I breathed a sigh of relief and went to the door but I could hear voices on the other side. I backed away. I wanted to go inside but I didn’t want to walk straight into another argument. I was far too tired for that. So I waited in the dark, slapping the mosquitos away until the voices finally stopped. Then I waited a little while longer just in case they were still downstairs but just being quiet. Eventually I couldn’t stand it any longer. I had to pee. So I opened the door and slipped inside.
The house was dark with only the last few boxes for the evacuation piled up by the door. There were Derek’s trophies from back when he played football in college gleaming in the dark and I thought of my horse show ribbons, annoyed that some parts of us were not so different after all.
I was hungry so I snuck through to the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Inside was a pizza box. They’d ordered pizza without me? Mom hadn’t even called to see if I was okay or wondered why I hadn’t come home. It was like she wasn’t worried at all. If it had been Cat, everyone would have been falling over themselves trying to find her. They would have thought she had run away again but no one ever thought that I would do something as stupid and reckless as that.
I ate a piece of cold pizza in the dark and then went to bed where I dreamt that Will was riding Bluebird bareback with me and Derek was chasing us, brandishing one of his football trophies.
When I woke up the sun was just starting to spill its milky light over the world. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. You wouldn’t have even known there was a massive hurricane swirling out there and heading right for us. I wondered what people used to do in the old days without weather reports or hurricane planes that flew into storms with their scientific equipment to tell us wind speed and direction. Did people just think that it was a regular old thunderstorm until the winds picked up and their roofs blew off?
I got dressed, grabbed an apple for me and one for Bluebird and rode my bike to the barn. My pony was standing by his gate, waiting for his breakfast. He nickered when he saw me, his chestnut ears pricked and all the stress from the night before just melted away. I ran to his gate and gave him the apple, then I opened the gate without putting his halter on and he followed me into the barn because he was the best pony in the whole world and didn’t need things like halters to know where I wanted him to go.
“Morning,” I called out as I put Bluebird in his stall.
He went straight to his bucket and stood there looking all hopeful.
“Just a minute,” I told him.
Esther was in the feed room surrounded by supplement buckets and scoops. She’d dropped one of the tubs and a blanket of white powder covered everything like snow.
“Are you okay?” I asked since she was just sitting there in the middle of the mess looking a bit dumbfounded.
She looked up at me, her face kind of vacant.
“I think this is going to be a bad storm,” she said.
“I know.” I nodded, wondering what was wrong with her. “That’s why we are evacuating, isn’t it?”
“We should have gone somewhere further away,” she said. “You were right. We should have evacuated sooner. Gone out of state.”
I didn’t know what had happened to make Esther lose it but the last thing I needed was her having a meltdown on the very day that we were supposed to be getting the horses out of Sand Hill. The Palm City racetrack may not have been as far out of the path of the hurricane as we would have all liked but it was better than sticking around here were things were definitely going to be bad.
“Come on.” I pulled her to her feet. “Palm City is all we have left. Let’s do this.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Evacuating the horses was kind of like going to a horse show, except there weren’t going to be any ribbons or prizes at the end. Unless you counted surviving as a prize, which I guess it sort of was. Esther originally had the radio playing in the barn, set to the news station that was bleating out tales of doom and gloom and giving statistics on the number of people who were fleeing the state. Eventually I couldn’t take it anymore and I switched the station to one that played actual music and soon Esther and I were singing in out of tune voices as we cleaned the stalls.
“Why are you guys so cheerful?” Mickey asked when she arrived. “Don’t you know that you’re supposed to be all depressed about the storm and stuff?”
“Be quiet,” I whispered. “It’s taken me this long to get Esther motivated. When I got here she was just sitting in the feed room looking at the floor.”
“Hurricanes do weird things to people.” Mickey shook her head. “You should see my mom. She stayed up all night putting her fish into a giant trash can.”
“She’s still taking them?” I said.
“She’s taking some of them but my dad said there is no way they will all fit in the minivan.”
“How did that go down?” I asked.
“How do you think? Mom spent half the night swearing that she was going to stay with the fish instead of coming with us.”
We both laughed because I could actually imagine Mickey’s mom staying behind, strapping herself to the trash cans full of fish and floating away with them when the deluge came. I’d never known anyone love fish as much as Mickey’s mom. I didn’t get the appeal. I just liked to eat them cooked in batter and served with French fries. The ones in tanks gave me the creeps, all big eyes and slimy scales. They just swum around in circles all day anyway and you couldn’t even hug them like a cat or a dog.
“That reminds me,” I said. “We have to try and track down Meatball so Esther can put him in his carry case.”
“He’s not around?” Mickey looked up and down the barn aisle for the fat orange cat that kept the mice away.
“No,” I said.
“That’s kind of weird. He always comes for his breakfast.”
“I know.” I sighed. “I think maybe he knows the storm is coming.”
“You wouldn’t know it though, would you?” Mickey looked out at the bright blue sky. “So, what can I do to help?”
“Grab a pitchfork and dig in,” I said.
We cleaned stalls, singing along to the radio while Esther loaded the horses into the trailer. I wondered why I hadn’t been able to tell Mickey about what had happened to me. She was my best friend. Shouldn’t it have been something that I wanted to share? Something we could talk about and maybe she would make a joke out of it and we would laugh. But it wasn’t a laughing matter and instead I just felt ashamed. Like it was something you weren’t supposed to tell people because what if Mickey didn’t laugh? What if she thought it was awful. I would have been so embarrassed and it would have ruined our friendship so instead I said nothing.
We sat out in the shade after Esther left, eating the popsicles from the freezer in the tack room. If the power went out during the storm, which it almost certainly would, they’d melt which we felt gave us justification to eat the entire box.
“Do you think Hampton is going to be okay?” she said.
“Of course,” I replied.
And I realized that Mickey had her own problems.
“My mom said that if we hadn’t got Hampton back then they wouldn’t have to come to the track and she could have evacuated somewhere that was more fish friendly.”
“Fish friendly?” I laughed. “Like a restaurant?”
“If there is any flooding at the track, I swear I’m setting all those fish free when my mom isn’t looking.”
“You know she’d kill you if you did that.”
“I know,” she said.
There wasn’t much else to do but wait for Esther to get back and eventually we got so bored that we decided to go for a ride. After all, it wouldn’t hurt the horses and they’d be cooped up in the stalls during the hurricane.
“It will do them and us good,” I told Mickey. “Besides, I need something to take my mind off the impending doom.”
We tacked up the horses and took them outside. The breeze was picking up an
d it blew Hampton and Bluebird’s tails out like a shampoo commercial.
“Ring or trail?” I asked.
“Definitely trail,” she said.
So we mounted and walked up the trail. Neither of us spoke. Instead we soaked the whole world in like a sponge because we didn’t know how much of it would still be there when we got back.
The horses used the wind as an excuse to act silly. Bluebird spooked at a plastic bag that had blown into a tree branch and Hampton spooked because Bluebird had, even though he didn’t know why.
“Do you have to copy everything your best friend does?” Mickey asked him, patting his crested neck.
“Of course he does.” I grinned. “And if I paint Bluebird’s hooves purple, you will have to do the same otherwise Hampton will be all jealous and sad.”
“Don’t you even dare,” she said.
We were still laughing when we got to the top of the ridge. At the bottom of the hill a bay horse was flowing over a course of jumps in the wind. It was Jess riding Hashtag.
“Isn’t she going to evacuate?” Mickey stood in her stirrups to get a better look. “What is she doing down there?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“I’d better stay here.” Mickey looked down at her reins. “If I get too close to Jess, I might do something stupid and then Esther would kill me.”
“But Hampton is fine now,” I said. “Can’t you just let it go?”
“You know very well that he’s not fine. She broke his jumping mojo and I’m not going to let it go until he gets it back.”
I didn’t like to think what would happen if Hampton didn’t get his mojo back or what would happen if Mickey got into a fight with Jess so I left her behind and rode down the hill. Bluebird fretted and fussed with his bit. He wanted to gallop. I could feel him all coiled and tight beneath me like a spring.
“Not right now,” I told him, patting his neck. “You can’t get all worked up before your trailer ride.”
Jess ignored me until we were level with the fence to her arena and even then she jumped a few more fences before coming over. They were set really high and Hashtag still cleared them with room to spare, tucking his legs up under his chin like a cat. It wasn’t fair that Jess always had all these really great horses that she didn’t appreciate.
“What do you want?” Jess said as she walked the bay horse over on a loose rein.
“Aren’t you evacuating?” I asked.
“Of course,” she snapped. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
“Well where are you going? To Palm City?”
“Unfortunately.” She sighed.
“Why is it unfortunate?”
I stroked Bluebird’s neck as Hashtag fussed about on the other side of the fence. A couple of times Jess snapped the reins and I watched his face get all worried as the bit dug into his soft mouth. I couldn’t help wondering if that was what she had done to Hampton.
“Well you guys will be there, won’t you?” she said, tucking a strand of blonde hair back under her helmet. It had pink rhinestones on it that sparkled in the sun.
“That’s nice Jess, thanks a lot.” I pulled Bluebird away from the fence. “Come on boy.”
“Besides,” she called out after us. “That racetrack is haunted.”
“What did she say?” Mickey asked after I had cantered back up the hill.
“Basically that she hates our guts,” I said. “And that the racetrack is haunted.”
“Haunted?” Mickey said as we trotted back to the barn. “What does she mean?”
“I don’t know,” I replied.
But we didn’t have much time to think about the fact that the racetrack was haunted because Esther came back to pick up the next load of horses and besides, we didn’t even know if it was true. It was probably just Jess messing with our heads, as if we needed something else to worry about when we had the storm. It was already picking up speed. The estimated landfall was going to be sooner than they had predicted. We’d be lucky if we got all the horses out in time.
“You know Jess has that big old trailer and only three horses.” Mickey wiped the sweat from her face. “She could have offered to help take some of ours.”
“Fat chance,” I said. “She’s mad that she’s even going to be at the same barn as us. Besides, you wouldn’t let her take Hampton anyway.”
“True.” She nodded. “But I wonder where all the Fox Run horses are going?” Mickey named the prestigious barn where Jess and her sister Amber sometimes took lessons.
“Well if they’re going to Palm City then Jess should be happy because that will cancel out the fact that poor losers like us our going to be there,” I said.
We hung around the barn, making sure that things wouldn’t blow around in the storm. We secured jump poles and standards by the fence where they hopefully wouldn’t become flying projectiles and then we waited. Eventually it was our turn to leave.
“Everything is going to be just fine,” I told Bluebird. “We’ll be safe at the track and Hampton will be there and all your friends.”
But even as I told him that things would be okay, deep down I wasn’t sure I believed it. Scary things happened in hurricanes and nothing was certain, not even the fact that we would make it through okay but I had to believe that we would, for Bluebird’s sake.
“Are there a lot of people there?” I asked Esther when the horses were finally loaded.
“It’s a mad house,” she said.
I wasn’t sure exactly what that meant but it didn’t sound good. I looked behind as Sand Hill disappeared from view. The barn with its new coat of paint and the fences that were fixed before Frank Coppell and his students came to stay. It looked so pretty and perfect and as the horse weather vane on top of the roof finally disappeared from view I felt a twinge of sadness because I didn’t know if Sand Hill would still be there when we got back.
We spent most of the journey in silence all locked in our own private worlds. The roads were packed full of cars that had suitcases strapped to the roof and people inside who looked just as nervous as we were. A couple of times people cut in and Esther had to slam on the brakes. I felt the horses shift in the trailer as they lost their balance for a moment and felt bad for them.
“Stupid idiots,” Esther mumbled under her breath. “Can’t they see I have horses in the back?”
“I don’t think they care,” Mickey said and she was right.
It took a lot longer to get to Palm City than I thought it would thanks to all the crazy people on the road but eventually we were pulling in through the gates and driving down the palm lined drive. It was a pretty impressive place with sprawling lawns and the spires of the barns glinting in the sunlight. There were trailers and people everywhere and it was clear that some of those people weren’t exactly worried about Hurricane Joyce. Guys had set up grills and were cooking hot dogs and burgers. Others were tossing a football around. A bunch of girls walked past arm in arm, dressed in bikini tops and really short shorts.
“What is this?” I said. “Some kind of frat party?”
“I told you it was bad,” Esther said.
“Maybe we should have gone somewhere else.” I sighed.
“Too late now,” Mickey said, her face plastered to the glass as a group of shirtless teenage boys walked past.
“Besides,” Esther said. “There was nowhere else to go.”
“So then I guess we’ll have to make the best of it,” I said.
“Make the best of it?” Mickey said. “What are you talking about? This is going to be great.”
And Esther and I just groaned because whenever cute boys were around, Mickey lost at least half her brain. And sometimes even more than half.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Palm City was a fully operational racing facility complete with a gleaming all-weather track, grandstands and a lot of barns. Of course more than half of them were full of the racehorses that were trained there. The rest had b
een allocated to the evacuees and to keep everything nice and simple, every barn had a color. We were in purple. Jess and the Fox Run horses were in yellow, which was the next barn over. I was sure Jess was very happy about that because at least she could pretend we weren’t there.
Despite the fact that the barns looked flashy on the outside, that was obviously just to please all the people who came to watch the races and bet their hard earned money away on a chance to win some more. Inside the stalls were all a bit battered but I guess that was what came of housing young thoroughbreds that were pumped up on sweet feed and bred to run.
The stall that Bluebird was in had giant kick marks on the back wall. Hampton had a door that was half eaten.
“I hope these stalls hold,” Mickey said.
“Me too,” I agreed as I closed Bluebird’s door and it squeaked loudly.
But it wasn’t a bad place to weather the storm. Everyone had banded together to ride out the hurricane. People were sharing hay and grain and anyone who’d forgotten something could find it right down the aisle in the tack box of someone else. All you had to do was ask. Mickey was right. It was just like one great big fun slumber party. At least it was in the purple barn anyway. Things weren’t going so swimmingly in yellow. And when we heard raised voices, Mickey and I couldn’t resist the urge to go and see what was happening.
As we walked past stalls filled with horses of every imaginable breed and color, I kept looking out for a blue roan Quarter horse with a sway back. Will had said that maybe he would come and although I wasn’t too keen to see his sister again, it would have been comforting to know that he was there. He seemed like he would be really good to have around in an emergency, the sort of person who was always cool and calm while other people were running around screaming and losing it. But I couldn’t see Blue anywhere. What I did see was Jess yelling at some other girl in the middle of the barn aisle.
“You keep that smelly rodent away from me,” she cried.
White Horses (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 10) Page 5
