Dark Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 23)

by Claire Svendsen

  I was putting Hashtag away when Dad came down to the barn.

  “Sit,” he said, pointing to a chair in the office.

  “Why?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Just sit for a minute Emily. Don’t think I don’t know what you are doing. You are down here running yourself ragged so that you don’t have to deal with what is happening up at the house.”

  “You said I couldn’t ride and I haven’t,” I grumbled. “You should be happy.”

  “Any headache? Dizziness? Nausea?” he said, tilting my head back and looking into my eyes.

  I stuck my tongue out at him.

  “Yes you seem perfectly normal,” he said with a sigh.

  He sat down behind the desk and pushed some papers out of the way. It was always neat and tidy when Missy was around to clean up and deal with the things that my father didn’t want to deal with but since she’d been gone, the bills and mail had been piling up. He could talk. He didn’t want to deal with things any more than I did.

  “How long are they going to stay with us?” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Dad sighed.

  “Well are you guys getting back together?” I asked. I was so confused and it wasn’t fair for my father to keep me in the dark.

  “What?” he said. “No, of course not. I am sleeping on the couch in the bedroom, your mother has the bed. We are not back together.”

  “Then why are you doing this?” I said.

  Dad was quiet for a moment, then he finally said, “Because I owe her.”

  “Owe her for what?” I shrieked. “You don’t owe her anything. In fact she owes you for all the years she stole from you. From us. She kept us apart, remember? How do you know she’s not here to do the same thing again? To drive a wedge between us?”

  “No one is driving any wedges,” Dad said.

  “I just don’t understand why you are doing this,” I said again.

  “One day you will,” Dad said.

  “One day?” I said. “When? When I’m older? When I’m one hundred? My birthday is next week, in case you’ve forgotten. I’ll be fifteen. Isn’t that old enough?”

  “Not for some things.” He shook his head. “So what do you want to do for your birthday? A party? A big cake? Just tell me and I’ll make it happen.”

  I knew he was trying to change the subject. Making this about my birthday and not what it was really about, my mother and me and him and I suspected my dead sister. We were all caught in a web of lies and deceit like her fingers still reached out from the grave, clutching at us with skeleton claws and forcing us to deal with things that had been pushed under the rug for years.

  “I hate my birthday,” I said, standing up. “If you knew me at all then you’d know that. I don’t want you to do anything. I want you to forget about it just like you did for all the other years. Okay?”

  “I never forgot your birthday,” he said. “I always sent a card and money and when you were younger I picked out gifts for you and mailed them.”

  “Well I never got any cards and I never got any gifts,” I said, looking down at him. “Maybe you should talk to the woman who is sleeping in your bed about that.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  “You told him what?” Mickey said.

  Her mom had picked us up later that day after Mickey had finished school and taken us to the dollar store so that we could pick up supplies for the Halloween show. I was holding a purple plastic skull and Mickey had a terrifyingly realistic spider that was about the size of a large dog.

  “It’s okay,” I said. “We can talk about stuff like that.”

  “Not really though,” Mickey said. “He still didn’t explain himself.”

  “He will,” I said, picking up another skull. “I just have to keep digging, that’s all.”

  “If I talked to my dad like that, I’d be grounded for a week,” Mickey said.

  “But your dad didn’t abandon you for ten years of your life. That kind of gives you a lot of leverage,” I said.

  “It didn’t make Missy stay though, did it?” Mickey said.

  “No,” I said sullenly. “But I’m working on that too.”

  “You can’t fix everything and make it go back to the way you want it to,” Mickey said.

  “Why not?”

  “Because this isn’t a Disney movie or an after school special. It’s real life.”

  “So?” I said. “Anyway, I don’t want to talk about it anymore. What do you think about using these as fillers for some of the jumps?” I held up the skulls.

  “Spooky,” Mickey said. “And we could hang these spiders in the barn.”

  “We already have real spiders.” I laughed.

  “But not ones this big and look,” she said, pressing a button. “Their eyes flash.”

  “Horrifying,” I said as the giant spider’s red eyes blinked at me. “They’d look pretty good in the haunted pumpkin patch though.”

  “Nice,” Mickey said, nodding. “Crawling all over the pumpkins. That would be cool.”

  We spent the next hour picking out all manner of ghosts and ghouls for the show. By the time we were done we had a giant cart full of stuff.

  “It’s a good job all this stuff only costs a dollar,” Mickey said.

  “Yes but a dollar each, we must have a hundred things,” I replied.

  It turned out that we actually had forty seven things and I’d guilt tripped a fifty dollar bill out of my father so we were pretty well set. We loaded the stuff into the car and then Mickey’s mom left us to go and get food while she went to the fish store.

  “Burger or salad?” Mickey asked pointing to opposite sides of the street where we had the choice of our local burger joint or the salad bar where all the hippies and the stick thin girls hung out.

  “Definitely burgers,” we both said at the same time.

  We sat in the same booth that I sat in with Jordan. The girl behind the counter glared at me as we got our food. I wondered if she’d been there the day he got ours. But he wasn’t here today and Mickey made a face when I picked out ten packets of mayonnaise. Jordan would never have done that.

  “What is the deal with you and mayonnaise anyway?” Mickey said as I squelched out a big pile and dipped a fry into it.

  “It’s only the best thing on earth,” I said. “Jordan gets it.”

  “And where is Jordan?” she said, looking around.

  “His mom probably locked him in the store room. She doesn’t want us to see each other.”

  “Trying to stand in the way of young love, that’s just cruel.” Mickey shook her head like she was a hundred year old woman and not a teenage girl.

  “It’s not love,” I said. “We are just friends. Now are you going to tell me what happened in Paris with you and Jean-Paul or not?”

  “Not,” she said. “Do you want to talk about planning your birthday?”

  “No,” I replied, stabbing a fry into the mayonnaise.

  It seemed we both had things we didn’t want to talk about, just like my father and I. But Mickey was my best friend. We still had plenty of other stuff to discuss.

  “I rode Nyx,” I said. “And he didn’t kill me.”

  “No way,” she said. “He didn’t try to kill you at all? Not even one little bit?”

  “Well he did launch me like a torpedo into the water jump,” I admitted.

  “You should stay away from that horse,” Mickey said. “He’s bad news.”

  “I know,” I said. “That’s why I have to ride him.”

  “I don’t get it,” Mickey said.

  “I don’t get it either,” I said. “But it’s like it is something that I have to do.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it is this massive adrenaline rush and besides, I want to figure him out. If I can, then he is going to be really unbeatable in competitions.”

  “Until he decides to launch you into the judges stand and you end up head first in their laps.”

  “Well yes, there is alway
s that,” I said.

  “So have you thought about what you are going to do for the costume class?” she said.

  “No, have you?” I replied.

  “I have but it’s a surprise,” she said with a sneaky look on her face.

  “A surprise?” I said. “That’s not fair. You have to tell me.”

  “No I don’t.” She grinned.

  “Fine, but when I figure out what my super awesome costume is going to be, I’m not going to tell you either,” I said.

  “Agreed.” She nodded and we both laughed.

  It was good to hang out with Mickey doing normal, boring things like shopping and eating. It made everything that was happening back at the barn seem not so important after all. Being there all the time. Living there and working there too, it became all-consuming and most of the time I was fine with that but sometimes you needed a little break. Someone to say, hey, let’s go and see a movie or how about a burger? A chance to rejoin the real world with real people who didn’t know what an oxer or a double combination was and who couldn’t have cared less if you explained it to them. Most of the time I had nothing in common with those people but sometimes it was nice to get out in the real world and pretend that I did.

  “We should go and see a movie some time,” I said to Mickey as we waited outside the restaurant for her mom to come and pick us up.

  “Why, is there a new horse movie coming out?” she said.

  “No,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be a horse movie.”

  She looked at me and frowned. “Who are you and what have you done with my best friend?”

  “Very funny.” I nudged her in the ribs. “I can do normal stuff too you know.”

  “Can you?” she said.

  “Sure,” I replied. “Of course I can.”

  But deep down I knew that time away from the barn was really time away from riding. Time that I could be working my horses and getting better and no one got to the Olympics by goofing off and messing around. But you were allowed to have some semblance of a life too, weren’t you? I hadn’t really figured that one out yet.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  That night, true to his word, my Dad slept on the couch in his bedroom while my mom took his bed and Cat had to make do with the couch in the living room. I went straight to my own room and shut the door, clicking the lock for good measure. There was no way I was going to risk anyone wandering in during the night. It would have been a nightmare to wake up to Cat’s ghoulish face hovering over me. I would have rather had one of the giant, red eyed spiders there instead.

  I woke early and tiptoed through the dark, sleepy house. Cat was sprawled out on the couch, her leg hanging off the side and her arm over her head. She had teddy bears on her pajamas and looked like she was five years old when in reality she was older than I was. I grabbed a granola bar and bent over to pet Meatball, who was purring and rubbing against my legs when I saw a shadow at the window. For a moment my heart stopped. All the talk of Halloween ghosts and now there was a real one right there in my kitchen. But the shadow moved, taking form as my eyes adjusted to the dark. It was just my mother, sitting on a chair with a blanket huddled around her even though it wasn’t really cold. She just stared at me blankly. For a moment I wondered if she was sleeping. Then she spoke.

  “Are you going to be mad at me forever?” she said.

  “Maybe,” I said stubbornly.

  “Can we at least talk? Why don’t you sit down?” She motioned to an empty chair. I backed away like she’d just offered me a scorpion.

  “There is nothing to talk about,” I said.

  “I think you know there is,” she replied. “You are mad at your father and you are mad at me. How long do you think you can continue to be mad at us?”

  “Forever,” I said.

  I knew that I would be mad at them for as long as it took. Madness didn’t have a time limit. It just happened organically on its own.

  “You need to grow up,” Mom said, her voice sounding sad. “The world isn’t always going to go your way.”

  “You don’t need to tell me that,” I replied in an angry whisper. “I have a dead sister that no one talks about, a father I didn’t see for ten years, a mother who ran off with her new abusive husband and left me behind and I’ve been kept from doing the only thing I’ve ever loved by you. Now I’ve made a home here with Dad and Missy. They’ve been kind to me and helped me. Are you going to do that? Are you going to teach me how to jump a bending line or take me to shows?”

  “Life isn’t all about horses,” Mom said.

  “Well it is to me,” I told her. “And it is to Dad too. You can’t win him back.”

  “That’s not what this is about.”

  “Then what is it about?” I said.

  But she didn’t reply. She just went back to staring out the window again.

  “See,” I said. “You can’t talk either. You won’t tell me what really happened to Summer and you won’t tell me why you kept me away from Dad for all those years and now you won’t even tell me why you are back. You expect me to be truthful when you don’t even know the meaning of the word.”

  I spun on my heels and walked out of the house. I wasn’t really mad. I was disappointed. I thought that the least my mother could do was to tell me the truth after all these years but it was like we were this big family of lies now and I don’t know why they couldn’t see that it was ripping us apart.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  My father may not have wanted me to ride Nyx but it seemed like everyone else wanted to. Word had got out that there was a west coast champion at our barn, probably fueled by the fact that Denora had been spreading it all over social media. We were trying to field all the calls and put people off until after the show but they were kind of mad about it. And the more people that called, the more Dad thought that maybe we should give the horse a second chance.

  “Five calls this morning,” he said, coming out of the office.

  I didn’t say anything. I just shrugged.

  “Well,” Dad said. “Don’t you think you’d better go and tack him up then?”

  “Okay,” I said with a grin.

  I knew that the only thing that would get Dad interested in the horse was if he thought other people wanted Nyx too. And so what if I’d shared a couple of those sale posts as well? I needed my father to see the potential in the horse. Missy still wasn’t returning my calls. For all I knew she could just show up with a trailer any day now and whisk Socks away and then who was I supposed to ride on the Junior Olympic team? My pony? The rest of my lovely and yet damaged or being retrained herd? No, I needed a winner and Nyx was going to be that horse. I just had to convince my father that he wasn’t possessed by demons and actually out to kill me.

  “The other day was just a misunderstanding, right?” I asked the big black horse.

  He stood like a gentleman in the cross ties. If you saw him you never would have believed that he could put in such a dirty stop. I almost couldn’t believe it myself, except I still had a headache from where my head had slammed into the wet ground. If I hadn’t been wearing my helmet, I wouldn’t have been tacking up to ride again today. It may have been hot and uncomfortable to wear but it was also a lifesaver.

  “Please try not to do anything stupid,” I said as I stroked the horse’s face and slipped on his bridle.

  But there was still something deep in his eyes that I didn’t trust. Something I’d never seen in a horse before. The will to do whatever he wanted, whenever he wanted. My words meant nothing to him. I knew that now. And he wasn’t going to catch me out a second time but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to try.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  We went out to the jump field because the ground was softer out there and wouldn’t hurt as much when I got launched off like a projectile again. If I did. This time I was prepared but that didn’t mean that Nyx wasn’t going to still try something or that I’d be able to stick whatever it was that he did. I had a good se
at and strong legs but I wasn’t glued to the tack. There were still ways a horse could get me off and I was sure that Nyx knew all of them. After all if the rumors were true, he was a dangerous horse. He knew how to kill people. Hurt them permanently. Was it really worth risking everything just to prove that I could ride him? I thought of my mother sitting up in our kitchen, probably plotting ways to get me off horses for good and it just made me want to ride Nyx all the more.

  “Okay, any funny stuff and you are off him, understand?” Dad said as he shut the gate behind us. “I’m not interested in you getting a career ending injury just because this horse might have some talent that we can tap into.”

  Dad was obviously thinking the same things I was but where I was thinking that I was going to prove I was the only one who could ride this horse where others had failed. Dad was thinking along the more sensible lines that there were plenty of other fish in the sea. Or horses in the fields. Either way he was thinking that riding Nyx wasn’t worth getting hurt over, which was probably what I would have been thinking too if I hadn’t been so mad.

  We worked on the flat for ages until both Nyx and I were bored. He pinned his ears and I could already tell that he was thinking about doing something stupid out of pure boredom.

  “Are you going to let us jump at all or are we just going to go round in circles the whole time?” I said. “Because he’s already had enough.”

  Just to prove my point Nyx tossed his head and kicked up his heels but it was a warning, not meant to do any harm. Not this time anyway.

  “Fine,” Dad said. “But I’ve lowered the jumps.”

  “Lowered them?” I said. “You should be raising them. He cleared them all easily. Shouldn’t we find out what he can really do?”