“I saw you rode Hashtag already,” she said as she opened the gate for me. “And that he gave you some trouble.”
“He’s had a hard time,” I said. “The girl who used to own him ruins horses and now he is a mental mess.”
“You mean Jess?” she said.
I stopped Four who was walking around in a circle, cooling off and looked down at her.
“You know Jess?” I said.
“Sure, I used to teach her. She’s a nice kid.”
“She’s a nice kid?” I said. “Are you sure we are talking about the same person?”
“Sure, she was in your Talent Scout class at the last show,” she said. “She rides that big black horse Valor now but Hashtag used to belong to her.”
“Yes and she ruined him,” I said.
My blood ran cold. I couldn’t believe that Missy had let someone who used to teach Jess come here. For all we knew, Sandy could have been a spy sent to make sure that while my father was out of action the whole barn collapsed around us. And maybe she was even reporting back to Jess that Hashtag wouldn’t jump for me and having a good laugh about it behind my back.
“You shouldn’t say mean things about people,” Sandy said, her voice cold. “It could come back to bite you in the butt.”
Then she strode off to the barn, whistling cheerfully and I knew that all my doubts about her had been right. She wasn’t some guardian angel sent here to help us while my father recovered. She was someone who was going to make sure that everything fell apart faster than we could put it back together. I just didn’t know why no one believed me.
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
I got up extra early every day to work Hashtag so that Sandy couldn’t and so that she wouldn’t be able to spy on me and report back to Jess. I suspected that Jess now knew that her old horse was here and she was probably really happy that I couldn’t do anything with him. I felt like a failure and tried every trick in the book but nothing seemed to work. What would make a horse that made his career out of jumping suddenly flat out refuse to do it? I didn’t know but it was getting to me. We’d ended our last session with Hashtag worked up and frustrated and me in tears. I didn’t know what I was doing wrong. I’d tried everything and nothing was working.
Maybe my father was right. The horse deserved for someone else to ride him because I obviously couldn’t get him to jump if my life depended on it, which it kind of did. If I didn’t get Hashtag jumping soon I knew Dad would sell him or lease him out to someone else. A horse that wouldn’t jump for me was not going to win me any competitions and was sort of a crushing blow to whatever ego I had left, even though I knew it wasn’t really about me. It was about the horse and I wanted to help him. I just didn’t know how.
I mentioned the subject of the vet to Missy but she just glared at me and said that Sandy said there was nothing wrong with Hashtag and that maybe if I couldn’t ride him then Sandy should work him instead. I didn’t mention the vet again after that. All I could do was hope that my father would make a speedy recovery and be able to give me some lessons on him but that didn’t seem to be happening either.
He lay on the couch every day in a drug induced stupor and I knew he was in pain but he wasn’t exactly doing anything to help himself. A nurse had been out to change his bandages, followed by a physical therapist, a nice lady with blonde hair and a kind smile who tried to show him how to exercise his legs so that the muscles wouldn’t atrophy. He yelled at her that he wasn’t doing any exercises and told her to get off his property before he called the police. She left in tears and didn’t come back. And he was supposed to be weaning off the pain pills but he made such a fuss on the phone, yelling at the nurse that no one had ever been in as much pain as he was that they relented and refilled his prescription.
In a way I wished they hadn’t. I knew it was the pills that were making him act so mean. I had dreams where I stole the bottle and flushed the lot down the toilet but I knew he’d only kill me if I did that. The man who lay on that couch was nothing like my father and I just wanted my dad back. Was that too much to ask?
CHAPTER TWENTY SIX
With the second leg of the Talent Scout series only a week away, I threw myself into working Bluebird. His training had been a little neglected since my father’s accident and even though I’d been hacking him out and jumping him over a few fences, I knew that wasn’t going to cut it. The first class had been hard and I knew that the courses were only going to get more technical and with my father out of the picture and Missy tied up with lessons and her new best friend Sandy, I turned to Mr. Rivers for help.
I’d never actually taken a lesson with our cross country instructor before but I figured he was the best shot that Bluebird and I had and maybe he’d be able to tighten our jumping in a way that my father hadn’t been able to. After all a fresh set of eyes never hurt.
We showed up in the ring ahead of our scheduled lesson and I worked Bluebird a little on the flat to loosen him up. Mr. Rivers may have been one of the Fox Run trainers but he still had to earn a living and he wasn’t going to be teaching me out of the kindness of his heart. Instead I was paying for his time with my hard earned cash and I wanted to make every second count.
Mr. Rivers came over with a steel travel mug in one hand and a stopwatch in the other. He took a sip of what I assumed was coffee and nodded.
“I see you are all warmed up,” he said.
“Yes,” I said.
“Good, I thought we’d go into the woods today.”
He was a thin man with sharp angular features but he was good at his job. He’d once been on the Olympic team and even though he didn’t get to ride, he knew his stuff.
“I’m trying to polish up our jumping for the next Talent Scout show,” I said. “Don’t you think maybe working in the ring or the field would be better?”
“No,” he said. “I don’t.”
Ethan had said that Mr. Rivers was a task master but I didn’t realize that he was also kind of mean as well. Ethan had always said their lessons were fun but so far there didn’t seem anything fun about Mr. Rivers at all.
“Okay,” I said, following him out of the ring and across the field into the woods.
I hoped that whatever he was going to teach me was going to be worth it because I could go out on the trail myself and mess around jumping over the cross country jumps all day for free. In fact I did it all the time when I didn’t want to do any real work and without paying for it. I wondered if Mr. Rivers would give me a refund.
CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN
It was windy as the storms were forecast to roll in early and Bluebird was frisky. He jigged about beneath me as we followed Mr. Rivers out to the cross country course.
“You’d better behave,” I said through gritted teeth as he kicked up his heels in a little buck.
We’d already jumped most of the cross country jumps that had been set up out there. The picnic table. The upturned canoe. Gone up the hill and jumped off the ledge that they’d built with wooden railroad sleepers. I didn’t know how this was supposed to help me in my Talent Scout class but I’d already paid Mr. Rivers and I didn’t exactly think that I could get my money back now so I was just going to have to suck it up and get on with it. If nothing else Bluebird was going to have a fun time. His ears were pricked as the wind tossed leaves around his feet and he’d already spooked at something rustling in the grass. He was being silly on purpose just to show off.
“Let’s warm up over some of the small logs,” Mr. Rivers said.
He pointed to a line of three jumps.
“Trot in and canter out,” he said.
Asking Bluebird to trot in to a jump was sort of like asking a racehorse to walk around the track. He was a jumper not an equitation horse and he was already excited. It took all my effort to get him to trot and even then it was a fast trot but we cleared the jumps easily and then came back to where Mr. Rivers stood by an old tree.
“Doesn’t like to go slow does he?” Mr. Rivers sai
d.
I shook my head, too embarrassed to make any excuses for my naughty pony because I didn’t know why he was so full of himself today.
“Ever think about taking up eventing?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I think I’m too much of a chicken. I like my jumps to fall apart when my pony touches them. We do come out here and play around though. Bluebird loves to gallop through the woods and we’ve jumped most of these.” I pointed to the other jumps.
“What about that one?” he said, pointing to the log that I’d seen when I was out with Dakota, the one that was about four feet high and stuck between two trees.
“But that’s not a jump, is it?” I said. “That is just where a tree limb fell.”
“Just checking,” he said and I wasn’t sure if he was disappointed in me or relieved that I wasn’t some reckless rider.
He spent a while making us jump some of the smaller jumps, commenting on my position and pointing out that my lower leg got sloppy when I wasn’t paying attention. I knew he was right. To be honest I wasn’t paying attention at all. I was thinking about my father and how I was going to have to go to the show without him and about Sandy and how she was up to something, I just wasn’t sure what. And when Bluebird jumped three logs that had been stacked together and then threw in a buck afterwards, I wasn’t paying enough attention to sit up and pull his head up and he dumped me off in the dirt.
I sat there for a moment, not even realizing what had happened. I couldn’t remember the last time my pony had tossed me off but everything seemed to work. My arms and legs were fine. Nothing broken and the only things I’d bruised were my butt and my ego.
Bluebird had trotted off a few paces and then looked around as though he suddenly realized that I wasn’t with him anymore. Mr. Rivers walked over and grabbed his reins. At least he hadn’t run off. That was all I needed, spying Sandy seeing my pony galloping back to the barn without me. She already thought I was incompetent and to be honest I was starting to feel it.
“Are you okay?” Mr. Rivers asked as I got up, brushing the dirt off my breeches and feeling glad that I’d only fallen off into a pile of leaves.
“Fine,” I said. “It was my fault.”
“You weren’t paying attention,” he said, handing my pony back to me. “Out on the cross country course you can’t let your attention slip for one second because it could cost you your life or that of your horse. Career ending injuries happen out in the woods. You have to keep your wits about you.”
“I know,” I said sheepishly.
It was pretty embarrassing. The first lesson I’d ever taken with Mr. Rivers and I’d fallen off like a beginner. I should have just stuck to schooling in the ring.
“And you know better,” I scolded Bluebird. “Bucking like that. I know this is exciting stuff but there is no need to get carried away.”
Bluebird showed no remorse. He was still all excited, dancing about as I got myself situated back in the saddle.
“Again,” Mr. Rivers said. “And this time keep his head up.”
We cantered over the three logs and when I felt Bluebird duck his head on landing, I sat back and pulled him up off his forehand.
“Better,” Mr. Rivers called out. “Again.”
After we’d settled into more of a rhythm and Bluebird stopped trying to buck and be silly, Mr. Rivers had us jump some of the more advanced fences. There was a log raised up on barrels that was set in the middle of a stream that I hadn’t even known was out there, a hutch made of scraps of old wood and two fences set on angles that made a complicated in and out. Bluebird had to pay attention to get over them and so didn’t have time to act silly and I didn’t have time to think about that other stuff either. Now all I could think about was the fact that if I didn’t pay attention, my lesson with Mr. Rivers was going to cost Bluebird his career and how I should have scheduled a nice, safe dressage lesson with Miss. Fontain instead.
CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT
Once Mr. Rivers seemed satisfied that I wasn’t going to fall off again he started using his stopwatch, giving me set times to complete certain combinations of jumps. Bluebird thought it was great fun and so did I. We galloped off around the tiny course he’d pointed out and came back grinning. I knew we’d nailed it.
“No,” Mr. Rivers shook his head. “You were too fast.”
“Too fast?” I said. “How could we be too fast? There is no such thing.”
“In a jump off there is no such thing as too fast but out on the cross country course there is an optimal time. Your objective is to hit that time.”
“But we’re not eventers,” I grumbled under my breath.
“I know you’re not,” he said. “But knowing how to rate your horse, to tell how fast he is travelling over the ground is a handy skill to have, don’t you think? Now try again.”
I didn’t think it mattered as long as we went fast because jump offs didn’t have optimal times and Mr. Rivers was just riding our case for no reason at all. We weren’t eventers and were probably never going to compete as one but I’d paid for the lesson and that meant I had to do what my instructor said, even if I did think it was a waste of time.
I tried to gauge the time in my head by counting the seconds but when we got back to Mr. Rivers, he told us that this time we’d been too slow. By this point I was getting frustrated and my competitive nature was starting to kick in. I didn’t want to fail at something so stupid so this time I really paid attention. The third time around we nailed it.
“Nice,” Mr. Rivers said. “You are done.”
“What, that’s it?” I said as he walked off.
“What more do you want?” he said. “You learned a new skill, didn’t you?”
I suppose that I had but I wasn’t sure how it was going to help me out any.
“Next time we are definitely taking a dressage lesson instead,” I whispered to Bluebird as we walked back to the barn.
“I heard that,” Mr. Rivers called out from in front of us.
“It was fun though,” I called back but he just waved me away.
CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
“You didn’t really say that, did you?” Ethan said when I told him the next day.
“Well what was the point?” I said. “He was just riding my case for no reason because I’m the head trainer’s kid and he thinks I should know how to time a round when I’ve never even done it before. That’s not fair and besides, I looked it up online last night and real cross country riders get to wear a stop watch.”
“Yes but what if your watch breaks on course?” Ethan said. “It’s been known to happen.”
“But I’m not an eventer,” I cried.
“You can’t say you didn’t have fun though,” Ethan said. “Not even a little?”
“Fine, it was fun,” I said.
We were sitting on the fence watching Faith have a lesson on Macaroni. The medication had worked and he was sweating again but everyone had agreed that it was best for him to take the summer off from showing. Faith could still ride him and take lessons but shows were out of the question until the weather cooled down. At first Faith had been cool with it. Now she wasn’t so sure. She kept begging me to find out if there were any other ponies she could show instead. I told her I’d try and find her something but it seemed like everyone who was anyone wanted to show this season. We had lesson kids that hardly ever came out to ride signing up to go to the local shows and some of our more advanced kids were showing two or three ponies but their parents had the money to buy or lease them. Faith’s didn’t.
“I miss Mickey,” I said, swinging my legs back and forth.
Ethan was silent. I knew he knew what was going on over in Paris. I just wasn’t sure how much he knew.
“When is she coming back?” he said, trying to sound like he didn’t care. Or maybe he really didn’t care. I couldn’t tell.
“Next weekend,” I said. “She might even make it back for the show.”
“Great,” Ethan said. “Like I
need another distraction. I already have Faith hounding me every day, asking if she can ride Wendell.”
“In the show?” I said.
“Of course in the show. You know that is all she cares about.”
“Maybe she’ll find another pony to catch ride like she did at the last show,” I said.
“That was dumb luck.” Ethan shook his head. “That other girl fell off right in front of her and the ride just fell into her lap. She won’t get that lucky again.”
“Don’t count on it,” I said as Faith flawlessly jumped a double combination that all the other kids were having trouble with. “The kid is lucky and pretty resourceful.”
“And annoying,” Ethan said.
“She is not,” I said.
“You don’t have to live with her.”
It was true in a way. You couldn’t really tell what someone was like until you lived with them. I hadn’t known that Mickey snored like a drunken sailor until I slept over at her house and she said that I talked in my sleep. I hadn’t known that my father had a nasty habit of leaving his dirty socks on the bathroom floor or that he apparently like painkillers a little too much.
“Is it wrong that I can’t wait for these shows to be over?” I said.
“Is it wrong that I kind of can’t wait for summer to be over?” Ethan replied.
“Everyone wants summer to be over,” I said.
“Faith doesn’t.” He sighed as his little sister jumped her small pony over a large oxer.
“Why?” I said. “I thought she’d be all excited for the cooler weather so that she can start showing again since that is the only thing she talks about.”
Double Standards (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 20) Page 6
