by Kate Lattey
I give her a strange look, my eyes moving from her to the slobbering mongrel dog and back again. “Cute?”
“Well, maybe that’s not quite the right word. But you’re lucky to have him. Mum’s not really a pet person. Can’t stand the mess. Fur on the furniture is her worst nightmare.”
“You have ponies though,” I point out as I go to the fridge, my stomach rumbling all of a sudden. “Surely you get horsehair all over the place. Especially in winter.”
“They get clipped right out,” Natalie replies. “No fluff to be found. And Mum gets the vacuum cleaner out every ten minutes, I swear. She’s very house-proud.”
“Hell,” I mutter as I pull the lasagne dish out of the fridge and stare down at it. Nina made this and brought it over the night before they went off on their trip. As a peace offering, presumably, but I had made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t eat it. Except right now it was looking extremely good, and I had no energy to make anything else. “You like lasagne? You’re not vegetarian or anything?”
“No, I’m a carnivore,” Natalie assures me, getting to her feet and taking the dish from my hands. “There’s not much I won’t eat, to be honest. Now sit back down while I put this in the oven to heat up.”
I grimace, but do as I’m told. “Yes, boss.”
The lasagne is delicious, which is good because Natalie thinks I made it, and I don’t disabuse her of the notion. We find some icecream in the freezer, and sit eating bowls of it while watching a DVD from my dad’s extremely limited selection. As it turns out, Top Gun isn’t too terrible of a movie, and we have a good giggle at the tight jeans and big hair that characterise movies of the 80s. I wonder if our current fashions are going to look that stupid in thirty years. Surely not.
“Well,” Natalie says as the credits start to roll. She shuts the DVD off and sets the remote down on the couch between us. “That was educational.”
I laugh. “That’s one way of putting it. You tempted to go join the air force now?”
“Not quite. Doctors Without Borders,” she replies, surprising me. “That’s the plan, anyway. And if I don’t make it into med school, I’ll train to be a paramedic. I’d rather do that anyway.”
I pull a face. “Gross. What if you have to give someone CPR?”
“And save their life? That would be amazing.” She clearly means it, and I feel like a bad human for making fun of it.
“Well sure, if they looked like that,” I reply, motioning towards the TV screen. It’s blank now, but a shirtless and sweaty Tom Cruise is still seared into my eyeballs. “You could sign me up tomorrow. But sadly, that seems unlikely.”
“Hmm.” Natalie looks around the room. “Well, it’s getting late. I guess I’ll sleep on the couch. Is your room through there?” She motions towards my dad’s bedroom, and I shake my head.
“Upstairs.”
“Show me then,” she says. “So I know where to go to check up on you during the night.”
“It’s not really necessary,” I insist as I get to my feet. “I’m feeling heaps better now. If you want to go home, I don’t mind.”
“Nice try,” she replies easily, standing up and stretching. “You can’t get rid of me that easily. If you’re still alive in the morning, then I’ll leave. Deal?”
I roll my eyes, but really I’m grateful for the company. And for someone who I thought I hated, she’s been nothing but nice to me all evening. It certainly hasn’t been as awkward as I’d assumed it would be. Maybe if we hadn’t got off on the wrong foot in the first place, I find myself thinking as I lead the way upstairs, we might even have been friends.
Natalie looks around approvingly at my bedroom. “This is so cute!” She reaches up and touches the sloping ceiling, placing a flat palm on the exposed beams. “It’s like a gingerbread house or something.”
“Or something.” I sit down on the bed gingerly. My head is spinning again after walking up the stairs, and I’m starting to get really nervous about the notion of falling asleep and not waking up. I have no idea how likely that is, or if it’s even really possible. Maybe it’s just something they tell you to scare you into getting checked out by a doctor after a head injury. Maybe not.
“How often are you going to check up on me?” I ask, trying to sound casual. Natalie turns around from where she’s been looking at the photo of Finn on the wall, pinned below the scant collection of ribbons we’ve managed to win so far.
“Every couple hours,” she replies. “Just to make sure.”
“Won’t you get sick of climbing up and down the stairs? You could just sleep up here,” I tell her. “If you want. Make things easier.” I think of offering her the camp stretcher, then remember that I gave it back to Alec after camp. I look at the bed I’m sitting on. “It’s only a double so it’s not exactly roomy but neither of us exactly take up much space.”
Natalie gives me a measured look, then nods slowly. “Okay. Probably better than the couch. I’ll go get my toothbrush and stuff out of the car. Be right back.”
She leaves the room, and I listen to her footsteps padding down the stairs when my phone beeps, making me jump. I reach over to the nightstand where I’ve left it to charge, and check it for messages, wondering if there’ll be one from Tegan. We haven’t spoken at all since she sent me that horrible text message, and although part of me misses her, mostly I’m still mad at her for what she said. Maybe I’ll make best friends with Natalie instead, I consider, then grin to myself as I imagine how much that would annoy Tegan. It would almost be worthwhile, just to see the look on her face. And Natalie’s turning out to be a fairly decent person, I have to admit. I certainly can’t imagine Tegan babysitting me like this, even if we were speaking to each other. She’d be far more likely to shrug my injury off and tell me to harden up.
The only message on my phone is from Anneke, filling me in on the action from Cambridge.
Day 1 finally over. Danny jumping like a star (: Noah’s had 2 rails and isn’t talking to Dusty. Carly got bucked off just riding around, can u get more useless than her I don’t think so. Your lot going ok, Alec’s pony had an unlucky rail but Sarah’s was DC so she’s a bit full of herself. Teagan still saying she hates her pony, no idea why, I think its cool. Wish u were here! give Finn a hug from me xox
I wish I was there too, I think sadly as I hear Natalie come back into the house. I wish I had made the team. I wish I hadn’t fallen off today and wasn’t having to be babysat by my nemesis. If I can still call her that, which I probably can’t. I’m finding it harder and harder to remember why we hated each other so much. As she brushes her teeth downstairs, I send a quick reply to Anneke, then flick a text to Alec.
Having fun without me? Anneke says Tegan being a pain, what a shock. Im having the worst day - fell off on the beach and Finn headed for home without me. Luckily (?????) Natalie was there with spider and helped out. Now shes staying over at my house because she says I have concussion and cant be left alone overnight incase I don’t wake up in the morning. Being weirdly nice tho im starting to forget why we hate her so much ahghh help
Natalie reappears just as I’m pressing Send, and I realise belatedly that I’m still fully dressed. I grab my pyjamas from under my pillow, and head downstairs to the bathroom, feeling strangely like a guest in my own house.
When I get back, Natalie’s sitting on the bed thumbing through a Show Circuit magazine. She looks up as I walk in, and holds the magazine up to me with a quizzical expression.
“You really don’t like Tegan’s sister, huh?”
I come closer, then recognise the photo of Lizzie on her pony Tish, draped in garlands and beaming at the camera. There are big black lines scrawled across Lizzie’s face, and her pony is wearing glasses and sporting a hat and goatee.
“Tegan’s sense of humour, not mine,” I assure Natalie, who makes a huffing noise as she sets the magazine back on the desk.
“She’s so weird,” she mutters, then glances at me. “I’m not trying to be rude, but I don’t get how you could
be friends with her.”
I pause in pulling the covers back and give her a warning look, wishing now that I’d told her to sleep downstairs. Tegan and I might not be talking right now, but that doesn’t give Natalie the right to start slagging her off.
“Yeah, well she doesn’t like you much either,” I mutter as I slide into bed.
“That’s not my fault.” Natalie climbs in beside me and switches out the bedside light, plunging the room into darkness. “She started it.”
“What?”
“Tegan. When we came here and I first started riding, I knew nothing. Could barely rise to the trot, let alone canter, and she was racing around Pony Club on her little bay pony, showing off like crazy and making fun of me. We used to compete against each other all the time, and if I ever had a rail or a stop she would start applauding or laughing at me. I was so glad when she got that mad black thing and took up show jumping instead. It’s half the reason I stuck with Show Hunter. I knew I’d never have to compete against her again.”
I don’t know what to say to that. It doesn’t sound unlike Tegan, but there’s a very good reason that I made friends with her, and I point it out to Natalie.
“She was the only person I met when I moved here that actually wanted to be friends with me.”
“You didn’t exactly make the best first impression,” Natalie tells me, and I think back to the first time we met.
It had been my first day in New Zealand, and I’d found her sister’s pony Zeke running loose on the road, so had ridden him back the way he came, trying to find his owners. Natalie had been furious at me for riding the pony, and accused me of making him lame. I still don’t think that was entirely my fault, but I am forced to admit to myself that if I ever found a stranger cantering Finn along the road with a swollen fetlock, I would tear their head off too.
“Neither did you,” I tell her, remembering how rude she’d been to me. “It was hardly the best day of my life, you know…” I let my voice trail off as the memories of those first long, lonely days in New Zealand come flooding back, and I find myself blinking back tears. Don’t you dare cry in front of her.
Natalie’s voice is soft in the darkness, cutting into my thoughts. “I didn’t really mean to go off at you like that. It’s just that I love that little pony, and I hate seeing my sister ride him because she treats him like a machine. And she fell off and blamed him for it, and Mum sided with her and threatened to sell him. So I was in a really bad mood and when you started yelling back at me I just lost it.”
“I probably shouldn’t have been riding him,” I admit. “But I was feeling so lost and lonely, and this little pony appeared out of nowhere and he was so cute and friendly, and I had a huge blister on my heel…” My excuses sound feeble, even to me. “I didn’t mean to make him lame.” Natalie is silent as I grapple for the words that are so difficult to say. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Her voice is warm as she accepts my apology, and I immediately feel better, even though I’ve never cared before what she thinks of me anyway.
“I enjoyed riding him though,” I tell her. “He’s a super pony.”
“Yeah, that’s the one good thing about having a little sister,” she admits. “Not having to sell your pony when you outgrow him.”
“I always wanted a sister,” I tell her, and she snorts.
“Trust me, you don’t. You’re lucky to be an only child. Getting all the attention, not being compared to anyone else by your parents, not being expected to do better than your sister just because you’re older, even though your pony is super green and her pony is completely pushbutton.”
I think about that for a moment, and see her point. “I guess. It gets lonely though. Especially when you only have one parent left.”
I’m surprised even as I speak, and start wondering what it is about being in the dark that creates honesty. If we could see each other’s faces, we’d never be talking like this, and I wonder if it’s going to be awkward in the morning. I resolve to shut my mouth and go to sleep, and I turn my face away from Natalie and close my eyes tightly. But I’ve dragged up too many memories, and my mind runs back over Mum’s long illness, and her total devotion to me during that difficult time. My existence was what had made her keep fighting for so long, through the pain and the operations and the seemingly endless rounds of chemotherapy, and I know that I wouldn’t have wanted to have to share her with anyone else, especially at the end.
I wipe away the tears on my sleeve, and try not to sniffle too loudly. Natalie has been silent for so long that I assume she’s fallen asleep until she speaks, her voice so unexpected in the darkness that it startles me.
“It must have been really hard for you to come here.”
I sniff again, then find myself replying. I still don’t know why, but the words are there and ready to be spoken out loud.
“It was hard at first. Especially since Dad and I hardly knew each other. But then I found Finn, and things got better. I got homesick though, especially after Alec’s accident, when…” I break off, trying not to dwell on those unpleasant memories. The sound of the gunshots ringing out over the hills will haunt me for the rest of my life.
“So you left.”
“Yeah. It seemed like the right decision at the time.”
Natalie shifts slightly and the blankets pull tight across my shoulders. “But you came back,” she says.
“Because I realised when I got there that if I stayed, I would become a completely different person,” I explain. “My friends over there, the whole lifestyle, it’s so different. I had to make a choice about what I wanted my future to look like, and…well, I like who I am when I’m here.”
“I get that,” Natalie says quietly. “My mum-” She hesitates for a moment, but the cover of darkness seems to be having the same effect on her that it has had on me, and she suddenly opens up. “I was born in Tehran. We moved here when I was two because my parents wanted a better life. But it was hard for Mum to leave all of her family behind.”
I’m dumbstruck. I’d always noticed that her mother had an unusual accent, and slightly foreign features, but have never bothered to try and piece together Natalie’s story. After a few moments of gaping, I find my voice. “Do you remember living there?”
“A little.”
“Think you’ll ever go back?”
Once again her answer surprises me. “I hope so.”
I roll onto my back and turn my head to look at her. “Really?”
I can see the tension in her back. “Why not?”
“Well, because it’s dangerous, and messed up.” I look over across at the night sky outside my bedroom window, listen to the wind brushing through the trees and the far off sound of the waves breaking on the shore. Try to think of what I know of Iran and the Middle East, gleaned from the television and internet reports - the desert, the poverty, the endless fighting – and shudder. “Why would you leave here, to go there?”
Natalie doesn’t hesitate. “To help.”
“Doctors Without Borders,” I recall. “But you don’t have to go there to help. I mean, you could volunteer in other ways, surely…”
Natalie rolls over and looks at me. “We left,” she tells me defiantly. “We ran away. And my mother is eternally grateful for that, because she can raise her daughters in a safe environment, and we get to do things like ride ponies and get a good education and have all the things she never had. And I get that, but I feel guilty for it too. For all the people we left behind.”
She’s still staring at me, but I look up at the ceiling, unable to meet her eyes. “Good for you,” I say eventually. “That’s pretty brave.”
“The hardest part is going to be getting past my mother,” she says softly into the night. “She doesn’t want me to go back. She couldn’t wait to get out.”
“What about your dad?”
“He understands. Both of us,” she admits. “Sees both sides, but won’t take either one. I have to get qualified first, of co
urse, and I think Mum’s clinging to the hope that I won’t. She used to be on my back constantly about schoolwork, but now she keeps telling me to lighten up and enjoy my youth instead of studying all the time.” Natalie gives a short, bitter laugh. “Little does she know that if I don’t make it as a doctor, I’ll train as a paramedic and try to get there even sooner.”
She’s quiet then, and I lie still and stare up at the sloping ceiling, completely amazed by what I’ve just heard, and suddenly realising that I really don’t know this girl at all. I think back over last season, from the first time we met to the times that my friends and I mocked her for her inability to ride Spider, or the night that we painted her pony’s tail green at a show, picking on her because she was so tense and uptight all the time. Never stopping to wonder why she was like that, or if she even wanted to be.
“I’m sorry,” I tell her. I feel the blankets shift as she listens. “About last season. It was Alec’s idea to spray-paint your pony, but I shouldn’t have gone along with it.”
Natalie speaks softly. “Thanks.”
I can just see the outline of her features in the moonlight. I try to imagine her in Iran, wearing a hijab and tending to patients in rough conditions. Would she be patching up bullet wounds, reattaching limbs? I feel sick at the thought of it, but admire her courage in wanting to do something so meaningful.
“You’re not as bad as I thought you were.”
“Well thanks,” I mutter. “Likewise.”
“Even if you are friends with Tegan,” she adds, and I find myself laughing as my phone buzzes again from under my pillow.
“Speak of the devil?” she mutters, and I shake my head as I pull it out.
“Alec.”
“Well he’s not quite as bad,” she concedes, but she’s smiling as she says it.
“Watch it,” I warn her.
Natalie chuckles and rolls onto her side, the blankets pulling tight around us as I swipe Alec’s message open.
Tegans a pain in the butt, even Natalie cant be as bad as her. Hope ur heads ok. Mum says hi and go to sleep ;)