by Kate Lattey
“I’m just lucky that girl on the black horse was there,” I tell him. “She saw it all happen and corroborated my story. Otherwise it would’ve been my word against Carly’s.”
Alec snorts. “Bet she’s wishing she never sold her pony to that fat snob now. Wouldn’t it be sickening to see your Grand Prix show jumper trying to cart that lump around? ”
“Carly’s not that bad,” I say, thinking that if Anneke and I are right about the reason for her constant vomiting, she’s far more aware of her weight than we are. Not that throwing up everything you eat is going to be effective, at least not in the long run, but I’ve learned enough about eating disorders in Health at school to know that they’re addictive behaviours. I wonder if Carly can help it, if she even wants to keep making herself sick or if she just doesn’t see any other way out?
But Alec is unsympathetic. “Yeah she is, trust me. Well, at least now Eleanor doesn’t hate me most of all,” he says with a menacing grin. “Congratulations Jay. You just reached number one on her hit list, so you’d better make the most of this teams thing tomorrow, because she’ll never pick you for anything again.”
I hope that he’s joking, but somehow I doubt it. The array of ribbons he’s taken this week flutter behind his head, and I stare at them enviously, wishing I had even a modicum of success to reflect on from this week, but it’s been one disaster after another, and I’ve had rails in every class I’ve competed in.
I try not to think about Sarah’s prophecy, her conviction that I couldn’t jump a single clear round at the show, but it keeps creeping back into my mind. During the day, when I’m not riding, when I’m eating junk food with Alec, or watching the big classes from the grandstand with Anneke, or stopping by Abby’s truck to help with her horses, I can convince myself that I’ve just had bad luck, and that I’ll do better in the next round. But in the depths of the night, when everyone else is asleep, I lie awake, consumed by self-doubt, and on Friday morning, when I ride Finn into the ring in my team uniform, I find myself staring at a course of jumps that suddenly look impossibly, ridiculously difficult. The fills are spooky and imposing, there’s a big brick wall, a high airy vertical, planks that’ll fall if you so much as breathe on them, and a tricky treble right out of a corner. We’re never going to get around clear, and I wish that I had refused to be in the team, that I’d agreed out loud with everyone else who knew I couldn’t do it, instead of silently pretending that I could.
I take a shaky breath, and let it out, trying to settle my nerves. Other people have already gone clear. Anneke has already gone clear. There’s no reason why I can’t too. I take one hand off the reins to pat Finn reassuringly, but my tension is transmitting itself to her and as soon as I release her rein she bounds into a fast canter. The bell rings, and I find myself heading towards the first jump on the course.
I’m not prepared for that. I’d intended to trot around the outside of the ring, to show her the wall and the treble and the planks, to prepare both of us for what was to come. But we’ve gone through the flags before I can regather my wits, and now it’s too late. Finn canters strongly down towards the first jump, and I sit down in the saddle and determinedly ride forward. Too forward, I realise suddenly as she rushes towards the fence, but it’s too late to fix it now. Finn’s stride flattens out and she rolls the front rail with her forelegs. It hits the ground, and my heart sinks. Four faults at the first fence. Why did I think I could do this?
Finn continues to rush around the course, and I continue to sit there and do nothing about it as the fences come up, simply sitting and steering, riding her like I used to before Abby tried to teach me better. We swing around towards the one-stride double and I try to steady Finn, but she ignores me and rushes into the first fence, landing long and finding a very deep distance at the second. I click my tongue and push my hands forward, but for the first time in what seems like a long time, Finn doesn’t jump. Instead she spins out to the side, barely avoiding crashing into the jump stand, and I struggle to get my seat back in the saddle as I turn her around. First refusal. Another four faults, and probably time penalties on top of it.
I curse myself as I head her back towards the double, riding more carefully this time, and we jump through cleanly. I praise Finn with my voice as we turn towards the next jump, the airy vertical, and I can’t see a distance to it at all. With every stride that Finn takes, I keep expecting to find my spot, but I can’t. Abby told me to sit still and let the jumps come to me, but this jump seems to be moving back and forth, refusing to let me get a gauge on it, and in the end I just close my legs against Finn’s sides and ride forward, trusting her eye more than mine right now.
Just don’t stop, I urge her. She doesn’t, but she hits the top rail hard, and it falls. Twelve faults and counting, and I give myself a mental kick as we approach the planks, determined to focus. But nothing is working as it should. Finn’s canter is erratic, I still can’t see my stride, and unnerved by my panic at the vertical, Finn starts to hesitate. My communication with my pony has gone, and I start dreading each fence, wishing that the course would hurry up and be over. In my darkest moment, as we turn the corner towards the wall and Finn almost stops mid-stride at the very sight of it, a fleeting hope crosses my mind that the rest of the team will do as badly as me, knocking us out of contention and not forcing me to try and jump tomorrow in the Premier arena, where I’ll be sure to make a fool of myself in front of hundreds of people.
Finn does make it over the wall, but she scatters poles like confetti through the treble, and as I bring her back to a trot after passing through the finish flags, I have never been so ashamed in all my life. I avoid everyone’s eyes, feeling like a fraud in my black, red and yellow team uniform as I ride straight back towards the Harrisons’ truck with tears in my eyes.
I tie Finn to the side of the truck and pull my team polo shirt off, throwing it under my bunk. I can’t even stand to look at it, and I swiftly unsaddle my pony, flipping the monogrammed Waikato saddle blanket upside down over her saddle so that I don’t have to see that either. I take Finn to the hosing bay and wash her off thoroughly. It wasn’t her fault that I rode so badly. I have no one to blame except myself, but that doesn’t make me feel any better.
Back at the truck, I scrape off the excess water and throw a cooling sheet over my pony’s back, then go into the truck to hide. I’m lying on my bunk feeling sorry for myself when I hear Alec come in. I brace myself for his pity, for his latest encouraging speech and assurances that I can prove them all wrong, despite all of the evidence to the contrary.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
I look up in surprise at his angry voice, wiping my tear-stained face on the pillow.
“Sulking.” He answers his own question. “I should’ve known. Seriously, come on. Get up and get back out there. What’s wrong with you?”
“Um, you saw me!” I snap back. “I rode like shit and I let my team down.”
“You had a bad round. It sucks, but it happens. But you’re on a team, Jay. You don’t just walk away and cry while you’ve still got team members out there competing! You suck it up and you go back and you support them.” He glares at me in disgust. I’ve never seen him look so disappointed in me, and it hurts even more than the shame of my horrible round. “You asked me if you deserved to be on this team, and I said yes. But right now, I’m thinking maybe you were right. Maybe you should’ve stepped back and let someone else do it. Someone who would think about the team before themselves.”
I’m angry. I get to my feet and I yell at him. I don’t even know what I’m saying, and I can barely see through my tears as I scrabble around under the bed and fish out my polo shirt, preparing to put it back on.
“Fine! I’ll go out there and be a laughing stock of everyone.” I shove my arms into the shirt sleeves, and pull it down over my head, scraping the zipper painfully against my face. “Are you happy now!?” I ask.
But I don’t get an answer, because Alec ha
s gone.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the time I get back to the ring to watch the rest of my team’s rounds, my anger has faded and my disappointment is back. I walk slowly up to Kim, who is standing near the ring with Anneke, watching the last of the pony riders complete the course. A tidy clear round, and the young rider pats her pony enthusiastically as she approaches the gate, her face a beaming smile. She catches my eye as she rides past, and a flicker of sympathy crosses her face, adding to my burning shame. She can probably tell that I’ve been crying in my truck for the last twenty minutes. I grit my teeth and walk up to Kim.
“I’m sorry.”
She startles at the sight of me, then nods. “Oh well. Not the best round, but let’s not panic until we see how Ellie and Savannah go. Both of their horses have been jumping beautifully all week, so all going well they’ll both go clear, and we’ll be able to drop your cricket score and still make it through to the second round.”
I nod slowly. “Here’s hoping.”
Kim looks at me carefully. “What got into your pony out there? She jumped so beautifully at Gisborne, I couldn’t believe it was the same pony going to pieces in the ring just now.”
“It was my fault,” I admit. “I let my nerves get the better of me, and I panicked.”
“Hmm.” I can tell that Kim is thinking the same thing I am – if I fell apart in this ring, what’s going to happen if we go through to the main arena tomorrow? She walks away, heading towards Ellie who has just ridden into the warm-up area, and I watch Kim go, wishing that she felt differently about me right now. Wishing that I’d given her reason to.
“Don’t beat yourself up. It happens.” Anneke gives me a brief hug, providing the sympathy that I’d been predicting from Alec earlier. I feel ill as I remember our confrontation, and I wonder where he has gone. I can’t see him anywhere around, and I hope he’s not going to stop talking to me. That’s the last thing I need right now, although I probably deserve it.
“It was all my fault. I rode so badly.”
“You’ll ride better tomorrow,” Anneke tells me.
“I hope so.”
“I’ll give you a healthy dose of Rescue Remedy,” she promises. “Mum keeps a supply in the truck. But you can’t have it all, because I have Pony of the Year on Saturday afternoon and if I bomb out in that, I’m probably going to shoot myself. Come on, Ellie’s almost up.”
Ellie and Savannah both jump clear rounds, so with a combined score of zero (now that my incredibly embarrassing 22 faults have been dropped), Waikato is officially through to the second round. To take my mind off the pressure, Anneke and I spend the afternoon helping Abby with her horses, and I don’t see Alec again until dinner time, when I finally return to the Harrisons’ truck.
“There you are!” Tabby greets me with a smile, as always. “I thought you’d dropped off the face of the earth or something.”
“I was helping Abby. That smells amazing,” I tell her as I walk up the ramp. “Is Alec here?”
“He’s feeding the ponies. Go and help him, would you? Food’s almost ready for eating.”
I jump obediently off the ramp and head towards the yards, hoping Alec has forgiven me for my earlier misdemeanours. Luckily for me, he’s a boy and doesn’t seem to hold a grudge the way that girls do. I find him at the yards, but before I can say a word to him, I get accosted with a warm hug from one of my favourite people in the world.
“Pip!”
“Miss me?”
“Always.” I hug Alec’s sister tightly. “When did you get here? Tabby never said!”
“She doesn’t know,” Pip explains. “I just parked up and started walking around looking for our truck when I saw these poor ponies being mauled about by this useless bugger, and I took pity on them and felt obliged to help out.”
Alec is refilling water buckets, and doesn’t seem to mind being called a useless bugger. “Jay, come grab the other side of this one, would you?” he calls to me, and I hurry to help him. As I reach down to grasp the handle of the large water bucket, Alec suddenly points to something behind me.
“What’s that?”
I turn to look, and the moment I have my back to him, Alec grabs me by the shoulders and pulls me firmly backwards. I lose my balance and sit down hard, right in the big tub of water.
Boys may not hold grudges, but they have their own ways of letting you how they feel.
I don’t know how I managed to get any sleep, but I must have dropped off eventually because I wake up to the smell of eggs frying. It’s early, just past six a.m., and I scramble out of bed and pull on my gumboots, then go and fetch Finn from her yard.
“Sorry about yesterday,” I tell her as I lead her back to the truck. “That was my fault. Today I’m going to be a way better rider for you, I promise.”
Finn butts me with her nose, wanting me to hurry because she knows there’s a feed for her inside the truck.
“Just a small one,” I warn her. “We can’t have you going into the ring with a full stomach, but you’d better have some energy food.”
“Same goes for you,” Pip tells me as she jumps out of the side door and hands me a plate of scrambled eggs. “Breakfast of champions, this is.”
“I can’t, I feel ill just looking at it.”
“Those who don’t eat, can’t ride,” Pip replies unsympathetically. “Come on, you can’t go in on an empty stomach, it will make you all weak and feeble and you won’t be able to ride properly.”
“Or I’ll end up vomiting off the side of my pony in front of everyone,” I argue, but I take the eggs and force myself to eat some of it.
“That’s the way,” she says encouragingly. “I can’t wait to see you guys jump today. Alec told me that you’ve got Finn going amazing.”
I shrug. “Until yesterday.”
“Off day. You’re going to be great today. And hell, even if you’re not, just look where you are and how far you’ve come.”
I carry Pip’s words with me as I walk the course with my team, listening carefully to Kim’s advice and the comments of my teammates. The jumps aren’t huge, but they are spooky and the whole atmosphere is ten times bigger than anything I’ve ever experienced before. My hands are shaking as we walk back to the gate, but I push my nerves to the side as Alec legs me up onto Finn’s back. Abby arrives to help me warm up, and Kim is happy to leave me to her. Abby doesn’t give me time to think or get overwhelmed, and before I know it, I’m riding Finn down the chute towards the archway that leads into the arena.
I stop at the gate and watch the rider before me jump untidily through the treble. I run a hand down Finn’s fit, hard neck as I take it all in - the bright, fancy jumps, the tents and white rails and picket fences, the grandstand towering over the arena, the big screens and lights and cameras, and all the people standing around watching. And a surge of pride fills me as I remind myself that I even getting here has been an achievement. It hasn’t been an easy journey, and I’ve strayed well off the path I’d intended to take, but I’m here now. And who knows what’s going to happen next? This could be my one and only chance to ride in the premier arena at the Horse of the Year Show. The girl I was when I lived in England just over a year ago would never have believed such a thing could be remotely possible – and yet here I am.
Abby walks up to me and pats Finn on the shoulder. “Just go out there and have fun,” she advises me, and I smile down at her.
“I’ll do my best.”
“That’s all we ask.”
Finn is excited as we trot into the arena, straining against the reins, but I speak softly to her and steer her carefully towards the spookiest jumps, letting her get a good look at them. There is a Liverpool, a wall, a treble, a narrow fence with very short poles, and a couple of imposing oxers, but I feel confident that there’s nothing out here that we can’t handle.
As I turn Finn towards the start, I see her image on the big screen in the far corner, and for a moment I’m stunned by how beautiful Finn is, an
d how professional we look. I’m filled with pride as the announcer tells the crowd who I am.
“We now have our first rider for Waikato, Jay Evans riding That’s Final.”
I close my legs around Finn’s sides and she bounds into her eager canter. The buzzer sounds, and we head towards the first fence. Yesterday I couldn’t find any distances, couldn’t hold a rhythm, couldn’t do a thing right. But today the first fence comes up perfectly, and I find myself starting to relax as I make the turn towards the second.
Finn is focused and keen, but listens as I steady her, responds when I ride her forward, agrees to wait when I tell her to slow down. We aren’t perfect – she taps the Liverpool, weaves a little on the approach to the skinny, and jumps into the treble too quietly and has to put in a massive effort to get out cleanly, but I sit tight and urge her on, and she does it for me. As we make the turn down to the last line, a bold oxer followed by a strong six strides to the last vertical, I force myself to stay focused. She clears the oxer, and we’re one away from home. One fence away from the clear round that nobody – least of all me – thought we could manage.
Don’t take the last fence for granted, I remind myself, remembering more of Abby’s advice. It’s not over until you’re through the flags. I concentrate on my job, giving Finn the ride she needs, and it’s not until I’m pulling Finn up after we’ve raced through the finish flags that I realise that we’ve done it. We’ve actually done it, actually gone clear, and I’m grinning from ear to ear as I pull up, and jog Finn back towards the gate towards my delighted teammates.
I cool Finn out, then take her back to the truck and rush back in time to see Anneke’s ride on Nonny. He jumps well, but takes a strong dislike to the skinny, and Anneke has to use all her skill to get him over as he desperately tries to run out. They end up jumping it on an angle, but they’re clear and making the turn to the Liverpool. I watch Nonny spook at it, Anneke sit down and drive her pony forward, and Nonny take off almost a whole stride early, launching himself into the air and yet somehow landing cleanly on the other side. The rest of her round is less dramatic, and she comes home without any faults but nursing her right hand.