High Hurdles (3 page)

That evening when her mother returned home from her latest business trip, DJ had just finished setting the table.

“Darla Jean, how many times have I asked you to put your bike away? One of these days I’m going to run over it, and then where will you be?” Lindy Randall dropped her briefcase on a chair and crossed to the sink to pour herself a glass of water.

DJ clenched her teeth. She’d been so anxious to tell Gran the bad news, she’d forgotten her bike. Fiddle. She slammed the napkins down on the table and headed for the garage. Now she didn’t dare mention needing extra money for her horse fund. Double fiddle.

Chapter
•
3

“DJ, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scold you first thing.” Lindy stood in the doorway to DJ’s room. She had changed out of her business suit and into an emerald lounging outfit.

“I know. It was my fault. I couldn’t wait to tell Gran about Diablo.” DJ looked up from her drawing. “You look nice.” Her mother always looked stylish, dressed in the latest fashion. DJ looked down at her tanned legs topped by the cutoffs she’d put on after her return from the stable. Jeans or shorts and T-shirts—what else did a kid need anyway? Besides her outfits for competition, of course, and Gran made most of those.

“Thanks, can I come in?”

“Sure.” Her mother’s recent insistence on privacy—both her own and her daughter’s—still caught DJ by surprise sometimes.

Lindy looked down at her daughter’s drawing of a jumping Thoroughbred. “You’re getting to be very good at that, you know. I’m glad one of us got Mother’s talent.” She sat down on the end of the bed. DJ watched her mother pleat the fabric of her pants. Something was up. But what?

Lindy looked up, her chin-length hair swinging as she moved her head. “What happened with Diablo?”

“They . . . the Ortegas moved to Texas and took him away.”

“Without telling you?”

“Even Bridget didn’t know. And now I don’t have a horse to compete with this summer.” DJ wanted to go on to say that if her mother spent less money on clothes, she might have some cash to buy her daughter a horse, but she didn’t. She’d heard the argument too many times: “Fashionable clothes help make sales, and if I don’t make sales, we don’t eat.”

“I’m sorry. I wish I could help, but right now my company is talking about cutting back. What little I have saved might have to tide us over if I get laid off.”

“You’ve been their best rep for the last two years, Mom. Why would they let you go?” When would her mother think of something besides her job and getting her next degree? DJ had a whole slew of questions that she kept hidden in a box in her mind. A box labeled
Mother
.

“Well, when I get my Masters of Business Administration, they’ll have to take notice. If they don’t, I’ll find a better job.” She nodded as if to convince herself. “So I better get to studying.”

“So what’s new?” DJ mumbled in spite of her promise to herself not to be a smart mouth.

“Darla Jean, I’m doing this as much for you as for me.”

“Right. Sorry.” There, she’d done it again. Why couldn’t they just talk like Amy and her mother did? Instead, she couldn’t keep from giving a smart answer every time her mom said something.

“Well, I am doing this for you. And a little gratitude might go a long way.” Lindy flounced out of the room, leaving a trail of expensive perfume.

DJ heaved a sigh and set her sketch pad down on the double bed. This certainly hadn’t been one of her better days. She uncrossed her legs and slid to the edge of the bed. Gran would remind her that her mother was under a great deal of pressure. That selling equipment such as guns and flak vests to police departments and sheriffs’ offices was usually a man’s job. That her mother felt the need to be so much better than the male sales representatives in order to keep her position.

DJ had heard the story too many times to count. She tried to remember the last time her mother had made it to one of
her
events. Her mom had missed the horse shows, the art fair at school—even missed her thirteenth birthday.

DJ trailed a hand on the banister on her way down to Gran’s sunroom that extended from the family room. She knew she’d find her grandmother curled up in her tattered but comfortable wing chair. She’d be reading a mystery, her favorite kind of book. Or else writing a letter. Gran was great about writing letters to her two sisters who still lived where they grew up in Georgia.

But Gran wasn’t in her chair. She wasn’t hiding behind an easel, sneaking in some extra work hours. She wasn’t in the kitchen making their favorite snack—popcorn, slathered with butter.

“Gran?” DJ checked the laundry room and glanced out at the deck.

Coming back through the French doors, she heard the murmur of voices from her mother’s room. DJ grabbed an apple out of the bowl on the kitchen counter and ambled up the stairs. She started to tap on the almost-closed door to her mother’s room but stopped.

“But I just don’t know what to say to her.” Lindy sounded depressed.

“She took the news of losing Diablo pretty hard.”

“Oh really? She barely mentioned it. She never talks to me, unless it’s a smart remark. Was this the way I was at her age?”

A soft chuckle. “No, you were much worse. You were boy crazy by twelve.”

“Yeah, and look what it got me.”

DJ couldn’t hear Gran’s answer.

“At least boys aren’t a problem—are they?” A pause. “Oh, Mother, I don’t know how you stood it.”

“The good Lord’s grace, that’s how. You might find it, too, if you asked.”

“I don’t need you preaching to me.” The tone switched to harsh resentment.

“You asked, I told you. Now about you and DJ . . .”

DJ leaned closer, but the voices dropped to a low murmur. Gran always said that eavesdroppers heard only bad things about themselves.
Ha!
She shrugged. Who knew when stored information could be useful? Another shrug, this one forced. It sure would be helpful if she and her mother could really talk for a change. Then she wouldn’t have to go around feeling guilty so often.

DJ meandered back down to the kitchen, tossing her apple core in the compost bin. She and Gran recycled everything possible. Just last week DJ had turned in aluminum cans and made three dollars, all in nickels. But then a dollar was a dollar no matter what form it came in. She stashed it all in her horse box. Every time she reached $10, she made a bank deposit.

She stuck her head in the refrigerator. Nothing to munch, unless you counted the bag of carrots her mother kept. Horse treats. She checked the cupboard. Microwave popcorn, nothing like the kind Gran made from scratch. She pulled a bag from the box.

“I made popcorn if anybody wants some,” she yelled up the stairs on her way to the family room and the television set. When nothing caught her interest and no one came to share her popcorn, she dragged her feet back up the stairs to her room.

What a crummy ending to a perfectly crummy day. Other than her lesson, she corrected. The thought of jumping helped her pick up her feet until she entered her room. The eight-by-ten photo Amy had taken of her and Diablo in the ring last summer sent her spiraling again.

She banished the threat of tears with a clamped jaw. Crying was for babies. She ripped the half-finished picture of the jumper off the pad, crumpled it between both hands, and stuffed it in the wastebasket. It wasn’t good enough anyway. Something was wrong with the thrust of the back legs.

If she only had a horse of her own, everything would be all right.

Morning dawned along with the beginnings of a moneymaking idea. DJ flew to the window and gazed out at the backyard. The hummingbirds were already buzzing. House finches sang at the seed feeders and two bright yellow and black goldfinches hung upside down on the thistle feeder. DJ sucked in a breath of crisp morning air flavored with the scent of the roses that bloomed around the deck below her second-floor window.

This had to be a better day than yesterday. If she hurried, maybe she could get in an hour on Megs before she had to start her chores. She tugged a brush through her long blond hair while she pelted down the stairs. Her mother would already have left for work, so she didn’t have to worry about making conversation.

“You have to eat before you leave,” Gran called from her chair. As usual, she sat curled with her steaming mug of coffee on the table beside her and her Bible in her lap.

DJ crossed the room to drop a kiss on her tumbled hair. “I will. You want something?”

“I’ll make scrambled eggs if you wait long enough.”

“No, I can eat a food bar on the way.” DJ headed back to the kitchen. “How come we’re out of fruit?”

“You ate it all.”

DJ sneaked the orange juice container out and began chugging from the pour spout.

“Darla Jean Randall, you pour that into a glass.”

DJ flinched and shoved the jug back in the fridge. Taking out the milk, she did as Gran asked. Drinking from the container was certainly much quicker.

“Will you call Amy and tell her I already left?” She returned from the open door and grabbed a second food bar for her pocket. That would be a morning snack.

“Please? Tell her I left for the Academy at—” she checked her watch—“six-thirty, and she should get her b—”

“Darla Jean! Ladies don’t use words like that.”

“Sorry, Gran. See ya.” DJ let a grin stretch her cheeks. What would Gran do if her darling granddaughter ever said a
really
bad word? Like some of the four-letter words she heard every day at school? One thing Gran liked about Bridget, she didn’t tolerate swearing, either.

DJ pedaled by Amy’s house, wishing she could have called. But Mrs. Yamamoto had made it clear that no calls were tolerated before seven-thirty in the morning or after nine at night. And it wasn’t even seven yet.

Was her idea a good one? Could she and Amy pull it off? Would it make enough money for her so she could buy a horse by summer’s end?

The hour in the ring with Megs flew faster than they took the jumps.
Squeeze. Lift. Let Megs show you how to judge the distances; she’s an expert. Use your knees.
All the commands of the day before echoed in her head. She’d heard them before, but it was different when they were directed at her.

Oh, the feeling of flying! The thrust of powerful hindquarters and then . . . for that brief second, to be free. And these were only small jumps. What must the larger ones feel like?

“Look straight ahead, between her ears,” Bridget called from the fence. “That is right. Do not rush. The more relaxed you are, the more comfortable your mount will be.”

DJ completed another circuit and rode over to the fence. “You seen Amy yet?”

“No. By the way, James’ housekeeper called. He will be in today—”

DJ snorted in what Gran would call a decidedly unladylike manner.

Bridget cut her a glance that said she entirely agreed with Gran. She continued as if there had been no interruption. “—and he will clean one extra row of stalls, down to the dirt.”

DJ knew James was getting punished.

“
And
he will spend two hours cleaning tack. Then he will work in the ring for an hour. I do not want to hear about any comments from you and Amy.”

That James! On top of leaving most of his work to the other staff, he was a whiner and a tattletale.
What she wouldn’t like to do to him!

“Understood?”

Why did Bridget stick up for him?
She and Amy knew the instructor never played favorites. James deserved a good yelling at. He even neglected his own horse.
If I had a horse like Gray Bar, I’d spend every minute of my life with her
.

DJ quit studying her hands and looked at Bridget. “Understood.” She leaned forward and stroked the bay mare’s neck. “I better cool her out.” She turned Megs back to the ring. They’d walk around twice, and then she’d put the bay on the hot walker so she could muck stalls.

One thing was sure, there was never a lack of work to do around the Academy. Maybe her other dream of someday owning one wasn’t such a hot idea after all.

Amy’s entrance snapped DJ out of her daydreams. “Hey, thought you were going to sleep all day.”

“I called at seven and you’d already left. Why didn’t you tell me you were going so early?”

“I didn’t know. I just woke up and couldn’t wait to get here. Besides, you know your mom says no early calls. But hurry with your stalls, I got a great idea!”

“What?”

“Can’t tell you now. But it’s a hummer.” DJ grinned at the look on Amy’s face. Her dark almond-shaped eyes nearly disappeared when Amy glared. And she was definitely glaring.

“You know I hate secrets.” Amy planted both fists on her nearly nonexistent hips. Their flat-chested bodies were one of their big-time gripes.