Greener Pastures

by Alyssa Brugman

  Then she told Erin about Chance.

  OMG! And U were there when it happened? How is L? I wish I had been there too, but I'm so glad I wasn't.

  'Shel,' her mother interrupted.

  'I'm in the middle of something important here,' Shelby said. 'It was a big day for me, in case you hadn't noticed.'

  'When you've got a minute would you call Clint and ask him if he would transport Blue up to Dandelion Flat for us? We will pay him, of course.'

  Shelby spun around on her chair. 'There is no way I am making Blue stay at that stupid, ugly place!' she yelled.

  They all stopped what they were doing and watched her.

  'I'm sorry, Shelby,' her Mum said. 'I understand that you feel like this is the end of something, but I hope you'll appreciate that it's a beginning too.'

  Shelby covered her face with her hands.

  'I know you don't believe it, but we think this is the best thing for all of you,' her dad added. 'You will see –'

  'Yeah, I heard you the first time,' Shelby snapped. 'You can make me do it. You can tell me over and over about how great it's going to be, but you can't make me like it.'

  Her dad's voice was strained with irritation. 'No, I can't make you like it. Life is full of things that you have to do whether you like it or not. You can sit around sulking like a party-pooper or you can make the best of it.'

  She took a deep breath. It was almost the same thing that Chad had said.

  Shelby took her hands away from her face and looked at their expressions. He was right. There was a party going on all around her and she was missing it.

  I'm the negative ion, she thought to herself.

  Shelby was going to have to make the best of it. Making the worst of it wasn't working.

  She stood up and marched over to the phone. She picked it up and punched in the number. 'Hi, Cassandra? It's Shelby. Can I talk to Clint please?' Her voice was all squeaky. She could feel her face going redder and redder. Her whole family watched her.

  'Clint? This is Shelby. I was thinking about your place. And I was wondering . . .' She swallowed, but the lump in her throat seemed to be getting bigger all the time. 'Do you still want to buy Blue?'

  25 New Recruit

  The next morning, after Shelby had said good morning to Blue, she met Lindsey in the feed room. The girls agreed to start at opposite ends of the stables and then meet in the middle.

  Shelby grabbed her favourite rake and the wheelbarrow and got to work in Charlie's stable sifting the manure through the rice hulls. She finished and then moved on to Griswold's, and then the next stable. Every now and then her eyes would start to tingle and her nose would drip. Luckily Aunty Jenny had given her some tissues that morning.

  Shelby was just about to move on to the next row of stables when she saw a familiar face standing at the end of the row.

  'Lydia!'

  Her friend's face was still pale and thin-looking. She gave Shelby a weak smile.

  'You said I could come up here and maybe you would teach me more about horse stuff.' She looked over her shoulder to where Lee was standing. He gave Shelby a nod.

  'How are you feeling?' Shelby asked.

  Lydia took a deep breath. 'Oh, I'm pretty sad. It was Dad's idea to come up. He said you've got to get straight back on the horse. And also we wanted to say thank you to the lady here for her help yesterday.'

  Shelby thought Lydia's dad had a lot of ideas, and not all of them were good ones, but she nodded. 'OK, well, let me drop off this wheelbarrow and I'll show you around.'

  Lydia and Lee followed Shelby to the poo pile. When Lee saw it he gasped.

  'That's a lot of poo. That's a real lot of poo.'

  Brenda Edel walked up behind them. 'Shelby, this is probably not the best place to start the tour.' She tried to steer Lee and Lydia away, but Lee was transfixed.

  'What do you do with it all?'

  Mrs Edel explained about the community garden.

  'I'd be happy to take it off your hands,' Lee said. 'I have a landscaping business. I'd love to make my own composted manure. That would be great.'

  Shelby had never seen him look so enthusiastic before.

  'That sounds like a deal that would work for both of us,' Brenda Edel said, smiling.

  Shelby cleared her throat. 'Lydia and Lee are the people you gave some advice to yesterday.'

  'Advice?'

  'About Chance,' Shelby said.

  'Oh.' Mrs Edel took Lydia's hand. 'I'm so sorry. They hang around, though, I've found. You'll see him out of the corner of your eye sometimes, just saying hello.'

  Lydia bit her lip and her eyes welled with tears. Shelby could see how hard she was trying to keep her emotions in check. Shelby felt herself start to cry too.

  'Shel can take you out for a tour while I talk to your dad here for a bit. I think we can do business.'

  Shelby showed Lydia the feed shed. While they made up the feeds together Shelby prattled on about which horses got which combinations of feed and why. She showed Lydia her board. Then she climbed up to the top of the hay pile and threw down a bale.

  Lydia picked it up and plonked it on the end of the trolley as though she'd been doing it for years.

  The two girls put the feeds into the waiting stables. When they came around the corner they met Lindsey, who had just finished mucking out the rest of the stables.

  Shelby made the introductions. She explained about Lee's business and how it was likely that Lydia would be visiting more often. Lindsey nodded. She had met Lydia's dad when she emptied her barrow. The girls grabbed some lead ropes and then walked down the laneway to move the horses out for the day.

  'There are so many horses here!' Lydia said. 'I had no idea.'

  Three by three they brought the horses out. Along the way Shelby or Lindsey would tell Lydia stories about the horses.

  'And you remember Bandit – Erin's horse,' Shelby said as they stopped by Bandit's yard.

  'He's so gorgeous,' Lydia said, stroking his neck. 'Don't you think he's gorgeous?'

  Shelby shared a smile with Lindsey. 'Yeah, he's pretty good. Come and meet the school ponies.'

  The girls headed over to saddle up the riding school ponies. Blue sauntered over and snuggled in to Shelby. She laughed on the outside, but secretly she loved that he was being so affectionate with her. At the same time it made her feel desperately sad.

  Lydia looked around the paddock. 'These are all yours?' she asked Lindsey.

  Lindsey nodded. 'It's a lot of work, but I like it. Do you want to come on the trail ride with us?'

  They had a group of fifteen for the trail ride that day. Lindsey asked Shelby to ride Cracker, after his unpredictable behaviour the previous weekend. She suggested that Lydia could ride Blue, but Shelby didn't want to. She couldn't explain to her friend without bursting into tears. Lindsey watched her closely, but didn't ask for an explanation. Shelby suggested Siete for Lydia instead and Lindsey agreed.

  For all her inexperience, Shelby noticed that Lydia had a nice way with the horses. She murmured to Siete as she moved around him, letting him know where she was. She tightened his girth one hole at a time, instead of just reefing it up to the highest hole first go. She also remembered the names of all the trail riders. Shelby had never been able to do that.

  They were just heading out of the gate when Erin rode Bandit to where Lydia and Shelby were riding at the back of the trail-riding group.

  'You won't believe what happened this morning!' she gasped. 'I was at the newsagent and you'll never guess who was there.'

  'Umm . . . could it be Ethan Agnew?' Shelby joked. She thought Erin might be cross about Shelby revealing her crush to Lydia, but Erin didn't seem to care. All of the trail riders could hear her too.

  'Yes!' Erin squealed. 'And he said, "Hey, Erin". He bought a book of sudoku puzzles, and a snowboarding magazine.'

  'So what did you say?' Lydia asked.

  Bandit fell into step between Siete and Blue. Erin dropped the reins as she tight
ened the chinstrap of her helmet. 'I've thought of all the things I could have said, like, "Sudoku, eh?" or, "Do you go to the snow much?", but I didn't want him to think I was looking at the magazines he was buying, because what if he was buying Identify that Wart Magazine, or Lose Your Back Hair in 10 Days? So I pretended that I wasn't looking.'

  'What magazine were you buying?' Lindsey called out from the front of the group.

  'Oh, a stupid doll book for my little sister and one for my mum about flower arranging. I know!' she moaned. 'I held them behind my back, but then I thought he might think I had some really bizarre body piercing magazine, so I just laid them on the counter, but after that I was worried he might think I was proud of them, and trying to send him some kind of message, so then I picked them up again. I looked like a lunatic.'

  'What did you end up saying?' Shelby asked.

  'Nothing! I just threw these two magazines around like I was trying to juggle them or do some crazy card trick. But when I got in the car and told my mum she pointed out that I am a lunatic, so if Ethan is going to like me he is going to like the lunatic.'

  'That's a healthy attitude,' said one of the trail riders.

  Erin seemed to notice the other riders for the first time. 'It is, isn't it?' she said.

  'I know Ethan Agnew,' said one of the little girls. 'He's on my brother's soccer team. He's at our place all the time.'

  Erin's face turned beetroot. She stared at Shelby.

  'Don't worry, you haven't said anything bad,' Shelby whispered to her.

  Lydia added, 'You could find out stuff about him.'

  Erin looked horrified. 'I don't want to know stuff! Then I would find out what he is actually like instead of how I imagine him being.'

  'Good point,' said Shelby.

  After the ride the four girls hosed down all of the riding school horses and turned them out. Lindsey said to Lydia, 'You know, we could use another pair of hands here. Since your dad is going to be coming up anyway, maybe I could talk to my mum about giving you a job here. What do you think?'

  Lydia's mouth dropped open. 'Really? That would be so amazing. I'm not that good, though – I have heaps to learn.'

  'I'm moving away,' Shelby told Lydia. 'So you can have my job.'

  'Oh. But . . . we're only just starting to be friends,' Lydia said.

  'I'm coming back,' Shelby assured her. 'But it will be a while.'

  They all headed back to the car park. Shelby's dad was waiting for her. He was talking with Lee. Shelby had always hoped her parents might become friendly with some of the other parents at the stables, but they never had.

  'You girls seem to have lifted Lydia's spirits,' her dad said as they headed home.

  Shelby didn't answer.

  'Hypothetically, if Erin was to organise a surprise party for you tomorrow afternoon at the stables would you want to know about it beforehand?'

  Shelby stared at him.

  'It is Erin we're talking about, so God knows what she's going to do to you.'

  'Yes, I would probably want to know.'

  'Lucky,' he replied.

  26 Baby's Got Blue Eyes

  Whenever Aunty Jenny stayed Shelby had to sleep on the lounge. Usually she didn't mind, but on this morning she felt stiff and sore. An early night had done her a lot of good, but she still felt wrung out like an old mop.

  Clint had arranged to pick Blue up in the afternoon, after her surprise party. Clint had told her about it too. It seemed her dad wasn't the only one worried about what Erin might have planned.

  They had talked about Blue over the phone and agreed that the best thing to do would be to get him settled in his new place straight away. Brenda Edel had agreed to lend Blue's best friend Hiccup to Clint for a few weeks just while Blue acclimatised. But Shelby suspected they were doing that more for her than for Blue. The pony knew Clint very well; it seemed unlikely that he would fret.

  There was no trail ride in the morning, but Lindsey told Shelby to go out into the Gully for a ride anyway.

  Shelby saddled Blue and rode him along the laneway to the back gate. She halted Blue just outside. Where would she go on her last ride into the Gully? Where would Blue like to go most of all? She decided to give him his head, so she gently squeezed his sides, pushing him forward. Blue peeked at her over his shoulder.

  'I don't mind, little guy; it's up to you.'

  Blue turned left, following a winding trail down the hill towards the causeway.

  First she told him about her conversation with Chad. Then she sang a song for him. She picked 'Blue Eyes', which was a daggy old Elton John song that Shelby's dad used to sing all the time when Shelby first got Blue. When her voice cracked she whispered it to him instead. Blue's ears twitched as he listened to her.

  Eventually she said, 'I need to explain something to you.'

  Blue plodded on.

  She couldn't think of a way to sugar-coat it, and besides, sugar-coating would be dishonest.

  'I have sold you,' she said. Her lip trembled so she rode for a while in silence, trying to get herself together.

  After a while she began again. 'I wanted to explain to you why I have done that. Firstly, I am too big for you. You should be carrying a much smaller child. Also, that is what you do best in the whole world. You like teaching beginners.'

  She raked her fingers through his mane. 'But I'm not going to pretend that I'm doing this for you. I'm doing it for me. You can't really do the things I want to do.'

  Shelby felt an ache in her throat. She swallowed, trying to dislodge the lump there.

  'So I have found the very nicest beginner that I can, and a dad who is the most knowledgeable person that I know. He might even look after you better than I can, and when the little girl grows out of you he will probably let you retire at his place. You won't be neglected, but you will have a peaceful life. I will ask him to let me know when . . .'

  Hot tears filled her eyes, blurring her vision. She rode again for a long time not saying anything.

  'When I leave school I'm going to buy a property and then maybe I could buy you back.'

  Her lip trembled again. 'I promise that ...I will ask Clint to let me know if you should ever get sick, because I want to be there when . . .' Her voice was all crackly and thick. 'I want to have the opportunity to say thank you again, because you are a one in a million, and it has been an honour.'

  Her throat was really hurting now, but she pressed on. 'It has been an honour to learn with you.' She wiped her face on her sleeve. 'I'm truly sorry for all the mistakes I made. I'm sorry and I love you.'

  Shelby dropped the reins and cried into her sleeve.

  Blue plodded on. She leaned forward slightly as he headed uphill. She couldn't see at all now. Then he stopped.

  She wiped her eyes and blinked. She was standing in front of a new house – a Kensington. It stood where Blue's old paddock used to be.

  She tipped forward and wrapped her hands around his neck, sobbing into his mane.