Two Strides (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 30)

by Claire Svendsen

  But we were too busy high fiving each other to pay much attention to the fact that Mousse would have to pass a second trot up before we could compete.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  The show consisted of three rounds. Round one was a clear round course. Round two was a speed course. Round three would be a traditional course with the clear rounds going on to a jump off. Riders would be awarded points for their team and the team with the most points would win the semi-final cup. It was sitting in the judges tent out of the rain, all golden and shiny. If we won, I wondered how we would share it. Would we take turns keeping it? Or would Duncan display it in his tack room with his fifty million and one other awards. But I was getting ahead of myself. There was no guarantee that we would win and so far we’d pretty much embarrassed ourselves. We had to try harder and do better. Duncan walked the first course with us.

  “Here,” he said, stopping at a narrow white fence. “This will be the bogey.”

  “How do you know?” Rose said.

  “Because you are coming off a big oxer and you’re going to have to get your horse back up off his forehand again to jump this clean.”

  “Looks easy to me,” Andy said.

  He sounded cocky, like he was too old for Duncan to be telling him what to do, which wasn’t good. We didn’t need another Jess on the team.

  “So how many strides?” I asked Duncan, trying to get his focus back on the course again. “Because I counted five for Bluebird but he has short legs.”

  “I’d say five for you yes and four for everyone else.” Duncan nodded.

  “Or we could gallop and get there in four,” I said.

  “No need to rush in this class,” Duncan said. “Remember, the goal is to go clean. You’ll do yourself and your horse a disservice if you gallop around and throw caution to the wind. I don’t mind you going for it in the speed class but in this one I want you to remember everything I’ve taught you. Half halts. Setting your horse up for the jump. Not getting ahead of yourself. You know how to ride this course with your eyes closed.”

  “We don’t actually have to do that, do we?” Hanna asked, looking worried. “Ride with our eyes closed?”

  “No,” I told her. “He’s kidding.”

  “Oh,” she said. “I can’t tell.”

  I felt bad for her. I knew she could ride and hold her own but she’d sort of been thrown into the whole situation at the last minute. After all, she was just supposed to be the alternate. Warm up with us. Watch us ride. Learn how we did things. Now she didn’t have time for any of that stuff.

  “If you have any questions,” I told her as we followed behind Andy and Rose as they trailed after Duncan. “You can ask me. Or ask Duncan. He doesn’t mind. He likes it when we question him. He says that when it comes to horses and riding, there are no stupid questions. It’s better to ask than try to guess and make a mistake.”

  “Right,” Hanna said. “This I know. Esther says that too.”

  And I wondered what her mistake had been because I could see on her face that once upon a time, she’d made one. Mine had been riding Grace for Walter. I wanted to ask her what hers was so that I wouldn’t feel so alone but I also didn’t want to mess up her nerves before we rode. This was supposed to be a friendly team competition but deep down we all knew that there was a lot more than a gold cup riding on the outcome of this show. There were the team finals and the trip to Paris and the fact that if we were on the winning team, we’d get noticed. It would open doors for us as riders, doors that I couldn’t afford to open on my own.

  “We’ve got this,” I told Hanna, looping my arm through hers. “Don’t you worry.”

  “I’m not worried,” she said.

  But I think deep down we both were.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  Mousse was cleared for the first class, trotting sound in the warm up ring like a champ. And he seemed to have settled now that the storm had passed although the sky was still gray. We’d hovered over the radar on Duncan’s phone, looking at the green, yellow and red mass that was headed our way.

  “Let’s just hope we finish before it gets here,” Duncan said.

  “And if it doesn’t?” Andy asked him, patting his horse on the neck.

  “Pray?” Hanna said.

  “I’m sure it will be fine,” Rose told him. “And besides, if there is lightning then we won’t be allowed to ride anyway.”

  “But by then I might have been carted across the show grounds and half way home,” Andy said.

  “We won’t let anything happen to you,” Rose said.

  She reached for Andy’s hand and squeezed it and he didn’t pull it away. Instead he smiled. I looked away. This was how normal people were supposed to react. How I was supposed to be with Jordan. But I couldn’t wrap my head around being anything more than friends. Sometimes I thought I wanted to be his girlfriend because we had this amazing connection. He could tell what I was thinking and how I was feeling without me even having to say a word. But at the same time I wanted to push him away and I worried that I was turning into my mother. I hadn’t exactly had the best female role models in my life. What if I turned out to be some kind of dating psycho?

  “You ready?” Duncan said as he saw me standing there by the ring in a daze. “You’re first you know. I’m counting on you to set the tone for the team.”

  “I know,” I said. “I’m ready.”

  “Good.” He smiled. “And Emily, I know that you can do this. I believe in you. Alright?”

  “I know,” I said but it was good to hear someone actually say it.

  “Go Emily,” Andy cheered as I rode into the ring.

  “You can do it,” Rose joined in.

  Even Hanna smiled and clapped. If Jess had been there she would have been off in the barn ignoring me or sending scowls in my direction, the sort that said she wished I’d drop dead. But instead we had this whole team spirit thing going on and it was something that I’d never really experienced before and something I was starting to like.

  “We do have this, right?” I asked Bluebird as I picked up the reins and asked him to canter.

  I had to believe in my mind that my pony would go clear, no questions, no doubts. And as we cantered towards the first jump, I knew that we did because I trusted him more than anything or anybody.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  The course was an easy one. I didn’t have any problems, not even at the bogey fence that Duncan had pointed out. I got my five strides and Bluebird hopped right over the airy fence. We bounced through the double combination, executed a perfectly timed rollback and I opened his stride a little as we came down to the last fence, a rather wide purple oxer. But I didn’t need to worry. My pony snapped his knees up and stretched across the big fence like it was nothing more than a cross rail. We came out of the ring to applause, mostly from my team members.

  I’d expected Hanna to be surprised as we rejoined the group. Usually people were when they first saw my pony competing over courses that the horses jumped but instead she just smiled and nodded.

  “We have many ponies like him back home,” she said. “I didn’t think America had such talent.”

  “We don’t,” Rose said. “Emily just got lucky when she found Bluebird at an auction.”

  “An auction?” Hanna said. “For show horses?”

  “No,” I told her, jumping out of the saddle and running up my stirrups. “I was outbidding the meat man.”

  “See?” Rose said. “If that’s not luck, I don’t know what is.”

  “How could people be so cruel?” Hanna said.

  “Ask Jess,” I told her. “She was the one who sent him there.”

  “That girl is not nice,” Hanna said, which was the nicest thing I’d heard all day.

  “Alright,” Duncan said. “Andy, you’re next. Don’t forget, four strides to the skinny white vertical.”

  “I know,” Andy said, rolling his eyes behind Duncan’s back.

  But he should have listened to D
uncan better than he did because Mousse got excited coming off the big oxer like Duncan had said he would and Andy had to rein him in too much. They got to the jump in a mess and even though Mousse jumped it from an impossible spot, they had the top rail down.

  “I told him.” Duncan shook his head. “This is why you should listen to me.”

  Andy came out of the ring red faced, patting Mousse because it wasn’t the horse’s fault. Andy had thought that he knew best and now he knew that he didn’t and those four faults were a costly lesson to learn from.

  “Sorry,” he told Duncan. “You were right.”

  “That’s why I’m the trainer,” Duncan said but he slapped Andy on the back and I knew that there was no bad blood between them.

  Everyone had a rail down sometimes. It was just unfortunate that Andy had the one down that Duncan had already warned us about.

  After that Rose went with Noelle and rode a beautiful hunter type round.

  “She looks so perfect,” Hanna said as Rose gave an automatic release over the final jump.

  They were slow but that didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was going clean and they had done so. When she came out of the ring, Andy patted her on the knee. I think he thought that no one was watching but I saw. It was the little things. The quiet gestures between them. I knew that they were a couple even if they didn’t.

  “You’re next,” I told Hanna, who looked a little green. “Are you okay?”

  “I suddenly feel nervous,” she said. “I wish Esther was here.”

  “Do you?” a voice came from behind us.

  “Esther!” Hanna cried, dragging Hemi over to her and throwing her arms around her aunt.

  “You know I wouldn’t miss this for the world,” Esther said. “Now get in there and knock them dead.”

  Hanna mounted her horse with a smile and trotted into the ring, past a flustered looking steward who was trying to keep us all on some semblance of a schedule.

  “You came,” I said.

  “Of course,” Esther replied.

  I didn’t add that she’d missed my first round. She’d get to see all the others and hopefully I wouldn’t screw up later but part of me wished that I’d been the one that Esther had rushed over to see and that I had thrown my arms around her instead of Hanna. Perhaps we were still getting to know one another again. Maybe it would just take time.

  “Don’t worry,” Esther said as we stood by the ring watching her niece jump a flawless round. “I saw you jump from the truck. You did an excellent job.”

  “Thanks,” I said, trying to sound cool about it when really praise from Esther was pretty much one of the best feelings in the whole world.

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  After the first round, we were in second place. I knew that wouldn’t have happened if Jess had been riding. She would have ruined it one way or another but I still felt sorry for her.

  “Do you think we should text Jess and see how she’s doing?” I said as we stood around in the barn after our horses had been put away.

  “And tell her that we are in second place after the first round?” Andy said as he scrubbed green slobber off Mousse’s bit. “Yes, lets rub her face in it.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I just thought maybe she’d like to see that we were all okay?”

  “You really think she cares?” Rose asked.

  “Probably not.” I sighed.

  “Jess isn’t here, so for once let’s just forget about her,” Andy said.

  I think he was right. A text to Jess would only be taken the wrong way and I didn’t need her stinging reply stuck in my head as I tried to concentrate on the job at hand, winning the team show.

  Several people had already come up to me to ask where I got Bluebird from, how long I’d had him and if he was for sale. The last question made me feel warm and fuzzy inside but at the same time, I was glad that my father wasn’t here. We needed money and we needed it badly. If Dad thought that someone was willing to offer a big chunk of change for my pony, would he force me to sell him? I didn’t think he would, after all, Bluebird wasn’t just a pony, he was family. But part of me wasn’t sure.

  Esther and Duncan seemed to hit it off and after our break, they both gave us instructions in the warm up ring. I appreciated their efforts but it sort of felt like we were being yelled at from all sides.

  “I wish they would at least take turns,” I grumbled to Andy as Esther and Duncan simultaneously told me to shorten and lengthen my reins. “I can’t do both things at the same time.”

  Hanna looked red in the face again, like Esther was embarrassing her. I knew I would have been pretty mad if my dad jumped in and started teaching the team. But I didn’t have to worry too much. The speed class was next and I knew that my pony was both nimble and quick. We wouldn’t have any trouble getting round in a really fast time and as long as we were clean then we’d be fine.

  “Don’t get carried away,” Duncan told us as we walked the course. “I know you’ll all want to gallop your little hearts out but if you’re not clean as well then it will be no good to our team score. I’d rather have you go a little slower and keep the jumps up than go out of control and smash them all to smithereens.”

  “The only one who would do that would be Jess,” Andy said. “And she’s not here.”

  I didn’t like to remind Andy that he was the one who wasn’t clean in the first round. Duncan just shook his head like he was disappointed we weren’t paying better attention and I was kind of surprised at Andy. Usually he was focused and he listened to what Duncan had to say. Then I saw him wink at Rose and she smiled back and it all fell into place. He was showing off for her. I just wished he’d show off by jumping a clean round.

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  The speed class was a piece of cake. Bluebird and I had the fastest time of the class. I think Esther was impressed. Bluebird had come a long way since she left Sand Hill and all of us behind and he was now more focused, fitter and had definitely upped his game and so had I. I couldn’t help smiling as she came over and patted him on the neck.

  “Wow,” she said. “I always knew he was good but I didn’t know that he was that good.”

  “I did,” I said as I leaned over and hugged my pony’s neck.

  “I thought for sure you would have outgrown him by now,” she said.

  “Don’t even say that,” I cried, trying to cover Bluebird’s’ ears.

  I couldn’t reach and in the end he tossed his head and basically told me to quit messing around, which I did because I didn’t want to make him mad before the last class.

  Rose was slow but clean. Andy had one fence down because he made another stupid mistake. Duncan just shook his head. I don’t think he’d figured out that Andy had lost his focus because he was too busy trying to impress Rose but when he did, he was going to have something to say about it for sure. There were no official rules for dating team members but I bet that it was against Duncan’s rules and now I could see why.

  “I’ll do better in the next class,” Andy said.

  “It was only four faults,” Rose told him. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “It’s never only four faults,” Duncan said darkly.

  But his attention soon turned to Hanna because she actually managed to have a refusal. Her gelding ran out at a brightly colored neon pink fence. Hanna managed to hang on, circle him and made him jump the fence but the refusal cost her a lot of time.

  “I’m sorry,” she said as she came out of the ring. “I don’t know why he hates pink so much.”

  Duncan made a grunting noise as if to say that the refusal had nothing to do with the fact that the jump was pink and probably more to do with the fact that Hanna anticipated that her horse hated pink jumps for some reason.

  “We’ll paint all the jumps pink when we get back to the farm,” Esther said, putting her arm around her niece.

  I looked away. Was it too much to want someone to put their arm around me once in a wh
ile? In fact, I was feeling pretty bummed out about it all through lunch. I sort of felt like an outcast now. Hanna had Esther and Rose and Andy had each other and Duncan was off talking to one of the other trainers that he knew.

  I picked at my sandwich and thought about Four. Dad had promised that we’d go and get him after the show but I knew he was just stalling. Besides, we didn’t even know if he was at the farm that Mickey had told me about. It was a long shot that we’d find him there and even though I hoped and prayed that we would, that didn’t mean we’d pull up and find him standing there waiting for us. And even if he was there, that was no guarantee that the people who owned the farm would just let us take him. I had all the papers, the bill of sale and his vet records but all that stuff could easily be forged. What if he was there and they refused to give him to us?

  “Are you okay?” Hanna asked, leaving Esther and coming to sit beside me.

  “I’m fine,” I told her.

  I didn’t know Hanna well enough to start blabbing about all my problems right away. That sort of stuff didn’t come easy to me. I had to get to know someone first and figure out if I trusted them or not. Then I’d start to slowly share but even then not everything. There were some things that even Mickey didn’t know about me and we’d been friends for years.

  “I know you lie to me,” she said, her accent thicker now that she’d been talking to Esther.

  I looked at her. She seemed nice. I didn’t know why I couldn’t trust her. Maybe it was because part of me was still mad that she’d stolen the part of Esther’s heart that I’d hoped to keep for myself but maybe, just maybe, there was room in Esther’s heart for both of us.

  “It’s a horse that I own,” I said with a sigh. “I let this girl have a free lease on him. I trusted her because she was at a barn where I knew he would be taken care of but now she’s gone and so is he and I have to track him down because I don’t want anything bad to happen to him.”