“She does want to show,” Ethan said. “She just doesn’t want to go back to school. She wants to stay home and do virtual school like you. She’s driving our parents mad.”
“Virtual school is pretty cool,” I said.
“It wouldn’t be the way my sister would do it.” He sighed.
And I knew Faith was a little over achiever. If she started virtual school she’d probably have graduated by the time she was twelve and taken my place on European junior circuit, pushing me right out of the way.
“One of these days, your sister is going to kick my butt,” I said softly.
“I know,” he replied with a grin.
CHAPTER THIRTY
The week sped by and I was supposed to be getting Bluebird ready for the show but all I mostly did was spy on Sandy. Missy didn’t seem to believe me when I told her that she was up to something and every time I tried to talk to my father he was passed out on the couch. So much for the idea that he would be up and about on crutches by the time the show came around. He barely even used the things, unless it was to use them to poke one of us to get our attention. Other than that he just hopped from his bed to the couch and back again.
He was supposed to go back to the doctor for a checkup but he’d rescheduled the appointment three times already. I knew he didn’t want to go but the sooner they told him that everything was healing okay, the sooner he’d be back in the saddle. That was if everything was healing. There was always the possibility that it wasn’t and I think that was what he was most afraid of but he always made me face my fears. It wasn’t fair that he didn’t do the same.
So far Missy had agreed not to tell him about Bandit, who was literally becoming the barn favorite. The smaller lesson kids spent ages grooming him and leading him about and he lapped it up like he was king of the barn, which he practically was because he had free range and got to do whatever he wanted because so far no stall or paddock could contain him. I’d even given a couple of lead line lessons on him to toddlers that were siblings of older kids who rode with us.
It was literally the cutest thing you ever saw in your entire life. Their chubby fingers clutching his mane and their tubby legs kicking against his sides. Bandit just ignored them, following me around the ring as they squealed with delight. It was pretty much what he’d been doing at the fair before we rescued him anyway only we didn’t make him do it for hours on end without a break and actually tried to teach the kids about keeping their heels down and the heads up. Missy was already hinting that he would be the perfect size for Owen when he got a little bigger. I wasn’t too keen on having Missy monopolize another one of my horses but I figured that if she liked Bandit enough to suggest that Owen could ride him then she’d stick up for me and the tiny horse if Dad found out and decided that he had to go.
But while Bandit was settling in swimmingly, Sandy was finding it harder than she’d thought it would be to slide right in and take my father’s place. People didn’t seem to want to ride with her and I didn’t know why. I kept trying to catch a glimpse of her teaching but there were so many other things to do to get ready for the show and to keep the barn running smoothly when we were one man down that I didn’t manage to see anything, until finally I saw her going out to the ring one evening with a kid on Ballycat.
“Now let’s see what you are really up to,” I whispered as I crept stealthily behind her.
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE
The kid wasn’t one of our regulars but I’d seen her take a couple of lessons recently with Missy. She was a timid girl and I wouldn’t have picked Ballycat to put her on as he was still one of the spookiest ponies we had at the barn despite my best efforts. I’d given Sandy a list of the lesson horses and their quirks, which ones were better for the beginners and which horses were more suited for the advanced students. It wasn’t my fault that she’d taken one look at it and then thrown it in the trash when she thought I wasn’t looking.
I settled into a spot behind a large bush where Sandy wouldn’t see me and got ready to watch. She couldn’t be as great as she made herself out to be. Not when I’d never even heard of her before. It wasn’t like she’d been around at shows or anything and even though she insinuated that she’d taught Jess, for all I knew that could be a lie too.
The lesson started out with all the normal stuff, heels down, head up, shorten your reins. When Sandy told the girl to trot Ballycat ignored her.
“Kick him,” Sandy yelled.
I was about to yell out no but it was too late. The girl kicked Ballycat hard with her heels and he freaked out, cantering away with her. She screamed and grabbed the bay pony’s neck.
“Sit up you little brat,” Sandy yelled, jumping in front of the pony and waving her hands.
Ballycat swerved away from her and the girl went flying off to the side, hitting the dirt. She lay there in a crumpled heap crying.
“You’re fine,” Sandy snapped at her. “Get up.”
It was our policy to encourage all students who weren’t injured to get back on the horse but not before assessing them to make sure they weren’t actually hurt. Sandy hadn’t done that at all. In fact she just left the girl sitting there crying in the middle of the ring and went to catch Ballycat who was standing by the gate, trying to get back to his stall.
“Where do you think you’re going you little monster?” Sandy snapped at the pony as she reached out to grab the reins and he swung away from her with wild eyes.
She snagged him before he took off again, reaching over the fence and grabbing a crop from the tub we kept there.
“Someone needs to teach you some manners,” she hissed, raising her arm and then lashing poor Ballycat across the neck with the crop.
He skittered away, frightened of the horrible woman who was raising her arm to hit him again.
“Stop,” I yelled, rushing out from behind the bush. “What on earth do you think you are doing?”
CHAPTER THIRTY TWO
It was my word against Sandy’s as the little girl, Katie, hadn’t seen anything. She’d still been curled up in a ball crying in the middle of the ring while Sandy went off to hit a poor, frightened pony. We now all sat in the office with Missy as some sort of referee. Katie had an ice pack on her wrist and her mother was pulling the car around to take her to the emergency room. There was a good chance from the look of the swelling and bruising that it might have been broken.
We sent the girl off with apologies and the relief that at least the girl’s mother had previously signed a release form so there was little chance that they would try to sue us.
“We hope you feel better soon,” Missy said as the mother hustled the girl out of the barn. “And don’t forget to come back for your free lesson.”
“They won’t come back here again,” Sandy said as Missy came back into the office and sat back down.
“Yes,” Missy said with a sigh. “Thanks to you.”
“No,” Sandy said. “Thanks to your unruly lesson ponies. If they can’t be trusted with kids, why are they even here? You are asking for a law suit with that one.”
“I gave you the list,” I told her. “Bally is for the advanced students.”
“The only thing that pony is good for is the dog food factory,” Sandy said.
“How dare you,” I cried. “You don’t even know him and you’re the one who ran off to exact your sick revenge on a defenseless pony, leaving your lesson student crying in a heap on the floor.”
“How dare you,” Sandy yelled back at me, her face all red. “I don’t owe you an explanation.”
“All right, all right,” Missy said. “Everyone calm down.”
“I am calm,” Sandy said but she didn’t look like she was calm. She’d jumped to her feet and looked like she wanted to strangle someone, probably me.
“Take a seat,” Missy told her.
“Why?” Sandy snapped. “So you two can gang up on me and pretend that I am some cruel person without a heart? I told you I didn’t hit that pony.”
> “I saw you do it,” I cried.
I couldn’t believe that Sandy would tell a bold faced lie like that. What kind of psychopath was she?
“So you were spying on me?” Sandy said.
“No,” I replied, trying to look honest and sincere. “I just happened to be passing the ring when I heard someone screaming.”
“Sure,” Sandy said, rolling her eyes.
“We can’t have instructors hitting ponies in front of clients,” Missy said. “It’s not how we do things.”
“How do you do things then?” Sandy said. “Wrap up the ponies in a snuggly blanket and try to explain to them that if they dump off little kids then that is not a very nice thing to do and they won’t get any more treats?”
“No,” Missy said. “We assess the situation to see if it was rider or pony error and if needed the pony goes back into training until he or she is deemed fit for lesson duty again.”
“Right,” Sandy said. “So basically what I said with a few training rides thrown in then.”
Missy looked at me. I shook my head. She was never going to get through to Sandy and if she couldn’t see that now, she never would.
“If you could just tone it down a bit,” Missy said.
“Sure, fine, whatever,” Sandy said, standing up. “Look you guys needed me. Now you don’t? That’s fine.”
“That’s not what I said,” Missy told her.
“You either want me to teach lessons here or you don’t,” she said. And then she stormed out of the office.
“I’d better go after her,” Missy said with a sigh. “We need her.”
“Are you sure we need her that badly?” I said.
“Have you seen your father?” Missy replied.
She looked beaten down, her face pale. Had it really come to this? We were now dependent on questionable instructors to survive? There had to be someone better out there than Sandy. There were always trainers looking for jobs and I was going to have to find a suitable one because I didn’t think I could put up with Sandy for one more day.
I slipped out of the office to go and check on Ballycat and saw Missy standing out by Sandy’s truck. She was leaning on the door looking like she was talking Sandy into staying. She had no idea what she was getting into. I had a feeling that this was only the tip of Sandy’s iceberg and who knew what other horrible emotionally unstable character traits were lurking under the surface of her personality.
The small Welsh pony was standing in his stall feeling sorry for himself. When I opened the door his eyes got all big.
“It’s okay, Bally,” I said, slipping inside. “I’m not going to hurt you and I’m going to make sure that mean lady doesn’t hurt you again either.”
I ran my fingers over his neck hoping to find something, a welt or swelling that would prove that Sandy had hit him but there was nothing there.
“If only it wasn’t my word against hers,” I told him, straightening his long forelock. “Now she’s going to be out to get me for good.”
I spent a while fussing over the pony to make sure he knew that we were sorry she hit him like that. It was wrong of him to take off but he hadn’t run away with Katie, only burst into a canter because she kicked him so hard. The fact that she fell off had more to do with the fact that she had freaked out than that he had. Even so, Sandy was also kind of right. Kids that fell off and had to go to the emergency room didn’t always come back and we were in the business of keeping clients, not scaring them away.
Eventually Missy came to stand outside the stall. “Is he okay?” she said.
“A little shaken but he’ll live,” I replied. “Did you make a deal with the devil or did you kick her out of here like she deserved?”
“What do you think?” She sighed.
“Oh no, you didn’t.”
“I didn’t have a choice. And I had to give her something too.”
“What?” I said, my heart thumping in my chest.
“I had to agree to let her ride Hashtag and I had to give her a stall for her pregnant mare.”
I just stood there completely speechless. How could Missy betray me like that?
CHAPTER THIRTY THREE
I couldn’t believe Missy could be so callous and cold. She knew what Sandy was like now and yet she was still going to let her ride Hashtag? How was that even fair?
“How can you do this to me?” I whispered. “She’ll ruin him.”
“From what I’ve seen, he’s already ruined,” Missy said. “He won’t jump. How can she make him any worse?”
“She can make it so that he won’t want to be ridden at all,” I said desperately. “Why don’t you let her ride Socks instead? Or one of the other lesson horses? Anyone but him.”
“I offered her Socks,” Missy said. “I offered her all the other horses but she only seems to want to ride yours. It was all I could do to stop her from insisting that she ride Arion or Bluebird.”
“Over my dead body,” I said.
“Exactly,” she replied.
“Well can’t we just find someone else? Another trainer to fill in until Dad is back on his feet? Surely she can’t be the only person out there willing to teach lessons.”
“No,” Missy said. “She’s not. But she is the only person willing to do it at a fraction of the cost. Your father is still pulling a full salary and we need that money right now what with his medical bills. If we want to hire someone as good as he is then he’ll have to go without that money. That means no shows. Is that what you want?”
I just stared at her, blinking back tears. This was what it had come down to? Having to choose between suffering through every day with a horrible person who was going to ruin my horse and the barn that we had built Fox Run up to be? Or going back to eating ramen noodles for months on end like I’d done when I lived with my mother. It didn’t sound like much of a choice. Both options were going to suck. I didn’t mind eating noodles but not going to shows? That I did mind because it would affect my career.
“If she scares away all the clients, Dad won’t have a job to come back to,” I said.
I left Missy standing there. I knew she didn’t really have a choice. None of us did. But I still didn’t believe her. There had to be someone out there willing to help us out. Telling the students we would be cutting back on lessons would be better than having Sandy send each and every one of them to the hospital. I went to find Hashtag.
He was in the big field, standing under a tree. I grabbed his halter and slipped it on. He sniffed my face, licking my salty tears away.
“I’m sorry boy,” I sobbed. “You’ve escaped from one horrible person only to be stuck with another. It’s not fair.”
I threw my arms around his neck and stood there for a while sobbing into his mane. It started to rain, fat drops plopping onto my arms. I didn’t care. I tied the lead rope onto the other side of his halter and then led him to the fence, scrambling up it and then onto his back. He turned around and sniffed my boot.
“If she is going to be riding you from now on, I don’t see why we can’t have one last joy ride,” I said.
We rode through the rain, out of the field and onto the trail. I didn’t tell anyone where I was going. There wasn’t really anyone left to care. Dad was zonked out on pain meds. All Missy cared about was trying to hold everything together and the more she did, the more everything fell apart. And I was supposed to be training Bluebird for the next show but that was the last thing I wanted to do.
We trotted through the trees and then cantered across the clearing. Hashtag’s back was big and broad and he was comfortable to ride without a saddle. His big ears flicked back and forth as we came to the cross country jumps and without even thinking about it I pointed him at one of the small logs and he hopped right over it.
CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR
I lost track of time, playing with Hashtag out in the rain, jumping everything in sight. He took them all in stride. The canoe. The picnic table. The logs in the stream. Splashing through the wat
er with pricked ears and a spring in his step. Clearing everything without a second thought bareback with a halter.
We circled the fallen tree limb, the one stuck between the two trees as high as a four foot vertical and just as tempting. I knew that Hashtag could easily clear it. He was one of the scopiest horses I’d ever seen. Just as good as Encore and Bluebird. Maybe even better. But the voice in the back of my head told me I shouldn’t. That it was dangerous. I could get hurt and so could my horse. The rebellious part of me didn’t care. I just wanted to prove I could do it but the fact that Hashtag was jumping again was victory enough. I brought him to a walk and patted his slick neck.
“I knew you could do it,” I told him, leaning over and hugging his neck.
He blew softly through his nostrils.
“This will just be our little secret, okay?” I said.
We walked back to the barn, both drenched and not caring. It was like a weight had been lifted. I didn’t know why Hashtag wouldn’t jump in the ring or the field but he’d jumped in the woods for me and no one else. He’d done it just like it was nothing and he’d done it for me. It was like I had my own little secret now, something that I knew that no one else did and I wasn’t about to share it with anyone.
“They’ll probably be all mad that I didn’t tell anyone where I went,” I said as we got back to the barn.
The lights were blaring, sending out an orange glow into the darkening sky. Some people had shown up to ride and they waved as they went out to the ring. I waved back. The arena was neat and tidy, the lines in the clay untouched by human or horse since Missy had dragged it. The jumps were freshly painted, all yellow and red and blue. The hedges had been trimmed. The flower beds pruned. We looked like a show barn because we were one and the truth was that I liked it here and I didn’t want to leave and part of me knew that Missy was right. If we had to put up with Sandy to stay then maybe it would be worth it after all. But I was also wrong. No one cared where I’d been because no one had even noticed. I was becoming invisible.
Double Standards (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 20) Page 7