Shelby's mother rubbed her temples. 'This is not how I intended to spend my afternoon.'
'You think I got kicked in the head on purpose?'
'Give him the sandwich now!' her mum said through gritted teeth.
Shelby handed the plastic container over and Blake stopped crying.
'How much longer are you going to be sick for, Shel?' he asked, blinking away his tears.
'Not long,' she promised, closing her eyes.
It was another forty-five minutes before a doctor saw them. The doctor bundled them into a ward and whipped the curtain around. Shelby wondered why she'd bothered. It wasn't as though it stopped the rest of the people in the room from hearing.
'You've fractured your zygomatic ridge,' she said, holding up the X-rays to the light.
Shelby and her mother both spoke at once.
'So when can I start riding again?'
'What does that mean exactly?'
'It means you've broken your cheekbone. You've got a mild concussion too. I would recommend that you don't ride again for at least six weeks, and keep away from horses for at least four to five weeks. I know horses, and I know how often they can clock you in the head with their jaws. This is not the kind of fracture that we can set with a cast. You will have to stay at home for the next week at least.'
Shelby wriggled on her trolley. 'Handling horses is my job, and I've never missed a day, so that won't be possible,' she said. 'What sort of horse did you have?'
The doctor smiled. 'Shelby, I know it sounds boring, but it will be much more boring if you don't give the bone a chance to knit. It could end up taking twice as long. You could also end up with a permanent lump there.'
Shelby opened her mouth, but her mother interrupted with a warning. 'No more cheek from you!'
They picked up a small vial of painkillers at the chemist on the way out and Shelby soon found herself at home on the lounge with a half-eaten spaghetti jaffle on the arm of the lounge next to her and six whole weeks of convalescing to contemplate.
She tried to remember the longest time that she'd gone without riding since she'd owned Blue. There'd been heavy rain for four days in a row last winter, and that had been unbearable.
Blake had eaten most of his jaffle, except the crusts, and now he squatted in front of the TV cupboard perusing the animated movie collection.
'Nemo or Milo?' he asked, displaying the two cases as if he were a game show hostess. 'I'm thinking Nemo.'
Shelby huffed. 'I don't have time for this!'
Blake examined the titles, frowning with concentration. 'I don't think Milo and Otis is any shorter,' he said apologetically.
23 Self-pity
Shelby rested the novel she was reading for English against the pillow. She had been reading the same line over and over – unable to concentrate.
Everyone else was probably getting ready for Pony Club right now. There was an interclub gymkhana in a few weeks. She'd probably miss that too. Maybe her mum would drive her over to watch? Shelby doubted it, now that her mum had assignments to do as well as a part-time job and full-time family duties.
She imagined what Erin and Lindsey might do without her supervision. They might sell Hotty to a brutal cowboy for the rodeo circuit. She would be called 'The Pocket Rocket' – a humorous curiosity slotted in between other displays of cruelty and abuse. Or they might give her away to some ignorant family – tied in a back yard on the fringes of suburbia, between the chicken pen and the Hills Hoist.
They might even send Hotty back to the Dog Man. Shelby narrowed her eyes. Yes, Lindsey and the Dog Man were old friends, weren't they?
Shelby could imagine the scene – poor little Hotty trudging up the ramp of the rusty old cattle truck on the way to her doom. The Dog Man slapping her rump. 'Hurry up, Sausages!'
Erin would be saying, 'Shouldn't we wait? I'm sure Shel would want to say goodbye.'
'Who?' from Lindsey.
'Shelby.'
'Oh, her.' Lindsey would shrug. 'I don't think she knew Bess that well anyway.'
Erin nodding in agreement. 'You're right. That horse always hated Shelby anyway. Remember how she nearly killed her? Twice!'
Shelby threw her book against the wall. 'Stupid zygomatic ridge,' she muttered.
And then there was Tammy's money. That was a little time bomb she hadn't thought about all day. She had to find a solution soon.
How could she be expected to lie here when there was so much going on?
'Mum!' she shouted. 'I need a drink!'
'There's nothing wrong with your legs,' came the reply from the other room.
'Jeez, you'd think the sympathy would last more than a few hours,' Shelby growled under her breath as she hauled herself to her feet.
In the bathroom Shelby looked at her reflection in the mirror again. Her broken cheek had swollen to twice the normal size. Her eye was puffy and black, and her nose was a reddish purple. She could still see the imprint of the hoof in small abrasions.
'You can actually see how much this hurts!' she yelled. 'Don't you even care?'
'Since you're up, there's a full basket of washing in the laundry that needs folding,' her mother called out.
Shelby dragged her feet all the way to the laundry and began to fold the clothes. Although her face wasn't hurting right at that minute she knew that it would be if she hadn't taken a painkiller. And when she really concentrated on how much it should hurt, she did feel a bit dizzy.
'This is so unfair!' she said to no one.
There was Blue, too. She hadn't gone for a day without seeing him for as long as she could remember. She hoped they didn't expect her to give him up as well. She wouldn't – no matter what the doctors said.
'You'd better drive me over there every day or else!' She was pretty sure her mum wouldn't be able to hear through the brick wall. 'Or else I'm going to be so mad!'
Speaking of tempers, she wondered what had happened with Lindsey and her mum. What would she say when Shelby couldn't come to work for five whole weeks?
Then Shelby had a splendid idea.
* * *
'Mrs Edel said that since I can't work for five weeks she'll need money for Blue's agistment. She said fifty dollars would cover it,' Shelby told her mother, as she hung up the phone. 'I can give it to her at the barbecue tomorrow.'
'That sounds reasonable,' her mother replied, gathering her handbag from the back of the dining room chair and rummaging for her wallet.
'So I can go then?'
'We'll see how you feel tomorrow,' her mother replied.
Shelby had, in fact, been talking to Erin and not Mrs Edel, but her mother would never know. During the conversation Erin had offered to stand in for her at the stables until she was better.
'That would be so great. I owe you one,' Shelby had said, with a twinge of guilt for the way she imagined her friends earlier.
'You can be my slave for the rest of the year,' Erin joked. 'Seriously though, you only broke your face because you were trying to stop me from getting hurt, so if you think about it, I'm the one who owes you. When are you coming back?'
'The doctor says that I'm not supposed to go near horses for four to five weeks, but only because they might bump my face accidentally, so I'm sure it would be OK if I just stood out of the way.'
'Yeah,' Erin agreed. 'You could just stay on the other side of the fence. That would be all right.'
'And Blue has nice manners and he would never bump me, so I don't think he counts.'
'Or Bandit,' Erin added. 'You'll have to come to the barbecue tomorrow anyway. Everyone will be there. I'm pretty sure that it's compulsory since you're staff.'
'Definitely. So basically it means that I just can't go in with the bad horses.'
Shelby was glad she had talked to Erin. It made her realise that the dumb fracture was not going to be a problem at all. One thing that Erin said did worry her – everyone will be there. That meant Tammy too. Tammy would never miss an opportunity to tell everyone how she though
t the stables should be run.
Shelby was going to have to find a way to get fifty dollars back in Tammy's tack room before lunchtime Sunday.
24 Night Ride
The only way Shelby could stay awake was to sit at her desk. A few times she heard the squeaky board in the hallway as her parents came to check on her. She would jump into bed and pull up the covers before the door opened.
At first she tried reading her English novel, but then she switched to her dog-eared, chocolate-stained, quarto edition of The Complete Book of the Horse.
The painkillers were making her extra drowsy and so she passed the time writing a list of breeds alphabetically, then by size, then by order in which she intended to buy them when she was a grown-up.
Finally, she heard the television turn off and her parents moving about in the bathroom, brushing their teeth as they prepared for bed.
Shelby waited for ten minutes after her parents' bedroom door closed and then left the house by the laundry door at the back of the house. She collected 'Misty', her old bike, which she had stashed next to the back gate earlier in the evening.
When she hit the colder air her face began to ache. The painkiller was wearing off, but she didn't want to take another one. She was groggy enough already.
Shelby stood on the gutter in front of her house. The front windows were dark and blank. She could vaguely see her own reflection from the streetlight.
For a moment she felt a wave of uncertainty wash over her. She'd gone out in the night without permission before, and she'd been in trouble.
If she asked her parents they would say no. They wouldn't understand why it couldn't wait until tomorrow. She wondered if it was worth going. It would be so much nicer to curl up under the doona.
Then she had a vision of the scene at the barbecue when Tammy realised her money was gone.
The day would be perfect up until that moment. Everyone would be sympathetic about her cheek, and they'd tell her what a great job she had been doing at the stables. They'd say things like, 'My horse has better manners since you've been working here,' or, 'Our pony is so much easier to handle now.'
She'd see a cute boy – someone's brother or cousin who had been dragged along, and Shelby would find him staring at her, but when she looked at him he'd blush and turn away.
Shelby and Hayley Crook would accidentally wear the same shirt. 'Twins!' Hayley would laugh, bumping her hip against Shelby's.
Then a voice would shriek out across the arena, halting all conversation, like a siren, or a car alarm.
'Thief! Thief!' she could hear Tammy scream, pointing her finger. Everyone would turn to stare at who she was accusing.
'No, it wasn't me!' Shelby would protest, but then Mrs Edel would step forward. 'It's true. We put a hidden camera in the tack room.'
Clint would roll out a big projector like they had in the hall at school. He would point it towards the back wall of the feed shed, and then everyone could see the giant, grainy, black and white image of Shelby taking the money, on repeat.
'I was going to put it back!' she'd announce, but it would be too late. All the grown-ups would shake their heads.
'It's always the quiet ones you've got to watch,' Shelby could imagine Mrs Crook saying in a loud voice. 'I knew she was sneaky. I never took my eye off her for a second.'
Shelby would overhear the cute boy talking to Erin, saying, 'So what happened to her head, anyway? Did she walk into a bus or something? Freaky! I couldn't stop staring at it all afternoon.'
Then when Erin giggled he'd say, 'Can I get you a Coke or something?' and they'd walk off together.
Shelby shivered in the moist night air. She put her hand in her pocket and squeezed the fifty-dollar note. She'd ride over, put the money back where she found it, and ride back again. No one would ever know. Easy squeezy.
She cycled down the street, round the corner, past the little strip of shops. Each bump jolted her face and her bike was much too small for her, so she rode standing suspended above the pedals. After a while her calves ached as well.
It was too early for the baker. Shelby could see the empty glass cabinets at the front of the shop. In the newsagent the lights around the glass-fronted fridges lit the display racks with a faint glow. She rode on the footpath past the red post-box, the yellow telephone booth and the dark blue charity bin, and then over the gutter and onto the street again.
The bike swung from side to side as she pedalled up the hill and around the bend past the sleeping houses. At the intersection she thrust out her hand to indicate she was turning, even though there was no one to see it.
She still hadn't seen any cars, and she was glad. She had visions of an evil stranger dragging her into a van like she'd seen on Law and Order.
There were semitrailers thundering along Gully Way, but none of them looked like they were going to stop and kidnap her. The shoulder of the road was smooth so Shelby sat on the seat.
She wasn't far away now. She wondered if she should ride straight in, as though turning up in the middle of the night was a normal thing to do, or whether she should try to sneak in.
She could say that she was coming to visit Blue. Shelby had often gone to visit him at night when he lived just down the road – especially when he first arrived. She would creep out and just sit in the paddock with him watching him graze – not believing he was really all hers.
If Mrs Edel caught her Shelby decided she would act surprised. 'I thought you knew I came here at night.' But Mrs Edel might ring Shelby's mum before she got a chance to get to the stables, and then it would all be for nothing.
At the edge of the Edels' property she stopped and dumped the bike in the long grass on the verge. The fence here was electric as well as post and rail, so she climbed through cautiously.
Shelby strolled across the paddock, with her hands in her pockets, trying to look as casual as possible, glad that she had chosen dark clothes.
There were two Arabians in this paddock and as she approached they began to snort suspiciously.
'It's OK,' she said, holding out her hand.
The mare stretched her neck out as far as it would go.
'That's right. You know me. I bring you hay. I should be one of your favourite people.'
The mare snorted again and then skipped back, spooking the gelding. They took flight – racing across the paddock with their tails in the air, then spinning around and galloping back. Shelby had never realised how loud the drumming of hooves across the ground could be.
She squatted down, hoping that they would calm down, but she must have looked even more like a predator than before.
One of the Arabs stopped still, nostrils flared, and then let out an ear-splitting whinny. Somewhere further inside the property a pony answered with a shrill neigh, and then another and another, like a Mexican wave.
In the next paddock a bald-faced quarter horse started a high-stepping trot up and down the fence-line, as if he were a sentry on duty.
Beyond him a pair of thoroughbreds thundered around the perimeter of their paddock, bucking and leaping. Somewhere in the stables a pair of hooves kicked a wooden door with a thud. This started a general rumble as horses moved around in their boxes.
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