Hot Potato

by Alyssa Brugman

  'We have to get it to the saddler before the weekend,' Lindsey said. 'He'll need a few days to fix it.'

  'But you can't,' interrupted Shelby. 'He knows your mum. What if he says something?'

  'I'll take it,' said Erin. 'I'll pay for it, and that will make me square for my share, OK?'

  Lindsey nodded. 'Deal.'

  'What are you going to say to your mum?' Shelby asked.

  Erin shrugged. 'Maybe I'll tell her the saddle was Hayley's and Mrs Crook said I could have it, if I got it fixed.'

  'But your mum knows Mrs Crook. What if she rings her to thank her for it? And won't she see that saddle is too short for Bandit?'

  Erin rubbed her eyes. 'I don't know! I'll make something up.'

  'What about later when you don't have it any more? What will she say when it's missing?'

  Erin sighed. 'I'll say it was stolen! Can you think of a better idea, Shel?'

  Shelby opened her mouth and closed it again.

  'I didn't think so!'

  The three girls sat quietly for a long time. The only sound in the room was a blowfly buzzing around the window frame and crashing into the glass.

  Eventually Lindsey spoke. 'I don't even want to think about what would happen if we got busted. We're making up stuff all the time, and it's only going to get worse, so it's important that we all tell each other what we've said and stick to the same story. I think it's time for us to decide what we're going to do with her.'

  Erin sat forward, lacing her fingers together. 'This isn't as much fun as I thought it would be. I think we should sell her.'

  'Shelby?' Lindsey asked.

  She folded her arms. It was obvious that Lindsey was in favour of getting rid of Hotty too. She had been from the very beginning. Shelby was sure that with a little bit of effort Hotty would be a great pony that they could all be proud of. There had to be some way to talk their parents into letting them keep her. They just needed some time to come up with a plan. Her only hope was to prolong the sale for as long as possible.

  'Whoever is going to buy her is going to want to ride her when they come to look at her,' she answered. 'I think we should try a different saddle. If we're going to make our money back, we can't have her bucking like that.'

  'Are you volunteering yours?' Lindsey asked.

  Shelby considered for a moment. Her saddle was ugly and old, and had suffered through all of her adventures. It had been dragged along the ground, rained on, stepped on – not to mention the normal wear and tear from riding almost every day. She had needed a new one for a long time, but she didn't have a whole rack to choose from like Lindsey, or a sympathetic mother like Erin. It was the only saddle she had.

  Still, if she was going to talk the other girls into keeping Hotty for just a little while longer, she was going to have to show commitment.

  She nodded. 'We'll try it tomorrow.'

  'And what if she does that crazy thing again?' Erin asked.

  'The chiropractor will be able to tell us if she has a sore back,' Shelby replied.

  'Yeah, and who's going to pay for that?' Lindsey asked.

  Erin's face split into a grin. 'Gwen Stefani, of course!'

  13 The Worst Part

  Erin was late for class the next day. She scurried into Maths with her head bowed and flopped into the chair next to Shelby. She flipped to the back of her exercise book and wrote a message.

  I can't take this any more!!!!

  'What?' Shelby murmured.

  The stupid saddle!!!! Erin wrote.

  'Tell me!' Shelby whispered.

  At the front of the room their teacher, Mrs Tapley- Hook, spoke. 'If X in this equation equals two-thirds and Y equals fifteen, can you calculate Z?'

  Erin cupped her hand over her mouth and kept her eyes fixed on the whiteboard at the front of the room, hoping that their teacher wouldn't notice.

  'We dropped Hiccup's saddle at the saddler's this morning, but he remembered it. I said that it had been Mrs Edel's, but she sold it to the Crooks and the Crooks were giving it to me. Then he said that the Crooks had never owned a stock saddle. They'd only ever had dressage saddles, so he didn't understand why they would buy one – especially a second-hand one, and then he said that it wouldn't fit any of their horses anyway.'

  Shelby shook her head. They should have anticipated that this might happen. Even in a city horse people always know other horse people.

  Mrs Tapley-Hook pointed her whiteboard marker at the boy sitting in front of the two girls. 'Jasper? Can you tell me the answer?'

  'Z equals twenty-seven,' he answered.

  'Very good.' The teacher turned around to write some new problems on the board.

  'Then what?' whispered Shelby.

  Erin's eyes widened. 'Then mum stared at me like I'd stolen it or something, and I said that . . .'

  'What does Z equal in this equation, Shelby?' Mrs Tapley-Hook asked.

  Shelby froze. She looked for cues from her classmates, but her eyes met only vacant faces.

  'Thirty-two?' she guessed.

  'You haven't been paying attention. You need to concentrate now or you won't understand the rest of the lesson. I won't ask you again.' Her teacher stalked past the girls' desk to the back of the room.

  Erin wrote another note in the back of her book and underlined it.

  And that's not even the worst part!

  Erin's face was pale and pinched, as though she was sick. Shelby was bursting to hear the worst part, but now she would have to wait until the end of class. She frowned into her equations. Who cares what Z equals? she thought. There were so many more important things to talk about.

  Finally the bell rang and all around Shelby could hear the rumble of students talking at once, teachers raising their voices with last-minute instructions, and the scrape of chairs being pushed across vinyl floors, or clanging against metal table legs.

  'So then what?' Shelby prompted.

  'I confessed.'

  Shelby gaped. 'Really?'

  Erin shoved her book into her bag and the two girls shuffled behind the other students towards the door. 'I didn't tell her about CC. I said that we'd broken the saddle and that we had to get it fixed before Lindsey's mum found out.'

  'Was she cranky?'

  A frown crossed Erin's brow. 'Of course she was cranky!' she huffed. 'I knew it would be more than fifty. I just never thought it would be three hundred!'

  'Dollars?' Shelby gasped.

  'No, broad-beans, you ninny. Mum was mad because she didn't see why our family should pay to fix the saddle when you broke it.'

  'You told her I broke it?'

  Erin continued. 'I just keep thinking of all the other ways I could spend three hundred dollars.'

  Shelby knew Erin would be thinking of shoes, or mobile phone covers – something dumb like that.

  'I don't want to do this any more, Shel,' Erin continued. 'I've decided. It would be different if we could ask for help, but doing it in secret is driving me mental.'

  The two girls joined the flow of students in the corridor.

  'We can do this by ourselves,' Shelby assured her. 'We just need some more time.'

  Erin jutted her chin out and folded her arms. 'Don't you get it? More time means more money. How much is this chiropractor going to be?'

  Shelby shrugged and looked at her shoes.

  Erin tossed her head. 'You don't even really want to share CC with us, do you? You want to keep her for yourself. You're just using Lindsey and me for things you need.'

  Shelby stopped still in the corridor and the other students streamed around her. Somebody shoved her in the back. 'Hurry up, will ya?'

  Shelby didn't notice. She was stinging from Erin's words. 'You take that back, Erin!'

  'Anyway, I already have a good horse. You're the only one who needs a proper horse. If you want to do this then do it by yourself.'

  Shelby followed Erin down the corridor, fuming. When they reached the Computer Studies room she waited until Erin picked a seat and th
en she sat on the opposite side of the room.

  She stared at the blank computer screen with a lump in her throat, as though she'd swallowed a whole walnut. She was afraid she was going to cry, not because she was sad, but because she was shocked – and also because what Erin had said was a little bit true.

  Shelby thought back to all the things she'd thought and said since she'd seen the pony at the sales. Erin was right. She had never really wanted to share Hotty at all.

  14 Candour

  At the end of the school day Shelby walked over to the place where Erin's mum usually picked them up to take them to the stables. Erin was already waiting. She had her bag over one shoulder and looked the other way when Shelby approached.

  'Are you sorry for what you said?' Shelby asked.

  'No.'

  Shelby bit her lip. 'Can I still have a lift?'

  Erin shrugged.

  Shelby looked over at the turning bay but the doors of the school bus she used to catch home were already closing. The engine rumbled as the bus pulled away from the kerb.

  Shelby scuffed her heel across the edge of the gutter. She didn't know what to do. Her parents wouldn't worry until five, when they went to pick her up from the stables. Would they think to look for her here? She wondered how long it would take to walk home.

  'You can be mad at me, but I need a lift,' she mumbled. 'I don't have any other way of getting there. I don't have a mobile. I haven't even got any money to ring my mum at a public phone.'

  Erin narrowed her eyes. 'It's always the same with you, Shelby.'

  'What do you want me to do, Erin?' She held her hands out, palms up. 'This is how it is for me.'

  'You could be more grateful.'

  Shelby looked away for a moment, swallowing her anger. 'So far I have paid my share. You offered to fix the saddle. Nobody made you.'

  At that moment Erin's mum drove up in front of them. The two girls climbed into the car. Erin slammed the passenger-side door.

  'Steady on there!' Erin's mum said. Her eyes met Shelby's in the rear vision mirror and Shelby blushed.

  Erin's mother tried to make conversation but Erin grumbled monosyllabic answers under her breath.

  'I can see you're in a mood,' her mother commented, and they drove on in silence.

  In the back seat Shelby squirmed. She hoped one day she could talk her own mother into driving them to the stables. Then she wouldn't feel like such a scab.

  Lindsey was waiting for them at the edge of the arena. Miss Anita had a young roan cutting horse on a lunge rein.

  'Are you guys ready?' Lindsey asked.

  'I'm going to ride my own horse today.' Erin stalked past Lindsey towards Bandit's paddock.

  'What's up with you, grumpy-trousers?' Lindsey called after her.

  'Ask Shelby,' she shouted over her shoulder.

  Lindsey turned to Shelby with an eyebrow raised.

  'We should probably ride Hot . . . the pony tomorrow,' Shelby said. 'We'll just check on her today.'

  The two girls saddled up Blue and Cracker. On the way to the back paddock they saw Erin in the jumping arena. She was taking Bandit around the course. She didn't stop when her friends rode past. Shelby wasn't even sure if she saw them.

  'Bandit's jumping well,' Lindsey commented.

  Shelby only nodded in reply.

  At the back paddock Lindsey opened the gate for Shelby and they cantered up to the ridge, halting at the top. All of the spelled horses were standing around the dam. Three horses stood shoulder-deep eating the weeds from the water's surface. Shelby shivered, thinking how cold the water must be and wondering what might be lurking on the silty bottom or swimming around their legs – yabbies possibly, ugly catfish or slimy black eels. She had fallen into a billabong similar to this last summer, and the memory of unseen slippery things brushing against her flesh made her skin crawl.

  The little chestnut pony was grazing happily between two fat broodmares. Shelby and Lindsey watched her for a little while longer.

  'Do you think I'm a scab, Lindsey?'

  'Is that what this is all about?' Lindsey laughed. She gathered up her reins. 'Race you back!' Then she was gone, scattering pebbles behind her.

  Shelby wheeled Blue around and he lunged forward, keen for the chase. She crouched over his neck as he gathered speed. Her eyes watered and the wind whistled as it rushed past her ears.

  Lindsey was streaking ahead. Cracker was stretched out low. Shelby could hear Lindsey's laughter as she urged him forward.

  At the gate Cracker skidded to a stop. Lindsey brought him up close to the latch and flung the gate open.

  'Close that, will you?' she called over her shoulder and then Cracker was off again, his pounding hooves creating a cloud of dust that made Shelby cough.

  'No fair!' Shelby shouted, grinning. Lindsey didn't answer. Shelby could hear her yelling, 'Yar! Yar!' like a stockrider.

  Blue skipped through the gate, backed up, and stood quietly so that she could fasten the chain. When she'd finished Blue needed no encouraging – he spun around on his hind legs and sprang forward, flicking his tail.

  Closer to the stables Shelby slowed Blue to a trot, and then a walk, letting him cool down and catch his breath. She unsaddled him and let him loose in the paddock.

  Lindsey was already in the feed shed.

  'What took you so long?' she asked.

  'You had a head start! If it wasn't for the gate, I would have beaten you easily,' Shelby joked. Gate or no gate, Shelby knew Lindsey was a bolder rider.

  Lindsey climbed up the bales of hay that were stacked to the ceiling as though they were a set of giant stairs and rolled a new bale down to the floor. Dust and loose strands of lucerne flew up into the air. One of the rat-cats sneezed.

  'You didn't answer my question,' Shelby said.

  Lindsey sighed. 'I think you want a horse that's as good as you think your horse should be, but I don't think Bess is that horse.'

  She frowned at Shelby, concentrating. Shelby guessed Lindsey was trying out different ways to say something Shelby didn't want to hear. Eventually she shook her head. 'She's pretty, but she's not a nice person.'

  'But she could have had a bad life so far. We don't know.'

  Lindsey shrugged. 'Why have you decided that it's your problem? There are so many nicer horses out there.' She paused. 'Like Blue, for example.'

  Shelby picked the lucerne off her shirt. 'I just think that if you always give up on things as soon as they get a bit difficult then you'd never achieve anything. Even really fun stuff has hard parts – like when you go to the zoo and at the end of the day your feet are sore and you're hungry.'