Fearless (14 page)

Molly clutched her head in frustration. “But why can't you do both? Why can't you come to the lessons and do your jump, and then when camp's over, you can do this play? It's not like riding is keeping you from your acting career.”

I picked up the blue sheet of paper that was lying on the bed between us and stared at the words. There was something else I felt I should tell Molly.

“I'm beginning to realize something. Maybe I'm not really that into riding.”

“Since when? You love riding! It's your favorite activity.”

“No,
you
love riding. It's
your
favorite activity. And it's Whitney's and Amber's.” I paused for several long seconds. “But I'm not sure it's my favorite. I mean, I like it. But the main reason I started riding was because Madison did it. And now you and all our other friends do it. But lately, I'm not so sure I even want to keep doing it.”

Molly looked away and got really, really quiet. I waited for her to say something, but she didn't. The silence of us both not saying anything seemed to suck all the air out of the room.

And then I saw it. A single tear was trickling down her cheek, leaving a wet trail down her face.

“You're crying?” I asked. I totally hadn't expected that. “Why are you crying?”

Molly still wouldn't say anything or even look at me. She stared at the floor in front of us. Then slowly she reached up to swipe away the tears that were now streaming down her face.

“Molly, what's wrong?” I reached out to pat her arm, and finally she looked at me.

“Don't you get it?” she asked.

“Get what?”

“Horses and riding and lessons and all that—that's something we do together. It's something we've got in common.” She rubbed both eyes with her fingertips. “But now you say you want to give it all up and start acting. Okay, fine.”

She gave me a long look. “But maybe we won't stay friends. You'll be doing acting stuff and I'll be doing horse stuff and . . . what will we do together?”

Now I was the one who felt like crying. “Of course we'll still be friends! Look, I promise I'll come watch you when you're ready to do your first jump.”

“But we were going to do our first jump together!”

“I know, but . . .”

“You're just scared, Jordan!” Molly said suddenly. Now she seemed mad at me. “I saw what happened this morning. You weren't going to faint. You just let yourself get freaked out over getting on a horse. You're thinking you're going to fall or you're going to get hurt. You can't let your fear keep you from doing the things you really love!”

I folded up the audition announcement and tucked it back inside my book to keep it safe. “But . . . maybe I can love this. I do get scared just thinking about auditioning. But I'm not going to let my fears keep me from trying out for this play.”

Molly shook her head in disgust. “Yeah, just like jumping. When camp started, you were so sure you wanted to do that. And now look. You're backing out of it. What makes you think you're not going to back out of this audition when the time gets close?”

I stared at her with my mouth open. How could she say something so mean?

Molly sat there, glaring at me. “Admit it, Jordan. You're just using this acting thing as an excuse to get out of jumping.”

Was I? Did I really want to give up riding? Was my whole life controlled by how scared I got over everything?

Right now, trying out for the play seemed like something I really wanted to do. But it was a whole month away. Just like when camp started, I'd had a whole month ahead of me before I knew I'd have to jump. Now that the time was almost here, maybe I was looking for excuses to get out of it.

“I guess maybe I am a little scared.”

Molly's whole expression changed when I said that. “You just have to come back and do the next lesson. It'll be okay. Wayward's a great teacher, and she wouldn't let us do anything that's not safe.”

I nodded. Maybe she was right. It wasn't like riding was interfering with acting. I'd have to keep going to activities until camp was over. And if I didn't go to riding with all my friends, what else was I going to do?

“What did we do today, anyway?”

Molly suddenly grinned. “We did a lot of cantering. And we did some work with the cavalettis. It was great. I wished you'd at least stayed to watch us.”

“What did you do with the cavalettis?” I asked.

“Wayward had them spaced out on the ground, and we had to practice walking and then trotting over them.”

That was supposed to prepare us to jump crossrails. Once you and your horse could trot through cavalettis easily, it wasn't a big step to have him jump a crossrail.

“I'll tell you something, but you better not laugh,” I said.

Molly smiled a little. “Okay, I won't. I promise.”

“Well, you know at our last lesson, when we were walking through the cavalettis? I had this crazy thought that maybe Odie would step
on
the pole instead of
over
it. I thought his feet would slide out from under him. And then he'd be flat on his belly with all four legs sticking out in all directions. That's what I was afraid of.”

Molly was trying hard not to laugh, but she couldn't hold it in. I didn't really care that she was laughing. That's why I'd told her in the first place—to stop us from acting so mad at each other.

I picked up my pillow and smacked her with it. “You said you wouldn't laugh!”

“I know. Sorry.” She smiled slyly. “I'll tell you something I used to be afraid of. You can laugh if you want.”

“Yeah? What?”

Molly glanced around the cabin. “When I was little, I was afraid of umbrellas.”

That really did make me burst out laughing. “Umbrellas?”

Molly smiled. “Don't laugh. They can be really scary. Like, in the wind, they can turn inside out. And whenever I was holding one, I was always afraid I was going to get lifted off the ground and go flying through the air like Mary Poppins.”

I was laughing so hard that my stomach hurt. “And I thought I had all kinds of crazy fears!” I noticed the little travel umbrella that Tis had hanging from a nail by her bed, so I went and grabbed it. I opened it up and ran back over to where Molly was sitting on the bed.

“Watch out! I think the wind is picking up!” I said, waving the open umbrella over Molly's head.

“Stop! Don't you know that's bad luck?” Molly tried to push the umbrella away.

“Okay, now that I've faced my fears, are you ready to face yours?” Molly asked me when we stopped laughing long enough for her to talk.

“Yeah. I am,” I told her.

I should just do it. Do the jump, get it over with, and then everyone would leave me alone.

What Molly had said still sort of bothered me,
though. She'd really hurt my feelings. But one of the reasons it hurt so bad was because I knew what she said was true.

I did tend to back out of things at the last minute. Right now I was all excited about auditioning for the play.

But how was I going to feel a month from now?

“Hey, Jordan—remember? Relax your hands,” Wayward reminded me for maybe the fourth or fifth time today. All during today's lesson, I'd been way too restrictive with the reins. We were cantering, and things weren't going well. I was so stressed, the whole back of my T-shirt was soaking wet from sweat, and I noticed my jaw was hurting because I had my teeth clenched.

Nothing was going right, and I couldn't wait for the lesson to be over so I could get off this horse. Odie had been jittery and jumpy today. He kept tossing his head up and snorting, and he was startling at the least little thing.

“Okay, let's stop there,” Wayward told us. We moved our horses down to a walk and then came to a halt.

Finally. This had been the second worst lesson of my
life. It seemed like nothing had gone right.

As we were dismounting, Madison saw that we were finishing up, so she came over to help us lead our horses out of the ring.

“Hey. How did it go today?” she asked. I had Odie by the reins, and we were walking back toward the stables.

“Fine,” I told her. If she'd seen any of our lesson, she probably knew it hadn't been fine.

It had been so hard for me to even climb back into the saddle today. I'd felt exactly the same way as I'd felt on Monday—like an eggshell about to crack.

But I'd done it. I had no other choice. If I'd skipped another lesson, twenty different people would've given me a hard time about it.

It hadn't taken long on Monday for the whole world to hear that I'd “felt faint” at my lesson. At lunch that day, Eda made a point of stopping me and asking if I was feeling all right. And then the next day, I'd gotten an e-mail from Mama saying she hoped that I was enjoying riding, but I shouldn't put myself under too much pressure. Then she'd gone on and on about how Maddy and I were two different people, and I shouldn't compare myself to her all the time.

What brought all that on? And who was the spy who had told both Eda and Mama about Monday's lesson? I
had a feeling I knew her last name. And it happened to be the same as mine.

“How about next week?” Wayward was saying to Molly as we walked up.

“Next week?” Molly groaned. “We have to wait that long? Why can't we try a jump on Friday?”

“We can't do it Friday. That's the Fourth,” Whitney reminded her. “We won't be going to activities at all on Friday.”

We always did special activities to celebrate the Fourth of July. One tradition was to have a capture-the-flag game between the different age groups, and then later we always had a counselor hunt where all the counselors could hide anywhere in camp, and all the campers had to look for them.

“You'll be ready by next week,” Wayward told us. “We'll just do a couple of easy jumps over the crossrail. It'll be set low, and everything's going to be Zen. Nothing to be nervous about.”

Was she looking right at me when she said that?

“Okay. That sounds good,” I said. Actually, it did sound good. Wayward was right—we were ready for it. We'd been working up to this all summer. I'd seen Whitney do it, and it really wasn't going to be that big of a deal. Once I'd finally done it, I knew I was going to
feel so much better.

We started walking away from the stables, but Madison wasn't leaving my side.

“Don't you have to stay and help out with the rest of the lessons?” I asked her.

“Yeah, I do. I just want to let you know how much improvement you've made this summer. You're really getting to be a good rider, Jordan.”

She had one arm around my shoulders as we walked along. “Thanks,” I said, because she really sounded like she meant it. Madison was so experienced. If she thought I was getting better, maybe I really was. Maybe today had just been an off day.

“You're going to do great on Monday. You're totally ready for it. And it'll be easy. Just don't think about it too much,” she advised. “You know, riding isn't just physical. A lot of it is mental.”

“What do you mean, mental?” asked Molly.

“Well, like if you've been working at a sport for a while, your body knows how to do certain things, right? Like you're all experienced at trotting around the ring in two-point now, so your body knows how to do that. But you can sometimes be analyzing things so much that you start to not trust yourself.”

“I know what you mean,” said Amber. “When I was
playing softball last season, I got hit in the batter's box twice in one game by wild pitches. After that, my hitting was really bad because I kept thinking that I was going to get hit again. It took me about three games to get over it.”

“Yeah, that's just what I'm talking about,” Madison agreed with her. “Sometimes you need to just do it without thinking.”

“Are you going to watch us next week?” I asked.

Madison looked at me. “Do you want me to watch you?”

“Yeah, I do.” This is what I'd been working up to all summer, so I did want Maddy to see it. I knew she was dying to watch me. The only reason she'd stay away would be if I told her I didn't want her there. And I wanted to show her I could do it.

“Then I'll be there. I can't wait to see you!”

At that moment, I was so glad that Molly had talked me into coming back to today's lesson. I was actually going to do it. I was finally ready to jump.