Hot Potato (10 page)

Shelby rested the novel she was reading for English
against the pillow. She had been reading the same line
over and over – unable to concentrate.

Everyone else was probably getting ready for Pony
Club right now. There was an interclub gymkhana in
a few weeks. She'd probably miss that too. Maybe her
mum would drive her over to watch? Shelby doubted
it, now that her mum had assignments to do as well as
a part-time job and full-time family duties.

She imagined what Erin and Lindsey might do
without her supervision. They might sell Hotty to a
brutal cowboy for the rodeo circuit. She would be
called 'The Pocket Rocket' – a humorous curiosity
slotted in between other displays of cruelty and abuse.
Or they might give her away to some ignorant family –
tied in a back yard on the fringes of suburbia, between
the chicken pen and the Hills Hoist.

They might even send Hotty back to the Dog Man.
Shelby narrowed her eyes. Yes, Lindsey and the Dog
Man were
old
friends, weren't they?

Shelby could imagine the scene – poor little Hotty
trudging up the ramp of the rusty old cattle truck on
the way to her doom. The Dog Man slapping her
rump. 'Hurry up, Sausages!'

Erin would be saying, 'Shouldn't we wait? I'm sure
Shel would want to say goodbye.'

'Who?' from Lindsey.

'Shelby.'

'Oh,
her
.' Lindsey would shrug. 'I don't think she
knew Bess that well anyway.'

Erin nodding in agreement. 'You're right. That
horse always hated Shelby anyway. Remember how
she nearly killed her?
Twice!
'

Shelby threw her book against the wall. 'Stupid
zygomatic ridge,' she muttered.

And then there was Tammy's money. That was a
little time bomb she hadn't thought about all day. She
had to find a solution soon.

How could she be expected to lie here when there
was so much going on?

'Mum!' she shouted. 'I need a drink!'

'There's nothing wrong with your legs,' came the
reply from the other room.

'Jeez, you'd think the sympathy would last more
than a few hours,' Shelby growled under her breath as
she hauled herself to her feet.

In the bathroom Shelby looked at her reflection in
the mirror again. Her broken cheek had swollen to
twice the normal size. Her eye was puffy and black,
and her nose was a reddish purple. She could still see
the imprint of the hoof in small abrasions.

'You can actually
see
how much this hurts!' she
yelled. 'Don't you even care?'

'Since you're up, there's a full basket of washing in
the laundry that needs folding,' her mother called out.

Shelby dragged her feet all the way to the laundry
and began to fold the clothes. Although her face
wasn't hurting right at that minute she knew that it
would be if she hadn't taken a painkiller. And when
she really concentrated on how much it
should
hurt,
she did feel a bit dizzy.

'This is so unfair!' she said to no one.

There was Blue, too. She hadn't gone for a day
without seeing him for as long as she could remember.
She hoped they didn't expect her to give him up as
well. She wouldn't – no matter what the doctors said.

'You'd better drive me over there every day or
else!' She was pretty sure her mum wouldn't be able to
hear through the brick wall. 'Or else I'm going to be
so
mad!'

Speaking of tempers, she wondered what had
happened with Lindsey and her mum. What would she
say when Shelby couldn't come to work for five whole
weeks?

Then Shelby had a splendid idea.

* * *

'Mrs Edel said that since I can't work for five weeks
she'll need money for Blue's agistment. She said fifty
dollars would cover it,' Shelby told her mother, as she
hung up the phone. 'I can give it to her at the
barbecue tomorrow.'

'That sounds reasonable,' her mother replied, gathering
her handbag from the back of the dining room
chair and rummaging for her wallet.

'So I can go then?'

'We'll see how you feel tomorrow,' her mother
replied.

Shelby had, in fact, been talking to Erin and not
Mrs Edel, but her mother would never know. During
the conversation Erin had offered to stand in for her
at the stables until she was better.

'That would be so great. I owe you one,' Shelby
had said, with a twinge of guilt for the way she
imagined her friends earlier.

'You can be my slave for the rest of the year,' Erin
joked. 'Seriously though, you only broke your face
because you were trying to stop me from getting hurt,
so if you think about it, I'm the one who owes you.
When are you coming back?'

'The doctor says that I'm not supposed to go near
horses for four to five weeks, but only because they
might bump my face accidentally, so I'm sure it would
be OK if I just stood out of the way.'

'Yeah,' Erin agreed. 'You could just stay on the
other side of the fence. That would be all right.'

'And Blue has nice manners and he would never
bump me, so I don't think he counts.'

'Or Bandit,' Erin added. 'You'll have to come to
the barbecue tomorrow anyway. Everyone will be
there. I'm pretty sure that it's compulsory since you're
staff.'

'Definitely. So basically it means that I just can't go
in with the bad horses.'

Shelby was glad she had talked to Erin. It made
her realise that the dumb fracture was not going to be
a problem at all. One thing that Erin said did worry
her –
everyone will be there
. That meant Tammy too.
Tammy would never miss an opportunity to tell
everyone how she thought the stables should be run.

Shelby was going to have to find a way to get fifty
dollars back in Tammy's tack room before lunchtime
Sunday.

The only way Shelby could stay awake was to sit at
her desk. A few times she heard the squeaky board in
the hallway as her parents came to check on her. She
would jump into bed and pull up the covers before the
door opened.

At first she tried reading her English novel, but
then she switched to her dog-eared, chocolate-stained,
quarto edition of
The Complete Book of the Horse
.

The painkillers were making her extra drowsy and
so she passed the time writing a list of breeds alphabetically,
then by size, then by order in which she
intended to buy them when she was a grown-up.

Finally, she heard the television turn off and her
parents moving about in the bathroom, brushing their
teeth as they prepared for bed.

Shelby waited for ten minutes after her parents'
bedroom door closed and then left the house by the
laundry door at the back of the house. She collected
'Misty', her old bike, which she had stashed next to
the back gate earlier in the evening.

When she hit the colder air her face began to
ache. The painkiller was wearing off, but she didn't
want to take another one. She was groggy enough
already.

Shelby stood on the gutter in front of her house.
The front windows were dark and blank. She could
vaguely see her own reflection from the streetlight.

For a moment she felt a wave of uncertainty wash
over her. She'd gone out in the night without permission
before, and she'd been in trouble.

If she asked her parents they would say no. They
wouldn't understand why it couldn't wait until
tomorrow. She wondered if it was worth going. It
would be so much nicer to curl up under the doona.

Then she had a vision of the scene at the barbecue
when Tammy realised her money was gone.

The day would be perfect up until that moment.
Everyone would be sympathetic about her cheek, and
they'd tell her what a great job she had been doing
at the stables. They'd say things like, '
My horse has
better manners since you've been working here
,' or,
'
Our pony is so much easier to handle now.
'

She'd see a cute boy – someone's brother or cousin
who had been dragged along, and Shelby would find
him staring at her, but when she looked at him he'd
blush and turn away.

Shelby and Hayley Crook would accidentally wear
the same shirt. 'Twins!' Hayley would laugh, bumping
her hip against Shelby's.

Then a voice would shriek out across the arena,
halting all conversation, like a siren, or a car alarm.

'Thief! Thief!' she could hear Tammy scream,
pointing her finger. Everyone would turn to stare at
who she was accusing.

'No, it wasn't me!' Shelby would protest, but then
Mrs Edel would step forward. 'It's true. We put a
hidden camera in the tack room.'

Clint would roll out a big projector like they had
in the hall at school. He would point it towards the
back wall of the feed shed, and then everyone could
see the giant, grainy, black and white image of Shelby
taking the money, on repeat.

'I was going to put it back!' she'd announce, but it
would be too late. All the grown-ups would shake
their heads.

'It's always the quiet ones you've got to watch,'
Shelby could imagine Mrs Crook saying in a loud
voice. 'I knew she was sneaky. I never took my eye off
her for a second.'

Shelby would overhear the cute boy talking to
Erin, saying, 'So what happened to her head, anyway?
Did she walk into a bus or something? Freaky! I
couldn't stop staring at it all afternoon.'

Then when Erin giggled he'd say, 'Can I get you a
Coke or something?' and they'd walk off together.

Shelby shivered in the moist night air. She put her
hand in her pocket and squeezed the fifty-dollar note.
She'd ride over, put the money back where she found
it, and ride back again. No one would ever know.
Easy squeezy.

She cycled down the street, round the corner, past
the little strip of shops. Each bump jolted her face and
her bike was much too small for her, so she rode
standing suspended above the pedals. After a while
her calves ached as well.

It was too early for the baker. Shelby could see
the empty glass cabinets at the front of the shop. In
the newsagent the lights around the glass-fronted
fridges lit the display racks with a faint glow. She
rode on the footpath past the red post-box, the yellow
telephone booth and the dark blue charity bin, and
then over the gutter and onto the street again.

The bike swung from side to side as she pedalled
up the hill and around the bend past the sleeping
houses. At the intersection she thrust out her hand to
indicate she was turning, even though there was no
one to see it.

She still hadn't seen any cars, and she was glad.
She had visions of an evil stranger dragging her into a
van like she'd seen on
Law and Order
.

There were semitrailers thundering along Gully
Way, but none of them looked like they were going to
stop and kidnap her. The shoulder of the road was
smooth so Shelby sat on the seat.

She wasn't far away now. She wondered if she
should ride straight in, as though turning up in the
middle of the night was a normal thing to do, or
whether she should try to sneak in.

She could say that she was coming to visit Blue.
Shelby had often gone to visit him at night when he
lived just down the road – especially when he first
arrived. She would creep out and just sit in the
paddock with him watching him graze – not believing
he was really all hers.

If Mrs Edel caught her Shelby decided she would
act surprised.
'I thought you knew I came here at
night.'
But Mrs Edel might ring Shelby's mum before
she got a chance to get to the stables, and then it
would all be for nothing.

At the edge of the Edels' property she stopped and
dumped the bike in the long grass on the verge. The
fence here was electric as well as post and rail, so she
climbed through cautiously.

Shelby strolled across the paddock, with her hands
in her pockets, trying to look as casual as possible,
glad that she had chosen dark clothes.

There were two Arabians in this paddock and as
she approached they began to snort suspiciously.

'It's OK,' she said, holding out her hand.

The mare stretched her neck out as far as it
would go.

'That's right. You know me. I bring you hay. I
should be one of your favourite people.'

The mare snorted again and then skipped back,
spooking the gelding. They took flight – racing across
the paddock with their tails in the air, then spinning
around and galloping back. Shelby had never realised
how loud the drumming of hooves across the ground
could be.

She squatted down, hoping that they would calm
down, but she must have looked even more like a
predator than before.

One of the Arabs stopped still, nostrils flared, and
then let out an ear-splitting whinny. Somewhere
further inside the property a pony answered with
a shrill neigh, and then another and another, like a
Mexican wave.

In the next paddock a bald-faced quarter horse
started a high-stepping trot up and down the fence-line,
as if he were a sentry on duty.

Beyond him a pair of thoroughbreds thundered
around the perimeter of their paddock, bucking and
leaping. Somewhere in the stables a pair of hooves
kicked a wooden door with a thud. This started a
general rumble as horses moved around in their boxes.

'Oh, great,' Shelby groaned.

She sat down cross-legged and waited. They had to
stop eventually.

The two Arabs found her even more frightening
sitting down. One of them snorted like a bull, and
then danced around the other. Shelby stood up again
and walked closer holding out her hand.

The veranda light came on and then the flyscreen
door squeaked open. Shelby could see the shadow of
Mrs Edel pushing her feet into gumboots on the top
step. She had a torch and she swung it over the
paddock.

Shelby dropped down flat, her heart beating fast.
I'm allowed to be here
, she told herself, but inside she
knew no one would ever believe her made-up story.
She felt like a trespasser as well as a thief.

Shelby could see the torchlight move and shake as
Mrs Edel came across to the fence. She could hear her
boots crunching across the gravel driveway, and then
the chink of metal as she opened the gate latch.

If Mrs Edel caught her lying out here Shelby would
be so embarrassed. It would be horrifying if Mrs Edel
thought she was a bad influence on Lindsey. She could
imagine her talking with Mrs Crook:
'Do you
remember that terrible Shelby girl who used to come
around here? She was such a dreadful influence on our
girls.'

'I know! Some children are just born wicked.'

Shelby could hear the whispering sound of Mrs
Edel's boots brushing through the long grass towards
where she lay.

What should I do?
she thought, panicking.
I could
pretend to be asleep!
She lay on her back with her eyes
scrunched shut.
I'll say I sleepwalked. No, that's
dumb. Think, Shelby!

But she couldn't think of anything. The sound of
the boots stopped. Shelby held her breath, not daring
to open her eyes.

'You silly, silly girl!' Mrs Edel said.