Secret Rider (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 1)

by Claire Svendsen

  “People get hurt all the time,” I yelled at her. “I could get hit by a bus crossing the street. Does that mean I shouldn’t cross streets anymore? In fact, it would probably be safer if I never left the house. You could just bind me up in bubble wrap and lock me in my room. Stuff food under the door. But you know what? Food is dangerous too. What if I choke on my sandwich? Do you know how to give someone the Heimlich maneuver?”

  I was hysterical now. I hadn’t meant to let it get this far or this out of control but every thought I’d ever stuffed back inside about the way she tried to control my life, came spilling out. She couldn’t protect me from everything. Soon enough I was going to have to start living.

  She sat back down at the table, the dishrag still in her hand. Tears were streaming down her face and I suddenly realized that I was crying too.

  “You can’t protect me from every single thing Mom,” I sobbed. “You have to let me live.”

  “But I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she sobbed.

  “Things happen to people all the time. You can’t stop that. But can’t you see? You’re slowly killing me.”

  I reached out and took her hand.

  “I never meant to lie to you and I’m sorry, truly I am. But I know in my heart that this is my destiny and I need to follow it. I need to see if I’m truly talented or not. Who knows, maybe I’ll suck and give up.”

  She shook her head. “You’ll never give up,” she said quietly. “I know that now.”

  I waited for her to give in and say that I could go and live with my father, which wasn’t really what I wanted at all. I wanted to stay here and ride Harlow.

  “When I saw you jumping that day in the field,” she said, squeezing my hand. “I knew. I saw it in your face. In the way you took that horse over those jumps. You have what she had. Both my girls born with an enviable talent.” She took my other hand in hers and looked straight at me. “I don’t want to lose you,” she said. “And I think maybe I was wrong.”

  At first I didn’t understand what she was saying. She was wrong? What was she wrong about? Making me stay here with her?

  “Emily,” she said slowly. “I want you to ride.”

  I jumped up screaming, knocking the chair over and tumbling into her arms. I was crying and she was crying, hugging me tight. She loved me and she wanted me to ride. This was it.

  “Do you mean it?” I said.

  Part of me thought that maybe this was all a cruel joke. She’d stand up and say that of course she didn’t want me to ride ever again and that this little nugget of hope was payback for all the bad things I’d done. The sneaking around behind her back. The lies. But she hadn’t held me that tight in years. And she was crying. She hardly ever cried.

  “Sit back down,” she said as I finally untangled myself from her arms. “We have lots to discuss.”

  The lots to discuss turned out to be her worries about the expense. As with any competitive sport, riding was expensive but much more so than cheerleading or softball. It wasn’t just the lessons and the clothes and the showing fees. It was the fact that soon she knew I would want a horse of my own and with that came a whole new set of expenses. Boarding and vet bills, shoeing and supplements. The list was endless from boots and blankets to bits and bridles.

  I could remember back in the day when Summer had her large pony Stardust and I had fat little Pudding. We kept them in the back yard, in our own two stall barn and my Dad used to bring home used tack from the auctions. It worked back then but that wouldn’t work now. There was no Dad and no backyard. It was boarding or nothing and in a one parent family, boarding was something we just couldn’t afford.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m not telling you I want my own horse. I want to ride Harlow.”

  “But we have to be practical,” she said. “Remember, I’ve been through this once already. When you start showing, you’ll want a better horse.”

  “I won’t,” I said. “And Esther lets me work in the barn in exchange for lessons. Mickey lets me have her hand me down clothes. I have everything worked out.”

  But Esther. I hadn’t factored in the fact that I disobeyed her. How was I going to get her to forgive me? I needed her to let me work in order to ride Harlow.

  “There is a show at the end of the month,” I said. “A schooling show at Fox Run Farm. Esther needs money, she needs more students. She wanted us to win there to drum up business for the stables. If we could talk to her together, maybe she’d still let me ride.”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I guess we could try.”

  “We have to,” I said.

  It was clearer than ever that if Esther didn’t take me back, my dream was over before it had even begun. We had no money for lessons at another barn. I was going to have to work my way to the top and I was willing to give it my all, if only Esther would give me a second chance.

  “When I called Mickey and told her what had happened, she could hardly believe it.

  “Wow,” she said. “Your Mom must really hate your Dad to go along with this just so you won’t contact him.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “She made me promise and everything. If I so much as call him on the telephone, this whole riding deal is off.”

  “That’s nuts,” she said.

  It may have been but I didn’t care. My father had only ever been a memory and if never seeing him again meant I could ride horses, I thought it was worth the tradeoff.

  It was Saturday morning when Mom and I finally pulled into Sand Hill Stables. It felt weird to show up without my bike and the sick feeling in my stomach that I was doing something wrong. This time there was a different sort of sick feeling instead. This time I was nervous because I wanted Esther to let me come back and I was going to do whatever it took to make that happen.

  Esther was in the ring with a handful of ponies and kids. It was the beginner’s group lesson which usually meant the kids spent more time falling off than riding. I crossed my fingers behind my back, hoping that today they would all stay in the saddle. The last thing I needed was for Mom to be reminded that people fell off horses all the time. It would be just the sort of thing to make her change her mind and drag me back home.

  “Do you want to come into the barn to see Harlow?” I said. I was dying to give him a carrot and make sure he hadn’t forgotten me.

  “I’d better not,” she said, looking down the dark aisle nervously. I guess she wasn’t as over the whole horse fear thing as I thought she was.

  So we stood patiently by the ring while the kids bounced around. Some of them weren’t half bad but they weren’t exactly good either. Esther had set up the lowest cross rail you could make without it being a pole on the ground and the kids were taking turns trotting their mounts over it. Some of them made it but as usual some of the ponies just ground to a stop in front of the fence and yanked the reins out of the little kid’s hands.

  “Kick on,” Esther yelled but tiny boots pummeling against the sides of fat ponies didn’t make much difference.

  After they’d all had a turn she told them to walk around and let the ponies cool down. Not that they’d broken a sweat but it was sort of the rules. She had spotted us a while ago but after one curt wave, she’d ignored us. Now she walked over, a sheen of sweat already covering her forehead. It was only nine o’clock and already eighty degrees.

  “Sorry,” she said. “But if I turn away for one second they all pile up and then fall off.”

  “It’s okay,” Mom said.

  “So,” she wiped her head with a cloth. “What are you doing here?”

  I looked at Mom but she’d decided that I should be the one to grovel to Esther. After all, it was my lies that had got us here in the first place. I didn’t tell her that it was also the fact that she showed up and yelled at me in front of everyone but I knew she had a point. Esther would want to know that this was something I was committed to.

  “I wanted to apologize,” I said, taking a deep breath. “And I’d like
another chance.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Sitting in Esther's office was worse than sitting in the principal's office. Much worse. Behind her on the wall were the photographs of all the winners the barn had produced in the past. Esther on Harlow. Esther on Fidget, a really talented jumper that she ended up selling for six figures. Girls I didn’t know who beamed for the camera, blue ribbons fluttering from their horse’s bridles. But that had been a while back and the money had probably run out long ago. Barns were expensive to run. Ester called Sand Hill a money pit. There was always something that needed fixing or some bill to pay. Before I came to work here, I'd always dreamed of having my own barn. Now I wasn't so sure. Riding was so much more fun and Esther hardly had time herself now days. And there hadn't been a winner here in a while. The Fox Run Farm event may have only been a schooling show but it would be full of local horsey kids and their parents. And while their cash flow wouldn't be enough to buy the barn a new roof, it would be enough to buy new tack for the lesson ponies and tires for the horse trailer.

  "I want to win for you," I finally said.

  "Not everything is about winning Emily," Esther said. "There is safety and horsemanship and knowing what your horse is capable of. You can't just fly over the jumps like the wind and expect to win. Not in the hunter ring. Mickey will win. She'll win because her horse is a natural born hunter. He's slow and steady and he makes the course look easy. Harlow won't do that. The judges won't like it."

  "Okay, so I won't win. But please. Can I come back to work and ride? I'll do whatever you want."

  Mom was standing in the doorway behind me. She'd already signed the release form and told Esther that she approved of my riding and that she was ready to support me. The rest was up to me.

  "Maybe I could ride someone else then?" I said.

  But the barn was full of fat ponies and the old horses who packed the adults around, when they weren’t lame. I'd ridden the ponies back when I was still learning to post and there wasn't anything wrong with them. In fact some of them had quite a jump when they put their minds to it but ponies were stubborn and willful. Some days they didn't want to jump at all and I looked kind of ridiculous on them. I was getting taller by the month.

  "While you've been gone, I’ve been thinking," she said. "It was stupid and reckless and dangerous when you jumped that tree out in the field."

  "I'm sorry," I spluttered. "I promise it will never happen again."

  She held up her hand to stop me. "Yes," she said. "It was all those things but it was also something else. You proved to me that you have a natural eye. You saw the distance, even when Harlow didn't and you put him there. You were the one in control. You weren't relying on your horse to save you. He made that jump because of you."

  I wasn't sure if I was supposed to smile or not. I'd done something wrong but it had been good? I didn't know if that was something I should be proud of or apologizing for. She was shuffling papers about on her desk looking for something, her blonde hair scruffy and tucked behind her ears. Her accent was stronger today. I decided to keep my mouth shut. It was usually what I did when I wasn’t sure if I’d be mucking things up further by speaking. Half the time I usually put my foot in my mouth so I’d learned early on it was best to stay quiet.

  “Here it is,” she finally said, pulling out the prize list for the Fox Run Farm show. “They just sent this out yesterday. Updated classes, all that team spirit nonsense has been done away with. This is a real show we can sink our teeth into. And you are going in the jumper classes.”

  “The what?” Mom and I both squeaked.

  Show jumping had always been my dream. I wanted to be one of those Grand Prix riders with a red coat and the American flag on my saddle pad but that day was a long way off, if it would ever come at all and this wasn’t the way it was done. Kids worked their way up through the hunter ring. If they were good enough and had parents with expendable bank accounts, they tried to make it to the medal finals. These were the dreams of little horse girls the country over. Most of them wouldn’t even get a chance to compete. I knew I wouldn’t. The horses who won cost even more money than Esther had sold Fidget for. Even Hampton, who was a really nice Warmblood, was still like a poor cousin to those horses.

  “I don’t want her jumping too high,” Mom said from the doorway. “Can we please try and keep her safe.”

  Esther pushed the prize list in my direction.

  “You wouldn’t be jumping any higher than the kids in the hunter classes. In fact you’ll be jumping lower than you do here at the barn. The jumper class is only two foot six but it’s not about the height. It’s about speed and agility and finding the spot that will get you there on a tight line.”

  Despite it being about a hundred degrees in her office, she poured herself a cup of coffee and offered my Mom one. She declined. She was probably thinking she’d made a mistake right about now.

  “Do you think I am mad for suggesting this?” she asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Mom said.

  But I didn’t care. I couldn’t get the picture of Harlow and me soaring over the jumper fences out of my head. It was going to be awesome.

  “In Europe,” she said. “There is no such thing as hunters, unless you’re field hunting in England and trust me, those stocky horses are a far cry from our dainty hunters. I grew up doing the jumpers and I learned the things that some hunter riders never do, I learned to really ride.” She leant forward on the desk. “Tell me Emily, what is your goal in life? What do you hope to accomplish?”

  The words stuck in my throat. It sounded silly to say that I wanted to ride in the Olympics, didn’t it? But if Esther was going to help me, I was going to have to tell her the truth, and the truth was that I was willing to work my butt off and ride as hard as I could to get there.

  “I want to ride in the Olympics,” I said, my voice not wavering like I thought it would.

  “Exactly,” she clapped her hands together. “Do you see hunters competing in the Olympics?”

  I suddenly realized that I hadn’t and it all made sense. Riding hunters in schooling shows was one thing but riding them competitively on the A circuit at the rated shows? That was something I’d never be able to do unless Mom won the lottery. And Esther was right. Top hunter riders who aged out and wanted to ride competitively switched to jumpers and then usually spent a year in Europe, learning everything they’d missed out on. Why not skip all that and start now?

  “I think it’s brilliant,” I said, beaming.

  “Great, so do I.”

  I looked over at Mom who seemed a little pale. This was probably all happening much too fast for her but summer was coming and there were no shows since it was too hot to ride and everyone was on vacation. If I didn’t ride in the Fox Run show then there wouldn’t be another one until the fall. I suppose that having waited this long, another few months wouldn’t have mattered but I wanted to prove to everyone that this was what I was born to do.

  “Is this okay with you Mom?” I said.

  She threw her arms up in the air. “I guess,” she said. “A jump is a jump and the whole sport is still dangerous as far as I’m concerned but if you’re going to do this, you may as well get it out of your system now. The Olympics is a lofty dream but you still have a long way to go.”

  I knew that she thought I was talented but I knew that she also thought I would outgrow this whole horse thing once I met a boy I liked. I was pretty sure that the only reason she was letting me ride was so that I could get it out of my system but for me it wasn’t like that at all. This wasn’t something that I wanted to do just because my Mom said I couldn’t. This was in my blood. This was my destiny.

  Mom left and told me to call her later when I wanted to be picked up. She may have agreed to let me ride but that didn’t mean that she was actually going to stick around and watch. I was glad. She’d probably make me so nervous that I’d mess up and fall off right in front of her.

  I ran to Harlow’s stall and envelop
ed him in a bear hug.

  “I’ve missed you so much boy,” I inhaled his sweet scent deeply.

  He seemed to think that he’d missed the carrots more than me, snuffling in my pocket until he pulled one out.

  “Save the carrots for after your ride,” Esther called out as she walked down the barn aisle. “Harlow is going to boot camp and so are you.”

  “Boot camp?” I whispered in Harlow’s ear. “That doesn’t sound very nice.”

  “Come on,” she said. “If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do it right.”

  In the tack room, Esther went to the corner where her big wooden trunk sat. The lid groaned as she opened it. I’d never seen inside but Mickey and I had spent hours flipping through our horse catalogs and speculating over all the goodies that were inside. It was the trunk that Esther took on the road back when she was showing and no one had ever seen inside it.

  On the top lay a beautiful navy wool cooler with red trim. The words ‘Champion’ had been embroidered on the side and underneath that ‘Winter Grand Prix’.

  “Wow,” I whispered. This was better than Christmas.

  “Harlow isn’t easy at shows,” Esther said. “He gets excited. That’s what makes him so good. It’s also what makes him dangerous. From now on you’ll school him in this.”

  She pulled out a buttery leather bridle with fancy stitching and a figure eight noseband. It had a bit with a lot of different rings.

  “What is that?” I pointed, wondering how I was supposed to steer Harlow while he had all that junk on his face.

  “Elevator bit,” she said. “He’ll just go with the reins on the big ring today but each ring down will give you leverage and trust me, in the jumper classes, you’ll need it. I saw how he got away from you at the beach.”

  I bit my tongue. I should have known that Esther, with her eagle eye, would have seen.