Everyone said my canter lesson was a huge step toward being a good rider. I needed to be more than a good rider. I needed to be the kind who deserved Fire, and I needed to get there fast. Every time I thought about this lesson, my belly flipped. I’d even asked Joe if we could have the lesson in the private ring so there wouldn’t be anyone coming by and distracting me. Everything had to be perfect.
Later that morning, Joe met me and Rusty in the ring. He tucked his cell phone into his coat pocket and blew on both hands before putting his gloves back on.
“We picked a chilly day for this lesson,” he said.
“My eyeballs felt like icicles by the time I got here.”
“Good thing you’ve got that fancy new jacket to keep you warm. You excited to canter?”
My fingers automatically went to the arm of the pink Birchwood jacket and touched the soft leather. It wasn’t particularly warm, so I’d layered clothes underneath: T-shirt, turtleneck, and a sweatshirt. I tugged on the collar of the turtleneck and felt the rim of sweat already around the edge.
“Yeah, and a little nervous.”
“Pshaw. Nervous? You’ve got this in spades.”
“I know I can do it. I just need to do it really well.”
Part of me hoped he would ask what I meant by needing to do it really well. Part of me really wanted to tell him about saving money for Fire, but another part of me held back.
“I wouldn’t expect anything less,” he said.
Rusty pushed his belly out when I pulled the girth up.
“Press your knee into his side,” Joe said. “Make him let go of that air.”
I got the girth buckled tight just as Sabrina and Rikki waltzed into the ring, their arms looped together. Joe looked at them suspiciously.
“What’s up, girls?”
“Nothing,” Rikki said. They sat side by side on the mounting block.
“Don’t you have something to do?” Joe asked.
“No,” Sabrina said.
“Not until our lesson later,” Rikki said.
I gritted my teeth and mounted Rusty.
“Go ask Kennedy if she needs help in the barn, then,” he said firmly. “This lesson is private.”
Rikki tilted her head and pouted. “You always let us watch the working student lessons.”
“Besides, she doesn’t care. We go to school together, right, Lizzie?” Sabrina said.
My chest burned like someone had lit a fire inside. It was one thing to avoid making friends, but I didn’t want anyone getting mad at me, either. I shrugged, then quickly maneuvered Rusty out of the middle of the ring and pushed him into a trot.
Up-down, up-down, up-down.
“Go, girls, out,” Joe said firmly.
“Okay, but she’s on the wrong diagonal,” Rikki said.
I glanced down at Rusty’s shoulders. She was right. My body rose out of the saddle when his inside leg moved forward instead of his outside leg. I’d never missed a diagonal before—ever.
“Thank you for bringing that to my attention,” Joe said. “Now please leave so we can concentrate.”
I clenched my teeth, sat one beat, and trotted on.
Up-down, up-down, up-down.
Rikki and Sabrina looped arms and trudged slowly across the ring toward the gate. They stalled near the edge so I had to trot through a narrow lane between them and the kick-wall. I kept my eyes straight ahead.
Up-down, up-down, up-down.
Once they left, Joe told me to walk.
“Sorry about that intrusion,” he said.
“It’s okay.” I wiped my face and wove my fingers through Rusty’s scraggly mane.
“You know, they aren’t bad girls,” he said. “A bit on the busybody side, but I don’t think they mean any harm.”
I let the reins slip through my fingers so Rusty could put his head down and relax. I knew they weren’t bad girls, and I knew in their weird way they were trying to be friendly toward me. But that was the problem. I couldn’t handle friends right now. They wouldn’t like me if they knew who I really was, and it was too much work to try to pretend to be someone else.
When I rode past the gate, I caught a glimpse of Rikki and Sabrina squatting on the back side of the kick-wall. They’d found a way to watch without Joe knowing. Sabrina put her hands up as if she was saying, Please? Rikki put her finger to her lips. I looked away and pretended I didn’t see.
“Okay,” Joe said. “Start your trot.”
I pushed Rusty hard to get momentum going. Up-down, up-down, up-down. We went through two corners then down the long side. Up-down, up-down, up-down.
“Excellent,” Joe said. “Now, get into your half seat.”
I shortened my reins, pushed my heels down, and raised out of the saddle.
“Tell me about your position,” he said.
“Chin up, eyes forward, shoulders over my knees, knees over my toes, weight in my heels, hands on both reins!”
“Good, now bring your shoulders back a little. And don’t grip with your knees. It’s all about balance, remember?”
“Yup!”
“Tie up your reins and drop them on his neck, then put both your arms straight out to the side. Stay in your half-seat position.”
I did as he said and felt the weight of my body sink farther into my heels. Rusty plodded along at a steady and safe pace through two more corners and another long stretch of the ring.
“Well done,” Joe said. “Without looking down, pick your reins back up and untie them.”
I lifted them from Rusty’s bobbing neck, untied them, and tightened my hold until I could feel his mouth chewing the bit.
“Excellent, Lizzie. Very good. You ready?”
“Ready!”
My heart soared. I was going to canter.
“Tell me with words what aids to use.”
I waited until we passed the spot where Rikki and Sabrina were peeking through the break in the kick-wall. “Outside leg behind the girth, inside leg on the girth, hold my outside rein and squeeze.”
“Where are you going to do it?”
“Right before a corner.”
“Which corner?”
“Whichever one you tell me.”
“The next one!”
“What?”
“Canter now! Go, go, go!”
I put my legs in place and squeezed, but Rusty kept plodding along at the trot.
“Again! Harder!”
Rusty trotted faster but still no canter.
“Again!” Joe yelled.
This time, I used the secret trick Kennedy had shared with me and dug my outside heel into Rusty’s side. As soon as my foot connected, the rhythm changed and we sailed into a beautiful, rocking canter.
One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three.
“You did it!”
We cantered through the next corners until the long side of the ring stretched out before me again.
One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three.
It was so easy, I wished now that Mom was here to watch.
“When you feel ready,” Joe called, “lower yourself and sit. Nice and slow.”
My heels sank. I moved my body back a tiny bit and settled into the saddle.
One-two-three, one-two-three, one-two-three.
“Your arms are flapping like chicken wings!”
I tucked my elbows against my sides, and my lips unfurled into a smile. The cold air hit my teeth, but I couldn’t have stopped smiling if I tried. I was cantering, and I knew someday I’d canter Fire, too. One day when he and I were both fully trained, we’d canter up the hill in the same fields I’d watched horses gallop through all summer. We’d canter down the path in the woods, maybe go as far as Good Hope so I could show Angela’s kids. Even Miss May might be impressed. And maybe Leonard wouldn’t be sour and would finally smile at me. Fire and I would be a team. Connected. The perfect pair. More even than Tucker and Bryce. Kindred spirits.
BAM!
Rusty swerved sharply a
way from the burst of noise coming from behind the kick-wall. He threw his head down between his knees, yanked the reins out of my hands, and bucked. I lurched sideways, my hands flailing, my eye right next to Rusty’s front leg when it rose and came back down with the reins tangled tightly around his fetlock. He crashed to his knees, sending a dark cloud of dirt up around him. I projected through the air and landed hard, flat on my back.
Nineteen
Joe raced across the ring. “You okay?”
I rolled to my side and spit out dirt that tasted like metal. Blood. My lip was cut and bleeding.
“Whoa, whoa. Stay still. Don’t move,” Joe said. He put his hand gently on my shoulder to steady me. “Your lip is cut. Does anything else hurt?”
“I’m okay, just dizzy. Is Rusty okay?”
“Lie back for a second, Lizzie,” he said. He pulled his coat off and made a pillow for my head. I closed my eyes and heard him go to where Rusty was breathing hard.
“Hold still, buddy. Let me just check your leg,” he said.
“Is he okay?”
“There’s a little swelling, but nothing feels out of place. He could have broken his leg in a fall like that.”
“I’m sorry, Joe.”
He came and helped me sit up, then stand on wobbly legs. My brand-new pink jacket was covered in dirt and spit, and a tiny clump of horse manure clung to the zipper. Every muscle in my body felt the way it had when I’d had the flu: sore, stretched, and beaten. Rusty watched me with forgiving eyes, his right front leg lifted completely off the ground.
“Can he walk?”
“Can you?” Joe asked. “Then we’ll see about him.”
“I’m okay.”
Rusty wouldn’t put any weight on the injured leg. With both of us hobbling, getting to the wash stall was a long process. Rusty limped along, one hoof, two hoof, three hoof, hop and stop. One hoof, two hoof, three hoof, hop and stop.
Joe turned over a large rubber bucket in the wash stall. “Sit there,” he said.
I lowered myself gingerly while Joe stripped off Rusty’s saddle. He turned on the overhead heater and let cool water dribble from the hose. His face was crimson, and his brows were all bunched up in the center of his forehead.
“He’s pretty banged up,” he said, eyeing the leg closely. “No lessons for him for a while. Hopefully he’ll be okay after a few days’ rest.”
I touched the velvety end of Rusty’s nose with my fingertip. “I can pay for his medicine. I have money saved.”
Joe poured sharp-smelling liniment onto a rag and rubbed it into Rusty’s back.
“Don’t think for one second I don’t know why that happened,” he said. “He’ll be okay, you’ll be okay, but it could have been worse. And it could have been prevented.”
I swallowed hard, trying to hold in a giant sob rising in my chest. “I lost my balance when he spooked.”
Joe squatted and gently touched Rusty’s injured leg with the rag. “Easy, fella,” he said. “Lizzie, you forget. I saw the whole thing, remember?”
I wished this miserable day was over and I could go back to our room, crawl under the covers, and start again tomorrow.
“This pony would never spook,” Joe said. “It only happened because those girls banged on the wall.”
“Wait, what?”
He ground up a white tablet and fed it to Rusty in a handful of sweet feed. “I don’t know if it was an accident or not, but I’ll be having a serious conversation with their parents.”
I watched Joe’s face to be sure I understood what he was saying.
“I thought you were mad at me.”
“You? Why would I be mad at you? Have a little faith in yourself, Lizzie. You did nothing wrong.”
Maybe Joe was right. Maybe I didn’t have faith in myself anymore. I hadn’t always been that way. I took the hose from him and pointed the stream of water at Rusty’s knee.
“I can do this,” I said.
“Good girl. Hose it for fifteen minutes, then give him a hot bran mash. I’m going to find Rikki and Sabrina.”
He turned briskly, but I grabbed his arm. “Wait!”
“What?”
“Can you maybe not tell their parents?”
“Why would you want that? They’ve hurt one of our best school ponies and could have seriously injured you.”
“It was a mistake. I’m sure of it. Maybe you can just give them a warning or something.”
“Lizzie, if I don’t talk to their parents, what kind of message does that send to them and all the other students who will hear about this? They need to understand how dangerous their actions were, and that there are consequences.”
“I know, but I don’t want them mad at me. They’ll think I told you because I saw them. They just wanted to watch.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
I shrugged but didn’t answer. The truth was, I didn’t want to cause any trouble. I wanted to be invisible. I wanted to fly solo, like Ms. Fitzgerald said. Get through until Mom and I lived someplace where she could just be a regular divorced mom with a job and where I wouldn’t be the kid with a dad going to jail. If I gave these girls any reason to be mad at me—or to notice me at all—my life here was only going to get harder.
Joe watched me for a second and his whole expression softened. “I get why you didn’t speak up, but I saw it myself.”
“They’ll still blame me. You know they will. And this is the only place I can—”
I stopped before my voice cracked. The smell of liniment made my eyes water. Joe and I watched dirty water swirl down the drain, washing away evidence of Rusty’s fall. Neither one of us said anything for a couple of moments. Finally, he put his hand on my shoulder and turned me to face him.
“Okay, Lizzie, I understand. I really do. This is my safe place, too.”
Then he left with his head down and hands stuffed in his coat pockets.
When I was done, I covered Rusty with a blanket and went to mix up the hot bran mash. The first time I’d made one, I’d gotten it all wrong, so Kennedy had written the recipe on the chalkboard in the feed room.
1 cup bran
½ cup oats
½ cup molasses
Chopped carrots, raisins, crushed peppermints, whatever you have
Add lots of super-hot water until it is like thin soup.
Stir.
The warm, sweet smell rose from the bucket and made me long for a really good, homemade breakfast. Someday, it would be that way again.
Rusty slurped up the mash while I went to the loft and threw two flakes of hay into his stall. As soon as he was tucked away for the afternoon, I slipped into Fire’s stall and wrapped my arms around his neck.
“It’s my birthday, Fire,” I said. “It doesn’t feel like it. I mean, I didn’t tell anyone on purpose, but it’s weird. This is my first birthday without at least a cake. Maybe I’m too old for that stuff anyway.”
Fire pushed his muzzle against my chest, telling me to scratch him.
“You’re so predictable.” I laughed. “The most predictable thing in my whole entire universe. We’re in this together, you and me.”
“Lizzie?”
I quickly wiped hay and shavings from my clothes and stepped out of the stall. Kennedy stood halfway up the aisle, her hands on her hips.
“Joe needs to see you in his office.”
The way she said it worried me. Maybe Joe had changed his mind about calling Rikki’s and Sabrina’s parents. Or maybe both girls were in there and he was making them apologize to my face. Maybe I could just die.
I walked slowly toward the office, flip-flopping on what to say. What if their parents were there, too? I hesitated outside the door, but Kennedy came up behind me and gave a little nudge in my back.
“Just go,” she said. “He doesn’t bite.”
“Why does he need to see me?”
“Who knows? Get it over with.”
It was obvious she knew and wasn’t going to tell me, which
felt like she was stabbing me in the back. The door scraped across the floor when I opened it. The office was almost dark, but Joe was alone, standing behind his desk with his knuckles pressed into the wood. No sign of Rikki and Sabrina.
“Come in and close that, please.”
I took one step forward. “Why is it so dark in here?”
Kennedy shut the door, trapping me between her and Joe. I could hear people mumbling in the changing room at the back of the office. Were Rikki and Sabrina in there? Would Joe really go back on his word? Grown-ups did that; they went back on their word. They did things without thinking how it could hurt a kid. A bolt of anger seared through me. Kennedy sensed it and grabbed my arms.
“Wait!”
Right then, the door to the dressing room burst open. Everything went from dark to light. From murky to clear. From rough to soft. From brown to pastels. A cluster of bodies moved out of the dressing room like they were bound together, determined to get through the door at the same time. Mom and Bryce and Jamie and Mr. McDaid were all stuck to one another, and they were all smiling. Mom held a round, slightly tilted, double-decker, aqua-blue birthday cake in her hands. The flames from a thousand yellow candles rose from the top, making her whole face glow.
“Happy birthday! Happy birthday!”
My knees felt weak as I listened to them sing that wonderful, awful birthday song in unison. My unison.
Our unison.
The unison of me and Mom and our new, chosen friends.
Wave after wave of raw sweetness swept over me. So many feelings bound together, I couldn’t have sorted them if I’d wanted to. It was my thirteenth birthday, and in the end I was glad they all knew.
Bryce made hot chocolate in Styrofoam cups, and I sank a knife deep into the fluffy cake, grinning so wide my jaw actually ached more than the rest of my body.
“Your lip is banged up,” Mom said.
Bryce laughed. “Yeah, you look like a boxer. Took a spill on your first canter, huh?”
I looked quickly to Joe, hoping and praying he hadn’t told anyone the Rikki-and-Sabrina part.
“Rusty took the spill,” he said. “Lizzie just happened to go with him.”
Jamie chuckled. “Every time Kennedy fell off a pony when she was little, she told me—”
“—you’re not a real rider until you’ve come off at least a hundred times,” she finished.
Lizzie Flying Solo Page 12
