Hot Potato

by Alyssa Brugman

  'No! I'd better go now.' Shelby walked out and stood on the veranda. She saw a swish of tail as her friends led the chestnut behind the feed shed.

  'I'll figure it out, you know,' came Mrs Edel's voice from inside the office.

  Shelby ran through some possible responses in her head. Good for you? Too cheeky. There's nothing to figure out? A lie. I know you will? Too close to the truth. Instead Shelby said nothing at all.

  4 Arabetha Bella or Bess

  The three girls perched on the top rail of the fence and watched the pony. The wind had picked up, making the tree boughs creak and lifting Shelby's hair from her forehead.

  They had decided that the back spelling paddock was the best place to keep the pony for now, even though most of the horses were racehorses, or broodmares – big thoroughbreds or standardbreds – so the tiny mare with her fancy white legs stood out.

  It had taken them a while to coax her along the laneway between the paddocks. She shied at everything, but Shelby accepted that this was a new place and she'd had a very scary day so far. Who knew where she had been before, or what had happened to her?

  At the sales, with all of those people crowded around, she must have felt like a pack of wolves were surrounding her, ready for the kill. She had no way of understanding that they weren't going to hurt her.

  Now the mare was cantering up and down the fence line and whinnying. The girls weren't so worried about her making a fuss and drawing attention to herself way out here. This paddock was seventy-five acres with lots of trees and two huge dams. It was criss-crossed with paths where Lindsey or Shelby led the beginners on trail rides on the weekends.

  There was a ridge running along the middle, and you couldn't see the far side of it from the house. Lindsey's mum didn't come out the back very often, anyway – only to check on the fences and the broodmares when they were close to foaling.

  'I think we should call her Princess Arabetha Bella,' said Erin.

  'Just off the top of your head?' asked Shelby.

  Erin giggled. 'No, silly! I was thinking about it on the way back in the truck.'

  'What about Bess?' Lindsey suggested. 'Bess is a good name.'

  'For a Clydesdale,' said Shelby. 'She's too small to be a Bess. I think it should be something pretty.'

  'OK, what do you think of Minuetta Farfalla Flora?' asked Erin.

  The pony galloped along the fence, ears back, shaking her head and swishing her tail. She skidded to a stop and whinnied again – her belly shaking with the strain. She was working herself up into a nice frenzy. Shelby wondered if the little mare had a best friend where she'd come from and she was only just now realising that it wasn't there.

  'Tess,' added Lindsey, shrugging. 'Or Ness.'

  'How about Countess Simonetta Cecilia Songbird?' offered Erin.

  'Then she could be Tess,' said Lindsey.

  Shelby laughed and rolled her eyes.

  'Only for short,' Lindsey added.

  Shelby groaned. 'No more "ess" names!'

  'Well, you haven't come up with anything, Shel,' Erin retorted.

  'We should call her Hot Potato. That's what Lindsey called her at the sales, and that's what she is. We can call her Hotty for short.'

  The two girls stared at her. Erin curled her lip. 'And you thought Arabetha Bella was bad?'

  'Don't forget she called her horse Blue,' observed Lindsey.

  'He was already called Blue when he arrived! I couldn't change it, because he answered to it.' Shelby frowned. There was nothing wrong with the name Blue. It was a good name – true blue, blue blood, blue ribbon. There was also the fact that her little paint gelding had blue eyes. It wasn't completely random! 'We have to agree on a name.'

  'Why?' asked Erin. 'You can call her what you like, but I'm going to call her Cecilia Songbird. Maybe I will call her CC for short?'

  Shelby tilted her head to the side. 'Wouldn't that be CS?'

  'Bess,' said Lindsey.

  'CC!' Erin retorted.

  'Bess!'

  'CC!'

  'What's wrong with Hotty?' whined Shelby. Hotty was a good name. It had a meaning – it was a joke between the girls that no one else would know. Why couldn't the other girls see that?

  'What's wrong with Cecilia Songbird?' argued Erin.

  'Nothing,' said Shelby. 'It'll be good for when we show her, but we need something to call her at home.'

  'Show her? You said we were going to sell her!' Lindsey rocked her head from side to side, mimicking Shelby. '"Get your money out, Lindsey, we can get a thousand dollars for her tomorrow." Remember?'

  'We need to find out what she can do first. She might be worth even more than that,' Shelby began. 'She could be . . .'

  Just then the pony trotted across the paddock in front of them. Her hooves flicked out, hanging in the air for a second before they hit the ground. Her neck arched over, and her hindquarters were tucked underneath her, propelling her forward. She looked as though she was floating.

  'Oh my Lord!' gasped Erin.

  'Wow!' said Lindsey, shading her eyes with her hands.

  '. . . Something really special,' Shelby finished.

  5 Experts

  'So?' inquired Shelby's father when his daughter walked out the back door. He was crouched down, weeding the vegetable garden. Shelby noticed he was wearing the gardening apron that he'd bought for her to give to him last Christmas.

  'It was good fun,' she said. 'Nice apron. Someone really good-looking must have given that to you.'

  'Someone really good-looking bought it,' he retorted. He frowned at her for a moment longer. 'Your mother and I were sure we were going to have to console you tonight. We thought you'd see all these sad, old, broken ponies off to the knackers, and you'd be beside yourself – crying and throwing yourself around. We even bought you blackberry pie for dessert to distract you.' He thrust his trowel into the dirt and brushed his hands together.

  'Mmm, pie,' Shelby grinned.

  At dinner Shelby really wanted to talk about the chestnut pony. It was the most exciting thing that had happened for ages and she was bursting to tell, but every time she opened her mouth she remembered that it was a secret.

  She also wanted to complain about how dumb Erin and Lindsey had been about the name, but she couldn't think how to bring it up without revealing the truth.

  Her family wouldn't be listening anyway. For years now she'd been prattling away about ponies at the dinner table, and none of them knew one end from the other.

  'Lindsey bought a horse today and we were trying to decide what to name it. Erin wanted to call it Arabetha Songflower or something, and Lindsey wants to call it Bess. How dumb is that? I said they should call it Hotty. They said I pick dumb names, but I've never had a horse that wasn't already named, so how would they know?'

  'What sort of horse?' asked her little brother, Blake. He had skewered a rissole and was waving it casually on the end of his fork. Connor, Shelby's other brother, concentrated on stabbing his vegetables.

  'A chestnut one,' she answered. 'Four white socks.'

  'How many hands is it?' Blake asked.

  'Could be twelve-something.' She shrugged. 'Small, anyway.'

  Blake nodded and then tore a chunk from his rissole with his teeth.

  Connor frowned. 'I thought four socks was bad because white hooves are softer than black ones, and so they get lame easier.'

  'Sometimes,' Shelby replied. 'It doesn't really matter on the surfaces we take them over. It's pretty sandy in the Gully.'

  Shelby's father spooned some extra carrots onto his plate. 'What about Blossom? If it was a gelding I would suggest Hamish. Hamish is a fine name. But if I had a little mare I would call her Blossom. What do you think?'

  Shelby didn't answer. Instead she took a long drink of her milk.

  'It must be just for herself.' Her mother pressed some mashed potato onto the back of her fork. 'The Edels usually buy bigger horses for the riding school because they have a longer stride and are more flexible in t
erms of the size of the riders they can put on them.'

  Shelby put down her glass and stared at her mother. Typical! she thought. As soon as she needed them to be ignorant, everyone's an expert!

  6 Bareback

  The next day after school Erin's mum drove the two girls to the stables, as usual. Shelby could hardly sit still in the car. She and Erin had talked about the pony all day and Shelby had been dreaming about her so much that she couldn't remember what she really looked like.

  They stopped briefly to pull on jodhpurs and grab their helmets, and then they headed to the riding school ponies' paddock to catch Blue.

  He was standing in the very far corner, resting. A round, shaggy pony called Hiccup grazed nearby. Since she'd moved Blue from the paddock near her house to the riding school, he and Hiccup had become firm friends. She'd noticed recently that when she let Blue loose in the paddock after a ride Hiccup would whinny to him, and they would canter towards each other and have a dramatic reunion, as though they had been separated for years instead of a few hours.

  At the gate Shelby called out, 'Come on, little man!' Blue pricked his ears for a moment and then closed his eyes again. He wasn't as easy to catch as he used to be. In the old days, when he was by himself, Blue used to wait for her at the sliprail, but these days he was more likely to be standing with Hiccup near the dam, or under the trees at the very back of the paddock.

  It made her sad that he wasn't so keen to see her any more, but at the same time she was also glad that he was in a herd, the way horses were supposed to be. She knew that he was much happier than before.

  Shelby slid the bridle over his ears, and then she and Erin doubled bareback along the laneway to the back paddock, leaving a bereft Hiccup neighing behind them. Shelby drummed her heels on Blue's sides and Erin laughed at his rumbling, bumbling, teeth-chattering canter.

  Along the way Shelby looked around for Lindsey but she couldn't see her anywhere. On Mondays Lindsey's school finished earlier than hers and Erin's. Normally Lindsey went straight to work making up the feed buckets, or lunging horses, but today Shelby thought she might be down at the back paddock already. That's where Shelby would be, if she had arrived early.

  She and Erin had talked about the pony all day, and had got in trouble in almost every class for not paying attention. Like Shelby, Erin had dreams about great show-ring victories and champion ribbons, but they had been careful to avoid two topics – the pony's name, and who was going to ride her first.

  Shelby wasn't sure if it was because Erin was scared to ride her first and embarrassed to admit it, or whether she wanted to be the one and didn't want to argue with Shelby about it.

  Lindsey was the most experienced rider of the three. Erin was probably the most technically correct, even though she had started riding later than the other two girls, but that was because she had lessons with Miss Anita every weekend. Neither Shelby nor Lindsey had instruction.

  Shelby thought she should be the one to ride the mare because she saw her first. She was the one who felt the special connection when they were at the sales. She was the one who had bid.

  Hopefully they wouldn't have to argue about it. Shelby had been optimistic that the other two might nominate her to go first – Erin because she was scared, and Lindsey because she was wise – but now that she couldn't see Lindsey around the stables, Shelby thought it was unlikely that she had waited. Lindsey didn't think there was anything special about riding a new horse. She had no sense of ceremony.

  When they reached the gate Erin swung off Blue's back to unlatch it, and then she walked beside Blue along the wheel ruts that headed up to the ridge. They reached the top and Shelby stopped, surveying the flat, cleared part of the paddock below.

  Fat broodmares and spelled horses grazed in a herd. Shelby noticed that they were all facing the same direction and wondered if that was always the case. She couldn't see the small pony amongst them.

  Beyond the herd was the gate that led out to the Gully where the girls rode. Fire trails stretched away left, right and straight ahead into the bush. She wondered if Lindsey had headed out for the afternoon, and felt a flare of anger in her belly at the thought of it.

  Blue strained at the reins, keen to munch at the grass in front of him, but Shelby held them firm. She took a deep breath. She was already cross, and there was no proof that Lindsey had even done anything yet.

  'There,' said Erin, pointing.

  Through the trees further along the track that ran along the ridge, Shelby could make out a chestnut hide moving at speed.

  'Is she riding her?'

  'Yep,' said Erin with her hands on her hips.

  Lindsey rode up to meet them at a canter. She hadn't bothered with a saddle either. Her face was flushed and she beamed. The pony tossed her head and crunched on the bit.

  'There you are! Well, she's definitely broken. I don't think she's done much, but she's got a nice soft mouth and she responds to leg aids. Watch.'

  Lindsey put her calf to the pony's side and the pony moved her back end away from Lindsey's leg. 'See?'

  'Nice of you to wait,' snapped Erin.

  'I get off early on Mondays so I came straight out here. I was going to wait, but I knew you guys would take ages. I couldn't help myself! She's pretty good. You should have a ride.' Lindsey slid off the horse's back and held the reins out.

  'Erin and I have been looking forward to this all day,' said Shelby. 'Don't you think it's a bit selfish? She's our horse too.'

  Lindsey tilted her head to the side. 'Well, technically speaking she's my horse at the moment. Remember?'

  Shelby and Erin exchanged a glance.

  'You would have made me get on her first anyway,' Lindsey said. 'Why don't you have a ride now? What's fifteen minutes?'

  Erin's face broke into a smile and she took the reins. 'Give me a boost, will you? Is she fiery? Has she shied or anything?'

  Lindsey cupped her hands together and Erin stepped into them, flipping her other leg over the pony's back.

  'OK, Bess, be a good girl now,' Lindsey murmured, patting her neck.

  'Her name is Hotty!' Shelby said. She could feel her chest tightening and her face going red. 'You can't have every part of it all to yourself. It's not fair!'

  'Jeez, Shel, chill, peppermill,' said Erin, adjusting the reins. 'Wow, she feels really narrow after Bandit.'

  Shelby glared at Erin. She shook her head, and then squeezed Blue's sides, pushing him around towards the gate.

  'I'll leave you to it then,' she said.

  'Shelby,' Lindsey called after her. 'What's the big deal? I'm sorry, OK?'

  It's too late, Shelby thought. It wasn't as though Lindsey could unride her. 'I have work to do,' she said without looking back.

  7 A Levy

  The afternoon sunlight slipped through the cracks between the wall palings, leaving bands of light and shade on the floor. One of the muscular feed-shed rat-cats lay on a stack of hay bales licking its paws. The striped shadows on its fur made it look like a tiger.

  Shelby looked up at the blackboard, muttered, 'Two green chaff, one pellets, two stud mix,' and then slid the dipper into the chaff bin.