Gift Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 14) Read online

  I thought about not saying anything. Going to my room and closing the door and just falling asleep but the throbbing in my ankle was getting worse and I was pretty sure that sleep would not be happening any time soon. Besides, I needed to get my boots off. I could already feel my ankle swelling inside them and if I didn’t hurry up, I’d be stuck wearing them forever.

  “I just took a little spill off Socks,” I said, knowing that Dad would tell her later anyway. “Don’t worry, he’s fine. It was me. I was distracted. I made a stupid mistake, it won’t happen again.”

  I didn’t want her to think I was a bad rider. Socks was her horse and she was only letting me ride him while she was out of action. If she thought I wasn’t up to the task then maybe she would take the ride away from me and give it to someone like Jess.

  “I’m not worried about him,” she said. “I’m worried about you.”

  “Really?”

  Missy wasn't really the sort of person I’d thought would show compassion. My own mother would have been more concerned with stopping me from riding ever again than finding out if I was truly hurt.

  “Of course,” she said. “Besides, you think you’re the only one who's ever taken a spill in this house?”

  “I guess not,” I said, suddenly grateful that I lived with people who rode horses for a living.

  “What hurts?” she asked, trying to get a better look at me over the back of the couch.

  “My ankle.”

  “Well you’d better hurry up and get those boots off,” she said. “I’ve known quite a few girls who have had to cut their boots off when their ankle has swelled too big."

  “What?” I cried. “No. These are my only pair of boots. I can't cut them off.”

  “Well you’d better hurry up then.”

  I jammed my foot in the boot pull that we kept by the door, the pain coming in waves.

  “I can do this,” I muttered through gritted teeth. “No pain. No gain.”

  But the boot wouldn’t come off. I pulled gently at first and then harder until tears of agony were actually streaming down my face. Missy went to put the baby down in his crib and then came to stop me from torturing myself.

  “I can’t get it off,” I cried.

  She put her arms around me and held me while I sobbed into the shoulder of the woman who was suddenly almost like the big sister.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  We finally got my boots off but it wasn’t a pretty sight and involved me rolling around on the floor while Missy gently pulled. In the end I told her to pull it as hard as she could, even though she said that we could be damaging my ankle even more. The last thing I wanted was to have to beg my father to buy me new boots after I’d just done something stupid and I wasn’t about to cut them off so pulling was the only option. When the boot finally slid over my ankle, Missy and I both cheered quietly because we didn’t want to wake Owen. I fought back the tears and tried to act like everything was okay.

  “Should we take a look?” Missy pointed to my sock.

  “Maybe we could just forget about it?” I said.

  “Does it still hurt?” She frowned.

  “No, it’s fine. In fact I think it is all better now,” I said.

  “Go sit on the couch,” she said. “I’m getting you ice.”

  We didn’t actually have any real ice because our refrigerator was old so the ice maker was broken and the ice trays were empty but Missy got a bag of frozen peas instead. She made me put my foot up on a bunch of pillows and sit there with the peas on my ankle while she microwaved a mug of hot chocolate.

  “Why are you being so nice to me?” I said.

  “Why not?” She handed me the hot chocolate and a cookie.

  “I don’t know,” I said. “It’s just weird, that’s all.”

  “People being nice to you is weird?” She laughed. “You’re silly sometimes.”

  “I am?”

  After Derek, I was used to my parent's significant others treating me like dirt and I wasn’t sure if Missy’s niceness was real or an act. Although I was very grateful for the hot chocolate and the peas, which numbed my ankle so much that I couldn’t feel anything at all. We were watching a movie when Dad came in later.

  “How is Socks?” I said.

  “He’s fine.” Dad sat down on the arm of the couch. “How about you?”

  “I’m fine too,” I said. “It was touch and go for a while because we couldn’t get my boot off but we got there in the end.”

  Dad frowned. “If you had trouble getting your boot off then it must be really swollen. Are you sure you are fine?”

  “Of course I am,” I said. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

  Dad looked at Missy, who shrugged.

  “Look kid,” he said. “You don’t have to act tough around us.”

  “I’m not acting tough,” I said. “I am tough.”

  “Okay but there is no shame in admitting you are hurt.”

  “I’m sure it is just a sprain,” I said. “I’ll keep the ice on it tonight and I’ll be good as new in the morning. Please, don’t worry.”

  “If you say so,” he said.

  We all sat there and watched the end of the movie and then Missy and Dad made small talk. Everyone knew I wasn’t fine, even me but admitting so would be like admitting that I’d made a mistake and I was a failure. Or maybe just that I was a regular human being who didn’t have any kind of hidden super riding powers. When I finally had to get up to pee, the moment they had all been waiting for happened. I tried to put weight on my ankle and it gave out.

  “That’s it,” Dad said as I lay there on the floor, clutching my ankle in agony. “I’m taking you to the hospital.”

  “But I’m fine,” I said.

  “Give it up,” Dad replied. “No one is buying it.”

  I was so embarrassed. He helped me to the car and Missy made us promise to call her when we found out anything because she had to stay home with the baby. Luckily for us the hospital was only ten minutes away. Unluckily, the waiting room was full of coughing and sneezing people since we were right in the middle of flu season.

  “You know we’re just going to end up sick if we stay here,” I said to Dad. “Can’t we just go home?”

  “No,” he replied.

  We sat there for three hours. I had my ankle, which was now the size of a tennis ball, propped up on a chair until there were no more free ones and I had to give it up to a vomiting lady. She sat there clutching the bag they gave her to throw up in, her face green.

  “This is so gross," I whispered to Dad.

  “Maybe next time you won’t be so distracted when you are riding, then we won’t have to come here,” he replied.

  He put his arm around me and I knew he wasn’t being mean. He was right. If I hadn’t been so focused on what Jess was doing then none of this would have happened and I vowed not to let her get inside my head anymore.

  When they finally called us back, I got a bed and a nurse with a crooked smile. He took all my information and shook his head when Dad told him what had happened.

  “Horses are dangerous you know,” he said. “You should take up a safer hobby, like knitting.”

  I looked at Dad, who was trying desperately to keep a straight face and when the nurse left the room we both burst into giggles.

  “Knitting?” he said.

  “I’d rather die,” I replied.

  My doctor had pretty much the same sentiment, coming in to poke and prod at my now purple ankle and tell me the statistics on the number of horse riding accident victims that he saw in the emergency room each year. Dad and I just looked at each other and rolled our eyes but I was grateful that he was there instead of my mother because if she’d have heard all those statistics, she never would have let me ride again.

  “I don’t think it’s broken,” he finally said. “But I’m sending you for an x-ray just to be sure.”

  “So when can I start riding again?” I asked the doctor, who just shook his head l
ike I was a lost cause.

  CHAPTER TWENTY ONE

  It wasn't broken, although the doctor made us wait ages before he came in to tell us, probably as punishment for my refusal to quit riding for life. He taped up my ankle and left me with crutches and a prescription for painkillers. He also said I should stay off it for a week and that I shouldn't ride for a month. Dad and I just looked at each other and laughed. Like that was going to happen. The Sandman show was in less than two weeks.

  "I can still show, can't I Dad?" I said in the car on the way home.

  "We'll see," he said.

  We stopped off to get my painkillers because even though I said I wouldn't need them, Dad said that was just because they had already given me stuff at the hospital and when it wore off, I would be sorry if I didn't have the pills. He said that he'd messed up enough ankles to know that by the look of mine it really hurt, which it did. I was just trying to prove that I was tough so he would let me ride in the show.

  I waited in the car and texted Mickey a picture of my ankle and the crutches that were lying on the floor of the truck. She didn't text me back. She called instead.

  "What happened?" she cried.

  "I fell off Socks," I admitted sheepishly.

  "Why? Did he do something wrong? Are you okay?"

  "He didn't do anything wrong," I said. "It was my fault. I wasn't paying attention."

  I didn't add that Jess had distracted me because that seemed like a cop out. I was ready to admit that Jess wasn't the root of all my problems and that I couldn't blame her for everything. It was time I started taking responsibility for my own actions.

  “Do you have to skip the show?” she asked.

  “I hope not,” I said, resting my head back.

  Because it would really suck if I had to miss the show and as a result Jess went on to win everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY TWO

  I vowed I wouldn’t take the painkillers. I kept them in their little orange bottle by my bed with a glass of water but I couldn’t sleep. My foot throbbed and burned like it was on fire. It made me feel physically ill. Eventually I took one of the pills and soon after, I fell asleep.

  Most of the next few days were a blur. The pills helped the pain but all I wanted to do was sleep. I kept my foot up and Missy would come into my room every now and then and change the ice pack on my ankle. The swelling was slowly coming down but the bruise was spectacular, a fantastic swirl of purple and green with yellow around the edges.

  I could see Bluebird from my window and every now and then I would call out to him and he would answer with a soft nicker. On the third day I tried taking him a carrot but navigating the uneven ground on crutches while still under the influence of painkillers was much harder than I had expected it to be. It took all my energy and I almost fell on my face twice.

  “I don’t need a second sprained ankle to go with the first one,” I told him as he reached over the fence for his carrot greedily.

  After that I didn’t try and take him any more treats because although I loved my pony more than anything in the whole world, his need for carrots was not as great as my need to heal and not wreck anymore of my body before the show.

  It was boring being stuck in the house with Missy and Owen. His crying got on my nerves and my ankle seemed to throb in time with his wailing. I didn’t know how Missy could stand it, being cooped up in the house all the time with him. It was driving me crazy. I wanted to be down in the ring riding my horses or out on the trail, galloping with the wind in my hair. I thought about Arion and how he was probably wondering where I was and I felt bad that my absence was probably setting his training back.

  The thing that sucked the most was that I couldn't make my ankle heal faster. Time was what it was going to take and I couldn’t speed it up even though I desperately wanted to. I googled everything about sprained ankles and tried them all, heat, cold, elevating it above my head. I even rubbed a mixture of herbs on it that I sneaked out of the kitchen when Missy was taking a nap but nothing worked fast enough and as the days passed, I couldn’t help thinking that maybe I wouldn’t get to ride in the Sandman show after all.

  “There'll be other shows,” Dad said that night at dinner.

  Missy had been attempting to cook for us since she was home all day and her meals reminded me of the ones my mother used to make before she took those cooking classes.

  “But I’ll be able to ride,” I said. “Look, see how much better my ankle is already.”

  I’d left the stupid crutches in my room since I kept getting them caught on things in our tiny house and was hobbling about better than I had been. In fact today was the first day I hadn’t taken any pills and it didn’t even hurt that much.

  “It’s not worth hurting your ankle more over one little show,” Missy said. “You have to think of your long term career.”

  “I am thinking of my long term career,” I said. “And the fact that people will wonder where I am if I don’t ride.”

  “It won’t kill you to sit this one out,” Dad said.

  “Please, Dad,” I begged. “I really want to ride.”

  “We’ll see how you get on this week. Okay?” he said.

  “Okay.”

  I grinned, knowing that no matter how much my ankle hurt, I wasn’t about to let him see because I was going to go to that show and I was going to prove that I wasn’t a baby or a one hit wonder.

  CHAPTER TWENTY THREE

  By the next weekend my ankle was a lot better. It still felt weak and weird to walk on but I wasn’t in too much pain or limping as badly as I had been. Dad said that I could go down to the barn and work my horses on the ground and if I managed that okay then I could ride on Sunday. That would still give me a week to get back in shape for the show.

  I was so happy to be out of the house that I didn’t even care that I was out of the saddle for one more day. It just felt so good to be outside in the fresh air and the sky was blue and full of puffy white clouds. I just felt really happy.

  “Hi boy. Ready to work?” I asked Bluebird as I put his halter on.

  He got all excited and dashed through the gate when I opened it, nearly knocking me over in the process. Having a week off had not been in his best interests. At least Dad had worked Socks a few times but Bluebird had just been left to his own devices, which meant he was pumped up and super excited to be doing anything that wasn’t standing in his paddock all day. He was definitely a pony that liked his job.

  As we went through the barn, people called out and said hello. I waved back and smiled, glad to breathe in the heady scent of horse. It didn’t matter which barn it was, whether it was Fox Run or Sand Hill or at a show grounds, a barn always felt like coming home again. Only the older women might have been glad to see me but Jess’s gang weren’t. They were all gathered around Sabrina’s stall, looking at something on an iPad and laughing. I ignored them but it was hard not to wonder what they were laughing about.

  “The new me doesn’t care about things like that,” I whispered to Bluebird. “I’m not going to let Jess ruin my riding career anymore. In fact, I’m just going to pretend like she doesn’t even exist.”

  I figured it was the best plan of action and the only one I had left. After all, I’d tried everything else. I tried being nice, which never seemed to have much of an effect on her and I tried being just as rude as she was and that only seemed to make her worse. It also backfired when I was temporarily kicked out of the group and besides, I wasn’t that type of person anyway. I didn’t want to be mean, I just wanted to ride and try to enjoy my life.

  When I got to my tack locker I saw there was a note taped to it. I pulled it off, thinking maybe it was something from Mickey. Then I opened it and saw that someone had scribbled in angry red letters PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL.

  CHAPTER TWENTY FOUR

  I looked behind me, expecting to see Jess standing in the doorway laughing. It had to have been her. No one else would do such a thing. I crumpled the note into a ball and threw
it in the trash. There was no point keeping it and trying to prove that she was the one who had left it. I was just going to try and do what I had said. Ignore her and rise above it. After all, weren’t bullies supposed to leave you alone if you ignored them? They just got bored of playing with someone who didn’t take their bait and moved on to someone else. At least that was what they used to tell us in school. That and to report them to someone. But who was I supposed to tell about Jess? My father already knew that she had it in for me but since she was a paying customer there wasn't exactly much he could do. This wasn’t like school where she would get a visit to the principal’s office and detention. If Dad told her to knock it off, she’d tell her own father and they’d leave Fox Run, taking all their money with them. Then my father would probably be fired and the four of us and our respective horses would have nowhere to go but a falling down farmhouse and a barn that wasn’t finished yet. No. I wasn’t going to let that happen. I was going to try and get through this on my own. I wasn’t the first person who’d had to deal with bullying and I wouldn’t be the last. I just wished that Jess didn’t have the power to make me feel so rotten all the time.

  I groomed Bluebird, ignoring the chattering of Jess’s gang down the other end of the barn. Then I put his boots on and grabbed a lunge line.

  “Let’s go and get some of your energy out,” I told him.

  I took him to the furthest end of the ring where I hoped we wouldn’t bother anybody. Bluebird knew the drill. He went to the end of the line and started to trot. I stood in the middle of the circle, watching him go round and round, a grin on my face. He was so cute with his head down and back up. I couldn’t believe the muscles he still had. He was in great shape, at the top of his game and I wished it was tomorrow already so that I could ride him.

  When I asked him to canter he kicked up his heels and took off. I had to brace myself against the lunge line to get him back under control and I felt my ankle twinge as I dug my heels in to stop him from dragging me away with him. I guess I wasn’t quite as healed as I hoped I was. The emergency room doctor had said that I shouldn’t ride for a month but I couldn’t go that long. I just couldn’t.