Dakota, true to her word, trotted to the dead tree and circled around it, then she asked Socks to canter. I knew that he’d probably take off without her even asking him because Bluebird and I were waiting for him back at the tree line. Dakota had to hold him back. I knew she would. But it was mostly a canter. Maybe a few gallop strides thrown in here and there but Dakota didn’t let him steal the reins and take off on her. They were getting closer and I waited for her to ask him to walk but she didn’t.
“Slow down,” I yelled out but something was wrong.
Dakota was slumped over and the next minute she just sort of flopped off the side and landed in a tall patch of grass. She’d passed out.
CHAPTER TWENTY TWO
Socks blew past Bluebird and me like a racehorse on steroids. I didn’t know what to do first. Follow Socks or check on Dakota? In a split second I made the decision to save Socks. He could seriously hurt himself between here and the barn and the last thing I needed was Missy seeing her beloved speed horse galloping back to the barn with broken reins and no rider. Dakota would never be allowed to ride again and she wasn’t going anywhere. Things couldn’t get any worse for her than they already were. Besides, I was pretty sure that she’d just fainted from the heat.
We rode after Socks and I called for him. Missy did a little whistle that always had him running to her but I sucked at whistling and my mouth only seemed to make a sort of wet farting noise instead so I just called his name.
Luckily it was too hot for him to go far. We found him in a shady patch of tall grass, grazing.
“Please don’t let your reins be broken,” I said as I went up to him.
I was hoping that no one would have to know about Dakota’s second disaster on the trail only I couldn’t exactly explain away broken reins. Plus they were the expensive kind. Missy had bought them in Germany and they wouldn’t be easy to replace.
I had a treat in my pocket and held it out to Socks. He picked up his head and stretched out his nose to get it, allowing me to grab his reins in the process. Luckily they were unbroken.
“Come on guys,” I said. “We have to go and rescue Dakota now.”
By the time we got back to where she had fallen off she was sitting up, looking a little dazed.
“What happened?” she asked.
“You fell off,” I said. “What is the last thing you remember?”
“We trotted to the tree and were cantering back and I started feeling really light headed and I don’t remember anything after that except waking up face down in the grass.”
“I told you it was hot,” I said. “How much water have you drunk today?”
“None,” she admitted sheepishly. “I had an iced latte though.”
“If you are going to ride in this heat and humidity you have to hydrate,” I told her. “And not with coffee. Water. Got it?”
“Yes,” she said.
“Come on, we’d better get back. Are you okay to ride or do you want to walk?”
“I’m okay,” she said.
I gave her a leg up and we walked the horses back to the barn but I kept a close eye on her in case she looked like she was going to pass out again and as soon as we got back I made her sit in the air conditioned office and chug down a bottle of water.
“I’m sorry about that,” she said when she came to find me later.
I’d just finished hosing off Bluebird and Socks and they were now standing under their fans in their stalls.
“Just keep it to yourself or you’ll never be allowed back out on the trail again,” I said. “In fact maybe you should just stick to the ring for a while.”
“Maybe you’re right,” she said.
“Did you girls have a good ride?” Missy asked as she walked by.
“Yes, it was the best ride ever,” Dakota said.
“Too much,” I whispered as Missy looked over her shoulder at us.
“I mean, it was okay,” she said.
I just shook my head. Despite my best intentions, Dakota was turning out to be a walking disaster area and a lost cause all rolled into one. It was a good job I liked her.
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
I spent the rest of the day hanging out in the air conditioning doing school work and watching TV. I felt kind of like a slacker but it was just too hot for humans and horses. There were warnings on the news about staying inside and keeping hydrated. Too bad Dakota hadn’t seen those warnings. Before she went home I told her to tell her grandmother if she didn’t feel well. I didn’t want people to know about Dakota’s accident if I could help it but heat stroke was no joke and I didn’t want her passing out again later either because ultimately I’d be the one who got in trouble for not reporting it.
After lunch Dad came in with sweat dripping from his face.
“It’s official,” he said. “Florida has turned into the surface of the sun.”
He flopped down on the couch under the ceiling fan. It didn’t make the house any cooler but it made you feel cooler when you were sitting under it and that was a good thing because the house we lived in was old with creaky windows and old doors and the heat snuck in faster than we could get it out. Plus the air conditioning unit was really old. It didn’t matter how low you set the thermostat, it would only keep the house around eighty degrees in the middle of the afternoon but at least it was better than being outside where it was topping one hundred.
“Why can’t it just rain and cool things off?” I moaned because as annoying as the storms were, at least they kept the heat in check.
“I don’t know,” Dad said. “But I’ve had to cancel afternoon lessons. It’s too hot. One of the girls looked like she was going to pass out this morning. She went all green and wobbly. I thought I was going to have to dunk her in the water trough.”
I nodded, hoping that he wouldn’t ask me if Dakota had been okay because I really didn’t want to have to lie.
“Moring and evening lessons are all the students can manage right now.”
“What about the horses?” I said.
“Them too.” Dad nodded. “I’ve already pulled out all the extra fans and we’re going to have to keep a close eye on Macaroni because I’m not sure he is sweating properly.”
“Great,” I groaned because a non-sweating horse in Florida was a big deal. “How is he going to manage at the show?”
“I’m not sure he is going to be able to go to the show if this heat caries on,” Dad said.
“Well that is not going to go down very well,” I said.
“Tell me about it.” Dad leaned back, closing his eyes and sighed. “I don’t need any more drama right now.”
“That’s what Missy and I said,” I agreed.
But that evening I got a call from an unknown number. I almost didn’t answer it, thinking it was one of those annoying telemarketers but something made me pick it up. Maybe part of me was hoping that it was Jordan and that he’d forgiven me for our horrible date.
“Hello?” I said.
“Emily?”
“Yes,” I replied.
“It’s Cat.”
My step-sister never called me. She’d unfriended me on all social media when she moved to Wisconsin with my mom and Derek. Her father was the one who had possibly pushed my mother down the stairs. I wasn’t sure I wanted anything to do with her.
“I know you probably don’t want to talk to me,” she said. “But I just wanted to let you know that your mom is home from the hospital.”
“Is she okay?” I said.
“Yes, well she’s still kind of bruised and battered but she’s okay.”
“Can I talk to her?” I said.
“She is sleeping right now.”
“Can you wake her up? I’d really like to talk to her,” I said.
“I’d better not,” she replied, her voice low like she didn’t want other people in the house to hear her talking.
There was an awkward pause. I wanted to know what had happened and I figured that I had nothing to lose. The
worst Cat could do was hang up on me.
“Did your father push my mother down the stairs?” I finally asked.
She sucked in her breath on the other end of the line and then said, “Yes, I think so.”
CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR
The heat wave continued and so did our exhaustion. The days started early with the horses brought in and fed when it was still dark. We were now scheduling pre-dawn lessons under the arena lights. The horses weren’t impressed but the kids thought it was great fun. The grooms filled up large muck tubs full of water which we floated giant ice blocks in like it was some weird miniature of the Arctic Circle. I wished I was at the Arctic Circle or anywhere that was cooler than here.
We left sponges in the tubs and used them to rinse off the horses if they got too hot during their lessons. The students rinsed themselves off too and sometimes chucked them at one another, wet sponges bouncing off their helmets like some bizarre water fight until my dad intervened. He didn’t think it was funny. It kind of was though.
When no one was looking I’d taken to dunking my head straight into those icy tubs and at the end of the day, when the water was no longer cold, we sat in them, not caring that our clothes were probably getting ruined.
Macaroni was sweating but not enough. He got sponged off before his lesson, during and after. Faith took his condition very seriously but I don’t think she realized what would happen if we couldn’t get him to sweat normally again. He wouldn’t be able to go to any of the summer shows. In fact, if he got any worse she’d have to stop riding him all together. Dad said that the kindest thing to do would be to sell him to someone up north where he wouldn’t have the strain of the Florida heat on his system but he hadn’t mentioned it to Faith or her parents yet. The pony had seen the vet and been started on medication that was supposed to help him sweat more and we were all hoping that it would because no one wanted to be the person that had to tell Faith that her pony couldn’t hack it.
“Macaroni couldn’t really die of heat stroke, could he?” Faith asked.
She was standing in front of the pony’s stall and he looked fine. He now had two fans blowing on him and had been hosed off earlier after Faith’s lesson. He didn’t look like there was anything wrong with him at all.
“He could,” Dakota said. She’d come out early to the barn too and was standing there with us. “If his temperature got up to about a hundred and seven he could have a stroke or go into convulsions and die.”
“He’s not going to go into convulsions and die,” I said as I saw Faith’s horrified face.
“He could,” Dakota said. “I read it in my vet manual.”
I wanted to yell at her that we didn’t tell ten year olds that their precious pony might possibly die but Dakota seemed oblivious to the death stare I was sending her.
“Why don’t you go and see if Missy is ready for you,” I finally told her.
“Okay,” she said brightly.
She was one of those people who just said things and didn’t think about the consequences of her words. How they could really hurt people. And I knew that Faith needed to know the truth but we were going to try the medication first and see if it helped. After all, Macaroni deserved a second chance before we just shipped him off to Canada or some other place that was relatively cold and yet completely foreign to him.
“I don’t want to ride him anymore,” Faith said softly. “You told me last month that I had to be careful riding him out in the heat but I still rode him anyway and now look at him.”
A big fat tear rolled down her face. I wanted to put my arm around her but I knew she wouldn’t really like that.
“I broke him,” she said sadly.
“You didn’t break him,” I told her. “It’s a medical condition called anhidrosis and it just means that his body has lost the ability to sweat normally. The medication will help. You have to trust me.”
“You can’t promise though can you?” she said. “You can’t promise that it will work.”
“No,” I said. “I can’t. I could lie to you and say yes but we don’t do that here do we? We face things and we handle them, together.”
I put my hand on her shoulder and the next minute she had turned around and was hugging me tightly.
“Thank you Emily,” she said.
“No problem,” I replied, hoping that the medication did what it was supposed to do.
Faith seemed to be holding it together now but if Macaroni had to move up north for his health, I knew she’d stop at nothing to go with him. I’d already had to deal with one runaway. I didn’t feel like dealing with another one so soon. And I really should have been taking my own advice because there I was telling Faith that it was better to face your problems when all I wanted to do was run away from mine.
I hadn’t told my father that Cat had called or that she confirmed that Derek had pushed my mother down the stairs. What was I supposed to do with that kind of information? If I could talk to my mother then I’d tell her to pack a bag and come back to Florida. To leave Derek and not look back. But he had somehow trapped her in his spider web of lies. He probably told her that it was an accident. That he didn’t mean to do it. That is what they all said. I’d been researching domestic abuse online. I had numbers to call, helplines that were supposed to provide refuge for battered women but first I had to get my own mother to admit that she was one because who knew what Derek would do next time and what if it was something far worse than pushing her down the stairs?
CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE
The week before the Talent Scout series, a trailer pulled in with a horse for Dakota. Finally she’d stop torturing me about riding Socks again. Missy had put her back on Popcorn for her lessons but she still wanted to ride Socks.
“I don’t know what it is,” Missy told me. “But I just don’t trust her on him.”
“Really?” I said.
But inside I was relieved. Socks was a sweet, kind horse and a really talented jumper. I was hoping that Missy might let me enter him in a speed class at the show so I was glad that Dakota was going to have her own horse to ride again, finally.
None of us had actually seen the mare in person, only pictures. She was on lease for the summer, which was about all Dakota’s grandparents could afford and apparently she went western and English. I wasn’t naive enough to believe that she could do both well but at least she would keep Dakota occupied and satisfy her apparent need to gallop really fast around three barrels set in a triangle, something that I didn’t really get at all but as long as she was happy and out of my hair, I’d be happy too.
“Are you excited?” I asked her as we stood there waiting for the horse to unload.
“I’m kind of nervous,” she said.
She was chewing on a piece of her long, blonde hair and frowning.
“Why?” I said. “Because you’re worried that you won’t like her?”
“No.” She shook her head. “I’m worried that I’ll like her too much and I already know that I don’t get to keep her forever.”
“The summer is long enough for now,” I said. “Try and enjoy the moment.”
“I will,” she said, smiling brightly through tear filled eyes.
I didn’t know when I had suddenly become the barn’s cheery mascot but it felt like that was all I had been doing lately. But I was finding out that helping other people made me feel better about myself and helped me to forget my own problems, even if only for a little while.
The mare backed down the ramp of the trailer, a flashy black and white pinto called Lucy. She apparently was the result of an accidental meeting between someone’s prized Quarter Horse mare and some old rogue Paint stallion which meant Lucy was built like a tank. Horses didn’t always have to be purebred to be awesome. Lucy had great confirmation, huge feet and a pretty face.
“I love her,” Dakota cried, rushing forward and grabbing the halter.
Lucy snorted and then sighed. She’d obviously been around the block a few times because she co
uldn’t have cared less that she was in a new place. Dakota led her into her stall and then stayed in there for hours, brushing her and talking to her and braiding her tail and mane, which was really long since it didn’t look like it had ever been pulled.
“I’m going to keep her mane long,” she said tucking wild flowers into it that she’d pulled out of the garden.
“I’m not sure my father is going to like that very much,” I told her.
“I don’t care,” she said.
But it turned out that one of the stipulations of the lease was that no one pulled the mare’s mane. There were other rules too. She had to go out with another mare or she would pace the fences. She was only allowed out before eight and after eight because otherwise she would get sunburned. She couldn’t jump more than three times a week and she was only allowed to go to two shows a month. I stood there looking at the typed out instructions that had been laminated.
“If they have that many stipulations, why do they lease her out at all?” I said.
“Good question.” Dad sighed. “She’s worse than the boarders.”
But Dakota didn’t care that there were a lot of rules that came with her new horse. She made copies of them and pinned them up in the feed room, where it was highlighted that Lucy could never, ever eat coastal hay or she might die. In the tack room where it said that she had to have a fleece cover on her girth at all times and on her stall where it was noted that if Lucy felt like it, she might bite you and it would be your fault, not hers.
We let her settle into the barn routine for a couple of days and then Dakota brought out her western saddle. She lugged it into the barn on her hip like it weighed a hundred pounds. When she handed it off to me I realized that was because it did weigh a hundred pounds.
Chasing Ribbons (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 19) Page 6