White Horses (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 10)

by Claire Svendsen

  “Yes.” Mickey nodded.

  “You promise?”

  “Yes. Fine. Whatever. I promise,” Mickey said.

  And Esther walked away looking satisfied because she hadn’t seen what I had, that Mickey crossed her fingers behind her back.

  “You’ll help me get even with Jess, won’t you?” she whispered.

  “I guess,” I said.

  “What do you mean you’ll guess? All the times I’ve helped you out? You have to do this one thing for me.”

  “Okay.” I shrugged.

  It wasn’t like Mickey even had a plan or anything. Besides, with the hurricane coming, who had time to worry about things like getting even and revenge?

  “Come on girls, hurry up and put Hampton away,” Esther called out. “I need your help loading up the trailer.

  So we spent the rest of the morning lugging bales of hay and bags of grain out to the trailer and then Ethan and Faith showed up, looking all tan and fit from their skiing vacation.

  Faith waved but didn’t stop to talk as she ran straight past us and into the barn to see Princess, the pony her parents had leased from Esther for the summer. Ethan didn’t rush in to see his horse Wendell like his sister had but instead stood about looking awkward.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Hey.” I wiped a strand of sweaty hair out of my face.

  He looked at me and then looked away. I wondered if he’d found out about the beach ride and Will, who I hated and kind of liked all at the same time. I kind of liked Ethan too but now he just seemed more like a friend than anything else, which was good because being around boys who were cute was getting far too complicated and distracting.

  “So, did you have a good vacation?” I asked.

  “Yeah.” He kicked at a rock. “It was cold.”

  “Cool,” I said.

  “Exactly.”

  We both started to laugh and everything suddenly seemed normal again.

  “You should have just stayed there,” I said, walking into the barn with him. “There is a hurricane coming you know.”

  “I know,” he said. “Evacuations. Major panic. Fun stuff. Bet they’ll be some good waves though.”

  “I’m sure,” I said, wondering why Ethan seemed to care more about surfing than horses now.

  “So are you coming to the track with us to be with the horses?” I asked.

  “Yes,” Faith yelled from Princess’s stall.

  “No.” Ethan shook his head.

  Even though Ethan kept his voice low, Faith still heard him. She came stomping out of the stall looking mad. While they were away she’d had her long, flowing hair chopped off into a cute little pixie cut. It made her look adorably hip and cool in a way that I could never pull off.

  “We are going, Ethan,” she said. “I told Mom that I’m going with Princess and she can’t stop me.”

  “Um, I think she can,” Ethan said.

  “She can’t,” I mouthed behind Ethan’s back.

  Faith grinned.

  “I’m going to the track,” I said. “I told my mom that there was nothing she could do to stop me and now my whole family is going to come along as well.”

  “See,” Faith said. “Mom will change her mind and besides, you should want to come too,” she scolded her brother. “Don’t you care about Wendell at all?”

  “Yes.” He looked over at the chestnut horse’s stall.

  “But you didn’t even bring him any carrots or anything. How is he supposed to know that you missed him?”

  “He knows,” Ethan said. “Besides, you hogged all the carrots for Princess, remember?”

  “Oh yeah.” She laughed.

  I put my arm protectively around Faith. “You want to know something super cool?”

  “What?”

  “Hampton is back.”

  “No way,” she screamed.

  She took off for Hampton’s stall and burst inside, rousing him from a nap and slathering his nose with wet, sloppy kisses.

  “I can’t believe it,” she told Hampton. “I’ve missed you a lot and I know Mickey missed you too. She must be so happy.” She looked at me, her face bright.

  “Yes,” I said. “And no.”

  “No?” Faith said. “What do you mean no?”

  “Jess kind of broke him. He doesn’t want to jump anymore.”

  “Jess is a brat,” Faith said. “I bet she didn’t break him. I bet he just didn’t want to jump for her so he pretended that he didn’t like it and now he’s back, he’s just forgotten that he does actually like to jump.”

  “You know, maybe you’re right,” I said.

  “Of course I am,” she said.

  And I suddenly realized that maybe Faith was onto something that we hadn’t even thought about. Maybe Hampton just gave up jumping because he got sick of Jess and maybe, just maybe, once he remembered that this was his real home, he’d start jumping again.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  That afternoon I stood in my room looking at all the things that wouldn’t fit in my backpack. I wanted to take all of it with me just in case the house blew down but I couldn’t. It was hard to think of which things to take and which to leave behind. Everything was so precious to me. Every horse show ribbon that I’d ever won. The pieces of Bluebird’s mane and tail that I braided together. The old blanket that he’d torn to shreds out in the field, now laundered and sewn back together with my big cobbled stitches and currently sitting on the bottom of my bed as an extra blanket. When I couldn’t sleep I’d pull it around me and bury my face in it because even though it had been washed, it still smelt of horse.

  I wandered down to the kitchen, thinking that maybe some junk food would make me feel better but there wasn’t any left in the cupboards. They’d all been packaged into boxes and loaded in the car already.

  “Have you got everything you need?” Mom looked up from some papers she was working on.

  The museum was going to be closed over the next few days thanks to the storm but that hadn’t stopped her from bringing a bunch of work home with her.

  “I can’t decide what else to bring,” I said. “I want to take it all.”

  “Of course you do.” She laughed.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I threw myself into a chair.

  “You get too attached to things. You were always like that as a small child. There was this blanket you had. It was this crocheted pink thing with satin trim and you carried it everywhere. It must have been through the wash a million times, dragged through the dirt, stepped on but you slept with it every night and I couldn’t pry it from your sticky little fingers without a temper tantrum.”

  “I think I remember that blanket,” I said. “What happened to it?”

  “You don’t know?” She started to laugh.

  “No.”

  I reached for a cookie that was on a plate in front of her and munched on it, trying to recall where the blanket had gone.

  “One night I crept into your room and took it while you were sleeping. When you woke up, I told you that you must have lost it somewhere. That you couldn’t have possibly had it with you when you went to sleep because otherwise it would still have been there in the bed.”

  “That’s horrible,” I said. “You’re so mean.”

  “You were four years old,” she said. “I couldn’t have you taking that ratty old thing to school.”

  “So you stole it from me and then lied about it? That’s really nice. You know other mom’s keep all their kids baby clothes and blankets and stuff and you couldn’t wait to just throw all mine away.” I shook my head.

  “You have to learn to let things go,” she said sadly.

  And I knew that we weren’t talking about baby blankets anymore. We were talking about sisters who died and dads who left and how they were ripped from our lives so we tossed out all their stuff so that we could pretend they were never there in the first place and maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much.

  “I’m glad you are coming with us,”
I said.

  “Me too,” she said. “But I’m sure you know that your stepfather is not happy about it.”

  “I know.” I threw down the magazine that I’d been leafing through. “He wanted to go fishing.”

  “Yes and he’s not going to let you forget it.”

  “Well he could still go fishing,” I said hopefully. “Cat could go with him. They could go together and you could come with me and Bluebird.”

  “No.” Mom shook her head. “We’re evacuating as a family.”

  “But we’re not a family,” I said.

  Mom reached out for my hand but I pulled it away. “I know you don’t like having Cat and Derek here and I’m sorry but maybe you could just give them a chance?”

  “I have given them a chance,” I said. “Besides, can’t you tell? Cat and I are BFF’s now.”

  “Yes,” she said, sounding curious. “How exactly did that happen again?”

  I thought of the beach ride and how furious my mother would be if she ever found out how irresponsible I’d been. There would be no way she would let me go with Bluebird if she knew.

  “We just found a common ground,” I said vaguely. “So would it help if I went and thanked Derek then?”

  “That’s a fantastic idea.” Mom smiled, her probing thoughts about why Cat and I weren’t at each other’s throats anymore apparently evaporating into thin air. “He’s in the garage.”

  “Great,” I said.

  I took another cookie and went off in search of my stepfather, feeling a little sick that I was actually going to have to thank him for something but I figured it was like ripping off a band aid. Better to just get it over with and move on.

  The garage door was open and I could hear stuff being tossed around. Derek was throwing things into a toolbox that he was obviously going to take with us. I wasn’t quite sure how much help a wrench was going to be in a hurricane but I guess whatever floated his boat. After all, my horse show ribbons weren’t going to be much help either but as Mom had just pointed out, I had an unhealthy attachment to things like that. I didn’t really think you could be emotionally attached to a wrench. Or maybe Derek could. He was weird like that.

  I cleared my throat so that he would see me standing there. He looked up, his face all red and sweaty and I suddenly got a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. Maybe now wasn’t the time to try talking to him after all.

  He straightened up, wrench still in one hand like it wasn’t a tool at all but some kind of weapon.

  “What do you want?” he snapped.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  The words all caught in my throat and I couldn’t get them out. I couldn’t even remember what I’d come to say. Something about thanking him but as he stood there with his wrench and a mad looking face, thanking him was pretty much the last thing I wanted to do because even if I did, he wouldn’t believe me. He’d know that the words were as false as I knew they were. This was a mistake.

  “I didn’t want anything,” I said.

  He tapped the wrench against his leg. “Come here.”

  “I’d rather not.” I backed away.

  “I said come here now.”

  It wasn’t a request. It was an order. Spoken in a voice I hadn’t heard before, a dark, gravelly voice full of hatred and evil. And even though every fiber of my being was screaming at me to run back inside to seek the protection of my mother, I found myself walking towards him.

  “So you got your way,” he said.

  I nodded.

  “You get to go with your precious pony and we all have to tag along. How do you think that makes me feel?”

  “Not happy?” I said.

  “You’re darn right I’m not happy.”

  I was standing right there in front of him but I didn’t dare look at his face. Instead I looked at the floor. At his battered work boots and a stain on the concrete that looked vaguely like blood. All I could think was that if he hit me, maybe my mother would leave him.

  “Sorry?” I said.

  “Is that a question?” He laughed but it wasn’t a nice laugh.

  “No.” I shook my head. “I am sorry. I didn’t want you to have to come with me. I wanted you to go fishing.”

  “I bet you did,” he snarled.

  “No, I mean, I just wanted you to do whatever you wanted to do and I wanted to do whatever I wanted to do.” I mumbled over the words as I tried to get them out.

  “You’re too used to getting your own way.”

  “Hardly,” I said.

  “What did you say?”

  He stepped towards me and I stepped away until my back was against the wall and his face was next to mine, his breath hot and angry on my neck and the wrench still there in his hand.

  “I think you have a few things to learn,” he whispered. “And I think I’m going to teach them to you.”

  I closed my eyes and waited for the sickening thud and the burn of pain that would come when he hit me with the wrench but it never came. Instead Cat’s voice sang out through the heat.

  “Dad?” she called. “Are you out here?”

  He backed away from me. The wrench clattered onto the floor and then he was gone. I sunk down the wall, my legs too weak to hold me, sobbing into my hands. I could hear their voices inside. Talking. Laughing. My mother oblivious to the fact that her husband had almost hit me in the head with a wrench. I couldn’t go back in there. I just couldn’t. I picked up my bike and rode away, tears still streaming down my face.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  I didn’t know where I was going but I knew I couldn’t go back to the barn. Esther would ask too many questions about why I’d come back and besides, I didn’t want to upset Bluebird on his last night before the evacuation. So I just rode past tourists and locals, focusing only on the road and not getting run over by some old person who had made a break from the retirement home and shouldn’t have been behind the wheel in the first place. And when I finally looked up, I found that I was at my secret cove.

  I abandoned my bike and scrambled down the rocks, sobs still wracking my chest. The ocean was calm and the tide was out. I ran towards the water and splashed into it, soaking my clothes through with the salt water. I kicked at the sand and screamed, glad that no tourists were around to see or hear. Then I slumped down on the wet sand.

  How could this be happening to me? I didn’t understand. Adults were supposed to protect kids, to nurture them. Educate them in a nice way, not with a wrench from the garage. That was the sort of thing that happened to other kids. Not to me. Boys who came to school with black eyes and claimed that they’d walked into a wall, laughing about how stupid they were when we all knew what had really happened. But girls didn’t have to go to school with black eyes, did they?

  “Hey, you never replied to my note.”

  The voice was gentle but I still shrieked and jumped to my feet, my nerves jangling and on edge. It was Will, his dark eyes suddenly showing concern when he saw that I’d been crying.

  “I can’t deal with you right now,” I said.

  I still didn’t know if I could trust him or not. After all, his sister was the one who messed with everyone’s tack at the beach ride. She cut my reins and they broke. I could have been killed. Will swore that he had nothing to do with it but I didn’t know him well enough to trust him and I didn’t even know if I wanted to.

  “I can see that.” He put his hands in the air and took a step back. “I didn’t actually know you’d be here.”

  “Well I am, so buzz off.” I sat back on the wet sand.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he asked, still sounding concerned.

  “I’m fine.”

  “You don’t look fine,” he said.

  “I said I’m fine,” I sobbed.

  He stood there awkwardly, not really sure whether to stay or go. Finally he said, “Well how about if I just sit here for a little while?”

  And I didn’t protest when he sat down on the sand next to me without saying another word b
ecause I guess it turned out that I really didn’t want to be alone after all.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  We sat there in silence for what felt like forever, until the light faded and the sky turned pink. Eventually I stood up.

  “I should go home,” I said.

  Will stood up too. “Okay.”

  He didn’t ask me if I was all right or what had happened. It was like he knew enough to know that it was something that I couldn’t talk about, at least not yet.

  “Are you evacuating?” he asked after we’d climbed up the rocks.

  “Tomorrow.” I grabbed my bike. “We’re taking the horses to the Palm City racetrack. Are you going there too?”

  I didn’t want to admit it, not even to myself but Will was comforting. He was like that security blanket my mother had to pry from my hands as a child and now that I’d figured that out, it would be nice to have him around in the middle of the greatest storm of the century. Especially since Derek was going to be there blowing hot air of his own.

  “I’m not sure,” Will said.

  “Oh.” I felt the small ray of hope that had blossomed inside me extinguish.

  “Do you want me to go to the track with you?”

  My face turned red. “Whatever. I don’t care.”

  He grinned. “Now that’s the Emily I know.”

  Then he just walked away and I was left riding my bike back to the home I hated. But I felt like Will had thrown me a life raft, one of those flotation devices that they toss out to the person who is drowning in a raging sea. All I had to do was hold on and hope that he didn’t let go.

  Back at home the house was dark and the garage was empty. I’d half expected to see Derek standing there with his wrench in one hand and a beer in the other, waiting to punish me when I inevitably came back. For a moment I even thought I saw him, standing there in the dusky light but it was just my imagination playing tricks on me. It wasn’t Derek at all. It was a garbage can with junk piled on top of it and one of those gaudy plastic pumpkins that my mom usually stuck in the yard for Halloween.