Dark Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 23)

by Claire Svendsen

  “I’ve seen what he can really do,” Dad said. “And I didn’t like it. The jumps stay low.”

  As we picked up an easy, forward canter, I wondered if this was why they always said you shouldn’t let your parents train you. Not in any sport. You were supposed to get outside instruction. Parents were jaded. They saw you as offspring to protect. Another trainer would have known that we needed to see Nyx’s full potential and not squash down the jumps to protect me. They would have pushed me to grow as a rider on this difficult horse. Missy would have. Dad might have if he hadn’t seen me catapulted through the air so I guess I couldn’t really blame him. It still sucked though.

  We jumped everything Dad told us to. Well, Nyx did. I just sort of stayed out of his way and tried not to upset him. He seemed to like it when he felt like he was the one in charge and I was fine with that as long as he did his job and didn’t do anything dangerous.

  “That’s enough,” Dad called out as I patted the big horse on the neck.

  “We didn’t try the water jump again,” I said.

  “And you are not going to,” Dad replied.

  “But that was the one jump he was bad at,” I said. “We need to know if he won’t jump water.”

  “Not today,” Dad said.

  And he wouldn’t change his mind. As we walked back to the barn I saw my mother at the window, staring out at me. I couldn’t see the expression on her face but I bet it was a frown. She’d be mad that Dad was letting me ride the very horse that had tossed me yesterday. Maybe they’d have a big fight about it. Perhaps she’d get mad and leave. One could only hope.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  The Halloween show inched closer and it was all anyone could talk about. The costume class. The haunted pumpkin patch. Everyone except for Mickey. All she wanted to do was talk about my birthday. The one thing I just wanted to forget.

  “Maybe we could go to the mall?” Mickey said. “You could pick out some cute clothes for the next time you see Jordan.”

  “The mall?” I said, scrunching up my face like it was a bad word.

  “Yes, you know, the place where all the teenagers hang out on weekends and buy overpriced stuff that they don’t really need with their parent’s credit cards.”

  “Well my dad only has one credit card,” I said. “And it’s trapped in ice in our freezer. Besides, the mall sounds like it would be torture.”

  “Well you were the one who said about going to the movies,” she said. “I thought you wanted to try doing more normal stuff for a change?”

  “I think I was just in a weird mood that day,” I said with a grin. “I must have been sick or something.”

  “Figures,” she said. “I knew it had to be too good to be true.”

  We were in the tack room, sitting on the floor painting signs for the show. Mickey was so into it that I jumped at her offer of help and besides, I couldn’t do it all by myself. I could tell Mickey was about to launch into another lecture about how I should celebrate my birthday when my phone rung.

  “It’s Missy,” I said, looking at the screen.

  “So answer it,” Mickey said.

  “What if she wants Socks back?” I said, feeling my palms start to sweat.

  “Well better to find out now than later,” Mickey said with a shrug.

  I knew that as far as she was concerned, Socks had never really belonged to me in the first place and so Missy taking him back was really me making a lot of fuss over nothing when I had all these other horses to ride. Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t but I couldn’t help the way I felt.

  “Well are you going to answer it or not?” Mickey said.

  “Answer it,” I said.

  I walked out of the barn and stood under the oak tree where we’d set up the foal naming picnic and Missy had told me that she was leaving. I could see Phoenix lying flat out in the big field with Chantilly and Bandit grazing either side of him while he slept. He looked so calm and peaceful. I wanted to go out there and lay with him but instead I answered the phone before it stopped ringing and I missed Missy’s call altogether.

  “Hello?” I said.

  “I thought you weren’t going to answer,” Missy said. She sounded cheerful. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it?

  “Mickey and I are painting signs,” I said. “For the Halloween show.”

  “Yes, I saw the flyers,” Missy said. “It looks like fun.”

  “I wish you were here to help,” I told her, feeling bad. “You’re a much better artist than we are. Mickey’s pumpkins look like deformed footballs and my ghost might as well be a cloud with eyes.”

  Missy laughed. “I’m sure it looks fine.”

  “I miss you,” I suddenly blurted out. “Why haven’t you returned any of my calls?”

  “It’s been really hectic here,” she said. “Taking care of Owen by myself and trying to figure out what to do. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.”

  “That’s okay,” I said. “I understand.”

  My mother could have taken a few lessons from Missy. Sometimes an apology went a long way.

  “Are you coming back?” I said hopefully.

  “I don’t think so,” she said.

  “Oh.”

  “Not right now anyway.”

  “Are you taking Socks away?” I asked her again.

  “Of course not, I told you that I want you to take care of him while I’m gone,” she said. But her voice sounded strained. Different. I got the feeling she was lying to me.

  “You’re sure?” I said.

  “He is staying at Fox Run,” she said.

  We talked about baby Owen for a little while. Missy said he was getting bigger every day and promised to let me see him soon. She said that she wouldn’t keep him away from me and I hoped that she meant it but by now I wasn’t sure about anything.

  “Is she going to let you keep Socks?” Mickey asked when I came back.

  “She said yes,” I said.

  “Then why aren’t you happier?” Mickey frowned.

  “Because I’m not sure I believed her.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  I worked Socks almost every day just like nothing had changed. He was doing really well since the Talent Scout clinic and I could see that he’d make a really good member of the Junior Olympic team. Nyx wouldn’t. Dad continued to teach me on him but he wouldn’t let us near the water jump and when he placed a Liverpool spread beneath an oxer, Nyx tried his sliding stop and buck trick again. This time I was ready for him, bracing my feet in the stirrups and grabbing a big handful of his thick mane. He didn’t toss me off but it wasn’t because he didn’t want to.

  “So he doesn’t like water,” I said. “We just don’t put him in any classes with water jumps.”

  “At his level all the classes have water jumps,” Dad said. “If he won’t even go over a Liverpool then we can’t use him.”

  “I guess,” I said.

  I knew Dad was right but I continued to ride Nyx anyway. The horse was still unpredictable but I wanted to understand him. And I wanted to know what he did to the other girls, the one he’d injured and the one he killed. Was it just the water or was it something else? Dad’s friend Bill hadn’t got back to him yet and now that Dad didn’t want to buy the horse he didn’t seem to care. As far as he was concerned, Nyx would go down south with Denora after the Halloween show but I still wanted to know what had happened in his past.

  At night, locked in my room, I scoured the internet for news stories about the big black horse that stood in my barn. It was all I could think about, like I was possessed by his past. I wanted to know what had happened. No, I needed to know. Maybe it was because my sister had been killed in a horse riding accident or perhaps it was because Halloween was inching closer and with it all manner of ghost stories hung thick in the air. But I couldn’t find anything. It seemed like some stories were too horrible to share. Or else they were buried in the recesses of the internet, too deep for me to find them. In the end I decided
to go to the source. I called Denora. She didn’t answer so I left a long, rambling message.

  “Hey Denora, its Emily, from Fox Run,” I added awkwardly. “You know, where Nyx is being stabled?”

  I figured I’d better mention it because we hadn’t seen or heard from her since she dropped the horse off. I was almost afraid that she’d dumped him on us just like Missy’s friend had done with Jupiter.

  “I was just hoping to get some more information on your horse’s past like his show record and if anything had ever happened to him, you know like if he’d been in any accidents or anything. Anyway, let me know. Thanks so much. Bye.”

  I hung up the phone feeling like an idiot. My voice had been cheery and false and I should have been more subtle. Skirted round the issue and found some way of making her tell me without actually coming out and saying it. Of course she wasn’t going to call back and say yes my horse did kill a girl and maim another one but don’t worry about it because he is totally fine and safe now.

  I tossed my phone across the bed, wishing I could toss it across the room only I was too afraid it would break and I couldn’t afford to buy a new one. Instead I threw myself back on the soft pillows, listening to my father and mother arguing in the next room. I wasn’t sure what they were arguing about but I was pretty sure that it had something to do with horses and me. I covered my head with a pillow and fell asleep where I found myself in a nightmare, on the back of a black horse with burning red eyes that bolted through a vast expanse of molten lava along a rocky trail. I clung to his bare back, my hands twisted into his mane so tight that they bled. And I wanted to jump off but I couldn’t because I knew I would die. But if I stayed on his back, I knew I’d die too. Either way I couldn’t win. I was trapped.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  My birthday dawned cool and crisp. It would still be warm later in the day but for now, in the early dawn light, it was cool enough to need a thin sweater. I crept through the house and ran down to the barn where my pony nickered for me. I slipped into his stall and wrapped my arms around his warm neck. Then I went to get his bridle. I needed it to be just the two of us again. Bluebird and me against the world just like the old days. I took him out into the pre-dawn light and sprung up onto his warm, bare back.

  His unshod hooves clopped gently across the parking lot and into the empty field. Some of the horses that stayed out overnight lifted their heads to look at us, early morning mist swirling around their legs.

  We took the trail, wandering through the dark woods and into the clearing. Bluebird stiffened as a family of deer sprung away from us, gliding gracefully over the long grass. I patted my pony on the neck and thanked him for not spooking and then we carried on. I let him take me wherever he wanted, my reins slack against his neck, one hand on his withers. He was my heart horse, the pony who stole all my love long before the others and we weren’t two separate souls but instead were intertwined so that I couldn’t tell where I ended and he began.

  We cantered across the clearing as the sun came up, turning the sky pink and yellow, then came back to a lazy walk as we turned to explore an area of the trail that I’d never been on before. It was usually too overgrown but now the grass was starting to wilt and brown and the path was clear. Bluebird picked his way through and I let my mind wander. I thought of birthdays past. The many years I’d spent begging my mother for a horse when even the mere mention of the word sent her into a mood. Now I had all the horses I could ever possibly want to ride and yet still I felt unhappy. But it felt ungrateful. Like I should be happy all the time. I didn’t have the right to be sad like the girl who cried herself to sleep on the birthday nights when that pony wasn’t there waiting for her. Who was I to complain? But had I been happier when I’d just had Bluebird? When I wasn’t competing seriously? Had that been a better life? These were the questions I thought about as I rode through the mist but I didn’t have the answers and it didn’t matter anyway. I couldn’t go back to the girl I once was. I could only move forward. I didn’t have any other choice.

  Mickey would have told me that birthdays were supposed to be fun, all about cake and balloons and presents. But I always felt somber on mine, looking back at the year behind me and the person I’d become. Maybe it was because I spent all those years without a dad or a sister. Or maybe it was just the way I was hardwired. I didn’t like people making a fuss over me. It seemed selfish to celebrate your own birth. I wasn’t that great of a person. I knew that. I hadn’t cured cancer or world hunger or really done anything. I hadn’t even helped Frankie and Dakota find horses yet. I needed to do better and as I vowed that I would I suddenly realized that I was kind of lost.

  “Where are we?” I asked Bluebird.

  He stopped and stood looking around at the dead end. Then suddenly we heard something up in the trees. Bluebird snorted and scooted backwards.

  “It’s okay,” I told him but I wasn’t sure because I didn’t know what it was. Then I saw them, two fluffy black bear cubs playing at the base of a tree, tumbling over one another and jumping at the bark. They were the most adorable things I’d ever seen. I wanted to hug them. But I knew that even at their small size they would have sharp claws and teeth and that there would be a momma bear not far away.

  “Maybe we should go,” I whispered to Bluebird.

  Then I saw her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  The momma bear was huge, and not impressed that we’d blindly wandered into their secret hollow. She was up in the tree on a big branch but she was eyeing us warily and I knew we weren’t safe for long. Florida bears were generally peaceful but had been known to attack small dogs and occasionally people if they thought that their cubs were threatened and I was a threat. So was Bluebird. My pony had just recovered from being poisoned. The last thing he needed was to be mauled by a bear, especially on my birthday.

  “Back up,” I whispered, closing my legs around Bluebird’s sides and gently pulling on the reins.

  My pony scuttled backwards, clearly more eager to get away from the bear than I had anticipated. Then he spun on his haunches and took off at a canter. He wasn’t out of control or anything so I let him go, looking over my shoulder to make sure a black shadow wasn’t chasing us. She wasn’t but she’d come down from her tree. I saw her standing there proud and tall, her baby bears playing at her feet and I said a silent thank you that she hadn’t pounced first and had given us the chance to get away. After all the woods were her home and we had wandered in uninvited. You had to learn to ride in harmony with nature and not just bulldoze through it.

  Back at the barn I didn’t tell anyone about the bear. There were some people who thought that the bear population was getting out of control when really it was the people who were encroaching on their land and not the other way around. Flattening Florida’s natural beauty to make way for their cardboard box subdivisions. It made me sick and I didn’t want anyone getting any ideas about going out into my woods and harming the little bear family.

  “Did you have a good ride?” Dad asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “You’re up early.”

  “Well it is your birthday,” he said. “Don’t you want to do anything special?”

  “Not really,” I said. “Can we just pretend that it’s not actually my birthday today?”

  “Good luck with that,” he said. “Your mother is up at the house baking you a cake.”

  “She is?” I said.

  He nodded. “Try and be a little bit nicer to her. She’s really trying. And you’re fifteen now, almost an adult. That means you can’t behave like a kid anymore.”

  He pulled me into a bear hug and I let him. For a moment I wanted to cry but I didn’t know why.

  “There is something in the office for you,” he said with a wink when he finally let me go. “Because everyone needs presents on their birthday even if they like to pretend they don’t like them.”

  “I never said I didn’t like presents,” I said.

  “You are one complicated
kid.” He shook his head as I walked off. “Oh and no riding Nyx today. Let’s not end up in the hospital on our birthday. Okay?”

  “Alright,” I said with a shrug but I didn’t make any promises.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  Dad’s presents sat on the desk in blue paper, the tape wrapped around them several times like it was holding the whole thing together. I was actually impressed that he’d attempted to wrap them at all. I poured a mug of coffee and sat down with them on the couch. They may have been lumpy and badly wrapped but they made me feel loved all the same. And even though we’d only been living together for a year, Dad knew what I liked better than Mom ever had. There was a new pair of gloves, because I was always losing mine, a t-shirt that had a silhouette of a horse jumping on it and a little velvet box which I opened to find a small silver horseshoe ring inside.

  “For luck,” Dad said as I slipped it on.

  I hadn’t realized that he was standing in the doorway, watching me.

  “Thanks Dad,” I said, rushing over to give him a hug. “I love them.”

  “I know you miss Missy,” he said. “I miss her too. Things are just complicated right now.”

  “I know they are,” I said. “I just wish they weren’t. Why can’t life be simple?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, stroking my hair. “I don’t know.”

  I went about the rest of my day trying to forget that it was my birthday but word seemed to have spread through the barn that it was and so people kept coming up to me and wishing me happy birthday and I had to smile and say thank you and pretend that I was happy.

  A couple of people even gave me gifts, which was super nice and totally unexpected. Just little things like candy or a notebook but it was the thought that counted and other than Mickey and my family, I’d never had people I didn’t know very well give me stuff before and it made me all tongue tied and embarrassed as I mumbled my thanks and tried to escape.