“You know, Eleni, if you didn’t want to ride Jinx you could have just told Melissa that. She wouldn’t have minded, would you?”
“Shut up,” I replied at exactly the same time Eleni did. We grinned at each other, although Eleni’s grin was definitely a bit ratty around the edges. She sat awkwardly on the edge of her bed, the afternoon sunlight streaming in through her bay window—something I totally drooled over every time I was here in her room—only showing just how tired and strung out she looked. Which was hardly surprising considering she’d busted her collarbone that afternoon. Her face was about as white as the sling holding her left arm bent up near the top of her right shoulder.
“You look awful,” I said without thinking and Tash burst out laughing.
“Sorry,” I added, mortification setting my face on fire.
“It’s OK, I feel awful,” Eleni said. She was even talking gingerly, as if just speaking hurt her.
“Didn’t they give you any decent drugs?” Tash asked, prowling around the room as usual. Her too-long jeans, now that she’d left her boots down by the front door, swished on the polished floorboards. I stared at Tash’s feet as she passed me, envious of the electric blue polish she’d painted her toenails with. She saw me looking and stopped in the middle of Eleni’s braided rug. She stuck her foot out. “You like?”
“Oh yeah,” I said.
“Want me to do your nails the same?”
“When?”
“I’ve got the polish in my bag,” Tash said and went to rummage.
I turned my attention back to Eleni, not entirely sure I wanted my fingernails electric blue right that minute but knowing any such debate with Tash was a lost cause before I even began. Besides, painting my own nails was impossible these days; I couldn’t close my fingers enough to do it without making a horrendous mess. And anyway, if I decided I didn’t like it Jennie would take it off for me when I got home.
“Did they give you anything?” I asked Eleni.
“Nah. We’ve got some stuff leftover from when Mum had that tooth out and that’s all they were gonna give me anyway.”
“Is it bad?”
“As if she’d tell you if it was,” Tash said, approaching with a sparkly blue bottle in her hand. I noticed her fingernails were a gorgeous silvery burgundy colour.
“Ooh, have you got that one with you?”
“Nah, sorry. Still want the blue?”
“OK.”
“Sit here then.” Tash grabbed a pile of books off the chair at Eleni’s desk and jerked her head imperiously. With another shared grin with Eleni, I sat down and arranged my hands the way Tash wanted them.
“What do you mean?” I said, my brain glomming on to what Tash had said a few sentences ago. “Why wouldn’t she tell me?”
Tash snorted and gave me the eyeball briefly before looking carefully back at the bottle of polish as she unscrewed the lid. “We both know what kind of pain you live with. We’d have to lose a limb before we’d dare complain.”
I didn’t say anything, keeping my eyes on Tash’s movements as she began to glide glossy blue onto my fingernails with delicate, deft strokes of the tiny brush. I was silenced by a sudden rush of resentment, not just for the disease that swelled my knuckles into irregular blobs but also for making my friends feel like I held their injuries and illnesses to ransom. A rare rush of almost-loathing had temporarily stolen my words, I was so freaking jealous that Tash’s long nimble fingers could grip that tiny, tiny brush and put polish on my nails with such delicate precision. I would never, ever be able to do that, short of some miraculous scientific breakthrough.
I made myself speak, eventually. “You don’t ever have to do that, you know. I would never compare, I’d never think—”
“We know,” Eleni interrupted tiredly. “If I wasn’t so sore right now I’d kick you, Tash.”
“What? Why?”
“Ever hear of engaging brain before opening mouth?”
Tash gave Eleni a puzzled, slanting look. She blew on my nails, her breath cool on my knuckles. Her forehead wrinkled as she obviously, strenuously puzzled over what Eleni meant.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“Yeah, you’ll hurt yourself,” Eleni said and she sounded so little-old-ladyish that I snorted laughter.
“Careful!” Tash paused, glistening end of the brush poised above my right thumb.
“Sorry,” I said, subsiding. I glanced over at Eleni and smiled. She returned it and despite the sun washing out her olive skin and the painful way she held herself, she looked so beautiful sitting among the patchwork quilts and pillows. I knew better than to tell her, though. She’d never believe me.
“You’ve got such strong healthy nails,” Tash said, “but god you could do with a manicure. Why don’t you look after them?”
Eleni and I looked at each other a bit wildly and Eleni’s face twitched horribly.
“Don’t laugh, jeez, Melissa, don’t. It’ll hurt too much,” she mumbled.
“No,” I said shortly, clamping my lips together.
Tash looked up, brush poised in the air.
“What?” she said.
Eleni did laugh then and ended up with tears streaming down her face because it did hurt, but in a good way, she said. I wasn’t sure I believed her, but I didn’t argue. I knew all the tricks to put people off when they asked you how much it hurt. I knew when someone was using them too, so I wasn’t going to argue with Eleni. She mostly gave me the same courtesy.
“I still can’t believe you did this to yourself falling off your bike.”
“Me either.”
“What on earth were you doing riding a bike anyway? You hate it. You haven’t been on a bike since we were little.”
Eleni’s face shifted rapidly from greyed-out white to hot pink. Tash glanced at me and then back at Eleni. She put the nail polish brush back into the bottle and carefully screwed on the top. “Don’t move a muscle or you’ll smudge,” she said to me before swinging around to stare accusingly at Eleni.
“Don’t give me that look.”
“So don’t tell me you were riding the stupid bike trying to lose weight.”
“Nothing wrong with exercise.”
“You have an event horse in full work. You don’t need any more exercise than that, surely.”
Eleni’s blush deepened.
“I keep getting puffed on the cross-country,” she said, shamefaced. “Iris wants me to shape up a bit so I can ride Ace better all the way to the finish.”
Tash opened her mouth and shut it again. Iris, Eleni’s instructor, was a screaming tyrant but Eleni wouldn’t hear a bad word about her. And her loyalty was mostly justified; she’d been with Iris since she was little and it was largely thanks to the demanding instructor that Eleni had got where she was, which was pretty far already.
“What’s Iris gonna say about a broken collarbone, hmm?”
Eleni’s face took on a series of odd shapes as she seemed to consider and discard a number of responses.
“Probably something like ‘How long until you can ride?’,” Eleni said eventually.
“More like ‘stupid cow’ I bet,” Tash snorted.
“Tash,” I said and she just shrugged her slender shoulders irritably.
The thing about Tash was she wasn’t stupid. She could seem dumb, the way she’d just come out with what everyone else was thinking and carefully not saying, and because she was blonde and gorgeous, people made assumptions. But she wasn’t thick and she wasn’t even really insensitive. She just had no patience for bullshit. In any quantity or variety.
“You’re probably right, as usual,” Eleni said. “She’ll tell me off for falling off the bike even though she suggested it in the first place.”
We nodded agreement. Neither Tash nor I said anything comforting about that not being fair, Tash because she was a realist and me because I knew it didn’t make any difference. Whether something was fair or not didn’t have any impact on what you felt about it or how it affected you.
It wasn’t fair that Eleni had fallen while riding her bike—something we’d all been doing without injury since we were in kindergarten—and had broken her collarbone. It wasn’t fair that she now would have to scratch from competitions she’d already paid entry fees and stabling for, or that her instructor would be annoyed about the setback in their training. It was particularly unfair that she’d broken the collarbone on the wrong side and although she wasn’t able to ride, she was still going to have to go to school, which really sucked. I thought she could probably talk her Mum out of that one, though, at least for the rest of this week.
It wasn’t fair that because Tash was blunt as well as beautiful, people assumed she was dumb.
It wasn’t fair that she could paint my nails and I could not.
Although I could hardly complain it wasn’t fair, it was definitely a real bummer that Eleni wasn’t going to be able to ride for ages. That meant I was either going to have to get someone else to ride Jinx or I was going to have to sort him out myself.
There was a serious problem with asking either of my brothers to ride Jinx. They give me heaps all the time about how precious I am about not wanting anyone else to ever ride him. Asking Gary or Brendan to ride Jinx was the equivalent to telling Dad and Jennie and by default, Mum, that my hands were awful and I couldn’t manage my horse. And that I could never do.
I rode Jinx deep into the corner of the arena I’d marked out with tyres in the paddock and gave him the aids for shoulder-in, sitting straight in the saddle and keeping my lower back soft and giving in an effort to keep him going forwards. Jinx slowed down, ducking back behind the bit, and I backed off a little in the degree of bend I was asking for and urged him forwards again but his walk became disunited and we ended up doing more of a straggle-along than a shoulder-in.
I circled around and popped him into trot, hoping the more energetic gait would help but when I tried for another shoulder-in I got pretty much the same result. I did a half-circle across the arena, then another to change direction, and brought Jinx back to walk. I gave him plenty of rein and let him stretch his top line muscles, while I puzzled over what was going wrong.
This was a very different horse from the one who’d nearly taken off on me a week or so ago. I frowned, feeling how sluggish Jinx was as he plodded around the arena with none of his usual energy and enthusiasm. I was starting to wonder if I’d overcorrected and overcooked him. He’d been such a handful that day when William was here. I’d been lunging him for a good half hour before I rode him and he hadn’t had a day off since. Perhaps I’d gone from not enough work to too much.
I decided to do some canter to trot transitions on the circle and see how he went with that. If that didn’t wake him up then I’d know for sure he was in need of a day off. Maybe even a check-up from the vet.
“Come on Jinx,” I said, gathering up the reins. Jinx quickened his pace immediately and I could have kicked myself. He wasn’t supposed to do that, he was supposed to remain in an even tempo until I told him to change. That was my fault; I’d clearly telegraphed my intentions to him ahead of actually asking.
I got him settled and walking calmly again, getting him back on the bit without too much trouble, but I could feel the increased alertness. Hmm. If I didn’t know better I’d think he’d been being lazy. But that’s a fault Jinx had never ever suffered from. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was sour.
I could have smacked myself. Of course, that was it. I’d been so worried about the upcoming dressage comp I’d been working him in the round yard or the arena ever since camp. We hadn’t been for any of the relaxing rides out over the property that we would normally have had once or twice a week just for a change of scenery. I was such a dope.
Instead of gathering Jinx into a trot, I turned around and rode him out of the arena and across the paddock towards the back gate that led out to the hill paddock. I’d take him out there and we could have a bit of a canter up the long hill where I could use the long slope to make sure I could pull him up OK. As we rode past the yards, Jinx tightened up underneath me, hesitating. I looked around to see what he was seeing. A chaff bag had escaped from the tack room and blown up against the fence. In the rising late-afternoon breeze it was flapping a little, curling and rising then settling back against the mesh. Jinx eyed it with deep suspicion, trying to sidle away from it.
“Ah ah,” I said, “Never you mind, it can’t hurt you—”
Sheila, one of the goats Jennie kept, jumped up from behind the yard fence, disturbed by Jinx’s approach. I hadn’t realised she was there and neither had Jinx, who had been too fixated on the scary chaff bag. The nanny’s sudden movement spooked Jinx and he jumped sideways. Unprepared, I lost my seat, my upper body whipping sideways as Jinx plunged away and then took a giant leap. I scrabbled for my too-long reins as Jinx, frightening himself with his own leaping around, took another huge bound and whipped around.
I grabbed at my reins, my fingers screaming at such abusive behaviour but I was too busy trying to get back into the saddle and regain some control over Jinx to worry about it. I was literally clinging on by one ankle and my far-too-long reins, struggling to sound calm as I tried to talk Jinx into a whoa.
But Jinx was beyond that. He’d been out of sorts all week and he loathed all Jennie’s goats in general, Sheila in particular because she’d butted at him once when he’d stretched his neck over the fence, curious about her kid.
I made another effort to haul myself back up by the reins and/or put enough pressure on Jinx’s bit to slow him down, I wasn’t fussy about which, but I couldn’t grip tightly enough. Worse, to my horror, I could feel my fingers slipping, unable to grasp the reins tightly enough to counter my dangling body weight.
All this happened in seconds—Jinx was only about three strides from where the goat had spooked him. But it was happening in slow-motion, which gave me longer to realise that this time I was gone. You always know the moment. You know the moment when you’ve fought gravity and lost. You know the moment when you need to stop trying to hang on and start thinking about how to let go.
As my leg came over Jinx’s back and the reins snapped free of my hands I knew that moment was here and as always I had that split-second to choose: hands out to protect my head or tuck and roll and protect my hands?
Tuck and roll, same as always.
My shoulder slammed into the ground and a flash of intense pain went off like a bomb in my neck. I could hear Jinx’s hooves thudding as he trotted off. At least the grass was a damn sight softer than the cross country course had been. But then there was a dark curtain falling over me like a blanket. I couldn’t hear Jinx anymore. And then I was fading out too.