Chasing Gold

by Catherine Hapka

  She filled her plate with food. Danny watched her, his fork suspended above his plate.

  “Careful, Haley,” he said. “If you eat too much, you might bust out of your froufrou flowery outfit.”

  “Daniel,” his mother said warningly.

  Haley ignored the boys as she ate. She’d barely taken the time to wolf down a sandwich at lunchtime, and it really had been a long day. After her dressage lesson, she’d mucked out all four stalls and rebedded them, followed by various other farm chores. Then her uncle had asked her to help him stack firewood and sweep out the machine shed, and Aunt Veronica had needed help carrying things down to the root cellar. After that Haley had dashed over to the Tompkins’ to take care of their plants and cat, then rushed back to start the afternoon chores. It made her tired just thinking back on it all.

  She’d just finished her third helping of sweet potatoes when a car horn sounded outside. “Oops, that must be Ems.” Haley quickly wiped her mouth with her napkin, then jumped to her feet and picked up her plate.

  “Leave that, Haley.” Her aunt pulled the plate out of her hands and set it down. “The boys will clear.”

  “What?” Danny exclaimed, sounding annoyed.

  Aunt Veronica ignored him, standing up and adjusting Haley’s ponytail. “You really do look pretty, sweetie,” she said. “Have a nice time tonight, okay?”

  “I’ll try.” With some effort, Haley managed not to grimace. Her aunt was right—she was stuck going to this party, like it or not. She might as well at least try to have a good time.

  An hour and a half later, Haley stifled a yawn as she checked her watch for about the fifteenth time. It felt as if she’d been at Tracey’s party forever. Despite her best efforts, she couldn’t seem to stop thinking about all the much more important stuff she could be doing right now. She’d wiped down her dressage saddle before her lesson that morning, but there had been no time to give it a proper cleaning and oiling. And of course she hadn’t touched her jumping saddle at all. She hadn’t managed to get Wings’s mane pulled yet either, or polished her tall boots, or dug through her tack trunk for her good crop and helmet cover. . . .

  “Haley!” Emma danced over, holding a plastic cup of punch. “Isn’t this a blast?”

  Emma’s face was flushed, and her glasses kept getting steamed up. But she seemed to be having fun. Haley wasn’t sure why. The party seemed to consist of people standing around shouting at each other over the too-loud dance music. Only a handful of people were actually dancing. Ashley and Phil, their grade’s only official couple, were swaying together in one corner, arms wrapped around each other. Emma had been fast dancing with Tracey and a few other girls for a while, though most of the group had drifted off to pick at the snacks laid out on the coffee table, which had been pushed up against the living room wall along with most of the other furniture. It was drizzling outside, which meant everyone was crammed indoors instead of the party spilling out onto the deck as Tracey had planned, and the place felt stuffy and too warm.

  “Where’s Tracey?” Haley asked Emma.

  “What?” Emma scrunched up her face and leaned closer. “I can’t hear you!”

  “I said, where’s Tracey?” Haley shouted into her ear.

  Emma shrugged and glanced around. “I don’t know—wait, there she is!”

  Now Haley saw her too. Tracey was winding her way through the crowd, pulling Owen along by one wrist.

  “There you are!” Tracey exclaimed when she reached Haley and Emma. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you, Hales!”

  Haley doubted that. For one thing, she’d seen Tracey giggling and leaning against Nick Jankowski just a short while earlier. For another, Haley herself had been standing right there in the arched doorway leading to the kitchen hallway for at least the past fifteen minutes.

  But she just smiled weakly. “Here I am.”

  Tracey dragged Owen forward. “So I was just telling Owen about your clinic thingy,” she said. “Ooh! I love this song!”

  The music had just changed to an up-tempo number with a pounding beat, though Haley noticed that Ashley and Phil were still swaying to their own tune. Tracey started dancing in place as she poked Owen on the arm.

  “So anyway,” she said loudly, “I figured he’d be totally impressed, since you guys both spend all your time riding horses and stuff.”

  “Well, sort of.” Owen smirked. “I ride horses. Haley prances around on a runt of a pony.”

  Haley rolled her eyes. “My runt of a pony could outrun and outjump your lazy horse any day of the week,” she said.

  It was a familiar exchange. But tonight, Haley’s heart wasn’t really in it. Why was she here? She had too much on her plate right now to spend hours standing around doing nothing.

  “Yo, Vance!” Owen whistled as one of his friends wandered past. “Get over here. Did you hear Haley’s doing a clinic with some fancy member of the tight pants club?”

  “Huh?” Vance was a large, slow-moving boy who always looked sleepy. Despite that, he was one of the best under-fourteen ropers in the county. “What’re you talking about?”

  “Haley’s taking a lesson with an Olympic rider next week!” Tracey told him, still swaying to the music.

  “She hasn’t been to the Olympics yet,” Haley corrected. “Probably someday, though.”

  Vance blinked. “The Olympics? So you’re doing reining now?”

  “Reining? No way.” Owen grinned. “That’d be way too cool for Haley. She’s into the goofy English stuff, remember?”

  “Oh, right.” A slow grin spread across Vance’s face. “Jumping over flowers and stuff, right?”

  Tracey giggled. “Oh, you guys!” she exclaimed, giving Vance a playful shove.

  Haley stared at her. Where had this weird, giggly, boy-crazy girl come from? And what had she done with her best friend?

  “Actually, that reminds me,” Haley said loudly. “I have to get up early to get a ride in before church. So I should probably go.”

  “What? No!” Tracey’s eyes widened in alarm. “You can’t go now—the party’s barely getting started!”

  “Yeah,” Emma put in. “We haven’t even had a chance to tell you about the dance yet either! Besides, you can’t leave—you rode here with me, remember? And Mom’s not coming to pick us up until ten.”

  Haley was already reaching for her cell phone. “I’m sure Uncle Mike will come get me.”

  Tracey frowned. “Whatever.”

  “Yeah, whatever,” Owen put in with a smirk. “Hope I didn’t scare you off. If you were a real Western rider, you could take a little joke.”

  “If you were any kind of real rider at all, you wouldn’t care what kind of saddle I rode in,” Haley shot back. “But that’s not why I’m leaving, so don’t flatter yourself.”

  Vance chuckled and punched Haley on the arm. “Good one, Haley.”

  Haley smiled weakly, trying not to notice the confused look on Emma’s face or the stormy one on Tracey’s. Lifting a hand to wave good-bye, she hurried out into the relative quiet of the kitchen to call home.

  “Still awake, buddy?” Haley said as Bandit came rushing forward to greet her.

  It was well after nine o’clock, and the barn was quiet. Uncle Mike had left the horses out in the pasture for the night, since the weather was still mild and the light rain had already stopped. It wouldn’t be long until the cooler weather stopped the grass from growing, and he wanted to save the hay stores he’d laid in as long as possible. Haley knew the horses liked being out, but she wished Wings was in his stall so she could give him a hug and let him help her remember why she was still awake instead of snuggled into her comfortable bed.

  For a moment she considered walking out to the pasture and whistling him over. But then a giant yawn overtook her, and she decided that would be too much effort. In fact, she almost turned around and headed back into the house. But if she put off her tack cleaning, she’d just have to fit it in later. Better to get it out of the way now.


  Bandit followed as Haley headed into the tack room. One of the cats was curled up on the stack of Western saddle blankets, and Haley gave her a quick pat. Then she reached for her tack-cleaning bucket, which was still sitting by the doorway where she’d left it that morning. She pulled down her jumping saddle and set it on the handmade wooden rack in the middle of the room. Grabbing the antique milking stool passed down from the days when the farm was a dairy, she sat down and set to work.

  CHAPTER

  9

  “ALMOST FINISHED WITH THOSE BOOTS?” Uncle Mike stuck his head into Haley’s bedroom on Sunday night. “It’s getting late, and tomorrow’s a school day.”

  “I’m done.” Haley gave her tall riding boots one last wipe with a cloth, then sat back, gazing at them in satisfaction. They were old and well-worn hand-me-downs from one of Jan’s other students who’d outgrown them, but they were good quality. The cleaning and polish Haley had just done made the leather gleam as if the boots were brand-new.

  That’s another thing I can check off my to-do list, Haley thought as she set the boots aside and wiped her hands on the rag. It had been another long, tiring day, but she’d accomplished a lot and was feeling pretty good. At church that morning, her aunt had been chatting with a neighbor who’d mentioned she was looking to hire someone to come and transplant some perennials before the cold weather set in. Haley had volunteered, and while the job had taken longer than expected, the woman had also given her ten dollars more than she’d promised. Sure, that meant Haley had been behind on everything else she had to do, but it was worth it.

  She’d been so busy that she hadn’t had much time to worry about whether Tracey was going to be mad at her for leaving the party early. Neither she nor Emma had called or texted all day, which told Haley that the answer was probably yes.

  She grabbed her nightgown off her chair, revealing her school backpack below. With a gulp, she realized she hadn’t done any homework all weekend aside from dashing off the social studies worksheet in the car on the way home on Friday. But that was okay, she told herself as she rifled through the bag. She could do the reading for English class in the car tomorrow morning, and . . .

  “Oh no!” she said aloud. “The math test!”

  Panic washed over her. How could she have forgotten about the big test tomorrow? While Aunt Veronica and Uncle Mike were pretty easygoing about most things, they took school seriously. Once when Jake had forgotten to turn in a school project, they’d grounded him for an entire month and made him quit the baseball team. If they found out Haley had blown an important test, they might not let her go to the clinic next weekend! They might not even let her ride until she brought her grade up!

  She couldn’t take that chance. Quickly pulling on her nightgown, she grabbed her math textbook and crawled into bed, hiding the book under the covers. A moment later Aunt Veronica knocked and stuck her head in.

  “Lights out, sweetie,” she said, flicking the switch by the door. “See you in the morning.”

  “Night,” Haley said.

  She waited until the hall light went off, then a few minutes more to make sure the house was quiet. Then she turned on the lamp on her bedside table and pulled out her math book. Flipping to the chapter on percentages, she did her best to focus on the words and numbers on the page.

  But math wasn’t Haley’s best subject even when she wasn’t completely exhausted. And tonight her tired brain just couldn’t seem to take in what it was reading. Within minutes she was completely confused, her mind swirling with ratios and numeric values and all sorts of other terms she didn’t really understand. How was she ever going to learn this stuff before tomorrow?

  I can’t do it, she thought hopelessly. I’m going to flunk that test, and then the clinic is toast. I’ll miss my chance to ride with Zina, and Wings will miss his chance to really show off what he can do, and all our hard work over the past few weeks will have been for nothing, and we’ll never make it past beginner novice. . . .

  Haley wasn’t much of a crier, but tears came to her eyes now. It just wasn’t fair! She was so close to making her dreams come true. She couldn’t let some stupid math test stop her!

  She glanced at the door. Aunt Veronica was a whiz at math. So was Jake, for that matter. But they were both in bed. How mad would they be if she woke them up?

  Pretty mad, she admitted with a sigh.

  Seeing her laptop sitting on the desk, she wondered if she could find some kind of free math help site online. Then she had a better idea.

  Hopping out of bed, she grabbed the laptop and logged on to the Pony Post. Brooke and Maddie were both great at math too. Maybe one of them could help her! While the site was loading, she checked the time. It was almost eleven thirty on the East Coast, which meant Brooke was surely in bed. But it was only eight thirty in California. . . .

  She crossed her fingers as the site appeared and felt a rush of hope as she saw that the most recent entry was from Maddie. Before she could check the time stamp on the post, a photo suddenly popped into view. It showed a cute palomino pinto pony wearing a sun visor on her head and a Hawaiian-style lei around her neck. A moment later a text entry appeared below it.

  [MADDIE] What do u all think? This is the last pic of possible Halloween costumes for Cloudy. Cute, right? I know Halloween is still weeks away, but I want to be ready, lol! Anyway, it’s getting late, so I’ll chat w/u all tomorrow!

  “Wait!” Haley blurted aloud.

  Her fingers flew over the keys. Seconds later she jabbed at the enter key, and her post appeared.

  [HALEY] Mads, wait! Don’t sign off yet!

  She held her breath, watching the screen. Was she too late?

  Then another post popped up.

  [MADDIE] I’m still here! What’s up? Isn’t it past bedtime where u are?

  Haley let out the breath she was holding and smiled. Then she started typing again.

  [HALEY] Yes, it is. That’s why I need ur help!

  She kept typing, explaining the issue. Maddie caught on quickly, asking Haley for the name of her textbook so she could look it up on the Internet. It turned out she’d studied percentages at the end of the previous school year, and she assured Haley that she’d be able to learn it too.

  [MADDIE] U are sooo organized and logical about stuff, this should be cake for u. Just pretend u need to figure out something to do w/Wings. Like, what percentage of his feed is beet pulp vs. sweet feed or whatev? Or: what percentage of your last ride did u spend on jumping vs. flatwork?

  [HALEY] That’s easy—but I don’t get graded on what I feed my pony or how much I jump him! LOL!

  [MADDIE] lol, I know. But just go with it, okay? Here’s how u turn that kind of percentage question into the same kind of equation you’ll prolly see on yr test. . . .

  Haley rubbed her eyes as she read on, nodding slowly. Somehow, the way Maddie explained the concepts made much more sense than the way the textbook did. Or grouchy, impatient old Mr. Washington, for that matter.

  Half an hour later, she was pretty sure she was starting to get it. Maddie had talked her through some of the problems in the chapter, and the concepts were almost starting to make sense.

  [MADDIE] Oops, my mom just told me it’s time to turn off the computer. Should I ask her if I can stay on a little longer, or are u OK now?

  [HALEY] I think I’ll be OK. Thanks, Maddie. U saved my life—and my clinic!

  [MADDIE] Anytime. That’s what friends r for!

  “Haley? Haley! Wake up.”

  Haley swam out of a deep, dark sleep. Something was buzzing around her head. A giant bee? No, wait, it was her alarm, the sound attacking her like a physical threat. She reached out from under the covers and swatted at it.

  “Ow,” she mumbled as she hit the corner of her bedside table instead.

  A second later the alarm stopped.

  “Haley.”

  Haley cracked open one eye and saw Aunt Veronica gazing down at her. “Um, hmm . . . ,” Haley mumbled.


  Her aunt crossed her arms. “Your alarm has been going off for ten minutes,” she said. “Didn’t you hear it?”

  Haley sat up and rubbed her eyes. “It was? Sorry.” Noticing her English book lying on the floor beside her bed, she hoped her aunt didn’t see it. After signing off with Maddie, Haley had studied her math for another half hour or so, then decided to get a head start on the reading for tomorrow. She must have dozed off in the middle of it.

  Her aunt looked concerned. “You look tired,” she said. “You’re running yourself ragged doing all this extra work lately. I’ll tell the boys they can do their own morning chores today.”

  “No!” Suddenly Haley felt much more awake. “It’s okay, I’m fine. I’ll do them.” She was feeling pretty good about her finances after earning that extra money the day before, but she didn’t want to take any chances. If she didn’t do the boys’ chores, she wouldn’t get paid. It would be heartbreaking if that turned out to be the difference between having enough to cover the clinic and having to stay home.

  She climbed out of bed, stifling her yawn until her aunt had bustled out of the room. Pulling on her robe, she stuffed her English and math books into her backpack. She might be tired, but at least she was feeling a little more confident about that test. Maddie had really helped her understand the math chapter last night, and Haley figured she could finish the rest of the English reading in the car and in homeroom, and then do some last-minute cramming for the math test at lunch.

  That shouldn’t be a problem, she thought. Tracey and Emma probably still won’t be talking to me anyhow.

  A few minutes later Haley was in the barn. The horses had spent the night outside again, and for a second the thought of walking out there to get Wings made her feel so tired she nearly collapsed where she stood.

  Then she remembered: It was Monday. The pony’s day off from riding.

  “Whew,” she murmured, leaning against a support beam for a moment.

  The feeling of a cold nose against her hand snapped her out of it. Glancing down, she saw Bandit nudging at her.