For Sale or Swap - Alyssa Brugman [2]
Most of the other girls at the Pony Club didn't have to wait for their birthdays – they got things when they needed them, and sometimes when they didn't. Hayley Crook had jodhpurs in every colour imaginable, and matching saddle blankets to go with them. It didn't make any sense at all, because Shelby's father went to an office all day, just the same as Mr Crook did, and yet the Crooks lived in a big fancy house with a pool area, and a gardener, and a cleaning lady three days a week, while Shelby's family (as her dad was always telling her) didn't have two pennies to rub together.
Maybe if I lived in a parallel universe I would have been born into Hayley's family, she wondered. If she had, her life would have been way better.
The screen door slammed behind Shelby, and she walked along the road. Loose gravel crunched underneath her shoes. It was almost dark now, but the summer air was still dry and warm. Streetlights arced over, lighting her way. She could see families inside their new brick bungalows and the flickering blue light from their televisions.
Maybe for Christmas she could get a new saddle like Erin's? That might get her out of the beginner's ring. Perhaps she could ask for a few lessons? There was an instructor at the stables where Erin and the others kept their horses. She could just ask for her Pony Club membership fees. That was the most boring present ever.
At the end of the block she turned left. There were only two houses on this cul-de-sac, but new blocks were zoned, with thin pickets and fluttering tape marking their proposed location. Shelby trudged along with her head down, her arms folded, and when she looked up again, what she saw made her pause for a moment. There in the gloom stood the skeleton of a house, its pale pine beams glowing. It hadn't been there that morning – only a flat grey concrete slab.
She knew it would happen sooner or later – new houses springing up, one after the other, in a slow procession towards her paddock. Of course, it wasn't her paddock, and that was the problem. She didn't know who it belonged to. When she and her father had patched up a ramshackle fence of wire, wood pallets and baling twine around a nice flat piece of vacant land, nobody had said a word. They were squatters – that's what her dad called it. Now the land around it was being sold off, piece by piece, and one day soon her paddock would be sliced up and marked with pickets and tape. Then what would she do? She couldn't exactly keep a horse in the back yard. It wasn't big enough for starters, and there was Dad's precious vegie patch.
Shelby's dad got a bit cross when the kids went near his vegies. That might have been because her little brothers had taken to 'helping' and squashed a whole row of his beloved tomatoes.
The only thing he got more cross about was his car. He wouldn't let anyone eat in it and he always opened the doors for the kids so they wouldn't get greasy marks on the windows. Shelby's parents had two old-fashioned Alfa Romeo Spyders. One of them worked, but the other one, the one her mother drove when it was working, was really just a spare that her dad had bought for the parts. Half the time her mother's car was in pieces all over the garage floor. Neither of the cars were worth much because they were very old, but her father loved them. Shelby's mum said that owning a Spyder was a dream that Shelby's father had had since he was young.
Blue's shaggy paint face stared out at her over the wooden sliprail that served as a gate. He whickered to her in his deep voice. Shelby smiled. He was always pleased to see her.
'Hello there, lovely boy,' she said to him, sliding under the rail. Blue nibbled at her fingers, and nosed around her pockets.
'No treats tonight, I'm afraid.' In her glum mood she had forgotten to bring him any.
Shelby bounced twice so she could land on her belly over Blue's back, scrambled across until she was astride, and then leaned forward, resting