High Hurdles (9 page)

Chapter
•
12

“I’m sorry, DJ. We’re going to have to postpone the party.”

“That’s okay. You can’t help it that your boy has the chicken pox. We’ll be glad to bring the pony when he’s better.” DJ hung up the phone. “That’s the second cancellation. We had to run into an epidemic of chicken pox! How am I ever going to earn enough money for a horse at this rate?” She slammed her fist on the telephone stand, making the pencils in the holder jump and spill onto the floor.

“DJ, are you all right?” Gran called from the other room.

“I’m fine! Just fine!” DJ knelt and picked up the scattered pens and pencils.
If I get any more fine, I’ll explode
. She dialed Amy’s number and waited while Amy’s brother went to get her.

“Bad news. Both our parties are canceled for Saturday—chicken pox.”

“Have you ever had them?” Amy sounded funny.

“I guess. Why?”

“Because John is breaking out in spots and I never have, that’s why.”

“Oh, great. So, you sick or what?”

“No, not yet. But Mom says I probably will be in ten to fourteen days. I don’t want the chicken pox.”

DJ flinched at the wail in Amy’s voice. She glanced at the calendar.
Two weeks!
That was the weekend of the Danville Saddle Club show, one of the biggest in the area.

“Maybe you won’t get them. Come on, Ames, you can pray for that. I will.”

“I’d rather get them now than later. Spots all over my face—yuk!”

“Yeah, and you hardly ever even have a zit.” DJ twined the phone cord around her fingers. “So, how’s John taking it?”

“He’s too sick to care. Mom says the older you are, the worse you get it.”

Visions of John covered with pussy sores made DJ cringe. “I gotta go. Talk to you tomorrow.” She hung up the phone and turned to find Gran standing in the door.

“So you don’t have any parties on Saturday?”

DJ shook her head.

“I’m sorry for that, but your new schedule will work out well for Joe and me. We’ll have the barbecue on Saturday instead.”

DJ watched as Gran lifted the receiver. Her face turned into all-over smiles when Joe answered the phone. Why, she looked as sappy as some of the girls at school who claimed to be in love. If that was what love did to a person, DJ wanted no part of it.

Gran can’t be in love. She hardly knows the guy.
But there she was, calling him
darlin’.
But then Gran called everyone
darlin’
. Well, not everyone—just her family. DJ and Lindy. And now Joe.

DJ felt like heaving. What was happening to her grandmother? She tried to get Gran’s attention. But waving arms and making faces didn’t work. Gran just smiled that sappy smile, laid a finger over her lips, and kept right on talking to Joe. Shouldn’t he be at work? Wasn’t there a law against calling a policeman when he was on duty? DJ stomped from the kitchen and up to her room.

“I don’t want to go to a barbecue at Joe’s house! I don’t want to even
see
the man ever again! I don’t . . .” She paused before slamming her fist into her pillow a third time. “I don’t want Amy to get the chicken pox!”

How could a summer that started out so great turn into such a disaster? Diablo to ride and show in equitation and dressage. Jumping classes. Ways to earn money for a horse of her own. The best summer ever! Now it was all a bust.

She flopped across her bed and let her arms dangle over the other side. Even sketching horses wasn’t fun anymore. How could she ever ride in the Olympics when she couldn’t even get through the summer? She pounded her fist on the carpet, keeping time with her swinging feet. What a mess—bam! What a mess—bam! Four beats. Wait—she’d forgotten about James accusing her of stealing the saddle and bridle. What a mess—bam!

“That bad, darlin’?” Gran stood at the door.

DJ swallowed. And swallowed again. Her eyes burned.
Bam! Don’t call me “darlin’,” not when you call that—that man—the same thing
. But all she said was, “I’ll live.”

“Guess I didn’t realize livin’ was in question.”

DJ refused to rise to the gentle humor. What a mess—bam! But when she heard Gran make her way back downstairs, she wanted to run after her and bury her head in Gran’s lap. To tell her how awful everything was. To let her make everything all right again.

“What’s with you today?” Amy planted her fists on her hips and stood, legs spread, as if to keep DJ from running right over her.

“Nothing.”

“Right. And I’m Ronald McDonald. Come on, DJ, you’ve been ugly as sin the last couple of days. This isn’t like you, not one bit.”

DJ kept on brushing Megs, using long strokes with such a heavy hand that the horse turned to look at her. Dust motes flew in the sunlight from the open doorway. Megs stamped her foot and swished her tail when DJ failed to swirl the hair at her flank.

“DJ, this is your best friend, Amy, remember me? What gives?”

DJ dropped the brush and rubber currycomb into the pail. “You really want to know? Well, tomorrow I have to go to a barbecue at
Captain
Joe Crowder’s house to meet his family. Sunday I get to help all of you who own your own horse at the horse show. I don’t get to show, mind you—I get to
help
.” She unsnapped the crossties and turned Megs around to take her out to the hot walker. “You want more?” She stopped and looked back at her friend.

Amy stood in the same spot, hands now at her side. Even in the shadow, DJ could see two tears leave Amy’s almond eyes and spill down her cheeks.

DJ bit her lip. “And now even my best friend hates me. But that’s no problem, because I don’t like me, either.” She dashed away a piece of dirt that was making her eye water. “Come on, Megs.
Someone
around here should get what she wants. And you want to be outside.”

What a creep you are!
DJ couldn’t think of any names black enough to call herself. When she returned, Amy was nowhere in sight.

Since she and Amy didn’t have any pony parties on Saturday due to the chicken pox, DJ spent the early afternoon cleaning tack for the show on Sunday.

“Cat eyes,” James hissed when he rode by her on the way out to the arena to practice.

While DJ heard him, ignoring him was easy. She had too far up to reach to answer. Once, she’d heard the saying
lower than a slug’s belly
. It fit her now.

Amy came, did her chores, and left without saying a word to DJ. Round and round DJ moved the rag, dipping it back in the saddle soap, then round and round some more. One thing was sure, there was always plenty of leather to clean.

“Need some help?” Hilary sat down on the bale beside DJ.

“Sure.” DJ nodded to the waiting pile of tack. “I hang ’em up when I’m done.”

“I know the drill.” They rubbed in silence. They could hear observers commenting on those still practicing in the rings for the show. A horse snorted. Another whinnied.

“How’s Megs?”

“Seems okay now.” Rub, dip, and rub some more.

“You helping tomorrow?”

“Yep.” DJ flexed her shoulders and sat up straight.

“I had a summer like yours once.”

That caught DJ’s attention.
How does she know everything that’s going on?
“Sure you did.”

“I broke my arm, my horse went lame, and my mom and dad separated.” Hilary stopped rubbing. “I was thirteen; it was a rough time anyway.”

“So?”

“So, what?”

“So what happened?”

“My arm healed, my horse recovered, and my parents got back together. We were lucky. Or as my mom says, ‘God took good care of us.’ ”

“You believe that?” Rub, dip, and rub. DJ wanted to watch Hilary’s face, but she couldn’t.

“Sure do. But it hurt as if I were dying at the time.”

Hilary stood to hang up a bridle. She reached down and took the one DJ had just finished. “When you thank God for what’s going on—no matter how bad it seems—it gets easier.”

“Thanks?” DJ’s voice sounded like that of a cornered mouse.

Hilary nodded. “I know it doesn’t make sense, but it works. Try it and let me know what happens.” She patted DJ on the shoulder. “Gotta run. See you tomorrow.”

DJ checked her watch. Today was not a good day to be getting home late. And she still had to take a shower.

Gran looked as if she’d swallowed the sun—she couldn’t quit shining. “You better bring a jacket; it could be foggy in San Francisco.”

DJ already had hers lying by the door. Thanks to direct orders from her mother, she wore a long-sleeved green cotton shirt and tan dress pants. It was the nicest outfit she owned. When she’d suggested clean jeans and a new T-shirt, the look she got from her mother quickly changed her mind.

Everyone else would probably be in jeans. Everyone but her mother and Gran, that is.

DJ put on her earphones and plugged them into her portable cassette player as soon as she got in the car. This way she wouldn’t have to talk—or listen. Or think, for that matter. One foot bobbed in time with the music. When they parked in front of a two-story house with big bay windows like many San Francisco houses, she shut off her recorder and stared. There was no yard on either side of the house—in fact, there was no place to walk between them, the walls butted right up against each other.

“Nice place,” she muttered in as sarcastic a tone as she could dig up.

Her mother pinched DJ’s underarm and hissed in her ear. “Shape up!”

DJ clapped her mouth shut. How could she smile and be pleasant when Gran and Joe were kissing in front of everybody? Worse still, DJ was the oldest kid there. All the others were still in grade school or younger.

Gran took DJ’s hand. Joe held the other—Gran’s, that is. “Come on, darlin’, we want you to meet the family.”

By the time DJ had met two of Joe’s three children and their kids, she felt as though she were caught in a memory game time warp.

The oldest, Robert, had a pair of five-year-old twin boys named Billy and Bobby.
What yucky names,
DJ thought.

“Our mom went to heaven,” Billy announced. Or was it Bobby?

“Oh.”
What do you say to that?

“Do you like horses?” Bobby asked. Or was it Billy?

“Yes, I do.”

“Good, ’cause my grandpa said you’d take me for a ride.”

“Ah, sure.”
Come on, DJ, loosen up. They’re just kids—you like kids.

“Grandpa said you ride at an academy.” A girl with shy, dark eyes stopped next to DJ.

“I’m Shawna. That’s my mom and dad.” She pointed to the man burning the meat and a woman holding the platter. “I’m nine.”

“Hi, Shawna. I do ride.”

“And you teach kids to ride.”

“Some.”

“Would you teach me?”

What could she say? DJ nodded. “Someday, sure.”
Joe sure has been volunteering me for all kinds of things. Who does he think he is, anyway?
DJ shot him a look, but it bounced off the circle of love shining around him and Gran.

DJ rubbed her stomach. She had a really bad feeling about all this.

Shawna sat right across the table from DJ, and the twins parked themselves on either side of her. DJ felt hemmed in by munchkins. She cut into her steak. Pink juice dribbled onto her plate. These people couldn’t even cook meat right! She ate around the pink part and tried to make a real meal out of the salad and corn on the cob. When she glanced up, her mother was sitting by the twins’ father.