Star Pupil (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 4) Read online

  STAR PUPIL

  BY

  CLAIRE SVENDSEN

  Copyright © 2014 Claire Svendsen

  All rights reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without prior written permission of the Author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Your support of author’s rights is appreciated.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, places or events is purely coincidental.

  For Antonia, who has been my sister for almost as long as I can remember

  CHAPTER ONE

  “What do you think he’ll be like in person?” Mickey asked dreamily.

  “He’ll be just like a guy, a normal guy who rides really well and has a stable full of really awesome horses,” I said.

  “But what do you think he’s like as a person?” she said.

  “As long as he can teach me how to not nearly get smacked in the head every time Bluebird jumps, I don’t really care.”

  “I bet he has maids,” she carried on.

  “Maids?” I laughed.

  “He’s rich, I bet he has maids and a chef and a brilliant mansion with marble floors and crystal chandeliers.”

  “You watch too much television,” I told her. “I’m sure the only thing Miguel Rodriguez cares about is that his horses stalls are cleaned properly and all his grooms are doing their jobs. You know, kind of like maids but for horses.”

  We were sitting in the barn cleaning tack which I actually didn’t mind but Mickey kind of hated. The soggy bridle sat in her lap and her sponge had rolled half way down the aisle as she went on and on about Miguel and the clinic.

  “You’re so lucky,” she said. “I’d give anything to go.”

  “No you wouldn’t.” I put down the girth I’d finished with and picked up her abandoned bridle. “It’s going to be work, really hard work. We’ll probably be riding eight hours a day and the rest of the time we’ll be learning lots but it will be super tiring.”

  “You’re right,” she said. “I’d rather just stay in his mansion.”

  At the end of the winter circuit, Bluebird and I had won the Snowball Cup and a place in renowned show jumper Miguel Rodriguez’s clinic. Well, technically I’d tied for first place when another girl, Becka Williamson and her pony Topaz, had managed to complete the jump off in the exact same time I had. Thanks to the polar vortex and the freak Florida snow flurry, that really only lasted ten minutes, they decided not to have us jump off again but to split the prizes.

  “Becka said that Miguel is scouring the nation to find talented riders for his new junior jumper team,” I said.

  “Great,” Mickey mumbled, her face falling. “You can all be BFF’s on the team then.”

  “It’s not like that,” I said.

  But it kind of was. Becka and I had been emailing back and forth about the clinic. She was easy to talk to and she’d been doing the jumper circuit a lot longer than I had. She’d even given me advice about what to take to the clinic and how to impress Miguel.

  “She’s probably just trying to sabotage your chances of getting on the team,” Mickey had said when I told her.

  “Why would she do that?” I asked defensively.

  “Duh, because she wants to win,” Mickey said before stomping off.

  I knew that she was jealous of my new found friend but Mickey wasn’t going to the clinic and Becka was. It was going to be nice to have a friendly face there.

  “You girls want a lesson later?” Esther stuck her head out of the office.

  “No,” Mickey said. “I have to go. My mom has some family dinner thing planned.”

  “What about you Emily? Want to get in a few more pointers before you go off to your clinic and become a big star?”

  “Yes please,” I grinned.

  “Suck up,” Mickey whispered under her breath.

  But the brewing uneasiness between me and Mickey was long forgotten as I sat on Bluebird an hour later in the arena. It was a cold February day and he was feeling his oats. He’d already spooked at a bucket and then snorted at a crop lying on the ground by the gate.

  “You’d better not let that pony embarrass me,” Esther said. “Don’t forget, you’re representing Sand Hill Stables as well as yourself.”

  “I know,” I said. “I won’t let you down.”

  “Good. Now let’s get to work.”

  Bluebird could jump like a cricket. His turns were tight and his transitions were clean. Other than the head tossing, the only other thing he seemed to suffer from was pony ADHD. Lately it had been worse than ever. One minute we’d be working great in the ring and the next he’d see some invisible monster off in the fields and completely lose his mind.

  “Do you think he’s too fit?” I asked Esther.

  “Too fit?” she laughed. “Hardly. You want to ride in the big competitions, you need a fit pony. You just need to ride him more.”

  But I was riding him six days a week with only one day off and that was because my mom had this new thing about Friday night being family time. She called it Friday fun day but it was more like a Friday freak show and mostly consisted of her trying to build some sort of bridge between me and my new stepfather. It wasn’t working. There was nothing she could do or say that would make me love Derek or even like him. As it was we got by with limited eye contact and some non-committal grunts every now and then. It was kind of working for me. I wished she would just leave us alone.

  Bluebird, taking advantage of my wandering mind, gave a dirty cow hop and I landed face down in the dirt. He took off bucking and farting and galloped around the ring twice before Esther could catch him.

  “That happens at the clinic, you think you’ll make the team?” Esther asked, her face set in a frown.

  “No,” I said, brushing dirt off my shirt. “Sorry, it was my fault. I was distracted.”

  “It wasn’t only your fault,” Esther said, feeling Bluebird’s withers. “I think this pony may need a new saddle.”

  “Great,” I sighed. “Something else I can’t afford.”

  So far I’d managed to get by on my winnings and Esther let me pay a reduced rate for board because Bluebird didn’t have a stall. I worked off my lessons and kept my fingers crossed that no big expenses would come up, like saddles.

  “And I thought I had problems when he needed a winter blanket,” I said. “You don’t happen to have a nice saddle lying around, do you?” I joked.

  “I’ve got plenty of saddles but they are all pretty beaten up,” she said. “Come on, let’s go and see what we can find in the tack room.”

  But an hour later and we’d tried every pony saddle on Bluebird and none of them seemed quite right. They were either too narrow or too wide and the only one that even came close to fitting him didn’t fit me at all.

  “What am I going to do?” I said. “The clinic is in two weeks. If I show up there with a saddle that doesn’t fit right, what is Miguel going to say?”

  “He’s going to say that you don’t know what you are doing,” she shook her head. “And that your trainer doesn’t know what she is doing either.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I said.

  I wanted to cry. It was like fate was somehow conspiring against me. Every time I made it one step forward, I was shoved two steps back.

  “Let’s try some different saddle pads and see if we can at least make him comfortable,” Esther said.

  She tried out several different combinations before she finally se
emed like she was satisfied and when we went back out to the ring, Bluebird was certainly less distracted. He didn’t lose his focus like he had been doing lately and he didn’t kick out when I asked him to move off my leg.

  “That was better,” I smiled, relieved.

  “Yes,” she said. “But it’s a temporary fix.”

  “Great,” I said. “He always needs something.”

  “Welcome to the world of horses,” Esther grinned. “They’re way worse than kids.”

  When I put Bluebird in his field for the night, I told him that he’d better toughen up and stop keep acting out.

  “I don’t act all foolish when I need a new pair of shoes,” I told him.

  He snatched the last carrot from my hand and ran off with it sticking out of his mouth like a cigar. The pony was a ham and no matter what he did or what he needed, I was so lucky that I had found him.

  I held on to that thought later as Mom, Derek and I sat around the kitchen table eating dinner. The conversation was, as usual, stilted.

  “Did you have a good ride?” Mom asked, trying to draw me out of the shell I’d put up.

  “Yes,” I said. “But Bluebird needs a new saddle.”

  “How much does one of those things cost?” Derek grunted.

  “Not as much as your cars,” I told him.

  I still hadn’t figured out why he had so many of them sitting out there in the driveway. The least he could do was rent them out or something and make some money off them. As it was he was living off my mother because as she put it, he was between jobs. I knew better. He wasn’t between anything. He was just lazy.

  “Now Emily,” Mom said diplomatically. “That’s not exactly fair. How is Derek supposed to know how much a saddle costs?”

  I answered with a shrug. To be honest even I didn’t know how much one was going to cost. There was new and used and custom fitted, all with a price range of hundreds to thousands. Just thinking about it put me off my food.

  “So this pony of yours,” Derek said, putting down his knife and fork and wiping his ugly moustache. “He costs a lot of money, right?”

  “I’ve never asked you for anything,” I said. “And I’m not asking for anything now. I’m just saying that Bluebird needs a new saddle, that’s all.”

  The words came jumbling out and I was already on my feet, my chair and back against the wall. We’d been down this road before. One minute Derek was happy because he found out that jumpers actually won real prize money and the next he was pouting because he found out that he wasn’t going to get his sticky fingers on any of it. I lived in a perpetual state of anxiety, wondering when the rug was going to be pulled out from under me for good and I was going to be told that I had to sell my pony.

  “Emily,” Mom said sternly. “Sit down. There are some things we need to talk about.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  A million horrible things flashed through my mind. Things like the fact that I was going to have to give up Bluebird and live a horrible, horseless existence. Or that now my mother and Derek were married, we were going to have to move somewhere far away where there would be no Sand Hill Stables and no one like Esther to give me cheap rates and help me out. I may not have been an adult but I knew the world was a cruel place for people like me who were trying to get by on a dime and a prayer.

  “Please can we not talk about this now?” I said. “I have my clinic in two weeks. It’s really important to me.”

  “We know,” Mom said. “I remember those days. Your Dad once got to ride with Ian Millar.”

  “No way,” I sat back down again. “That’s so cool. Tell me everything.”

  “Lilly,” Derek said, clearing his throat. “Let’s try and keep on track here.”

  And just like that, the Mom robot was back. The one who refused to talk about my father and instead did everything that awful Derek wanted her to without a second thought.

  “Yes,” Mom sighed, looking at her plate. “The clinic.”

  “I’m going,” I scowled at Derek. “And there is nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “Really young lady?” Derek said. “I think there are quite a few things we could do to stop you from going, starting with selling that pony of yours.”

  “Bluebird is mine,” I screamed. “I bought him with my own money. He doesn’t belong to you and you can’t sell him.”

  “Emily,” Mom said calmly. “It’s alright. No one is talking about selling Bluebird.”

  “Derek is,” I mumbled.

  “Well, you see the thing is,” Mom said. “That you have Bluebird and all these friends at the barn and, well, Catherine is having a really hard time and we thought it might be nice if she came and spent some time here with us and you.”

  “Catherine?” I said, my mind blank.

  “My daughter,” Derek said.

  “Oh no,” I said, my voice sounding much louder and higher than I had meant it to. “You’re not going to lump me with some horrid stepsister to cart around. And what? You expect me to take her to the barn? Teach her how to ride? Share Bluebird with her? Forget it. That is never going to happen. I had a sister and she’s dead. I don’t need another one thank you very much.”

  Before they could even get a word in, I ran off to my bedroom and locked the door. Mickey was right. She’d said that the stupid stepsister would want to come and live with us when she found out we were minutes from the beach in sunny Florida. Now she was going to ruin everything. Horses were my thing. Mine alone. I wasn’t going to share and they couldn’t make me.

  Later that evening there was a gentle knock at the door.

  “Emily?” Mom said softly. “Can I please come in?”

  I begrudgingly opened the door. “Don’t do this to me Mom,” I said.

  She came and sat on the bed and beckoned for me to sit next to her. I did. We sat there, the two of us so close to each other and yet not touching.

  “I’ve never really understood this horse obsession,” she finally said. “I didn’t understand it in your father and I don’t understand it in you.”

  “It’s in your genes,” I said. “You either have it or you don’t.”

  “Right,” she nodded. “I suppose that must be it and you know, I’m sure that Catherine couldn’t care less about horses so why don’t you just be nice to her and soon enough she’ll be on her way back home again.”

  “Or not,” I said. “I don’t have time to babysit someone Mom. This clinic means everything to me and what with Bluebird needing a new saddle, I don’t have the time.”

  “You’re going to have to make the time,” she said. “Because it’s already booked and the ticket is paid for. Catherine will be arriving the day after tomorrow and I expect you to treat her with the respect and decency that I’ve brought you up to show.”

  “I can’t believe this is happening,” I groaned.

  “And in return,” she said. “I will make sure that Derek stays off your back about Bluebird and the clinic and riding in general.”

  “You will?” I said.

  “You have my word.”

  It didn’t really seem like a fair trade off. I mean, it was sort of her job to stick up for me in the first place since I was her own biological daughter and all but if she was promising that as long as I was nice to Catherine, then I wouldn’t have to worry about my horse life, then I guessed it was worth it.

  “She’ll probably just stay in her room the whole time,” Mom said as she left. “She hasn’t been adapting to the changes in her life very well. Maybe you could help her with that too?”

  “Alright,” I said, inwardly rolling my eyes.

  Did my mother really think that I was coping with Derek well and adapting to the new family situation I’d found myself shoved into? We barely spoke and when we did, it ended in screaming matches like the one at dinner. If stupid step sister Catherine was looking for some stability, she was coming to the wrong house. Here the lifejackets were in short supply and it was every man for himself. Catherine was j
ust going to have to roll with it because there was no way I was going to baby her and hold her hand, even though I had just promised I’d be nice. After all there was regular nice and then there was too nice and I was firmly in the just barely nice enough to get by camp.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “Becka said she might have a saddle that would fit Bluebird,” I said.

  The three of us were sitting in the ring, Mickey, Ethan and me. It was one of those warm days that was mixed in-between all the cold ones and our sweaters were piled in a heap by the gate. Esther had been working us hard today. Even the horses were sweating.

  “Of course she did,” Mickey grumbled.

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” I said.

  I was getting sick of her always bashing Becka. After all, she didn’t even know her so it wasn’t fair to be so mean.

  “Nothing,” she said and looked away.

  “That won’t exactly help,” Esther put her hands on her hips. “What if you get there and it doesn’t fit? Then you are still stuck without a saddle to use for the clinic and it’s too late to try and find another one.”

  “Just get your mom to buy one,” Ethan said.

  “Can’t, she doesn’t have the money.”

  “Maybe you could rent one?” Mickey said in a particularly non helpful voice.

  “And maybe I could sell my kidney,” I sighed.

  It was getting ridiculous. How was I ever going to compete at the top level without lots of money? I saw now why it was so difficult to make it to the top in the horse world. Forget about the insanely expensive horses but there were all the other things that went with it. The board and farrier bills, tack and trainer fees and of course the showing fees which got bigger with every show we went to.

  “If you sell your kidney, how are you going to ride in the clinic? You’ll be laid up for weeks,” Ethan grinned.

  “You’re right,” I said. “I give up.”

  Esther reached out and snapped my knee with the crop she was holding.

  “Ouch,” I said, rubbing my stinging flesh. “What was that for?”