Ambition: (The Eventing Series Book 1)

by Natalie Keller Reinert

  Becky shook her head. “No, you can’t just take him out. He’s my responsibility. I’m the groom — he’s my job —”

  I realized, with a sinking sensation, that this was entirely my fault. Becky was looking for the respect due to her as my working student, as my assistant. And I hadn’t given it to her — I’d been laughing about her and bitching about her for weeks. Bitching about her to Lacey. Lacey didn’t see Becky as a person of importance in the barn, thanks to me. I’d been catty and rude, and stripped Becky of what little respect she was due as my working student. She’d been awful to me, that was true, but I was her boss. Wasn’t I supposed to be the bigger one in this relationship?

  I blushed to think of it, feeling my cheeks grow hot, thankful that the dimness of the tent hid the color.

  And then, looking at Becky’s pinched face, her downturned mouth, her angry eyes darting from me, to Lacey, to Dynamo and back again, I felt a surge of rage rise up again and dislodge the embarrassment.

  Why did I owe her anything at all? Why did she go off and leave me, why did she throw everything I offered her — friendship and mutual respect and a deeper knowledge of horses — in my face? Becky and her college education, a slap in the face, a passive-aggressive move to let me know that I wasn’t as good as I thought I was, I wasn’t climbing as fast as I thought I was, I wasn’t a star worth hitching anyone’s wagon to. Becky and her course schedule, standing before me in the tack room and offering to work for me on a reduced schedule, letting me know that she didn’t think that I could get anyone else to muck my stalls and rub my horses. Becky and her distant silences, her skeptical glances, her put-upon air, letting me know that she thought her boss was an idiot.

  Why did Becky get to call the shots?

  When Lacey was at the barn, she worked just as hard as Becky did. And she did it with a smile, and if she complained she was still ready to laugh with me a few minutes later, and if I didn’t feel like eating dinner alone she came inside and ate ramen noodles with me, and if I fell asleep on the couch she did night-check and left me a note before she went home. Lacey was more of a working student than Becky was. Just because we didn’t have a piece of paper between us, stating what our responsibilities to one another were, didn’t mean that Lacey hadn’t earned her standing in my barn, didn’t mean that Becky was somehow her superior.

  Becky made me feel like I was nobody. She brought me down. And she reminded me, constantly, with her very presence, that I wasn’t who I wanted to be yet. I wasn’t a four-star rider with students beating down my door, begging to clean up my horses’ stalls and scrub away their manure stains in exchange for a fifteen-minute riding lesson. I was a hopefully-three-star rider, and the only apprentice I had managed to snag was one who didn’t even want to work for me full-time.

  I shook my head and walked out of the stall, leaving the chain down behind me, and sat down heavily on the tack trunk out front. I leaned my head back, letting the stall bars cradle it, and sighed. A glance to the right told me that the peanut gallery had gone back to their chores. The event must go on, ride times waited for no man. I closed my eyes. I had to ride a dressage test in two hours, and I was in no state of mind for such concentration.

  Becky and Lacey came timidly out of the stall, their expressions now similarly worried and confused. Lacey wound the lead shank around her hand, coiling the leather in circles. Becky snapped up the stall chain behind her and put her hands behind her back, like a child waiting for a punishment to be handed down.

  I closed my eyes, hoping to avoid making a decision for a few seconds more.

  I wasn’t there yet. I wasn’t an international rider yet. I wasn’t anybody yet. If there was one thing Becky was right about, it was this: I wasn’t worth the effort. Not now.

  But I was going to be.

  And I was so, so close.

  In the meantime…

  “Lacey,” I said woodenly. “Better defer to Becky when we’re at an event.”

  Lacey opened her mouth to argue and closed it again when I frowned at her, thankfully copping on that I wanted her to keep quiet while Becky was around.

  “Becky,” I went on. “You can’t cause a scene in front of all those people. It was just Lacey, not a kidnapper. You should have waited for me and told me that you weren’t comfortable with the situation. Or even texted. You made us look second-rate.”

  Becky muttered something which sounded suspiciously like… but no, she wouldn’t have said that. “Excuse me?” I asked, incredulous.

  “I said, we are second-rate!” she snapped defiantly, folding her arms across her chest. “We’re not big-shots. You’re not on any team. You’re not even riding Advanced. I work my ass off for you because you might be somebody someday, but you act like you’re winning at Rolex already.” She shook her head. “And it’s ridiculous.”

  Beside her, Lacey’s mouth had dropped open, and the coils of leather were falling from her arm.

  I felt my face redden, a pulsing in my forehead. Tell me how you really feel, bitch. “You work your ass off for me?” I stood up from the tack trunk slowly, eyeing Becky like a snake in the hay shed. “Are you kidding? Becky, believe it or not, you have it easy with me. You have off two days and a morning every week! That’s like working at a… a bank or something. No, better than that! And no other trainer gives time off like that. And sure, yeah, I’m not a big-shot. Yet. That’s all about to change. Starting today. And I need you on board with that. Because when we have a barn full of horses and we’re competing half-a-dozen of them every weekend, you don’t want to miss out because you weren’t on my team when I needed someone. You got that?”

  Becky paused before she nodded, sullenly. It was a long enough pause to tell me what I needed to know. I could see the decision in her eyes, in the set of her jaw: she had made up her mind before I even came back and broke up her stupid fight. Maybe even before Lacey had shown up and pulled the horse out of the stall. That was probably just the cue she had been waiting for. Well, that was just fine by me. But she wasn’t walking out of here while I had an event to compete in.

  “You have the weekend to think it over,” I told her. “In the meantime, don’t draw anymore attention to yourself. We shouldn’t be noticed anywhere but in competition. Got it?” And I turned and walked away before either girl could say another word. I needed a Diet Coke.

  I tried not to spare Becky another thought that weekend if I didn’t have to. And I didn’t, most of the time. She knew the routine of an event: when I needed a bottle of Gatorade, how to put on the ice boots after Dynamo’s cross-country round, where in the trailer I’d stashed my black helmet cover after the last jumper show we’d gone to. Whenever I needed to throw my reins to someone, or whenever a water bucket needed filled, or whenever I realized I hadn’t eaten in a day and a half and needed a granola bar to stave off a fainting spell, Becky was there, silent and efficient as always, to make it happen.

  Becky might have been good, but for all that she still didn’t give a damn about me, and I knew it. Lacey was my friend, there for everything else I needed, chattering when I needed a distraction and quiet when I needed to think. And oh, how I needed to think.

  About how to liven up Dynamo’s walk-to-canter transitions in the dressage test (I decided on tiny Prince of Wales spurs for an extra little poke at just the right moment).

  About how to keep him focused on the approach to fence nine on the cross-country course, a nasty log fence with a steep gravelly hill on the other side, shadowed in forest after a long sunny approach through an open field (I would sit deep in the saddle about ten strides out and collect his canter to a taut bounce, so that he knew he should be looking for the fence ahead).

  About how to make it through the left-hand option of the water complex without finding myself with a mouthful of water (I would pray to the eventing gods. And we did manage it, one of only six pairs who made it around that option dry. Peter Morrison made it, too).

  About how to get a clean round in the stadi
um jumping, the last phase at this event, and maybe, just maybe, move up in the placings. Or hang on to a clean score (Relax, relax, relax).

  And when we did get that double clear round in the stadium jumping, cantering meticulously around the oval arena and negotiating the course of wobbly painted poles, so different from the logs and barriers in the great open stretches of field and twisty paths of forest that made up yesterday’s cross-country course, it was Lacey that I screamed to as we went jogging out of the arena, the crowd clapping thinly for the upstart newcomer who had just clinched the Intermediate Division.

  It was Becky who stepped up dutifully and clutched Dynamo’s reins in one hand, hurrying with the other to loosen his noseband, free up his jaw, and improve his breathing. But it was Lacey who I leaned down to hug from the saddle.

  I should have been better to Becky, and I knew it, but there was no room for anything but jubilation after this weekend, after this ride, after those final moments sailing through that stadium jumping course aboard Dynamo, leaning down over his hot wet neck, gloved hands pressing down on popping veins as he soared over the fences with such finesse, sitting back down in the saddle to bring his power and impulsion back under control so that we could wheel and be ready for the next fence without losing too much ground and racking up time penalties — he was a star, an absolute star, and he was mine. I found him, I saved him, I made him. He was mine. And winning with him was so very sweet — I just wanted to share it with a friend.

  And Lacey was the only friend I had.

  So I turned to Lacey, hugging and squealing, while Becky silently offered Dynamo a drink from a bucket of water.

  But as I straightened, out of the corner of my eye, I saw a familiar face, eyebrow quirked once again in my direction, as a male rider on a tall bay mare, red ribbon already in hand, watched my every move.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Late Sunday night, hours after my life’s greatest triumph to date, and there I was, sitting alone on my deck. A sadly neglected space, the broad wooden patio was really more of a storage area for my rusty grill, a few dead-looking turn-out halters, and some water buckets with broken handles that I was sure I would find a use for yet (I never would). If I leaned forward and peered around the corner of the house, I could see Dynamo’s silhouette when he leaned out of his stall window, looking around in the night, watching his friends out in their paddocks. He was in for the night, legs done up in standing wraps and poultice beneath brown paper bags from Publix, on forced rest after the exertion of the event. He would rather have been outside, but that wasn’t his choice. It was mine.

  He turned his head, and I saw his star in the moonlight, an irregular oval between his eyes, a jagged stripe down to his nose, shining iridescently beneath Florida’s absurdly large moon. My heart rose into my throat at the sight of it, shining in the dark like a beacon. My sweet boy. He had done it. He had brought home the blue, proved his worth, proved our worth.

  Dynamo turned his head back towards the paddocks and whickered, a lilting sound that carried through the humid night. A few horses out in the fields called back. Mickey, notably. I smiled. The gray horse was settling in nicely, his head-wound scabbing over, his good spirits undiminished by the daily scrubbing and picking and anointing that he had to suffer through in the wash-rack. I was growing terribly fond of him, and despite all my resolve to the contrary, I couldn’t wait to get on his back. As soon as his head was healed enough for a bridle to go over his ears and sit on his poll, I was going to climb on board and see if he felt as smooth as he looked.

  Maybe he’d be the next big horse. Maybe in two or three years I’d have two big horses. Maybe I’d have three or four. We were going places. Today had cemented that. Today everyone had looked at me. Today everyone had wondered who the hell I was.

  Tomorrow they’d read the write-ups online and they’d know.

  “It’s beginning, Dynamo,” I said into the night, but my horse was done socializing. He retreated into the darkness of his stall, back to his hay, or to lay down for a few hours of rest. I ought to do the same, but I was still too keyed up. My brain was going a million miles a minute. I ought to get a beer, I thought, slow it down a bit. But I was comfortable. It was past the mosquitos’ bedtimes, the tree-frogs too. Aside from an occasional truck on the county highway beyond my driveway, there wasn’t a single sound to break the silence. Something in me hated to break the peace of the country night.

  Inevitably, though, my thoughts drifted to Becky. And then I wished I’d gotten up and cracked that beer.

  Dynamo and I had done it, but Becky had done it, too. Should I have been surprised, that she hadn’t stayed to celebrate the win with me tonight? She hadn’t smiled in six weeks. She hadn’t stayed to have dinner with me in six months. But tonight, when she told me she wouldn’t be coming back in the morning, I’d almost seen a ghost of a smile flit across her sour face. I suppose she knew that I had been planning on taking the next morning off.

  She had ridden in with me on Sunday morning, before the stadium jumping, and so we were stuck together on the drive home. I was driving my truck, hauling the big four-horse trailer behind. Dynamo was riding back there like royalty, untied in a box-stall so that he could walk around and stay limber.

  The big rosette for first place was hanging in its traditional place of honor, the rearview mirror, so that everyone else driving home from the event could see our triumph. There would be a quote from me and a picture of Dynamo and I, mid-stride in our victory gallop, featured on the Chronicle of the Horse website by the time we got home. If nothing exciting happened in the next few days, there might even be enough white space for me in the next hard copy.

  What she said barely registered, couldn’t penetrate the happy haze I was in, the empire-building I was busy at, the stables and arenas and paddocks I was laying out at some two hundred-acre dream farm somewhere down the line.

  I got up and got the beer, the storm door creaking behind me. Marcus got up from the couch, wagging his tail, and followed me back out. The night was not roused by my brief absence. A frog peeped lazily, a whip-poor-will from the pine forest across the highway sang out. And then it went back to its sleep. I took a long pull from the bottle, savoring the icy bitterness against my throat, waiting for the bubbles to calm my over-excited brain, to give me a sense of perspective. Erase these feelings of guilt and abandonment that thinking about Becky seemed to stir up in me. It wasn’t my fault she didn’t like me, didn’t believe in me, didn’t need me. A few more gulps, and I’d remember — I didn’t need Becky. She wasn’t important anymore. She was just the first in a long line of girls who would come and go, with their shiny new boots ready to be scarred and cracked, with their shiny new hands ready to grow callouses, with their shiny empty heads ready to be filled with all the horse-care and riding knowledge I could stuff into them.

  I didn’t need Becky. I was someone to watch, I was someone on the climb, I was a rising young star. I could do better than Becky. I could replace her with two Beckys.

  I made it halfway down the bottle of beer, regarded it, set it down. The whip-poor-will had flown closer, it was in the turkey oaks on the other side of the parking lot now. Whip-poor-will, it called, and the little chirp the bird made after every cry was like a vicious little chuckle. Poor Will.

  But it was a little sad, I thought. A little somber, a little rub off the sheen of my moment of glory and triumph. I picked up the beer again, suddenly moody.

  Marcus hopped down the porch steps, ears flopping with every bounce, and went trotting off into the night, nose to the ground. The world kept turning, when you were a fat beagle. He had never had much interest in Becky anyway. The feeling had been mutual. And what kind of horsewoman wasn’t a dog person?

  She had sat silently in the passenger seat of the truck, her chin on her fist, her elbow on the windowsill, gazing moodily out at I-75. Cars were heading north in a steady stream, the Sunday night traffic of weekends at Disney World coming to a sunburned, exhausted e
nding, the backseats of cars filled with sleeping children and stuffed animals, tags from the gift shops still stuck to round fuzzy ears. A different kind of Florida from the one we knew, a two-hour drive and a world away from our rolling hills and our black-board fences and our cherished grass and our priceless horses.

  I thought they were kind of funny, but Becky just gazed out at them, all of those tourists from Ohio and Kentucky and Missouri, and her posture was glum and defiant, her shoulder turned coldly against the red, blue, and yellow satin dangling there between us, the worthless prize that signified our biggest weekend yet.

  And I’d missed Lacey more than ever, someone to laugh with, someone to keep up the carnival atmosphere I still felt in my heart. She was following behind in her battered little hatchback, coming back to help with the evening feed, although it would piss off Becky to have her help. But Becky had just given her notice, a barely-hidden smirk on her lips, while I gazed at the gold-stamped letters on the rosette. First place.

  And rejected.

  I looked up at the moon for a few minutes. The whip-poor-will relocated to the stumpy orange tree at the far end of the house. His call was piercingly loud now. It was the sound of old Florida, the sound of my childhood. I wasn’t nostalgic for much, but hearing that whip-poor-will made me remember nights just like this at the farm back in Punta Gorda, after I had taken a riding lesson and put the lesson pony away for the night, long after the other girls had gone home. Laurie already in her house, done for the night. My bike leaning against the barn wall, near the empty picnic table where the girls cleaned their tack and ate potato chips and gossiped while I was mucking stalls. I’d been a little kid when it had all started. How old was I now? I could barely remember. Twenty-one, twenty-two? But I felt like a hundred. And still too busy, and not good enough, to make friends with the people I wanted to like me.