Young Riders (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 16)

by Claire Svendsen

  “I’ll do my best,” I said. “Give my ponies hugs and kisses from me. And treats. Lots of treats.”

  “I will. Bye.”

  She hung up and I sat there for a few minutes in the dark, the garden only lit by the watery light of the moon. I missed home and my friends and horses but deep down I knew that this was how it was going to be from now on if I was serious about a career with horses. Travelling to shows and clinics. Leaving horses and home behind. A life on the road where each show led to the next one until it was an endless blur of courses and ribbons with early mornings and late nights. Having to fight and claw your way to the top with a little bit of talent and a lot of luck.

  But by the end of the next morning I felt better about myself. Encore and I had completed the exercises set up by Hunter and he hadn’t yelled at us once. There was a particularly tricky line that he’d set from a vertical to a triple bar. The striding was horrible. Meant to force us to add or subtract a stride. Everyone was having trouble because they all played it safe and tried to add but I just kicked Encore on and left the stride out like I would have done with Bluebird.

  “Perfect,” Hunter cried as we soared over the jump. “Maybe the rest of you should try leaving the stride out like Emily, don’t you think?”

  Tara glared at me as she trotted Paris past us. I didn’t know what she wanted from me. I wasn’t trying to make them look bad. I was just trying to do my best. It wasn’t my fault that her best wasn’t as good as my best was.

  The rest of the week was pretty much the same. The rain came and we dodged the showers, riding in-between them in a soggy ring that had puddles at both ends and one in the middle. And I spent our lessons looking like a drowned rat because I refused to wear the rain coat that Jordan had given me because it just made me a walking billboard for the tack store and the others had already laughed about the fact that I got free stuff. They didn’t need any more ammunition to use against me. But being wet or dry didn’t make much difference to our riding because the footing was so horrible that it was like trying to jump in the middle of a bog and eventually we were grounded, sitting in the barn cleaning our tack and trying to be productive while the rain pounded on the roof like a million tiny, angry hammers.

  I tried to hang around long after everyone else had given up and gone back to the house, grooming my already clean horse so that I could listen out for Hunter and Gus and overhear them talking about things like where Encore had come from and what exactly they had done to my father but they never spoke of it again. I don’t know if it was because they’d seen me hiding out in the bushes that day or that they had just resolved their differences but their lips were sealed and they both went out of their way to be extra nice to me.

  I saw it now. The others were right. We weren’t that perfect. There were things I did that Hunter let slip but that he pulled the others up on. He was trying to make me like him, probably so that I wouldn’t suspect anything else but I longed to find something. Some shred of evidence that I could take to my father that would clear his name but it was ridiculous to expect that there would be anything to find.

  I lurked around the office but was never able to slip inside unnoticed and it wasn’t like I was going to find a file with all the information typed out in it and a dirty syringe taped to the back. Any evidence was long gone, if there was ever any at all to start with. Gus had already let it slip when I first arrived, telling me how easy it would be to put something on your hand and let a horse lick it off when no one else was watching. If that was what they had done then there would never be any evidence. Just their word against mine and the fact that I’d overheard something that didn’t even make any sense.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FOUR

  Show day dawned with a gray sky full of rain.

  “Do you think they’ll cancel?” Alice said.

  She looked over the edge of her bunk, trying to stare out the window below.

  “I doubt it,” I replied. “They can’t exactly send us home and then tell us to come back another day.”

  “They could,” Tara snapped. “If that is what Hunter wants to do then that is what he’ll do.”

  Alice looked at me and rolled her eyes. Over the last few days she’d realized that Tara and Becka were never going to let her into their group. As a result she’d become friends with Andy and me and she’d been riding better. We all had. It was like it had taken us a few days to find our groove and now we had it. Praise was being sprinkled about by Hunter more frequently now. Either we really were getting better or he’d just given up and accepted that this was as good as we were going to get.

  But it was probably because we’d had another top rider stop by to give us a lesson. Gatsby Pine, the actor turned rider who had girls fawning over him at every horse show like he was a rock star. It hadn’t been much better here. Tara and Becka had been so busy flirting with him that they hadn’t listened to a word he said and we were only about fifteen minutes into our lesson when the skies opened, dumping buckets of rain on us that we tried to ride through but in the end had to give up. All three of them would be judging us today. This wasn’t going to be just another competition where speed and clear rounds would win the day. It was the whole package. Position. Turnout. Your ride between the fences. Today it would all count.

  “I feel sick,” Becka groaned.

  “What’s the matter?” Tara said. “Worried you’ll lose?”

  “Who’s had the most rails down since we’ve been here?” Alice asked.

  “I have,” Becka said, pulling the covers over her head.

  “We’ve all tried our best. That’s what counts, isn’t it?” Alice said, trying to be helpful.

  “Oh shut up.” Tara threw her pillow at us but it didn’t reach and fell on the floor in the middle of the room.

  It would have been nice to say that we had all bonded over the past week. That we were able to put aside our differences because of our shared love of horses but that never happened. No matter what you did or how nice you were, some people would never be your friend. I knew that now. And people who you’d once thought were your friend like Becka could turn in an instant and become friends with someone else.

  There was a knock on the door.

  “Breakfast in ten minutes girls,” Mrs. Morrison said.

  “Great,” Tara said. “More food I’m not supposed to eat.”

  “At least she’s been feeding us,” I said. “If she hadn’t shown up, I think we would have had to survive on horse feed and carrots.”

  “Whatever,” Tara said.

  And I left them to their moaning and groaning because I for one was excited about the prospect of showing off Encore for one last day and I was even more excited to be going home.

  Mrs. Morrison was in the kitchen standing over a frying pan.

  “Eggs and bacon?” I said. “That’s not very healthy.”

  “Health food can be over rated you know.” She grinned at me. “You have a big day today. You can’t win on celery sticks now, can you?”

  “Tell that to Hunter,” I said.

  “He has his ideas,” she said. “And I have mine.”

  “Good job you’re the one who is cooking then,” I said.

  “I am.” She smiled. “And all the best luck to you today,” she said, sliding a plate over to me with a pancake that had a smiley face on it made out of blueberries. “I hope you win.”

  “Me too. I’d win if I had my pony here.”

  “You’ll win because you have spirit,” she said. “I knew it the first moment I saw you. You’re a fighter.”

  “I hope you’re right,” I said.

  “I know I am,” she replied.

  CHAPTER THIRTY FIVE

  As I sat on Encore’s back, waiting for my turn to go into the ring, her words kept rumbling around in my head. I was a fighter. She was right. I was. I’d fought for everything in my horse life every step of the way and this was no different. And over the past week, spending time with the horse that had no personalit
y, I found out that he did have one after all. He was just reserved and shy, like a turtle that was always hiding in his shell. But somehow I’d managed to lure him out, thanks to the help of Andy’s gingersnaps. Even now he turned his pretty bay head around and nudged my boot looking for a treat, his face looking refined and daintier than ever with his braided forelock and eager eyes.

  “You think so, do you?” I said, taking a crumb out of my pocket and reaching down so that he could lick my hand. “If we win today, you can have all the ginger snaps you can eat.”

  Andy came out of the ring, patting Mousse’s neck after a clear round.

  “Well done,” I said.

  “Thanks.” He grinned.

  Becka and Tara had already had rails down and their rounds weren’t pretty. There was plenty of flopping about in the saddle. They seemed to have forgotten all they had learned in their eagerness to outdo one another. Alice was warming up Paris. She was going after me.

  I tried to think of everything I was supposed to do, all the advice that I’d been given over the past week and the corrections I was supposed to apply but as I closed my legs around Encore’s sides, I realized that my mind was blank. I couldn’t remember any of it. All I knew was how many strides I was going to fit between the water jump and the skinny vertical. Where I was going to make my turn to roll back to the triple bar and how I was going to add extra leg at the liverpool so that Encore didn’t back off. The rest of the stuff? I just had to hope that it had somehow sunk in because I was riding on instinct just like I always did and that wasn’t something that anyone was going to be able to change because it was just the way I rode and usually the way I won.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SIX

  Hunter, Leslie and Gatsby sat by the edge of the ring watching. I tried not to look at them. Instead I imagined I was back at Sand Hill Stables in Esther’s old uneven ring, about to school over a course of jumps. When I was nervous or anxious it turned out that Sand Hill was still my happy place. My safe place. I could imagine myself riding there more than I could at Fox Run and it was the place I yearned for even though it had been shabby and run down. We didn’t have gilded taps or temperature controlled wash racks. We hadn’t even had level stall floors or endless mounds of fresh bedding like they had at Fox Run but it had been a simpler time and it was the place I went to when I imagined myself working hard and winning.

  The sun came out from behind the storm clouds and I pushed Encore into a trot. His ears were pricked. The bonding we’d done over the past week had done wonders for our relationship. He wasn’t the horse I thought he was at all. I’d misjudged him and I felt bad about it. I vowed to never again take a horse at face value. To wait until I’d uncovered their inner secrets before I labelled them something they were not.

  We cantered quietly towards the first fence. I tried to think of it as an equitation class and to not just get the job done but to make it pretty as well. Encore made that easy for me. He always landed on the correct lead, never took off at a funny distance and cleared all the fences easily. When we finished I circled him at the trot like they did in the hunters, showing off his swinging stride and the way he easily came back to me. Then I left the ring with a big smile on my face. We’d gone clean.

  “Awesome,” Alice said as she trotted Brookside past.

  “Good luck,” I called out.

  “Thanks,” she said.

  Andy and I stood by the rail watching Alice and Brookside jump. They were doing so well and I thought she had nailed it when Brookside faltered at the water jump and took off too soon, splashing down into it as he landed on the other side.

  “Maybe they won’t hold that against her?” Andy said.

  But after that mistake Alice was rattled. She never managed to pull herself and her horse back together and the rest of the round was rocky. They pulled the top rail off the last jump and it came down with a loud clatter.

  “That was bad luck,” I told her as she came out of the ring looking crestfallen. “You nearly had it.”

  “I know he’s not a fan of the water,” she said. “I should have used more leg.”

  But she gave her horse a pat on the neck anyway, unlike Becka and Tara who had been so furious with their mounts that they could hardly bear to look at them.

  “I guess it’s just you and me then,” Andy said, grinning.

  “I guess,” I replied. “May the best man win.”

  “Or woman,” Alice said.

  But all I could think about were the times that my father told me to man up and the many times Esther told me there was no crying in horse riding. And a quick glance at my watch told me that my father would be standing before the Equestrian Federation committee right about now. Was he manning up as well? Defending his good name? Or was he admitting that he’d been wrong. That he messed up. Hoping to get a slap on the wrist and a temporary suspension instead of a permanent one?

  “Look.” Andy pointed. “They’re setting up the jump off course.”

  And all thoughts of my father vanished from my mind because I had my own life to worry about and I couldn’t worry about his as well. At least not at the same time anyway.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  The jump off course was full of twists and turns. I knew it would be. Hunter was tricky like that. So was Gatsby. I could hear Leslie telling them that the course was too difficult but they ignored her and I was glad. I wanted a hard jump off. Sure I would have liked it better if I was riding Bluebird, who would have been able to dart through gaps that no regular horse would even consider but I felt like Encore had my back now. I was willing to push him a little bit more than I had been at the beginning of the week and count on him to be there for me. I couldn’t say that about him when we first started out.

  Andy and I walked the course together. After all we may have been each other’s competition but we both knew that at the end of the day we had gained something far more important than a blue ribbon, friendship. If Andy hadn’t been here this week then I don’t know what I would have done. Probably gone insane. And besides, we were both riding two very different horses and therefore had two very different strategies on how we were going to ride the jump off course. There was one thing that we both had in common though. We were both going to go fast. Super-fast. Neither of us was willing to sacrifice speed for the safety of keeping the rails up. We’d just have to leave that to our horses.

  “Think you can take me Dickenson?” Andy said.

  “I know I can,” I said.

  “Want to bet?” He grinned.

  “Fine, loser has to clean the other persons tack.”

  “Done,” he said as we shook on it.

  “I think getting into the jump off makes you both winners,” Alice said.

  “Suck up,” Tara mumbled under her breath.

  Both Tara and Becka had disappeared into the barn and didn’t reappear until Hunter forced them to come out and watch the rest of us ride. He told them they were being unsportsmanlike. I don’t think they really cared. They weren’t even watching now, instead they were sitting on the grass staring at their phones.

  “Do they even want a career with horses?” Alice whispered.

  “I don’t think they know what they want,” Andy said.

  And really it didn’t matter. They probably had trust funds and would be taken care of for the rest of their lives even if they didn’t work. They could sit on their butts and get their nails done and go clothes shopping and maybe every now and then they’d show up at the barn to ride their expensive horse. Perhaps they’d even go to a show or two, showing up at the last minute to get on a horse that someone else had groomed and tacked and cared for but that would be it.

  Hunter came over to us and held out a coin.

  “Let’s toss to see who goes first,” he said.

  And this was one competition I didn’t mind losing because I’d never have been able to decide whether to go first or last.

  And in the end I didn’t have to make a decision at all. Andy won the
coin toss and he elected to go last. It really was the best position to be in. You’d know if the person before you went clean and clear, in which case you’d have to go fast and hope you left all the rails up. Or if they had a rail down then you could play it safe and hope you kept them up too. But going first left me with only one option. Gallop like the wind and pray that we didn’t hit anything. If I had Bluebird it would have been a piece of cake. He was always fast. Encore wasn’t. Sure he galloped but he still felt a million times slower than my pony. But he was who I had and I was going to trust him and hope that he would give me everything he’d got.

  “Ready boy?” I asked him.

  He tossed his head.

  “Good. Remember, win for me and I’ll give you all the ginger snaps you can eat.”

  “You can’t bribe a horse,” Alice said. “He doesn’t even know what you are saying.”

  “Want to bet?” I winked at her as we cantered into the ring.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  During a jump off my position was usually the last thing on my mind and I knew other people were the same. It was when your elbows started to flap and your toes stuck out and those shoulders were well rounded and not in a good way. But as I galloped Encore around the course, in the back of my mind was that we weren’t just being judged on speed and rails but the whole package.

  It was hard to think about all that equitation stuff when you were galloping down to a skinny vertical and leaving out two strides but Encore rose to the task beautifully. Not once did he ever let me down. I knew now why my father wanted me to bring him all along. He was good and he was solid. He didn’t have a crazy bone in his body and he’d get the job done and get it done all while looking every bit like a medal horse, which meant I was free to concentrate on things like my position, which sometimes went out the window when I was clinging to the back of my speedy pony.