Jump Off (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 22) Read online

  I thought about how bad Quantum had been at the vet clinic, all tubes and wires and his organs shutting down. They never said what had caused it in the first place. I just assumed that they weren’t sure just like they hadn’t been sure with Bluebird. Sometimes horses got sick and sometimes they died. That was life. It wasn’t fair but it was just the way things were.

  “You don’t know that swimming in the pond was what caused him to get sick,” I said gently.

  “But he got the fever the next day,” Frankie sobbed. “And I didn’t tell anyone because I didn’t want to get in trouble but maybe if I had then they could have done something different. Given him some other treatment. They might have been able to save him.”

  She put her head in her hands, fat tears dropping through them and onto the floor. I wasn’t sure what to say. I couldn’t know if that was what had caused her horse to get sick just like I couldn’t be sure that Jess had poisoned Bluebird. All I knew was that I was glad we’d got him to the clinic when we had. That we hadn’t waited. Frankie’s local vet had treated Quantum for two weeks before they sent him to the clinic. By then it was too late. A shiver ran down my spine as I imagined what might have happened if we had waited that long too. Then maybe I’d be the one sobbing into my hands like Frankie was.

  “You didn’t know that they’d sprayed the property,” I said gently. “You couldn’t have known. If that was what got him sick then it was just an accident.”

  “But I should have said something.” She looked at me with red eyes.

  “Even if you had, they still might not have been able to save him.”

  “You can’t know that.”

  “And neither can you.”

  We sat there in silence for a while listening to the sounds of the barn. The horses being brought in and out from the paddocks and going to the ring for lessons, the birds that always hung around the manure pile, squawking as they picked through the poop for oats and the gentle rumble of thunder in the distance.

  “You can’t punish yourself forever,” I eventually said. “You have to let it go. It’s in the past now. If you say you won’t ride again then you are only punishing yourself. Do you really want to never ride again?”

  “I’m not sure,” Frankie said.

  “Well if you change your mind, I want you to come out and go for a ride with me on Four. He’s fun, he really is. I’ve been riding him out on the trail and having a blast. He’s never going to be a show jumper but I think he could be a really good friend.”

  “Maybe I could just groom him first?” Frankie said.

  “It’s a start,” I replied with a grin.

  I gave her a grooming kit and put Four in the cross ties opposite the tack room where I could keep an eye on them. Frankie was cautious around my big gray, gently reaching out to touch his neck and then pulling her hand back when he shifted in the aisle like her touch might break him. I sat on an upturned muck tub, scrubbing my dirty bridle and watched a heartbroken girl try to let herself feel something again.

  I couldn’t imagine what she was going through. I didn’t know if that orange stuff in the lake had really been what had made her horse sick or not and yes Frankie had made a mistake. She’d broken the rules and done something she wasn’t supposed to do and as a result something bad had happened. But she couldn’t beat herself up forever. She had to put it behind her and move on. I knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I knew that Quantum must have haunted her dreams and I knew that she would always feel guilty but maybe one day the guilt would be less and she’d let a new horse into her heart and as she picked up the brush and started to groom Four, I hoped that at least that simple act was mending just a tiny piece of her soul.

  CHAPTER THIRTY SEVEN

  “That girl from the vet clinic was here, wasn’t she?” Dad said that night.

  We were all sitting in the kitchen. Dad had gone to pick up Chinese food and we had loaded our plates but apparently none of us were that hungry since we were all picking at it and pushing it around instead of eating it. Chinese food used to be Mom’s favorite. I knew Dad had to know that and I couldn’t help wondering if he’d dropped some off at their motel as well.

  “Yes, Frankie,” I said. “I’m trying to get her to start riding again.”

  “Not everyone bounces back from the death of a horse,” Dad said. “I’m sure that you can understand that. Maybe she is just not ready.”

  “No, that’s not it,” I said. “She blames herself for what happened to Quantum.”

  “Why?” Dad asked.

  “She just does,” I said.

  Frankie had confided in me and I wasn’t about to go blabbing her secrets around. Besides, it wasn’t anything that my father needed to know.

  “You should just leave her alone,” Dad said. “She’ll come around on her own if she wants to. You have enough to do as it is.”

  “I think it’s nice that you want to help her,” Missy said, first smiling at me and then glaring at my father. Maybe she doubted the motives of his Chinese food run as well.

  “I want to help Dakota too,” I said. “Lucy left and she is without a horse as well. Jordan said that they might be selling Wizard and Dakota really liked him when she rode him before. Maybe they could work something out.”

  “What are you, a horse matchmaker now?” Dad said.

  “Maybe,” I replied. “Why not?”

  “Because tomorrow you’ll be riding in front of some of the best trainers in the country and I want you to concentrate on that, not finding horses for your little friends.” Dad threw down his fork.

  “Why are you mad at me?” I said, throwing mine down as well. “I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  “Taylor called me. She told me you were hanging around in front of the tack store with Jordan, fawning all over him,” Dad said.

  “I wasn’t fawning,” I yelled. “I was just talking to him. He is my friend. What is wrong with that?”

  “Being friends with that boy won’t win you any gold medals,” Dad said. “And I want you to stay away from him.”

  “No,” I said, standing up. “I won’t. You can’t tell me who I can and can’t like.”

  “While you live in this house I can,” Dad said.

  He was standing up too. We were both yelling at each other. Our first real fight. We’d never had one before, at least not one that I could remember. Not like this. There was real rage in his eyes. He was totally mad at me over nothing.

  “Nothing happened, has happened or will happen,” I said. “So back off.”

  “Don’t you tell me to back off young lady,” Dad shouted. “You’re my daughter and until you are eighteen, you’ll do as I say.”

  “Will I?” I said. “Because you don’t have a very good parenting track record. In fact I don’t know why I should be listening to you at all.”

  “Guys, please.” Missy tried to get my father to calm down but he wouldn’t.

  And part of me was upset because I couldn’t understand why he was so mad at me but part of me was actually glad because maybe he wasn’t mad with me at all. Maybe he was just taking out his frustrations on me because his secret meeting with my mother hadn’t gone very well. I knew she had to be sick of staying at the motel by now. It was only a matter of time before she cracked and got mad at him too.

  “I have to pack,” I said.

  “Yes, go to your room,” Dad yelled after me. “You’re grounded.”

  “I already decided to go to my room so it’s not a punishment and you can’t ground me if you want me to go to the clinic tomorrow,” I called back.

  I went into my bedroom and shut the door, not realizing until now that I was shaking. I took a couple of deep breaths and tried to calm down. I didn’t like yelling or shouting or arguing with people and it wasn’t fair for my father to pick a fight with me over nothing. He told me to go to the tack store in the first place and besides, Jordan and I hadn’t even kissed. We talked, that was all. It wasn’t a crime.

  Later tha
t evening there was a knock at my door. I’d finished packing and was lying on the bed hugging Meatball. I clicked off the light and rolled over, pretending to be asleep when Missy came in with a mug of hot chocolate. She sat down on the bed, not believing my fake snores.

  “Your father didn’t mean it,” she said, putting the mug down on my bedside table. “He’s just taking out his frustrations on you.”

  “But I didn’t do anything wrong,” I said, rolling over and looking at her face in the light that spilled in from the hallway. She looked pale and drawn. “And I don’t know why you are sticking up for him anyway.”

  “I don’t know either,” she said softly. “But I love him and I don’t want to lose him.”

  “Not even if you have to share him with my mother?” I said.

  Missy sighed. “I know he is working through some stuff and I’m probably giving him a longer leash than I should but he’s going to have to make a choice. He can’t keep both your mother and me hanging on. It’s not fair to either of us.”

  “I don’t want him to pick her,” I said, sitting up and throwing my arms around Missy. “I want him to stay with you.”

  “I want him to as well,” she said, stroking my hair. “But I can’t make that choice for him.”

  “I’m still going to the clinic tomorrow, aren’t I?” I said, pulling away from her.

  “Of course you are,” she said. “Even if I have to drive you there myself.”

  CHAPTER THIRTY EIGHT

  True to her word, Missy was up the next morning and ready to take me to the clinic.

  “I told your father to stay in bed,” she said.

  “You did?” I asked. I’d eaten breakfast but I hadn’t felt like it. I had to force it down and now it was churning around in the pit of my stomach. I kind of wished I hadn’t eaten anything at all. “Is he still mad at me then?”

  “He’s mad at everyone,” Missy replied. “And I didn’t want you guys getting into a big fight on the way there. It is important for you to do your best and you won’t ride well if you’re thinking about the giant fight you had with your father.”

  “True,” I said. “Socks is ready and I put all my stuff in the trailer. I just have to load him up and we can go.”

  “Just let me grab a coffee first,” Missy said.

  I went down to the barn to wait so that I wouldn’t run into my father if he wandered through for breakfast and watched the foal play out in the paddock with Bandit. Chantilly was grazing but I could tell that she was keeping a close eye on the two of them. She was a good mother and an even better babysitter and I was so thankful that we’d found her.

  Mickey had put up a flyer on the board outside the office. She’d decorated it with tiny stickers of foals and put glitter all over it and then she’d drawn a sign-up sheet so that people could name the foal. We already had three people put their choices down. I wasn’t sure how we were supposed to pick. Mickey had suggested putting all the names in a hat and then pulling out the winning one but I said that we could end up with anything that way. She said that I should just pick her name then and be done with it but since she hadn’t put hers down yet, I was worried that it would be something horrible like Sparkly Hooves or something.

  “Do you think you can be a good boy today?” I asked Socks.

  I rubbed his face and gave him a treat and then checked that his shipping and bell boots were secure. Then I left him to go and say goodbye to Bluebird.

  “You’re not going to do anything stupid while I’m gone, right?” I said.

  He sighed and I hugged his neck.

  “It’s so weird going without you,” I said. “I’m going to miss you so much. Next time it will be you and me, I promise.”

  But it was a promise that I didn’t know if I could keep or not. If the selection team liked the way Socks and I went together then maybe they wouldn’t let me switch back to Bluebird when he was jumping again. Maybe if I got picked for the team it would be on the condition that I only rode Socks. After all they probably didn’t want their team looking all stupid and being laughed at if we showed up at all these important shows with a pony on our team.

  I slid Bluebird’s door closed with a sigh of my own and stood there watching him until Missy called out that it was time to go. I knew I was only going to be gone one night and that I would be back the next day but leaving him after he’d been so sick was wrenching my heart in two and I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit.

  “You’ll take care of Bluebird while I’m gone, won’t you?” I asked Missy.

  “Of course I will,” she said, putting her arm around me. “Now come on, you have to put your game face on. Are you ready to go and kick some butts?”

  “I guess so,” I said, laughing at the fact that Missy said butts.

  “Good, let’s get this show on the road then,” she said.

  CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

  Missy made the ride fun. We picked up pumpkin spice lattes and bagels on the way there and Missy told me all about the different shows she’d ridden Socks at. It was almost like she was reliving her childhood through me. She said she was picked for the Junior Olympic team on a horse called Fracture and they’d won silver at the team games. And she said that there was no way that they wouldn’t pick me. She said I was a sure thing. I wasn’t so sure. I knew that Bluebird and I were an unbeatable team and lately Socks and I had done really well but he wasn’t my heart pony. He wasn’t even my horse. I longed for those pricked chestnut ears and that happy face with the cheeky blaze. But I loved Socks too and I knew that if we were going to do well at all then I was going to have to trust him.

  “What am I supposed to do about Jess?” I asked Missy as we pulled in through wrought iron gates and followed a palm tree lined drive down to the barn.

  “Ignore her,” Missy said.

  “That is going to be kind of hard if we end up being team mates,” I said. “And considering she poisoned my pony.”

  Missy parked the trailer and looked at me.

  “You have to let that go,” she said.

  “How can I let it go?” I said. “It’s the whole reason Bluebird isn’t here. It’s why I almost didn’t make the team.”

  “You have to let it go because if you don’t, it could destroy you. Don’t give Jess the power to take away your future. Promise me.”

  “I promise,” I said.

  But I had my fingers crossed behind my back where Missy couldn’t see them. There was no way I was going to let the fact that Jess had poisoned my pony slide. I was going to find proof, get her to admit what she’d done and then I’d make sure she told everyone else what she’d done too so that they could all see her for the fraud she really was.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  We unloaded Socks, who came out of the trailer looking all puffed up and full of himself, looked around and then deflated a little when he realized that he wasn’t at a show.

  “Don’t worry,” I told him. “You’ll still get a chance to show off.”

  “You here for the clinic?” a groom asked as he walked by with a muck tub.

  I nodded, feeling nervous for the first time.

  “You’re all in that barn over there.”

  He pointed to a small barn that was fenced and surrounded by small paddocks. It looked like a quarantine barn, separate from the large sprawling building that was the main barn. Peeking inside I could just see the soft velvet noses of horses as they looked at Socks and I longed to go in there and visit with horses that were worth more than the house we lived in but I knew that I couldn’t act like some horse crazy kid. I had to act professional.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Nice place,” Missy said with a whistle as we walked over.

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  There were two rings with jumps and a grass field with a big, intimidating course set up in it.

  “You don’t think they’ll have us jumping that, do you?” I whispered to Missy, pointing at the jumps.

 
; “They may,” she said with a grin.

  “That would be so awesome,” I replied with a bigger grin.

  Our barn had its own groom who checked us in, looking over our paperwork and having us sign forms that basically said that if anything happened to me or Socks, it wasn’t their fault. Socks got a stall on the end next to Andy’s horse Mousse who was already here. They sniffed noses through the bars and squealed. Valor was in the biggest stall at the other end. I wondered what Jess had done to get the best stall but I didn’t really care. At least she was as far away from me as possible.

  “So I’ll pick you up tomorrow at three,” Missy said.

  “Okay,” I replied, walking outside with her.

  It felt like I was being dropped off at boot camp. A boot camp where if you failed, your life might as well be over.

  “Don’t do anything stupid,” Missy said again. “Just concentrate on your riding like you did at the last show. The only way to beat Jess is by riding better than her. Forget her silly games. You don’t need to stoop to her level.”

  “I know,” I said.

  But I still wasn’t ready to let it go.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  “You’re here!” Andy dashed forward and hugged me. “I didn’t know you were coming.”

  “Neither did I,” I said. “They sent a letter. I guess they felt sorry for me.”

  “Not really fair though, if you didn’t qualify, is it?”

  A tall thin girl with brown hair and glasses walked past, glaring at me like I was chewing gum that she’d found on the bottom of her shoe.

  “That is Bridget,” Andy said, looping his arm through mine. “Just ignore her.”