Hot Potato (6 page)

'I think it's chiropractic,' Lindsey said. 'The chiropractor
is coming this week to look at Diablo anyway, so we
can ask her then.'

The three girls were in the riding school tack
room. Lindsey was sitting with the broken stock
saddle across her lap. Every now and then she ran her
hands across the cantle, as if stroking it would make it
magically mend.

The back wall was lined with saddle racks affixed
in rows. There must have been twenty-five saddles –
mostly stock saddles in a range of styles and sizes, but
there were also a few all-purpose saddles and ancient
dressage saddles. The side wall was studded with ushaped
metal bridle holders, labelled with a sticker for
each of the riding school horses. The whole room was
filled with the spicy sour smell of old sweat, leather
and oil.

'It's more than that,' Erin said. 'She went nuts! Did
you see her face, Shel? It's as if she hates you.'

'She doesn't hate me.' Shelby scowled. 'Maybe it
was just because that saddle didn't fit? It might have
been pinching her wither, or pressing. If she was sore
then she would have done that with anyone.'

Shelby was sitting on the doorsill with her feet on
the steps, making sure no one nearby could overhear
them. She could see the car park. Hayley Crook and
her mother climbed into their four-wheel drive and
headed down the driveway. Hayley waved and Shelby
raised her hand in return.

'You didn't see because you were on your bum,'
Erin continued. 'Lindsey and I saw the whole thing.
She charged at you! It looked like she wanted to kill
you! The minute you got on her she just wanted you
off.'

Shelby sulked. 'I rode her all the way up from the
back paddock, remember? Besides, she's fine with me
on the ground. It's not about
me
. She was the same
with all of us bareback. It was that saddle.'

After Shelby's fall the girls had agreed to stop for
the day. It would have been too tricky to get another
saddle, especially since Lindsey wasn't sure how long
her mother was going to be away. They'd put the pony
in the paddock and walked sombrely back to the
stables along the laneway together.

'What am I going to tell my mum?' Lindsey
groaned.

Shelby looked around at the racks on the walls.
'Are you sure she'll notice?'

'This is Hiccup's saddle.'

'Oh,' said Shelby.

Hiccup – Blue's friend – was a shaggy, round pony
with a sweet face. His stock saddle had been fitted
with an extra wide gullet to accommodate his broad
frame. Hiccup was a great favourite amongst the
regular customers. He was requested for almost all
trail rides.

'We have to get it to the saddler before the weekend,'
Lindsey said. 'He'll need a few days to fix it.'

'But you can't,' interrupted Shelby. 'He knows
your mum. What if he says something?'

'I'll take it,' said Erin. 'I'll pay for it, and that will
make me square for my share, OK?'

Lindsey nodded. 'Deal.'

'What are you going to say to your mum?' Shelby
asked.

Erin shrugged. 'Maybe I'll tell her the saddle was
Hayley's and Mrs Crook said I could have it, if I got
it fixed.'

'But your mum knows Mrs Crook. What if she
rings her to thank her for it? And won't she see that
saddle is too short for Bandit?'

Erin rubbed her eyes. 'I don't know! I'll make
something up.'

'What about later when you don't have it any
more? What will she say when it's missing?'

Erin sighed. 'I'll say it was stolen! Can you think
of a better idea, Shel?'

Shelby opened her mouth and closed it again.

'I didn't think so!'

The three girls sat quietly for a long time. The only
sound in the room was a blowfly buzzing around the
window frame and crashing into the glass.

Eventually Lindsey spoke. 'I don't even want to
think about what would happen if we got busted.
We're making up stuff all the time, and it's only going
to get worse, so it's important that we all tell each
other what we've said and stick to the same story. I
think it's time for us to decide what we're going to do
with her.'

Erin sat forward, lacing her fingers together. 'This
isn't as much fun as I thought it would be. I think we
should sell her.'

'Shelby?' Lindsey asked.

She folded her arms. It was obvious that Lindsey
was in favour of getting rid of Hotty too. She had been
from the very beginning. Shelby was sure that with a
little bit of effort Hotty would be a great pony that they
could all be proud of. There had to be some way to talk
their parents into letting them keep her. They just
needed some time to come up with a plan. Her only
hope was to prolong the sale for as long as possible.

'Whoever is going to buy her is going to want to
ride her when they come to look at her,' she answered.
'I think we should try a different saddle. If we're going
to make our money back, we can't have her bucking
like that.'

'Are you volunteering yours?' Lindsey asked.

Shelby considered for a moment. Her saddle was
ugly and old, and had suffered through all of her
adventures. It had been dragged along the ground,
rained on, stepped on – not to mention the normal
wear and tear from riding almost every day. She had
needed a new one for a long time, but she didn't have
a whole rack to choose from like Lindsey, or a sympathetic
mother like Erin. It was the only saddle she had.

Still, if she was going to talk the other girls into
keeping Hotty for just a little while longer, she was
going to have to show commitment.

She nodded. 'We'll try it tomorrow.'

'And what if she does that crazy thing again?' Erin
asked.

'The chiropractor will be able to tell us if she has a
sore back,' Shelby replied.

'Yeah, and who's going to pay for that?' Lindsey
asked.

Erin's face split into a grin. 'Gwen Stefani, of
course!'

Erin was late for class the next day. She scurried into
Maths with her head bowed and flopped into the
chair next to Shelby. She flipped to the back of her
exercise book and wrote a message.

I can't take this any more!!!!

'What?' Shelby murmured.

The stupid saddle!!!!
Erin wrote.

'Tell me!' Shelby whispered.

At the front of the room their teacher, Mrs Tapley-
Hook, spoke. 'If X in this equation equals two-thirds
and Y equals fifteen, can you calculate Z?'

Erin cupped her hand over her mouth and kept her
eyes fixed on the whiteboard at the front of the room,
hoping that their teacher wouldn't notice.

'We dropped Hiccup's saddle at the saddler's this
morning, but he remembered it. I said that it
had
been
Mrs Edel's, but she sold it to the Crooks and the Crooks
were giving it to me. Then
he
said that the Crooks had
never owned a stock saddle. They'd only ever had dressage
saddles, so he didn't understand why they would
buy one – especially a second-hand one, and then he
said that it wouldn't fit any of their horses anyway.'

Shelby shook her head. They should have anticipated
that this might happen. Even in a city horse
people always know other horse people.

Mrs Tapley-Hook pointed her whiteboard marker
at the boy sitting in front of the two girls. 'Jasper?
Can you tell me the answer?'

'Z equals twenty-seven,' he answered.

'Very good.' The teacher turned around to write
some new problems on the board.

'Then what?' whispered Shelby.

Erin's eyes widened. 'Then mum stared at me like
I'd stolen it or something, and I said that . . .'

'What does Z equal in this equation, Shelby?' Mrs
Tapley-Hook asked.

Shelby froze. She looked for cues from her classmates,
but her eyes met only vacant faces.

'Thirty-two?' she guessed.

'You haven't been paying attention. You need to
concentrate now or you won't understand the rest of
the lesson. I won't ask you again.' Her teacher stalked
past the girls' desk to the back of the room.

Erin wrote another note in the back of her book
and underlined it.

And that's not even the worst part!

Erin's face was pale and pinched, as though she
was sick. Shelby was bursting to hear the worst part,
but now she would have to wait until the end of class.
She frowned into her equations.
Who cares what Z
equals?
she thought. There were so many more important
things to talk about.

Finally the bell rang and all around Shelby could
hear the rumble of students talking at once, teachers
raising their voices with last-minute instructions, and
the scrape of chairs being pushed across vinyl floors,
or clanging against metal table legs.

'So then what?' Shelby prompted.

'I confessed.'

Shelby gaped. 'Really?'

Erin shoved her book into her bag and the two
girls shuffled behind the other students towards the
door. 'I didn't tell her about CC. I said that we'd
broken the saddle and that we had to get it fixed
before Lindsey's mum found out.'

'Was she cranky?'

A frown crossed Erin's brow. 'Of course she was
cranky!' she huffed. 'I knew it would be more than
fifty. I just never thought it would be three hundred!'

'Dollars?' Shelby gasped.

'No, broad-beans, you ninny. Mum was mad
because she didn't see why our family should pay to
fix the saddle when
you
broke it.'

'You told her
I
broke it?'

Erin continued. 'I just keep thinking of all the
other ways I could spend three hundred dollars.'

Shelby knew Erin would be thinking of shoes, or
mobile phone covers – something dumb like that.

'I don't want to do this any more, Shel,' Erin continued.
'I've decided. It would be different if we could
ask for help, but doing it in secret is driving me mental.'

The two girls joined the flow of students in the
corridor.

'We can do this by ourselves,' Shelby assured her.
'We just need some more time.'

Erin jutted her chin out and folded her arms.
'Don't you get it? More time means more money. How
much is this chiropractor going to be?'

Shelby shrugged and looked at her shoes.

Erin tossed her head. 'You don't even really want
to share CC with us, do you? You want to keep her
for yourself. You're just using Lindsey and me for
things you need.'

Shelby stopped still in the corridor and the other
students streamed around her. Somebody shoved her
in the back. 'Hurry up, will ya?'

Shelby didn't notice. She was stinging from Erin's
words. 'You take that back, Erin!'

'Anyway, I already have a good horse. You're the
only one who needs a proper horse. If you want to do
this then do it by yourself.'

Shelby followed Erin down the corridor, fuming.
When they reached the Computer Studies room she
waited until Erin picked a seat and then she sat on the
opposite side of the room.

She stared at the blank computer screen with a lump
in her throat, as though she'd swallowed a whole
walnut. She was afraid she was going to cry, not
because she was sad, but because she was shocked –
and also because what Erin had said was a little bit
true.

Shelby thought back to all the things she'd thought
and said since she'd seen the pony at the sales. Erin
was right. She had never really wanted to share Hotty
at all.

At the end of the school day Shelby walked over to the
place where Erin's mum usually picked them up to
take them to the stables. Erin was already waiting. She
had her bag over one shoulder and looked the other
way when Shelby approached.

'Are you sorry for what you said?' Shelby asked.

'No.'

Shelby bit her lip. 'Can I still have a lift?'

Erin shrugged.

Shelby looked over at the turning bay but the
doors of the school bus she used to catch home were
already closing. The engine rumbled as the bus pulled
away from the kerb.

Shelby scuffed her heel across the edge of the gutter.
She didn't know what to do. Her parents wouldn't
worry until five, when they went to pick her up from
the stables. Would they think to look for her here? She
wondered how long it would take to walk home.

'You can be mad at me, but I need a lift,' she
mumbled. 'I don't have any other way of getting there.
I don't have a mobile. I haven't even got any money to
ring my mum at a public phone.'

Erin narrowed her eyes. 'It's always the same with
you, Shelby.'

'What do you want me to do, Erin?' She held her
hands out, palms up. 'This is how it is for me.'

'You could be more grateful.'

Shelby looked away for a moment, swallowing her
anger. 'So far I have paid my share. You offered to fix
the saddle. Nobody made you.'

At that moment Erin's mum drove up in front of
them. The two girls climbed into the car. Erin
slammed the passenger-side door.

'Steady on there!' Erin's mum said. Her eyes met
Shelby's in the rear vision mirror and Shelby blushed.

Erin's mother tried to make conversation but Erin
grumbled monosyllabic answers under her breath.

'I can see you're in a mood,' her mother commented,
and they drove on in silence.

In the back seat Shelby squirmed. She hoped one
day she could talk her own mother into driving them
to the stables. Then she wouldn't feel like such a scab.

Lindsey was waiting for them at the edge of the
arena. Miss Anita had a young roan cutting horse on
a lunge rein.

'Are you guys ready?' Lindsey asked.

'I'm going to ride my
own
horse today.' Erin
stalked past Lindsey towards Bandit's paddock.

'What's up with you, grumpy-trousers?' Lindsey
called after her.

'Ask Shelby,' she shouted over her shoulder.

Lindsey turned to Shelby with an eyebrow raised.

'We should probably ride Hot . . . the pony
tomorrow,' Shelby said. 'We'll just check on her today.'

The two girls saddled up Blue and Cracker. On the
way to the back paddock they saw Erin in the jumping
arena. She was taking Bandit around the course. She
didn't stop when her friends rode past. Shelby wasn't
even sure if she saw them.

'Bandit's jumping well,' Lindsey commented.

Shelby only nodded in reply.

At the back paddock Lindsey opened the gate for
Shelby and they cantered up to the ridge, halting at
the top. All of the spelled horses were standing around
the dam. Three horses stood shoulder-deep eating the
weeds from the water's surface. Shelby shivered,
thinking how cold the water must be and wondering
what might be lurking on the silty bottom or swimming
around their legs – yabbies possibly, ugly catfish or
slimy black eels. She had fallen into a billabong similar
to this last summer, and the memory of unseen slippery
things brushing against her flesh made her skin crawl.

The little chestnut pony was grazing happily
between two fat broodmares. Shelby and Lindsey
watched her for a little while longer.

'Do you think I'm a scab, Lindsey?'

'Is that what this is all about?' Lindsey laughed.
She gathered up her reins. 'Race you back!' Then she
was gone, scattering pebbles behind her.

Shelby wheeled Blue around and he lunged
forward, keen for the chase. She crouched over his
neck as he gathered speed. Her eyes watered and the
wind whistled as it rushed past her ears.

Lindsey was streaking ahead. Cracker was
stretched out low. Shelby could hear Lindsey's
laughter as she urged him forward.

At the gate Cracker skidded to a stop. Lindsey
brought him up close to the latch and flung the gate
open.

'Close that, will you?' she called over her shoulder
and then Cracker was off again, his pounding hooves
creating a cloud of dust that made Shelby cough.

'No fair!' Shelby shouted, grinning. Lindsey didn't
answer. Shelby could hear her yelling, 'Yar! Yar!' like
a stockrider.

Blue skipped through the gate, backed up, and stood
quietly so that she could fasten the chain. When she'd
finished Blue needed no encouraging – he spun around
on his hind legs and sprang forward, flicking his tail.

Closer to the stables Shelby slowed Blue to a trot,
and then a walk, letting him cool down and catch his
breath. She unsaddled him and let him loose in the
paddock.

Lindsey was already in the feed shed.

'What took you so long?' she asked.

'You had a head start! If it wasn't for the gate,
I would have beaten you easily,' Shelby joked. Gate or
no gate, Shelby knew Lindsey was a bolder rider.

Lindsey climbed up the bales of hay that were
stacked to the ceiling as though they were a set of
giant stairs and rolled a new bale down to the floor.
Dust and loose strands of lucerne flew up into the air.
One of the rat-cats sneezed.

'You didn't answer my question,' Shelby said.

Lindsey sighed. 'I think you want a horse that's as
good as you think your horse should be, but I don't
think Bess is that horse.'

She frowned at Shelby, concentrating. Shelby
guessed Lindsey was trying out different ways to say
something Shelby didn't want to hear. Eventually she
shook her head. 'She's pretty, but she's not a nice
person.'

'But she could have had a bad life so far. We don't
know.'

Lindsey shrugged. 'Why have you decided that it's
your problem? There are so many nicer horses out
there.' She paused. 'Like Blue, for example.'

Shelby picked the lucerne off her shirt. 'I just think
that if you always give up on things as soon as they
get a bit difficult then you'd never achieve anything.
Even really fun stuff has hard parts – like when you go
to the zoo and at the end of the day your feet are sore
and you're hungry.'

'Then it's time to go home!' Lindsey smiled.

Shelby chewed her lip. 'Anyway, that's not really
what I asked.'

Lindsey raised an eyebrow. 'You want to know if
I think you're a scab?'

Shelby nodded.

'It would be easier for everyone if we all had the
Crooks' budget. None of us do. If you really want this
horse you should try asking your mum.'

Shelby groaned.

'You think she'll say no,' Lindsey added before
Shelby could interrupt. 'But it's at least worth asking,
so you can cross that off the list.'

Shelby lifted the bale onto the trolley. Lindsey
clambered down the stack of hay. At the bottom she
brushed the dust from her jodhpurs.

'You're always trying to prove that you're as good
as anyone else – talking yourself up. I don't know why
you think you need to do that. Most people think
you're fine already.'

Shelby took a deep breath. It had been a day of
candour from both of her friends.

'Blue is a sturdy little horse. I would be proud to
own him,' Lindsey added.

'Really?'

'Really.'

Shelby helped her friend load the rest of the feed
buckets onto the trolley. She wondered if Lindsey was
telling the truth, and, if she
was
making it up, was she
doing it to be nice, or because she wanted Hotty out
of her hair?