Boot Camp (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 24)

by Claire Svendsen

  I went up the creaky stairs. There would be no quietly creeping around in this house and I wouldn’t be sneaking out of the window any time soon. I went into the bedroom that I had claimed as my own. Cat had said that I should have this one as it looked out over the paddocks, which I thought was nice of her. I went over to the window and looked outside. The glass was all smudgy because we couldn’t clean the outside without a really tall ladder. I stared past the grime and out to the paddocks and the tree. Up the hill that Mickey and I used to gallop down when our horses lived at Sand Hill and we didn’t have miles and miles of trails. Now our horses were spoiled but they were about to be unspoiled really quick.

  Across the ridge on the other side of the hill was Sand Hill Stables. I didn’t know what had become of it since Ester left. Had it really been turned into a petting zoo with pigs and goats and camels like I’d heard rumors of? And next door in the distance was Jess’s land. Her big house and fancy pool and the new barn that had been built after the hurricane demolished her old one, no doubt even bigger and better than before. Living next to my mortal enemy wasn’t something I had ever planned on and now there was nothing I could do about it. Maybe we could erect a giant ten foot fence. But I knew even that wouldn’t keep Jess out.

  CHAPTER TEN

  In between helping Dad fix up the old farm and packing, I still rode my horses. After all, these would be the last few times that I would be able to ride them in a real ring with proper jumps. Hashtag and Arion got the full treatment. After their respective performances at the show, they were both eager to continue on in their work. Hashtag wasn’t quite as good as he’d been in front of the crowds but Arion seemed to think he was a star now and jumped everything in sight. Maybe he could be my next team horse. I was hosing him off when Dakota came to stand beside me.

  “You’re leaving,” she said sadly.

  “Yes,” I replied. “We have to.”

  “What about Four?” Her voice wobbled a bit.

  I’d only just given her the horse and now she probably thought that I was going to take him away again.

  “He can stay here,” I said. “As long as you are paying his bills, Missy won’t mind.”

  “Are you sure?” she said, her eyes glistening with tears.

  “Of course,” I said. “You are a boarder now. She won’t kick you out just because Four is my horse.”

  “Oh I’m so relieved,” she said. “I thought I’d lost another one.”

  “Of course not,” I told her. “Besides, we don’t have room for him on my father's farm. They are all going to be squished in like sardines as it is and there aren’t any stalls. It’s a nightmare.”

  “It sounds like fun though, starting over,” she said.

  Which was what people said when it wasn’t happening to them. No one liked starting over. It was like being punished for something you didn’t even do. But I just smiled because I knew that Dakota was trying to be nice and it wasn’t her fault that we were being kicked out. It was no one's fault, except my mother’s.

  “I hope you’re happy,” I told her when I went up to the house and found her sitting in the kitchen.

  “Happy?” she said looking up at me blearily.

  She had a mug of coffee and was nursing a hangover. I could tell. I knew the signs by now and there was an empty bottle of vodka in the sink.

  “Well this is all your fault, you know that, right? The fact that we are getting kicked out. That would never have happened if you hadn’t come back.”

  “I didn’t have anywhere else to go,” she said, staring at the mug instead of me.

  “I think you know that you did,” I said. “You just wanted to come down here and wreck everything I’d worked so hard for.”

  “You can be mad at me if you want,” she said. “I don’t care.”

  “I’m not mad at you,” I said. “Not anymore. I feel sorry for you. And I think you are pathetic. The least you could do is get a job. Help out around the house. Do some packing. Clean up at the new farm. You’re not a princess Mom, you’re no better than the rest of us.”

  I didn’t mean to sound so cruel but the words just sort of spilled out of me. It was her fault, there was no denying that. She was the root of all our problems and she needed to make a choice. She was either going to pitch in and help us or she needed to leave. She couldn’t just live here in some kind of limbo, wasting her days by getting drunk and lying in bed. No one had time for that when we had all these things to get done.

  “You can’t drink away your problems,” I told her. “You have to face them.”

  “And what if I can’t,” she whispered.

  “I know you,” I said. “You can. You just have to get up off your butt, stop feeling sorry for yourself and do something.”

  The next day Mom asked Dad to take her over to the old farmhouse and she spent the whole day cleaning. I wasn’t sure if it was what I’d said to her or not but at least she was trying. It wasn’t fair for the rest of us to work our butts off while she just sat around like a drunk queen. And by the time she came home she had that happy, tired glow where you knew that you’d done a good days work and that you had accomplished something. We all needed that in our lives. To accomplish things to make us feel good about ourselves, even if they weren’t very big things. Even if they were something insignificant, like cleaning.

  “Good job Mom,” I told her as she pulled the rag off her head and a cloud of dust came with it.

  “You know,” she said. “That place isn’t so bad after all, once you get used to it. The whole thing has this shabby chic vibe to it and that is really in right now.”

  “Well it’s definitely shabby,” I said. “I’m not so sure about the chic part.”

  “It will be by the time I’m done with it,” she said.

  And with Mom taking over the house, that left us more time to finish up the barn and the fields for the horses. We cleared a space for the hay and fashioned a makeshift tack room out of some plywood that we found lying around. Dad had some hooks in his toolbox and we hung them so that we would have a place for our bridles and he made saddle racks out of leftover pieces of wood. It was nothing special but it was ours and we hadn’t let life beat us down. We’d risen to the challenge and we weren’t going to let this move beat us.

  “Emily, you’ll never guess what I’ve found,” Dad said as he burst into the barn, his face all lit up like a Christmas tree.

  “A pot of gold?” I said hopefully.

  “Not quite,” he said. “But just as useful. Come look.”

  He dragged me over to one of the furthest fence lines where he had been clearing the weeds and there in the long grass were a handful of jump poles and a few wonky standards. The paint was peeling off them and they looked like if you even tried to move them they might just disintegrate before your eyes but they were better than nothing.

  “See?” Dad said. “You’ll still be able to jump after all.”

  And even though I’d had all the jumps I could ever possibly want at Fox Run, I’d never been happier to see some ratty old jump poles and standards hiding in the weeds in my whole life.

  “That’s great Dad,” I said and I meant it.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  As it got closer to moving day, I started to get excited again but it was tinged with sadness. It was kind of overwhelming to feel two opposite emotions at once. I was standing there looking out across the fields when I suddenly saw Bandit leading Chantilly and the foal down to the gate. I hadn’t even asked my father what we were going to do with them. Bandit belonged to me but he’d scream his head off forever if you separated him from his little family. Chantilly belonged to the vet clinic and would go back there after Phoenix had been weaned and the foal didn’t really belong to anybody. He had belonged to Missy’s friend but now he belonged to all of us. Were we supposed to leave him behind? But if we took him then was our farm really foal proof? I went to find Dad and ask him.

  I found him in the tack room, knee deep in b
ridles and mumbling to himself.

  “She thinks she can take this farm from me well then she has another thing coming. This is mine, and that is mine and this too.”

  He was tossing stuff into a tack trunk, no doubt separating the things that belonged to him from the things that belonged to Fox Run and would stay behind. It looked like most of it belonged to my father. We’d have enough tack for fifty horses, let alone the few we were taking with us.

  “Um, Dad?” I said.

  He looked up and saw me standing there. “Yes, what is it? I’m kind of in the middle of something.”

  “I know,” I said. “But what are we going to do with the foal? Is he coming with us? He doesn’t really belong to Missy but I guess he doesn’t belong to us either.”

  Dad looked around at the piles of stuff he had amassed. I’d obviously caught him in an I hate Missy mood and so when he looked back at me and said, “He’s coming with us.” I knew that it was revenge talking and not the fact that he actually wanted a foal.

  “But are the fences safe enough?” I said. “You know how babies can be, they get into everything.”

  “I’ll make sure he has a safe place to stay,” Dad said. “And I’ve been thinking about getting some wood and making a few stalls.”

  “Really?” I said. “That would be great.”

  “No promises,” Dad said. “But you don’t need fancy wrought iron doors and grills to make stalls safe for horses. As long as they are sturdy and secure, that is the most important thing, isn’t it?”

  “Yes Dad, of course it is,” I replied.

  I slipped away before he changed his mind. I knew that he’d only said that I could take Phoenix because he didn’t want Missy to have him, not because he actually wanted the foal and once we got him there and he started running around like the crazy thing he was, Dad would probably decide to send him right back. But for now he was coming with us and so were Chantilly and Bandit and that was all that mattered because I knew that we couldn’t split them up no matter what happened.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Dad started loading up the trailer to take our belongings over to the new farm. I was helping to pile up stuff in the tack room when Faith burst in, her eyes brimming with tears.

  “You can’t leave,” she cried, throwing her arms around me.

  I let her get it out of her system and then gently pushed her off me.

  “I have to,” I said. “My dad doesn’t work here anymore but look on the bright side. At least you are getting your trainer back.”

  “I don’t want her back,” Faith said. “I hate her.”

  “No you don’t.” I sat Faith down on a tack trunk. “Look, you can’t be mad with Missy. It's between her and my father and nothing to do with you.”

  “It is to do with me,” she sobbed. “She’s taking you away and that affects me. I don’t want to ride here anymore. I want to come and ride at your farm.”

  “Maybe one day you’ll be able to,” I said. “But for now, trust me, you are better off here. We don’t have stalls or a ring and we only have about two jumps. It's not going to be very good over there for quite a while and we are just going to be muddling through the best way we can because we don’t have a choice but you do. You stay here and you ride. I would if I was you.”

  “We’ll you’re not me,” she grumbled. “And I don’t care. I still want to come with you.”

  It took ages to convince Faith that there was no way she could come with us and afterwards she stormed off, now mad at me as well because I wouldn’t let her bring Macaroni to our farm.

  “What was that about?” Dad said as he came in to pick up more boxes.

  “Faith having a meltdown because she wants to come with us.” I sighed. “You know, you could easily start your own business over there once we get it in better shape.”

  “I know,” Dad said. “But I don’t have the money to get it into that kind of shape.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s what I told Faith.”

  As I helped Dad move more boxes, I thought back to Sand Hill Stables. It hadn’t been the fanciest barn but Esther still had lots of clients even though the paint was peeling and sometimes the boards fell down and she sent us out with a hammer and a box of nails to fix them. Mickey and I, two girls who could barely lift the heavy wood, banging crooked nails in and giggling about it. Having a wonderful time without all the luxuries that we now had at Fox Run.

  “I think one day we’ll have people flocking to our little farm,” I told Dad. “One day we’ll have a waiting list.”

  “One day,” Dad said.

  And I knew he thought that day was a million miles away but I had a good feeling about it and maybe that day wasn’t as far away as he thought it was.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  We took things over to the new farm bit by bit until there was hardly anything left to take but us and our horses. I was going to miss Fox Run and everyone there but I still kind of wanted the whole thing to be over now like ripping off a Band-Aid. Prolonging the inevitable wasn't doing any of us any good. We needed to get out.

  “One last ride?” I asked Bluebird.

  Really I should have gone for one last ride on Socks because maybe I'd never get to ride him again but that was part of the reason why I didn't want to ride him. I could remember all the great times we'd had and the shows we'd been to and just plodding around the property wouldn't compare to those. Besides, knowing my luck I'd ride him and he'd hurt himself and then Missy would blame me forever. At least this way she was still only mad at my father, even if she wouldn't let me stay or take Socks with me.

  Bluebird and I rode through the woods one last time. We jumped over some of the cross country fences, even though I'd said I wasn't going to jump him over the winter. We galloped across the clearing with the bright sun beating down on us and when we got to the hidden pond I let Bluebird splash along the edge, not caring about alligators or snakes or things like that.

  “No more long trail rides for us,” I told him as he chased his shadow along the edge of the pond.

  But it didn't really matter. It was just another thing that we would get used to like not having stalls or a ring or an unlimited supply of fly spray.

  I rode back with my reins long and feet out of the stirrups and I didn't feel sad. I just felt calm instead. I'd accepted what was going to happen like you did a trip to the dentist for a root canal. You didn't want it but you knew it had to happen all the same and afterwards things would be better and eventually the pain would fade. Or at least I hoped that it would.

  “Ready to load up?” Dad asked when I got back.

  “What, now?” I said but I guess there really was no time like the present.

  We loaded my three horses into Dad’s small trailer.

  “Aren't we going to use the big one?” I asked, pointing to the Fox Run trailer that was sitting parked under the shade of a tree and could take six horses all at once.

  “Better not,” he grumbled. “Don't want them to blame me for breaking it.”

  Which was pretty much what I'd thought about riding Socks.

  “You're right,” I said. “Good call.”

  “I’ll come back for the others later,” he said. “Once we get yours settled in.”

  Only I wasn't really sure that mine were going to settle in. They were used to going into stalls when they got to their destination, not being shoved out into fields to run around and hurt themselves.

  “You guys had better behave,” I told them as I made sure they were all secure and then got in the truck.

  And as we drove away, I didn't look back. I wasn't ready to say goodbye to Fox Run just yet and I had a feeling I would be back one day. I just wasn't sure when that day would be.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Bluebird, Arion and Hashtag looked around at the property with pricked ears and bright eyes. I was sure that they didn’t see the fact that there weren’t any fancy stalls filled with shavings or an arena to ride in. All they sa
w were fields full of grass.

  “All right you lot,” I said. “Think you can behave?”

  Dad and I took them into one of the fields and let them go. They had their boots on to protect their legs and Arion and Hashtag had bell boots on so that they wouldn’t pull their shoes off. But they weren’t exactly used to going out together. Bluebird had been out with Arion but my gray horse usually went out with Four, the other gray. And Hashtag mostly went out by himself. But this was the biggest field, the one with my tree in it and I wanted my horses to have the best shelter. Bandit, Chantilly and Phoenix would have the small field at the front so that we could keep an eye on them and Dad was going to bring over Canterbury and he would go in the little paddock by the barn. Dad said that he couldn't go out with other horses because Canterbury thought kicking the snot out of them was part of his job and I wasn’t too keen to find out if Dad was exaggerating or not.

  The bay, gray and chestnut took off over the lush green grass, kicking up their heels as they went. Hashtag let out a trumpeting whinny and a horse over on Jess’s property answered.

  “I wonder if she knows that we are neighbors now,” I said.

  “That girl and her father know everything,” Dad said darkly. “And I want you to stay away from them.”

  “You don’t have to tell me that,” I said. “Mr. Eastford almost shot me, remember? And after what Jess did to Bluebird, I don’t know.” I shook my head just thinking about how awful it would be if Jess snuck over in the middle of the night and did something bad to our horses. “Do you think we should get a big dog or something to guard the place?”

  “Might not be a bad idea,” Dad said, which meant he was worried about it too since he didn’t even like dogs that much.