CHAPTER TEN
Since Jordan had pretty much abandoned Wizard, I decided that I’d better ride him. If he did want to sell him then the horse needed a tune up. However, I was hoping that I could convince Jordan to keep him. Wizard was sweet and he’d been through a lot. He deserved a stable home with people who were going to love him and take care of him. I thought maybe that place was here but Dad wasn’t so sure. He kept asking me if I’d heard from Jordan and even threatened to go and see Taylor at the tack store but after she yelled at him, I don’t think that he was really too keen to see her again. I didn’t blame him. Taylor was mean.
“Do you think maybe you could handle a little workout?” I asked Wizard.
I tacked him up and took him out to the ring. The horse was fidgety and a little spooked. I didn’t blame him. He’d been through a lot. I’d be spooked too. I just asked him to walk on a loose rein and then trot a little. Finally, we cantered around the ring and he let me jump him over a couple of the smaller jumps. He was flawless. He didn’t really need a tune up at all. If we took him to the next show, he’d clean up in the ribbons and probably go home with a new owner, one who wouldn’t pay cash under the table and beat him.
“So you’re riding my horse now are you?”
It was Jordan. I hadn’t even heard him come in. He was hanging on the arena fence watching me. I patted Wizard on the neck and walked him over to his owner.
“Well you abandoned him,” I said. “What was I supposed to do?”
I didn’t add that he’d abandoned me as well. That didn’t seem to matter anymore.
“I’ve been a little busy,” he said with a frown.
“That is what you always say,” I said. “It’s getting to be a lame excuse. We’re all busy. That doesn’t stop me from answering my phone or at least sending a text message so that you know I’m alive.”
“Well I’m here now,” he said. “With my bags and everything.”
“What bags?”
I looked at his feet and saw two overstuffed bags full of clothes spewing out like they were trying to escape.
“So?” I said.
“Mom kicked me out, for good this time.” He shrugged.
“You don’t seem too upset about it,” I said.
“It’s been coming a long time and anyway, it was time,” he replied.
“This isn’t because of me, is it?” I said, my face turning red. “I don’t want to be the thing that comes between you and your own mother.”
“You think you’re that important?” he said with a sly smile.
“Hey,” I said and reached out to kick his arm with my boot.
“Don’t worry, it wasn’t just you. There are other things too.”
“What things?” I said.
He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
I thought it mattered a lot but not enough to make Jordan mad about me pressing him.
“So where are you staying?” I said.
“Here,” he replied.
“Here?” I shrieked.
“That’s okay, isn’t it?” he said.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
“Did you tell Jordan that he could stay here?”
I demanded answers from my father when I found him in the barn. I’d dragged Wizard behind me and left Jordan standing there looking a little confused.
“He called while you were riding,” Dad said. “And I told him to come on over.”
“But to move in here?” I said. “Where is he going to put his stuff? Where is he going to sleep?”
“We have extra bedrooms, don’t we?” Dad said.
“You want him to live in the house with us?” I said. “Are you mad?”
“I thought you’d be happy,” Dad said. “You can tell him to leave if you want but I don’t think he has anywhere else to go. Besides, you were the one who said that we needed extra help. Well now we have help, live in help. That is the best kind.”
“But what if I’m in the bathroom and he bursts in or something?” I said, imagining all the awkward positions that Jordan could find me in.
“You’ll just have to lock the door,” Dad said.
“The lock doesn’t work,” I replied with a huff.
This was all I needed. Jordan breathing down my neck, living in my sanctuary. I already had my flaky mother and Cat, who was unpredictable. Now I’d have to watch my language and stop lounging around in my pajamas and drinking juice out of the carton and all the other gross things that a potential boyfriend might find disgusting.
“So am I in?” Jordan said.
He’d been standing at the entrance to the barn with his bags, looking like a lost puppy.
“I guess so,” I said. “I’ll show you where you can put your stuff after I take care of Wizard.”
“I’ll take care of him.” Jordan dumped his bags and went over to scratch his horse on the neck. “I’ve missed you,” he whispered.
Wizard nudged Jordan hard with his head and almost pushed him over. At least someone was happy that he was here.
I wasn’t sure whether Dad had made the best decision or the worst. I guess we’d find out as we went along. If we didn’t all kill each other first.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Later I showed Jordan his room. I don’t think he was impressed.
“You’re putting me in the attic?” he said.
“It’s not the attic,” I said. “It’s a spare room, look.”
I showed him where there was a folding cot and a card table that had seen better days.
“The view is good,” I said. “You can even see Jess’s farm from up here.”
I pressed my face against the dirty glass. I hadn’t spent much time up in the attic. It smelled funny and there had been rats when we first moved in. I think that Meatball had taken care of all of them now and my father had set a few traps but I still wasn’t too keen to find out if any mutant ones had survived. I didn’t tell Jordan about the rats.
“You can see her barn from here,” I said. “And the ring. If you see a gray horse out there you have to let me know, okay?”
“Why?” he said.
“Because I need that horse back,” I said. “He’s mine. Well he used to be mine, sort of.”
“And you want him back?” Jordan said.
“Of course I do. You know what Jess is like. She’ll have ruined him in a month or two and besides, he was retired. He was lame. I don’t know what Jess has done to make him sound again but drugging him up to his eyeballs so he can jump for her isn’t exactly my idea of a good time.”
“Maybe he just got better?” Jordan said.
“He didn’t get better,” I replied, glaring at him. “He needs to be rescued from her.”
“So you want a lame horse here then, do you?” Jordan said.
“You obviously don’t understand,” I said.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I don’t understand.”
It felt like we were already having our first fight and he’d only moved in five minutes ago.
He threw his stuff on the bed and started looking for a closet. There wasn’t one. I felt kind of glad. Let his clothes get all scrunched up if he didn’t even care about things like saving horses from Jess.
“No closet?” he finally said.
“Cat is going to bring you up a chest of drawers for your stuff,” I said. “She has a spare one in her room.”
“Right, so I’m like the servant or something, stuffed in the attic and out of sight?” he said.
“Sorry it’s not up to your standards,” I said, still feeling hurt.
“No, look, its fine,” he said. “It’s not you, it’s just the situation.”
He looked sad and I felt sorry for him again. I knew what it was like to have a difficult relationship with your own mother.
“So I guess you’ll be down later?” I said.
“Are you kidding?” he said. “I’m not sitting up here all day in this dusty room. Tell me what to do. I’m here to work.”
“Who’s the hot help?” Molly said when she came out that evening to ride.
It had been a warm day and Jordan had taken his shirt off. I’d tried not to look but had caught Cat drooling at him for five minutes and now Molly was doing the same thing, looking at him like he was a piece of meat.
“That’s my friend Jordan,” I said. “He’s going to be helping out for a while.”
“Friend or boyfriend?” Molly said with a sly wink.
“Friend,” I said. “Definitely friend.”
“Why?” she said, looking at me like I was crazy. “He’s so cute.”
“So everyone keeps telling me,” I said.
But maybe having Jordan around was going to be a good detox. The more I looked at him, the less I got that weird feeling in the pit of my stomach. It was like exposing a horse to something they were afraid of. Eventually they got over that balloon you put in their stall or that tarp you made them walk over every day. Maybe the more time I spent around Jordan, the less I’d like him. And maybe my father knew that too.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
“Your Dad is really letting some hot guy live with us?” Cat said. “Is he mad?”
“Possibly,” I said.
“I mean Jordan is like super-hot. I could totally jump his bones,” she said with a smile.
“Now you sound like the mad one,” I said.
She shrugged. “I’m just saying, there are not many dads who would let their daughter’s hot boyfriend move in with them.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said.
“You keep saying that.” Cat just shook her head. “When are you going to admit that you guys are meant for each other. Who else is going to put up with all your craziness?”
She did have a point.
“Well if Dad thought he was my boyfriend, he definitely wouldn’t let him move in so you’re the only one who does.” I thought for a moment. “Unless he’s hoping that us living under the same roof is going to drive us further apart.”
“True,” Cat said. “When Jordan catches you in those ratty old mismatched pajamas it's not exactly going to be a match made in heaven is it?”
“Well what else am I supposed to wear?” I said.
Cat just shook her head. “You really are clueless, aren’t you?”
“I guess?” I shrugged.
But Jordan said he was tired and went to bed after dinner and so there was no chance of him seeing me in anything but my respectable day clothes. My mother didn’t seem impressed that Dad had just invited Jordan to live with us like a stray dog. Apparently he hadn’t asked her either.
“Why do we need him here?” she’d snarled at my father as they did the dishes.
“In case you hadn’t noticed,” Dad told her. “This farm is falling down faster than we can put it back together. I need help and I can’t afford to pay someone. Jordan will work for board and lodging. He’s young and strong. It’s the best of both worlds really. We help him out and he helps us out.”
“Well I’m not cooking Easter dinner now,” she said, throwing her dish rag on the counter and storming off.
Somehow I’d never thought she would follow through with it anyway. The mom who used to cook for us and even took a class to learn how was long gone. This mom didn’t care about being domestic. She didn’t care about anything.
“And what about when his mother comes to yell at us again?” I said after Mom had stomped up the stairs and slammed her bedroom door like a teenager.
“The horse is back,” Dad said. “She can’t sue us anymore. Jordan turns eighteen next month. That means he can live wherever he wants.”
“And until then?” I said, my palms starting to sweat at the thought of Taylor showing up here again like a little tornado.
“We'll just have to pretend we’re not home,” Dad said.
“Mature,” I replied. “We might as well just get a big dog that will bite anyone’s leg off who comes on the farm.”
“Not a bad idea,” he said.
“Really?” I replied. “Because I’ve been thinking that we should get a dog for a while now, you know, for protection.”
He nodded thoughtfully but I’d thought that Dad was just humoring me until the next day when he called me over to the truck.
“Where are we going?” I said.
“The pound,” he replied.
“Really?” I said.
“I don’t think your dog idea is such a bad idea,” he replied. “The meaner and uglier the better.”
“Okay,” I said.
I didn’t tell him that I actually had visions of some cute, fluffy dog like Lassie who would follow me wherever I went and round up the horses for me because mean and ugly didn’t sound quite what I was looking for. Still, mean and ugly would keep Jess away and anyone else who might decide to threaten our horses and the safer our horses were, the better I would feel.
Animal control was a single story building surrounded by metal fences topped with barbed wire. It looked like a prison. I suddenly wanted to rescue all the dogs, cats and other animals that were trapped inside. I knew what happened to them if they didn’t get adopted after a certain amount of time. It was the gas chamber for them. Or round the back of the building and a bullet to the head. I wasn’t exactly sure how they did it but I knew that the pets that were no longer wanted and couldn’t get adopted were killed. They had to be. There were more waiting to take their place in the kennels. People really needed to stop breeding their pets.
“Look, horses,” I cried, pointing to a paddock around the back where I caught a glimpse of a flaxen tail.
“No,” Dad said firmly. “We don’t need another lame, useless horse.”
“But …” I said.
“No,” Dad replied before I could finish my argument.
I’d wanted to add that just because the horses were rescues, didn’t mean that they were lame or useless but Dad was right, we really didn’t need another horse right now and besides, the chance of one of them actually being any good was a long shot.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The dogs were kept in metal cages with concrete floors. Some of them had plush toys that they had obviously been given by the volunteers. One of them was holding a green dinosaur, another a pink pig. They met us at the bars with wagging tails although some of them barked and others just sat in the back eyeing us warily.
“Most of them are friendly,” the volunteer said.
She was a heavy set girl with a plain face and a container of dog poop bags clipped to her belt. Her name was Nancy. I wondered how many dogs Nancy had back at her house or apartment. Probably more than she was supposed to but I didn’t blame her. If I worked there, I’d want to take them all home with me too, especially the little ones, all fluffy and sad with puppy dog eyes. They looked like they could fit in the palm of your hand. I looked away. One of those would never scare Jess.
“We don’t want nice,” Dad said. “We want the kind of dog that will rip your leg off if you look at it wrong.”
“Well those aren’t the sort of dogs that get adopted,” Nancy said, looking at my father like he was a maniac. “Those are the ones that don’t pass the intake tests.”
“What happens to them?” I asked.
“They are destroyed,” Nancy said. “For their own good,” she added. “If we adopted out dogs that bit people we’d get sued and besides, the only people who want dogs like that are the people who run the fighting rings.”
She looked at my father, probably trying to decide if he was a drug dealing, dog fighte
r.
“We have a horse farm,” I said. “We want a guard dog.”
“Why didn’t you say so,” she said. “You’ll need a decent sized animal, one that is loyal but only to a few people. Safe around horses and other animals. Let me see.”
She flipped over some pages on her clipboard like it would magically tell her which dog was the one for us. I tried to look over her shoulder at the black and white mug shots of the dogs and their information.
“And no puppies,” Dad said. “We don’t have time for potty training.”
“Well the puppies get adopted pretty quickly,” Nancy said. “It is the older dogs that have problems being adopted.”
“Why? What is wrong with them?” Dad said.
“Oh nothing,” Nancy said breezily. “Sometimes they can be a bit set in their ways but you know it’s like adopting kids, everyone wants a baby.”
I couldn’t imagine why. Babies spent all their time pooping, crying and demanding to be fed. I remembered how Owen had been. I was sure he was much more fun now that he could walk and was probably starting to talk. Babies were no fun at all. Puppies were cute though. We passed a whole pen of them, all tumbling over each other and playing. I could see the appeal. Then again a puppy could easily get stepped on by a horse. That wouldn’t be so good.
Nancy took us round the back where some of the less desirable dogs were kept. There were a couple of pit bull mixes who barked at us, spit flying everywhere.
“I’m not scared of you,” I told them.
“They are nice dogs,” Nancy said. “It’s their upbringing. A lot of these come in after being seized from drug dealers so they haven’t really been trained for anything good.”
“What have they been trained for?” I said, imagining the dogs as thugs out on the street with spiked collars, fetching packets of drugs and taking them back to their masters.
“You don’t want to know,” Nancy said.
She stopped outside a cage.
“This one might work for you,” she said. “He came in about a month ago. No one has shown any interest. He doesn’t have much time left.”
Catch Rider (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 28) Page 3