White Horses (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 10)

by Claire Svendsen

  CHAPTER TWENTY FIVE

  Waiting for the storm was so boring. It had to be the slowest moving hurricane in the history of all hurricanes. But beneath the boredom was fear, like waiting for a dentist’s appointment. To take our minds off it we played games. Someone had brought a pack of cards so we played poker, which Esther wasn’t amused about because she said that we were too young to be playing games where gambling was involved. And surprisingly it turned out that Mickey was really good at it because her Uncle was a closet gambler and even though he’d lost his life savings, she told us that he was really close to winning it all back again.

  "It's just as well we're only playing for pretzels," I said as she placed her winning hand on the muck tub.

  "Maybe one day I'll be one of those high rollers who lives in Vegas and makes like a bazillion dollars." She grinned.

  "Good, then you can bankroll my stable because I'm pretty sure I'll always be strapped for cash."

  "Horses are a money pit," she replied. "At least that’s what my mom is always saying."

  We watched show jumping rounds on Mickey's iPad until the battery ran out and we couldn't find an outlet to charge it back up because they were all taken with peoples cell phones. Then we helped Esther clean the stalls and as we did, the sky finally started to turn dark. Night and the storm were both approaching and I didn't want either of them to come. I wanted to stay here in this middle ground. The time before the storm because I didn't know what after would be like.

  "Have you ever been through a hurricane before?" Fern asked.

  She hadn't been able to move Excalibur over so she kept buzzing back and forth between the two barns.

  "No." I shook my head.

  "Me either," she said. "Maybe it won't be as bad as it sounds."

  "Maybe," I replied.

  I wanted to stay strong for Bluebird. I couldn't fall apart and let him down.

  "Your mom sent me out to come and get you." Mickey appeared from the evacuation room. "She says you've avoided them long enough."

  "No, I don't think I have," I said.

  "Seriously. If you don't go in there and spend some time with them I think your mom’s head might explode."

  "Like your mom’s did?" I asked.

  After Mickey's dad stuck his hand in the trash can full of fish, her parents had a giant row. Even I was embarrassed but Mickey didn't seem to care.

  "They always do this." She shrugged. "They'll get over it."

  But as it turned out, they weren't getting over it any time soon since they weren't speaking to each other. Mickey's mom was now sitting next to mine and her dad was off somewhere with Derek. Cat had befriended a group of hot looking boys and was about as happy as anyone in a hurricane could be.

  "See," Mickey whispered. "You have to save me. They are driving me crazy."

  "Over here, girls." Mickey's mom saw us and waved.

  I started to back away. There the moms sat all fake smiles and small talk and I didn't want to be anywhere near them. I wanted to be with Esther and Bluebird and the other horse people who understood me.

  "Five minutes," Mickey said. "It won't kill us."

  "It might," I said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SIX

  If waiting for the storm was torture, then waiting for the storm with our mothers was like torture with a double side helping of extra punishment. They clearly both resented being stuck with us in horse land and so we had to sit there and listen to them go on and on about how loud horse people were and complain about all the hay and shavings that were being traipsed into the room. Mickey's mom was kind of a neat freak and as a result had set up a boot cleaning station by the door that consisted of a broom, a boot rack and a hard brush that people were supposed to use on their boots. So far it hadn't worked but that didn't stop Mickey's mom from yelling at everyone who came through the door.

  "Your boots," she yelled at the next poor, unsuspecting girl who came in.

  "What about them?" she said, looking down at her feet all confused.

  "You need to wipe the poo off them dear," Mickey's mom said. "We're all sleeping in here tonight on the floor. You don't want to put your head next to a smelly smear of manure, do you?"

  "I don't care." The girl half-heartedly wiped her boots.

  "What is wrong with your friends?" Mickey's mom asked her.

  "She's not my friend." Mickey shrugged. "I don't even know her."

  "But you're all alike, aren't you? You congregate at all the same shows. I bet you know her from somewhere."

  "No Mom, I don't," Mickey said. "Don't your fish need checking on or something?"

  Mickey's mom looked at her watch. "Yes, I should probably check the water levels again, thanks to your father."

  She dashed off to the back of the room where her trash can had been set up with some yellow crime scene tape around it, warning people to stay away.

  "She thinks people might get hungry and try to eat them," Mickey whispered.

  "They may," I said. "If they run out of other food."

  "Those fish really are important to your mom, aren't they?" my mom said.

  "Yeah," Mickey groaned.

  Mom looked at me and made a face. I could tell that she didn't know what the big deal was about the fish either but since Mickey's mom was one of the only other non-horse people in the room, she was kind of stuck for people to talk to.

  "I'm sorry Mom," I said. "You didn't have to come."

  "You think I would have just left you alone here with all this riff raff?" She looked around the room slightly horrified.

  "They're not riff raff," I said. "They are some of the nicest people you will ever meet."

  "If you say so," she said but she didn't sound convinced.

  I stood up. "I'd better go and check on Bluebird."

  "What, again? You were only just out there. I'm sure he's fine," Mom said.

  "Yeah, I should go and check on Hampton too," Mickey said.

  We slipped out of the room before Mom could say anything else to stop us.

  "I can't believe they came." I sighed.

  "Mom said if she didn't come then I couldn’t come," Mickey said.

  And I was pretty sure that I would never have been allowed to ride out the hurricane at the Palm City racetrack by myself either. So I was kind of grateful that I wasn't stuck at some fish camp wondering how my pony was, even though I did have to put up with family in order to be there. The only bright side was that I hadn’t seen much of Derek. He’d stayed away from me and the horses and I felt pretty confident that he wouldn’t yell at me in front of people so while we were there, I actually felt pretty safe. Well, as safe as you could feel in a hurricane anyway.

  CHAPTER TWENTY SEVEN

  The wind picked up and rain blasted sideways, coming down the barn aisle in sheets. Luckily the stalls that Esther had secured for us were in the middle but those at either end weren't so lucky. I found a little girl crying outside her pony's stall, soaking wet with her hair plastered to her face. The pony inside was a cute Welsh, all long eyelashes and flowing tail.

  "Are you okay?" I put my arm around her.

  She nodded.

  "Is that your pony?"

  "Yes, Sundance," she said.

  "She's pretty."

  "Thanks." The girl wiped her eyes.

  “Are you here with you mom or your trainer?" I looked around, wondering why the girl was all alone.

  "My mom." She nodded. "She went to the bathroom."

  "I see," I said. "Do you want to come and sit with us while you wait for her? I have a pony too and his name is Bluebird."

  "Really?" she asked.

  So the little girl, Ashley, was adopted into the Sand Hill fold. And it turned out that her pony was for sale so I took down her number, thinking that Sundance might be the perfect pony for Faith. We passed the time sitting outside our horse’s stalls, talking about the shows we'd been to and the shows that we would go to in the future, anything to take our minds off Hurricane Joyce, who was hittin
g us hard. We were doing okay until the lights flickered.

  "The power isn’t going to go out, is it?" Mickey asked nervously.

  "I'm sure the track has a generator," Esther said but she gathered flashlights together just in case.

  The wind roared outside like a freight train with lightening blazing across the sky and then it would suddenly die down again. It was the squalls that everyone talked about and it would be like this until the storm was over us. They said that if the eye went over you, it could seem like the storm had passed you by. The rain would stop and the wind would die down. That's when people usually went outside thinking that the worst was over. Only it wasn't. They kept telling us to stay inside, blaring out warnings on the radio about downed trees and live electric wires hidden in flash floods. It was like the end of the world only we were okay because we were together with our horses.

  "Remember the tornado, when Bluebird wouldn't go into a stall?" Mickey said.

  "Yeah, that was fun times," I said. "Good job he'll go into one now otherwise I don't know what I would have done."

  "You'd have stood out there in the raging storm holding a tarp over him to keep him dry, that's what you would have done," Esther said.

  "I think the horses can make it through okay outside though," Fern said. "If they have to. There was this news story about a herd of horses in a hurricane. One of the owners was worried and went out to check on them even though it was really dangerous. They thought the horses might have been freaking out but instead do you know what they found?"

  We all shook our heads.

  "They found them standing in a circle in the middle of the field with their butts to the wind and inside the circle were all the foals and the really old horses."

  "You're making that up," Mickey said.

  "I am not," Fern cried. "It's true."

  "I can believe it," Esther said. "Horses have been around for a really long time. They know how to take care of themselves."

  "Well, some of them do but some of them clearly don’t." I pointed at Saffron who'd been given a small dose of tranquilizer so that she wouldn't hurt herself and was now standing in her stall with her head hanging down, sleeping.

  “I never said she was the smartest horse in the barn," Esther said.

  "It's okay, we still love her." I laughed.

  But our laughter was tinged with a hint of nervousness, a little too high and shallow. We were laughing on the outside but on the inside we knew that we were caught in the middle of something bad.

  "Think about all the stories you'll be able to tell them when they interview you after winning that Olympic gold medal," Mickey said. "How you and Bluebird survived a hurricane and everything."

  "Yeah," I said but I couldn't help thinking that it would only be if we survived.

  When the first bad squall had passed over us there was a break in the rain and we stood at the end of the barn, looking out across the track. The palm trees were blowing sideways, their trunks bending and swaying. Water was already beginning to puddle up on the ground. The track lights were on for now and across the way I could see grooms scurrying about with buckets, tending to their charges.

  "Do you think they know something we don't?" I said.

  "I don't know,” Esther said.” Maybe we should fill some more buckets with water just in case."

  "Good idea," Mickey said. "I hate having nothing to do."

  "You love having nothing to do." I laughed.

  "Yeah but right now I'd rather have something to do because it will take my mind off everything else."

  "I know what you mean." I looped my arm through hers. "Let's go fill up more buckets then."

  But as I turned and my eyes swept across the infield and the lake beyond, I thought I saw a flash of white.

  CHAPTER TWENTY EIGHT

  I felt all the blood literally drain from my face. It had to have been lightening reflecting in the wet grass or the glassy surface of the lake. It couldn’t have been the ghost horse because I didn't believe in ghost horses.

  "What is it?" Mickey said. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing," I replied. "Come on. Let’s go fill the buckets up."

  "You saw it, didn't you?" she said.

  "Saw what?" I tried to ignore her.

  "You know what. The ghost horse."

  "No, I didn't," I said. "I saw something but it wasn't a ghost, okay?"

  Mickey wasn't exactly convinced and neither was I but we didn’t talk about it. Instead we filled all the buckets in the stalls and then we filled all the extra buckets.

  "What about the muck tubs?" I asked Esther. "We could scrub those out and fill them too?"

  "Then where are we going to put the poop?" Mickey said.

  "We've done enough," Esther said. "All we can do now is wait it out."

  "Fine," I said but I'd have rather had something to take my mind off the flash of white.

  Eventually we got tired of sitting around watching the rain and wind and went back into the evacuation room. Mickey was hungry again and I was tired. Only inside the room all the lights were blaring and the TV's and radios were on. People were laughing and talking and joking around.

  "This is ridiculous," I said. "Where are we supposed to sleep?"

  "I don't know." Mickey ducked as a Frisbee sailed over her head. "Obviously not in here."

  "We could sleep in the horse’s stalls?" I said hopefully.

  "I don't think the parents would like that very much."

  "Neither would Esther but what they don't know won't hurt them. Besides, do they look like they care?"

  I pointed over to where Mickey's mom was showing mine how to knit what looked like a really lumpy scarf and Derek was huddled around the one TV that actually wasn't showing anything to do with the hurricane but instead was playing a football game.

  "Let's get our stuff," Mickey said.

  We managed to sneak out our sleeping bags, some bottles of water and a stash of Pringles that Mickey's mom had brought. In the barn aisle it was dark and cold.

  "It doesn't feel like summer anymore, does it?" I shivered and pulled my hoodie on as a gust of wind blew down the aisle.

  "No," Mickey agreed. "So, whose stall shall we invade?"

  We decided to crash in with Bluebird since he was the smaller of our two horses and less likely to crush us. Besides, I'd slept in his stall before and he had never cared. Plus he had really small hooves, unlike Hampton whose big dinner plates could easily pulverize our skulls.

  We settled into the driest corner.

  "You'd better not poop on me," Mickey told him.

  “Don’t go giving him ideas.” I laughed.

  We sat there in the dim light, listening to the horses munching on their hay and the wind as it roared all around us.

  "It really is kind of scary isn't it?" Mickey said.

  "Yes." I nodded.

  "But at least we're together." She grabbed my hand. "But you didn't really see anything out there, did you?"

  "I don't know," I said. "I hope not."

  We snuggled down in our sleeping bags all warm and cozy and at some point I think I must have drifted off to sleep from sheer exhaustion. But some time later I woke to a loud crack.

  "What was that?" I jumped to my feet, wiggling out of the sleeping bag and patting Bluebird who was all ears and bulging eyes.

  "A tree branch maybe? Whatever it was, it didn't sound good," Mickey said.

  We slipped out of the stall. People were in the aisle looking out into the dark.

  “What was it?" Mickey asked them.

  "Transformers," a woman said, pointing out into the dark storm.

  And she didn't mean the cool kind that turned into machines. She meant the electric current kind that sparked and snapped. We watched as the wind blew the wires together and they tangled up in each other. Then there was a loud bang and a shower of sparks came out of the transformer at the top of the pole.

  "If we lose too many more of them the power will go out for good," the woman s
aid as the lights flickered.

  And while riding out a hurricane was one thing. Riding one out in the dark was something else altogether. We stood there watching the storm destroy what little electricity we had left and one by one the transformers all blew, each time causing the horses to spin nervously in their stalls. Then, with one final crashing bang, the barn went dark.

  CHAPTER TWENTY NINE

  We stood there in the dark for a moment. No one moved or spoke. Lightning flashed across the sky. Someone screamed. Then suddenly flashlights were being passed around and people were going to check on their horses. We didn't have the luxury of freaking out because we had our four legged friends relying on us to keep it together and take care of them.

  "Here." Esther gave us one giant flashlight to share. "Go and check on your horses."

  "Okay," I gulped.

  The barn was awash with beams of light as people went to make sure their horses were okay. Bluebird and Hampton were happy as clams, eating their hay like nothing had happened. It was night time after all and the barn was usually dark at night anyway.

  "I don't like this," Mickey said.

  "What's to like?" I replied.

  "Nothing, that's what."

  We checked on the other horses. Ethan's horse Wendell was standing in the corner with his eyes bugging out of his head but I didn't dare go into his stall in case he burst through the open door and ran out into the storm. Instead I hung on the outside and talked to him in a soothing voice. He listened, his chestnut ears swiveling back and forth until I found a mint in my pocket and crinkled the wrapper. Then he came over to investigate, snuffling the sticky mint up gently with his lips.

  "Don't worry," I told him. "Everything is okay."

  But while things seemed to be holding together in our barn, things weren't going so swimmingly in yellow. Fern came over wearing a raincoat, her hair wet and dripping.

  "Parts of our roof have blown off," she said.

  "Are the horses okay?" I looked up at our own roof that had so far held together with only the odd drip here and there.