I stood back, curious now more than worried. Was Bandit really in charge already?
He jumped up and shook himself and so did the horses. Then he started to graze and they did the same, following him as he made his way across the field.
“I don’t believe it,” I said, shaking my head. “That little stinker.”
I didn’t bother and try to catch him. He looked so happy out with the big boys and the fact of the matter was that the grass was pretty short already. He wasn’t going to gorge himself in an hour or two. I’d pull him away from his friends later. But I made a mental note to ask Jordan if they had any miniature sized muzzles in the tack store.
Of all my horses that needed work, Four needed it most. He was the one that was supposed to be a sale horse in the first place and I knew that he’d probably be the first to go, the sacrificial lamb offered up for sale and even though I really liked him, I’d rather it was him than Arion or Bluebird.
The gray horse looked at me through his long forelock as I brushed his dirty coat.
“How do you manage to get so disgusting?” I asked him.
I’d thought Arion was bad enough but Four pretty much found every dirty spot in his stall and made sure he slept in it.
“Oh, he’s nice.” Sandy came out of the office to watch me tack up. “Is he in the lesson program?”
“No,” I said. “He’s not.”
“Shame,” she said. “Why aren’t all these horses giving lessons? Maybe you could let me ride him some time?”
“No.”
She let out a dramatic sigh. “I’m here to help you. If you won’t let me do anything, what is the point?”
“Did you get some people signed up for lessons?” I said.
“Yes,” she replied. “Some. They are kind of hard to convince though. People really think that the sun shines out of your father’s you know what.”
“That’s because it does,” I said. “And watch what you say. He’s your boss you know.”
“Wow, why is everyone so uptight around here?” she said.
“Well if you don’t like it,” I said, pointing out the end of the barn.
“No need to be like that,” she said, glaring at me. “When is Missy getting back?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “But she won’t like you talking bad about my father either.”
“Whatever,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then.”
She walked out of the barn, leaving me speechless. She didn’t know us. How dare she talk about my father like that? Who did she think she was?
I took Four out to the dressage ring and worked on his transitions. He really was coming along nicely, except he still didn’t like a lot of contact. He wasn’t going to make a dressage horse that was for sure. But he didn’t like poles either. Getting him to go over them even when they were just on the ground was a major fight. If he didn’t like jumping, what was I going to do with him? Sell him back to someone as a western horse. Was trying to convert him to an English horse really worth the effort? I was starting to think that I was going to end up with a horse that I couldn’t really do anything with. I really hoped that we hadn’t made a mistake in buying him.
After I’d finished with Four and put him away, I went to get Bandit. He couldn’t stay out there for much longer but he didn’t want to leave his friends. When he saw me coming with the halter, he ran away. No matter how many tricks I used to try and catch him, he wasn’t having any of it.
“Do you want me to sell you back to the fair so you can go on giving pony rides for the rest of your life?” I finally yelled at him.
“Having issues?” Dakota asked.
She’d come to stand beside me having shown up to ride her horse Lucy.
“Where did that little midget come from?” she asked, leaning on the fence.
“He was a gift from Jordan,” I said.
“A gift or a punishment?” she said.
“Good point.” I laughed.
“Come on, I’ll help,” she said.
Together we managed to corral Bandit in the corner of the field and even then he threw his head around and fought me as I tried to put his halter on.
“Stand still you little hooligan,” I said through gritted teeth as his tiny hoof stomped on my foot.
“Can’t we just pick him up?” Dakota said.
“I think he’s heavier than he looks,” I said, finally wrangling the halter on the miniature horse. “Gotcha.”
Only Bandit wouldn’t lead. He planted his feet and stood his ground, stretching out his neck as I tried to pull him along.
“Come on,” Dakota said, going behind him and patting his butt with her hand and making clucking noises.
But Bandit decided he’d had enough and just lay down right there in the pasture and closed his eyes with a sigh.
“Did you teach him that?” Dakota asked, putting her hands on her hips.
“No, I did not,” I said. “But I have a feeling that Bandit has more tricks up his sleeve than giving pony rides.”
“So now what?” she said.
I looked at the mini lying there in the sand, silently protesting the fact that I wanted to take him away from his friends.
“I have an idea,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Bandit lay there playing dead while we brought all the other horses in from the field. I thought I caught him glaring at me out of the corner of his eye but when I looked again he had closed them. The little guy was good. Dakota helped me bring them in and put them in their stalls and the next minute we turned around and there was Bandit standing next to us in the barn aisle.
“How did he do that?” she said.
“He got in by himself and he got out by himself.” I shrugged. “I just don’t know what I am going to do with him.”
Bandit followed me to his stall like a puppy dog and went in acting all polite and cute.
“It won’t work,” I told him. “I’ve seen your true side already.”
But I stroked his head anyway and gave him a little pat on the neck because he had come in eventually and I couldn’t punish him for that or he’d be all confused.
“Want to go for a ride?” Dakota asked. “I was going to take Lucy out to the cross country jumps.”
“Sure,” I said. “Anything to get out of this barn.”
We took Arion and Lucy out on the trail. Dakota was easy to be with. She talked about her grandmother getting fitted for false teeth and how her grandfather kept forgetting where he left the TV remote. She said it was like living in a retirement home and that she had started cooking for them since they almost burned the house down when they forgot that they’d left the stove on.
“One of these days I really think they are going to kill themselves by accident,” she said, shaking her head.
“How is your dad doing?” I asked.
“He’s doing better,” she said. “Mom said that maybe the treatment might be working after all. They’ve got him on this new experimental drug so she’s all excited.”
“That’s great,” I said.
“Yeah but they only give the drug to people who they think are going to die anyway so that they can’t be sued if it has horrible side effects or something.”
“You can’t give up hope,” I told her.
“I know,” she said.
She leaned forward and hugged Lucy’s neck. “I just feel so lucky right now and then I feel horrible that I’m actually enjoying myself while my dad is suffering.”
“He’d want you to be happy,” I said.
“I suppose.” She sighed.
“Well mine has gone off the rails anyway so maybe you’d want to trade?” I laughed.
“It’s the drugs,” Dakota said. “They make them act nuts. My dad was the same on the drugs they gave to help him with the side effects of the chemo. He was like a different person. Moody. Angry. I think it was part of the reason they sent me away. Mom didn’t want me to see him like that all raw and in pain.
His dignity stripped away.”
“Great,” I said. “Can’t wait until my dad gets home then.”
I was actually dreading the fact that my father was coming home from the hospital. I didn’t know what to expect. Would he still be all crazy? Or would he just be despondent over the fact that he was going to be off his feet for a while because I knew that if I’d broken my ankle and was going to be laid up for a while, I’d be all cranky and crazy too.
We hung out in the shade, taking our horses over the lowest cross country jumps. Arion loved it. He thought leaping over fallen logs was the best fun ever and I even ended up taking him over the higher jumps as well, letting him tackle the upside down canoe and the picnic table.
“Nice,” Dakota cried as we soared over it with room to spare.
“He does love to jump,” I said.
Arion was getting better every day. It was like suddenly a switch had flipped in his head and he was sucking up training faster than I could give it to him, which was more than I could say for Four.
“Your turn,” I said.
“Nice try,” Dakota said. “But we’ll stick to the tiny logs thank you very much.”
She trotted Lucy up to the smallest log and the mare pinned her ears and then jumped over it. It had turned out that while Lucy could jump, it wasn’t exactly her idea of a fun time. She’d much rather run around the barrels that my father had set up in the back field, just like Dakota. Our attempts to turn her into an English rider had failed but then again, I don’t think she ever really wanted to be one in the first place. She was just trying to out run her past. Forget her old life and the horses she’d had to leave behind.
“What about that?” Dakota said.
She pointed to a tree limb that had come down in the last storm. It had wedged itself between two trees and was about four feet high, leaves and twigs littering the ground below it.
“That’s not a jump,” I said.
“But it could be.”
“It’s too dangerous.” I shook my head. “If we didn’t clear it and hung a leg or something, Arion could fall.”
“I thought you were fearless,” she said.
“I thought you were my friend,” I replied with a grin. “Egging me on like that? You know Mickey would never do that.”
“Well Mickey’s not here is she?” Dakota said.
“No,” I said with a sigh. “She’s in Paris, living the good life.”
We rode our horses back to the barn but I couldn’t get the tree limb out of my mind. Would Arion really be able to jump it or would I just be asking for trouble? He jumped everything else and it would be a true test. It would also be a dangerous and reckless thing to do but part of me craved that. I felt like I needed to take on scary things because it took my mind off everything else that was going on. I’d never been an adrenaline junkie before but I could certainly see the appeal. Not that I was ready to go and bungee jump off a bridge or something. All I wanted to do was jump a tree limb in the woods. What was so wrong about that?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Dad came home later that day with crutches and a sour attitude. He went straight to bed. Missy looked exhausted. I offered to take Owen for a while so that she could have a nap but the baby was also tired, fussing and crying until I put him down in his crib.
“What’s the matter?” I said, placing his stuffed giraffe next to him. It was literally his favorite toy and he screamed his head off if he didn’t have it near him. “Don’t worry, your dad will be all better soon.”
But I thought that Dad had looked a rather spectacular shade of green. Missy said that he’d moaned in pain every time the car went over any kind of bump. His ankle would take time to heal and it wasn’t going to be a quick fix. This wasn’t a sprain or a strain. It was a break that had been fixed with wires and pins and breaks took months to heal.
I spent the rest of the day catching up on my schoolwork. I’d fallen behind and I couldn’t let that happen. So I sped through assignments and quizzes, talking to my teachers on the phone so that they could verify that I was on track. Virtual school was turning out to be both a blessing and a curse. It was great that I could do my work whenever I wanted but I couldn’t skip it like I’d skipped school in the past. Not if I wanted to be able to continue to do it.
There was this looming group project that I was supposed to be preparing for. We were going to be paired up with other kids in the area who also attended virtual school so that we could do some work together. It was supposed to foster team work but I thought the whole point of virtual school was that you got to work alone so I wasn’t too keen on the idea. In fact just the thought of it sounded awful. At least it was a month or two away. Hopefully after the Talent Scout series had ended and maybe I’d have won and be in Europe by then, training with all the top riders. Then I wouldn’t have to do the group project at all.
I lay back on my bed and thought about Jess. How she’d been to Europe and trained and now she seemed like a different person, nice and kind and a much better rider than she’d been before. Everyone said that it was an act. That she couldn’t have really changed but for some reason I was willing to give her the benefit of the doubt and I wanted to see her again, outside of the show ring. I wanted to go over to her farm and see her new horses and new barn. But her farm was next to my father’s broken down one and backed onto Sand Hill and it was too far to ride my bike. I was also scared to find out what had happened to our old barn. I had so many happy memories of riding with Esther and Mickey and I wanted to keep them that way and not have them messed up by seeing that the place had been turned into a pumpkin patch or a dog kennel.
I pulled out a photograph from under my pillow. I’d stolen it from Dad’s photo albums. It was of Summer, sitting on her large pony at a show. He had a blue ribbon fluttering from his bridle and her head was turned like she was looking for someone but she was smiling. She looked happy. It was the way I wanted to remember her, not lifeless and limp on the ground like I imagined her to be after the accident.
“You wouldn’t be worried about Jess, would you?” I asked her. “You’d just be focused on winning and nothing else.”
I slipped the photo back under my pillow. I didn’t want Missy or my dad to know that I had it, even though I wasn’t sure why because I was pretty sure they wouldn’t mind. Maybe it was because I felt silly talking to someone who was dead. Or maybe it was because I was worried that one day she might actually answer me, her voice trailing from beyond the grave and telling me to grow up.
“I have got to get out more,” I said to the four walls of my bedroom because to be honest it felt like they were closing in on me.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Dad slept for fifteen hours and woke up just as grumpy as when he’d gone to sleep. He hobbled into the kitchen while I was scoffing down some breakfast, hoping to get out before he appeared. I was too late.
“How are you feeling?” I asked him.
“How do you think?” he said.
He had an orange prescription bottle in his hand and popped it open, tipping two of the pills into his hand and then swallowing them dry.
“I’m sure you’ll be better in no time,” I said.
“Really? Are you a doctor?” he asked.
“No,” I said softly. “That’s just what people say to make you feel better.”
“Maybe I don’t want to feel better,” he said.
“I’m sorry Dad,” I said.
I didn’t know what else to say. He was right. If it was me, I knew that I’d be really mad at the world that I wouldn’t be able to ride for months. That I’d have to sit back and watch other people ride my horses and compete in the shows that I was registered to go to. It wouldn’t be fair and I knew that it wasn’t fair for my father either.
“I was thinking,” I said as he perched on the edge of a stool and opened the packet of cookies that were on the counter top. “Do you want me to work Canterbury for you while you’re laid up?”
“Are yo
u joking?” he said.
“No,” I said. “The horse has to work. That’s what you’d tell me, isn’t it?”
“And you want to end up like I am?” He glared at me as he crunched a cookie.
“That wasn’t really Canterbury’s fault. He was just having a bad day. You’ve never had any trouble with him before.”
“And I won’t have any trouble with him again because he’s going up for sale and if I catch you going anywhere near him then you’ll be grounded forever. You hear me?”
I nodded, feeling sorry for Canterbury. It wasn’t his fault. It was no one’s fault. It was an accident. So much for taking care of him in an effort to feel closer to my father. It seemed like he’d placed all his blame and rage on the horse. Still at least if he was mad at Canterbury then he couldn’t be as mad with me.
“I should get going,” I said. “I’ll see you later.”
But Dad didn’t reply. He was staring off into space with a blank look on his face. I guess his meds were starting to kick in. I didn’t necessarily think they were the best thing for him but at least they toned his rage down a bit. I slipped out of the house before he had a chance to yell at me about something else.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It was a busy morning down at the barn. It seemed that a lot of people had decided that in my father’s absence they would try and work on their dressage or up their game with a couple of cross country lessons. Of course when it came down to it all riding was essentially the same. Mr. Rivers was going to tell you to sit up and keep your heels down just as much as my father would so there wasn’t much in it. Only Sandy didn’t seem to think so. She’d shown up and was now standing there looking all disgruntled that no one wanted to ride with her.
Double Standards (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 20) Page 4
