“I want to fix it so that she never mentions horses again.”
“And how are we going to do that?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But we have to think of something.”
“Then we will.” Mickey smiled.
She reached out to grab my hand and squeezed it tight. Sitting there on the back of our horses, I felt like maybe I had my best friend again. Like she had my back and would stick up for me and help me make sure everything was going to be okay.
“She’s probably friends with Jess,” I groaned as we rode back to the barn. “That’s all I need, two of them.”
“If she’s friends with Jess then she’ll definitely end up falling off.” Mickey laughed. “Besides, how does she expect to ride in those awful clothes she wears?”
“I don’t know but you should have seen her at the dinner table, sitting there all pretty with her hair straight and just a hint of makeup. She looked like the perfect daughter.”
“She’s not the perfect daughter and you know it,” Mickey said. “She’ll mess up again, you know she will.”
“I just hope it’s sooner rather than later.”
I was starting to feel a little better about the whole thing and kind of hopeful that with Mickey’s help everything would work out. But when we got back to the barn, Esther was standing there with Saffron all tacked up, looking expectantly up at me.
“Oh no,” I groaned. “Not again.”
“I thought you could take her for a ride.” She smiled.
“Great,” I said. “Thanks a lot.”
“You’re welcome,” she replied, not catching the sarcasm in my voice.
“I don’t know what the problem is,” Mickey said as we untacked our horses. “You’ll usually ride anything.”
“Yes but I prefer to ride horses that don’t have a grudge against me or want to try and kill me.”
“Who are you kidding?” Mickey laughed. “All the horses and ponies that you’ve ridden have been like that.”
And the more I thought about it, the more I realized that she was right. Lately every horse I’d ridden had come with a lot of issues and some serious baggage. I wondered what it would be like to be Jess. To have an amazing jumper shipped down to your farm and be able to ride it straight off the trailer and over the jumps without having to do any work. But then I knew it would be like the horses that Frank had brought down with him. The ones I called the robots because they didn’t ever seem to do anything wrong and I knew that I didn’t really want to ride horses like that. I wanted to ride the ones that needed fixing or help or someone to understand them. I liked being the girl who could do something with a horse that other people couldn’t and as I put Bluebird out in his field and ran back to the barn, I was actually looking forward to getting up in the saddle and seeing what Saffron had to offer.
My excitement was short lived. The only thing Saffron had to offer was the fact that she didn’t want to be working. At all. She showed her displeasure by running my leg into the fence repeatedly, no matter how hard I tried to keep her away from it.
“Inside rein, outside leg,” Esther yelled.
This time, instead of abandoning me, she’d actually come out to help. Although she just laughed when I tried to give her the reins and get her to ride first.
“This is good for you,” she said. “Don’t you want to be the kind of rider who can coax the best out of any horse?”
“Yes,” I said.
After all, it was exactly what I had been thinking but being a horse whisperer had sounded so much more romantic when I’d imagined it in my head. Getting bashed against the fence? Now that was most definitely not romantic. And to think, I had been day dreaming about jumping the mare. As it was, I couldn’t even get her to go in a straight line.
“What’s wrong with her?” I asked Esther as we fishtailed back and forth down the rail.
“She’s a little greener than I thought she’d be,” Esther said vaguely.
“Green?” Mickey shrieked from her spot on the fence. “She’s positively untrained.”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Esther said. “She just needs a little refresher, that’s all.”
“Refresher, right,” I said through gritted teeth. “I’ll refresh her.”
Saffron wiggled about all over the place like a distracted toddler. I’d get her attention for a few minutes and then lose it again. At the trot she was mildly interested in what I wanted her to do. At the canter, she couldn’t have cared less.
“Circle her,” Esther cried. “Circles, circles and more circles.”
“You take her round in a circle,” I mumbled as we completed a circle that was more egg shaped than round.
But by the time we were done, Saffron was at least trying to listen to what I was asking of her and I patted her arched neck.
“She’ll be back to her old self again in no time.” Esther smiled as I jumped to the ground.
Only Saffron’s old self wasn’t exactly a well-trained horse that would sell for a lot of money and we had a ton of work to do to get her to a point that was anywhere near being ready to sell. Or at least, I did anyway.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
I wasn’t really a bath person but by the time I got home, every muscle in my body ached. I sat in the bathroom and poured a bunch of different potions into the water that I found hiding in the back of the bathroom cabinet. They created a pretty big pile of bubbles that I gingerly eased myself into. Then I just lay there, wondering if this was what my life was going to be like from now on. I wanted to know where all the fun had gone. Everything seemed so stressful. I needed to relax, to have a good time and the beach party was exactly the place to do it.
Mom hadn’t mentioned it again. It was probably time to go and talk to her. Find out if Cat was going to be allowed to go. After all, she had been grounded and it hadn’t even been that long. Surely they wouldn’t have let her out of purgatory so soon.
I stayed in the bath until the water was cold and all the bubbles had popped. Then I got out and went to my room to look for something to wear. My riding clothes were still in a big, dirty pile in the bottom of the closet and the shorts and tank tops I wore to ride my bike to the barn were all mixed in with them along with my pajamas an
d some t-shirts. It had finally happened. My closet had no clean clothes in it. I stood there with the wet towel wrapped around me, wondering why Mom hadn’t done the laundry. She always did the laundry. It disappeared and then came back in clean piles. I never had to think about it, until now.
I dug around in my drawers and found an old pair of gym shorts and a t-shirt that once belonged to my dad. It was faded and frayed with a college logo on it but I rescued it out of the trash back when it fit me like a dress and I’d hung onto it because it reminded me of him. Now it was no longer like a dress and I wasn’t even sure if I wanted to keep it anymore but since it was the only thing I owned that was clean, I put it on anyway.
I shoved all the dirty clothes into the hamper and dragged it down the stairs feeling kind of mad. It wasn’t like I’d never done my own laundry before but if Mom was going to stop doing it then she could have at least told me before I ran out of clean clothes.
I stood in front of the washer, shoving the clothes in. There were all these stupid rules about separating colors and fabrics. Laundry rules that I vaguely knew but didn’t really care about. You put the clothes in and they came out clean. That was how the washer was supposed to work. I jammed everything in until the machine was practically overflowing, then I tipped in a triple load of soap for good measure and slammed the lid shut. I needed clean clothes. I didn’t have time to wait around and do a hundred loads.
In the kitchen I stood in front of the refrigerator. All the food I liked to eat had gone, replaced with a hundred plastic containers full of Mom’s leftovers. I pulled one out and opened the lid, scrunching up my nose when I smelt something I didn’t like. If she was going to leave all of that stuff for us to eat, she was going to have to start labeling things or they weren’t going to get eaten. And what did she think we were anyway, human garbage disposals?
I grabbed the bread and made a sandwich instead of opening more containers. Then I sat in the living room and flipped on the TV. It was weird. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been alone in my own house. There was always someone there being annoying. Making noise and filling the house with their moaning and groaning. In fact I’d pretty much never seen the TV off. It played sports twenty four hours a day and Derek was usually never far from its big screen. I guessed that now he’d started his own business, he actually had to get off his butt and do some real work. I flipped through the channels, wondering how long it was going to last.
Beach Ride (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 9) Page 4
