“Okay,” I said. I handed her The Affordable Horse. “I’m getting this for a friend in school.”
She tapped the cover and smiled. “Oh, I dreamed about owning a horse when I was a kid.”
“Yeah, I just saw it and thought, you know, it would be nice to let her read it, since she wants to get a horse.”
It felt awful lying to Linda, but I wasn’t ready to tell anyone else about my plan to buy Fire. I didn’t want anyone telling me it was impossible, and I didn’t want anyone telling me I should give whatever money I saved to Mom. Especially if that anyone was me.
By the time my first working student day finally arrived, I was beat from helping Angela with the girls at dinner each night, but I was also richer.
I marked down every bit of money in my book and watched the numbers change. Sometimes, I opened the notebook just to see the numbers lined up in the column, even if I didn’t have anything to add.
When I got to Birchwood after school, Kennedy was waiting for me in the office.
“Hey, kiddo, you ready?”
“Yeah.”
“What’s the first thing you do?”
Suddenly, everything she’d taught me went right out of my head. Tacking? Grooming? Feeding? Watering? What was it?
Kennedy pushed the working student logbook across Joe’s desk.
“Oh, right! Sign in,” I said.
“Yup, you sign in.”
I wrote in my name and in the next column marked the time: 3:53 p.m. My first day. I resisted drawing a giant happy face on the page.
For the next two hours, I shadowed Kennedy and another girl named Meridy, who had been a working student for over a year already.
“She can be your mentor if I’m not around,” Kennedy told me. “But she’s moving to Hawaii in two weeks, so learn fast, okay?”
At six o’clock Mom surprised me by showing up. She was in the office with Kennedy when I went to sign out.
“So how’d you like it?” Kennedy asked.
“Great!” I said.
“Well, you won’t be able to have your first full lesson until you’ve worked more hours,” she said, “but I told your mom to come because I think Joe has made arrangements for you to ride Rusty for a few minutes.”
“Today?”
She raised her eyebrows. Affirmative.
I dropped the pen. “Right now?”
“Right now,” she said. “You have a date waiting for you in the little indoor ring.”
My feet didn’t want to stay on the ground; they wanted to dance the whole way to the ring. I was going to ride a pony.
Right then.
That very day.
Finally.
Kennedy brought Mom and me through a wooden gate to where Joe was walking the ancient, swayback pony in a circle. Each time one of Rusty’s front hooves hit the ground, his knobby knees turned out, and his belly swung to the side. Scrawny tufts of red hair made their way up his neck, ending at a pom-pom of fuzz between his ears. His face was peppered with gray hairs around his eyes and his muzzle.
“Rusty may not look like much,” Joe said, “but this pony has carried hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids on his back over the years. He’s our best beginner pony. He’ll keep you good and safe.”
Rusty was a far cry from Fire, but right that second, I didn’t care. He smelled like ponies and saddles, and when he reached out his muzzle and looked at me with soft, gentle eyes, my heart got all squishy and I knew I could love him, too.
Kennedy pulled his girth tight. “Do you know how to mount?”
“I—I think so,” I stammered. “I mean, I’ve seen it, and kind of practiced it but not on a real pony.”
“Yeah, well, it’ll be a little different from practicing on a stone wall,” she said playfully. “But let’s give it a try. I’ll go get you a helmet.”
Joe handed me a pair of old, scuffed-up paddock boots that sagged at the ankle. “Try these on. They should work.”
Kennedy found a green helmet that fit my head perfectly and buckled it under my chin. I turned to show Mom.
“You look like an equestrian,” she said. “My Lizzie the equestrian.”
“Okay, kiddo,” Joe said, “let’s see what you know.”
He handed over Rusty’s reins. The three of them watched me stand next to his left shoulder and weave my fingers into the tiny bit of mane at his withers. My left foot slipped easily into the metal stirrup. I pushed off the ground with my right leg, and in one slightly clumsy movement, I was sitting on Rusty’s back.
“Nicely done,” Kennedy said.
“Welcome to freedom, Lizzie,” Joe said. “It’s the start of something beautiful.”
Joe was right. It was beautiful, and I did feel free in a way that was hard to put into words. But the best part was, I hadn’t needed Dad to make it happen after all.
Winter
Fourteen
The third time Fire pulled the Christmas wreath from his stall door, I almost gave up.
“You’re so bad,” I said, sticking the candy canes and what was left of three hot-glued sugar cubes back onto the cedar-and-pine ring. “Mom and I worked hard on this.”
A fuzzy carrot-and-holly ornament Mom had crocheted for the wreath had fallen to the ground. I picked it up and wiped off the dust and hay.
“No more treats until you say you’re sorry.”
Fire tossed his head. His forelock flopped down over his eyes, and I swear his lips curved up in a smile.
“You know you’re too adorable to get mad at, don’t you?”
Except for Robert and Luis and me, the barn was empty. The afternoon group lessons had been canceled for Christmas Eve, and only the beautiful sounds of horses and Christmas music floated gently down the aisle. I wove a piece of baling twine into the frame and hung the wreath on the wall where Fire couldn’t reach it anymore, then cleaned up the mess. Every time I bent to sweep glitter and broken peppermints into the dustpan, he nibbled the back of my jacket.
“Stop!” I said, slapping the air in front of his face. “This jacket is practically brand-new! If you bite a hole in it, I’m telling Kennedy you’re getting too much grain. Bad pony.”
I pushed his muzzle away and kept sweeping.
“Hey!” Bryce ran toward us, his face stern. “Can you help me? I’m late for my dressage lesson!”
The barn door rolled partway open at the other end of the aisle. Mr. McDaid’s silhouette loomed large and intimidating against a gray sky outside. His voice boomed.
“I’ll be back at sixteen hundred hours, son. You be ready!”
Bryce jerked around and scowled at his father. “That doesn’t leave me any time to cool Tucker out and put everything away!”
Mr. McDaid looked at his watch. “An extra five minutes, then. We’re expected at Christmas Eve service at seventeen hundred. Be sure you give little Lizzie our message!”
Mr. McDaid saluted me and left. He always saluted, like he was in the army or something.
“What message?” I asked.
Bryce clipped Tucker to the cross-ties. “Can you not ask questions right now and just help? Kennedy said if I’m late again she won’t teach me.” His cheeks puffed up under watery eyes. It looked like he’d been crying just before he arrived. “I swear when he knows it’s dressage day, my dad drives slower than a possum crossing the highway.”
“I’ll help,” I said. “Give me a brush.”
He handed me a rubber currycomb and together we speed-groomed Tucker. Within seven minutes, Tucker’s coat gleamed, his hooves were picked, and he was tacked up and ready to go. Even so, Bryce didn’t look any less grim. I gave Fire a peppermint, then followed Bryce into the ring and perched on top of the mounting block, my usual place where I sat to watch his lessons. Bryce tightened Tucker’s girth, then warmed him up on a loose rein. With each step the horse took, Bryce’s body softened. He was in his happy place again.
Kennedy bustled in. “I brought you a hot chocolate from my dad’s pub,” she said,
holding out one of the green paper coffee cups with the peach-and-gold rose etched on the side, right above where it said O’Toole’s. Every time she brought coffee in one of those cups, I remembered the roses blooming in the garden the day we left our old house. It was hard to believe it had been six whole months since then. It was impossible to believe it had been almost a year since I’d spoken to Dad.
I sipped the hot drink, grateful for its sweetness, for the warmth of the cup in my cold hand, and for Kennedy’s voice as she started teaching Bryce and Tucker and me, on my first Christmas Eve without my father.
“You want to feel Tucker’s inside hind leg engaging,” Kennedy said.
For almost an hour, she walked in circles, following Bryce around the ring, her head tilted to one side as she studied him. Bryce’s face went from stern concentration to flickers of a smile to a furrowed brow again. He’d told me how important it was to him to be perfect, because he wanted to ride in the Olympics someday.
“That inside hind leg should be moving on the same track as his outside front. That’s right, that’s good. Let his body bend, softly bend.”
With each precise step, Tucker’s muscles tightened, then relaxed, tightened, then relaxed, a combination of softness and strength. His neck arched and bent toward the inside, and his ears flicked back and forth. Bryce sat tall and straight-backed in the saddle, his stirrups long and his fingers flexing the reins. When Tucker suddenly got the movement exactly right, his whole body softened and a smile broke out on Bryce’s face.
Kennedy raised her coffee cup in the air. “Yes! You felt it, right?”
“Yeah,” Bryce said.
He moved his focus to his fingers holding the reins.
“Don’t look down, Bryce. You’ll lose your concentration. Eyes up! Feel his mouth in your hands; feel him chewing the bit. You have to learn to feel all this as if you were blindfolded.”
They moved around the perimeter of the ring a few more times, such a beautiful unit of horse-and-human, it made chills travel all the way to my core.
“Nicely done,” Kennedy said. “That’s enough work for today. Let him stretch his neck. Give him a chance to think about grassy meadows while you cool him out.”
Bryce let the reins slide through his fingers and took his feet out of the stirrups. His face glistened with sweat, but I knew his heart was happy. I knew because that’s exactly how I would feel, too.
Sometimes, on the nights after I watched his lessons, I’d wait for Mom to go crochet with Mrs. Ivanov, and I’d stand in the small block of space between the end of the bunk beds and the window and pretend I was riding Fire, practicing my own perfect dressage movements. Other times, I’d lie in bed and let my imagination take us outside the ring. I dreamed about riding Fire bareback, crouched low over his neck with his long mane laced between my fingers as we galloped across open fields in the moonlight. In my imagination, we kept going on and on forever because there was nothing to stop us. Because we were free.
Kennedy sat down on a jump rail and finished off her coffee. “Well, Miss Lessons-with-Joe, how are they going? The lessons, I mean.”
“Good,” I said.
“They should be. Not many working students get to ride with him. They’re usually stuck with me. You must be exceptional.”
I’d heard another working student say she wished she could have lessons with Joe like me. I’d felt uneasy, almost embarrassed, but when I told Bryce, he said for me to ignore her and be grateful Joe had taken me on.
“I’m changing my diagonal on figure eights,” I said, “and trotting over ground poles in the half-seat position. Next week I’m supposed to canter.”
Kennedy raised her eyebrows. “Ooooh, the first canter. That’s a big step. You are learning fast.”
“I need to learn faster. I want to ride Fire as soon as I can.”
Kennedy crushed the paper cup and stuffed it into the cardboard tray. “Yeah, everyone wants to ride Fire except me.” She looked down and crossed her long legs at the ankles. “I’m not much for my feet dragging on the ground. If I ever get my own horse, it’ll have to be at least sixteen hands, probably more.”
“Yeah, he’s definitely not tall enough for you.”
She looked at me from the corner of her eye. “You should know that since Fire’s training has been going so well, people have been asking about buying him.”
“Who?”
“Sabrina’s dad for one. Look, Lizzie, just keep working hard in your lessons so maybe Joe will at least let you ride him. Once Fire’s ready, he’ll sell fast.”
Sabrina!
Kennedy tapped my knee and frowned. “I’m sorry. I’ve been in your shoes a dozen times over the years. It is the worst. But you might as well know up front what’s going to happen, instead of getting your hopes up and having your heart get broken over and over like mine always did.”
She and Joe didn’t know my plan. They didn’t know that I was going to earn the money and buy Fire myself. If they knew, they’d wait for me.
“But I’m—”
Kennedy jumped up, cutting off my words. “Sorry, kiddo, I gotta go. My dad’s waiting. Have a nice Christmas, okay?”
She gave me a one-arm hug, then waved at Bryce on her way out.
“Good work today, buddy. Merry Christmas!”
Bryce lifted his chin and smiled. “Thanks, you too!”
I was still sitting on the mounting block, trying to catch my breath, when he brought Tucker to the middle of the ring and dismounted.
“You don’t look very merry,” he said. “What’s up?”
“Nothing.”
He loosened the girth and threw a sheet over Tucker. “Come with me while I cool him out. Talk to me. I know something’s wrong.”
We led Tucker a few times around the ring before I said anything. “Are you still doing the hot-walking thing at the polo club?”
“Every Friday night.”
“And you make money?”
“Yeah, a lot.”
“Can I go with you?”
“Sure! It starts up again the first Friday in January. That’d be great.”
“Okay, thanks.”
My breath came a little easier. I had a plan. I could make it work.
“It will be fun, and I need to save money,” I said cautiously.
I was giving him a chance to ask me what I was saving for, so I could decide how much to tell him. Before he could say anything, Mr. McDaid’s big voice boomed through the barn.
“Son! Where are you?”
Bryce whipped around to face the gate. His eyes flashed. “Dang! I forgot about church. Now I’ll be in for it!”
He shoved his hand under the cooler to feel Tucker’s chest and shook his head.
“He’s too hot. I can’t put him away yet.”
Mr. McDaid’s footsteps pounded on the concrete. “Bryce! Where are you? We’re LATE!”
“Won’t he wait?”
Bryce shook his head. “He’s looking for reasons to take my dressage lessons away. I don’t know what to do.”
I grabbed the lead rope. “Go! I’ll cool him out and put him away. Hurry!”
“You sure?”
“Boy!” Mr. McDaid bellowed.
“I’m positive. Go.”
“Thanks, Lizzie, I owe you!” He sprinted away toward the barn. “Coming!”
Tucker and I stood in the middle of the suddenly silent ring, his breath still coming hard and hot. I could hear Robert and Luis throwing hay into the stalls from the loft overhead and the restless hum of horses waiting for their dinner.
A minute later, Bryce was back. “I forgot I was supposed to invite you and your mom for dinner tomorrow. Can you come?”
“Dinner? Where?”
“At my house, duh. Give me your mom’s phone number. I’ll have my dad call her.”
He typed Mom’s cell number into his phone, then clicked it off and waved.
“Gotta go. Thanks again, bye!”
Mr. McDaid’s Escalade ro
ared to life in the driveway. I waved to the sound of tires spinning, then gripping the gravel tossed over the ice, and the car sped off with a crunch.
Mom pulled her light blue sweater over her head and draped it across the back of the chair to dry out. Tiny crystals of snow dissolved into the weave of fabric.
“Boy, do I ever miss a fireplace,” she said.
She stood thoughtfully in the middle of our tiny room, then shook her shoulders like she wanted to rid herself of a bad memory.
“Bryce’s dad called. Did you know we were invited there for dinner tomorrow?”
I peeked over the rail of my bunk. I’d been in bed ever since I slipped in the back door mere seconds before Miss May traipsed down the hall to lock it.
“Sort of. He told me, then ran off with his dad to go to church. Are we going to church this year?”
She picked up the sweater from the chair, felt the fabric, then laid it over the back again and smoothed it with her fingers. “I don’t know. I guess I forgot. Everything’s so different. I could find a place to go if you want.”
I turned away and stared at the ceiling. “I don’t really care. Maybe next year.”
Mom got busy doing what she did when something felt unpleasant or out of her control: she moved things around in the tiny closet. It was a weird habit she’d started when we first got to Good Hope and she couldn’t make all our clothes fit in the tiny dresser. Finally, she sat down on the bed and rustled around inside a bag she’d brought home. I knew there were presents in there. I wished she hadn’t spent the money. I wished I had the courage to ask her to save it and help me buy Fire.
“Did Dad send us anything for Christmas?” I asked. “Like money?”
There was a long pause before her phone beeped from the windowsill. Without answering me, she flipped it open and read the message.
“It’s from Mr. McDaid,” she said. “Bryce’s dad. Do you want to go?”
“Do you?”
“If you do.”
Staying at Good Hope for Christmas would mean having dinner brought in from the same church people who’d given us our Thanksgiving dinner. At Thanksgiving, Mom had reminded me to act grateful when I’d shrunk under their looks of pity, not wanting to eat. Going to the McDaids’ would mean dealing with the awkward tension between Bryce and his dad, but it would probably be better than those pitiful looks.
Lizzie Flying Solo Page 9
