Show Jumper

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Never fear, Stevie’s here,” Stevie said. “I brought my own blue coat, and you can wear it tomorrow. It may be a little large, but it’s snug on me, so maybe not. But even if it is, at least it’s not red—or scarlet—or whatever that thing is you have on.”

  “You brought your coat?” Carole asked, amazed. “Why?”

  “Why, as a spare, of course,” said Stevie. “You guys are just going to have to get used to the new, organized me,” she added, grinning. “I’m finding your amazement at my preparation a little insulting. Was I really that bad?”

  “No, never,” Lisa said gratefully, “and now you’re the perfect tack manager. I’d love to wear your blue coat tomorrow. Thanks so much, Stevie.”

  The three girls headed back to the show rings to see if any other events were going on. During their walk, at least seven complete strangers walked up to Lisa and began asking about Samson. Comments like “Where have you been hiding him?” and questions about his breeding and training at first had the effect of restoring Lisa’s spirits. But after a barrage of questions about Samson and compliments about his ability, she began to get a little irritated.

  “Why is it all about Samson, Samson, Samson?” she finally said in a peevish tone. “Why is it all about the horse and not the rider? Why hasn’t anyone said one single thing about me? Is it because of the jacket?”

  Carole exchanged glances with Stevie. Lisa still looked edgy after her encounter with Margie and the others, and they could tell that her confidence was starting to erode. “It has nothing to do with the jacket,” Carole said. “It’s just natural. All anyone looks at in the jumping events are the horses. They assume we’re good because we wouldn’t be here otherwise.”

  Lisa said nothing but continued to frown. She very badly wanted to ask Carole and Stevie a question about that awful conversation in the bathroom. But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to raise the topic. She already felt terrible about the pink jacket, and now everyone she met seemed interested in Samson. She was afraid that if she asked the question, she might hear an answer that would make her feel even worse.

  Replaying over and over again in Lisa’s mind was Veronica’s last remark, that anyone could jump a clean round with a horse like Samson. What Lisa wanted to know was, was it true? Was Samson the only reason why Lisa had advanced to the final? She knew that if she could bring herself to ask Carole and Stevie the question directly, they would tell her the truth, even if it meant hurting her feelings. But she didn’t feel ready to hear the truth—if the truth happened to confirm her worst fears.

  AFTER THE EVENTS of the morning were over, The Saddle Club returned to the Pine Hollow stalls. When they got there, they saw Jock Sawyer leaning against the van and talking with Max. Eager to catch any tidbits of horse advice and knowledge, the three girls moved closer and joined the conversation.

  “He’s some horse,” they heard Jock say.

  “Yes, we thought he would make a fine jumper—his sire was a champion—but we didn’t know for sure until recently,” Max said. “We trained Samson at Pine Hollow, and he spent a season with a local trainer, Scott Grover.”

  Max noticed that the girls had joined them. “Hi,” he said, smiling. He turned back to Jock. “But if you really want to know about Samson’s training as a jumper, you have to ask these three girls here. Not only did they help Samson enter this world, they also discovered his jumping ability and took on the bulk of his training over the past several weeks.”

  With a surge of hope, Lisa saw a chance to partly redeem her mistake with the pink jacket. “Well, I was the one who first discovered his jumping ability,” she began. “I was exercising him and then I thought that maybe I could take him over a low jump. He cleared it like a pro! So then I brought Stevie and Carole into it. We realized right away that we had a natural jumper in Samson. We took turns schooling him over jumps. First we started low, and then we gradually took him over higher and higher fences.”

  “How high?” asked Jock.

  “This high.” Lisa demonstrated with her hand. “For a while, Samson was jumping too high over the fences, but we managed to correct him on that. We reined him in a bit more as he approached each fence and gave him leg signals to let him know not to overjump the fence.”

  “Interesting,” said Jock.

  As Lisa continued her recital, Carole and Stevie looked at each other, amused. Lisa sounded as professorial as Carole did when she talked about horses!

  When Lisa finally wound down, Jock said cheerfully, “Well, that’s just great. Uh, all your methods obviously worked in that you have such a terrific horse as a result. But thanks for sharing that information with me, uh … you’re Stevie, right?”

  “No, I’m Lisa,” Lisa said, her face falling.

  “Right, Lisa,” said Jock, correcting himself and shaking her hand. “Well, I’ve got a lot of horses to check out this afternoon, so I’ll be catching up with you later, Max.” With a wave, he walked off.

  Carole and Stevie didn’t appear to notice that anything was wrong with Lisa or that she had fallen silent again after Jock had displayed such an overwhelming interest in Samson but called her by the wrong name. “I’ve had enough work for one day,” said Stevie. “Let’s go on an autograph hunt and take in the sights.”

  “I’m with you,” said Carole, patting the pocket of her jacket. “I’ve got my notebook right here. Let me change out of my riding clothes and then I’ll be ready to go.”

  “Not me,” said Lisa. “I’ve got some things to do here.”

  “Oh, c’mon, Lisa,” pleaded Stevie. “We don’t get the chance to meet these riders very often. Let’s have some fun.”

  “I’ll introduce you to some people I know,” Max offered. “Lisa, you really should take some time off today. Relaxation is as important as hard work in preparing for a big day. Besides, you and Samson did well today.”

  “No thanks,” said Lisa firmly. “I’ll find you guys later, okay?”

  LEFT TO HER own devices in the stabling area, Lisa slowly changed out of her riding clothes—tucking the hated pink jacket into a deep corner of her bag—and into her barn clothes. She pulled down her tack, sat down on a hay bale, and began obsessively rubbing and cleaning the tack with saddle soap and polish.

  She knew that she was facing one of her biggest challenges ever with tomorrow’s round. She knew that Margie and her gang were, in general, not very nice people, she certainly knew what Veronica’s character was like, and at any other time, she would have been able to brush off their comments. Today, however, was different. Although Lisa tried to focus on cleaning her tack, Margie’s and Veronica’s remarks kept replaying in her head, like a tape that refused to be turned off. She wasn’t especially worried that their little plan would break down her confidence—now that she knew what they were up to, she’d be able to tune those comments out. But tomorrow’s round looked like a whole different ball game.

  When Lisa had first entered the Macrae, she had secretly fantasized about winning the event. But she hadn’t really let herself believe that she could win, nor did she want that badly to win for her own sake. What she wanted was for the whole world to see what a wonderful jumper Samson was. After the conversation in the bathroom, though, the nature of the competition had changed. No matter how many times Max had tried to drill into her that winning wasn’t important, Lisa wanted to win the junior jumping division and prove to people like Margie and Veronica that she was a lot better than they thought.

  The only problem was, Lisa wasn’t any more sure today that she could win the competition than she had been yesterday. In fact, she was starting to suspect that her clean round today was just a matter of luck and Samson’s talent. If her confidence went down even further before tomorrow and hurt her concentration, could Samson alone save them? And if he did, what did that say about her?

  Lisa put down the cloth she was using and laid her head on her knees. She felt exactly the same way she would if she were taking a huge test tomorrow, only th
is time she knew she hadn’t studied enough. Lisa was such a perfectionist that she was rarely unprepared for a test in school. But in the rare instances when she hadn’t studied enough, she had only managed to get her usual grade a few times. The other times, she had paid the price with failure—or, at least, with her definition of failure, which meant that she got a B-plus instead of an A.

  With school, however, there was always another test and always another opportunity to get a final good grade in the class. Here, Lisa thought, there were no second chances. This was her chance to make it in the big leagues, the Macrae Valley Open. If she and Samson did well, she hoped Max would want her to continue riding the gelding in the big horse shows. But if all didn’t go well, then Lisa would be once again—just like at Briarwood—a green rider, a rider who wasn’t qualified to compete in the big shows.

  Sitting on the hay bale, Lisa started to feel really sick to her stomach. Then she caught sight of something. Hanging across the aisle, outside Starlight’s stall, were Carole’s riding clothes, covered in plastic. Lisa gazed at Carole’s old black coat, the ratcatcher shirt she’d worn to umpteen shows, and her old breeches. Everything looked neat, clean, and worn in. Compared to Carole’s clothes, Lisa’s outfit was stiff, flashy … and completely wrong.

  Lisa’s target of misery changed from herself to her mother, and she was angry. Why had she let her mother buy her a whole new outfit? Didn’t she know better than to buy brand-new clothes for one event? And why hadn’t she protested more when she had tried on the pink jacket? I can’t believe I actually thought clothes could make the rider, thought Lisa. Her flash of anger made her feel momentarily better, since she was able to release some of her frustration. But deep down inside, she knew it wasn’t all her mother’s fault.

  Maybe I should go hunt autographs with Carole and Stevie, thought Lisa. And then maybe I should tell them how I feel. That’ll cheer me up, I bet.

  Just as she got up, her mother appeared. Lisa sighed.

  “THERE YOU ARE!” Mrs. Atwood said brightly. “Carole and Stevie said you’d be here. And they said to tell you that they’ve got tons of autographs, and Carole has asked some of the people to sign her book twice so that she can give some of them to you.”

  “Great,” said Lisa. “I was just about to go and join them—”

  “Wait a minute,” said her mother. “I’ve got wonderful news. I met some very nice people today, and you’ll never guess! They invited us out to dinner with them! We’re going to one of the best French restaurants in town. The food costs the earth, but it’s supposed to be wonderful.”

  Lisa was dismayed. Mrs. Reg had offered to take The Saddle Club out to dinner, since Max was dining with some old horse-show friends of his, and she would a thousand times rather do that than go to some fancy restaurant with her mother and her new society friends. She tried to think of a good excuse not to go. “Mom, you know I don’t have a dress to wear to a restaurant like that,” she said. “I just brought my riding and barn clothes with me.”

  Mrs. Atwood’s smile vanished, and a slight edge crept into her tone. “Not to worry,” she said evenly. “I went shopping in a local boutique and found you a darling new dress to wear tonight. No,” she firmly cut off another protest from Lisa. “I just won’t hear any more excuses. I’ve worked very hard to make friends here, and this is important to me. The least you can do is go to dinner. Is that so much to ask? Now let’s go back to my hotel. I want you to try on the dress and get your hair done at the beauty parlor. We have a long afternoon ahead of us.”

  Lisa sighed in resignation. Looking at it from her mother’s point of view, she seemed a real pain saying no to “dinner.” She looked around and found a piece of paper, then wrote a note to Carole and Stevie explaining that she wouldn’t be joining them for dinner and why. She also asked them to take care of Samson for the night. She tacked the note onto Starlight’s stall where they would be sure to see it, then turned to her mother. “Lead the way,” she said wearily.

  LISA GAZED INTO the cold eyes of Margie, Belinda, and Melinda. Perhaps this was another dream, she told herself. Perhaps she was having a nightmare in which her mother’s friends had turned out to be the parents of Margie, Belinda, and Melinda. Worse yet, she was forced to sit at one end of the table with them while their mothers chatted at the other end. Perhaps I’ll wake up, Lisa thought, and I’ll be where I want to be—with Carole and Stevie and Mrs. Reg, eating at a pizza place and laughing and telling jokes.

  Then Mrs. Atwood, noticing Lisa’s antisocial silence, suddenly reached over and tapped her daughter on the arm. Lisa jumped, but she didn’t wake up. She was stuck with Margie, Belinda, and Melinda.

  Then she looked down at the mess on her plate. She had asked for steak, cooked medium, hoping to get something that she recognized. Instead she had gotten a very rare piece of beef—oozing red juice—that had been wrapped in layers of overdone pastry. Lisa struggled with cutting the beef but could barely make a dent in the shell. When she finally managed to cut into the beef, the force of her knife made flakes of pastry and red meat juice fly over the front of the ridiculous new dress her mother had bought for her. The dress was pink and had smocking down the front, just like a baby’s dress. Thank goodness, thought Lisa. Maybe I’ve ruined it.

  “How long did you say you’ve been riding again?” Margie asked sweetly.

  “Is this your first big show?” asked Belinda.

  “Have you ever trained with any real riding instructors?” asked Melinda.

  Lisa confined herself to answering their remarks as briefly as possible. Then they started asking her about Samson. Since this was more neutral territory, Lisa volunteered information more readily about him.

  “Yes, I helped train Samson for this competition,” she said proudly. “And I was the one who found out about his jumping talent.”

  “Well, of course you did,” said Margie. “Who else but his owner would find that out?”

  “Oh, I don’t own Samson,” said Lisa. “He belongs to Max. He’s a Pine Hollow horse. I don’t have my own horse.”

  “You don’t own him?” asked Margie in disbelief. “How strange! I thought that everyone who rode the A circuit owned their own horse.”

  Lisa flushed. She turned away from the three girls and tried to get her mother’s attention. But her mother was absorbed in a conversation with Margie’s mother.

  “Yes, it’s the most exclusive store for riding clothes in the Philadelphia area, located on the Main Line,” Margie’s mother was saying. “You know, that’s where anyone who’s anyone lives in this area. We’ve all lived there for years. Although if you really want decent riding clothes, you should go down South to horse country.”

  “Really?” Mrs. Atwood said. “We’ve offered to buy a horse for Lisa, but she’s turned us down so far. She says she’s not ready, although after today, I can’t see why not.”

  “Maybe that’s for the best,” said Margie’s mother in a condescending tone. “After all, you can’t imagine how much you have to spend for a halfway decent horse. Why, I spent at least …”

  Hearing her mother’s oohs and aahs, Lisa sighed. She was hoping they could skip dessert and the rest of this long, boring dinner so that she could get back to the motel. But it didn’t look as if her mother was going anywhere for a long time.

  “But you’re from Willow Creek, right?” Margie’s mother was saying. “I’m surprised you don’t know Barb diAngelo. She’s one of my best friends.”

  Lisa groaned inwardly. Of course Margie’s mother and Mrs. diAngelo were good friends—just like Margie and Veronica.

  “Oh, I do know Barb diAngelo!” said Mrs. Atwood. “We belong to the same country club.”

  “Well, you must join us in the VIP box tomorrow,” Margie’s mother said graciously, as if Mrs. Atwood had passed some important test. Lisa’s mother beamed with pleasure.

  Suddenly Lisa couldn’t stand any more. She was sick of the food, she was sick of Margie and Belinda and Melinda, and she
was sick of her mother’s fawning over these awful people. “I don’t think you need fancy riding clothes or an expensive horse to do well at a horse show,” she burst out. “One of my best friends bought a horse for not very much money and trained him herself” Lisa was, of course, talking about Carole and Starlight. “She doesn’t wear the latest riding clothes, either,” she went on, “but she’s one of the best riders I ever saw. She’s competing in tomorrow’s final jumping round.”

  During Lisa’s outburst, Margie’s mother began raising her eyebrows, and after Lisa was finished, she said, “Well, how … nice for your little friend, doing things that way. I’m sure she’s very dedicated.”

  Mrs. Atwood, flushing pink at Lisa’s outburst, jumped in quickly. “Lisa doesn’t mean to be so … aggressive, do you, dear?” she said, patting Lisa on the arm. “The stress of competing must be affecting her manners. Normally she’s just the quietest, sweetest little thing—such a good student, too …” She went on discussing Lisa as if she weren’t there.

  Excluded from the conversation, Lisa turned to her end of the table again, only to find Margie, Belinda, and Melinda wearing smug grins. Lisa’s outburst had obviously convinced them that she was rattled and that their little plan to break down her confidence was working. “We’ll see how you and your friend do tomorrow,” said Margie with a meaningful smirk.

  Fuming quietly, Lisa said nothing more.

  “Would you like dessert, miss?” the waiter asked, handing her the menu.

  WHILE LISA SUFFERED through her dinner, Carole, Stevie, and Mrs. Reg were eating their dinner at a nearby pizza joint. The restaurant, which smelled deliciously of tomatoes and cheese and garlic, was crowded with people from the Macrae. Carole and Stevie were craning their necks, stealing glances at all the famous riders. Their conversation consisted of phrases like “Look, there’s …!” and “Hey, I didn’t get her autograph! D’you think she’d mind if I—?”