High Hurdles Collection Two (75 page)

Chapter • 11

The inspectors found makeup powder on the counter of their bathroom— one demerit each.

DJ felt like chewing nails. Who had time to put makeup on anyway? She thought a moment. It had to be Karen. Neither DJ nor Megan wore any, and she didn't think Selina did, either. That left DJ with one demerit to go.

“So what do we do?” DJ crossed her arms over her chest.

“You want to take her on?” asked Megan.

“We could post a sign on the mirror.” DJ thought of Karen, who hadn't been too friendly to begin with. Now this.

“But it has to come down by inspection time. They don't like things like that. ‘Each person is to be responsible for her own actions.' ” Megan parroted the last like she was quoting from a handbook or something.

“Okay, here goes.” DJ ripped a page from her notebook and wrote, “Please make sure everything is clean when you are finished.” She held up the sign.

“You got any tape?”

DJ shook her head. “Sheesh, why does everything have to be so difficult?” She went in the bathroom and leaned the sign against the mirror. “There.”

Sunday during their dressage class, the instructor stopped DJ and motioned her to the center of the ring. “Now, remember your aids, inside seat bone to outside hand. You don't want him to drop his shoulder. All this will help make him more supple. Do you understand?”

“I … I think so.”

“Good. Go again.”

After a few strides, Elma called again. “Now, tell me where you're tense.”

“Between my shoulders.” DJ's answer came immediately.

“So what will you do about that?”

DJ relaxed her shoulders and checked out the rest of her body. No wonder Herndon kept moving to the center of the ring. Her right leg was too tight, and Herndon had been well taught to move away from a strong leg.

By the end of the session, DJ was dripping wet, and not just from the humidity, either. On the way back to the administration building, she realized that today she was sweating rivers from driving a fourth-level dressage horse forward. How come it took so much to push him today, and yesterday she couldn't stop him?

After an hour's lecture, she knew more about international shipping of horses than she'd ever thought necessary. Things from papers needed for quarantine laws to finding reputable shippers. How could she ask questions when she didn't know enough to know what to ask?

At dinner Kurt told a horror story about shipping a horse to Germany. It had to be put down somewhere high above the Atlantic when, for who knows what reason, the horse went ballistic and half tore his crate apart. When the tranquilizers did no good, they had to shoot him.

“But at least the horse was well insured.”

His final comment made DJ catch her breath. Was that all the horses meant to him, money?

“Easy,” JM whispered from her side. “He likes to scare people, our Kurt does. Don't let him get to you.”

DJ swallowed and sat back in her chair. He sure did manage to find her hot buttons—and push them. She hated to admit it, but she didn't like Kurt any better now than at the beginning of camp—less, in fact.

Her list of questions for her father was growing. He'd trained and shipped so many horses, for both himself and buyers, that he'd know how to keep them safe.

DJ had bought postcards in the equestrian center's tack shop and spent her free time writing them to her family and Amy. Though she'd called home on Saturday, the writing really made her think how much she missed them. Not that she had much time to think of anything except what was going on at camp, but still … She picked up the last card. Should she send one to Sean? After all, they never had gotten to talk on the phone the week before she left.

Quickly she drew the head of a foal up in the left-hand corner. Then she wrote,
“No drawing time here, but I'm learning lots. DJ.”
She checked in her notebook for his address and added the stamp. Dropping them in the mailbox, she headed for the swimming pool, where most of the rest of the campers splashed and played.

On Monday John Hamilton raised the bars on the low jumps up to two and a half feet and then up to three feet so they could no longer just pop over them. Now they were really jumping.

And DJ kept getting left behind again.

“It's all in the timing, DJ,” Hamilton said. “You've done it before, you'll do it again. Now, focus and count the rhythm. Trust your horse.”

Sure, trust my horse and go sailing by myself when he quits
. DJ knew that Herndon wasn't trusting her, either. His hesitation showed it.

When the horse in front of them quit, Herndon quit, too, and so did the one behind them.

“Okay.” Hamilton shook his head laughing. “This is getting to be contagious. You are all trying too hard and tightening up. Relax. Come on, shoulders, neck, back, hips, legs, arms, and hands.” As he named each body part, he moved his to show them how he wanted them to move. “You cannot jump your best when you are tight. If you're tight, your horse will be, too. Horses are incredibly able to pick up your tension. Now, on the rail and trot. Concentrate on relaxing.”

“At least it's not just us,” DJ said to Herndon's flicking ears. He snorted as if he totally agreed.

That night when they watched the videos of the day's work, DJ recognized right when she tightened up. The suppleness went out of her, and her arch over Herndon's withers wasn't there. Therefore, he wasn't rounded, either.

The next afternoon she did much better.

“So what's the difference?” Hamilton asked.

“I relaxed. My grandmother always says if you smile, you relax. Yesterday I wasn't smiling—and I
really
wasn't relaxed.”

“You're not behind today, either, are you?”

She shook her head. “The video of me taught me a lot.”
And seeing it on a big screen like that helped, too
. She knew that if she asked for a large-screen television, it would appear, but her family had given her so much already.

“I hate to ask for things.” Back in the stall, Herndon nodded and nosed her hand. She gave him the horse cookie she'd kept in the grooming bucket and stroked his neck while he munched. Of course, it took someone good on the camera to get the shots so she could see what she did. Maybe Brad could do that for her, or Joe.

At least she hadn't gotten any more demerits.

“So, DJ, how has the week gone for you?” John Hamilton joined her at the cold drinks machine Wednesday afternoon.

“G-great.”

“You have a minute to talk?”

Do I have a minute? Does the sun get up in the East?
“Sure.”

“What kind do you want?” He motioned to the machine, his coins at the ready.

“Uh, root beer.” The can clunked down and he fished it out to hand to her. “Thanks.”

He got one for himself and, popping the top, stepped off the porch. “How about over there?” She kept pace with him, sipping her soda and wishing she could think of a way to tell him how the week
really
had been for her.

“What do you plan to do with what you've been learning?”

“Jump in the Olympics.” The words came out before she could think.

“You're sure.”

“Have been for years. That's my goal and my prayer. So far God has given me what I needed.”
Now, why did I say that? Duh
.

“Me too. I wondered from the way you acted if maybe you were a Christian.”

She wanted to ask how, but she sipped her drink instead.

“You have a great horse for where you are.”

“I know.”
Should I tell him?
“Herndon's a gift.” She went on to tell him about Major and the injury, about Brad and Jackie and the rest of her family and the Academy. “Bridget Sommersby is my trainer.”

“I read that on your application. She had high praise for you, and from her, that is something. I competed against her more than once, and I've wondered where she had gone to.” He sipped and shook his head. “Amazing the way lives touch and then somehow touch again.” By now they were sitting on an oak glider under a maple tree. “Tell her hello for me, will you?”

“Sure. Why don't you come do a clinic for us sometime at Briones Riding Academy? That's Bridget's school.”
Why would you ever say that? Hello?

“Sounds like fun. I like California, just rarely get out there anymore. Tell her to contact me.” He turned a bit so he could watch her. “So … what could keep you from your dream of the USET?”

“Me, mostly, I guess. I know it's terribly expensive, too, but if God wants me there, I'll be there. My family says they'll do whatever we need to do to get me there. And I have my own business. That might help, too.”

“You do?”

“My friend Amy and I have a line of cards with pictures of horses, mostly foals, on them. I draw, and Amy is a photographer.”

“Really? Would you send me a sample? Do you think they'd go well in our store here?”

“I don't know why not. They do well in other tack shops.” DJ leaned against the back of the seat. “Somehow I need to fit in both art and riding … because I think God has given me gifts in both areas, and I don't want to waste anything He gives.”

John nodded. “The two areas might not both peak at the same time, but one can't ride twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Sometimes getting to the top is easier if a person is one-tracked, but it seems to me that people who have balance and a love of beauty fare better in life. Go for it, DJ. Go for it all. And if there is ever a way I can help you, please let me know.”

“I … I will.”

“And I'll see you back here next year?”

“ ‘If it's up to me, it will be.' ” DJ quoted a sign that hung in the classroom.

“Good.” He stood and held out his hand. DJ shook it and nodded. Then she grinned up at him.

“And I sure hope I see my cards in your shop. They're better than postcards, more like frameable art.”

His shout of laughter made her grin wider.

“John?” Someone called from the administration building.

“I gotta go. Thanks for talking with me.” He smiled again and headed across the grass.

DJ watched him go. “God, I don't know how you did this, but thanks a whole heapin' bunch.” Instead of going directly into the dining room, where most of the campers had gathered, DJ dogtrotted over to her dorm, took out her notebook, and wrote down everything she could remember that John had said, and what she'd said, too. Then she went to join the party.