Love and Muddy Puddles (11 page)

“Why don’t you walk her down to the paddock?” Ness said. She handed me the lead rope that was attached to Cupcake’s halter.

“Really? I’ve never done that before,” I said. I didn’t want to, but I did want to, and I didn’t know what to do.

“It’s easy,” said Ness. “You just walk.”

I started out tentatively tugging at the rope but then Ness showed me how to hold it, with more authority, showing her that I was the boss, and then I was walking and Cupcake was walking beside me and the two of us were walking together like, I don’t know, like we were friends. 
If you can be friends with a horse
, I thought. Because, I know, I know, it sounded ridiculous. But maybe it was true. Maybe Cupcake and I were friends.

Cupcake went into the paddock, running with the herd and after giving me a hug, Ness left and then I hummed and buzzed around by myself with something brimming up inside me that I hadn’t felt for ages. Maybe it was hope? Or joy? I’m not sure. All I know is that it sounded like 
zing
 and felt like a bouncy ball and tasted a little like honey.

“You’re very chirpy today,” said Dad over dinner. I smiled widely and opened my mouth but the zing and the bounce weren’t quite enough to break my ‘don’t-talk-to-Dad’ rule so I stayed quiet. He looked a bit deflated and I actually felt sorry for him.

Mum changed the subject. “Where did you guys ride today?” she asked, talking to Charlie and Josh. “Which horse were you on?”

I nearly even listened as Charlie explained about Perry and having 
to change saddles
 because it 
didn’t fit her girth
 and about this 
amazing track that just went straight up behind the property
. And I nearly even paid attention to what Josh said about the funny thing that Tessa did while he was riding behind her but all the time I was buzzing and zinging and humming inside, thinking to myself, 
I took Cupcake for a walk and I’m the special person for her and she calmed down just for me because she liked me,
 but then the honey taste in my mouth turned to vinegar when I heard Charlie say this:

“Did Ness bring Cupcake over? She said she doesn’t know what she’s going to do with her if she can’t get her to settle down. She might have to sell her.”

I choked. And then coughed. And then choked again.

“Are you alright, Coco?” Mum looked really concerned. She leaned over to pat me on the back but I pushed her hand away.

“No no, I’m okay,” I almost squealed. “No. Tell me about Cupcake. Would Ness really sell her? Would she do that? She can’t.”

I stopped to find the whole family gazing at me with slightly odd looks. My words, overdone and loud, echoed around me and then fell out of the air to the floor. I could hear the tiny smashing noises of concern on concrete. I felt awkward. This was embarrassing.

Charlie looked at me with interest. “Yeah. She might sell Cupcake. That’s what she said.” She narrowed her eyes, still trying to figure me out. “Did you see her when they came down today?”

I shrugged and held my breath. “A bit.” I didn’t want to give too much away. But it didn’t matter anyway. Charlie was off on another topic with bright, enthusiastic eyes.

“Did she tell you about Pony Camp?” she said. “It sounds like heaps of fun. About 25 people come, all around our age, and some bring horses and some ride the ones here, but it’s three days and we camp and go on day-long rides and even a beach ride and sometimes swimming in the river with the horses.”

Dad looked up. “When’s it on? The house might be ready by then. Maybe we’ll be able to help, or everyone could camp on the property?”

“Tessa said it’s in late spring, early summer,” said Josh. “It sounds awesome.”

I breathed again. The conversation moved on to camp and beyond. But the buzz and the zing and humming inside me had turned to a churning worry. Would Cupcake be sold? Would they send her away? Would I lose, once again, the only friend I had?

I didn’t know what I was going to do.

I only knew I had to do something.

Up to this point, every afternoon I had lain on my bed, watching Charlie and Josh get their gear on to go out on with Tessa and James and listening to Mum yell, “Have you got a helmet on? Have you got a mobile phone just in case?”

Every afternoon I’d heard Josh yell back, “There’s no point, because nothing’s going to happen and some places don’t even get reception.”

And every afternoon I’d seen Mum run out and give them a phone anyway. “I don’t care. Take the phone. It’s Ness’s rule and there’ll be somewhere you can go to get yourself a signal.”

“Well if I fall off and break my leg I’ll try to do it in a place with good reception,” yelled Charlie as she rode away.

“Just take the phone, Charlie,” said Dad, but he was laughing.

The day after Cupcake arrived, I waited until they’d gone out and until Mum and Dad were looking at house plans and concrete specs. Then I snuck out of my bed and looked around for some shoes and a jacket. I was going down to the paddock.

To begin with I just hung over the side of the fence and watched Cupcake in a big group of horses all eating grass. It looked pretty boring. 
She probably wants something more interesting to eat, 
I thought, so I ran back and stole a couple of carrots from the kitchen.

To get to Cupcake I realised I’d have to climb the fence. Which is easier said than done in ballet flats, let me tell you. Especially when you’re holding carrots. I won’t say I fell, but I won’t say that it was a seamless, graceful descent down from the timber palings. Plus I may have got a splinter in my thumb that hurt a 
lot 
and I may also have looked down at my jeans and seen grass stains on the knees.

But 
I was over, and no one had seen me and there was no potential for embarrassment, unless of course horses laugh about humans when they’re on their own, but that’s really not even worth thinking about. Besides, I was sure Cupcake wouldn’t laugh at me. Especially once she’d seen that I had carrots.

At first the other horses crowded around. They were warm and their noses were surprisingly velvety and once I got used to the smell it wasn’t icky at all, but they weren’t the ones I had come to see. It took a little while to work out how to walk between them all (
Do you avoid the back legs? Will they squash me like a caterpillar? Am I going to die?)
 but I made it to Cupcake and held out my carrot. At first she shook her head and made a little ‘heh heh heh’ sound deep and low, but I said, “It’s okay, it’s just me,” and stood there quietly and after she’d looked at me for about two seconds, she slowly put her head down and let me give her a pat. And then I stood next to her, holding out the carrot and laughing and trying not to get grossed out while her big, slobbery mouth took it off my outstretched hand and crunched it up.

The next day I went down again. This time though, instead of slipping on my ballet flats I snuck on a pair of Charlie’s boots instead. 
It’s only so it’s easier to climb the fence,
 I said to myself. 
Definitely not a fashion statement.
 The day after that I found some old, grubby jeans as well. 
Can’t wreck my good stuff, 
I justified to myself.

By the end of the week Cupcake would run to the fence when she saw me walking down and nudge me under my arm as I climbed over. Soon I was able to put my arms around her neck and then she started rubbing her forehead on my back. I had to make sure I brushed the hair off my shirt before Charlie got back so she wouldn’t find out what I was doing, although I guess you could have made the argument that Charlie wouldn’t actually notice if there was horse hair on anyone’s shirt. But I wasn’t taking any chances. The last thing I wanted was for my family to start pushing me towards ‘having fun’ and riding and joining in with the whole community bonding thing. I was going to do things my way and in my time.

I watched carefully but sneakily one day as Charlie put a halter on Fozzles. It looked easy enough. C
lip here, don’t undo that bit, slip it over the nose
. That afternoon I grabbed one from the side of the shed where Mum now had about six or eight hanging on hooks, hid it under my jumper and went down the paddock.

As I climbed the fence with Cupcake nudging me I pulled out the halter. “Come on Cupcake,” I said, “Put this on.” But I was too loud and too quick and she shied and ran away from me. That day I couldn’t even get her back with a carrot. It took me a week of carrying the halter 
and
 the carrot together every day so she could see it and get used to it before I was able to put it on her. I felt like a fumble fingers wobbling around with clips and catches but Cupcake was calm and patient with me and she let me do it. Every day. We’d put it on, have a walk together and then she’d have a carrot and I’d give her a scratch and take it all off again.

A few weeks later I saw Ness attach a long rope to the halter and walk Cuddles around her in circles. So I grabbed a rope, stuffed it under my shirt and headed off down the paddock. Cupcake came when I offered her a carrot and it was easy to put on her halter and then she obligingly walked around in a circle for me.

I was so excited I didn’t hear Ness walk up behind me.

“I didn’t think you liked horses,” she said.

I wheeled around, guilty faced.

“No, keep going,” she said. “I want to see what you can do.”

At the sound of Ness’s voice Cupcake put her ears back and pulled away, but I turned to her and said, “It’s okay. You’re okay.” Once she could see that I was calm, she calmed down too and kept walking.

Ness came up quietly and stood next to me. “Can you get her to trot?” she said.

“How do I do that?” I asked.

“Click your mouth and say ‘trot’. She knows the commands. She just needs to hear them said with authority. You’re in charge.”

I shifted my body language like I was being bossy, puffed out my chest, clicked my tongue and told her to ‘trot’. Immediately Cupcake read my signals and began trotting around me. I glanced at Ness, excited. She gave me a smile.

“Now make her stop,” said Ness. “Again, like you mean it.”

“Wo-oah,” I said strongly, and Cupcake came to a halt.

“Why are you doing this?” Ness said. She was quiet, keeping things calm. “Seriously, I didn’t think you liked horses.”

“I don’t,” I said. “It’s just Cupcake. I don’t know. There’s something...”

“You two have a connection,” she said. She was staring at me and her blue eyes seemed brighter in the sun. “You understand each other.” Her voice raised a few notes in excitement. “It happens sometimes. Horses and people aren’t so different, you know. Some horses are exclusive about who they like and don’t like, just like people. This one hates most people, but she loves you. You’re her leader. She’ll follow you anywhere if you lead her. You’ve got a friend.”

I looked at Cupcake, clicked my mouth and got her to trot again. Her brown eyes caught mine and I’ll swear I almost saw her wink.

“Charlie said you were going to sell her,” I said. My voice sounded hard.
“It’s a possibility. I just don’t have the time for her.” Ness shrugged. “She’s a great horse, but she needs work.”

“Could I do it? The work, I mean. Take the time? Get her settled?” I stopped the trot and turned to Ness, desperate. Cupcake stood and watched us both.

“But you don’t know how to do it.” Ness looked at me doubtfully. “It’s quite a thing.”

“But I could learn. You could teach me. And then I could learn to ride her too. If I did the work you wouldn’t have to sell her...”

Ness narrowed her eyes and looked into the distance, but then she smiled and looked at me. “Yeah. Okay. Why not?” She shrugged. “We can see how it goes. I’ll teach you. You teach her. But you have to do exactly what I say because I know what I’m doing. And also you’ve got to do it every day. You can’t give up next week or she’ll just go backwards.”

“You don’t have to worry about that,” I said. “I’ve been coming down every day for weeks already.”

“I know,” said Ness.

“You do?”

“Yeah. Don’t forget, I can see this paddock from my place. I’ve been watching.”

My face went red. “I didn’t want to tell anyone.”

“I get that,” she said, shrugging. “Some things need to be kept to yourself for a while.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I still don’t really want to tell anyone though. Would it be too much... Would you mind if... Could you keep this all a secret? I want to surprise them.”

She looked at me knowingly.

“You like to be a bit special, don’t you.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, well, let’s see,” she said. “How can I put it. There’s a phrase in 
Pride and Prejudice
—you’ve read that, right?”

I nodded, offended. “Of course. It’s like, only the second best book in the whole world.”

“Well, there’s a bit where Elizabeth says to Darcy something like this: ‘You and I are both alike. We both don’t want to say anything unless it will amaze the whole room’.” She looked me, grinning. “I’m a little bit the same. And James is the exact opposite. He hates show and game-playing. He’d rather say it straight out. But I think you like to amaze the room.”

I looked down, slightly affronted. “I guess.” I shrugged my shoulders. ”I just don’t want to be ordinary.”

“What’s wrong with ordinary?” Ness asked. She seemed genuinely curious.

I made a face. “It’s so... embarrassing. Especially when Charlie’s so
not
ordinary. Everyone always says how talented and how pretty and how, I don’t know, how 
everything
 she is.”

Ness raised her eyebrows. “Really? Because I would have thought you guys were both pretty similar in that way. Both talented I mean. And pretty, of course. Aren’t you kind of the same?”

“Yeah, but you haven’t seen her at school. She’s smart, sporty and arty and she has those amazing eyelashes. And even worse, she doesn’t even care about it. Everyone just likes her. I have to try harder at everything.”

Ness thought for a moment. She pulled Cupcake in a bit closer.

“I’ll tell you something that you’ll think I’m just saying because I want you to feel better, but that’s not the reason I’m saying it.”

I looked up at her. “What?”

“Charlie is Charlie. You are you. You’re different people. She has something special about her, that’s true. But you do too.”

“Yeah, but she has like ten—no, a hundred—special things about her.” I said. “I have only one thing I’m good at. I can do clothes.”

“One thing? I think you’ll find there’s a lot more than just one thing,” said Ness. “But even if it is just one thing, it’s actually two.” She pointed to Cupcake who was rubbing her head on my back. “You’ve got a compassion about you that’s special. Animals can see it. It’s a kind of innocence.”

“Innocence?” I looked at her strangely. “That doesn’t sound good. That sounds lame.”

“No,” she said. “No, it’s beautiful. It’s a beauty in your soul. It’s a gift of love. Horses know when you’ve got it.”

“Well, Mum would say I haven’t been very loving recently,” I said, turning down my mouth. I kicked my toe in the dirt. “And I haven’t spoken a word to Dad since we moved. That’s like six months or something now. Maybe I’ve got a gift of hate—not love.”

“Oh, Coco,” she said. Her voice sounded funny. Wobbly, kind of. She looked at me. “That’s not hate. You’re just angry.”

Cupcake was standing between Ness and I and it was just as well because as soon as she said it my eyes started to fill up.

Great. I don’t want to cry in front of Ness
, I thought. 
Even more embarrassing.
 I made my eyes as big as I could trying to keep the tear drops inside but first one, then the other, leaked and in about a minute I had wet, streaky cheeks. I kept my face away from Ness and towards Cupcake but it was too late. She’d already noticed.

“Hey, it’s okay,” she said. “Everyone gets angry. I’ve been pretty mad myself at different times. The thing is to 
do
 something with your anger. You don’t want to let it make you bitter.”

“But how can I help that?” I said, wiping the drips off my cheeks. My voice sounded wobbly and silly. “I’m always going to be angry with Dad. I just don’t think I can forgive him for making us move. I just hate it here.” I started combing out Cupcake’s mane with my fingers, just to do something with my hands. “No offence. I like you and all that—in fact, you’re probably the only person I 
do
 like. It’s just I didn’t want to leave Sydney.”

Ness looked at me. Her eyes were softer and they looked kind.

“No offence taken, Coco. I know how you feel. I do. It’s really hard to lose your home.”

But that’s not the real problem, 
I suddenly thought.

And then I knew what the real problem was. I understood the real reason why I was angry.

“Actually, no. It’s not even that. I’m mostly mad because no one paid any attention to me, to the fact that I didn’t want to go,” I said fiercely. My voice went from wobble to wild. “It was like, no, it s
till
 is... like being in one of those bad dreams where you’re trying to yell but nothing comes out of your mouth. From the very first day—and it was my birthday too—they just didn’t listen to a single thing I said.”