“I already freaked out,” I said. “I had a big row with my mom on the way home from the dress shop.”
“I bet that went well,” she said.
“Yeah, it didn’t and I’m over it. There is nothing I can do about the stupid wedding or the stupid step sister. I can’t stop a wedding and help run the barn all at the same time.”
“Don’t forget, you still have to win the Snowball Cup as well.”
“How?” I said, kicking the leg of Esther’s desk. “We don’t have anyone to take us.”
“Oh no,” she tossed her soda can into the trash and missed. “I hadn’t even thought of that. What are we going to do?”
“Not go,” I said. “We don’t exactly have a choice.”
“I bet Fox Run doesn’t seem like such a bad place to board now,” she sighed, pointing to the mess in the barn aisle we’d left after picking the stalls.
“Not if you can afford it,” I said. “Which I can’t.”
I stuffed some more pink and green tissue into the gift bag on the desk.
“What do you think?” I said.
“It’s not very much is it,” Mickey sighed. “A headband?”
“Well we didn’t have a lot of money did we.”
The headband had been twelve dollars and I’d spent the rest on the bag, the tissue and a really nice card that had a gray horse on it. I thought it looked like Harlow, who I hadn’t dare let out of his stall since the great escape even though he didn’t seem like he was lame.
“I think she’s going to love it,” Ethan came and stood in the doorway. “It matches all her clothes perfectly. What’s not to like?”
And he was right. When we presented Helga with the gift, she took one look at it and burst into tears.
“See, she hates it,” Mickey said.
“I loves it,” she cried. “Best gift forever.”
“You mean ever,” Mickey said but no one cared because the rest of us had given up trying to correct Helga’s broken English and it didn’t really seem to matter anymore now that she was leaving anyway.
“You all do good riding now,” she sobbed. “I made good of you.”
“Yes, you did,” we all agreed.
And later that day a taxi came and took Helga away, just like one had taken Esther away only this time we were completely and utterly on our own.
“What happens if we screw up?” Mickey said, looking around with wide eyes. “What happens if we do something wrong and a horse gets sick and dies?”
“Then Sand Hill will close forever so you’d jolly well better not do anything stupid. In fact don’t even think about horrible things happening. Got it?”
She nodded and gulped but it wasn’t her fault. She’d just voiced the fears we all had. Horses were a big responsibility and usually there were adults somewhere in the equation who would take over and make things right if they went wrong. We were just three teenagers, hoping to fake our way through until someone came to rescue us.
“Should we put sheets on the horses tonight?” Mickey asked.
I looked at the temperature on my phone, the phone that had been a bribe to accept Derek into our family with no questions asked. To replace the father who was missing with one who was so different than the one I had known that I couldn’t even comprehend ever calling him Dad. But no one had ever said anything about getting a new sister too. My sister was dead and I wasn’t going to let her be replaced either.
“Hello? Earth to Emily,” Mickey nudged me.
“Yeah, sorry. Um looks like the clipped ones will need sheets tonight,” I slipped the phone back into my pocket.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked.
“Fine,” I lied but I was nothing even remotely like fine.
I wandered out to Bluebird’s field and called him. He was up at the top of the ridge but as soon as he heard my voice he picked his head up and turned to look, then came cantering down the hill. He slid to a stop at the gate and snuffled my hand for carrots. I pulled a big one out of my pocket and broke it in half. He inhaled both pieces instantly.
Over the last couple of weeks his winter coat had grown in thick and fuzzy. He looked less like a show pony and more like a wild pony. Even if Esther had been here and we’d had a ride to the show, I could never have ridden him like that. Looks didn’t matter as much in the show jumping ring but it still would have been an embarrassment. Even a trace clip would have been better than no clip at all but with the unusually cold winter freeze sweeping across the nation and poised to hit Florida in two days, if I took any of his hair away, he would definitely need a blanket. In fact even with all his hair, I was still worried that he would be too cold out there in his field.
“Why won’t you just come inside?” I asked him. “It would make life so much easier.”
But he just sighed and went off to roll in his favorite sandy patch. I’m pretty sure he thought that he wasn’t there to make my life easier but he certainly made it a lot more interesting.
Ethan was beckoning to me as I trudged back to the barn.
“We have a problem,” he said. “I can’t come and help out tomorrow.”
“Well that sucks,” I said, leaning against the wall wearily.
“Yeah, my mom thinks I’ve been spending far too much time here and she’s dragging me and Faith off on some family activity day. It’s going to be hell.”
“Well, have fun,” I smiled sarcastically. “At least I’ve got Mickey.”
“Actually, you don’t,” she said, coming out of the tack room looking pale. “I forgot, I’ve got a dentist appointment in the morning and then Mom is dragging me clothes shopping.”
“Clothes shopping,” I yelped. “Can’t that wait?”
“How am I going to get out of it?” she said. “I can’t exactly tell her that Helga has gone or she’ll make me move Hampton. I can’t let that happen.”
“Can’t you make up another excuse?”
“It won’t work. You know how my mom is.”
“And you know how my mom is,” I cried. “What if she decides she wants to drag me off on another wedding shopping spree?”
“You’ll just have to get out of it,” Ethan shrugged. “Someone has to be here.”
“What, like you guys are getting out of yours? Thanks a lot,” I stomped off down the barn aisle.
There were twenty stalls. Luckily even though business had picked up, Sand Hill wasn’t full yet but there were still twelve horses inside, six lesson horses and six boarders. That was twelve stalls to clean all by myself and eleven horses to turn out and bring in alone because Harlow would stay inside. Twelve waterers to clean and thirty nine feeds to give because they all got breakfast, lunch and dinner and even though Bluebird wasn’t inside, he still had to eat.
“I can do this,” I whispered to myself. “I can do this.”
But all I really wanted to do was sit down in the middle of the barn and cry.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Riding my bike to the barn the next morning, there were a million bees buzzing in my stomach but as soon as I got to the barn, they all magically melted away. There was Bluebird at the gate nickering for his grain and the rest of the horses shuffling in their stalls and knocking their buckets about. They needed me and I was here to make sure everything was okay.
I tipped the grain into buckets, consulting the chart that was pinned to the wall. It wasn’t just a case of one scoop for each and on you went. There were three different types of food, all the horses got different amounts depending on their workload and weight and then there were the supplements. Boarders were kind enough to supply theirs in pre-measured bags but Esther had not been so kind. I had to consult the lids for the names and amounts that they got. Then I ran down the aisle with the wheelbarrow, tipping food and throwing flakes of hay.
“Here you go boy,” I dumped Bluebird’s breakfast into the bucket that hung on the fence. He shoved his face into it, slobber flying everywhere. “Thanks a lot,” I laughed, wiping a stran
d from the front of my shirt.
Stalls were cleaned while the horses ate and then I turned them out in their appropriate fields.
“This isn’t so bad,” I told Harlow. “Maybe I’ll even have time to get your walking exercise in.”
He laid his gray head on my shoulder and I scratched under his chin where he had a particularly itchy spot. I was thinking how easy the morning had gone when I saw a red car pulling into the parking lot and my heart sank.
So far we’d been lucky. The boarders hadn’t asked too many questions. All they knew was that Esther was on vacation and that Helga was taking care of things while she was gone but now Helga had gone too. Just like Mickey’s mom, I was sure that they wouldn’t be too happy to find out that they were paying board to have a bunch of thirteen year olds take care of their horses. Especially Linda Green.
I could see her now, getting out of her sports car in her plaid breeches and leather half chaps. She rode dressage, not that we’d ever actually seen her go to a show and though dressage was kind of boring, it could sometimes be brilliant, like when Mickey and I watched the musical freestyles on television at the Olympics. But it certainly wasn’t interesting the way Linda rode it. She just went around in circles and every now and then tried to get her horse to perform a piaffe, which usually ended in her coming back to the barn and tossing her whip on the ground saying that she needed a better horse.
As she strode into the barn, I could already tell that she was mad, her black hair short and spikey today.
“Where is Helga?” she snapped.
“Why? What’s wrong?” I asked, skirting the issue of Helga’s absence.
“Why doesn’t Fly have his black boots on?”
I looked out to the field where her black horse was grazing. He was a big stocky guy who had a propensity for hurting himself with his giant, dinner plate hooves. Some weird mix of Friesian, Lipizzaner and Warmblood. I just thought he looked like a cart horse but according to Linda, the mix was going to produce the next dressage super horse. I kind of thought she’d been ripped off because we all knew that she spent an obscene amount of money on him but he was a nice enough horse. Just not nice enough to do any advanced dressage.
“He has his white boots on,” I said, wondering what I’d done wrong.
He wears his white boots during the week,” she said, hands on her hips. “And his black boots on weekends.”
“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. Is there a difference?”
As far as I was concerned, the horse had two pairs of boots that were identical except for the color so I wasn’t sure why it was such a big deal.
“Esther knows,” she said, looking like she was going to cry now. “That I take the white boots home on the weekends to wash.”
“Well, I can go and switch them out if you like,” I said, trying to be helpful even though I was starting to think that the woman had a few screws loose.
“Forget about it,” she said. “I’m going to ride anyway.”
She stormed off into the tack room and I thought that she was done but after a few seconds she came out again.
“When is Esther coming back?” she asked.
“She’s on vacation,” I lied.
“I know that,” she snapped. “I said when is she coming back?”
“Soon,” I said, at least I hoped it was soon.
“But what date?”
She was pushing me for answers that I didn’t have and I had two choices. Make up a date and hope beyond all hope that Esther made it back by then or tell her the truth, that I didn’t know when she was coming back.
“She’s coming back on Christmas Eve,” I said. “For the Snowball Cup.” And I hoped that maybe because I said it out loud, the lie would actually come true.
Linda stood there for a moment, perhaps trying to decide if she believed me or not.
“Well when she comes back, I have a few choice words to say to her,” she said. “I don’t pay all this board money to have her playing around on vacation instead of taking care of my horse.”
“Don’t barn managers deserve vacations too?” I asked innocently.
In all the time that I’d been coming to Sand Hill, I hadn’t even known Esther to take a day off let alone a vacation and if she hadn’t been forced to leave the country, she’d still be here now.
“No,” she said.
And even though I couldn’t believe she was saying it, I knew that she totally believed the words to be true. In her mind, Esther was a slave to her horse and to her and I thought it was sick that a grown woman could treat another human being in such a demeaning and horrible way. I wanted to tell her so but I didn’t have the nerve. Plus I was trying to make sure Esther kept the boarders she had. It wouldn’t help her out any to come back to an empty barn.
“Adults can be idiots,” I whispered into Harlow’s neck and luckily Linda Green didn’t hear me.
She was only out in the ring for ten minutes before she came back in, declaring that Fly was not in the mood to work today. More often than not, Fly was never in the mood. He was pretty good at getting out of work. I could see it now on his cheeky black face. He knew exactly what he was doing.
“Is Helga around?” she asked.
“She’ll be back later,” I said. This time a bold faced lie.
“Fine,” she sighed. “I guess I’ll have to show you how to put on all Fly’s blankets. It’s going to be cold tonight and below freezing tomorrow. I’m not going to have my poor baby suffering just because Esther isn’t around.”
“All right,” I said.
I mean, I’d blanketed the horses before. I didn’t really see what the big deal was, until she brought out a laundry basket filled to the brim with about five sheets and blankets in varying degrees of thickness. Fly hadn’t even been clipped. He was almost as hairy as a Clydesdale. He was going to sweat to death under all of those.
“First the slinky,” she said, pulling the stretchy body suit over poor, long suffering Fly’s head. “Then the sweat sheet, regular sheet, thin blanket and thick blanket.”
She had to be kidding. The horse looked like he was about to take a trail ride over to the Arctic Circle or something.
“Then there is this hood thing but I can never figure out how to attach it,” she threw it at me. “But I’m sure you can figure it out.”
“Okay then,” I said, starting to peel all the layers off one by one since Fly was already starting to sweat.
“He might not need all those on tonight,” she said as she walked away down the barn.
As far as I was concerned, he wasn’t ever going to need any of them but I just smiled and waved, glad that she was finally leaving.
“Oh and by the way,” she said, turning to look back over her shoulder at me. “I think that pony out there is colicking.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
I ran outside, heart pounding a million miles a minute. What was wrong with the woman? Couldn’t she have told me that there was a sick horse before she spent five hours showing me how to blanket her already hairy horse? And then she just drove away, not even an offer to help me.
Fragments of a hundred horse articles ran through my head. What was I supposed to do? Not let the horse roll, keep them moving, call the vet. How was I supposed to do all that on my own? But I couldn’t let anything bad happen to Bluebird, I just couldn’t.
But there he was, up on the hill, grazing alongside the fence with Saffron and the mares on the other side. It was a lie. A cruel joke. There was no colicking horse. I took in a ragged breath and leant on the fence but then I saw her. Princess rolling by the gate and biting at her belly.
I completely froze. This was my worst nightmare. A real horse emergency and I was all alone. My hands were shaking as I grabbed her halter from the gate and tried to get her to be still while I put it on.
“It’s okay girl,” I said. “You’re going to be okay.”
I tugged at the halter but she wouldn’t get up. She rolled her eyes and groaned before try
ing to roll again.
“Get up,” I shouted at her. “Come on.”
It was a tug of war, one that I didn’t want to be having with a pony who already felt ill but I had to get her on her feet so I took the end of the lead rope and swung it at her butt. She struggled up and stood but she wasn’t happy about it.
“Okay,” I said. “Good girl. Let’s take you for a nice walk.”
I closed the gate to keep the other mares in and led Princess across the grassy knoll in front of the barn, all the while struggling to fish the cell phone out of my pocket. I dialed Esther’s phone but it just said that the number was unavailable, the same thing it had been saying ever since she left. Some help she was. It wasn’t fair that she’d just left us like this. But being mad about it wasn’t going to help me and it certainly wasn’t going to help Princess. I scrolled through the numbers and phoned the vet.
The answering service told me that they would get the message to him right away but it felt like hours before he called back, even though in reality it was only about five minutes.
“Princess is colicking,” I blurted out. “I’m here all alone and I don’t know what to do. She was rolling in the field and I’ve got her up and walking but she still wants to roll.”
“Good job,” Dr. Delta said calmly. “Now does she have gut sounds?”
“I don’t know,” I said.
“Okay, place your ear against her belly on both sides and listen. I’ll wait while you do.”
I pushed my ear against Princess’s sides and listened. On the left there was nothing but on the right I heard a faint gurgle.
“Good,” he said when I told him. “Esther should have a tube of Banamine paste in the barn. I want you to give her some and keep her on her feet. I’ll be out as soon as I can but I’m in the middle of stitching up a horse with a bad gash so it may be a little while.”
“What if something happens?” I whispered. “Something bad.”
“You’re doing everything right,” he said. “Princess gets gassy when the weather changes, she gets like this every winter.”
Winter Blues (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 3) Page 8