“Show off,” I told him.
“Like you’re not,” he replied.
Ethan was right. What was I even doing here? I didn’t belong here. I wasn’t sure I belonged anywhere.
The girl who had ridden behind me on the warm up course went next. Her bay was big and stocky but he didn’t have the athletic ability that Wendell did and she had a death grip on his mouth after the log in the ditch so when they got to the table, he put on the brakes and slid to a stop. She fell up on his neck but didn’t fall off.
“Leg, crop, leg,” Mr. Rivers told her. “You knew he’d do that and you let him get away with it. Circle and make him jump the jump please.”
The girl gathered her reins and her composure and kicked her horse into a forward canter, tapping him with the crop as they reached the approach for the picnic table. Her horse pinned his ears but jumped it anyway.
“See?” Mr. Rivers said. “He can do it when he wants to, he just has to know that you want to as well. When you second guess yourself, so does he.”
I watched the other riders go and listened to their trainer give them precious words of wisdom. Mr. Rivers was good. He didn’t yell or put his riders down, telling them they were stupid like so many trainers did. He pointed out how they could ride better in relation to how their horse was feeling, always putting it into words that they could understand and praising them when they made the corrections that he’d asked for. I liked him. I liked him a lot. Maybe I could just switch disciplines like Ethan, then I’d never have to take another lesson from my father again. I also wouldn’t be on the team anymore. All I’d ever dreamed of was show jumping but eventing didn’t seem so bad.
“You’re up,” Mr. Rivers told me.
I gathered my reins and really hoped I wasn’t about to mess things up.
CHAPTER SIX
Arion was usually a pretty good sport and up for anything. He’d survived the dressage show I made him go to, even if he did jump out of the dressage ring, and I’d ridden him in the woods loads of times, just not with a trainer and my peers watching me.
“I usually tell my students to use more leg,” Mr. Rivers told me. “But I don’t think that is going to be your problem. Keep him steady after the log because he’s going to gallop off the bank and over it and you’ll end up coming to the table too fast. Got it?”
“Yes,” I said.
In show jumping, too fast usually wasn’t a problem but these jumps were solid. If you hit them wrong, they wouldn’t fall, you would and so would your horse. Rotational falls were a big deal in the eventing world and not something that many people were lucky enough to walk away from. They were to be avoided at all costs but most times they were accidents and how were you supposed to avoid those?
“You hear that?” I said as I patted Arion on the neck. “Nice and steady.”
But Arion was excited, just like I knew he would be. He galloped up the bank and leapt off with no regard for what was beneath him, cantering away to the log in the ditch and jumping so high and wide that I had to grab a piece of his mane.
“Whoa,” I called out to him as we approached the table.
“Circle him,” I heard Mr. Rivers shout but we weren’t out of control. My horse wasn’t running away from me. I let him gallop on and we took the table in stride, and even if it did take a couple of circles to get my excited horse back under control after, I still felt pretty proud of him.
“Good boy,” I said, patting him as he arched his neck and pranced back to the group all gray and dappled in the sunlight and completely full of himself.
The adrenaline rush had been so awesome that I couldn’t stop smiling, until I saw the look on Mr. Rivers face.
“When I tell you to circle, you circle,” he said. “You don’t just blindly carry on.”
“But everything was fine,” I said.
I couldn’t understand why he was so mad with me. My jumper had just cleared a line of cross country jumps with room to spare. I knew my horse. I knew that he was going to make it. Mr. Rivers didn’t. He’d barely seen me ride him let alone jump him. He’d once given me a lesson on Bluebird but he didn’t know what Arion was capable of. We were invincible.
“If you want to ride in my group, you do as I say, understood?” he said.
“Yes,” I grumbled.
“But despite your insubordination, your horse does have some talent. Want to come over to the dark side and ride with us full time?” he asked me with a small smile.
I just shrugged. I’d thought that I was going to be getting away from people telling me I was doing things wrong. I just wanted someone to praise me once in a while. What was so wrong with that?
“What is his problem?” I whispered to Ethan.
“I don’t know.” He shrugged. “He’s never yelled at me before.”
“Great,” I said. “Hey but at least I didn’t fall off.”
“The lesson’s not over yet,” he replied.
We spent the rest of the time cantering over various combinations of the jumps in the woods and I tried to keep my over excited Thoroughbred slow and steady but he seemed to think that this lesson was the best thing he’d ever done in his whole life and all he wanted to do was gallop. But when Mr. Rivers told me to circle him I did and I noticed that after the circle, he jumped the next fence much more rounded and balanced and so Mr. Rivers was right all along, which didn’t make me feel any better because I just wanted to hate him for embarrassing me and now I couldn’t.
Ethan and I didn’t fall off but the girl on the bay did. He seemed quite timid for a horse that was supposed to be an eventer and she didn’t have the nerves to back him up. Two timid partners weren’t going to cut it out on the big bad cross country course and after a couple of close calls, he finally decided he’d had enough and ducked out at the canoe. He went one way and she went the other, landing in a mud puddle.
“Do you think she’ll clean our tack?” I asked Ethan as Mr. Rivers hurried over to check and make sure she was okay.
“Doubtful,” Ethan said as her horse blew past us on his way back to the barn. “Think we should chase after him?”
“Let my father deal with it,” I said. “It’s not our problem.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
By the time we got back to the barn I was exhausted and sweaty but very happy. Dad looked like the first two but not the third. He’d obviously spent a big portion of his time chasing the bay around and now the horse was in the wash rack having great big gobs of sweat rinsed from his coat. He’d given my father a run for his money.
“Couldn’t you have come back to help?” he asked me, glaring at my happy expression like he wanted to rip it off my face.
“I was having a lesson,” I replied sweetly.
“You are a show jumper, not an eventer,” he said through gritted teeth.
I knew that if other people hadn’t been around he would have been yelling at me by now.
“I’m expanding my horizons,” I said.
Then I just walked past with my hot and sweaty horse and gave Arion the biggest, longest bath of his life. My Thoroughbred deserved it. He’d taken to the woods like a duck to water and he’d jumped fences that were higher than the ones he usually faced in the ring, all while doing it willingly. Not once had I felt him hesitate or falter. He was a great horse.
“I was serious before. You should think about joining us every week,” Mr. Rivers said.
He was leaning in and looking over his shoulder as he said it like he was afraid my father was going to kick him out if he found out that he was poaching me as a student, which was a very real possibility.
“I don’t know,” I said.
It had been fun but I didn’t know if I could really endure my father’s wrath week after week if I rode with someone else.
“I know you’re not interested in changing careers,” Mr. Rivers said. “But your horse might be and besides, it does them good to get out of the ring every once in a while. It does you good too,” he added.
I put extra liniment on Arion’s legs and then I made him stand in his stall to dry. He looked longingly out his back window and nickered forlornly to Four who was out in the big field grazing without him. My other gray horse lifted his head and looked around for his friend, then replied with a throaty neigh.
“Not until you are dry,” I told him. “I know what you are like.”
So I threw him a flake of hay and then stood there wondering what to do next. I’d worked all my horses. I’d done all my chores and my schoolwork. Avoiding my father was forcing me to do all the things I usually put off doing and the Fox Run grooms were so efficient that there weren’t even any barn chores to do.
I went outside to the back paddock where Bluebird was standing in the shade. I sat on the fence and he came over and nuzzled my boot.
“I’m bored now,” I told him, leaning over and straightening his forelock. “You’re probably bored too, aren’t you?”
It was time for him to go back into real work. He’d had a month off. He was off all his medications and back to his old self and I’d been riding him. I just didn’t have the nerve to jump him yet and it didn’t really matter because I was supposed to be jumping Socks. He was my team horse now.
“Oh Bluebird.” I sighed. “It’s not fair. I miss Missy.”
I’d tried calling her but she hadn’t answered. What if she was mad at me too? What if in order to hurt my dad she took Socks away? She’d have every right and I wouldn’t blame her. He was her horse. He always had been. I was just riding him. I thought of all the horses that had come and gone but Socks had always been here, like he was one of my own. Part of my herd. I loved him now like I loved all my horses and I didn’t want to see him go. Of course Missy didn’t have anywhere to keep a horse right now but it wouldn’t be long before she got another job. Girls were always lining up to ride with her. What if she took Socks to her new farm? Or even worse, what if she decided to sell him?
“What are you doing?” Faith said.
She’d come out of the barn and climbed up on the fence next to me looking about as sorry for herself as I felt.
“Imagining the worst,” I said.
“Because you miss Missy.” She nodded. “I miss her too. Who am I supposed to ride with now?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “She’ll come back,” I added.
“I thought you said you would never lie to me,” Faith said. “How do you know that she’ll come back.”
“You’re right,” I said. “I don’t.”
Faith’s hair was getting longer again and she was growing taller. She wasn’t the little annoying kid that I’d first met at the Sand Hill summer camp. She was growing up. Soon she’d outgrow her scruffy pony Macaroni and need a bigger one. Then she’d need a horse. Eventually she’d be competing against me. I shuddered to think what would happen on the day she beat me.
“Are you waiting for your brother?” I asked.
“Yeah,” she said. “He’s wrapping Wendell’s legs. He said you guys worked hard today.”
“We did.” I nodded. “It was fun.”
“Did it take your mind off stuff?” she asked.
“Kind of,” I said.
“When I’m sad or mad I like to ride really fast and it helps me to forget. Or jump a really big jump. You know how your heart jumps into your throat and you can’t breathe because you’re not sure if you’re going to fall off or if your horse is going to refuse or have a rail down? But the thought of that makes everything else go away?”
“Yes,” I said. “I know that feeling.”
In fact it was the feeling I’d been chasing all day. The one I got from my cross country lesson. The one that was like a drug only it was nothing you swallowed or injected. It was being on the back of your horse and pushing yourself to the limit and surviving and that couldn’t be bad, could it?
CHAPTER EIGHT
That evening I walked up to the house, dragging my feet. Meatball followed behind me, trying to pounce on the lace of my boot. I thought of all the people who had left me in my life. First my father, then my trainer Esther, then my mother and now Missy. It was like everyone I loved just walked away. Was I really that horrible to be around? How would they like it if I just ran away from them?
Deep down I knew that it wasn’t me they were leaving. It was the situation they were in. The person they were in a relationship with. I was just the accidental casualty. The person caught in the blast radius, unlucky and alone. At least horses couldn’t leave you. Not by choice anyway.
The house was quiet. I pulled off my boots and walked through to the kitchen in my socks. Meatball cried and fussed until I tipped a cup of his dry food into his dish and he sat there crunching it, his fluffy tail wagging slowly as I sat on the counter.
One of Owens bottles was in the sink and there was one of his plush toys on the back of the couch, half stuffed behind the cushions. I could see the red fabric sticking out. It was the cow that mooed when you squeezed its belly. It always made him giggle and thinking of him made my heart hurt because this time I hadn’t just lost one person. This time I’d lost two.
I wasn’t really hungry but I knew I had to eat if I wanted to keep my strength up for all the adrenaline chasing I was doing so I found some frozen chicken nuggets, that probably weren’t even real chicken and nuked them in the microwave. Then I took them to my room along with the cat and the red cow and shut the door. The door to Dad’s room was already shut but I could hear the faint mumble of the TV so I knew he was in there. He didn’t want to talk to me anymore than I wanted to talk to him. What were we supposed to say to each other? I wanted him to fix things between him and Missy and get rid of my mother and Cat. But I don’t think he really knew what he wanted at all. Maybe he was having some kind of midlife crisis. Mickey said all dads had them. They bought fast cars and got tattoos and chased women half their age. It was kind of dumb. What was the point? To wreck your whole life so that you had to start over? Boys were stupid.
The next morning I was up and down at the barn before my father was even out of bed. I’d beat him at this game if it was the last thing I did.
“Morning,” Henry waved.
“Good morning Henry,” I replied. “I made coffee in the office. Get it while it’s hot.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ll let the grooms know.”
I figured Henry was a good ally to have on my side. He knew the running of the barn better than anyone and was really good at clearing spots on the schedule for things like ring time and trailering to shows. If I had to, I’d do this whole thing without my father. I didn’t need him.
I worked Bluebird first. My pony was happy that things were back to normal. His ears were pricked as I rode him into the fresh arena, our hoof prints the first to make tracks in the deep footing. We worked this way and that until I felt his muscles loosen and then I trotted him over some poles on the ground. He tried to jump them instead.
“Are you trying to tell me something?” I asked him.
I knew I was being too cautious. Taking it too slow. But he was a jumper. This was his career. If he was going to continue it, he needed to jump. I walked him out of the ring and over to the jump field where there were some small jumps set up in the corner.
“Now?” I asked him.
He nodded his head, jangling the bit in his mouth. I knew he was as ready for this as I was and as we cantered towards the first fence, I didn’t feel scared for him anymore. Instead I was just happy. He hopped over the tiny jumps like they were nothing and after we were done I let him walk, leaning over to hug his neck.
“I’m glad you are back,” I told him. “But you feel so small.”
My pony had a powerful jump like a cat and he was handy and fast but after weeks of riding horses, he felt tiny. And I didn’t like to think of him as incapable of doing anything and I couldn’t imagine never riding him again and I’d never believed that ponies were just for kids
but the day was getting closer where it wouldn’t be fair to compete him at my level anymore. I was outgrowing him just like Faith was outgrowing Macaroni and I wanted time to stop so that I wouldn’t.
As we walked back to the barn I kept thinking about all the things that weren’t fair and wondered if maybe it was time to just give up and accept that things were going to be the way they were and I couldn’t do anything to change them. Raging and fighting and being mad didn’t change the fact that Missy had gone. I couldn’t bring her back, only my father could do that and I decided then and there that I was going to concentrate on the only thing I could control, my career.
“You’re next,” I told Socks as I led Bluebird past his stall. “Because we have a team to practice for.”
CHAPTER NINE
“I have time to give you a lesson if you like,” Dad said as he walked past.
I was tacking up Socks in the aisle, hoping to get out to the ring before he appeared. I should have ridden Socks first. Dad wouldn’t have offered to give me a lesson on Bluebird because he knew that he wasn’t back up to showing level yet. But Socks, he was now my Junior Olympic team horse. And he was Missy’s horse. Of course Dad would want to interfere with that.
“No thanks,” I said.
“Emily, don’t be ridiculous,” Dad said, stopping and standing there with his arms crossed.
“I’m not being ridiculous,” I said. “I’m taking a stand.”
“A stand for what? A stand that means you’ll run around taking instruction from anyone but me and falling behind so that when you show up for the first team event you’ll be the worst rider there?”
“Thanks a lot. You think I can’t hack it on my own?” I said.
“I think you need help and you are shooting yourself in the foot by shutting me out.”
He had a point. I did kind of need him.
“And I have this whole Halloween show planned. Don’t you want to help me with that?” he said.
Dark Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 23) Page 2
