Pony Jumpers 6- Six to Ride

by Kate Lattey

  We both jumped and cried out in surprise, which set Critter off into more spasmodic yapping. We both yelled at him to shut up, then Mum stepped back into the hall, her hand clutching her heart.

  “You gave me a helluva fright,” she said.

  “Me? You’re the one lurking outside my bedroom door!”

  “I thought I heard voices,” she said, and my pulse quickened. I couldn’t tell her that I was going for a midnight swim with Phil. She’d stop me – or she’d try to. She’d been on my case lately about getting enough sleep, and sneaking out in the middle of the night was not something she’d approve of.

  “I was on the phone,” I lied.

  “At this time of night?”

  I thought quickly. “It was AJ. She couldn’t sleep.”

  “Is everything okay?” Mum asked anxiously.

  “Yeah. She was just sore, you know. Because of her collarbone. And she’s missing Squib.”

  “Right.” To my relief, Mum seemed to buy it. “It won’t be long before she can ride again. The time will be up before she knows it.”

  “That’s what I told her.” I took a step into the hallway, meeting my mother’s curious glance. “I have to pee.”

  “Okay. Well, goodnight. Get some sleep.”

  “I will.”

  I watched her go back into her bedroom, waited for the door to snick shut, then went the other way down the hall to meet Phil.

  The river was flowing softly between the tall stands of willow trees that lined the banks. I followed Phil beneath them, the long branches brushing through my hair as we walked along the narrow trail that led us down to the swimming hole. We used to come here all the time when we were kids, but I hadn’t come down here in a long time, and judging by how overgrown it was, nobody else had either.

  My foot hit a muddy patch and slipped, and I let out a short cry as I flailed helplessly for a second before landing squarely on my butt, jarring my spine and biting my tongue.

  Phil looked over his shoulder, moonlight glinting off his dark hair. “You okay?”

  “No. I bit my tongue,” I said thickly, tasting the blood in my mouth and pulling a face. “And it hurt.”

  He came back and held out a hand to me, which I clasped, then pulled me to my feet. “Watch out,” he cautioned. “It’s a bit muddy just there.”

  I narrowed my eyes at him and shoved him in the shoulder, but he just rocked on his heels and grinned at me. “Oh, stop it.”

  “Stop what?” he asked innocently.

  “Being so graceful. You should have stuck out the ballerina ambition,” I told him, pushing past him and carrying on down the narrow trail that snaked its way through the whispering trees. “You’d probably be touring with the Royal New Zealand Ballet by now.”

  I waited for him to argue with me, but he said nothing. I shot a look over my shoulder, but the moon had slipped behind a cloud and his face was in shadow. Phil had taken ballet lessons for a few years, from when I’d first known him until he reached his teens, when the incessant teasing – mostly from his brother – had compelled him to quit.

  “Do you ever miss it?” I asked him.

  “Miss what?”

  “Dancing.”

  A hesitation, and then he spoke in a light tone. “You assume that I’ve stopped. You don’t know what I do in the privacy of my own room.”

  “And I really don’t want to,” I assured him, then heard him laugh. “You know what I mean, though. Ballet lessons and all that. You were pretty good.”

  “I was all right. Didn’t have the dedication for it through. Not really.” He stepped on a dried branch, which snapped underfoot with a sharp crack. “If you want to be really good, you have to dedicate your whole life to it. Bit like horses, I guess. Eat, sleep and breathe.” There was a trace of bitterness in his voice, and I wondered again what it must be like to be the only non-horsy member of a horse-mad family. Not easy, I was sure of that.

  “So you gave up dancing and took up motocross. Bit of a switch.”

  “Not really,” he countered. “Still all about balance, strength and timing.”

  “Different background music though,” I pointed out as we finally reached the end of the trail and stepped onto the stony riverbank.

  “That’s true,” Phil agreed, coming up alongside me.

  The moon slid out from behind the clouds again, its reflection shimmering on the slowly-moving water, and somewhere in the trees above us, a morepork hooted softly.

  “Ready to swim?” Phil pulled his t-shirt up over his head and tossed it onto the stones next to him, then started unbuttoning his jeans.

  “Hold up. If you’re planning on skinny-dipping, think again,” I told him.

  Phil looked at me in surprise. “Didn’t you put your togs on?”

  I flushed. “No.”

  “I thought that’s what took you so long to meet me,” he replied, continuing to undress.

  “That would be Mum, actually. She overheard us talking and intercepted me in the hall.”

  Phil stopped and stared at me, half-out of his jeans. I was relieved to see that he was wearing boxer briefs, then quickly averted my eyes. I couldn’t help wondering what on earth I was doing here and wishing I was back in my bed, snuggled up warm and listening to Critter’s uneven snores. A slight chill came on the breeze and I shivered as goosebumps stood up on my bare arms.

  “What’d you tell her?”

  “Not that we were sneaking out together at midnight, obviously,” I replied. “I said I’d been on the phone with AJ. She believed me.”

  “Huh.” Phil crossed his arms over his chest and looked at me. “Well then, I guess you’re swimming in your clothes.”

  “Actually,” I started to say, but he didn’t let me finish.

  “Oh no. You don’t come all this way and then refuse to swim with me.” And before I could move, he’d grabbed me around the waist and hoisted me onto his shoulder. He was surprisingly strong, and none of my kicking or flailing had the slightest effect. He marched us both into the river, and I gasped as my feet were hit the surface of the frigid water. I squirmed, trying to break free, but to no avail.

  “Going under,” Phil warned, and then we were submerged. The cold water hit me like a sledgehammer, making my lungs seize in my chest. I kicked harder, tearing myself free of his grasp at last, and surfaced, gasping for breath.

  Phil’s head popped up next to me, and he was laughing as he trod water. “It’s warmer than I thought it’d be,” he said, but his grin faded as he looked at my face.

  Still unable to fully draw breath, I was gasping like a landed fish, struggling weakly towards the shore. The water was deep here and I couldn’t touch the bottom, and my inability to breathe was preventing me from being able to swim. Phil reached towards me and I tried to push him off, but he grabbed my arm and towed me towards the bank, where my toes found relieved purchase against the slippery stones, and I stood up.

  “You okay?”

  I shook my head, but my body temperature was adjusting itself at last to the paralysing cold, and I found myself finally able to breathe normally.

  “I…I think so,” I half-gasped, standing waist-deep in the water and shivering. My wet clothes clung to me as I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “What happened?”

  “C-cold.” I couldn’t stop my teeth from chattering, and Phil frowned.

  “It’s because you’re so skinny,” he decided. “No fat on you to keep out the cold.”

  “Speak for yourself,” I replied as he stood opposite me, beads of water trickling across his bare chest. He was more muscular than I’d expected, but he was a long way from bulked up. If he was a horse, he’d be a lean, race-fit Thoroughbred.

  “We’re both scrawny buggers,” he conceded, then crouched down in the water so that it covered his shoulders. “Now that you’re wet, it’s probably warmer underwater than out of it,” he pointed out. “That wet t-shirt’s just gonna make you colder.”

  “I’m not
taking it off,” I told him, then ducked down into the water again myself. Not because I thought it would be warmer – although surprisingly, it was – but mostly because I’d become suddenly very aware that I was cold, wet, and definitely not wearing a bra.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “In here.” I pushed the tack room door open and stepped inside. The room was pitch dark, and I hadn’t taken two steps before I banged my shin on something hard, and yelped.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. Ow.” I reached out to the wall and felt along it for a moment, then found the switch. The fluorescent light overhead flickered into life, and I glared down at the metal edge of the spare saddle rack that I’d walked into.

  “Who left that there?” I muttered. “That’s gonna leave a bruise.”

  I rubbed my leg before limping over to the sports bag in the corner and unzipping it. I hadn’t unpacked properly from the show on the weekend, and Mum was trying this new thing where she refused to do everything for me, which apparently included my washing. Or at least, she now required me to bring my washing into the laundry for her to do, muttering something about being sick of picking up after me at my age. I’d just let the bag sit on the scratchy old tack room couch, figuring she’d get to it eventually. She hadn’t, but her stubbornness was paying off now. I rummaged around, and pulled out a dry pair of shorts, and a faded red hoodie – which was another reason to be glad that Mum hadn’t done my washing.

  I threw the clothes onto the couch and looked at Phil. “Turn around.”

  He was staring at the red hoodie with an inscrutable expression. “I didn’t know you were in the First Fifteen.”

  “There are lots of things you don’t know about me,” I replied. “Now pivot.”

  Phil turned and faced the wall, and I quickly peeled my wet t-shirt off and pulled Anders’ hoodie on over my head. It was warm and dry, and I rubbed it against my damp skin for a moment before changing my shorts as well. My underwear was still soaked, but I wasn’t going to go as far as changing that in front of Phil. He’d be going home soon anyway. We’d just come in here for a quick chat, because neither of us were tired yet, or ready to sleep, but I hadn’t been able to stand the cold river any longer.

  “Okay, I’m decent.”

  Phil turned around with a quirked eyebrow. “If you say so.”

  “I do.” I sat down on the couch and tucked my legs up underneath me. The old woven fabric was already making me itchy, but I folded myself into as much of a ball as I could and tried to regain some body heat. Phil dropped down next to me and stretched his legs out in front of him.

  “This is nice.”

  I looked around the room, which was cluttered and dusty, with tack and covers and brushes and boots lying all over the place. When AJ was around, she kept it pretty organised, but without her we’d descended back into chaos. Every now and then Mum went on a massive clean-up, usually trying to get me to help but almost always failing because spiders. Nice isn’t the word I’d have used to describe it. Functional, maybe. Messy, for sure. But…

  “Nice?”

  Phil tilted his head back and rested it against the couch cushions. “Isn’t it?”

  “It’s okay I guess.”

  He tucked one hand behind his head and turned to look at me. “So now that I’ve got you on the couch, it’s time for you to tell me all of your problems.”

  “You don’t want to hear about my problems,” I told him.

  “Try me.”

  “Haven’t I already cried on your shoulder enough today?”

  Phil glanced down at his shoulder. “I don’t remember that happening.”

  “You know what I mean. I already gave you an earful about my crap riding.”

  “You don’t ride like crap, and you know it,” Phil said firmly. “Even I know it, and I don’t know much, and certainly not about riding.”

  I huffed out a breath, then jumped as a huge moth bashed itself against the smeary window above our heads, trying to get towards the light. “Yuck. I hate moths.” Standing up, I crossed the room and flicked the light off again, plunging us back into darkness.

  “That was a little extreme,” Phil commented from somewhere across the other side of the room.

  “It wasn’t all about the moth,” I told him, even though it had been, because imagine if that little bastard got into the building. My nerves were already strung out enough as it was. “It’s in case Mum wakes up for some random reason and sees the light on out here, comes to investigate.”

  “Sure it is.” He didn’t believe me, I could tell. I decided I didn’t care.

  “Okay, fine. I hate moths. You already knew that.”

  “I did.”

  My eyes were slowly adjusting to the dim light, and I managed to pick my way slowly back to the couch. “Made it.”

  “Good work. I’m very proud.”

  “That makes one of you.”

  Phil shifted on the couch so that our shoulders were touching, and a sensation of warmth that had nothing to do with my actual body temperature washed over me. “Okay, come on,” he demanded. “Spill.”

  I sighed. “Fine. I will if you will.”

  It was a throwback to our younger days, when we’d laid down a challenge to one another. For us, it had never been I dare you to. It was always I will if you will, so that everything we did, we did together.

  I could almost hear him smiling as he responded with another familiar phrase. “Only if you go first.”

  I sighed, then gave up arguing with him. He wanted to hear my problems, fine. “I just…I just feel like lately, I keep letting people down. And the more I try to stop, the worse I get. Like I’ve been sucked into this crazy downward spiral where everything I do is just…crap.” I rolled my eyes at the sound of my own voice. “Ugh. I’m pathetic. Okay, your turn.”

  But he wasn’t letting me off that easy. “Who are you letting down?”

  “Everyone. Literally everyone,” I replied. “First of all there’s my Dad, who spent all this money on a new horse for me, and is finally investing in the sport I love, because he believes that I’m good at it and that I’ve got a future in it. So he spent a sickening amount of money on a horse that I can’t lead from the stables to the paddock without being trampled, let alone ride without fearing for my life. And I don’t want to tell him that because he’ll think he got ripped off, and because he might give up on me and walk away again.” I flinched as I spoke, and tried to move quickly away from that unexpected revelation. “I don’t want to let Mum down, because she wants to see me succeed, to prove to Dad that my riding career has been worth all the time and money she’s poured into it over the years. And I don’t want to let Marlene down, even though I really don’t like her, because she bred Tori and she expects me to do well and I feel like my public humiliation is just making her stud look bad, and she’s clearly invested a lot of time and money into making it look good. I don’t want to let AJ down by not improving Squib while she’s out of action, but the only times he’s actually improved has been when I’ve let other people ride him. He hates me and he goes really badly for me, and I can’t seem to change his mind.”

  I took a breath, and Phil half-smiled. “Is that all?”

  “Not even close,” I replied. “I also don’t want to let Abby down by not having Lucas recover fully from his injury, so I’m on tenterhooks trying to make sure he doesn’t get rushed through his rehab and end up ruined forever. I’m terrified that she’ll decide she could do a better job looking after him and take him away from me. And I don’t want to let Steph down by not having Molly perform to the best of her ability, which she’s not doing lately because my head is so not in the game. And then there’s Puppet, who’s been taking rails left right and centre, and…”

  “I told you already not to worry about him,” Phil interjected. “Okay, stop. That sounds like enough to be going on with.”

  “You think? And school goes back in three weeks,” I added miserably.

  “Do
n’t remind me,” Phil muttered. “So now that you’ve listed your ninety-nine problems, what are you going to do about them?”

  I rolled my eyes. “If I knew that, I’d have fixed them already.”

  “Okay, start at the end,” he said calmly. “Puppet’s taking rails and you don’t know why. Have you asked anyone on the ground to see if they can tell what’s up with him? Has he had his back checked out, or his saddle refitted?”

  “No,” I conceded. “I could ask Mum to look at him. She’s pretty good at finding those niggly injuries. Maybe she’ll pinpoint something.”

  “So that’s one,” Phil said. “What else? Molly isn’t jumping as good as usual?”

  “Yeah, but that’s because I’ve been stressed out and unfocused,” I admitted. “It’s all me.”

  “So work out a plan to fix it,” Phil told me. “Go have a lesson or something. Swallow your pride and ask Steph for help.”

  I nodded slowly. “When did you get so smart?” I demanded. “Seriously, you’re like the Dalai Lama right now.”

  Phil raised his eyebrows. “I think you’re confused about what the Dalai Lama actually does, but I’ll take the compliment the way I think it was intended.”

  “You should,” I told him. “Okay, so that’s two down. What about Lucas?” Phil said nothing, so I thought for myself. “I’m doing everything I can for him,” I decided. “He’s progressing well, and Abby’s said that she’s happy he’s with me. So I think he’s okay.”

  “And that’s three down,” Phil said. “What else was there?”

  I thought back. “AJ. Who told me that if I wanted to, I could turn Squib out until she’s better, or just hack him lightly to keep him fit. She doesn’t expect me to be schooling him, and I’m actually paranoid that she’ll come by unannounced while I’m riding him sometime, because she’d probably lose her mind if she saw how terrible we are together.” I mulled that over for a while. “I wonder if Jonty would take him for a few weeks. Although knowing AJ, it won’t be long before she’s back in the saddle herself anyway. Maybe I could get Mum to lunge him a couple of times a week,” I said thoughtfully. “That’d help.”