Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
About the Author
Excerpt: Winter Circuit
Summer Circuit
Kim Ablon Whitney
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Copyright 2014 Kim Ablon Whitney
Cover by Littera Designs
Cover photos by Caranine Smith/Bigeq.com and ©iStock.com/EricFerguson
Ebook Design by QA Productions
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Also by Kim Ablon Whitney
The Perfect Distance
Blue Ribbons
Winter Circuit
Chapter 1
There are times in your life when things change completely. I don’t think this happens in everyone’s life because not everyone lives a part of their life as one person and then discovers that they can live another part of their life as another person. Not that I truly became another person. Maybe I just discovered myself in that adolescent way people are supposed to discover themselves. But one thing is for sure, when I pulled into the show grounds on July third, I had no idea everything was about to change.
Mrs. Gorham drove the trailer. I followed behind, going fifty-five on the highway and then plugging along at thirty up the winding mountain roads in Vermont. It was awful driving behind a trailer. I couldn’t see anything except the back of the ramp and the words CAUTION: HORSES! Even though I knew I wouldn’t be passing the trailer for the whole four hours, I couldn’t help weaving to catch a glimpse of the road ahead. The rest of the time I looked at the passing scenery as we traveled through tiny rural towns with improbable names like Harmonyville, Athens, and Jamaica. For a while the road paralleled the river and every now and then there would be a covered bridge or swimming spot with cars parked alongside it.
We passed old white farmhouses, their pretty porches dotted with rocking chairs and decorated with American flags for the Fourth of July. Belted Galloway cows, reminding me of giant Oreo cookies, grazed in pastures next to the farmhouses. There were tumbledown houses too—holes in their roofs, windows long boarded up.
When we finally pulled into the dirt driveway of the horse show, my stomach started twisting. Trailers were everywhere, two-horse trailers like Mrs. Gorham’s, six-horse goosenecks, and huge sixteen-horse rigs. Grooms, calling to each other mostly in Portuguese, unloaded horses, their legs wrapped in farm colors.
“So this is a big deal hunter/jumper show,” Mrs. Gorham said.
“Well, there are bigger deal shows than this,” I said.
The horses from my trainer’s barn were coming directly from another big show that they’d been at for two weeks. It hadn’t been easy for my trainer to find my horse a ride to Vermont, but she’d finally found Mrs. Gorham, a woman who rode dressage at a nearby barn.
“And you really stay here for seven straight weeks?”
“I guess it’s different than the dressage world,” I said.
“You can say that again,” she said. “Well, let’s start unloading.”
I was still looking around the grounds, shielding the sun from my eyes with my hand, even though I had sunglasses on. High school was over. No looking back. There was college to look forward to, but before that, there was the summer circuit. Seven whole weeks in Vermont horse showing without my mom or dad.
My mom was terrified of what that would mean and whether I would be able to survive on my own. My dad probably was too, but he’d been the one to decide this was just what I needed. He had a sink-or-swim plan to make me able to fend for myself—drop me at the horse show for seven weeks without a groom. I’d be taking care of Logan all by myself when I’d hardly so much as picked up a brush or a pitchfork in my years of riding.
We consulted the stall chart by the feed and bedding office and found my stalls, in the aisle next to the stalls of my trainer, and unloaded Logan. He nearly catapulted himself backwards off the trailer, snorted and looked around, his head high and neck muscles tight.
“I better lead him in,” Mrs. Gorham said, putting the chain over his nose.
When I just stood there, she jutted her chin to the trailer. “Grab a bale of hay. All this stuff has to go in.”
I’d never carried a bale of hay and it was surprisingly heavy and awkward. I wobbled toward the tent, the bale bouncing off my thighs, and the twine digging into my fingers. I dropped it twice and finally stumbled into the aisle.
Mrs. Gorham helped me carry in everything else. My trunk, another bale of hay, five bags of shavings, Logan’s feed, muck bucket and pitchfork, water and feed buckets, and toolbox. I took the light things like the buckets while stout Mrs. Gorham hoisted shavings bags onto her shoulder, carrying the pitchfork with her free hand. She maneuvered my tack trunk onto a hand-truck and wheeled it smoothly over the bumps and divots in the ground.
I sat down on a bale of hay, sweaty and already exhausted. Logan nosed around in the stall behind me, plucking up the grass over which the tent had been set up.
“Okay.” Mrs. Gorham dusted off her hands. “Have a good summer!”
I looked up at her. “Wait, aren’t you going to set up?”
She took a step backward. “I’m on strict instructions . . .” She hesitated, as if she were maybe considering helping me out even if my dad had told her to dump my stuff and run. She was probably concerned for Logan more than she was for me. But before she could change her mind, she turned and left. I guess I could have chased after her and begged, but I was too busy being pissed at my dad. He was a self-made man. An entrepreneur who’d dropped out of college and started a company that sold for millions. Given his money, though, he didn’t live an incredibly lavish lifestyle. He and his second wife, Monica, lived in a spacious, but by no means grand, house in Palo Alto. Mom got her share of his millions in the divorce and she and I lived a comfortable life devoid of any material wants in a Boston suburb. Mom didn’t work—but that was a whole other story. My dad liked people who worked hard. Monica was an executive vice president of a software firm herself. Dad hated that Mom didn’t work and he hated that she’d babied me. My older brother Ryan was just like Dad. He was a sophomore at Stanford and he’d already founded two companies that were doing pretty well. Seriously. Two companies. It was a good thing I loved my brother, or I would have totally hated him. I wasn’t a total deadbeat. I got good grades and was headed to Tufts. But I never did anything amazing, not like Dad or Ryan. And Dad thought I wasn’t ready for the real life of college. He wanted me to learn responsibility, perseverance, and hard work.
Logan sneezed behind me, startling me. I turned to look at him. I couldn’t just leave him in the stall without bedding, hay, or water. No matter how mu
ch I resented Dad for trying to make me into something he wanted me to be, I had a fifteen-hundred pound animal depending on me. I surveyed the aisle filled with buckets, shavings and feed bags, and hay bales. I had my work cut out for me. I stood up, sparked by the idea that this was some kind of test Dad had orchestrated. Survivor: Horse Show.
I would so prove him wrong.
Chapter 2
I hauled the bags of shavings into Logan’s stall, but somehow I couldn’t figure out how to open them. I clawed at the thick plastic, but my non-existent nails were useless. I finally opened up a pathetic, tiny hole and tore from there. I took my anger out on the plastic, tearing it into shreds. For the next bags, I decided to use scissors from the tool box to get the bags started. It was amazing how much easier that went. Once all the shavings were down, I realized I’d lost track of all the pieces of plastic from the first bag I’d ripped apart.
“Crap!”
I couldn’t just leave them there, buried in the shavings. If by mistake Logan ate one, he could choke and die or it could clog up his stomach. I found a few pieces, but how many had I torn off in my frustration? I certainly hadn’t kept count. Four? Six? Eight? I bent over, searching the shavings. Logan looked at me like I was crazy, pawing around by his feet. He put his nose next to my face and blew, tickling my ear.
“You’re lucky I’m even looking for these,” I told him.
Logan bordered on disaster-horse and although I often said things like “I want to kill you” in my head when I rode him, I didn’t actually want him dead. I could just see Dad getting the call that on my first day at the show I’d managed to kill Logan. Logan kept following me, brushing my neck with his nose like he might find a treat there. It was kind of cute and endearing—until he sneezed again, covering my neck and the side of my face with gooey horse snot.
“Gross! Really?” I said, turning to look at him as I wiped the snot off my face.
He took a step back like he was saying, “Who? Me?”
After ten minutes of looking and seriously considering giving up and hoping for the best, I had found six shreds of plastic and I had gone through what seemed like every last shaving. I would have to just hope that I’d found all the plastic. Logan was still looking at me like I was crazy. Clearly no one had ever had this much trouble making up his bed.
I threw the plastic bags over the stall door and kicked the shavings to spread them. I was wearing shorts and espadrilles and when I was done my shoes and legs were covered in itchy shaving dust. Apparently, jeans and paddock boots would have been a better choice.
I took the empty bags outside to the trash can. Leftover shavings I hadn’t dumped out of the bags flew up in my face, covering my skin and hair and going up my nose. It was entirely disgusting. I stood by the trash barrel, coughing and sputtering, and trying to stuff the bags into the already full barrel, as a groom I recognized from my trainer’s barn came out with empty shavings bags. His bags were somehow folded and stuffed into each other, as neat and compact as origami.
“You can just leave them next to the barrel.” He deposited his own stash there. “They’ll come around and pick them up later.” He was one of the more experienced grooms, one of those in charge at Jamie’s barn, but I couldn’t remember his name.
“Oh, okay.” I wiped my face, trying to get off the shavings that I was sure were stuck there. “Thanks.”
He looked at me a moment longer, clearly amused by seeing one of the clients having to get her hands dirty and doing a bad job of it at that.
Jamie, my trainer (I used the term loosely because the word trainer implied that she imparted knowledge), met me on my way back. “Hannah, when did you get here?”
“A little while ago.”
Jamie was wearing her usual—jeans and a polo shirt. She never wore shorts, ever. Not on the hottest day possible. Her dyed red hair was pulled back in a tight ponytail.
“Well, you better get on and get in the ring. As soon as you can. We’ve got our work cut out for us this summer.” She cocked her head at me. “What happened to you anyway? Your hair is covered in shavings.”
“Uh, just, nothing.”
Jamie raised her eyebrows at me and walked away. She could have asked if I needed help, which it was pretty obvious I did. But Dad had probably gotten to her too.
I rushed through the rest of the set-up since Jamie wanted me on Logan. I wasn’t sure how to hang the water buckets in the stall and no one else was in the aisle yet for me to look at how they had done it. It was one of those things I’d just never noticed before. Buckets always seemed to be magically hanging in the stalls. Or actually I’m not sure I’d ever really spent any time in Logan’s stall at a show. He was always tacked up and put away for me.
I didn’t have time to waste so I just decided I would put them on the ground for now. I took the two buckets and filled them at the wash rack. They were so heavy and I’d filled them nearly to the brim so the water sloshed out all over my legs as I lugged them in. Once the buckets were there, they looked completely wrong. Logan had to lower his head nearly to his ankles to drink. He took a sip and then gave me that “you’re nuts” look again. I’d figure out where they really went later. Jamie would kill me if I wasn’t on soon and I still had to get dressed, groom Logan, and get him tacked up.
I decided I’d get dressed first, which turned out to be a bad idea. By the time Logan was tacked up, my breeches were gross and my polo shirt stained and sweaty. I led Logan outside and realized there was no groom to give me a leg up. I pulled down my stirrup and put my toe in the iron. I went to hoist myself up and my saddle literally swung down Logan’s side. Apparently I hadn’t tightened my girth enough. Could I do anything right? I looked around, sure people were pointing and laughing, but thankfully everyone was busy going about their own business. I undid the girth, repositioned the saddle and did up the girth extra tight. Somehow I managed to just barely pull myself into the saddle as Logan took off at an extended walk toward the rings.
Chapter 3
“Hannah!” Jamie yelled. “Get in here!”
I legged Logan forward, but he didn’t budge. After sprinting to the ring, he was now frozen solid. Tuesday was warm-up day. In addition to being the day everybody spent unpacking, it was the day all the riders practiced before the competition began the next day. That meant the ring was teeming with riders.
“Kick him!” Jamie yelled.
I kicked him and we were in the ring. I felt a rush of air as a girl who looked clean and composed cantered by.
“Get to the trot if you don’t want to get killed out here!” Jamie called over the voices of the other trainers.
Logan immediately surged forward to a racing trot. I knew I was in trouble. I should have spent the day getting him acclimated. Taking it easy. But Jamie never wanted things easy. Logan’s trot was wild, and every few strides he would throw his head.
“How’s he feel?” Jamie asked.
“Fresh,” I said. Understatement of the century.
“Keep working while I help Maddie. I’ll be with you in a few minutes.”
If I lived that long.
I made it twice around the ring before I saw someone coming straight for us. It was Logan’s least favorite thing, his very own pet peeve. When someone came at him from the other direction, he freaked out, usually grabbing the bit and running. Even though I knew I had to stay calm so he stayed calm, I couldn’t help it. My knees clenched around the saddle. My hands tightened on the reins. The rider coming at me was going to stay to the inside of the ring; I would pass on the outside. As we came closer to each other, I held my breath. Please, please, please let Logan not freak out.
Logan tossed his head vigorously and scooted a bit to the left, but that was minor for him. It seemed as if we had actually survived. Maybe Logan was going to surprise me and turn over a new leaf this summer. No more Black Stallion imitations. I put my reins in one hand to pat him and that’s when it all went wrong.
I looked up and he was comin
g at me at a canter.
“Outside,” he said, which meant I should move to the inside. Left shoulder to left shoulder. Pass left to left like when driving, that’s what I had always learned. But he was approaching fast and wanted the outside, even though I was obviously in his way.
“Outside!” he said again, this time louder and with urgency.
My arms stiffened. I grabbed the left rein and pulled, trying to steer Logan to the inside of the ring and let him pass on the outside, but instead Logan leapt up in the air, full-mechanical-bull-imitation, and surged to the right, directly into the path of the oncoming horse.
The guy pulled his horse up hard and we both stopped, head on, inches from each other. For extra points, Logan snorted and pawed out at the other horse.
I looked up, cringing.
“I said outside,” the other rider said.
I hardly knew anyone on the show circuit, but the guy looking at me from atop his big bay warmblood looked vaguely familiar. For one thing, he was incredibly hot. The horse show world was low on guys to begin with and so the ones who rated high on the hot scale stood out. Frankly, even unattractive guys became appealing in the horse show world. An actual attractive straight male was like the Holy Grail. Even the attractive gay guys warranted regretful sighs and sometimes even failed attempts to change their sexual orientation.
“Sorry,” I murmured.
His brown eyes softened slightly. “Next time watch where you’re going.”
He steered his horse to the right and departed straight away into a canter. I heard Jamie’s voice from across the ring.
“Hannah!” Jamie pointed to the in-gate, which I’d only just entered. “Get that horse out of here. Take him outside for a hack.”
Jamie was shaking her head. I moved Logan, whose neck was covered with sweat and was blowing hard even though we had barely trotted, toward the in-gate. Behind me I heard Jamie say, “Sorry, Chris. You know how some of them can be.”
I didn’t think about what Jamie had just implied about me. Instead I ran his name through my head. Chris. Chris. Chris . . . Kern? My face flushed red. I remembered his photo and the article I’d read about how he had won the grand prix at Devon.
Summer Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 1) Page 1
