Show Days (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 32)

by Claire Svendsen

  One of Rae’s more competent clients offered to take Rags back to her farm in a smaller trailer. I thought that the black horse would refuse to load after everything he’d been through but he walked straight into the two horse trailer like it was nothing. Julio shook his head.

  “See?” he said. “Nuts that one.”

  I felt bad for Rags. He wouldn’t have the career of a champion because even though he could jump, his brain couldn’t handle the world around him and while I was worried about his future, I had to believe that Rae wouldn’t let anything bad happen to him and I knew that we had more than enough outcasts and misfits at home. I couldn’t bring home another one.

  There was no way that we could afford another mouth to feed, which reminded me that I needed to talk to Rae about entering me in some classes while we were here. Shelby had said that after this show, Rae would be taking her horses back to her home base for a break and that meant I’d be going home too. This would be my last chance to prove how good my pony was and to win that much needed prize money.

  I found her in the tack stall, going over the equipment with a check list. I thought that sort of thing would have been Julio or Theresa’s job but Rae was too down to earth for that. I admired the fact that she wasn’t afraid to pitch in and help when she was needed and I wondered how hard it had been for her to adjust from a life where everyone did everything for you to one where you had to do it yourself. She must have really wanted this life to still go for it after her father lost all his money.

  I stood there watching her for a moment, the way her brow furrowed as she checked items and made sure that they were not only there and accounted for but in good condition. The way that she chewed on the pen when she was thinking. Usually she was on the phone, talking a million miles a minute to clients and future clients, drumming up business so that she could keep hers afloat. I’d never seen her not talk for so long and I was almost about to creep away when she spoke.

  “What is it Emily?” she said without turning around. I hadn’t even realized that she knew I was there.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

  “I told you not to apologize,” she said but she was smiling. “What do you need?”

  “Well it’s just that I heard this was the last show and I was wondering if Bluebird could go in a few more classes here. I really haven’t had a chance to show you how good he is in the big classes and I won’t get a chance to show again for the rest of the summer, unless you count schooling shows back at home, which don’t really count anyway.”

  The words all tumbled out of my mouth. Now I was talking as fast as Rae did. Trying to tell her everything before her phone rang and she walked away.

  “Schooling shows do count,” she said. “Always remember that any chance to show your horse is a chance for both you and him to learn something. Don’t ever think that the size of the show is what is important.”

  “That is what my father says,” I told her.

  “Then your father is a very smart man.” She smiled. “I’ll look at the schedule and see where we can squeeze you in, especially now you don’t have Rags to ride.”

  I looked at my feet feeling embarrassed and a little angry. It really shouldn’t have been left up to me to calm the horse but I couldn’t exactly tell Rae that and she didn’t even know that I’d basically put my life on the line by staying in the trailer with him.

  “We tried,” I said. “He just wouldn’t settle.”

  “He’s difficult.” She shook her head. “I don’t think life on the road suits him very much.”

  That was the understatement of the year, I thought to myself but bit my tongue.

  “You won’t get rid of him though, will you?” I said, imagining Rags being shipped off to an auction where he might end up as dog food.

  “I’m in the business of selling horses,” Rae said. “Not keeping them all. If I did that then I’d never make ends meet.”

  I thought of how I collected horses like some people collected baseball cards and realized that if I carried on doing so then I’d never make it either.

  “But don’t you worry.” Rae put her hand on my shoulder. “I’ll make sure he finds the right home. I’m not in the business of having my horses shipped off with uncertain futures either.”

  “That’s good to know,” I said.

  “Now run along,” she told me. “There is lots to do and not much time to stand around talking.”

  “Okay, thank you, sorry,” I mumbled. “I mean, not sorry,” I added.

  I could hear Rae laughing at me as I ran back to the trailer to say goodbye to Rags but he’d already gone. I stood where there was just a pile of manure to show that he’d ever been there at all. I knew that Rae wouldn’t let him go to anyone bad but what would happen when that person got sick of his antics and decided to sell him or give him away because they couldn’t sell him? I didn’t even want to think about it. There were too many good horses in the world and not much room for the difficult ones but I hoped that he’d find someone to love him with all his eccentricities included because he deserved that. Every horse deserved one person to love them.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  We settled into the horse show like pros because by this point we were. It had become second nature to me that Infanta liked her water bucket hung on the left side of her stall and which horses couldn’t be stabled next to each other because they would fight. The ones who had to be on the end of the aisle and those who liked to be tucked in the middle. Especially important where the ones who had to have their stall door closed at all times because they would either reach out and bite passersby or try to escape. How we had to make sure that the cords to the fans were tightly secured out of reach with zip ties so that the horses couldn’t chew on them in the night and electrocute themselves.

  When you travelled to shows with horses, you got to know them a lot better than if they were at home just sitting in your own barn. This was a crash course in keeping horses alive, healthy and winning. And other than the lightning, I thought we were doing a pretty good job, which didn’t really mean much because losing a horse was losing a horse no matter which way you looked at it.

  “I’m starving,” I said to Shelby when I suddenly realized that it was almost lunch time and I hadn’t even eaten breakfast. “Do you know where we can get food around here?”

  “Food trucks should be over there.” She pointed in a vague direction out the end of the tent. Over there could be anywhere.

  “Want to come?” I asked her, hoping she could show me the way.

  I felt self-conscious when we first got to the shows, especially since everyone else knew everything and everyone because they’d been there before and I hadn’t.

  “I ate a granola bar so I’m good,” she said. “Besides, Rae wants me to braid Infanta. Apparently there is a class she wants to enter her in tonight and the braider isn’t arriving until tomorrow.”

  “Okay,” I said, feeling a little jealous that Rae hadn’t asked me.

  My braids were just as good as Shelby’s. Maybe even better. I left the tent feeling a little like I’d just been put in my place. Shelby was ranked above me in the grand scheme of things if you counted the fact that she’d been there the year before but I was a better rider. I held on to the hope that maybe Rae was going to let me ride Bluebird tonight but if that was the case, wouldn’t she have already told me?

  I made my way through the crowd. A lot of people had arrived this morning just like we had and so it was mostly grooms setting up camp, putting up their barn banners and fancy trimmings. Some barns had matching chairs and tables with flowers, others had whole awnings where they seemed to have food and places for their riders to relax in the shade with fans to cool them, surrounded by all the ribbons that they’d won, hung up for everyone to see. Their victories on display so that no one could dispute how good they were.

  Rae had a modest set up but some of the barns must have spent thousands of dollars. Proba
bly hundreds of thousands. There were matching tack trunks and fly sheets and everything was monogrammed. And if you didn’t have a set up like that then you weren’t considered one of the best. No wonder Rae had to work so hard to get clients, always talking on the phone and trying her best to show that she could ride and train alongside the top riders and get the same results even if her set up wasn’t as big and fancy. But the sad thing was that the wealthy clients didn’t care. They wanted the flowers and the champagne and the royal treatment. The horse business flourished on the illusion of money and I was getting a chance to see it firsthand.

  A little kid walked by, followed by a groom leading a bay pony. The pony had a monogrammed scrim sheet on and was already braided, his coat gleaming in the sun.

  “Don’t forget he needs extra fly spray before we go in the ring because if you don’t spray him and we lose, it will be your fault,” the kid said.

  “Yes, I know,” the groom replied.

  I gave her a commiserating smile and she smiled back but her face was sad. We were at the beck and call of clients who treated us like we weren’t even real people with feelings. What was the matter with everyone? I thought of Faith and how nice and well-rounded she was. How she could take care of her own pony and didn’t expect a groom to do it for her and that made me miss home and our stupid schooling shows that Rae had said weren’t stupid at all.

  I found the food trucks over on the other side of the rings but by the time I got there I realized that I wasn’t hungry. I lined up anyway, getting some sort of veggie wrap because I didn’t think I could stomach anything hot and greasy. I ate it and drunk my ice cold lemonade, watching a few riders in one of the warm up rings.

  There was one horse that caught my eye, a flashy bay gelding with a gleaming coat and white socks and for a moment I thought that my eyes were playing tricks on me because the sun was glaring in my face, reflecting off everything and illuminating a shimmering cloud of rising heat over the ring. It couldn’t be him. Not in a million years. But it was. There in the warm up ring was Socks, leaping over the warm up jump like a stag with Missy tight in the tack. And now I really did feel sick. What was she doing here? It felt like someone had stabbed a knife through my heart. I tossed the rest of my food into the trash and walked back to our stalls with a heavy heart.

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  “At least you said he looks good,” Shelby said when I explained the whole Socks situation to her.

  I had to. She kept pestering me to tell her what was wrong. I hadn’t realized my feelings were so raw but they were. Missy was something that I hadn’t really dealt with properly yet. I’d just buried her under all the other emotional baggage I was carrying around.

  “But you don’t understand,” I said. “He was basically my horse and she stole him from me.”

  “Basically isn’t the same as actually being your horse,” Shelby said. “And she didn’t really steal him if he belonged to her in the first place.”

  I knew she was right. I also knew that I was over reacting. Missy had a right to take Socks to any show she wanted because he was her horse. I just wished she hadn’t come to the same one I was at though I guess it was inevitable that I would run into her eventually.

  “I know,” I said. “It’s kind of complicated. When we lived together she was like a big sister to me or maybe even a sort of young, hip mom and since I don’t have either of those, it was awesome. And then she just stabbed me and my dad in the back.”

  I wasn’t sure why I was telling Shelby all of my personal history. I was usually the sort of person who kept it all bottled up inside, muttering that I was fine when really I was about to explode. But since this was the last show and I would probably never see Shelby again, it felt good to talk to someone about all the things that sucked in my life and know that even if she judged me, it didn’t really matter because I’d probably never see her again.

  “It sounds like your dad stabbed her in the back too,” Shelby said.

  We were sitting at the edge of our tent with our breeches rolled up and our legs in the sun, trying to even out our farmer’s tans. I was wearing mine because I was hoping to get any chance I could to ride. Shelby was wearing hers because she said it was the only piece of clothing she had left that was clean. She’d forgotten to use the washer and dryer before we left the little farm and who knew when we’d get a chance to use another one. I suspected we’d be washing our underwear in buckets before long.

  “I know he hurt her,” I said. “But I didn’t and now she has our farm and my horse and my half-brother. I haven’t even seen him in like forever. It’s not fair.”

  “You know what would be fair?” Shelby said, laying back and putting her hands behind her head. “If you beat her on your pony.”

  “I think that would be awesome.” I nodded.

  “But do you think he could do it?” she asked. “It wouldn’t be any good if you entered her class and then she beat you.”

  “That would suck,” I said.

  “And defeat the whole purpose,” she added.

  “Bluebird could do it,” I said, sitting up and wrapping my arms around my legs. “I know he could.”

  But winning was a gamble and just like any sport you could never really predict if you were going to win or not. You could prepare and be the best that you could be but there was still this secret element of luck to winning, the horse show Gods agreeing to keep the poles in their cups and your pony swift on his feet. There were no guarantees. That was the thrill of the chase. But we had to try and beat Missy and Socks. We just had to.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  Beating Missy and Socks was all I could think about. I tried to talk to Rae about it but unlike earlier, she was now talking with the clients who had started to arrive at the show or talking on her phone. Every time I tried to ask her about entering some classes she would wave me away. And the thing was that I didn’t even know which classes Missy was entered in anyway. I knew that she’d go for the speed classes because Socks was a speed horse but I needed to know for sure. I couldn’t have my pony galloping around and wasting precious energy in classes that didn’t matter.

  I’d gone over to the stewards tent to try and get a look at the entries but there was a very stern looking woman in charge over there and she’d waved me away from her precious clipboards with a brush of her hand and a scowl. The only way to know for sure was to infiltrate Missy’s camp and find someone who could dish the dirt for me but if Missy had come with people from Fox Run, they’d see me coming a mile away so I did the only thing I could. I enlisted Shelby to help.

  “Why me?” she said.

  We were both picking stalls as fast as we could, something we’d become good at because Rae hated the clients to see manure in the stalls at all so we basically had to be there to catch it as soon as it came out. Plus, the flies in the tents were horrible. We were going through gallons of fly spray and it wasn’t even helping. We’d resorted to keeping the fly sheets on the horses even though they were in their stalls, which meant we had to hang extra fans because then they were too hot. The whole thing was kind of an exercise in making sure the operation didn’t crumble down around our feet. If Rae had more money, we’d have got stalls that were on the end where the breeze was but she didn’t so we were stuck in the middle where it was the hottest.

  “No one from Fox Run knows you,” I said. “That’s why. You could make friends with someone and casually find out which classes Missy is riding Socks in.”

  “I’m not good at making friends,” she said dubiously. “Or finding things out.”

  “It’s easy,” I said. “Just be all nice and tell them how amazing they are and how you wish you had horses like they did and they’ll be eating out of your hand.”

  Shelby frowned.

  “Or,” I added. “You could pretend to be a prospective client. If Missy thinks you are interested in riding with her, she’d probably tell her yourself. You could ask which classes she is in because you want to
judge how competent she is.”

  “That just sounds rude,” Shelby said.

  “From what I’ve seen around here, most of the rich clients are rude,” I said in a low voice so that no one else would hear me.

  “You’re not wrong there,” she whispered back.

  She was silent for a moment, thinking it through. I knew that if she did me this favor then I’d owe her but I needed to know.

  “Please?” I whispered.

  “Alright,” she said with a sigh. “But if I get caught then I’m blaming you.”

  “Fine.” I grinned.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Shelby was already wearing her breeches, all we had to do was find her a show jacket and do her hair. I braided it for her so that she looked both stern and stuck up.

  “You’re not going to put a ribbon in it, are you?” she asked, looking dismayed as she stared into the small, dingy mirror that was hanging in the tack stall.

  “No,” I said. “You’re professional and too old for ribbons but you’ll need this.”

  I handed her a tube of lipstick. She looked at it like it was a bomb that was about to go off in my hand.

  “No way,” she said. “I’m not getting dolled up like a cheer leader just to get some information for you.”

  “Come on,” I said. “It’s only lipstick. All the cool teenagers are wearing it.”

  “I don’t see you wearing any,” she replied, snatching it out of my hand.

  She was right, Mickey had tried to force makeup on me and I’d felt betrayed. Now I was trying to do the same to Shelby but I wasn’t trying to change her life. This was just a costume. A disguise. But I still felt bad for pressuring her.

  “You don’t have to wear it if you don’t want to,” I told her.

  But Shelby already had the pink lipstick on and was admiring herself in the mirror.

  “It’s actually not that bad,” she said. “I don’t mind it.”