A muffled shriek attracted my attention.
Brooke was in trouble. Bounce had had to call for assistance, and she held the horse still while two stable employees attempted to shove Brooke up onto the saddle. I watched her struggles with a pitying smile.
“Oh, please hold still, Miss Delilah,” pleaded Brooke. (“Miss Delilah” being the ridiculous name of Brooke’s steed.)
“She is holding still, at least so long as you don’t knee her in the stomach, poor girl,” said Bounce. “Let’s try again. One, two, three and . . . up!”
This time the little group of assistants managed to get Brooke up onto Miss Delilah’s back. “Perhaps a pony next time,” mused Bounce. “Okay, now let go of the horn.” As Brooke simply looked dazed, Bounce explained. “The horn! That thing on the pommel. The thing you’re holding in a death grip. Let go!”
“Let go?” Brooke stared at Bounce disbelievingly.
“Yes. You need to hold on to the horse with your thighs, not your hands. You have to have your hands free for the reins.”
“Oh. Okay,” she said without enthusiasm.
After she had complied and taken up the reins, Bounce took a moment to turn around and check to see how I was doing. The stable help did as well.
I sat up a little straighter. I was conscious that I made rather a handsome picture—particularly in contrast to Brooke’s sweaty terror—erect, calm, and composed in the saddle. Bounce nodded approvingly.
“Very nice. I can see you’re an old hand. Brooke, watch your cousin. She knows what she’s doing.”
I smiled. And to think I owed it all to Goofy.
Once Bounce had slung herself across a big white animal, we began to move toward the riding ring. Miss Delilah interrupted our progress by halting and beginning to eat grass. Brooke watched her helplessly.
Bounce ordered, “Don’t let her eat, Brooke! You have to show her you’re in charge. Give her a dig with your heels. A little harder. Brooke, she’s taking advantage of you.”
Needless to say, Brooke had been relieved of her crop during the mounting fiasco, but I had retained mine. While we were standing around waiting for Brooke to deal with Miss Delilah’s snack, my horse thought, for one split second, of taking a bite of grass herself. I transferred the reins into one hand and lowered the crop so it made contact with Chessie’s flank. I bent forward over her neck and growled deep in my throat, but softly, so that only she and I could hear. Her head jerked back up, and she stood stone-still, the picture of equine good manners.
As it happened, Bounce had looked over at that moment. Too far away to hear the growl, she’d only seen my slight use of the crop, and that I had spoken to the horse. Clearly pleased, she nodded at me again.
The whole lesson went like that. It turned out that what Goofy was doing in that cartoon was English-style riding—I distinctly recalled the section where he was “rising to the trot,” or “posting.” After a few moments of feeling like a bowl of Jell-O falling down a flight of stairs, I found the rhythm, and was soon trotting fluidly around the ring. By listening carefully to Bounce’s instructions to Brooke, I was able to unobtrusively adjust my grip on the reins and lower my heels so that I looked like a pro.
“Oh, excellent!” Bounce applauded my performance. She had had to lead Miss Delilah in a trot around the ring, with Brooke sliding first to one side, and then to the other, so I suppose our instructor was pleased not to have two incompetents on her hands.
Surprisingly, Brooke had conquered her panic and was beginning to have fun, despite slopping around on the horse’s back like a sack of laundry. She looked awful, with her hair escaped from its barrette, her face bright red, and a roll of flesh showing beneath her jacket, but from time to time nervous giggles escaped her.
“I’m getting it, I’m getting it,” she cried in triumph as she completed what I could tell was a bone-jarring circuit, whereupon she nearly fell off backward. Capitalizing on this diversion, Miss Delilah promptly stopped short and began to snatch at the tall grass that was poking through the fence.
“Sit up straight and grip with your thighs!” called Bounce. “Don’t let her eat grass!” And so on.
Finally, evidently feeling that she had spent quite enough time on Brooke, our teacher told her to wait while she worked with me. She had a few corrections to offer, and a little advice. Mostly, though, she was content to watch me as I trotted gracefully past.
“You’ve got an excellent seat, and a real ability to move as one with the horse,” she said. “I love to see it, you know. It’s like one of those mind-melds when a really good rider is in the saddle. It’s obvious when somebody’s got a strong love of horses and the experience to back it up.”
Chessie shook her head violently and whickered in disagreement. I could see the whites of her eyes, which I suspected signaled fear. She gazed longingly back at the stable but was too nervous of me to do anything more than look.
I smiled and thanked Bounce. Once again, humans were proving themselves inferior to the lesser animals when it came to figuring me out. Having made her mind up about me, Bounce was ignoring what her own horse was trying to tell her. Not that it mattered. My feelings toward Chessie were perfectly friendly, so long as she did what I told her to do.
“Perhaps you could show me your canter,” Bounce was beginning, to my dismay, as I couldn’t quite remember what a canter was, when she interrupted herself. “No, we haven’t any time, sorry. I’ve got some more students arriving in about fifteen minutes, and we’ll need to show Brooke how to see to her horse after a ride. Next week we’ll have a look at your canter. I’ve no doubt we’ll have you galloping and jumping in no time, if you haven’t already mastered those skills.”
Modestly I denied any knowledge of these evidently more advanced forms of riding.
“Uh-huh,” said Bounce, smiling. “Like you’ve only ridden ‘some.’ ”
Chessie was reluctant to share the close confines of a stall with me while I brushed her, but I fixed her with another Do as I say stare, and she consented, heaving an obvious sigh of relief as I left and flipped the latch down on the door.
“Bye, Chessie,” I said aloud. “See you next week.”
She snorted. Not if I see you first, seemed to be her response.
In the next stall Brooke was still fussing over Miss Delilah. “What great big brown eyes you have, Miss Delilah dear,” she crooned as she smoothed the horse’s forelock. Honestly, it was like a little girl brushing her dolly’s hair. She finally put down the currycomb and emerged from the stall.
We had both, it seemed, substantially changed our opinions about horseback riding.
“Do you know, I thought it would be much easier,” Brooke confided. “I mean, I figured, how hard could it be? I assumed it would be like sitting on a moving sofa. But I think I’m getting it. You, of course, were wonderful! I know your dad said you were pretty good, but wow! You could tell that Ms. Bunce was impressed.”
And I was far more favorably inclined to the exercise than I thought I’d be. Making a large, powerful creature like that obey me with nothing more than the force of my personality was a real kick. In-tox-icating, as Brooke would say.
“Good-bye, girls!” Bounce looked up and waved to us from where she was greeting the new students. “Morgan, be sure to explain to Brooke what she can expect to be feeling for the next few days, won’t you?”
I said “Um-hmm” in return and waved.
“What did she mean?” demanded Brooke as she seated herself at the wheel of the Miata. “Wow, I sure am tired! Who’d have thought that riding a horse for an hour would be so exhausting! What is it that I can expect to be feeling for the next few days?”
Since I hadn’t the foggiest idea, I contented myself with a mysterious smile.
“Wait and see,” I said, and no matter how much Brooke begged for information, I stood my ground and refused to say another word on the subject.
7
THE NEXT MORNING I WOKE in agony. Muscles I had not
even known existed throbbed and ached in my back, my arms, and my stomach. But mostly, my inner thighs were on fire. I groaned as I turned over in bed.
A knock came on my bedroom door. “Yaghwah?” I muttered in response, struggling to come to a seated position.
A hunched and broken figure shuffled in through the doorway. “Is this,” the figure whispered, “what she meant?”
“What who meant?” I demanded, having managed to sit up in my bed.
“Ms. Bunce. She told you to warn me about what to expect I’d be feeling in the next few days.”
Oh, right. The hunched, pathetic figure was Brooke. And we were both apparently experiencing the same misery of sore muscles after our first hour astride a horse. Only she was not supposed to realize that it was my first hour.
“What, are you sore?” I asked, trying to sound carefree and at ease.
“Oooh,” she groaned, collapsing onto my bed. “Ow, ow, ow! Yes, I am sore,” she said mournfully.
I pasted a superior smile on my face. “I suppose you would be. All first-timers get it. You see,” I said, making it up as I went along, “you’re exercising muscles while riding a horse that you normally don’t use. So after your first time it hurts.”
Actually, my explanation made sense.
“But . . . but it gets better, right?” Brooke said in a pleading tone. “I mean, as you ride regularly, you get used to it and your muscles get stronger, right? You feel okay, don’t you?”
“Well,” I said, “I haven’t ridden in a few weeks because of being locked up in my room, so, yeah, I’m a little sore. Not as bad as you are, of course, but I can feel it too.”
“What do we do?” she asked plaintively. “How do I get back to feeling human again?”
“First, two ibuprofen and a hot shower, and then, later, the sauna,” I said. I could tell this was the right idea—just the thought of hot steam made me feel better.
She thought so too. “Oooh, a hot shower! Yes! And then the sauna! Oh, you are so right, Morgan. Okay, see you.”
In my old house in Los Angeles we had only one bathroom, so Brooke and I would have had to wait and take turns after the parents were done, and I won’t bore you with the blah-blah-blah yelling about my long, hot showers. In this house every bedroom had a bath, and there was no drought to impose restrictions, so we both climbed into our showers at about the same time. And of course, my old house didn’t have a sauna.
There were mounds of blueberry pancakes on the table when we came down for breakfast, with sausages and sliced fruit. We fell upon the feast like hungry wolves.
“Hey, easy, tigers,” said Uncle Karl. It was a Sunday, so he was allowing his underlings to write up the contracts at his various dealerships and was instead lounging around at home in a bathrobe so luxurious that it looked like it had been fashioned from the rarest of endangered animal hair. “Don’t eat the plates. What are you two up to today?”
“I don’t know about Morgan, but I’m going to stay home and recuperate. She’s fine—she’s hardly sore at all.”
“Oh, I was hoping to go clothes shopping with you girls,” cut in Aunt Antonia. “Are you sure you’re not up to it, Brooke?”
Brooke’s only response was a groan.
“Well, it’s really only Morgan who needs new clothes, so I suppose she and I can go alone just as well. Not as much fun for her, maybe, but school starts next Wednesday, so she needs something that fits.”
I closed my eyes briefly to gather strength. Under any other circumstances I would have adored being taken out shopping for clothes, with or without Brooke. In fact, without Brooke there to possibly sop up some of her mother’s generosity, I would probably wind up getting more stuff. Today, though, I sure wouldn’t have minded spending the afternoon cycling in and out of the sauna, instead of tramping all over the mall and undressing and redressing countless times in tiny changing booths.
“I’d love to,” I said with a brave smile. “Thank you so much, Aunt Antonia.”
“Actually, I’m not entirely sorry we’re going to have this time alone together, Morgan,” Aunt Antonia said.
Uh-oh. I smiled vaguely at her as she swung the Cadillac into the mall parking lot. That sounded like trouble.
She sat motionless, not moving to open her door. I considered making a bolt for it and pretending I didn’t know that she wanted to talk, but decided that it would just be postponing whatever it was, and that she would be more likely to be openhanded in buying me goodies if not distracted by other concerns.
“I hope that you are settling in with us, Morgan,” she began.
That was easy.
“Oh yes! I love it here,” I said with enthusiasm.
“I was concerned by our conversation a few days ago. I don’t know your parents well—living on opposite sides of the country, we don’t see too much of them—but I do know that Karl says they love you very much.” She stopped, evidently trying to figure out what to say next.
I thought this over. Let’s see . . . I tried to remember what Brooke had said. If Aunt Antonia didn’t know either of Janelle’s parents well, she couldn’t be a sister to one of them. So . . . that meant that easygoing Uncle Karl was the brother of the Ice Queen? Weird, if true, but I thought that was right.
My conversation with Brooke on the way home from the airport flashed back over me. Hadn’t I hinted that my father had an ungovernable temper? Remembering the guy I talked to the other day on the phone, this seemed unlikely to actually be true. Maybe I’d better be careful. It was the Ice Queen who seemed most prone to losing it, and probably her brother, Uncle Karl, knew it.
I decided to go for an emerging-maturity kind of tone. I let out a long sigh.
“Oh, I suppose they do. It’s just . . . you know, they have weird ways of showing it. And I don’t think that they consider what effect their forms of discipline are going to have on me.”
“Forms of discipline . . . ,” Aunt Antonia said. “Yes, that was what worried me. I didn’t mention the need for this shopping trip to your parents. I didn’t know how to broach the subject of how much weight you appear to have lost lately.”
I nodded my approval. “Yeah, probably better not to. They’re kind of sensitive about it.”
Aunt Antonia pounced, as if this was a valuable admission on my part. “But why? Why should they be sensitive about it?”
I dropped my gaze and looked evasive.
“Because. I don’t know. They don’t want people thinking they put undue pressure on me, I guess.” I turned my head to stare out the side window, body language signaling an unwillingness to discuss this subject any further.
Aunt Antonia was silent. Then she said slowly, “All right. I suppose we’ll leave it at that. But you know, Morgan, if ever you want to talk, I am happy to listen. As you might expect, I have quite a bit of experience with this sort of thing, given my job.”
Eh? Somehow I’d gotten the idea she worked in an office somewhere shuffling papers. Or . . . I don’t know, as the browbeaten secretary in a pencil factory. Could she be a guidance counselor?
She put her hand on the car door handle, and I relaxed, thinking the interrogation was over.
“Your parents didn’t know about the name change,” she said, without opening the door. “Neither had ever heard you express any dissatisfaction with your name or interest in changing it. They wondered where you had gotten the idea.”
“They don’t know everything there is to know about me,” I said, which was entirely accurate.
She sighed. “I suppose that’s true. Well, let’s get shopping.” Finally, finally she got out of the car, and I followed suit. Still, she looked at me over the roof as we shut the doors, a long, long look that I did not entirely know how to interpret.
Oh well. Whatever.
I knew it was going to be so much easier for me to turn over a new leaf and stop stealing things here; I had everything I could possibly want! Designer clothes, new haircut (Aunt Antonia insisted, and I looked great!), new
shoes (Aunt didn’t seem to think much of the ones I was wearing), even a pretty little gold necklace. True, I didn’t have a phone, but what of it? I’m not social, I don’t play games, and I don’t listen to music, so it wasn’t as big a deal to me as it would be to most teenage girls. And if I behaved myself and didn’t hook up with any inappropriate boys, I bet Auntie would eventually be persuaded to come across with one. Assuming I decided I wanted one.
The only thing I regretted about our shopping spree was that I didn’t feel well enough to milk Aunt Antonia for all she was worth. As I’d anticipated, taking clothes off and putting them on multiple times was painful, and I wasn’t able to enjoy the experience as much as I would have liked. Buying jeans was the worst. Toward the end she thought I should try on another pair, and I could not do it. The only thing I wanted was to get back home to the bottle of ibuprofen in my bathroom.
“No thanks,” I said, and since there was no way I could benefit any further from her largess at the moment, I added cunningly, “You have been more than generous. I couldn’t possibly accept anything else.”
“Oh, think nothing of it, dear,” said Aunt Antonia. “It’s a pleasure buying clothes for a girl who enjoys them. Brooke isn’t interested.” She unlocked the trunk of the Cadillac so I could store my bags of wonderful new things. “You’ve got a great figure for clothes, and good taste, too. I used to be fond of new things myself, but in my line of work you have to be conservative, and nobody ever notices what you’re wearing anyway.”
One of these days I was going to have to figure out what Aunt did for a living. Could she possibly be a lady minister? I laughed aloud.
She smiled back at me and said, “We’re so happy to have you here, Morgan. Brooke was terribly nervous about you coming, you know, but she’s very pleased about it now. I think this is going to work out well for both of you girls.”
Don't You Trust Me? Page 5