Prize Problems

by Janet Rising

  “Fantastic!” I said. I mean, what’s more exciting?

  “Have you got a pony, Grace?” asked Bean.

  Grace didn’t get a chance to answer—her mother swooped in like a hawk.

  “Not yet. Grace rides at the riding school presently, don’t you Grace?” Before Grace had the chance to speak her mother continued, shaking her head, “I’m hoping this vacation will improve her confidence and get her going a bit. Honestly, when I was her age I was galloping about and leaping on and off ponies all day. Grace doesn’t take after me, that’s for sure!”

  Grace just stood there, sucking her hair—probably grateful she didn’t take after her mother. I felt sorry for her. What was her mother still doing here? I’d have died if my mom had come and hung around, voicing her disappointment with me to anyone within earshot. Annabelle seemed to feel the same way.

  “Well, Mrs. Sharpe, I’m sure you have a long drive home, and you can see that Grace is fine with us. We’ll take good care of her, won’t we girls?”

  “Hiya!”

  We turned to see a girl with long, reddish blond hair, lots of black mascara and pink lip gloss climbing over the gate. Behind her, another girl tried to open the catch, her short, curly blond hair wobbling as she struggled.

  “I’m Amber!” exclaimed the climber, leaping down and trotting toward us with a grin. “And this, if she ever gets here, is my sister Zoe.”

  We introduced ourselves—Grace’s mother introduced Grace, adding that her daughter was a bit shy and she didn’t know where she got it from.

  No one else knew either.

  Amber continued to grin at us. She and Zoe were a couple of years older than me and Bean, and looked fun.

  “We’d rather you went through the gate, dear, instead of over it,” said Annabelle, smiling away like a ballroom dancer. “It’s awfully bad for it.”

  “Told you!” said Zoe, scowling at her sister. “Unless you climb at the hinge end, it makes the gate drop.”

  “Oh, why do you always have to be right all the time?” moaned Amber, her shoulders sagging.

  “You never pay attention, we’ve been told about gates before,” Zoe said huffily.

  Amber blew a defiant raspberry. “Phew,” she said, running her fingers through her hair, “all this fuss over a gate! Have we met before?” she asked, looking at me quizzically. “Only you look really familiar.”

  I shook my head. I couldn’t help thinking how Amber was the perfect name for her—her hair was the color of petrified tree resin. I would have remembered meeting someone as striking as her, I was sure.

  “Come and have some refreshments,” offered Annabelle, and we all followed her into the chill-out room where drinks were set out on a table. A big, black, fluffy cat sat on one of the three sofas, pony posters adorned the walls and there were horsey books and magazines scattered all around. I had hoped there’d be some food, I was starving!

  “Cool place!” exclaimed Amber, reaching for a Coke.

  “Have you got a pony?” Ellie asked her.

  “No, worst luck!” Zoe interrupted, stroking the cat. “It’s our dream to get one—maybe one day.”

  “I’m getting one—a show jumper,” said Ellie. “I expect I’ll win lots of ribbons and cups on mine.”

  “I’m sure you will, dear,” soothed Annabelle, still smiling.

  “I just want a pony to love, I don’t care about winning stuff,” Amber said bluntly, shrugging her shoulders. “I really want a chestnut with four white legs.”

  “Oh no, Amber, you know I want a dun,” moaned Zoe, tickling the cat under the chin. The cat purred like a coffee-grinder and Annabelle told us he was called Soot.

  “You could do with being a bit more ambitious, Grace,” said her mother, giving her a poke. Grace’s lack of reaction suggested poking was normal behavior.

  “Now you’re all here I can tell you about the fun we’ll be having during the next five days,” said Annabelle, her voice revving up to sound more exciting. “Ahhh, here’s Sharon, our groom,” she added, as a girl of about eighteen came bounding into the room. Slender with short, almost-white blond hair which stuck up in all directions like an explosion, Sharon wore a lemon polo shirt like Annabelle’s (only dirtier), navy jodhpurs, chaps and dusty boots. It was obvious that Sharon did all the dirty work, leaving Annabelle to stay clean and stylish. She gave us a huge grin and winked. We all grinned back.

  “Hi there!” she said. She looked a lot more fun than uptight Annabelle.

  “I’m just about to run through the itinerary,” Annabelle explained, waving her clipboard in the air.

  “It’s like prison camp, here,” Sharon joked, winking at us. “You won’t know what’s hit you!”

  Amber laughed, but Grace looked terrified.

  “No it isn’t, Sharon, everyone will have a wonderful time!” exclaimed Annabelle, clearly annoyed by Sharon’s irreverence. “After lunch, I’ll introduce you to the ponies. We’ve already allocated them to you all, according to the rider profiles you returned to us, but we may have to swap you round if we find things don’t work out.”

  “Oh, who have I got?” pleaded Amber. “I so want Sorrel!”

  “Only because you think she’ll teach you the finer points of horsemanship,” teased Zoe, quoting from the High Grove website.

  “Get lost Zoe, you loser!” replied her sister.

  Annabelle glanced at her clipboard, shook her head and looked a bit smug. “Sorry, my dears, no one will know until after lunch. We’ll have a lesson this afternoon to make sure you all get on with your ponies, then after we’ve cleaned our tack and turned the ponies out, it’s probably warm enough for a swim before supper. Then tonight we’ve got some wonderful horsey DVDs for you all to watch! Meanwhile, there’s a full schedule on the notice board in the dining room. You’ll also see there that we always have a best-kept pony competition, a tidiest-stable competition and a cleanest tack competition, so bear that in mind whenever you’re grooming, mucking out and cleaning tack!”

  I heard Bean groan. She hated doing any of those things. I thought Sharon could be right about the prison camp, despite the wink and the grin.

  “Cool!” exclaimed Amber, punching the air. “I am so going to try to win one of those!”

  “Same here!” said Ellie.

  “You so won’t, Amber,” Zoe said. “You’re always in too much of a hurry.”

  Amber pulled a face. “I said I’m going to try,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with trying.”

  I heard Grace’s mother whispering to Grace that she ought to try and win something. It would do her good, according to her mother. Grace stayed mute.

  “Do you think Grace’s mom is going to stay all week?” Bean whispered to me out of the corner of her mouth.

  “Don’t—that’s totally not funny!” I whispered back, fighting visions of Grace’s mom laden down with trophies—she’d be bound to win everything.

  “I can’t wait to tell Dee about her,” Bean continued, staring at Grace’s mom in fascinated horror. “She thinks her mom’s bad!”

  I nodded in agreement. Dee’s mom Sophie was a hundred times better.

  Finally, Grace’s mother managed to tear herself away—but not before she’d had a long conversation with Annabelle, which we all overheard, regarding the expectations she had of High Grove Farm. It seemed that unless Grace morphed into a potential for the Olympic equestrian team over the next five days, she would consider the money paid for Grace’s vacation totally down the drain.

  “Your mom’s a nightmare!” Amber said, nudging Grace’s arm good-naturedly. “But most moms are!” she laughed.

  For one horrified moment, I thought Grace was going to cry. Amber noticed, too.

  “Hey, only joking! She’s gone now, you’ve got five days of freedom!”

&
nbsp; “She wants me to learn to jump,” whispered Grace, frantically stroking Soot who, quite content in his role as comforter, closed his eyes and purred even louder. “But I don’t want to. I just want to ride Bobbin, my favorite pony at my riding school, but she keeps on talking about getting me a pony.”

  “Why wouldn’t you want to learn to jump?” sneered Ellie. “It’s so totally the best thing. I could jump and jump and jump, it’s so fantastic.”

  “Well, not everyone likes doing the same thing,” said Bean. “If you don’t want to jump, Grace, just say so.”

  Grace’s blue eyes widened, her hand hovering over Soot in mid-stroke. “Can I do that?” she asked.

  “Sure can!” said Amber. “If you can’t, we’ll stick up for you!”

  “Why do you always have to shove your nose in, Amber?” asked Zoe. “It’s none of your business.”

  “Hey, Grace is worried, I’m being supportive!” Amber said. “We have to stick up for each other, right?”

  “Amber’s right,” said Bean passionately. “Grace is here to enjoy herself, not be scared into doing something she doesn’t want to do. And I’m sure you’ll get a fantastic pony, they all looked awesome on the website.”

  “I’m sure none of us will be made to do anything we don’t want to,” said Zoe. “We’re on vacation, not at school.”

  “Well, I still don’t see why you wouldn’t want to jump!” said Ellie.

  Bean put her arm round Grace. “Stop worrying. You’re going to get a great pony and we’ll all make sure you have a fantastic time!”

  Grace nodded gratefully and resumed her cat-stroking offensive.

  I could tell that Bean’s sympathy with Grace was due to being so out of sync with her own family. Bean loved Tiffany and she rode really well. Her talents lay in other directions from the rest of her family and I wondered whether Grace was the same. Maybe she didn’t want to ride. I couldn’t help thinking that if that were true then Grace wasn’t going to have a very good time on a riding vacation.

  Not a good time at all.

  Chapter 4

  The High Grove Farm ponies lined up along the fence, giving us the once-over and looking just as cute and awesome as they had on the website. I felt a shiver of excitement run through me. Never mind that Grace was nervous, I hadn’t ridden any pony other than Drummer for ages. Curling my fingers around Epona in my pocket, I realized how much I was looking forward to enjoying some cozy chats with my allocated pony. Wouldn’t he or she be surprised!

  But then the effect of Epona kicked in and I could hear the ponies. I never learn…

  “Will ya look at this group, what a bunch of amateurs!” exclaimed the piebald, Harry, looking us up and down through his long, white forelock. He spoke with a loud, confident, New York accent.

  “I bet none of them can ride,” sneered Sorrel, the chestnut. Her mane, by contrast, was pulled short and her legs, unlike Harry’s, were sleek and free from feather. Her voice was clipped and uptight, like someone trying to talk fancy. “I bet I get another rider hanging on to my reins all week. I don’t know what they teach people at riding schools these day, I really don’t.”

  My initial thrill of anticipation tumbled down a notch.

  “I don’t care who I get, as long as it’s not the fat one,” whined Cherokee, the bay with white splashes, eyeing up Grace. “My legs won’t stand the weight.” I looked at his legs—white from the knees down, complimented by a splash of white on his nearside shoulder and another one on his offside flank, which broke up his dark brown body and black mane and tail. He looked so cool. He sounded anything but.

  “Which one is the fat one?” asked Appaloosa Dot-2-Dot, her head going from side to side as she examined us all.

  “I wouldn’t worry,” Harry told her. “She’s obviously a Shadow candidate.”

  “What’s that?” Upon hearing his name the ancient snowy-white pony opened his eyes briefly before closing them again.

  “Don’t worry, Shad, we’ll wake you if anything interesting happens,” promised Sprout, yawning.

  “Which it won’t!” snapped Sorrel.

  Any enthusiasm I’d felt was now oozing out through my boots and trickling on to the grass like a mutating virus. This was so not what I’d expected.

  “Which one is the fat one?” repeated Dot.

  “Hey you guys, what does Dot-2-Dot have in common with my manger two minutes after feeding time?” asked Harry.

  “They’re both empty!” chorused the other ponies, laughing.

  “I don’t get that,” said Dot.

  “Are they saying anything?” Bean asked me, out of the side of her mouth. “Are they as cute as they looked on the website?”

  “Yes they are,” I hissed back, “and no they’re not!”

  “What do you mean?”

  I sighed—I was about to burst Bean’s bubble of positivity. “The piebald thinks we all look useless, Sorrel is uptight and grumpy and Cherokee keeps complaining about his legs—and they’re being really rude about Grace.”

  “Grace? Why?”

  “They say she’s fat!”

  Bean looked across at Grace who was sucking another strand of hair. “You couldn’t call her fat,” she murmured, “she’s just a bit bigger than the rest of us.”

  “That’s not how they see it.”

  Annabelle gave us all one of her trying-too-hard smiles. She had changed into a lavender-colored polo shirt with purple jodhpurs, which reminded me of Katy. I wondered, with a pang of homesickness, how she was getting on with Drummer and resolved to call her as soon as possible for an update.

  Unaware of having lost me to thoughts of home, Annabelle continued, brandishing her clipboard. “We’ve allocated ponies according to your experience so now’s your time to start bonding!”

  Sharon held a green halter at arm’s length. “Who’s got Harry?” she asked Annabelle.

  “Ellie, dear, we’ve given you Harry, our gorgeous piebald,” Annabelle enthused. “I know you two are going to get on famously.”

  “Yeah, like a house on fire!” I heard Harry chuckle.

  Taking the halter, Ellie glanced at the field gate, the confidence she’d shown earlier totally gone.

  “We’ll all go in and catch the ponies together,” explained Annabelle.

  “Shadow?” asked Sharon.

  “Grace,” said Annabelle.

  “Phew!” sighed Bean.

  “Thank goodness!” sighed Sorrel, as Grace took the blue halter from Sharon’s outstretched hand.

  “Told ya!” snapped Harry, triumphantly. “Saw that one coming a mile away!”

  “Sprout?” asked Sharon, holding out a leather halter and rope. Annabelle read out my name. I had really wanted Cherokee, as he reminded me of Drummer, but Sprout looked fun, and I wasn’t disappointed.

  “He’s a bit of a lunatic,” Sharon told me, and winked.

  “Oh, OK,” I gulped, wondering what form of lunatic Sprout would be.

  Amber got her wish and was paired with Sorrel, giving an air punch and emitting a yell of YES!, and Bean was given Cherokee ( “Dirt-colored, thank goodness!” I heard her exclaim), which left Zoe to catch Dot-2-Dot with the pink harness presented to her by Sharon.

  Accepting my carrot bribe, Sprout stuck his nose in his harness without a murmur. His tiny pink snip was dead cute and his mane stuck up and wafted about as he moved, which made him look slightly manic. Stroking his nose I eyed him up and down. Bigger than Drummer—about 14.2 hands, whereas Drum is just over 14 hands—and slender in build, he looked part Welsh with a nice head and only a hint of feather on his heels. Bean caught Cherokee without any trouble, but Sharon had to help Grace with Shadow—even though he stood rooted to the ground like he was nailed there—and Annabelle fussed a bit around Ellie, but eventually we all had our pon
ies in their stables and were grooming them for our first ride.

  “What’s yours like?” I heard Harry yell to Sorrel. “I’m going to have to nurse mine all week if this is the best she can do.”

  “Mine’s surprisingly competent,” Sorrel snapped back about Amber. “Oh, wait a minute, I spoke too soon. Don’t do it like that! All wrong—totally the wrong brush for totally the wrong place. Ouch! Honestly!”

  “There’s a spider on my harness,” said Dot in a far-away, singsong voice.

  “Shake it off quick, Empty!” advised Harry. “Otherwise we’ll all suffer from their hysterics!”

  “Mine seems to know what she’s doing,” I heard Cherokee say about Bean, “so that’s one thing I won’t have to worry about!” I was beginning to dread learning how Sprout viewed me. I made a special effort to be gentle as I groomed his face.

  “Well, I’ve had better,” I heard Sprout remark. The nerve! I was just deciding that I’d show him, when Zoe let out a blood-curdling shriek which made every equine head shoot upward in anticipation of, at the very least, a nuclear attack.

  “Ouch, my ears!” I heard Cherokee groan. “Not to mention my nerves, which are now in shreds.”

  “Told ya, didn’t I!” snapped Harry.

  “You’re such a know-all, Haz,” said Sprout.

  After Zoe had stopped hyperventilating at Dot’s spider, and Amber had stopped laughing at her sister’s dismay, and Zoe had stopped glaring daggers at Amber, we tacked up.

  Stroking Sprout’s neck I whispered in his ear, which flicked back at the sound of my voice. “What kind of lunatic are you?” I asked him as butterflies fluttered around in my stomach. Would I be able to cope with Sprout? Or would I embarrass myself in front of everyone? It was time to find out.

  Chapter 5

  Everyone took ages to get their ponies ready but eventually we were in the outdoor school, mounted and lined up in front of Annabelle. Bean steered Cherokee up beside me.

  “Cherokee feels so different to Tiffany,” said Bean.