Show Days (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 32)

by Claire Svendsen

  “I’d want to know if it was my horse,” I whispered to Shelby as we dumped a bucket of manure together. “I don’t think it’s right to keep things from an owner. It seems dishonest.”

  “Then you’re in the wrong business,” Jessica said, dumping her own bucket and glaring at us. “And you two are getting a free lesson out of it anyway so what do you care?”

  “I care because if someone didn’t tell me something about my own horse, I wouldn’t stay at that barn or with that trainer. It’s my horse and my right to know what is going on,” I said.

  “Yeah well that’s not how this whole show barn thing works,” Jessica said, leaning on her pitchfork and wiping sweat from her forehead with a rag. “You think the owners want to know every time their horse does something bad? No. They want Rae to fix it so that they don’t have to deal with it. It’s like sending your kid off to boarding school. Those parents just want the report card with the good grades, not to know that their kid snuck out in the middle of the night to go skinny dipping in the lake.”

  “You know about skinny dipping in the lake, do you?” Shelby raised an eyebrow.

  “My parents shipped me off as soon as I could talk and walk. They didn’t want to raise me. They paid people to do that.” She gave a smug smile and walked off, her long, tanned legs looking like a model’s in her denim shorts.

  “That explains a lot,” Shelby said.

  “I guess,” I said.

  But boarding school and having parents that weren’t interested in raising you was no excuse for bad behavior. I didn’t have very good role models as parents and I thought that I’d turned out mostly okay. We got back to work but I still couldn’t help thinking that it Jessica’s parents were so rich, why didn’t she have a fancy show horse instead of a second class one and why was she a working student instead of a paying one?

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  “I heard you walked through the woods all alone in the middle of the night and an alligator almost bit your leg off,” Trixie said.

  She was standing off to the side while I finished tacking up her pony. She knew how to do it but her parents paid us to.

  “How did you hear about that?” I asked her.

  “Oh, you know,” she said vaguely. “Stuff gets around.”

  So much for keeping it a secret from Marty. She’d know soon enough if the other clients did. I wondered if Jessica had blabbed about it. I wouldn’t have put it past her to spread the word so that we would get the blame and couldn’t get that free lesson after all.

  “We didn’t almost get eaten by an alligator,” I told her. “Now come on, take your pony out to the ring before you are late. Have you got your crop?”

  “No,” she squeaked. “I left it in the tack room.”

  “Fine, I’ll take Peter to the ring and you meet me there.”

  I walked the pony out into the sunshine as Trixie ran off to the tack room. The sun was relentless. It beat down on us all day, every day with the only relief being horrible thunder storms where lightning hit the ground feet from the barn and thunder crashed all around us. I’d lived in Florida long enough to be used to the storms but even I was terrified by these ones. There was something about them. The force with which they came bull dozing through, the lightning that didn’t care what it hit. When they came I wanted to curl up in a ball and hide somewhere but there was nowhere to hide. No place to escape. Every day we waited them out and when they had passed the world was wet and green again. But not this morning. This morning it was hot and dry. Rae had on a big floppy hat and sunglasses. Even though the sunscreen was passed around the barn faster than the gossip, we were all pretty burned.

  “She’s getting her crop,” I told Rae as I waited by the gate.

  “Kids.” She shook her head. “Always forgetting something.”

  We stood there in silence for a moment and then Trixie came running out of the barn.

  “Have a good lesson,” I told her.

  “I will,” she said as she took her pony and I retreated into the shade of the barn.

  There were still chores to do and as usual not enough people to do them. This was the working student life and it wasn’t glamorous at all. Not one bit.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  That afternoon a couple of horses arrived, new clients that Rae had picked up at the show. There was a bay mare with a small star on her forehead called Stella and a gray gelding with a dappled coat called Storm, who I immediately fell in love with. I had a soft spot for grays and the new horse made me miss my two at home all the more.

  “Where do you want them?” the groom asked as he stood there holding the two horses.

  “I don’t know,” I said, looking around.

  The barn was small and the stalls were full. Where were we supposed to put two new horses?

  “Julio?” I called out. “Where do you want the new horses to go?”

  Julio came out of the tack room grumbling under his breath.

  “There and there,” he said, pointing at the stalls that Bluebird and Rocket were in.

  “But where are our horses supposed to go?” I said.

  “Out,” Julio snapped back.

  “Outside?” I said. “But it’s a hundred degrees, it’s too hot and the thunder storms are too dangerous. You can’t expect them to live outside now, can you?”

  Julio shrugged. “You pay training board?” he said.

  I knew he was right. We were working students. The lowest of the low. The bottom of the totem pole. Our horses weren’t owed anything. They were there for free just the same as we were and I guess I’d just assumed that they would be cared for as well as those horses whose owners were paying thousands of dollars a month.

  “Fine,” I said in as grumpy a voice as I dare. “I’ll go and find Jessica and tell her our horses have been evicted.”

  “You do that,” Julio said as he went to talk to the groom about the new horses.

  Jessica was even less impressed than I was.

  “My horse can’t just live outside,” she said. “He has sensitive skin, there are bugs, it’s too hot and we keep getting those horrible storms.”

  “I know,” I told her as we walked to our stalls, the groom still holding the two new horses and looking rather uncomfortable about the fact that his charges were kicking our horses out. “I don’t want Bluebird outside either.”

  But it didn’t seem that there was much we could do about it. I picked the smallest paddock back behind the barn because it was shaded by two trees and Bluebird would get the protection of the barn from the rain. I grabbed his fly sheet and put it on him, even though he protested by pinning his ears.

  “It will help to keep the sun off your coat and the bugs from eating you alive so stop fussing,” I told him.

  He shook his head anyway and then trotted off a few steps. At least there was grass so he could stuff his face all day and not be bored. I checked the water trough and picked out a couple of dead weeds that were floating in it.

  Jessica had chosen one of the bigger paddocks. I knew she would. There was more grass and lots of room for Rocket to run and play. There was less shelter but he was in full view of the barn and the ring like he was on display. I was happy to have my pony tucked around the back, out of sight and hopefully a little more sheltered.

  “Get these horses settled,” Julio said when we got back to the barn.

  We cleaned what used to be our stalls, scrubbed the buckets and filled them with fresh water and then the new horses were allowed in them. They sniffed at the shavings and the bars, saying hello to their neighbors with a squeal. The groom dumped some stuff in the tack room and left. We stood there making sure that the horses would eat their hay and drink their new water.

  “It’s not fair,” I told Shelby who had come to check out the new arrivals. “Now my pony is stuck outside.”

  “I thought you said he was used to being outside,” Shelby said.

  “This is different,” I told her.

  And someh
ow it was. Having my pony out on our farm in his big field with his friends was totally different than having him stuffed out the back in a paddock where the flies would probably eat him alive. It wasn’t fair. I thought for a moment about sending him home. Rae had me riding Rags anyway because she wanted to sell him. I’d hardly had time to ride my pony at all and while I loved having him around and couldn’t bear the thought of being separated from him for the rest of the summer, I also couldn’t bear the thought of his care being downgraded. So I couldn’t send him home because I needed him with me but that just felt selfish and wrong.

  “Maybe they won’t be here for that long,” Shelby said. “Horses come and go on the road. They don’t always stay for the whole summer. Not many people can afford it. Some will just show up for a week or two and then leave again.”

  “A week or two of my pony stuck outside?” I said. “No thanks.”

  “Well we’ll be moving on soon anyway. This show is winding down. Soon we’ll be off to the next one and I’m sure they’ll be a stall for your pony there.”

  “There had better be,” I muttered under my breath.

  I hadn’t come on the road just to have my pony treated like a second class citizen. He meant everything to me and if something bad happened to him just because he was stuffed outside in a paddock then I knew that I would never forgive myself.

  “This sucks,” I said.

  “I know,” Shelby told me.

  There wasn’t much more to say than that.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  We got our lesson that afternoon when it was too hot to ride and no one else wanted to. At least I got to ride Bluebird because Rae wanted Rags to have the day off after the late night class the day before. Shelby got to ride one of Rae’s other horses, a flashy little chestnut mare with white socks and a big blaze.

  We trotted around the ring feeling like we might as well have been riding on the surface of the sun. A covered arena would have been nice but I kept having to remind myself that Rae didn’t come from money anymore. That she was trying to make her own way on her own dollar just like I was and money in the horse world was tight. Rae was trying her best and so were we. Well, all of us except Bluebird who was hot and grumpy and didn’t feel like doing anything. At least he perked up a little bit when Rae set the jumps up.

  “Is this lesson a reward or a punishment?” Shelby asked me as she wiped the sweat out of her eyes.

  “Both?” I said.

  But as soon as we started to jump, I felt better and I knew that Bluebird did too. Rae set up a couple of tricky combinations and had us ride through them several times. Bluebird was a star, like he always was. I could count on him to jump anything, anywhere, anytime. The mare that Shelby was riding was a little green but she gave her the confidence she needed and I was impressed. Because Shelby had refused to ride Rags, I thought that maybe she was a timid sort of rider but she attacked the jumps just like I would have done.

  “Alright girls, that’s enough,” Rae said from her spot in the shade. “It’s too hot to work them for much longer. Baths and liniment for them and get them under the fans.”

  Both horses were huffing and puffing and Bluebird’s neck was white and foamy. I knew that he’d be happy to get rinsed off. I just hoped that I could get away with keeping him in the wash rack where we had a giant fan that pointed at the horses until he was dry because otherwise he was just going to go out in the sand and roll.

  “That was fun,” Shelby said. “I haven’t ridden in ages.”

  “It would have been more fun if it wasn’t a hundred degrees,” I said as we walked into the barn.

  “At least you got to ride,” Jessica snapped when she heard us. “I haven’t even had that chance.”

  “You will,” Shelby said, trying to be nice because that was the sort of person she was.

  “When?” Jessica said.

  “You just have to be patient. You only just got here,” I told her.

  “Whatever,” she said and walked off.

  “I can’t decide if I like her or hate her,” Shelby said.

  “I’m just going to ignore her,” I replied. “I’ve learned that you can’t change people. They are who they are and you just have to put up with them or move on and keep them out of your life.”

  “That’s a bit hard what with all of us living on top of each other,” Shelby said.

  “I know.” I sighed.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  The new horses settled in and although they were very sweet, I couldn’t help feeling a little resentful towards them because they had stolen my pony’s stall. The owner came out to ride them once but it turned out that Shelby had been right after all. They weren’t here to stay. They were here to be sold. Rae competed both of them at the show over the next few days and they came back with blue, red and yellow ribbons so that I knew they were talented horses and wouldn’t be around that long. That at least gave me some comfort as I watched my pony mooch around his paddock looking for shade.

  We’d had a couple of bad thunder storms and I’d brought Bluebird inside the barn and held him while the lightning and thunder crashed all around, much to the disgust of Julio.

  “There is work to be done,” he growled at me.

  “And I’m not leaving my pony out in that,” I told him, pointing out the barn where the rain was so heavy that all you could see was a white wall of water and not much else.

  He made a grunting noise and went off to find Rae and complain but I guess she told him to let me be because no one told me that I couldn’t stand there and so I did. I brushed Bluebird’s mane as I waited for the storm to pass and hugged his neck.

  “I miss home,” I whispered.

  I wasn’t sure what I’d thought being on the road would be like but it wasn’t really anything like this and so far we hadn’t even been on the road that much. Theresa had told us that we’d be moving on in two days and those days couldn’t come fast enough. I wanted to be out of this place. At first the barn had seemed like a blessing, a place that we could call our own away from the hustle and bustle of the show life but it turned out that the hustle and bustle was what I craved. I also longed for a place where my pony had his own stall again and I was hopeful that would be at the next show.

  “Are you going to stand there forever?” Jessica asked me, coming out of the tack room looking annoyed that I wasn’t helping her clean the mountain of bridles and saddles that were waiting for us.

  “Until the storm passes,” I told her. “Aren’t you worried about Rocket?”

  “Why?” she said. “It’s only rain.”

  “It’s not only rain,” I said as lightning hit something down the street. “Aren’t you worried about him being hit by lightning?”

  She made a sort of scoffing noise. “What are the odds of that?”

  I shrugged. I wasn’t sure. I’d heard of horses being hit by lightning but I thought it was more of an urban legend than anything else. Still, I wasn’t taking any chances with Bluebird. She could do whatever she wanted with her horse but I’d stand there all day and hold my pony in the barn if I had to.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  On the last day of the show, Rae decided to pit Jessica and me against each other. She entered us both in a jumper class on our own horses. I was glad to finally be riding Bluebird again but I wasn’t so keen on the whole idea of us battling it out in the show ring.

  The class was early and so we braided and got our horses ready and then rode over together while the sun was still rising.

  “At least it won’t be too hot,” I said.

  “It’s still hot,” she groaned.

  “Yes but not as hot as if we were riding later.”

  She didn’t reply. I don’t know what was the matter with her. Hanna had been miserable and now she had gone. I wondered if the same thing would happen to Jessica. Shelby said that a lot of the working students couldn’t hack it. There were long hours and not much reward in it but I had already learned a lot and I w
as trying to soak up as much information and knowledge as I could while I was there. It may not have been Europe but being around someone like Rae was worth the effort.

  She met us over there, wearing her trademark floppy hat and big sunglasses.

  “You girls ready?” she asked.

  We warmed up back at the farm and our horses were supple and relaxed from their walk over. We both nodded and handed our mounts off to Julio who was standing next to the golf cart so that we could walk our course. It was a speed class and right up Bluebird’s alley. He could have won it with his eyes closed but I still paid attention as Rae walked with us and pointed out places we could shave off a few seconds. Jessica’s horse was big. I didn’t know if he was fast or not but he certainly wasn’t going to be as handy as Bluebird was. And we were going early in the class. That meant we had to set the pace and hope no one else caught us. If we went clean.

  I took my pony back from Julio and walked him away from the ring. It wasn’t very busy at the show now that the classes were winding down. There was a big Grand Prix class that night and we were all going to come over and cheer on Rae and Infanta but then we would move on, the next show only a few days away. I let my pony graze on the crushed grass, not caring that he had his bridle on. I’d wipe the green slobber off his face before we went into the ring.

  I looked at my phone. Nothing. I hadn’t had an update in days. I was worried that something bad had happened but I knew that my father and Jordan were probably so busy that they didn’t have time to text me and tell me if Four had put all his weight back on or if Arion was missing me. But I missed them all like crazy. My heart ached for our little farm and I couldn’t wait to get back there and put some of the practices I’d learned on the road into action. I was also longing to sleep in and take naps and all that other stuff I’d taken for granted.