Show Days (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 32) Read online

  “It is your color,” I said, trying to pretend that I knew what I was talking about when really I was as clueless about makeup as my mother had been about horses.

  When we were done, Shelby looked just like any of the other riders walking around. You never would have known that she was just a working student. She could have had an expensive horse in one of the stalls and a rich family backing her. No one would be able to tell any different.

  “Now, what do I say?” Shelby said, adjusting her stock tie like it was strangling her.

  “Just tell her how amazing she is,” I said. “That’s all anyone at this show wants to hear.”

  “And you’re sure this will work?” she said.

  “Of course,” I replied, shoving her gently in the direction of the other tents.

  But really I had no idea if it was going to work at all. The new Missy was temperamental and maybe she didn’t even want to waste time wooing new clients like Rae had to do. After all, she had them lined up to ride with her as it was.

  “Good luck,” I said.

  Shelby just rolled her eyes.

  CHAPTER FORTY ONE

  I kept my distance, following behind Shelby as she made her way across the show grounds. I knew that this whole thing was stupid. If I was an adult I would have just walked up to Missy and asked her how she was and which classes she was riding in. Been polite and mature. But Missy wasn’t mature when she took Socks back just to hurt me and she certainly wasn’t mature when she got my father and me kicked out of Fox Run. It still stung and I wasn’t an adult. I was a fifteen-year-old girl with all the raging emotions to prove it. I was allowed a little leeway to act immature. She wasn’t. Besides, I knew she never tell me if I flat out asked her.

  Shelby stopped by the tack shop trailer and bought a bag of elastic bands for braiding. I’d given her the money. It wasn’t much but the bag she now carried made it looked like she had money to throw around. Everyone knew that the tack shop at the show had jacked up the prices because they knew you needed it right then and there and you couldn’t go anywhere else. Only desperate people and rich people shopped there. It made Shelby look like a legitimate prospective client. At least I hoped that it did.

  Fox Run had a modest set up at one of the back tents. They were further away from the action than we were but they had more stuff. Missy was sitting in a monogrammed folding chair with her feet propped up on a wooden table. Henry was bustling about behind her, tending to whatever horses they had brought. I hung back knowing that if either of them caught a glimpse of me it was over. Instead I hid behind a power pole and a large bush, leaning out only far enough to see but not able to hear, which was really frustrating.

  Shelby looked the part though. She waltzed up to Missy, swinging her bag from the tack store, looking all casual and hip. I guess she’d seen enough of Rae’s clients to know how to play the part and she was playing it well, smiling and flipping her braid and acting like maybe she had more money than she knew what to do with. I watched Missy run her eyes over Shelby, weighing up if she was a worthy client or not and for a moment I thought it wasn’t going to work,

  Missy looked bored. I thought she wasn’t going to take the bait. But then Shelby said something. I couldn’t hear what it was but Missy’s eyes lit up like someone had just told her she’d won the lottery. She jumped to her feet and stuck her hand out to shake Shelby’s. Then she put her arm around the girl and walked her into their barn.

  I slumped against the pole feeling relief wash over me. It had worked. I knew now that Shelby would get the information I needed to beat Missy. But I also felt a little sick because now it meant that I would actually have to beat her.

  CHAPTER FORTY TWO

  “Don’t ever make me do that again,” Shelby said.

  It was half an hour later and she’d finally appeared looking worn out. I’d had to go back to our stalls to cover for the fact that she was taking so long. Julio was already annoyed that we’d both disappeared. I told him that Shelby was in the bathroom and that she wasn’t feeling well and that he should be more considerate of girls when they were sick. That made his face turn red and stopped him from asking any more questions. I just hoped that Shelby would never find out that I’d told him that because she would kill me.

  “Are you okay?” I asked her.

  “You didn’t tell me that Missy is a psycho,” she replied.

  I bought her an ice cream and one for myself, hers strawberry, mine mint chocolate chip and we were sitting in the shade by one of the rings watching little girls on ponies crash their way around a course of small jumps. Julio had told us to take a half hour break. Shelby looked at him like he was crazy. I dragged her away before she could question him.

  “She didn’t used to be psycho,” I said. “But I have heard rumors.”

  I didn’t add that I’d also seen her psycho act first hand.

  “Well she’s psycho now. I was kind of scared of her and I was pretending that I wanted to ride with her. I can only imagine what she’d be like if she found out what I was really up to.” Shelby sighed.

  “Don’t worry,” I said. “She won’t. Now what did she say? Did you find out what classes she is riding in?”

  “Not all of them,” she said. “But she’s riding Socks in the big speed class tomorrow.”

  “Good,” I said.

  That was a class that I knew Bluebird could handle. I was worried that Missy would have entered him in the big Grand Prix at the end of the show, the class that Rae and Infanta were hoping to win. I knew my pony was good but he had his limitations and taking on world class horses in a big Grand Prix was a little above him. At least at the moment anyway.

  “What else?” I said.

  “Well she went on and on about this new horse that she has. I think she was trying to sell him to me,” Shelby said. “She also seemed really interested in who I was riding with.”

  “What did you tell her?”

  “That I was in-between trainers, which was why I was thinking about going with her,” Shelby licked her ice cream and it dribbled down her chin. They were melting faster than we could eat them in the heat.

  “Who else was there?” I said. “I saw Henry. He’s the head groom.”

  “I don’t know.” Shelby shrugged. “A few girls, a woman with black hair. Some guy.”

  “Some guy?” I said, my voice catching in my throat. “What guy?”

  “Some other trainer guy I guess but I think they were together because she kept touching him and it wasn’t in a way that you’d touch someone unless you were involved with them. Not unless you wanted a sexual harassment lawsuit.”

  The top of my ice cream fell off. I watched the minty green ball roll along the grass and come to a stop in a patch of sand. Missy was involved with someone else. She’d moved on from my father. I couldn’t exactly blame her. My father had ditched her for my mother but he’d only been helping her. They weren’t romantic or anything like that. They’d slept in separate bedrooms. But Missy was young and pretty. Why wouldn’t she move on and find someone else. I couldn’t blame her for that and yet I did. I resented this new guy who’d turned Missy into someone else. That had to be the reason why she was so different. I hated him already.

  “Are you okay?” Shelby said.

  “Yeah,” I replied. “I’m fine.”

  But my teeth were clenched so tight that my jaw hurt. I couldn’t believe that Missy would just replace us like that. I guess deep down I’d hoped that now my mother had vanished, things could go back to the way they were. My dad would apologize to Missy and she’d take him back with open arms. We’d be able to move back to Fox Run and never have to worry about having enough money for the feed bill again. We’d have stalls for all our horses and Missy would let me ride Socks. Mickey and I would be best friends just like the old days and it would be great. Only now it wouldn’t. Part of me knew that expecting Missy to take my father back was a stretch but I’d clung to that small shred of hope, even after we’d had tha
t fight at Fox Run. Now it was final. The last shred scrapped. They were never getting back together and I had to face that once and for all.

  CHAPTER FORTY THREE

  The rest of the day was spent catering to restless horses and nervous clients. This show was the biggest we’d been to and everyone was on edge. I hoped that Missy was on edge too but I doubted it. She seemed to have found her confidence again and now I knew why. The mystery guy. Of course she hadn’t got over her lost nerve all by herself. She’d had help. I don’t know why I hadn’t seen it before.

  I tried to forget about Missy and Socks by throwing myself into the work. I cleaned stalls and scrubbed buckets like my life depended on it, leaving a trail of jobs well done in my wake. Even Julio complimented me. He complimented Shelby too, even though she’d only done about half the work I’d done. She looked at me and raised an eyebrow. I just smiled since I couldn’t tell her why he was being so nice to her.

  That evening I took my pony out to one of the smaller warm up rings. I’d waited until the Fox Run truck left the show grounds. Missy hadn’t been driving, the guy had been behind the wheel but she was sitting next to him, the air conditioning blowing her hair and she was laughing at something he had said. I was glad that my father wasn’t here to see. I knew that it would hurt him more than it would hurt me. Or maybe it wouldn’t. For all I knew he’d moved on and I was the only one who was living in a dream world, imagining that they’d get back together and we’d all be this one big happy family again.

  Bluebird seemed tired. I knew that the trailer ride had taken it out of him. Doing anything in this heat was like trying to walk underwater. The air was so thick and muggy you could cut through it with a knife.

  We rode around for a while but neither of us was bothered about actually doing anything that was more than a lazy trot. I let my chestnut pony stretch his head down and sniff the manure of the other horses while my mind drifted to Socks. If he’d just come here, he would be fresh and ready to go. Bluebird was ready to go home. I thought we had it in us to beat them. Now I wasn’t so sure. I gave my pony a bath and put him away, feeling a lot more defeated than I’d expected to be.

  CHAPTER FORTY FOUR

  That night Shelby and I slept in the trailer. Well, she slept while I tossed and turned on the hard couch, my legs tucked under me so that I would fit, going numb so that I had to keep shifting my position. But I’d told Shelby she could have the bed because I owed her. She said we could share but I knew that her hitting me in the face every five seconds would be just as bad as trying to sleep on the bench. I longed for the bunk beds back at the little farm but now that memory was clouded by what had happened to Rocket. I wondered if Jessica had been back to visit his grave or if he was just a memory for her now too.

  I slipped out of the trailer around five in the morning. Shelby was still snoring but I let her sleep. The grounds were already busing with sleepy grooms yawning as they moved around the tent stalls with their buckets and pitchforks. Some looked like they were still in their pajamas. I was pretty sure Rae wouldn’t go for that. Julio wouldn’t either. He grunted a good morning as I fell in beside him, tossing hay as he dumped the grain. It felt familiar now, the work that we did every day. I didn’t have to think about it anymore. I instinctively knew what to do.

  “Julio,” I said as we stood in the dark drinking coffee from his flask while we waited for the horses to eat their breakfast. “Can I ask you a question?”

  “I guess,” he said. “You might not like my answer though.”

  I figured as much. Julio was brutally honest. He’d tell you the truth no matter what. I kind of liked that about him.

  “If you were good friends with someone, like almost family and they did something horrible to you, would you forgive them?” I asked him.

  He stood there for a moment, sipping his coffee. I could tell he was thinking about what I’d said.

  “Where I come from,” he said. “If someone betrayed my family, they would get taken out back and shot.”

  “For real?” I said.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  “So that is a no then,” I tried again.

  “Forgiveness isn’t about the other person,” he said. “It’s about you, pulling the festering poison from your own wounds and closing them so that they can’t hurt you anymore.”

  Julio was smarter than he looked and I think he was right. Forgiving Missy would probably help me in the long run but for right now, beating her would make me feel a whole lot better.

  CHAPTER FORTY FIVE

  “You didn’t wake me,” Shelby said when she finally appeared at eight o’clock. “Julio must be furious.”

  I was buckling Infanta’s front boots, the mare standing quietly tied in her stall because there were no cross ties here. You couldn’t take up the whole aisle when someone else might want to get through.

  “He’s okay with it,” I said, tucking the supple leather through the loops.

  “He’s okay with it?” she said. “Why, is he sick or something?”

  “No but I think he thinks you are so you might as well milk it while you can,” I said with a smile.

  “Why would he think I’m sick?” she said.

  “Just say thank you and enjoy your lazy day,” I told her.

  Shelby frowned and then shrugged. The work was hard and we didn’t get any real days off. A lazy day was not something a working student ever got. I think I’d just paid back my favor.

  Rae took Infanta out to the ring for a schooling session, I watched her from the end of the barn as she guided the pretty gray mare over some of the jumps. Infanta was clean and careful, twisting herself over the fences in the weird way only she could. But she was effective and had more energy than my pony did. I’d given him alfalfa for breakfast to help pump him up. I hoped that I wouldn’t live to regret it.

  I’d managed to talk to Rae when I handed off Infanta to her. She’d agreed to let me enter Bluebird in the big speed class. That meant we had one day to get ready and I knew that really it wasn’t enough time. It wasn’t enough time at all.

  CHAPTER FORTY SIX

  I was hoping that I wouldn’t run into Missy at all. That the first time she’d see me was when I rode into the ring, riding in the same class that she was in but of course that would have been how it played out in a book or a movie and this was real life. Missy didn’t stand there shocked and awed as I wowed her with my fantastic riding. Instead she stumbled across me as I was getting carted across the show grounds by one of the horses, a feisty chestnut mare with a fiery temperament to match. I was supposed to be taking her for a hand walk but walk was the last thing the mare had in mind. She’d just barreled through a group of giggling girls, who weren’t laughing anymore once we’d scattered them like bowling pins and then we ran straight into Missy.

  “Watch it,” she yelped, spinning around and rubbing the back of her heel where the mare had stepped on her.

  Her face flashed with something, recognition and a taste of something else. Remorse? Regret? Did she really miss me like I missed her? But then her mask slipped back into place and now she just looked angry again.

  “Oh, it’s you,” she said. “What are you doing here?”

  “Working,” I said, not giving her any more information than I had to. “What are you doing here?”

  “Riding,” she said.

  We were both as smart mouthed as each other. No wonder we’d got along so well back when we’d been living together. She was like a big sister. A big, smart mouthed sister who now hated me.

  “So, I hear you have a new boyfriend,” I said.

  I wasn’t going to say anything, I was going to hold all the cards as close to my chest as possible and not let her get to me but the words just came spilling out before I could stop them.

  “Yes well we can’t all be alone forever,” she said.

  I wasn’t sure if she was referring to me or my father. For a moment I wanted to tell her that Jordan had kissed me. Back when she ca
red about me, she was the one who encouraged me to go out with him. Who talked my father into letting me go on a date when I think he would have liked to have kept me cooped up until I was eighteen. But this time I bit my tongue. I wasn’t going to tell her anything.

  “I bet you are well suited to each other,” I said. “Is he a backstabber too?”

  Before she could reply, I walked off, the mare prancing at my side and my heart pounding in my chest. I wasn’t sure where I’d got the nerve or the cheek from and I knew that if my father could have heard me, he would have said that I behaved very badly but I didn’t care. I had to say what I felt and I wasn’t about to tiptoe around Missy’s feelings when she’d stomped all over my own.

  “I can’t wait until we beat her tomorrow,” I whispered to Bluebird when I slipped into his stall later.

  He nudged my pockets, looking for a treat and I gave him one of the good ones that Rae seemed to have an endless supply of. The expensive, freeze dried treats with oats and molasses. Bluebird was already addicted.

  “Don’t get any ideas about getting all this fancy stuff when we go home,” I told him. “Because you know it won’t be like this.”

  But I longed for home like I longed for the cooler weather. I didn’t care that our farm was old and falling down. I just needed to be back there. I missed it so much that when I thought about it, my heart actually hurt. But I couldn’t fall apart now. I’d be going home soon enough. For now, I had to concentrate on beating Missy.

  That evening Rae gave me a lesson. I don’t think we did very well. She kept shaking her head and putting her hands on her hips. I’d put on my bigger spurs after the night before when Bluebird was so lazy that he wouldn’t even move off my leg but now he thought that he was a racehorse. I suspected it had something to do with the alfalfa I’d been shoveling into him all day. He was high on life and jumping out of his skin.