Summer Circuit (The Show Circuit -- Book 1)

by Kim Ablon Whitney

  Could I really have crashed into Chris Kern?

  Chapter 4

  I walked Logan around the show grounds, making sure to stick to the paths labeled HORSES ONLY and not find myself on the paths marked for dirt bikes and golf carts. That was just what I didn’t need—to crash into a moving vehicle after already crashing into the show’s top rider. Logan refused to calm down, jigging and chewing the bit the whole time. I finally gave up and took him back to the barn. I stripped off his tack and threw him in the stall. I glanced at the water buckets on the ground and the mountains of shavings now mixed with dirt, since Logan had dug around to forage for the grass underneath. I quickly retreated to my tack trunk and hung my head in my hands. This was beyond a disaster.

  “He-llo!”

  I heard Zoe’s voice and looked up to see her and Jed walking into the aisle.

  “We heard you crashed into Chris Kern!” Zoe said and Jed quickly added, “Something I’ve always aspired to do myself.”

  Zoe gave Jed a fake-disgusted look and directed her gaze back to me. “You’ve been here, what, a few hours? And you’re already getting into trouble?”

  “How did you know?” I’m sure my face showed my horror. “Did you see it?”

  Zoe chuckled. “Word travels. What did he say?”

  I lowered my voice to imitate Chris. “Watch where you’re going next time.”

  “That sounds like Chris—über-serious. So, what’s Jamie having you do this summer?”

  “Children’s jumpers. You know, stick with the low fences so I don’t kill myself.”

  Most juniors in their last year were doing the big eq, junior hunters, or junior jumpers, or a combination of all three. That’s what Jed and Zoe were doing. But they weren’t tragic-junior-rider me.

  “How’s Logan anyway?” Zoe wandered over to peer into his stall. “What the—”

  Jed joined her and soon both of them were staring at the mess I’d made. Logan had knocked one of the buckets over, probably on purpose, creating a big circle of wet shavings.

  “I’m not sure what looks worse, this stall or you,” Zoe said. “You put the water buckets on the ground?”

  Jed shivered. “Extreme unmakeover.”

  “I wasn’t sure how to hang them.”

  “Did you try the hooks?” Zoe motioned to two lovely metal circles on the side of the stall, right there to attach a double-ended clip to. How had I missed those?

  “I guess I didn’t see them,” I mumbled.

  Zoe stepped closer to me. “And is that dirt on your neck? How did you get dirt on your neck?”

  “This whole thing was kind of a challenge.”

  “I see that.”

  I hung my head again. Zoe and Jed had ridden with Jamie much longer than I had, since they had been doing the ponies. They had spent years on the road together, riding in six o’clock lessons, finishing first and second in the same classes, staying at the same hotels. They were always super nice to me, but I wasn’t one of them.

  “Oh, honey,” Zoe said. “Don’t cry. Is she crying?”

  “I don’t know, maybe,” Jed said.

  “I’m not crying,” I muttered.

  Zoe came to sit on one side of me on the tack trunk. “Who’s taking care of Logan? Pablo? Why didn’t he set up your stalls?”

  “I’m taking care of Logan.”

  “By yourself?” Zoe’s eyes went wide.

  I nodded.

  Jed gasped. “Why? Did your dad go bankrupt, or go to prison for insider trading or something?”

  Zoe shot Jed a look. “Manners, Jed.”

  “What? It happened to Amanda Connors. She’s down to two horses.”

  “My dad didn’t go bankrupt. He wants me to suffer. I mean, learn to be independent.”

  Jed slid onto the tack trunk on the other side of me. “We’ll help you.”

  “Do you even know how to set up a stall?” I asked.

  Jed grinned. “No, but Zoe does.”

  Zoe liked to pretend she was one of the juniors with tons of money. Really, she was the daughter of a small-time professional who bought and sold horses in Virginia. She had grown up doing all her own work, even if now most of the time Jamie gave her grooms.

  Zoe stood up. “First thing we have to do is hang your buckets. That’s like a tragedy waiting to happen in there.”

  We put Logan in the grooming stall and Zoe and Jed helped me. We clipped the buckets onto the hooks. Jed dragged the hose in to fill the buckets as Zoe showed me how to bank the shavings to the sides.

  She wielded the pitchfork expertly, like some girls used a round brush and a blow-dryer. “Leave it banked so Logan can eat whatever grass is left and then later this afternoon pull some shavings down, but not all of them.”

  While we were working, one of the grooms from Jamie’s barn, Mike, came over to find Zoe. “Jamie says you need to get on Baxter.”

  Mike was one of the few white grooms and he stuck out in his tank top and black jeans. He rode a motorcycle and was into weight-lifting, He was the last person you would ever imagine working with horses. He also was totally into Zoe. He was only a few years older than us. He hadn’t gone to college and might not have even graduated from high school. Zoe liked to flirt with him sometimes because he wasn’t ugly and he was really nice, but she’d never be with him, she’d said, not even for a one-night stand.

  “I’m helping Hannah set up,” Zoe told him.

  “You can help me after,” I said.

  Zoe gave Mike a trying-to-be-cute smile. “Unless you have time after you get Baxter ready for me . . .”

  Her smile worked. Mike made a show of acting kind of put-out, but I knew he loved the idea of helping Zoe, even if it meant helping me. “Okay,” he said. “But you owe me.”

  “Maybe,” Zoe said. “What do you have in mind?”

  “A drink at Backcountry.”

  “I could do that,” Zoe said.

  It was agreed. Mike got Zoe on Baxter and then he came back and helped me finish Logan’s stall and get the grooming stall up. In minutes he had the rubber mat down on the floor and the brush box positioned. In the third stall he put my feed, extra hay bales, supplements, muck bucket, pitchfork, and rake. I watched him, trying to learn how it was all done in case I ever had to do it again.

  When it was all set he brushed his hands off on his jeans.

  “Thank you so much,” I said.

  “Anytime. You going to come out for a drink?”

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe. Are you going tonight?”

  “Nah, probably Sunday . . . that’s the real party day.”

  I nodded. I’d often heard the whispers about Sunday nights. “We’ll see,” I said.

  “You’re going to have fun up here,” Mike said. “Everyone does.”

  I thought back to my day so far. Crashing into Chris, botching my stall set-up. It had to get better than this.

  Chapter 5

  Jamie said she would give me a lesson on Wednesday morning and then I would show in a 1.00 meter class that afternoon. I didn’t feel at all ready, but I didn’t have any say in things like that. Jamie reigned supreme. She was a dictator and even the parents kowtowed to her. Most outsiders to the sport would never understand why people paid gobs of money to be treated like dirt by a trainer with dyed red hair who said, “idear,” instead of “idea.” But where we lived on the South Shore there were few A-level barns and once you started riding with a trainer, it was hard to leave, unless you were one of those fickle people who hopped trainers every few months. Even though Jamie was mean and often not very helpful, riding with her became familiar and it was hard to break those ties.

  Early Wednesday morning, I went to put Logan on the cross-ties so I could clean his stall. I decided I would start with emptying his water buckets. I went to unhook them and what did I find? Poop. Floating horse poop. He had pooped in his bucket. How did a horse even pull that off? I had never seen it before, or even known it was a thing horses did. And what kind
of sick horse would crap in his own water? I gave Logan a sidelong look and then dragged the buckets outside, unsure whether to dump them in the wash stall or the manure pile. Mike was dumping a wheelbarrow and saw me staring into the bucket.

  “What you got in there?” he asked. “The fountain of youth?”

  “No, manure.”

  Mike nodded. “A floater.”

  “So this is like a thing?” I said. “My horse isn’t the first to invent this little demented trick?”

  “Nah, some horses do it.”

  “Why?”

  Mike shrugged. “Scrub it extra good. You showing today?”

  “Yup.” I had the feeling my day wouldn’t be getting much better.

  The minute I entered the ring for my class, I felt like someone was watching me. And I didn’t mean Jamie, because she hardly ever gave me her full attention. While I was on course, she was always checking her phone or calling back to the barn on her walkie-talkie.

  I wanted to look around at the few people in the stands and alongside the ring, but I knew looking anywhere but straight down the middle of Logan’s ears would only do two things—make Jamie scream at me and probably make me go off course.

  I heard the electronic beep signaling that the timer was reset and that I could start my course. One last time, I retraced my path in my mind. Starting over the single oxer, left turn to the four-stride line on the outside, then sit up, collect, balance for the vertical on the corner, go forward a little to the oxer-vertical across the diagonal, turn right to the two-stride on the far outside and then regroup for the finish over the tight five. That is, if I even got over fence number one. Logan had been terrible in my lesson, stopping multiple times, but here I was still going in the ring.

  I squeezed Logan into a canter. It sounded so straightforward going over it in my head. That was the easy part. I could hear Jamie’s last instruction to me. Press him forward. Don’t be indecisive. Give him a good ride. I clucked to Logan to lengthen his stride and then sat back in the saddle and tried to relax. Jamie hadn’t exactly mentioned anything about relaxing on course, but I knew that practically hyperventilating like I usually did would certainly prevent me from thinking clearly. Then again, relaxing on course was not something I had quite yet mastered. Relax, I told myself, relax.

  On the approach to the first jump, a red oxer, I realized that the reason why I couldn’t relax was because I knew something was bound to go wrong. My stomach was spinning and I could feel Logan tense up through his neck and his back until he felt ten inches shorter in length and five inches taller in height than he had when we had entered the ring. He snatched at the bit, making me brace against him, my back rigid. I leaned back in the saddle and tried at the same time to put my leg firmly against his side so he would know I wanted him to go. As I turned the corner to the oxer, Logan tossed his head into the air, loosening my grip on the reins. I tried to quickly gather up my reins again and to kick Logan forward to the jump. He propped a few short strides, stopped dead and wheeled around on his hind legs back toward the in-gate.

  I let out a quiet groan. We hadn’t even gotten within ten strides of the first jump and Logan had already decided he wouldn’t go.

  “Hit him!” Jamie screamed from the in-gate.

  I looked at Jamie, then at Logan, and then down at my hands. I didn’t have a crop to hit him with. That was something a groom might have reminded me to carry, but of course I had gotten myself on and up to the ring. It was a miracle the tack was even on right. Something had felt like it was missing when I tacked up—I guess it was the crop that a groom always handed me.

  “Use your hand, the slack of your reins,” Jamie yelled. “Hit him!”

  I looked at Jamie again and then kicked Logan. My calf hit his side and Logan didn’t even flinch. I kicked harder and this time it was enough to spark Logan into a canter. I headed to the oxer again. By now, Logan was covered with a frothy sweat and was grinding his teeth on his bit so much the metal was squeaking. I braced back in the saddle again, silently praying that this time he would jump. Logan lunged at the fence as if he was going to go, then changed his mind, sliding to a stop at the base of the jump and taking the first few rails down. I was thrown forward slightly onto his neck by the stop, and had to crawl back into the saddle.

  “Thank you in Jumper II,” the announcer boomed over the loud speaker, making sure I wouldn’t go rogue and keep trying to jump the course. It was a phrase I had heard countless times before. Two refusals and you were out. How I longed for the days before FEI rules when I would at least get three shots at making it over.

  The one good thing, I thought to myself, was that I didn’t even feel like crying anymore, which was what I’d done practically every time I’d shown Logan when I’d first gotten him.

  Before Logan, I’d leased a wonderful horse from a girl who had ridden with Jamie, and then went to college and was too busy to ride. Dobby was nineteen and had done and seen it all. He’d done the hunters and the eq finals but couldn’t jump over three feet anymore. He never stopped at a fence, no matter what hideous distance I got him to. Somehow he’d find a way to get over and make it look halfway okay. He was never quick or worried. He was a complete saint and I loved him. Back then, I liked riding too. I’d never been good at any other typical sports like soccer or basketball, and while I wasn’t great at riding by any stretch, Dobby made me feel like I was mildly competent. It also got me out of the house and away from Mom. We had been talking about buying a horse and then Dobby’s owner graduated, got a job on the West Coast, and decided to retire Dobby to a farm down South.

  Instead of going horse-shopping in Europe with Jamie like most people at the barn did—where Jamie would pick out an appropriate horse—my dad had bought Logan on a total whim. He’d had a business dinner with a man who it turned out bred his own warmbloods in California. The man had raved to Dad about all the great jumper prospects he had. After too many glasses of expensive wine, Dad had agreed to buy a certain prospect that the man was telling him about. By the time Dad told me, the money had already been wired and Logan was on his way across the country to Jamie’s barn. Dad had even named him for me—Personal Best. Of course Dad had picked that name. Logan was pretty to look at, with his dark bay coat and white socks on all four feet, but it was clear he was much greener than the man had indicated. Logan was way too much horse for me. Jamie tried to tell Dad as much, but he simply told her to “make it work.” If it was up to Dad, I might have switched trainers. He wasn’t the type to kowtow to anyone. But it was always Mom who said we should just stay with Jamie. She hated change of any kind, even if it was for the ultimate best. A year after we’d gotten Logan, it still wasn’t working.

  In the beginning I’d felt pretty sorry for myself. I mean who else had a dad stupid enough to buy a horse without even looking at it? A dad who had never ridden a day in his life except for the odd vacation trail ride? Now I was basically resigned to the fact that Logan was a psycho. In all honesty, I’m not sure I would’ve known what to do if he had jumped around the course.

  While the jump crew reset the jump, I left the ring at the trot, Logan going more sideways than forward. I kept my head down. At the in-gate, Jamie was waiting, arms crossed.

  “What were you doing out there?”

  “I . . .”

  “Nothing,” Jamie said, “You’re sitting on top of that horse like a sack of potatoes waiting for him to march you around. Well, I have news for you, it’s not going to happen. Not today and not by the end of the summer.”

  I nodded weakly.

  “This horse is not going to cart you around and until you learn that you might as well give up, which is what you’re doing anyway.”

  “I know.”

  “And besides your stick, you forgot to put on his running martingale.”

  So that was the tangle of leather still in my trunk. I wasn’t sure I could have put it on right even if I had realized what it was.

  Jamie paused and glared at me. I
glanced away from her stare at the sidelines of the ring. Chris was standing with his back to the ring, looking straight at me.

  Chapter 6

  Not only had Chris seen my awful ride, but he was close enough to hear Jamie yelling at me. Actually, anyone within a hundred-foot radius of the in-gate heard her.

  She continued her attack on me, mixing outrage with pure despair. “You’re going to have to do better than this. What the hell were you thinking?”

  When I didn’t answer, my mind still on Chris, she snapped, “Answer me so I know someone’s in there and you’re not brain dead!”

  “I don’t know what I was thinking,” I managed. “I was just trying to get him over the jumps.”

  “That was trying to get him over the jumps?”

  “I guess so, yeah.”

  Jamie shook her head like she’d just witnessed the fall of civilization, and turned away.

  I knew Logan wasn’t push-button and wouldn’t just cart me around, but couldn’t he at least jump the jumps? Was that too much to ask? I didn’t plan to go out there and be terrible. But Jamie didn’t see it that way. She saw it all as my fault.

  I wanted to hate Logan completely, but it wasn’t entirely his fault either. We were a bad match, never meant to be.

  As I headed to the barn, I glanced back to see a new rider on course, cantering the jumps flawlessly. Chris was still by the ring. It looked like he was watching me although I was too far away to tell for sure and why would he be watching me anyway? He must have had some other reason to be at the jumper ring.

  Logan race-walked the whole way back to the barn, his head and shoulders lurching. I tried to slow him, but he only walked faster. When I got to the barn, I stopped him a few feet from the tent and jumped off. I wanted to throw him at a groom and go back to the condo I was staying in, but of course there was no groom to throw him at. I was stuck putting him away myself. I took off his tack and grabbed my wash bucket. I took him out to the wash area and turned the hose on him. He danced around as I sprayed him, nearly stepping on my toes.