“Sí, little big in back,” Camillo said.
“Swollen hind right or hind left?”
“Right.”
Rob spun around to face him. “Damn it, Camillo. You’re supposed to tell me these things. Do you know how much that horse is worth?”
Camillo had his eyes on the ground. Susie touched Rob’s arm, but he shook her off. In the ring, Katie had jumped the first part of the line and was headed to the second element, a big square oxer. Before I could cross my fingers, Stretch propped like he was going to stop. Because the footing was slick, he careened straight into the oxer. Rails crashed to the ground. Katie spun Stretch in a circle while the jump crew reset the fence. Then she tried the oxer again. He crow-hopped the jump, landing in a heap on the other side, the whites of his eyes gleaming.
“Hold up!” Rob screamed out to her. “Stop!”
Katie brought Stretch to a trot and he was worse than before, much worse.
“Oh God,” Susie breathed.
Katie walked Stretch a few steps more and then stopped. Rob jogged into the ring to meet her and Camillo followed.
“Get off,” Rob told Katie. “He’s hurt.”
Katie dropped her reins and dismounted. Rob ran his hand down the right hind leg, then the left, and then the right again. “Take him back to the barn,” he told Camillo. “I’ll be there with the vet in a minute.”
His face pinched in a worried frown, Camillo nodded and took Stretch. Stretch was hobbling now. Katie followed, but she didn’t get very far before her father came stalking up to her.
“What the hell was that about?” he demanded. “If you have a refusal, you keep going. You’re not out there to learn to quit! I pay good money for you to be—”
Katie cut him off. “Stretch’s hurt, Dad.”
By this time Rob had joined them.
“Will the horse be okay for the Medal?” Mr. Whitt asked him.
“I don’t know,” Rob said. “We’re getting him looked at right away.”
“It’s Katie’s last show,” he said, as if this weren’t obvious to everyone.
Rob held up his phone. “I’m going to start calling to find out what else is available.” Rob had plenty of other horses at the farm but none good enough to cart Katie around the Medal Finals. She didn’t need just any horse; she needed a seeing-eye horse.
“What are you going to find her in a week that’s as good as Stretch?” Mr. Whitt demanded.
“I’ll find her something,” Rob said.
Back at the stabling area, Camillo held Stretch while the vet palpated his leg. Stretch tried to pull his foot away several times—it hurt that much. Camillo kept rubbing his nose and whispering to him in Spanish. When the vet finally let go of the leg, Stretch dropped his head and sighed.
“It’s the suspensory branch,” the vet reported. “We’ll have to do an ultrasound to know the extent of the damage, but he’s done it pretty good.”
Rob pressed his eyes closed. A blown suspensory ligament meant Stretch was out for more than just the Medal Finals. He’d be out for months, maybe a whole year. And at fifteen Stretch was no spring chicken. There was a good chance he’d never really come back to top form. I knew Rob didn’t care so much about Stretch being out for the Medal Finals for Katie but about Stretch being out next year and possibly forever. That would mean Rob was out a lot of money. I’d heard Dad say Gwenn’s parents had already put a deposit down on Stretch for next year and Rob had used it to secure his mother a place in the nursing home.
Rob said in a low voice, “He’s done. I mean done.”
“You don’t know that,” Susie said. “He might come back. You never know.”
“Sure,” Rob said. “You never know.”
Rob schooled me, but after what happened with Tara and then Stretch he was so distracted, it was like he might as well not have been schooling me.
“Good, Francie.” Monotone. “Again like that.”
“You know where you’re going out there?” he asked at the in gate, looking past me.
“Yup,” I answered. It was a test of the rules. No yes, but yup, which was usually enough for Rob to lose it. He didn’t even flinch.
I peeled off my raincoat, which was soaked through, and handed it to Susie. The rain pelted down on me, yet once I entered the ring, I didn’t feel it. This was my chance. I had to put everything behind me—Tara lying slack on the ground, Stretch’s scared eyes as he pulled up lame, Katie’s hateful look of just a few hours ago, Camillo back at the barn in tears, thinking he’d caused Stretch’s injury. The judges liked my decision in the gymnastics, because I ended up twentieth, which put me fourteenth overall, and so far, many of the top fourteen had messed up, including Tara.
I charged into a canter, finding a good distance to the first fence, and cruised on toward the second. When I was riding, I couldn’t hear anything. Being on course was like being in another consciousness. And it was magical when my timing was on. I never felt as strong, as capable, as I did then.
The bank was a game for Tobey. Up he hopped and down again. He flew over the water jump and then we tackled the grob, which had caused tons of stops and spills. I cantered downhill and we leapt the two ditches and then cantered back up again.
We were already at the last line. Three more fences, just don’t do anything foolish. Then the final jump. I saw the distance. I didn’t usually have time in the air over a fence to enjoy the feeling because I was thinking about what came next. But this time I let myself. Each horse jumps differently. Tobey’s jump was athletic—springing up effortlessly. When I first started riding him, he jumped too high. He would lurch up and stay there, hanging in the air before landing with a thud. We worked on his arc, though, evening it out. But he still powered over. There was still that split second in the air when time stopped. It was like when you’re on a swing, and you’re swinging as high up as the swing can go, and there’s that moment at the height of the upward swing where you stop pumping just before you come back down and you’re still in the air, and that was what Tobey felt like at the top of his jump—like he might just keep going up.
I exited the ring to Rob’s clapping. I deserved more. I deserved at least one whoop. Before, I would have doubted myself, wondering what Rob saw that I didn’t feel. But this time I was sure Rob wasn’t seeing things right. Everything with Tara and Stretch had clouded his vision, and he couldn’t see that I’d just put in the round of my life.
When the announcer listed the riders that should stand by for the award presentation and I was one of them, I searched the field for Rob or even for Susie but couldn’t find either of them. I spotted Colby, though, jogging toward me. I hadn’t seen him since he rode. His horse threw a shoe after the sixth fence and he had to pull up. “You looked like you were going to put in the perfect trip,” I told him.
“So goes it,” he said, making me once again marvel at his carefree attitude. “But you, you’re getting a ribbon.”
Colby pointed to where his father, dressed in an olive green oilskin jacket and matching rain hat, stood under a giant golf umbrella. “I’ve gotta go. He’s driving me back to the farm. Can you come see me when you get back?”
I shook my head. As hard as it would be, until I had a chance to talk things out with Katie, I was staying away from Colby. “I don’t think that’s such a good idea.”
Colby didn’t argue. “You rode great,” he said, before he turned and headed back to his father.
After the test the announcer called the top eight riders, including me, into the ring and ran down the results in reverse order. Each rider and horse stepped forward and a woman in a rain poncho and high-heeled shoes browned with mud pinned a soaked ribbon on the horse’s bridle. Here I was, about to get a ribbon at the Talent Search Finals, yet everything was wrong. It was still raining. I was soaked to the bone and shivering. Rob and Susie were gone. So was Colby. Stretch was hurt and Katie wasn’t talking to me. I had wanted to try again to say something to her about what had happened last ni
ght, but after Stretch, I thought it was better to leave her alone.
Each time the announcer called out a name, I expected it to be mine, and each time it wasn’t, I knew I was one place higher. Finally he announced sixth and it still wasn’t me, which meant I was fifth. The best placing without making the test. I walked out and the woman with the muddy shoes pinned the pink ribbon to the side of Tobey’s bridle. I heard Dad clapping and no one else. Because of the mud, we did a victory trot, not a gallop.
I told myself it didn’t matter, that nothing that had happened today mattered, because I was still fifth. I was still fifth at the Talent Search. Only, fifth wasn’t winning. If I had been winning, Rob would be at the in gate—rain or no rain.
We packed up everything as quickly as possible, loaded the horses on the trailer, and hit the road home. I was quiet on the drive. Dad was, too. I wished I didn’t get carsick when I read in the car, because I had to finish a set of short-answer questions on the case study on the Federal Reserve System and monetary policy we’d read for econ.
My phone buzzed—a text coming in. It sounded so loud in the quiet of the truck cab. It was from Colby, asking where I’d ended up. I typed back that I was fifth and that Kristy Blythe won. He used about ten exclamation marks as he texted back congratulating me. My phone buzzed again. This time he was asking how Stretch was.
“Who’s texting you?” Dad asked.
“Katie,” I lied.
I told Colby we didn’t know yet about Stretch and he wrote back asking what we should do about Katie. Before I could answer Dad said, “Katie again?”
“Yup.”
My phone buzzed again.
“It’s not Katie, is it?” he said. When I didn’t answer right away, he said, “I know about you and Colby.”
I was about to ask how. But I didn’t need to. Tara, who’d seen us together in the tack room. Why had I even bothered to try to be nice to her? Like Katie had said a while back, maybe I was too nice to people sometimes.
My phone buzzed again and I switched it to silent.
“I told you it wasn’t a good idea to get involved with him and you went ahead and did it anyway,” Dad said. “If Rob finds out, this’ll look really bad for us.” He sounded really mad.
I felt like I had done something terrible, and I had to remind myself I hadn’t. I’d lied to Dad about going to see Colby and I’d sneaked out, none of which was good, but it wasn’t awful. It certainly wasn’t as bad as giving Doug the test.
“What’s so wrong with it?” I asked. “Maybe Rob won’t care.”
“I care,” Dad said.
“So it’s about you, not Rob?”
Dad finally took his eyes off the road long enough to glance over at me. “It’s about staying away from him, Francie.”
I was silent for a few seconds. Then I said, “I want to go to Mexico. What if Abuela dies and I never get to meet her?” Bringing up Mexico had become my new tactic, and Dad picked up on it immediately.
“You’re changing the subject.”
“Doesn’t she want to meet me—her own granddaughter?”
“Of course she does.” Dad sighed and then added, “If I tell you we can go, you’ll stay away from Colby?”
I probably would have agreed, but before I could answer, Dad said, “Well, I’m not making that trade. I’m not making any promises.”
“Neither am I,” I said.
Chapter Fourteen
* * *
On Monday morning I could barely keep my eyes open at school. We’d gotten home at eleven from the Talent Search and I’d stayed up until one finishing my assignment for econ. During second period, which I had free, I went into the computer lab to print out my assignment. I was planning on going to the library afterward to study, or maybe to even close my eyes for a few minutes, but of course all the printers were being used, so I had to wait.
I sat down at one of the computers and started poking around the Internet. I went to The Chronicle site to see the results from the Talent Search. There was my name in fifth. Then, before I knew what I was doing, I was typing my mother’s name into Google. I hit enter and inched forward in my seat, waiting anxiously to see what would come up. I wasn’t sure why I was doing it now or for that matter why I had never thought to do it before. Only a few entries came up, and they weren’t very interesting: some charity event at what must have been her other kids’ school and the results for a 10K race she’d run. But somehow just seeing her name out in space was kind of cool—it proved that she actually existed.
I was still staring at the screen when Becca and Tracy came in. “Hey, there,” Becca said, leaning over my shoulder. “I’ve been looking all over for you. I thought you’d be in the library. What are you up to?”
I moved the cursor to close the window. “Just waiting to print out an assignment for econ.”
Becca glanced to the printers. I followed her gaze to see that a few were free now. I opened my file and pressed print.
Becca leaned against the desk. “So, I was just wondering about the next test . . . if you could help Doug study again?”
I looked around, worried who might hear us. “I don’t know,” I said.
“Come on,” she said, keeping her voice down—thankfully. “What’s the big deal?”
The big deal was that I was finally able to walk around school without breaking into a sweat every time I saw Mr. Yannakopoulos or our principal. I didn’t want to go back to living in fear. But I wasn’t about to tell Becca that.
“He doesn’t need it until next week,” Becca said.
“I could get in serious trouble and so could Doug, for that matter,” I told her.
“How are you going to get in trouble?” Becca asked. “No one will find out.”
My paper had finished printing and I got up to collect it.
“Let’s go,” Tracy said to Becca.
“We’re meeting Doug and the twins,” Becca explained to me. “We’re going out.”
Doug had never asked me again about the lunch he’d said would be on him. He only cared about what, or who, was convenient for him at the time.
“We have English in fifteen minutes,” I said, looking at the clock. Becca had always been like me—she’d never missed a class.
“I’m skipping,” she replied. “Take good notes for me, okay?”
I gave Katie a few days to see if things would blow over. In those few days I also kept my distance from Colby in public, although we texted and Facebooked whenever we could. He seemed to understand why we had to keep things on the down low. By the end of the week Katie still wasn’t looking at me, let alone talking to me, and I decided I had to do something. It was too strange passing her in the barn and not even saying hello.
On the way back to the barn from bringing a horse in from the pasture, I passed the work site for the new indoor. No one was working or had been working on it all week. When I spotted Katie in the field next to the barn, grazing Stretch, I figured it’d be my best chance to talk to her alone. I put the horse in its stall, and before I could change my mind, I walked out to her and Stretch. She was wearing a The BOOK baseball hat and didn’t look up as I approached, just kept staring at the ground.
“How’s Stretch?” I asked, even though I knew the answer. Camillo had been cold-hosing his leg five times a day, as well as treating it with a laser and magnets. But the swelling hadn’t come down much and Stretch was still hobbling around. The ultrasound showed that the damage was really bad and Rob was still considering the options of what to do next. There were lots of different treatments including injections, shock wave therapy, and even surgery. Dad said that even with those treatments Stretch might never be able to be ridden again.
Katie didn’t answer, making it clear she still wasn’t talking to me.
“At least he hasn’t lost his appetite,” I added. When I still got nothing from her, I said, “Katie, come on. This is ridiculous. We’re best friends.”
“We were best friends.”
; “So that’s it?” I asked. “You’re going to let some guy come between us?”
“You let him come between us,” she corrected. “You knew I liked him. Would it have been that hard to stay away?”
“I didn’t plan on it, I swear,” I tried. “I didn’t think there was any way he would like me.” I knew this was lame; I had known Katie was into him and I should have just told her what was happening between us.
“You’re the one who knew how I felt,” she said.
“And that was why I told Colby I couldn’t get involved with him, but then it just happened. I was going to tell you.”
“When?” Katie demanded. “When were you planning to tell me?”
“What about all that with Tom at the party?” I asked. “You should have seen you two in the hall, and you even admitted you would have slept with him if I hadn’t dragged you out.”
“I can’t believe you’re bringing that up,” she said.
I sighed and tried once more. “I’m sorry . . . I want us to be friends again.”
“Well, I’m sorry, but I don’t think I can do that,” Katie huffed.
Right then all my guilt over not telling Katie faded. Here I was apologizing and Katie wasn’t willing to give an inch. Who said she had some claim to Colby, and why hadn’t she realized the feeling wasn’t mutual? Why had she just assumed he’d like her and not me?
“Fine,” I said. “Have it your way.” I turned from her and murmured under my breath, but loud enough so she could hear, “Spoiled brat.”
“What?” she called after me.
“You heard me!” I snapped, spinning back to her. “You just can’t believe that he might like me instead of you. Well, this is one thing your daddy can’t buy for you.”
I couldn’t believe the words that had just come out of my mouth. I’d said them as Katie’s best friend, or rather, ex–best friend, but the minute they were out, all I could think about was how it wasn’t right for me, the groom, to be telling the client off. Maybe that was why I’d snapped like I had, though. For all the times I’d watched Dad and the other grooms take too much from people just because they had money.
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