“Hey,” he said. “Welcome.”
“Thanks, I think,” I replied.
“Don’t worry. We don’t bite. At least most of us don’t anyway. I’m Andrew but you can call me Andy.” He stuck out his hand.
“Emily,” I said, reaching out and shaking it. “Are you the only boy? When I saw your name on the list, I thought you were a girl. ”
“I get that a lot.” He grinned. “And yes, I’m the only boy, sort of like an endangered species at the zoo that people keep staring at through the glass.”
“You’d better watch out then,” I said. “Girls can be vipers.”
“And should I watch out for you?” he said.
“No I think you’ll be fine,” I said.
He clutched his heart and fell back on the couch, his eyes rolling up in his head.
“That was a harsh blow,” he said when he’d finally recovered. “You have a boyfriend?”
“Not exactly,” I said. After all, I wasn’t about to share my personal life with a boy I’d only just met. “It’s complicated.”
“Sounds like it,” he said. “Well, you’re in there I think.”
He pointed to one of the bedrooms. “You girls are all sharing.”
“And I suppose you get a room all to yourself?”
“That’s right.” He smiled. “It’s such a hard life being a boy in a girl’s world.”
“Yes, I feel so sorry for you,” I replied with a half-smile.
Andy was nice. Not nice in an attractive way, though he wasn’t ugly or anything. He was tall and thin with brown hair and a pointy nose with freckles and though he wouldn’t win any cutest boy awards, his personality more than made up for his shortcomings in the hotness department. And I wasn’t there to fawn over boys anyway, though I wasn’t sure about any of the other girls. If one of them set their eye on him it was likely to be a blood bath as they scratched each other’s eyes out in an attempt to snatch him up before someone else did.
The bedroom was small with one window. There were two sets of bunk beds. Stuff was already on three of them so it looked like I was taking the bottom one in the corner. I put my suitcase next to it and sat down. I could see the barn from my bed and the ring. There were a couple of girls standing out there. One of them was Becka. She kept flicking her hair. If she was there to ride and work, it hardly seemed like it. She looked more suited to a fashion show now than anything else.
I lay my head down for a second feeling tired. The clinic hadn’t even started yet and I was already exhausted. I pulled out my phone and texted Dad to let him know that I’d settled in and to ask how Bluebird was. He didn’t reply. He had an annoying habit of assuming that texts were like emails and only deserved responding to at some later point. Not something quick you shot back so that the person who sent it knew that you weren’t dead or something. Then again he was probably teaching or maybe even on the back of a horse. I decided to cut him some slack this time but if he didn’t text me back later, I was going to get really mad with him. He couldn’t just leave me hanging all week wondering what was going on back at Fox Run. It would drive me insane and he knew that. In fact sometimes I think he did that stuff on purpose.
I had just closed my eyes for one second when Andy knocked gently on the door.
“Roll call in the ring in five minutes,” he said.
“Okay,” I called back.
I figured that I should probably find a bathroom and straighten myself up before meeting the other riders. I mean I didn’t really care what they thought of me but I didn’t want them thinking I was some kind of hot mess either. Young Riders who were chosen to ride in fancy clinics with Olympic athletes were supposed to be professional and that was exactly what I was going to try and be.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We stood there in the blinding sun, four girls and one boy. Andy was on one side of me and Becka was on the other. Next to her were two girls, one small and slight with pretty blonde hair and one with dark curls and a curvy figure.
We faced the man who stood before us like a God and he might as well have been since he’d won four Olympic gold medals. He had an impressive tan, a gold watch with diamonds that sparkled in the sunlight and he could make a horse do things that we could only dream of.
My heart skipped a beat because this was the reason I’d come. All thoughts of Fox Run and the horses I’d left behind faded away until there was only the goal I’d been dreaming of since I could remember, winning a medal of my own.
“Welcome to Gray Gables,” he said. “My home away from home. I don’t need to tell you who I am but for those of you who have been living under a rock and might not know, my name is Hunter Preston and I am here to rip apart everything you think you know and then put it back together again in my image.”
“He’s a bit cocky, isn’t he?” Becka whispered.
The small girl giggled. Hunter glared at her.
“There will be no silly games here. This isn’t pre-school. I’m not your daddy or your babysitter or your favorite teacher. In fact by the time I am done with you, you’ll probably hate me. You’ll leave here wishing you’d never come and cursing my name.”
“Sounds like a blast,” Andy mumbled under his breath.
“But you will leave here a better rider than you came. That I can guarantee.” He clapped his hands together. “Now, please step forward one at a time and introduce yourself to me and the group. Tell us about your riding experience and the horse you have brought with you so we can all get to know each other a little bit better and then let’s get mounted up.”
Everyone stepped forward one by one and introduced themselves. They’d all ridden with this top trainer or that one. Won countless prizes and ribbons and ridden the best horses. Some of them had been champions in the hunter ring. Andy had been a successful eventer before he switched to the jumpers. It made me think of Ethan and how he’d done it the other way around, giving up the fast paced world of the jumpers for the breakneck life of three day eventing.
My resume was less stellar than the others. I threw in my clinic experience with Miguel and the fact that I’d briefly trained with Frank Coppel but I’d never shown at a huge established venue like the others had or won medals or circuits. And I was almost afraid to mention my father for fear that Hunter would know about his suspension hearing and penalize me for it. I just mumbled something about riding at Fox Run and stepped back into line, my face red and the eyes of the others on me.
“Don’t you usually ride that chestnut pony?” Hunter asked, sounding curious.
After what Becka had said, I was sort of hoping that no one else would bring it up but I wasn’t embarrassed of my pony, I was proud of him.
“Yes,” I said. “But he was injured a couple of days ago after a freak accident with the gate in his field.”
The thin girl, Alice, snickered under her breath. “She rides a pony?”
“So cute and so pathetic,” Tara, the other girl replied.
“Well I’m sorry to hear that,” Hunter said. “I was looking forward to seeing him jump. He’s got guts that pony. Oh well, maybe next time.”
And as the others were stunned into silence my heart swelled because Hunter Preston didn’t think that I was pathetic for riding a pony and that was the only thing that mattered.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
We got our horses ready quickly and efficiently, tacking them up in their stalls using the ring ties that had been bolted into the walls. Encore stood there staring off into the distance like usual.
“Don’t worry, it will be fun,” I told him as I ran the brush over his already gleaming coat. “At least, I think it will.”
I’d been to clinics before. Had lessons with other instructors who’d trained people that had won Olympic medals. In fact I lived with someone who had. Missy, the youngest person to ever compete on an Olympic show jumping team. But somehow this seemed different. Since I moved in Missy had been all about the baby and not much else. If she was hiding any secret Olympic
winning formulas she wasn’t spilling them, at least not yet.
In the next stall I heard the snap of teeth that closed around air and the slap of Becka’s hand as she smacked the mare for almost biting her. Twizzle reminded me of Sabrina, the horse Jess had for barely a month. If Twizzle couldn’t perform I suspected the same thing would happen to her, shipped back home to wherever she came from, the lease papers torn up.
We all made our way out to the ring at roughly the same time and stood there in the same line we had before. Andy’s horse was the gray, a sweet looking gelding called Mousse. Alice had a flashy bay with big white socks called Brookside and Tara’s horse, Paris, was a chestnut with a white blaze and three socks. They were all gleaming in the sun just as Encore was. I patted his neck. He looked the other way. And I wished more than anything that I had Bluebird by my side. My security blanket. If he was with me then I wouldn’t have felt so nervous. He would never let me down, not in a million years. I hoped that Encore wouldn’t but I didn’t know that for sure.
“Mount up,” Hunter called out.
I swallowed the lump in my throat and ran down my stirrups.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
You would think that a clinic for up and coming young show jumpers would include something like actual jumping but Hunter seemed to think we were all far too incompetent to even go near a fence. He worked us for an hour on the flat until our legs burned and our breath came in hot gasps. I had a stitch in my side from all the endless posting without stirrups, Becka had a red face and hair that had come out from under her hair net and was flying away in the breeze and Tara looked like she was about to faint right off the back of her horse. Only Andy seemed none the worse for wear. Obviously his previous life as an eventer had instilled in him a sort of stamina that we could only dream of.
“You can’t expect your horse to get to the base of a fence prepared to jump it if you haven’t done your job. And the riding in-between the fences is the most important part. What happens in the air? That is out of your control but the rest? That is up to you.”
Hunter sounded like one of those people on an infomercial, only he was selling us riding secrets instead of magic washing powder and he knew that we would pay dearly for them. But I think most of us already knew what he was talking about, even if we weren’t executing it correctly. At least the endless dressage lessons with Miss. Fontain on Arion had prepared me for the worst of it. The other girls weren’t so lucky.
“Half halt,” Hunter yelled at Alice. “Do you even know what a half halt is?”
“Yes,” she mumbled, pulling on Brookside’s mouth so that he threw his head up in the air.
“That is not a half halt,” he shouted across the arena. “Have you even taken one dressage lesson in your whole life?”
Alice shook her head, biting her lip and looking like she was about to cry.
“Everyone walk,” he said.
We walked our horses, huffing and puffing around him in a big circle.
“Who here takes dressage lessons? Raise your hands.”
I raised mine and so did Andy. The rest shook their heads.
“When you get back to your barns I want you to schedule one dressage lesson a week. I don’t care if it is with a local trainer or a top notch professional but you need to have them teach you the basics. This is what we call a foundation people and it is not over rated. It is essential to your survival.
I thought of the hours I’d spent going round in circles on Arion and the dressage show where we completely bombed but at least it was nice to know that it hadn’t all been for nothing. It turned out that my father was right after all. Dressage was a good foundation and it stopped angry trainers from yelling at you, which was pretty much all the bonus I needed. I’d started out the clinic one step ahead and that was how I intended to carry on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
We all went back to the barn feeling a lot less confident than we’d started out. Alice and Tara were complaining that they hadn’t come to a dressage clinic and that if this was what it was going to be like the whole time then they were just going to quit and go back home.
“What about you?” Andy whispered. “Are you a quitter?”
“Hardly,” I whispered back. “Then again you and I got yelled at the least.”
“And I don’t think that is going to do us any favors with the group,” he replied as Alice turned around and gave us a dirty look.
“I don’t care what they think,” I said. “I only care what Hunter thinks.”
“I’m not even sure I care what he thinks,” Becka said. “He acts like he is some kind of genius or something.”
“That’s because he is a genius,” Andy said. “A horse genius and there are hundreds or maybe even thousands of other young riders out there who would give their right arm to trample all over your dead body and take your place even if they knew they were going to get yelled at and told they couldn’t ride.”
“No one told me I couldn’t ride,” Becka huffed.
“Not yet,” Andy said with a sly smile.
“Whatever,” Becka said but her words were hollow.
No matter what anyone said or did, the only thing we all cared about was earning Hunter’s approval and the tiny little crumbs of praise he threw out to us that we snapped up like a flock of hungry birds.
I patted Encore as I took his tack off and settled him back in his stall. He’d done his job and made mine easier. Bluebird wasn’t that great at anything he thought might be dressage related. He was best just left to his own devices but that wasn’t going to fly here and it wouldn’t work with Hunter. Bluebird hated being made to use all those dressage muscles and his flying changes were sometimes a disaster. He changed late behind whenever he felt like it despite all my corrections. It was just his thing. We got over the jumps fast and clean and that was usually all that mattered. But in Hunter’s eyes there was more to it than that and Encore had given me the upper hand, for now at least anyway.
“Thanks for not embarrassing me,” I whispered.
I held out a treat for him to take but he turned away and went to his hay instead.
“Doesn’t he like treats?” Andy asked.
He was standing outside the stall watching curiously.
“No, not really.” I sighed.
“Well maybe you just haven’t found the right ones yet,” he said.
“Or maybe he just doesn’t like to be spoiled,” I said. “At least that’s what my father says.”
“Every horse likes treats,” Andy said. “You just have to keep trying until you find a kind that he likes.”
“I will,” I said, stepping out of the stall and closing the door with a renewed hope that maybe there was a treat out there somewhere that Encore might like and then maybe he would like me more too.
“Hunter says performance horses shouldn’t get treats,” Alice said as she walked by. “They’re not lap dogs, they’re athletes.”
“And aren’t athletes allowed treats?” Andy said.
“Have you ever seen a top athlete in training eat a cookie?” she snapped back.
“Yes,” he said.
“You have not.” I laughed as we walked back to the house together.
“I bet they do eat them though,” he said. “Behind closed doors when no one is watching.”
“You’re probably right,” I said. “And besides, I don’t see why our horses shouldn’t be spoiled. They work hard enough.”
“And so do we. Do you think there will be cookies for lunch?”
“Knowing Hunter Preston?” I said. “Absolutely not.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Lunch was a buffet of food that looked like it had come from a health food store. There were carrots and lettuce and celery sticks all laid out next to some sort of mushy slop in a bowl.
“How am I supposed to survive on this?” Tara moaned, picking up a baby carrot and crunching it loudly. “I’ll faint right out of the saddle if I don’t get more to eat than this.”
“Maybe we could order a pizza?” Alice said, picking up a spoonful of the slop and then sloshing it back down again.
“A secret pizza?” Andy said. “You’d never get the delivery guy past Hunter. He has eyes like a hawk.”
“He probably just thinks we are all too fat,” Tara groaned. “And this is our punishment for riding badly this morning.”
“No one is being punished.” Hunter strode into the kitchen and opened up the refrigerator. “There are rolls, meat and cheese in here. Make yourself a sandwich if you wish. I told you, I’m not here to be your babysitter. Make your own food. Eat whatever you want but you won’t find pizza or potato chips or chocolate in this house. You watch what you put in your horse’s mouth. Make sure he has the best grain and hay and supplements, don’t you?”
We nodded.
“Then why shouldn’t you treat your own body the same way? We’re athletes’ people and this isn’t a pie eating contest.”
So we made sandwiches and ate them but felt guilty about it. In fact Tara ate two but I was pretty sure that was just to prove a point. She said she was going to eat whatever she wanted and no one was going to tell her otherwise. I kind of saw where she was coming from. It wasn’t Hunter’s place to tell us what we could and couldn’t eat but then again it was also true that we were athletes. One half of a team. I wondered if he was going to have us running laps and lifting weights by the time we were done.
“I didn’t know this was going to be some kind of fat camp,” Tara said as we put the leftover food away.
“Hunter doesn’t mean it,” I told her. “He’s not a girl. He doesn’t understand the things we go through.”
“That’s easy for you to say,” she said sadly. “You’re skinny.”
And I felt bad for Tara because I knew what she was going through but I didn’t know what to do about it. I wasn’t about to stand up to Hunter and get kicked out of the clinic. None of us were. And he hadn’t singled Tara out. He’d told us all that we had to take better care of what we put in our bodies. But in the back of my mind I knew that it was also a good way to make a group of young girls really insecure about their body image in a way that we hadn’t been before. And it wasn’t Hunter’s place to tell us what we could and couldn’t eat.
Young Riders (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 16) Page 5