Show Days (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 32)

by Claire Svendsen

  “You ready?” Julio called out, beckoning me back to the ring.

  “We’re ready, aren’t we?” I asked my pony. Then I gave him a quick hug for good measure.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  When it came to riding, confidence was key. Confidence in yourself and your horse. You had to believe that you could do it and sometimes you had to fake it until you made it. But Bluebird and I didn’t have to fake anything. We blazed around the course of jumps like they were a bunch of cross rails.

  Bluebird had been bored since we’d been at the farm and I hadn’t had time to ride him that much. All that pent up energy meant that he was raring to go and not afraid to attack the course like a much bigger horse. We actually went so fast that I felt his hind end slide out from under him as we made a tight roll back. He recovered nicely but it made me realize that I needed to talk to Rae about getting his feet done. Still, we galloped through the finish line with the fastest time yet, all the jumps still in their cups.

  “Show off,” Jessica mumbled under her breath as we trotted out of the ring.

  It was just the sort of thing that Jess would say but I didn’t bother to reply. I was too happy with my round and my pony to have her rain on my parade. And her round wasn’t until the end of the class. So far mine was still the time to beat. She knew what she had to do. I just didn’t know if she could do it or not. I’d never really seen her go all out but I was about to find out if she was better than I was or not and I knew that was why Rae had pitted us against each other. She wanted to know who was the best and so did I.

  Rocket cantered up to the first jump, cleared it and then took off. He was fast, his tail streaming out behind him as they galloped over the jumps. But the thing with speed classes was that you had to be fast and careful at the same time, which was sort of a contradiction. It wasn’t easy to tell a horse to go for it and still have him tuck his knees and round over the fences. It took a special horse or a special pony like Bluebird to not get flat and lazy over the jumps. Rocket tried his best and there was no denying he was fast but he was also sloppy and so was Jessica. She didn’t set him up and several of her distances were questionable. She had two rails down and came out of the ring with a scowl on her face.

  “Bad luck,” I said. “You almost had it.”

  “Shut up,” she said.

  I was only trying to be nice but I guess she was right. It was better not to say anything after all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  Bluebird and I won the class. It wasn’t much of a victory because the competition wasn’t all that great but a win was a win and I’d still beaten Jessica, who didn’t place at all. Yet as they pinned the blue ribbon on Bluebird’s bridle and we took our victory lap around the ring with only a few people clapping half-heartedly, our victory felt hollow. It would have been better if Jessica and I had been closer. If she’d had a clean round and we beat her because we were the best and the fastest. Instead I knew that she’d just had a bad day and that her horse had been lazy. On another day I knew she could beat me and I wanted to tell her that because I felt bad for her but I knew that she wouldn’t listen.

  “Well done,” Rae congratulated me when we came out of the ring. “Now get your horses back to the barn. There is lots of packing up to do. And Emily,” she called after me. “I want you to work Rags in the ring today. Get some of his energy out before the long trailer ride tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Suck up,” Jessica said.

  I let her trot ahead while Bluebird picked his way slow and steady along the trail. The sun filtered through the leaves and made shadows dance on the ground and something was blooming, its scent thick and sweet in the air. I’d left the ribbon pinned to my pony’s bridle and it fluttered in the breeze. I longed to be back home. To tell Jordan how Bluebird won the class or even my father. Instead I was stuck with a bunch of girls who wouldn’t congratulate you at all. Instead they’d try and step over your corpse after they’d stabbed you in the back. I didn’t like it so for the ride back I tried to forget and pretend that I was just out for a trail ride. That I wasn’t on the road in one of the most cut throat sports in the business. And for those few moments, I felt happy and that was enough for me.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  “Of course you feel happy. You won your class, didn’t you?” Shelby said later.

  “Yes but you’re missing the point,” I told her as I ran cold water over my sweaty pony. “It was nice just to have a moment to breathe. Don’t you feel like you are being suffocated here?”

  “Not really.” She shrugged.

  Julio hurried past the wash rack and glared at us. He was already loading the trailers. Some of the horses would ship out tonight so that they could travel when the temperatures were cooler and the rest of us would follow the next evening. I was glad. The thought of Bluebird sweating to death in what was essentially a tin can didn’t exactly thrill me.

  “And now Jessica hates me,” I said.

  “She doesn’t hate you,” Shelby told me gently. “She doesn’t even know you. But no one is here to make friends, remember that.”

  “I’m friends with you,” I told her.

  “That’s because I’m not your competition,” she said with a knowing smile. Shelby was wiser than she looked.

  As she left to help Julio and I scraped the water off my pony’s chestnut coat, I guessed that she was right. Shelby didn’t have a horse and she only got to ride every once in a while. She wasn’t a threat to me but Jessica was. Today she’d had bad luck. The next time I knew that she wouldn’t let her aggressive need to win get in the way of her actually doing so.

  “I don’t have time to let you dry,” I told Bluebird as I took him back to his paddock. “So I’ll ask you not to roll but I know that you won’t listen to me.”

  I took off his halter and closed the gate. My pony sniffed around in the dirt, circling a few times like a dog before his legs buckled and he was rolling. I turned away not able to look but I didn’t really mind. We wouldn’t be showing again here and what did it matter if my pony was actually a pony for a while, dirt and all. He’d earned that roll. We did win after all.

  As I walked back to the barn I saw Rocket standing in the big paddock. He looked hot and uncomfortable. Jessica hadn’t hosed him off because he still had sweat stains where his saddle had been. The poor horse had been hot and she’d just shoved him outside. I guess that was his punishment for not winning but I felt bad for him. He still deserved to get rinsed off. I wanted to tell Jessica or do it myself but there wasn’t time. Julio was shoving a to-do list into my hands and it was going to take the rest of the afternoon to get everything he wanted done. Plus, Rae had asked me to squeeze in riding Rags at some point.

  “You didn’t hose off Rocket,” I managed to say as I caught Jessica coming out of the bathroom.

  “I know,” she said.

  There was no excuse or apology. I wanted to tell her that she didn’t deserve the horse and that she shouldn’t take it out on him but instead I just said, “It wasn’t his fault you know.”

  She stopped and looked at me, her eyes blank.

  “No,” she said. “It was yours.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  The clouds were already building by the time I tacked up Rags. He was not amused. He didn’t want to work and I didn’t blame him. I didn’t really want to either but I figured that since Rae hadn’t given me any sort of lesson plan I could just lightly hack him around and make sure that he wasn’t too wound up before the trailer ride.

  He was being silly though, freaking out at normal things like his saddle pad. He swung away from me as I put it on his back even though I’d done so gently.

  “You’re alright,” I told him, patting his neck but he snorted anyway. “Crazy horse,” I added.

  I didn’t know where Rae would find someone who would want a horse that couldn’t remember that a saddle pad wasn’t going to eat him but I guess maybe there was someone out there
for him somewhere. I kind of felt like every horse had a person waiting for them just like every person had a soul mate and it was just a matter of finding them and bringing them together.

  “Maybe you’ll find a new owner at the next show,” I said.

  One of the new horses had already found one. The trailer came to pick the bay mare up just as I was getting ready to go out to the ring. Now we were just left with Storm, the pretty gray that I secretly drooled over when no one was looking.

  “Is it okay if I put Bluebird in the empty stall?” I asked Julio as he took the horse out to the trailer. “It’s so muggy. There isn’t even a breeze. He deserves a little fan time after his win this morning.”

  Julio grunted, which I took to mean yes. He seemed to be warming up to my pony now that he was proving himself to be a winner and not just a weird outcast that I should have outgrown years ago. I ran out and grabbed Bluebird and put him in the now empty stall. Jessica looked over and I waited for her to say that it wasn’t fair but she didn’t. I don’t think she cared enough about Rocket to make the effort and anyway, life on the road was cutthroat and you had to jump at the opportunities that came your way. You couldn’t just wait for someone to hand them to you on a silver platter. I was learning that if you wanted something, you had to ask for it.

  I left my pony inside, cooling under the fan and sniffing around the bedding for stray pieces of hay and walked Rags out to the ring. It was already cloudy but the heat was oppressive. Soon a storm would come to break that heat but until it did it was like riding in a sauna.

  After adjusting the girth and making sure that Rags hadn’t blown himself up, I got on and let him walk on a loose rein but he spooked at something I couldn’t see so I had to take back the contact and make him do actual work so that his mind wouldn’t wander.

  “I tried to let you take it easy,” I said as he tossed his head. “But you wouldn’t have it so now you have to trot and round your back and do all those things you hate.”

  He pinned his ears and tried to buck but I already had his head up and all he managed was a sort of crow hop. He settled for a few strides and I patted his neck. He pricked his ears like he was trying to understand.

  “Good boy,” I told him.

  I was used to difficult horses so Rags didn’t scare me but it was his unpredictability that wouldn’t make him a success in the show ring. You’d never know if good Rags or crazy Rags was going to show up. I felt bad for him, knowing that eventually he’d make his way down the ladder from the show barns like Rae’s to the middle of the road lesson barns and on down to shadier places. The world was not a kind place for horses that didn’t know how to be a horse. I wondered whether maybe Rae would let me keep him and take him home with me but all I could imagine was my father’s face when I told him that I’d collected another horse that wasn’t exactly a champion.

  I got a good canter out of the black horse and worked on his flying changes because he liked to buck his way through them and so it kept all his attention and mine on the job at hand and meant he couldn’t do anything else stupid. Eventually I let him walk and saw Julio waving me back to the barn.

  “I’ve just got to cool him out,” I called over to him.

  “Storm’s coming,” he shouted back and by the way he was pointing over my shoulder. I knew he wasn’t talking about the gray horse back in the barn. “Looks bad. Hurry up.”

  Rags was still puffing after his workout when the first rumble of thunder sounded off in the distance.

  “Guess you’ll just have to cool off inside,” I told him.

  When you heard thunder that meant that there was the possibility of lightning and I wasn’t taking any chances. I hurried Rags into the barn and untacked him as quickly as I could. I wanted to get him rinsed off before the storm got any closer. Using water during a thunder storm was a good way to get electrocuted.

  “I’m sorry,” I told Rags as the water splashed in his eyes. “I’ll wipe them if you put your head down.”

  But he flung his head up like a giraffe and wouldn’t let me get the water out of his eyes so I just finished the job and then fetched a towel from the tack room.

  “There, are you happy now?” I asked him as he finally let me wipe his face.

  Lightning hit something a few miles away. Rags spooked and then slipped, scrambling to find his footing on the wet ground. I quickly unhooked the cross ties and put him away in his stall just as the rain began to fall.

  “That was good timing,” Shelby said. “You were lucky.”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  But I didn’t feel lucky. In fact, I had a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, the sort that said something horrible was about to happen.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  “You should bring Rocket in,” I told Jessica. “Just hold him or put him in the cross ties.”

  She looked out to the paddock where her horse was galloping around like a crazed thing, sliding to a stop at the gate and snorting before circling around again.

  “He’ll stop in a minute,” she said. “I don’t want to get wet and besides, he’s getting rinsed off now isn’t he.”

  I watched the horse, silently willing him to settle, to calm down and wait for the storm to pass. Lightning cracked and thunder rumbled. I watched my pony in his stall, grateful that I’d brought him in but guilty now that Rocket was stuck out in the storm. Jessica didn’t seem to care though and horses were outside all the time in thunder storms. Sometimes they were caught in it and it was too late to bring them in without risking your own life. Some of them lived outside full time, pasture boarded because that was all their owners could afford or it was what they thought best for their horse. But I didn’t like it. I felt sick as Rocket finally calmed down and stood there, his butt to the rain and the wind, flinching when lightning hit.

  “I can’t watch,” I said.

  I’d turned to go into the tack room, to find something to do that would take my mind off the storm and the fact that my hands were shaking and my heart was thumping way faster than it should have been. That was when the loudest crack I’d ever heard ricocheted through the barn. The horses spun and neighed and for a moment that flash of light seemed to last forever. I didn’t want to turn around but I knew I had to. And when I did Rocket wasn’t standing anymore. He was laying down like he’d just decided to take a nap in the rain. Only he wasn’t taking a nap at all.

  He was dead.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  We had to wait for the storm to pass before we could go out there and do anything. We stood there at the edge of the barn, huddled together. No one told us to get to work or said that we shouldn’t be wasting time. Everyone knew but no one wanted to actually say it.

  “Maybe he’s just in shock,” Shelby said.

  She had her arm around Jessica, who was gently sobbing. I hadn’t thought she’d cared but of course she had. She wasn’t cold hearted after all. She was just a different person than I was and even though we hadn’t exactly got along, my heart broke for her. I handed her a tissue and she blew her nose loudly.

  I didn’t know how she was able to stand there. If it had been Bluebird, I would have run out into the storm regardless, not caring if I got hit by lightning myself. I would have laid with him and I don’t think I ever would have got up again. I would have died with him right there in the rain and dirt. But my pony was standing in the stall that I’d claimed for him and I knew that it was only by luck that it hadn’t been him out there instead of Rocket.

  Eventually the storm passed, the thunder now off in the distance instead of overhead. Jessica ran out to the paddock and we followed behind her. She threw herself down on the horse’s neck, wailing loudly. Rocket was laying there like he was sleeping. If we hadn’t seen him get hit by lightning, you never would have known what happened to him.

  We let Jessica stay with him for a while, giving her space to grieve and time to process but I knew that it would take longer than that. Maybe she’d never get over it. I
knew that I would never see the storms in the same light again. We all knew that you could get hit by lightning or that your horse could but you never actually thought it would happen. I didn’t know anyone that it had happened to but now I did and I couldn’t unsee the horse standing there one moment and then dead the next as though God himself had struck him down.

  Theresa came and eventually pulled Jessica away. She took her into the barn and made her drink hot chocolate and eat cookies. Julio came and covered the horse with a tarp.

  “What’s going to happen to him?” I said.

  “The guy will come with the tractor and bury him,” Julio said. “Over there.”

  He pointed to the back of the property where there was a line of trees.

  I couldn’t help wondering how many other horses were buried out there and what they had died of. It was morbid and horrible and I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to be faced with death when we were supposed to be having fun.

  And it was like the horses knew too. They were quiet in the barn. Somber. I slipped into Bluebird’s stall and hugged him tight, tears falling down my face and into his mane. He let me love him because I think he knew that I needed to. It was like our own mortality and that of our horses had just been shoved in our faces. We all knew that our four legged friends faced the possibility of injury and illness but having your horse there one minute and gone the next was the sort of thing you never imagined. Until it actually happened.