Gift Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 14)

by Claire Svendsen

  “They get to stay in their pajamas,” I mumbled.

  “Honestly,” Mickey said. “This is the last time I do something nice for you Emily Dickenson.”

  “Sorry,” I said and I was.

  Everyone was in such good spirits that I hated to be the person who ruined everything so I slapped a fake smile on my face and then stuffed it full of food to stop myself from saying anything else horrible.

  Later, Mickey’s mom shoved us into the car. Mickey had a bag on her lap but she wouldn’t tell me what was in it.

  “It’ll ruin the surprise,” she said.

  “Okay.” I shrugged.

  She should have known by now that I hated surprises more than anything else in the whole world. When was she ever going to learn?

  Mickey’s mom drove for ages. I sat there listening to Mickey go on and on about her upcoming dressage show. She had a month to get ready for it and she was already so excited that I knew she was going to burn out before the show day actually arrived. But I also thought it was awesome that my best friend was excited about going to shows again, even if they weren’t the same shows that I was going to.

  “We’re here,” she cried as the car turned down a long drive.

  I looked around. There were paddocks and horses and there was a tumbledown barn.

  “Where exactly are we?” I said.

  “Hopeful Acres,” she said like I should know exactly where that was.

  “And?” I said. “What are we doing at Hopeful Acres?”

  “Volunteering,” Mickey said with a smug smile, opening her bag to show me that it was full of carrots and apples. “After the Christmas carol singing, I thought it would be awesome to do something else nice, you know, keep the good karma flowing and all that.”

  “Wait a minute,” I said. “You brought me here to clean stalls? I do that every day at home. I’m supposed to be having a break from all that.”

  “I thought you’d love it,” Mickey said, her face falling. “Helping horses in need?”

  “I have a horse in need back at Fox Run. A horse I should be spending time with instead of all these horses.”

  “I’m sorry,” Mickey said.

  “It’s fine. Forget it. We’re here now.”

  I knew I was being a horrible person but I couldn’t help it. The only reason Dad had even let me go to stay with Mickey was because he said I was getting burned out and needed a break when really he needed my help back there. If I was going to be cleaning stalls, I could have done it at home and been more of a help to my father. Couldn't Mickey understand that? And why would she even think that I’d want to clean stalls on my one day off anyway?

  I got out of the car and slammed the door but as soon as I saw a lady walking a little foal past, my heart melted and I couldn’t believe I’d behaved like such a monster.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Annie, the orphan foal, stole my heart and since Mickey finally realized that it would be a special kind of torture to make me clean stalls on my only day off, she let me play with the foal while she mucked out instead.

  “It’s so sad,” I said. “The mare really died giving birth to her?”

  I was sitting in the barn with Tammy, the woman who ran the rescue. She had a kind face and tired eyes. I’d seen that look before on my own face. The one that said there were too many horses to care for and not enough hours in the day to do it and I felt guilty about giving Mickey such a hard time.

  “Yes and the owners didn’t have a clue how to take care of her,” Tammy said. “So they dropped her off here. I was hoping to have found a nurse mare for her but no such luck. Now I have to get up every few hours to give her a bottle of milk or she goes crazy but it’s not all bad.”

  She scratched the filly’s head and Annie closed her eyes.

  “Sounds like home,” I said. “I have a new baby stepbrother who does the same thing.”

  We played with the foal and I got to give her a bottle, which was much more fun than giving one to a real baby. Then I felt bad about leaving Mickey to do all the work so I went to help out.

  We mucked stalls and picked out the pens. The rescue was full, mostly of old horses that were lame or couldn’t be ridden anymore. We threw them piles of hay and soaked alfalfa cubes for the ones that couldn’t eat the hay because they didn’t have any teeth left.

  “It’s sort of depressing,” I said to Mickey. “To think that this is where all the old horses end up.”

  “It’s better than the slaughter house,” Mickey said. “And they are not all old. Look.”

  She led me to a small field where three young horses were playing, kicking up their heels as they chased each other.

  “Thoroughbreds?” I said.

  “From the track. You should talk to Tammy. She knows things about giving racehorses a second home. Maybe she could help you.”

  I suddenly realized what Mickey had done. She hadn’t brought me here to work after all. She’d brought me here because she knew I needed help and I was too stubborn to admit it.

  “Thank you.” I enveloped Mickey in a big bear hug. “I’m sorry I was such a mean old Grinch. I just haven’t been sleeping at all what with the baby and I know it is no excuse but I am just so tired.”

  “I don’t know why you think I don’t get you,” she said. “Because I do.”

  “I know,” I said. “And if I act like that again, I want you to slap me in the face.”

  “Okay,” she said brightly. “Come on then. Let’s go and find out how to rehabilitate a racehorse.”

  It turned out that rehabilitating a racehorse wasn’t an easy task. Tammy said their brains were usually fried and their bodies wrecked from years of being pushed too hard and fast for too long. If they had the stamina and strength for it they carried on racing but the discarded ones didn’t have the heart, the skill or the will. She said that she usually turned them out for up to a year. Let them play and learn to be horses while detoxing from all the medications and supplements that had been shoved into their still growing bodies.

  “I don’t have anywhere that I can turn mine out for a whole year,” I said as we all stood by the field and watched the racehorses play. “Do you think maybe he could come and stay here with you?”

  “I would take him if I could,” Tammy said. “But I’m full already. These three just tipped me over the edge and I really shouldn’t have picked them up but they would have been shipped straight to the slaughterhouse if I hadn’t.”

  “I don’t know what I am going to do,” I said.

  “You said you had a bond with him once, right?” Tammy said.

  I nodded.

  “Well you work at getting that back. He remembers you. He’s just not sure that he trusts you. You have to earn that trust again.”

  “But how?” I said.

  “You have to do everything yourself,” she said. “Feed him, clean his stall, turn him out. He needs to know that you are his person. You are the one who feeds him when he is hungry or takes him out to play. Don’t try to train him yet. Just try to be with him.”

  “But I tried that,” I said. “It hasn’t worked.”

  “Give it time.”

  “I don’t know how much time I have left,” I said.

  There was another show in a few weeks. Dad had already entered Bluebird and Socks. The winter jumper circuit was well under way and just because I’d won a spot in the Young Riders clinic, Dad said that didn’t mean I could just sit back and rest on my laurels. There were other classes to win and shows to prove myself at. How was I going to find time to bond with the hurricane horse if I was busy with all the other stuff?

  “Have you ever had one that you couldn’t train?” I asked Tammy softly. “One that no matter what you did, you couldn't get through to?”

  “There was one.” She shook her head. “He’d been abused for a long time. I think something broke inside him. He wasn’t right in the head. He was dangerous. I tried every rehabilitation trick in the book. Time off. Training aids. Bei
ng firmer with him than I would have liked. Even medication from the vet. It didn’t help. The day he nearly pummeled me to death was the day I finally had to let him go. Sometimes there are horses that are too dangerous. Not many but they are out there.” She put her hand on my shoulder. “I hope your guy isn’t one of them.”

  “Me too,” I said.

  CHAPTER SIX

  I wasn’t sure if the trip to Hopeful Acres helped to make me feel better or worse. On the one hand, Tammy had told me that it could be done but on the other, she’d also said that sometimes it couldn’t be done. She had given me a really useful book though called Retraining the Racehorse. Its pages were creased and the spine was falling apart. Some of the pages had been stuck back in with tape. Tammy said that she found it at a yard sale and that it was the best book she’d ever read on working with these kinds of horses but it was out of print and this was her only copy so she was just lending it to me. I wouldn’t get to keep it.

  I sat in my bedroom that night flipping the fragile pages, looking for anything that would help me to turn my new horse around. Bluebird and Socks had been happy to see me when I got back from Mickey’s and I had ridden both of them. I also sat with the hurricane horse for a while, pretending that I didn’t care if he noticed me or not. I wasn’t sure that it made a difference but at least now I knew that it was supposed to help, I didn’t feel like I was wasting my time.

  The book said that it was better to take things slow. That abused horses were fragile and that anything bad could set them back but the hurricane horse didn’t seem fragile. In fact he seemed more aggressive than ever and I was worried about what Tammy had said. How the one horse she couldn’t save was the one who turned dangerous. I didn’t want that to happen to my horse but I also didn’t know how to stop it from happening. Perhaps my father could help, after all he was the one who bought the horse for me and maybe it would be fun to have a project horse to work on together.

  I crept through the cottage. It was quiet and that meant Owen had finally quit screaming and fallen asleep. The last thing I wanted to do was wake him up so I tiptoed through the rooms until I was outside their door. I thought for a moment that they were sleeping too but then I heard soft voices. For one second I felt guilty, then I pressed my ear against the door. I knew it was wrong to eavesdrop but I couldn’t help myself.

  At first they were talking about Owen, how Dad thought that Missy should give up on the whole breastfeeding thing and start giving him bottles of formula. I agreed with that but Missy didn’t. She said she wanted to keep trying and Dad didn’t push the matter. Then they talked about the number of diapers that the baby went through and how Missy should try and buy baby clothes at the thrift store in town because he was only going to be able to wear them for a few months before he outgrew them. He was already far too big for the newborn clothes that her friends had bought her, which was kind of a shame because some of them were really cute. I’d just decided it would be better not to disturb them and was about to go back to my room when I heard my name.

  “Emily has been skipping school,” Missy said.

  I think my heart actually stopped beating. I hadn’t thought that they noticed. In fact I was kind of hoping that they would just forget all about school and I’d never have to go back.

  “It’s been Christmas,” Dad said. “School is closed over Christmas, isn’t it?”

  My dad was so clueless when it came to things like that. If it hadn’t been for Missy, he probably wouldn’t have noticed if I never went to school again.

  “But she stopped going before school was out," Missy replied. “Didn’t you notice?”

  “Things have been kind of busy around here honey,” he said. “And Emily has been a really big help. I couldn’t have made it through this difficult time without her.”

  “But she needs an education,” Missy said.

  “She needs to ride more,” Dad said. “That is her future, not algebra and long division.”

  I felt my heart swell. Dad got me. He always had but it sounded like Missy was going to ruin everything.

  “If she doesn’t go to school, you’ll be the one who gets in trouble,” Missy said. “You know that, right?”

  “She’s special. She has a gift. Isn’t it against the law for her to squander that gift?”

  “I don’t think that’s how it works,” Missy said.

  “Well what about all those child actors? They don’t go to school, do they?”

  “They have private tutors,” Missy said. “And I don’t think we can fit one of those in the budget.”

  “I don’t think we can fit anything else in the budget,” Dad said.

  I was leaning on the door so hard, totally intent on listening to what they were saying that I didn’t realize I was resting my arm on the handle until it suddenly clicked open. I fell inside, landing on my face in a crumpled heap on the carpet. Missy let out a shriek of surprise and the next minute we all heard the wail of a baby that had just been woken from his nap.

  “Emily,” Dad cried. “What on earth?”

  “Oh please don’t make me go back to school,” I said. “I hate it there. It’s awful. I want to stay here and help out at the barn and ride all the time. You’re right, I’ll never be the best I can be if I have to go to school every day. The girls on the A circuit have tutors, why can’t I?”

  Dad looked like he wasn’t sure if he should yell at me for listening in on their conversation or be happy that I was as serious about my riding career as he was.

  “She has to get an education,” Missy said with a sigh as she got up to go and comfort Owen.

  “We’ll figure something out.” Dad winked at me. “But you’d better go back to bed.”

  After that I forgot to ask him about helping me work with the hurricane horse because I had enough on my plate convincing him to let me stay home from school.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I spent the next few days freaking out about the whole school thing and if that wasn’t bad enough, things with the hurricane horse weren’t getting any better. Plus I couldn’t even think of what I should name him, which I was sure didn’t help any. The poor guy just kept getting called hurricane the whole time, which was probably not helping his disposition any.

  I was sitting in the office, thumbing through some old books that were in there to try and find him a suitable name when Dad came in.

  “Studying?” he said.

  “Sort of,” I replied. “Trying to find a name for my new horse.”

  I didn’t add that it was hard to find one because he didn’t like me. I didn’t want Dad to think that getting him for me had been a bad idea. After all, he’d done a really sweet thing and it wasn’t his fault that it had kind of backfired.

  “Names aren’t that important,” Dad said.

  “They are to me.” I closed the book. “If he turns into a really great jumper then everyone will know his name and I want it to be a good one, not something stupid.”

  “Most horses come with names already.” He shrugged. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

  “It is to me.”

  There was an awkward silence and I thought that maybe he might just go away but he took another step into the room and I knew what was coming.

  “So, this school thing,” he said.

  My heart sank.

  “Missy and I have agreed to disagree.”

  “You have?” I said, suddenly feeling hopeful again. “What does that mean?”

  “Well, she is right in a way. You do need an education and your mother would kill me if she found out that I let you skip school. In fact it would probably be grounds for her to get my custody revoked. You don’t want to go to school in Wisconsin, do you?”

  “No,” I cried, jumping to my feet. “She could really do that? You wouldn’t let her, would you?”

  “I wouldn’t have a choice,” Dad said. “If it went to court and a judge found out, he’d say that I was an unfit father.”

  “But you’re n
ot an unfit father. You’re the best father ever. You bought me a horse and you let me ride all the time. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  “Being a father isn’t just about giving you the things you want.”

  Dad motioned for me to sit down. I knew I’d gone kind of overboard, gushing on and on about how great everything was when there was still a great big cone of silence between us but despite all that things were pretty cool and I wasn’t about to have school and homework mess it all up.

  “So then what?” I said. “I have to go back?”

  “No,” Dad said. “You are right. If you’re going to seriously compete on the circuit then you’ll be going to shows and missing a lot of school and I want you to have a chance at your dreams.”

  “You do?” I said.

  Looking at the man I had missed for so long, it was hard to believe I’d grown to hate him and to see how quickly he had made me love him again.

  “Of course, you’re my daughter, aren’t you?”

  “Great.” I grinned. “So school can kiss my butt goodbye.”

  “Not so fast.” He held up his hand. “You still need a high school education no matter how much you think you won’t need it so Missy and I agreed on this.”

  He slid a folder across the table and I eyed it warily. There was a picture on it of a beaming teenager sitting in front of a laptop. There was a pile of books next to her and some pens and paper, which was kind of dumb considering she had a computer and didn’t really need them.

  “What is this?” I said.

  “Virtual school,” Dad replied.

  “As in I virtually don’t have to go?” I said.

  “As in you do all the work on the computer instead of going to an actual school.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So how does it work?"

  “It’s all in the folder,” he said.

  “Well when do I start?”

  “I haven’t figured that out yet.”

  I breathed an inward sigh of relief. It would probably take ages for him to figure it out so it didn’t sound like virtual school was something I needed to worry about in the immediate future and the fact that I didn’t have to go back to regular school was something I was extremely happy about. There had been some girls there who had started to make it their quest in life to be mean to me and while throwing things at someone in class wasn’t exactly bullying, it also kind of felt like it was.