DJ knew her mother well enough to know that only Robert’s hand on hers kept her silent and in her chair.
But Saturday is mine! I need time with Major, and I never get to be with my friends there anymore.
Silence—a silence that pressed against her eardrums like a thousand-decibel stereo on full force.
One of the boys sniffed and got off his chair, circling the table to stand next to his father. The other did the same, taking up a post by Lindy, who put her arm around him.
DJ felt like she was back on the wrong side of that very thick plate-glass window. And there was no rock in sight.
Resentment puckered her mouth like sucking a lemon.
How come I always have to give up my things? It’s not fair! Another glance at her mother said that if she stormed out of the room, there would be serious repercussions. Like being grounded for time and eternity.
DJ gritted her teeth. “Can I have until 10:00 or 10:30?”
Robert nodded. “I think that can be worked out, if you can be ready to leave at 10:30.”
“You said right after breakfast.” The boys looked up at their father.
“This will be fine. You can go over to the house with me first.”
“May I be excused?” Being polite took every bit of tooth enamel she owned.
“Do you have homework?” Lindy still didn’t look very happy.
“When don’t—” DJ checked her smart remark. “Yes.” She picked up her plate and silverware.
“Of course you may be excused.” Robert smiled at her. “Thanks, DJ.”
Now she felt like a run-down boot heel. Why did he have to be so nice? She took her things into the kitchen, snagged a soda from the refrigerator, and headed up the stairs. After calling the farrier, who couldn’t come until next Wednesday after all, she attacked the stack of books on her desk.
Every once in a while, she could hear laughter from the family room as the rest of the “family” watched a video. The glass between them doubled in thickness.
Later, the Double Bs knocked on her door. “We brought you some popcorn, DJ.”
“Come on in.”
Carefully, they set a big bowl of buttered popcorn on the corner of her desk. “We helped make it,” said one. The other nodded.
“Thank you.” She looked at them both through slightly squinted eyes. “You know what?” She popped several kernels in her mouth.
They shook their heads.
“I have to have a way to tell you apart. What is something different between you two?”
The boys shrugged, looking at each other with mirror faces. “I’m Bobby,” said one.
“And Billy,” the other. They looked at each other again. “Most times Daddy can’t even tell us apart. So he guesses.”
“Does he get it right?”
They nodded. “Sometimes.”
“Maybe we should tattoo your initials on your foreheads.”
Giggles bent them double.
“Oh, silly me, that wouldn’t work, you are both BC!” She twitched her mouth from side to side and squinted her eyes. More giggles. Well, at least I can make them laugh. She shooed them with fluttering hand motions. “Get out of here so I can get my homework done. And thanks for the popcorn.”
They giggled their way down the stairs, and DJ could hear them telling their dad about the tattoos. Indelible marker would work awhile, anyway. Her thoughts refused to go back to work. It wasn’t as if she didn’t like the zoo—she rarely got to go to the San Francisco Zoo, and she loved it all. But … would all her Saturdays be used for family things? And Sundays, too? How would she ever work it all in?
She clenched her teeth. Something had to give, and it wasn’t always going to be her!
With that, she stuffed her mouth full of popcorn and slammed back into her algebra book. Starting a book burning entered her mind. Why was algebra so hard? Why did she have to take it, anyway? Y=x, how stupid. Who cared?
The boys came by later to say good-night, and sometime after that, Robert knocked at her door.
“Come in.” DJ twisted from lying on her bed, where she was writing in her journal.
He stuck his head in the door. “Night, DJ. And thanks for being so gracious. From now on, we’ll try to plan things further in advance so we can all get the things done we want and need to.”
“Uh, thanks.” Now she felt like a run-down and unglued heel.
But when her mother stopped by a few moments later, she came all the way into the room, shutting the door behind her.
DJ braced for what she knew was coming. The line had never disappeared from between her mother’s eyebrows.
“I expect you to take part in family events.” Lindy paced the length to the window and turned. “Without griping.”
DJ bite her tongue. Not fair! Not fair!
“Is that understood?”
“Yes.” DJ knew how to clip words, too. She’d learned from a master.
“Your horse is not—”
“His name is Major.”
Lindy ignored the interruption. “ … the most important part of your life.”
Don’t answer!
The silence pounded on DJ’s eardrums.
“I expect a response.”
DJ swung her feet to the floor. Would running help? She clenched her fists and clamped them against her thighs. “I—” she took a deep breath— “I know that. But I have responsibilities, too.”
“Yes, you do, but playing all day at the Academy is not one of them.”
“I’ll be teaching another group again when the weather gets nicer.”
“Perhaps not. We will have to discuss that. When Robert can take some time off, we need to be available.”
Maybe you do, but I didn’t marry him. DJ wisely kept that comment to herself. That silence again. How come silence could say so much?
“Do you understand?”
Mother, I am not an idiot. “Yes, I understand.”
“Good night, then.” Lindy made a motion as if to hug or kiss her daughter, but DJ crossed her arms over her chest and ducked away.
Lindy closed the door so carefully behind her that DJ knew she’d wanted to slam it. She thumped her fist on the pillow. She felt like opening the window and letting the heavy air escape. Instead, she crossed the room and looked outside, leaning her forehead against the cool glass. Word by word, she replayed the scene in her mind. True, she hadn’t exploded like she used to, but why did she still feel like crying?
When she woke in the middle of the night, her throat hurt and her eyes burned. Had it been a dream? She’d been lost, and when she saw her mother in the crowd, she’d run right to her, but Lindy acted like she didn’t see her daughter at all. She talked and laughed with whomever she’d been with. And walked away.
DJ went to the bathroom and blew her nose. Was she coming down with something again?
Saturday morning DJ tiptoed out of the house at dawn.
“How come you left so early?” Amy asked when she pedaled up to the barn much later. “I finally called your house, and you’d already left.”
“I needed to get stuff done early.”
“Great. I thought since it was nice, we could go riding up in Briones.”
“I have to go to the zoo with my family”
“Uh-oh.” Amy rubbed Major’s nose. “Trouble, huh?” She cocked her head. “But you like the zoo.”
“Not on Saturdays.” DJ took the saddle off the door and swung it over Major’s back.
“Robert being a pain?”
DJ shook her head. “My mother can—” She bit off the words. “But I didn’t yell back.”
Major nickered and looked down the aisle, his ears nearly touching at the tips.
Amy turned her head. “Joe’s coming.”
DJ opened the gate and led Major from the stall. “Let’s just say I have to be home, cleaned up, and ready to leave by 10:30. Patches is on the hot walker, and a note from Bridget said the owner of my new training job and her husband w
ill be here to meet me at 9:45. They’re moving their horse in then. If they’re late, I won’t be here. Just great, right?”
“Uh-oh.” Joe patted Major’s neck. “Looks like storm clouds here.”
“You don’t know the half of it.” DJ shook her head and led Major toward the arena.
DJ worked Major through the dressage moves they’d been practicing but had no time to introduce anything new. She eyed the jumps, wishing they could repeat the day before, but she wisely stayed on the flat and over the cavalletti.
Mists rose in the open field north of the Academy and swirled around the bare oak branches before disappearing in the warming sun. A cow mooed from up in the park.
DJ stripped Major down, put him on the hot walker, and took Patches inside to tack up. She’d groomed him earlier.
“You were one smart horse,” she told him at the end of the hour. “If you’d tried to dump me today, I think I’d have—”
“DJ, your people are here.” Amy trotted up to the gelding’s stall.
“Okay. Can you put him on the hot walker for me? I don’t have time to cool him down.”
“Sure.”
DJ pulled off her riding gloves and stuffed them in her back pocket. She could see the dark blue horse trailer parked in front of the barn door. She glanced at her watch. She had to leave for home in ten minutes.
“Rhonda Samson, I want you to meet DJ Randall,” Bridget said when DJ joined the trio by the trailer. “She will be training Omega for you, like I said.”
“Glad to meet you,” DJ said, her manners securely in place. She shook hands with a round ball of a woman who looked as if she could be bounced across the parking lot by any NBA player. Her smile and the twinkle in her turquoise eyes told DJ they could be friends from the get-go.
“She looks kind of young,” Mr. Samson said to Bridget after greeting DJ.
“Age and ability do not always go together. DJ has turned two green broke horses into good riding partners, and I know she will do the same again.”
“Well, if you say so.” He turned to begin unlatching the trailer.
The woman shook her head. “Don’t pay any attention to him, DJ. He wanted me to buy an old plug, thought it might be safer.”
Her teasing tone made DJ even more certain Rhonda would be a great addition to the Academy. “So what did you get?”
“A three-year-old half-Arab, half-Quarter Horse filly. If I had the time, I’d train her myself, even though I haven’t ridden for ten years.”
“At least.” The mustached man lowered the trailer ramp.
“Come on, Bob, you’re just jealous because I didn’t buy a Sea-Doo like you wanted.”
Bridget and DJ exchanged raised eyebrow looks.
“So how much training has she had?”
“None, but she’s been handled a lot so she is gentle.”
It took all of DJ’s willpower not to look at her watch. Come on, I have to leave. You want me to be grounded for the rest of my life?
Bob fussed with the tailgate a little more before Rhonda walked in and, untying the horse, backed a chestnut filly down the ramp. The horse picked up her feet like a ballerina, almost dancing down the incline. Her coat glinted in the sun, even with the winter coarseness. A white blaze ran from her upper lip clear to her ears, disappearing under a thick forelock.
“She’s a beauty,” DJ said, walking around to check the other side.
“And smart as a whip.” Rhonda stroked the horse’s neck. “Won’t take you long to get her in shape, I don’t think. Meantime, I’ll take English lessons from Bridget. I always rode Western before, but if you’re going to have a dream come true, you might as well have it all.”
Bob slammed the gate back in place and dusted off his hands. “I’ll move the trailer while you take her to her stall.” He glanced at his watch. “Then we gotta hit the road. I’m late already.”
DJ checked her watch. “Oh, fiddle. Sorry I can’t go with you, but I need to get home.”
“I had hoped to see you work with her a bit. …” Rhonda looked at her husband and made a face. “All right, I can tell when I’m being ganged up on.”
“Sorry.” DJ could hear her mother already. She turned and ran for her bike. At least she had taken a shower before she left home. She hoped washing would get rid of the horse smell or she’d get growled at for that, too. She threw her leg over the seat when the thought hit her. Patches! Major! They were both still on the hot walker.
She dropped her bike and headed back to the stalls. “Joe, could you please bring Major and Patches in from the hot walker? I’m late!”
“Sure ’nough, kid. You want a ride home?”
DJ shook her head. “I can ride it almost as fast as you can get the truck out. Thanks, I owe you one!” She called the last of the sentence over her shoulder as she jogged out of the aisle. She’d have gone at a dead run, but Bridget forbade running in the barns.
The twins were already in the car when DJ pedaled up the street.
Chapter • 10
DJ hit the kitchen door at 10:29. “I’ll hurry!” she said before her mother could get in a word. The look on Lindy’s face already said more than DJ wanted to hear.
Robert shut the hatch on the Bronco as DJ charged out the front door. “Perfect timing, DJ. Did you bring a jacket? Could be cold over there.”
DJ waved her fleece-lined Windbreaker. She climbed in the second seat, where the boys were already buckled in. “Hi, guys.”
“We was waiting.” The B closest to her handed her the left half of the seat belt. “You gotta buckle up.”
“I know.” DJ tousled the boy’s hair, then clamped the belt in place. She could hear Robert and Lindy talking in low tones at the rear of the vehicle. Come on, Mom, I wasn’t that late. Lighten up. And besides, there was nothing I could do about it. You always said I have to be polite. At the reminder of the reason she was late, she thought again of the filly Omega. She would be fun to break. The second thought wasn’t nearly as pleasant. How will I find time to do all of this?
The boys fell asleep in the car on the way home, and DJ did the same not long after. The next words she heard were Robert’s, “Let’s just order in pizza.”
DJ kept her eyes closed—opening them took more energy than she could dig up at the moment. They had had a good time. She could feel a grin coming on as she remembered lunch. She and the boys had been setting the hot dogs out on a round table with a blue umbrella while Robert went back for napkins and Lindy used the rest room.
DJ had turned away to look at something for one second when one of the twins let out a shriek. She turned back just in time to see a sea gull lift off with one of the hot dogs in his beak.
“He took my lunch!” The B flapped his arms at the bird.
Hearing the boy shriek, Robert charged back. “What happened?”
“The bird took my hot dog!” Bobby—or Billy—pointed to a circle of squawking and fighting sea gulls, one of which had the hot dog. Two others now squabbled over the bun. “Get it, Dad.”
“I’ll get you another one.” Robert’s laugh rang out. The boys looked at him, at DJ, who was trying to keep from hooting, over to the birds, and back.
“Bad birds!” the boys shouted together.
“You can have half of mine,” the twin who had kept his hands over his lunch said.
“Here, you take mine, and I’ll get another.” Still laughing and watching the hot dog disappear down the bird’s gullet, DJ handed her basket across the table.
“Thanks, DJ.” Robert took some money from his wallet and handed it to her.
“Now, you guys hang on to your food.” In a flash, both boys put their hands over their plates. “That’s one smart bird.” DJ shook her head, laughing her way over to the concession stand.
Even now, she could hardly keep from laughing. While her mother had missed all the action, she had thought it funny, too.
That evening after they’d devoured the pizza, DJ sat on the sofa with a boy tucked unde
r each arm and read both Horton Hears a Who and The Cat in the Hat. They giggled at her different voices for the different animals and chanted some of the lines with her.
“Thank you, God, for my family,” DJ whispered that night when she’d turned the light out. “And thank you for such a cool day.” Those sea gulls, the boys shrieking, them all laughing—maybe this family thing wasn’t going to be so bad after all.
Monday afternoon Bridget posted an announcement for a jumping clinic to be held at Wild Horse Ranch in the Napa Valley the second Saturday in April. Hilary Jones stopped right behind DJ as she studied the poster.
“Think you’ll go?” the older girl asked.
“Sure want to. What about you?” DJ looked over her shoulder. “Hey, I like your hair that way.”
Hilary wore her dark hair in dozens of thin braids, each ending in a row of colorful beads.
“Did you do it yourself?”
Hilary shook her head. “It takes hours at the beauty parlor. And, yes, I’m already registered. You notice who’s teaching? Lendon Gray. I wouldn’t miss seeing him for the world.”
“Don’t you ever have to ask if you can go to things like this?” DJ knew the poster hadn’t been up the day before.
“Not really. My parents know how badly I want to become an internationally known rider. If we don’t already have something important planned, I just write a check and register. I keep the important things in my calendar so I know what’s going on.”
“You have your own checking account?”
“Sure. I’ve had one for a couple of years now. My dad deposits my allowance in it, then I put in any money I earn. Dad said it was important for me to learn how to manage my money now ’cause one day I’m going to have a lot to manage.”
DJ knew that money wasn’t a problem in Hilary’s family, but she didn’t think they were that wealthy. “How so?”
“He really believes I’m going to make it into the big time. He’s got my promotional campaign all worked out. Got my name on cereal boxes and all kinds of things. I’m not sure I believe all of that, but you’ve got to have a dream, like Bridget says.”
DJ stuck her hands in her back jeans pockets. “I close my eyes, and I can see myself at the Olympics.”
High Hurdles Collection Two Page 8