by Kate Lattey
“Nah. No worse than I get playing rugby.”
“You play rugby?” Another stupid question. Maybe I was going to set some kind of record for inanity.
“Yeah. Well, I try. How’s Rory doing this morning?”
“Good!” I said eagerly, anxious to change the subject to something I was more comfortable talking about. Small talk had never been my forte. “Better, anyway. I was going to keep her in last night but Mum said we should turn her out so she can keep walking around and prevent it swelling up too much.” The bus brakes exhaled loudly as we ground to a stop. “She’s still limping a bit and she’ll be out of work for a while, but she’ll be okay.”
“Good to know. I’m glad it wasn’t more serious.”
“Me too.”
The front doors of the bus folded back with a hiss and a clunk, but it wasn’t until Evelyn was standing right in front of me that I realised that Jonty was in her usual spot. We all stared at each other for an awkward moment before Jonty grabbed the seat back in front of him and pulled himself upright.
“She’s all yours,” he said to Evelyn, then turned to look at me. “See you round, Tess.”
He walked down the aisle towards the back of the bus as Evelyn took her accustomed place next to me, then fixed me with an intense look. “What was that?”
I debated my options and decided to play dumb. “What was what?”
“Yesterday you said you barely know the guy, now you’re sitting with him and gossiping like long lost friends. Explain.”
“My pony got injured last night, and he helped rescue her,” I told Evelyn. Her eyes widened slightly, but didn’t ask any follow-up questions, so I answered as though she had. “She’s badly scraped up, but she’ll be fine.”
“That’s good. Hey, did you look at that English assignment yet?”
I switched obediently to her choice of topic. “I did, but I have literally no idea what they want us to do.”
Evelyn became more animated. English was her best subject, and she was determined to finish top of the class in it. “I’m not sure either! I downloaded the exemplars last night, but they don’t even seem to fit the same criteria as the assignment we’ve been given, so I’m completely stumped. I’m going to ask Mr Watts about it after class. You can come with me if you want.”
I didn’t want, particularly, but I nodded. You did what you had to do to keep your friends, because the only thing worse than being at school was being at school alone.
* * *
I closed my fingers around the reins, took a breath, and squeezed my legs against Misty’s sides. He shot forward into a trot, and I gripped the reins tighter. Relax, I told myself, but my brain fired back a Does not compute message. I forced Misty onto a circle, pushing him around the corner with my outside leg. He took three more strides, then decided that my leg meant canter, and proceeded in a series of bounding leaps. I tried in vain to keep him on the circle but he pulled his head down, ripping the reins out of my hands, and once he had his head between his knees I knew that there was no stopping him. I clung on tight, struggling to shorten my reins and regain some kind of control, but Misty was going faster now and everything around us turned into a blur.
I hate you, I thought as I hauled on my inside rein to try and turn him. His strong neck braced against me as he completely ignored my aids.
“Stop, Misty!” I cried, hating myself for the whining desperation in my voice but completely unable to stop it. Colin heard me, even if Misty didn’t. He came running across the paddock, ready to rescue me like he did the other day when Copper was running away on me. He planted himself in front of Misty and barked at him, but my moment of relief was short-lived. Instead of stopping the way that Copper had, Misty swerved out to the side, aimed a kick at my poor dog’s head, and then decisively bucked me off. Two falls in two days, and I was no closer to being able to ride Misty than I had been before.
I lay on the ground, winded, listening to Misty’s hoofbeats as he continued to race around the paddock like a lunatic. I didn’t need to be able to see him to know his tail would be in the air, his head held high, his reins and stirrups flapping around. I closed my eyes, glad that Hayley wasn’t here to see him. After her dizzy spell yesterday, she’d been placed on house arrest for the rest of the week and told she had to take it easy. Hayley didn’t know how to take anything easy, but at least she was doing as she was told for once.
I heard Colin snuffling around and felt his wet tongue lick my cheek. Reluctantly I opened my eyes and propped myself up onto my elbows, then looked for Misty. He was standing in the far corner of the paddock with his leg through his reins, grazing nonchalantly. Great. If he broke those reins, there’d be hell to pay. I pulled myself up into a sitting position and watched him for a moment, then got to my feet.
Colin stayed protectively by my side as I approached the pony. Misty let me get within a few metres of him, then threw his head up and snorted warily at my dog. I rolled my eyes at him.
“Come on Misty, you’ve seen Colin a thousand times. You’re not scared of him.”
Misty took a couple of prancing steps and then stopped as the rein looped under his elbow applied pressure to his mouth.
“Just stand still and let me catch you, stupid pony. Colin, sit.”
Colin obediently sat down and watched as I approached Misty. He tried to run away again, but the rein around his foreleg stopped him and he stood still and thankfully let me grab him. I unbuckled the reins and fixed them up, then stood and stared at his saddle, deeply reluctant to get back on board.
I remembered reading somewhere about a Grand Prix rider who had a horse that was so wild to ride at home that she used to only ever ride her at shows, keeping the mare fit in between by lunging and towing her behind a quad bike. I didn’t fancy my chances at leading Misty off the quad, but lunging wasn’t the worst idea. He knew how to lunge, because I’d seen Hayley do it a few times when she’d sprained her ankle and wasn’t allowed to ride.
“Right. Let’s try that.”
I led Misty back to the barn and tied him up outside, then pulled my helmet off and pushed my sweaty hair back.
“Stay there and don’t cause any problems,” I told Misty, who batted his eyelashes at me as though he was a model of perfect behaviour and had no idea what I was talking about.
I spent the next five minutes rummaging around in the tack room before I finally managed to dig out our lunge rope and whip, but I couldn’t find the side reins anywhere. I didn’t really know how to fit them anyway, so it was probably a good thing, but I hoped it wasn’t going to make Misty too unmanageable. I was carrying the gear back out, my head still swimming with doubts and worries, when I turned the corner and smacked square into Jonty. My forehead connected with his chin and we both bounced backwards off each other.
“Ow!”
“Oof!”
I rubbed my forehead and tried to glare at him, but he was already grinning at me. “Watch where you’re going, eh?”
“Me? I live here,” I pointed out, but I couldn’t stop myself from smiling back at him.
He looked around. “In the barn?” he teased.
“Shut up. You know what I mean. What’re you doing here?” I had a sudden swooping fear that he was going to ask me out or something. That couldn’t happen. I’d managed to patch things up slightly with Mia by swearing to her that I had zero interest in Jonty. Which was true, of course. He was a friend and I’d been lucky to have him around to help with Rory, but that was it. No romantic attraction whatsoever. He was Jonty, for crying out loud. Hardly boyfriend material, even if I wanted a boyfriend, which I was pretty sure would only turn out to be way more trouble than it was worth.
Jonty swung a halter from his hand. “Come to give Copper some exercise.”
“Oh, right. Is that like an every day thing now?”
“Yeah, looks like it. At least until Hayley can ride him again. That’s what she said, anyway. Doesn’t want him losing fitness.” Jonty glanced back over
his shoulder to where Misty was pawing at the concrete pad I’d tied him on, wearing the toe of his shoe down resolutely. “We can ride together, if you want.”
“I…” Not for the first time, I cursed Misty for being so difficult. If I could’ve ridden Rory, I’d have said yes, but I wasn’t about to let Jonty see me struggle with Misty. At least he hadn’t turned up ten minutes ago, when I’d been flat on my back with the wind knocked out of me. “I’m just lunging him today.”
Jonty pulled a face. “Suit yourself. Sounds boring to me.”
“Trust me, Misty never lets anything be boring.”
He laughed, and stepped aside to let me through. “Well then, I’ll let you get on with it.”
Why hadn’t I told him that I’d just finished for the day? I could’ve untacked Misty and turned him out and not had to deal with Jonty watching me and seeing me inevitably fail. I faked a confident smile and strode past him, heading towards Misty, who stopped pawing when he saw me coming. He eyed the lunge whip nervously, and I set it to the side while I removed the reins from his bridle and took his saddle off. He hadn’t even broken a sweat yet, and I wondered if he would be easier to ride if he wasn’t so fit, then decided he’d probably just be naughtier.
I fed the lunge line through the bit ring and clipped it onto the other side, then clucked to Misty and started walking back to the paddock. I carried the lunge whip the way that the Pony Club manual taught, with the lash caught up in my hand and the tip pointing towards the ground, but Misty still rolled his eyes at it and danced sideways the whole way out to the paddock. I shut the gate behind us and faced the wide-eyed grey pony, trying to exude confidence. I could see Jonty walking out behind the barn towards Copper’s paddock, and I felt a bit better knowing I was out of his sight, at least for a moment. I’d never been any good under pressure.
I put the lunge rein in my left hand and fed it out a bit, then brought the whip around behind him, letting the lash trail across the grass. Misty danced forward, spooking at the whip that was nowhere near him, and I wondered if I should drop it. He tugged at the bit, pulling out on the circle, and I clicked my tongue to tell him to trot on. He sprang into his high-stepping trot, still snorting and eyeing the whip that I had barely moved, then burst into a canter. It was taking all my strength to hold him on the circle, so I dropped the whip to the ground, wondering if that would make him easier to manage.
Misty proceeded for another half-circle, then realised that I no longer had the whip in hand and slammed to a halt, turning his body to face me with his ears pricked and head high.
“Get on,” I told him, waving my right arm vaguely in his direction. Misty just looked at me, pretending that he was confused and had no idea what I wanted. I stepped in closer, shortening the lunge rope as I went. “Go on. Onto a circle.”
Misty still ignored me. I moved around towards his left side, planning to flick the end of the lunge rope towards his hindquarters to shift him away from me, but he just made a turn on the forehand, keeping his quarters away from me. No matter how hard I tried, Misty refused to do as I was telling him. I knew that he knew what I wanted. He was well aware that being on the lunge meant go in a circle around me, but he also knew I couldn’t make him do it. Not without that whip in my hand.
“Right. Well, I gave you a chance, so now you’re going to have to deal with the whip,” I told him, backtracking towards where the whip lay in the grass. Misty followed me calmly, and I shortened the rope up so that he was only a couple of metres from me. But when I leaned down to pick the whip up, he spun his quarters towards me and kicked out with both hind legs. I ducked, feeling a whoosh of air over my head, and in my moment of panic, I let go of the lunge rope.
It took Misty exactly as long to realise that he was free as it took me to realise that dropping the lunge line was a really bad idea. It was several metres long and could end up tangling around his legs and tripping him up. Hayley would have my head on a plate if any harm came to her precious pony while he was in my care, and the fact that he’d almost brained me wouldn’t cause her the least amount of concern.
I grabbed the end of the rope as it slipped past my feet, and planted my heels into the ground as I stood up, trying to stop Misty’s flight. He felt the pressure and started to turn, then slipped. His hind legs skidded out from underneath him and he half-fell in the muddy corner by the gate. I let some slack out in the rope quickly as he scrambled back onto all fours. Mud was plastered across the pony’s hip and hind leg, and he stood and stared at me, his sides heaving.
So that was the end of that.
I reeled him in and took him back to the barn, too scared to try anything else for fear of making things worse than they already were. I managed to get him hosed off and turned out before Jonty even made it back to the barn with Copper, because apparently Hayley had neglected to mention that her horse was a pain in the neck to catch and that you had to take a bucket of food out with you to entice him. So by the time Jonty had dragged Copper into the barn to saddle him, I was on my way back to the house. Part of me wanted to stick around and chat to Jonty, but I thought it was probably safer to avoid the situation entirely. The last thing I needed was to put myself into a situation where Jonty thought I was interested in him. That would well and truly seal my fate with Mia, and I wondered yet again why other girls had to be so complicated.
* * *
I steered clear of the barn after school for the rest of the week so I wouldn’t run into Jonty when he came to ride Copper. Fortunately it was nearly the end of the school year and I had a ton of assignments to complete, so Mum let me off without riding Misty for a couple of days. That excuse didn’t fly with Hayley, but when a heavy rain front swept in and soaked everything, even she didn’t want to sit in the paddock and yell at me if she was going to get soaked doing it.
None of those things deterred Jonty, however, and he was there every day after school, rain or shine, to work Copper. I watched him surreptitiously from my bedroom window as he rode out over the hills, disappearing into the misty rain, never wearing a raincoat no matter how wet it was out there, and coming back soaked to the skin and plastered in mud. But he never went home until Copper was clean and fed and rugged up for the night. He took better care of the horse than he did of himself, and every day I found myself watching him more and more.
Mia had forgiven me for my supposed trespasses against her, but the one time I’d attempted to bring the subject of Jonty into our conversation by offering to introduce them, she’d shrunken into herself and refused, point blank, to even consider it. I didn’t see what the point was of even having a crush on someone if you weren’t going to talk to them, at the very least, but the other two backed her sentiments up.
“It’s easy for you Tess,” Josie had tried to explain. “You know how to talk to guys.”
I’d snorted, almost losing juice out of my nostrils. “Me?”
“Yeah. You hang out with Bayard all the time, and you must be used to Hayley’s boyfriends always being around.”
I’d rolled my eyes. “Bayard hardly talks at all, so I don’t know whether he even counts. And Hayley’s boyfriends don’t exactly pay much attention to me.” Well, one of them had tried to, but I’d escaped from that situation quickly, and it had made me very wary of talking to any of them again. “Jonty’s different though.” I didn’t realise that was true until I said it. “He’s easy to talk to.”
“Maybe for you,” Mia had sniffed, and Jodie had changed the subject before I could back up my comments, leaving me shrugging to myself and wondering if their half-hearted friendship was actually worth the hassle.
* * *
“Hey Tess.”
I jumped, and the feed scoop flew out of my hand, scattering pony nuts across the concrete floor. I turned around to see Jonty standing in the doorway of the feed room and looking guilty.
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to scare you.”
I picked up the scoop and looked at the dropped feed. “I guess that’ll keep the
mice happy. Did you need something?”
“I guess I’m just wondering why you’ve been avoiding me.”
“I’m not. I haven’t been.” He clearly didn’t believe me, which I couldn’t blame him for. He actually looked a bit hurt by my obvious lie, and I felt terrible. “It’s not you. It’s…complicated.” How could I explain the situation to him when it barely made sense to me?
“So you’re not like, mad at me or anything?”
I shook my head. “No, of course not.”
“Because I thought we were friends.”
“We are,” I told him. As long as that’s all we are.
He nodded, looking relieved. “Good. So you gonna ride with me today?”
“I…”
“Come on. Friends don’t let friends ride alone.”
My stomach was tossing and turning at the thought of riding Misty, but the sun had come out with a vengeance on this bright Saturday morning and Hayley had decided it was time to give me a jumping lesson. Maybe hacking with Jonty would get me out of that, and it surely couldn’t be any worse than being screamed at by Hayley. The temptation increased until I gave into it.
“Okay. I guess I could do that.”
Misty was thrilled to be out, and started pig-rooting and squealing as soon as we headed out of the yard. I gripped hard with my knees and tried to push back the sudden and overwhelming temptation to cry. Instead of getting braver the more I rode this pony, I only got more scared of him. And he must have been able to tell, because he behaved worse and worse. I wondered if we would ever get used to each other, then reminded myself that he was being sold. Six weeks to go. I wished those weeks would hurry up.
To his credit, Jonty looked slightly alarmed by Misty’s behaviour. “He’s a bit full of himself.”
“As always.” I let Misty follow Copper through the gate, then struggled to hold him still as Jonty latched it behind us. Ever since Rory’s accident, it had sat a bit crooked on the hinges and was no longer easy to open and shut. Misty started shifting around as though he was standing on hot coals, and I wanted to smack him but I knew that would only make him worse.