by Maggie Dana
Yet.
I’m too shy to ask and I don’t know Jessica’s parents very well. They’ve got pots of money, and Jessica owns two Thoroughbreds because you need more than one horse when you compete in hunter-jumpers. I keep hoping Jess will ask me to stay, and if she does, I want to be ready with an immediate YES that Dad’s already on board with.
Not that he’d argue.
He’s been palming me off on his relatives every summer since Mom died. Some live close enough for me to get to the barn on my bike, but Aunt Marion lives two hundred miles away in Vermont. She can’t come down here to babysit me because that would mean leaving her precious roses. She feels the same way about them as I feel about Magic.
I’m relieved—but not surprised—when Dad says I can stay with Jessica. I don’t tell him that she hasn’t actually asked me.
“Call Marion and tell her you’re not coming,” he mutters before ambling off, a stack of papers tucked beneath one arm.
Now, most parents would ask questions like, “Who is Jessica and where does she live?” and “Is it okay with her parents if you move in for two months?”
But not Dad.
His world is filled with earnest grad students who follow his every word and traipse after him through jungles from Borneo to Brazil. They worship the ground he walks on. They flock to his lectures, anxious to learn from one of the world’s leading experts on butterflies. By the time they attend my dad’s classes, they’ve already shed their protective cocoons and have turned into adults who know how to fly.
More or less.
Dad doesn’t get this. He judges everyone younger than himself, including me, by the students who take his classes, which gives me a ton of freedom. With it comes a ton of responsibility. I’m only fourteen, but I cook and I clean. I remind Dad to pay the bills and get his car serviced so it doesn’t break down in the middle of nowhere.
Some days I feel as if I were born old.
I would love to be a carefree kid again. I would love to plunge into my horsey bedroom without feeling it was a bit over-the-top. I’d love to ride my old wooden rocking horse and wallow in the show ribbons strung like bunting around both windows.
I worked hard for those ribbons.
And I loved every minute of it, just as I loved collecting posters of the Olympic riders that now cover my walls like rock stars. My dream is to meet one of them—Will Hunter, Nicole Hoffman, or Ineke Van Klees, who won a gold medal for the Dutch equestrian team at nineteen.
There’s a photo of Magic on my dresser.
His bridle sports a red-and-blue ribbon that we won last September. Beside it is a photo of me and Webbie at our first show. Mom stands to one side, her arm around my shoulders. It was taken right after we placed third in walk-trot.
That yellow ribbon was my best ever.
It’s faded and worn because I’ve stroked it so many times, but I wouldn’t trade it for all the world—not even for the ribbon that Magic and I won last weekend. There are some things—some memories—that cannot be replaced. I give Mom’s image a thumbs-up.
And then I cry, because I always do.
* * *
Mom wasn’t supposed to die. Lots of women have breast cancer and defeat it, but Mom didn’t. It spread to her bones and then her lungs, and a couple of months after I turned nine, I was crying buckets at her funeral.
Only three weeks before Mom died, we’d been at that show where Webbie got loose and I smacked the other girl. I can’t begin to imagine how much pain Mom must’ve been in, yet she came with me and cheered me on and then reamed me out for behaving badly. You’re pretty clueless when you’re only nine years old.
My tears for Mom are still there—but well hidden—when I bump into Jessica in the school’s cafeteria. She invites me to sit at her table with the popular kids. They pretty much ignore me until Jessica says it would be totally cool if I could stay with her for the summer while my father is away.
“Seriously?” I say.
She nods, and my mouth drops open. Did a unicorn miss its target and sprinkle magic dust over me by mistake, or did Mrs. Mueller give Jessica a very big hint? I have no idea. But whatever it is, I am hugely grateful. Maybe I’ll leave carrots out for the unicorn tonight. Do unicorns even like carrots?
I bet Google knows.
Somehow I manage to mumble my thanks, and Jessica says that her mom will call my dad. Good thing I gave him a heads-up.
After that, I am one of the in crowd. Kids I barely know invite me to pool parties and barbecues. One of them even asks me for a sleepover next weekend.
My empty calendar is suddenly full.
Tomorrow, I’ll be grooming for Jessica at a hunter-jumper show. She promises to do the same for me at a dressage event in early May. As I walk into the barn later that afternoon, I feel as if somehow I’ve finally arrived. All it took was a quick nod from a girl with bouncy blond curls, and I’m no longer an outcast. I want to tell someone.
But who?
I don’t have any other friends, so I tell Magic. He’s outside in the round pen with Webbie, and they both nod as if they understand. Maybe they do. Horses are herd creatures. So are humans. We all do better when we have close friends to share our best secrets with.
I bring Magic inside and groom him. I’ve only got a couple of hours because Dad’s picking me up at seven. He has yet another meeting to attend and I’ve got a ton of homework because midterms begin on Monday. I slip on Magic’s bridle, then his saddle, and we head toward the indoor ring.
For once, the place is quiet.
No students, no kids rushing about shouting at their ponies. Magic and I settle into our familiar routine—warming up with half-halts, shoulder-ins, and twenty-meter circles. My horse drops his head and accepts the bit. He’s supple and obedient. We trot the cavalettis, jump a few easy fences, and repeat our flat work.
Barn swallows twitter in the rafters.
A wisp of hay falls from the nest they’re building. Magic snorts but doesn’t spook. I love nights like this; just me and my horse—well, not really mine, but I wish he was—and whatever diversions Mother Nature decides to provide, like the robin’s nest in a pinecone wreath that was on the barn’s side door. Every time you opened it, birds flew out.
Patrice wanted it taken down. “It’s a pain.”
“Why?” I said.
She shrugged. “It just is.”
I tried to save the robins and their eggs, but the next day both nest and wreath were gone. Mrs. Mueller said Christmas decorations shouldn’t be up when it’s almost Easter. I bit my tongue and didn’t remind her that the pinecone wreath—complete with fake holly—had been on her barn door since the previous Thanksgiving.
* * *
It’s my turn for evening chores, so I cool Magic down and get busy feeding the horses. I throw flakes of hay into stalls, top up water buckets, and measure out supplements and grain. Magic gets a couple of carrots. So does Webster, who’d never speak to me again if I forgot his treats.
I’m about to double-check the stall doors when I hear Dad honking from the parking lot. I scan the aisle. No rakes and brooms lying about, no stray pitchforks or overflowing muck buckets. Everything looks okay. Grabbing my backpack, I race outside.
* * *
It’s still dark when I get up. We have to hit the road at seven, and I’ve got two horses to groom and braid. Jess will try her best, but she’s all thumbs when it comes to braiding.
I don’t know about Janet.
This will be her first show with Sandpiper, so who knows if she will pitch in to help or arrive at the last minute the way Blair and Patrice always do. They’re not competing today because this show isn’t important. It’s not part of the A-circuit.
Okay, what should I wear?
Breeches or jeans? If I wear jeans I won’t look professional, but if I wear my breeches, I’ll have to wear my dressage boots and I can’t run in them. What if a horse gets loose or—?
Is this really me? Agonizing over clothes?
I grin at myself in the mirror, tie back my hair, and decide that long brown socks and paddock boots will look just fine with my breeches, the old buff ones—not my brand new white ones that I’m saving for the event in May. They were a birthday gift from Dad. Big shock. I think Mrs. Mueller put him up to it.
Do I have a clean shirt? One without pink watermelon stains? I wish Magic were coming with us today, but I’ll get to ride him tomorrow. I have a lesson with Mrs. Mueller—we’re going to work on flying changes. She says Magic is just about ready for them. With luck, I will be, too. I’ve never managed a flying change before, except on Gretel, Mrs. Mueller’s retired Grand Prix horse, but that doesn’t count. Gretel can do flying changes in her sleep.
Wearing my only stain-free polo shirt and a brown hoodie with Sandpiper Stables across the back, I creep downstairs so as not to wake Dad. He likes to sleep late on the weekends.
On the kitchen table lie his books and papers in messy piles, surrounded by a rash of crumbs. I clean them up, then unload the dishwasher, grab the last muffin, and race outside.
The barn is ten minutes away—by car.
It takes a bit longer on a bike, especially when you’re eating a blueberry muffin and carrying a heavy backpack. It’s filled with the homework I didn’t get to last night, along with a book on eventing by Denny Emerson that I cannot stop reading. A gray van whizzes past. My bike wobbles and skids into the ditch.
Oh great, just great!
I’ll not only be late, I’ll be showing up covered in mud. I wipe off the worst of it and then rescue my bike, but the handlebars are now crooked. I grip the front wheel with my legs and yank the handlebars as straight as I can get them. Not perfect, but it’ll get me to the barn.
As I coast down the driveway, the first thing I see is Dr. Anderson’s truck parked at an awkward angle. And nobody’s hitched up the trailer yet. On a show day, Mrs. Mueller always does that first thing, before feeding the horses.
Something’s not right.
I can feel it. The place is eerily quiet. Nobody’s laughing or complaining that they’ve forgotten to wear their lucky socks, or—
Jess stumbles through the barn’s side door. Behind her is Janet and they’re both crying. I dump my bike and rush toward them, but Jess holds up her hand like she’s fending me off.
“Go away,” she screams.
I want to ask what’s wrong, but the words get stuck in my throat. I’m about to try again when Mrs. Mueller steps outside. Her face is white, her lips a thin line. Wisps of hair have escaped from her bun.
She takes a long, cold look at me, then tells Jess and Janet to wait for her up at the house. They’re to make hot chocolate and keep out of the way. Still crying, they shuffle off, leaning on one another like they don’t have the strength to walk on their own.
Clutching my backpack, I’m rooted to the ground as Mrs. Mueller walks toward me. She takes three faltering steps and halts, close enough for me to see the tears that stream down her face.
She raises her fist, then lowers it.
Her shoulders sag. She looks ten years older than she did two days ago. For a moment we stare at one another. I keep hoping that this is a dream, that I’ll wake up in my bed and laugh at myself for being an idiot.
But this is real.
Except I still don’t know what happened. I glance at the vet’s truck. I hadn’t noticed it before, but the driver’s door yawns open as if Dr. Anderson was in such a rush that she didn’t have time to close it.
Another bad sign.
I swallow hard, too scared to speak because if I do my heart will jump out of my mouth. And then I hear it.
“You killed my horse.”
It’s Mrs. Mueller, and she’s yelling at me. I cover my ears but I can’t block her words. Over and over they come, slicing through me like knives.
It’s your fault.
You didn’t bolt Magic’s door.
He got out and gorged himself to death.
Somewhere, in the middle of all this, Dr. Anderson emerges from the barn. She wipes her hands on a cloth, then hugs Mrs. Mueller. They hang onto one another like two survivors on a life raft while I’m left drowning in a sea of misery.
My fault?
The words slam into me. I double over, feeling sick. Somehow, I stumble toward the barn door, but the vet stops me.
“Don’t go in there.”
“Why not?”
“Because you killed my best horse,” says Mrs. Mueller.
No, no, Magic can’t be dead.
There’s got to be some mistake. In a panic, I replay what I did last night. I schooled Magic in the indoor, then I fed the horses and checked their stalls. Everything was bolted down tight.
Wasn’t it?
My mind blurs as I remember Dad honking from the parking lot, in a hurry to get to his meeting. I double-checked the aisle, right?
Doors closed and bolted. Check.
Rakes, pitchforks, and brooms hung up. Check.
Muck buckets emptied. Check.
I’d wanted to do a final once-over, but Dad had honked again and I raced out.
Oh, my God.
If Magic is dead, it really is my fault.
* * *
Word about Magic’s death spreads faster than gossip on Facebook. Blair is no sooner at the barn than she’s calling everyone she knows. I hear snatches of conversation …
… he got out of his stall and ravaged the feed room … yes, he colicked … and he DIED … like, just now … I mean, can you believe that Kate McGregor was …
By now, I’m a wreck, sitting beside my broken bike in the parking lot like a runaway teen. I see my ravaged face on milk cartons and on posters at the post office.
This is crazy.
I am not a runaway. I have a home. But somehow I can’t bring myself to go back to it, and Mrs. Mueller won’t let me into the barn.
Magic is dead.
I’m not allowed to say good-bye, or—
My guilty heart turns itself inside out. Between huge, wracking sobs I call home. Dad doesn’t answer. I try his cell, but it goes to voice mail, and I hang up because I’m crying too hard to leave a message. I’m about to start walking home when Patrice shows up, and her father, whom I’ve never met, offers me a ride.
Without asking questions, he tells me to throw my bike in the back of his SUV, and we drive the ten minutes to my house in awkward silence. He obviously knows what happened. By now, I bet the whole town knows.
“Thanks,” I whisper.
Patrice’s father nods but doesn’t speak. The minute I unload my bike, he drives off. His oversized tires leave skid marks in our gravel driveway.
* * *
I rip through my room like a maniac. Down come the posters, into the trash go my ribbons. Those new white breeches won’t be needed, so I stuff them into a garbage bag along with my hunt jacket, Sandpiper hoodie, and pink stained t-shirts. On top go my riding boots and an old helmet that no longer fits. My other one’s at the barn.
Through a waves of tears, I pull books and magazines from shelves, reach under the bed for stray pony socks, and toss out everything that reminds me of horses—except for Mom’s photo that I shove in my bottom drawer beneath a pile of old sweaters.
Then I lug it all downstairs. Dad’s in the kitchen. He gives me a puzzled look as I haul my bag of memories outside and dump it into the trash.
“What are you doing?” he says.
“Spring cleaning.”
I’m not ready to tell him about Magic, but I know I must.
* * *
Six miserable weeks later I am in Vermont. Aunt Marion’s cottage is tiny, her spare bed is lumpier than a sack full of apples, and there are so many rose bushes in her garden that you can barely walk up the front path without getting scratched.
I help her trim them back.
Wearing leather gloves with gauntlets that reach my elbows, I snip and clip and listen to my aunt explain the difference between hybrid teas and floribun
das. It makes absolutely no sense. A rose is a rose is a …
They smell good, though—far better than the compost that sits in a wheelbarrow waiting for me to spread it around the rose bushes. Aunt Marion’s paying me to help and I really appreciate it, but I need something else to do. I’m too young to get a job—a real job like working in a shop or washing dishes—and babysitting is a non-starter. I am utterly hopeless with kids unless they’re on ponies.
Mustn’t think about that.
As if reading my mind, Aunt Marion says, “Why don’t you go riding? There’s a very nice stable at Timber Ridge Mountain.”
It towers above us.
It’s not the highest mountain in Vermont, but it’s got some of the steepest ski trails in New England. Right now, a cable car is snaking its way to the summit, hauling summer visitors up for a magnificent view. You can see three states—New York, New Hampshire, and Vermont—from the peak of Timber Ridge, according to my aunt.
“Well?” she says, snipping off a dead leaf.
I haven’t told her about Magic. Telling Dad was bad enough. After I blurted it all out, he hugged me, then treated me to breakfast at our favorite cafe. Over eggs and bacon and a mountain of waffles that I couldn’t eat, he said, “Stop blaming yourself. It was a dreadful accident, but it wasn’t your fault.”
I tried to believe him—oh, how I tried—but I couldn’t. I could not be one hundred percent sure that I’d locked that lower bolt. Early the next morning Dad drove me to the barn so I could pick up my helmet, spare boots, and grooming box.
Not that I wanted them.
They went into the trash with everything else. The garbage truck came on Monday and took it all away. My life with horses was squashed into a noisy compactor and off to the town dump in less than thirty seconds.
I mumble something to Aunt Marion about being allergic to hay—totally ridiculous—but she doesn’t push. However, that night when I’m about to climb onto that lumpy mattress, I find a newspaper ad pinned to my pillow.
Mature high-school student needed as summer companion for disabled teen. Prefer someone who can live in. Call Timber Ridge Stables at …
~ Holly ~
Mom is adamant: I need a watchdog, otherwise she won’t let me go to the barn. I am perfectly capable of going by myself. If the back path through the field is too rutted and muddy, I just trundle along the road. It takes a bit longer, but I get there all the same.