Pony Jumpers 9- Nine Lives Page 9

  “Sorry.”

  I looked across at Anders, checking whether he was serious. He was staring straight ahead at the open green space.

  “I’m not trying to take it out on you,” he said slowly. “I’m just…”

  “I know.” I reached across to pat him sympathetically on the knee, then hovered my hand over his strapped leg.

  “Don’t you dare.” He swatted my hand away, then broke into the wide, familiar smile that had been absent for too long. I grinned back at him, relieved to have a reminder that the brother I knew was still in there, somewhere.

  “Apology accepted, by the way.”

  “Thanks.” He ran a hand through his thick blonde hair. “So how’s Scud treating you?”

  I shrugged. “Fine. Why?”

  “Thought I’d better check. Especially now that I can’t beat him up if he doesn’t.”

  “Were you planning to before?” I asked.

  “Hoping I wouldn’t have to. Still hoping that, actually.”

  “Well I appreciate the intent, I guess,” I replied. “Guarding my honour and all that, but you don’t need to worry. We’re all good.”

  Anders nodded, then reached for his crutches. “Well, since we’re here, I guess we should keep moving.”

  I clapped him on his broad shoulder. “That’s the spirit.”

  Dax leapt to his feet as we stood up, and I unclipped his lead again and grabbed a stick off the ground, then hiffed it across the grass. He took off in pursuit, running in front of an approaching cyclist and forcing them to brake hard to avoid crashing into him.

  “Sorry!”

  The young woman on the bike glared at me as she came to a stop, then looked at Anders as he spoke up.

  “We keep telling him to look both ways, before he crosses, but he’s a slow learner,” Anders said, and I watched her expression change as he smiled at her. His charm was suddenly back, and in full effect.

  “That’s okay,” the girl said, flicking her long ponytail over her shoulder. “He’s a gorgeous dog.”

  She wasn’t even looking at Dax when she said that, and I snorted at the obviousness of what she really meant. Her cheeks reddened, and she pushed off and started cycling away as Anders hit me on the ankle with one of his crutches.

  “Some wingman you are.”

  “I’m your sister,” I reminded him. “I’m not here to help you pick up girls. That’s Dax’s job.”

  We both looked over at the dog, who was loping back towards us with the stick in his mouth, plus two more he’d collected for good measure.

  “Overachiever,” I told Dax as he dropped all three at our feet.

  Anders leaned down and picked up the biggest stick, then pulled his arm back and threw it. Even standing on one leg, his throw went nearly twice as far as mine had, and Dax shot off in happy pursuit.

  “Serious question?”

  Anders gave me a wary side-eye. “Shoot.”

  “Do you really think you could beat Harry up?”

  His eyes widened at the insult. “Did you seriously just ask me that?”

  “Bro, I love you, but you’re not exactly Joseph Parker.”

  “Neither is Harry,” Anders pointed out as Dax returned with his slobbery stick. “Besides, you’re forgetting one very important detail.”

  “Oh yeah? What’s that?”

  Anders threw the stick again. “You’ve got two brothers.”

  “Two against one? Sounds fair?”

  Anders shrugged. “Hey, if he deserves it, he gets it.”

  My phone buzzed in my pocket, and I pulled it out and checked the message. “Speaking of other brothers,” I said, then read out Aidan’s text. meet u at st helens sports field in 20min

  I relayed the information to Anders, who threw Dax’s stick one more time before we started up the road. We walked in silence past the cemetery, but it was a companionable quietness now. I was glad Mum had made Anders come along after all, and just hoped that he could keep up this good mood. I clipped Dax’s leash back up as we left the gardens, and he immediately started dragging me over to things he wanted to smell.

  “Dog, you’re worse than Tori,” I muttered, my thoughts sliding back to her effortlessly. I wanted to figure that horse out so badly. It was like a nagging itch just out of my reach.

  We paused at the side of the road, waiting for the traffic to ease. Then Anders spoke again, his voice measured.

  “If I lent you some money,” he said. “Not all of it, because I don’t have it, but let’s say, a thousand bucks. How soon could you pay me back?”

  My heart bounced. “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “As soon as I could.”

  “That’s not very specific, AJ.”

  “Well, I don’t have a job,” I pointed out.

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “When I sell Squib, I’ll have lots of money,” I said. “He’ll be a superstar by then, and worth thirty grand at least.” Anders raised an eyebrow sceptically. “He will! I could sell him for nearly that already, but I want to keep him until I age out.”

  “Which is when?”

  “This time next year,” I said sadly as we crossed the road. “Stupid birthday couldn’t be conveniently in October like Katy’s. No, I had to be born in February.”

  “Nothing wrong with being born in February.”

  “There is when it means you’ll be seventeen six months before the next season starts. ‘Competitors will be eligible to take part in pony competitions as pony riders until the end of the season during which they reach the age of seventeen’,” I quoted. “That’s from the rulebook. The season being from 1 August until 31 July the following year, which means that Katy gets another whole season on ponies compared to what I do.”

  We reached the footpath on the other side, and Anders swung himself up onto it. “Poor you.”

  “I know.”

  “On the bright side though,” he said. “You’ll be able to pay me back that much sooner.”

  I elbowed his arm, and he almost stumbled on his crutches.

  “Watch it.”

  “Sorry.”

  He looked over at me, and a mischievous smile crossed his face. “You will be.”

  We walked towards the sports field, where a group of girls in shorts and tanks were standing in a huddle, hands outstretched into the middle of their circle. As we approached, they yelled something and threw their arms into the air. I could practically hear Anders rolling his eyes.

  “St Helen’s cheerleading squad?” I suggested, but as the girls peeled apart and started jogging to various positions on the field, it became evident that I was wrong.

  “Girls’ rugby, by the look of it,” he said.

  One of the girls kicked the ball downfield to where another girl caught it. She ran forward, dodged two tackles, then passed the ball in-field to a support player, who dropped it.

  “I didn’t think they played rugby at St Helen’s,” I said.

  “I’m pretty sure that whatever that is, it’s not rugby,” Anders said as the girl tried to pick the ball up and tripped over it instead. “They need to sack their coach.”

  I was looking around. “I don’t think they’ve got one.”

  I certainly couldn’t see anyone in the vicinity who looked like they were coaching, and although one or two of the girls seemed to be giving orders, half of the team were either confused or not listening.

  We sat down under the trees to watch them while we waited for Aidan, and Anders continued to entertain himself by pointing out how terrible the girls were. It wasn’t long before one of them attempted a crosskick downfield that went majorly astray, bouncing awkwardly across the grass towards us and stopping a couple of metres away.

  I stood up and grabbed the ball as a girl in a hot pink t-shirt came jogging over to me, her long plait swinging between her shoulder blades. She looked like she’d crumple into a heap if anyone tried to tackle her, and I wondered how long she’d last in an actual rugby game.

  I dropped
the ball onto my foot and punted it back to her. To her credit, she caught it easily, even though I’d kicked it a bit harder and wider than I’d intended. Anders’s disparaging snort next to me proved that he’d noticed my inaccuracy.

  “Call that a kick?”

  “Shut up.”

  “How many times have I told you? Head and shoulders,” he lectured.

  “Yeah, yeah.” I rolled my eyes at him, but the girl was still standing there, tossing the ball from hand to hand and listening intently.

  “What d’you mean, head and shoulders?” she asked my brother.

  “Over the ball, when you drop it onto your foot,” Anders told her. “Otherwise you’re leaning back and the ball won’t go where you want it to. As AJ just demonstrated.”

  I leaned down, picked up an acorn off the ground and threw it at Anders’s head. He saw it coming and caught it in one hand, then flicked it deftly back at me. I jumped out of its trajectory, and it hit Dax on the ear, making him yelp.

  “No wonder he doesn’t like you,” I told Anders, who scoffed.

  “He loves me. C’mere, Dax.” The big dog crawled towards my brother, then rolled over for a tummy scratch. “There’s a good dog.”

  I shook my head. “A pathetic dog is what he is.”

  The girl with the rugby ball was still there, holding it out at arm’s length and going through the motions of kicking it, clearly thinking about her head and shoulder placement.

  “Give it a go,” Anders encouraged her, motioning her to turn around and kick it back downfield. She pivoted, lined up one of her teammates who was watching, then executed a decent spiral punt downfield.

  “Not bad,” Anders told her. “Point your toe more next time.”

  “I will. Thanks.” She looked over at her team, then back at Anders. “You know, we’re looking for a coach right now.”

  “You need one,” he told her bluntly.

  The girl’s eyes chin lifted defiantly. “Hey, we know that we suck, but we’re keen to learn. Our coach quit last week, and none of us know enough to take over training, so we’re just kind of fumbling through.”

  “The stars have aligned,” I declared before my brother could get another word in. “Anders is desperately in need of a hobby, and he can definitely help you out.”

  “No I can’t,” he said, but I hadn’t missed the spark of interest in his eyes. “I’m not a coach, and I can hardly even walk right now, let alone run them through drills.”

  The girl seemed unfazed by his reluctance. “But you could tell us what to do, right? We don’t even know any drills. We had to fight to get the school to let us even start up a team, and if we totally suck, they’ll disband it before we even have a chance to play a single match. Please?” She smiled at him, and her eyelashes fluttered for good measure. “We just need some direction, that’s all.”

  “Well that’s a coincidence,” I said with a grin. “So does Anders.”

  8

  HELP

  Tori was standing near the front of her box and eyeing me suspiciously when I arrived at Katy’s early that afternoon.

  “Hey, Tor. How’re you doing?” I leaned over the door and looked at her bandaged hind leg, noting with relief that she was bearing weight on it. “You wouldn’t do that if it hurt, right?”

  Tori just tossed her head at me, then went to the feed bin in the corner and stuck her nose in it.

  “I get it,” I told her. “But it’s not dinner time yet. First I have to muck out the paddocks.”

  The day was already warm, and only getting hotter as it went along, but the poo wasn’t going to pick itself up, so I grabbed a wheelbarrow and a pair of rubber gloves. Nobody liked mucking out, but it was a necessary chore when you had several horses in smallish paddocks. Squib saw me coming, but didn’t move out of the shade of the tree in his paddock.

  “Fair call,” I told him, pushing the wheelbarrow across the lumps of dirt that his hooves had churned up when he was feeling lively. “I’d be standing in the shade too, given the choice. But you’ve got some work to do later, so enjoy the rest while you can.”

  An hour later, I was done. Sweat prickled my skin as I pushed the last wheelbarrow of manure around to the back of the barn and tipped it onto the muck heap. My sprained finger was throbbing, so I went into the tack room and taped it more firmly to its neighbour with some green insulation tape that I found in Katy’s grooming box. I needed to give my hand a rest before I tried riding Squib, and I looked around for something else to do.

  A thud from Tori’s stable got my attention, and I picked up the grooming box and carried it out to her. She’d allowed me to sponge her off yesterday, but would she let me brush her over today? Only one way to find out.

  “Time to make you beautiful,” I told the black mare. “Well, more beautifuller. Don’t look at me like that. It’s a real word.” Tori snorted, and looked away as I slid the bolt back and pulled the door open, then stepped into her loosebox. “What would you know about it? You don’t even speak English.”

  Tori was facing away from me, and her long black tail swished ominously as I approached her.

  “Hey, you.” Her head was low, her muzzle less than a foot from the floor, and she was staring intently at something. “What’cha looking at?”

  As I crossed the loosebox, a swallow swooped low over my head, twittering furiously. I glanced up as it flew into the mud nest it had made on the wall under the eaves then perched on the edge for a second before swooping low again over Tori’s back.

  Her skin twitched, but she was focused on the ground in front of her. She looked at me, then stamped a front hoof and dropped her head down again.

  “What’cha looking at?” I asked, looking down at the fluffy bedding. “There’s nothing down there…oh.”

  I was wrong. There was a tiny baby bird, barely fledged, sitting in the shavings and cheeping pathetically.

  “Did you fall out of the nest?” I asked the bird, glancing up again at the mud nest overhead. “Poor wee thing.”

  I reached down, carefully picking up the tiny bird and cupping it in my hands. Tori’s muzzle brushed against my shoulder, and I braced myself for her teeth, but she was calm, breathing softly on the tiny bird. I looked up at the high nest, wondering how I was going to get the fledgling back up there without a ladder. The wooden partitions between each loosebox were about the height of my chest, so if I could stand up on one and reach above my head, I might just be able to reach the nest and shove the bird back in. I figured it was worth a shot, so I set the tiny bird in the manger while I scrambled up onto the partition. Tori showed some alarm at my sudden increase in height when I stood up, but I spoke softly to her as I walked along the narrow divider to the back wall, the bird cradled in my injured hand. I stood on tiptoe, the baby bird clutched precariously in my grip, but I couldn’t quite reach the nest.

  “Sorry kid,” I told the bird, lowering my arm and looking back down at it. It flapped its wings feebly at me. “You’re lucky that Tori didn’t already squash you into her bedding, you know. If you’d been a saddle, you’d have been destroyed by now.”

  My eyes travelled to Tori as I spoke, and I realised that she had come a bit closer, and was still watching me, her ears swivelled forward. There was something in her expression that made me determined to try again.

  “I’m going to have to jump,” I warned them both. I could hear the little fledgling’s family tweeting at it as I reached up and grabbed an angled support beam with my left hand, then jumped as high as I could, using the beam to pull myself up. I didn’t exactly deposit the baby swallow gently into its nest – chances are good that it fell in head first and landed on its siblings – but I did manage to get it in there without dropping it, or destroying the nest, or falling off the partition and landing under Tori’s hooves. Mission accomplished.

  With a sigh of relief, I turned around carefully and sat down on the narrow wall, my feet dangling into Tori’s stable.

  “Well, that was exciting,” I
told her.

  Tori was looking up at the nest, watching the adult swallow dive into it, chirping loudly. Then she turned and looked at me again, and I know it sounds crazy, but I swear she understood what I’d done. Maybe I was attributing a level of emotion and comprehension to her that she wasn’t capable of, but that’s how I saw it. It definitely felt real in that moment.

  I jumped down, landing softly on the deep bed of shavings. “Now, are you ready for me to give you a nice brush down?”

  Tori still didn’t like being groomed under her belly and across her flanks, still snatched her hooves out of my hands when I tried to pick her feet, and repeatedly swished her tail out of my hand when I brushed it out, but once I had her out of her stable, she walked alongside me without trying to yank the rope out of my hands, and munched contentedly on the long grass between the apple trees. I leaned against the fence and picked dandelions, threading them into a long chain which I draped across her shoulders as she grazed.

  “Maybe some day you’ll win a real one,” I told her, imagining a wide garland of flowers around her neck. Tori blew out through her nostrils, and I smiled and ran a gentle hand down her shoulder. “It’ll work out in the end,” I promised her. “You’ll see.”

  I spent the rest of the afternoon riding. First I attempted to school Squib, but he was a total pain in the neck because I had to ride him in his old Wintec, which no longer fit him properly – a fact he made sure I was well aware of. I rode Molly next, intending for her good schooling to provide a pleasant countermeasure to Squib’s wilfulness, but my injured hand made my contact on the reins slightly uneven, and Molly became increasingly fidgety and upset as we went along. I hacked Robin down the road, resting my injured hand against my thigh as we trotted along, dodging the overgrown gorse and snagging blackberry that extended onto the wide grass verge.

  I saved the best for last, and true to form, Lucas was a dream. I cradled my aching hand against my stomach as we cantered along the tracks that wound along the bottom of the rolling hills, his hooves thudding rhythmically across the hard, summer-baked ground.