I couldn’t escape Mickey though. She showed up that afternoon, bursting out of the car with a handful of helium balloons. They bobbed and swayed and for a moment she fumbled with the strings and one of them escaped.
“Oh man,” she said as a metallic purple heart floated away. “That was the best one.”
“You are lucky those things aren’t taking you away with them,” I said as the balloons tugged at their strings.
“Here,” she said. “You take them. Then if you fly away I can say that it was all part of the great birthday plan.”
“The great birthday what?” I said.
“Don’t worry.” She laughed when she saw the horrified look on my face. “There is no great plan. I baked cupcakes and I brought you a gift and balloons. I didn’t book a creepy clown to come and jump out at you or anything.”
“Just as well,” I said. “Otherwise I would have to end this friendship right here and now.”
“You can’t just end a friendship,” she said. “You’re stuck with me for life.”
“Good,” I said. “I need to know someone isn’t going to abandon me.”
We ate Mickey’s cupcakes under the shade of our favorite old oak tree, the balloons tied to her branches. The horses that went by snorted at them. They were about as impressed as I was. The cupcakes were good though, double chocolate with chips and frosting. We both ate two.
“I feel sick,” Mickey said, lying back on the warm grass.
“Me too,” I said, doing the same.
We watched the clouds race by and she told me about school and how she’d aced her latest test. I told her about my early morning trail ride and the bears.
“I would have totally freaked if I came across a bear family,” she said. “You should get them removed.”
“Why?” I said, feeling horrified. “They haven’t hurt anybody.”
“No, not yet,” she said.
“And they won’t,” I replied, feeling defensive. “Besides, nobody goes on that part of the trail anyway so it doesn’t matter.”
“If you say so,” she said. “It still freaks me out though.”
I kind of wished I hadn’t told Mickey about the bears. She wasn’t into wildlife or nature or any of that stuff. I should have known that she wouldn’t understand.
“Here,” she said. “Aren’t you going to open your gift?”
“I thought the balloons were the gift,” I said with a grin.
“Well if you don’t want it, I can always keep it for myself,” she said, pulling the bag away from me.
“Oh no you don’t,” I replied, snatching it back.
Inside the bag was a pony sized browband but instead of the usual sparkles or rhinestones that were so popular now, it was covered in velvet ribbons, twisted around and around to make a colorful pattern.
“It’s just like the ones those English pony club kids had in that book we used to drool over,” I said. “I can’t believe you remembered. Where did you find it?”
“I got it over the summer,” she said, looking smug. “When I was in France.”
“Thank you,” I said, giving her a big hug.
It was the little things that meant the most. The fact that Mickey had remembered something we’d lusted over long ago and she’d sought it out and bought it for me. And I didn’t care that it wasn’t in fashion or that if I put it on Bluebird it would look like we were ready for some gymkhana games. We were going to wear it in our next jumper class and wear it with pride. Who knew, maybe we’d start a new trend.
“Did Missy get you anything?” Mickey asked.
“She sent me a text but that was it,” I said, feeling sad.
“And your mom?”
“Apparently she is baking me a cake,” I said, rolling my eyes.
“I didn’t know your mom could bake,” Mickey said.
“She can’t,” I replied.
“Well that should be interesting,” Mickey said.
“I know. Can I come home with you instead?”
“You know you always can if you need to escape,” she said.
“Thanks,” I replied with a sigh. “But Dad said I have to act like an adult now.”
“Tell him that you’ll act like an adult when he does,” Mickey said.
“Maybe I will,” I said. But I knew that I wouldn’t.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The cake wasn’t bad but it wasn’t that good either. It sat on the kitchen counter, the icing melting slightly off it since the day had warmed up. There were three purple candles stuck in the pink icing. Happy Birthday Emily had been spelled out with chocolate drops. It looked like the kind of cake I should have had when I was five, not fifteen. But I knew that Mom had made an effort. Like Dad said, she was trying and I guess that meant I was supposed to try too and I didn’t want to get into a fight on my birthday anyway. I was tired and getting a headache and everyone expected me to be nice and gracious and so I was going to shock them all and act that way and then the whole birthday drama would be over.
“Happy Birthday,” Cat said, handing me a paper bag. “Sorry it’s not really wrapped.”
“That’s okay,” I said, taking it from her gingerly.
Who knew what my evil step sister could have hidden inside. A dead frog? A moldy piece of cheese? The girl I used to live with would have done all of those things but she had been lying low since they had moved in. Staying out of the way. Being quiet and maybe hoping to blend in for a change. It was like living with a ghost sister and I already had one of those. I didn’t need another.
I looked into the bag but nothing was moving. No spiders or cockroaches. I stuck my hand in and pulled out a tiny porcelain pony. He was a chestnut, prancing his way across my hand with his head high, his painted mane tossed about by an imaginary wind.
“I thought he looked like your pony,” she said. “Blueberry?”
“Bluebird,” I replied. “Thanks, I love it.”
Cat looked relieved. She flopped back on the couch, her big toe sticking out through a hole in her sock, her face bare of makeup. She looked young and vulnerable and I suddenly felt horrible that I’d been so mean to her but I had this image in my head of the Cat I used to live with. The one who hadn’t been very nice and that was who I’d expected to come back here. Maybe she had changed. I just hoped it wasn’t the fake kind of change like Jess had put on. An act to fool us all only I wasn’t about to be fooled again. This time I had my guard up but that didn’t mean that I had to be a horrible person.
“Sorry about having to sleep on the couch,” I said, sitting down next to her.
“It’s okay,” she said. “I’m used to it.”
“Maybe we could take turns?” I said.
“Don’t sweat it,” she replied. “I’m cool with it.”
“Okay,” I said.
We sat there awkwardly for a while both staring at the television but not really watching it. The chestnut pony was still cradled in my hand. If Cat hadn’t liked me, she wouldn’t have given me anything. Or she would have given me something generic. Boring. Impersonal. But she hadn’t. She’d offered the tiny horse like a peace offering and I clutched onto him because I hoped that he was. Cat wasn’t my blood. She wasn’t related to me, not really. We didn’t owe each other anything. And yet there had been times when I felt like she’d had my back and even though they’d been away and even though her father had tried to kill my mother, maybe she still did. After all, she didn’t have anyone else right now. All she had was us and we weren’t much. I felt kind of sorry for her.
Mom finally came out of the bedroom dressed in a floating wave of pale blue gauze.
“You’re back,” she exclaimed, swirling around.
“Are you drunk?” I said.
“Of course not darling child, come here.”
She pulled me up and wrapped her thin arms around me. The heady scent of perfume and liquor filled my nostrils.
“You are drunk,” I said, pulling away. “You baked me a cake and I was going t
o be the adult and say thank you and behave nicely so that we could all have a civil evening but how do you expect me to do that when you behave like this?”
“Emily,” Dad said as he came through the front door and caught the tail end of our conversation. “Don’t talk to your mother like that.”
“I can’t deal with her like this,” I said, holding up my hands. “She’s drunk.”
“Darling, I’m not drunk, I’m perfectly fine,” Mom said, slurring her words and tripping over her own feet as she fell into my father’s arms.
“See?” I said.
“Emily, go to your room,” Dad said, holding my mother up so that she didn’t fall over.
“Yes, room to your go,” Mom slurred and then started to laugh hysterically.
“You are sending me to my room on my own birthday?” I cried. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”
“Just go,” Dad said.
“Fine.”
I went to my room and shut the door. I didn’t slam it like I wanted to. I was the adult after all, at least that was what it felt like today and I was sick of it. Sick of treading around on eggshells. Of not talking about my dead sister or Missy or my feelings. I wanted to scream out what I was feeling. Only my emotions had been stifled for so long that I wasn’t even sure what they were anymore.
I set the china horse on my bedside table and then quietly slid open my bedroom window and slipped outside. I wasn’t a child or a horse. I couldn’t be cooped up. I was going to do whatever I wanted and no one was going to stop me.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
It was dusk already, the evening air damp with a coolness that wouldn’t have been there a few weeks ago. Florida fall was here, which wasn’t like fall in the rest of the country but we took what we could get. I thought of how it was the perfect riding weather and how I wished it could stay like this forever and I wondered how many falls and winters I would ride through until my dreams came true and then what? Would I ride forever?
I knew it was what I wanted. I just wasn’t sure how to make it happen. I needed sponsors and wealthy owners and people who believed in me as much as I believed in myself and I needed to get out of our small town. To travel on the road. Go to shows all over the country. All over the world. I was fifteen now and it felt like half my life had been wasted already and I didn’t know what to do about it.
Nyx was in his stall. He pinned his ears when he saw me. I knew he wasn’t in the mood and neither was I but I had to do this. I had to know for sure. I slipped his halter on and led him out into the darkening evening. His steel shoes rang out as we crossed the parking lot and went to the jump field. There was no one around to tell me to stop. We walked over grass, already dewy and wet and reached the water jump. Nyx snorted and rolled his eyes. I ignored him.
“Are you real scared or fake scared?” I asked him. “Because you are either a killer horse who does it out of the meanness of his heart or you are genuinely frightened and I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt one more time.”
I stuck the toe of my boot in the water and splashed it around. Nyx stood there with his feet planted, glaring at me like he couldn’t believe I was making him do this. It was the same look I gave when people tried to get me to celebrate my birthday.
“I know where you are coming from,” I told him. “I really do. I’ve been there but this is your job and you are too talented to go and be some trail horse. When people see you jump, they are going to try to make you do this and if you keep hurting them then it’s not going to end well for you.”
I walked into the shallow pool of water and stood there. Nyx looked the other way. I tugged on the lead rope. He ignored me. I tugged harder. He still ignored me. I planted my feet and yanked as hard as I could and he bolted right over me.
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
If I didn’t have quick reflexes, if I hadn’t been expecting it, the horse would have mowed me down without a second thought. Instead all I’d felt was a rush of air as I jumped out of the way and his shoulder brushed mine. He stood on the other side of the water, ears pinned. He knew what he’d done and it wasn’t out of fear or anxiety. It was cold and calculating. The horse was dangerous. He knew it and I knew it. Maybe he’d been born that way. Maybe he’d been made into the horse he was by trainers who had treated him cruelly. I didn’t know. But I knew that there was darkness in that horse that was never, ever going to go away.
“If I decided to ride you tonight, would you kill me?” I asked him.
In the beginning it had been a challenge. I’d wanted to prove that there was no horse that I couldn’t ride. No horse that I couldn’t understand and reform with my patience and love. But that was what little girls thought and I wasn’t a little girl anymore.
“Should I ride him, Summer?” I said aloud standing in the water jump in the middle of the dark field. “Should I?”
I was yelling now, demanding that the ghost of my dead sister appear and talk to me. It was almost Halloween, a time for spirits and dead things to come alive. People saw ghosts sometimes. There was scientific evidence of orbs on photographs and voices speaking in whispers on recorded messages so why couldn’t my dead sister say something to me? Anything? But all I saw were the bright stars twinkling in the dark sky above me and the black horse barely visible in the night.
“Fine,” I said. “Forget it.”
I took Nyx back to the barn, taking his halter off and closing the stall door. I knew that I wouldn’t ride him again. There was a demon inside him that I couldn’t break or tame or fix. Maybe someone else would be able to. Or maybe they’d just get hurt. I’d been lucky that I hadn’t been. It was the first time I’d realized that not all horses could be tamed. And maybe that was the way it was meant to be.
I left the dark, mysterious horse that had filled my head for the last few weeks and went to check on my other horses. The other lovely horses I’d neglected while I was trying to prove something. They were horses that needed me. That would try their best for me and maybe they would accidentally hurt me one day but they weren’t out to kill me because they didn’t have darkness inside them.
I hugged Bluebird last and then went back to the house, climbing in through my window and sliding it shut. No one had even noticed that I was gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
With Nyx off my mind once and for all, I was able to concentrate my attention on the Halloween show and after my mother’s performance on my birthday, Dad seemed less inclined to indulge her silly antics.
“Is she going to get a job?” I said as we took a break from working on the course designs for the classes. “Is Cat going to register for school? Don’t you think that they have hung around long enough?”
“I did suggest that your mother try and get her old job at the museum back,” Dad said with a sigh. “It didn’t go down very well.”
“Well she needs to do something,” I said. “Can’t she get a hobby so she can get out of the house every once in a while?”
“I know,” Dad said, shaking his head. “I know.”
And he may have known but that didn’t seem to mean he had any say in the matter and things were getting worse by the day. Mom was drinking more and wandering down to the barn to yell at me while I was riding, screaming that if another daughter of hers died then she would kill herself. It was totally embarrassing both for me and for the Fox Run clients. If it carried on much longer we were all going to get kicked out.
But with the show to focus on my days were full and I could see now that I wasn’t going to have to do anything to get rid of my mother. She was going to end up sabotaging herself and all I had to do was sit back and let it happen.
“Leg,” Dad yelled at me later that day. “You’re babying him. Your pony is not broken. It’s time he got back to real work.”
He was giving me a lesson on Bluebird and it was clear that I’d been giving my pony a free pass to slack off since he’d been back in work. But I was planning to ride him in the show and it turned out
that we weren’t ready, not by a long shot.
“You see what happens when you don’t move off my leg?” I said to Bluebird as I nudged him with my spur. “We both get yelled at.”
Bluebird flicked his chestnut ears back and forth and decided that it was better to move forward than to have a steel nib jammed in his side. Suddenly my pony stopped leaning on me, got up off his forehand and had a couple of lovely jumps.
“Better,” Dad said. “Again.”
Jumping my pony was like slipping into a pair of comfortable old shoes. We knew what each other was thinking and despite his current lack of motivation, I trusted him with my life. I wasn’t sure what I’d ever seen in the black horse that had taken over my mind. Mickey said that maybe he was possessed by the evil spirit of the girl that had died while riding him. I said that I didn’t care and both Dad and I agreed that there wasn’t much point in him staying here. In fact Denora had come and taken him away that morning, the horse running over her as he scrambled into the trailer.
“I’m fine,” she’d said as she hopped about on one foot.
She didn’t look fine. In fact she looked kind of mad that we hadn’t fallen for the horse. Perhaps she’d find others down south that would. People who would be willing to take on a dangerous horse like that because of his fantastic jump like we almost were. Who would overlook the danger that lurked within him. I’d never been happy to see a horse leave our farm but when Nyx did it was like this black cloud had been lifted. Even Henry started whistling again. Maybe Mickey was right after all. Maybe the horse did have dark powers. Either way, I was glad he had gone.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
In the end we decided to keep the Halloween show an in barn affair. We just didn’t have enough man power to deal with outsiders bringing horses and needing stalls and all the drama that it would bring. This made the Fox Run clients very happy. It made me happy too.
Dark Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 23) Page 7