Hot Potato (Shelby and Blue) - Alyssa Brugman [11]
Shelby was starting to feel silly for the way she had behaved with her friends. Lindsey should have waited, but Shelby doubted that she herself would have, if she'd been the one to arrive first. Was it a big enough deal to go off in a huff and miss out on a whole afternoon of playing with the new pony?
'No,' she muttered out loud, wishing she'd let it go, like Erin had.
Picking up the next bucket, Shelby glanced up at the blackboard and thrust the dipper into the bin of pony pellets.
Lindsey was right too. She had paid for the horse, and they probably would have decided that she should ride first. Now Shelby would have to make up with her, and there would be that little while afterwards that was strained and awkward.
Shelby sighed. 'I'm a duffer.'
The best way to make amends would be to give Lindsey the fifty dollars. Then they would be square. It was just a matter of finding it.
Shelby didn't get pocket money from her parents. She had asked to have it weeks in advance so many times that her parents had lost count and given up. Now they had agreed on the things they would buy for her – like money for the canteen at school, Blue's food and worming paste, getting his feet trimmed, and her pony club fees. For anything above that she had to do extra chores around the house.
What could she tell them she was buying? It seemed as though her parents were paying attention to what she said these days, so she would have to be careful.
With all the feeds made up, Shelby hefted a bale of hay onto the front of the trolley and dragged it out of the shed. She stopped at the first stable, tipped the feed into the bin and dropped a biscuit of hay into the bag hooked on the wall.
For safety, they always put the feeds in the stables before bringing the horses in from the day-paddocks one at a time, and then once they were eating calmly, the two girls put the horses' rugs on. All the horses knew the routine, and that made their behaviour more predictable.
One by one Shelby emptied the buckets into the waiting bins, until she reached the last stable in the row. A woman named Tammy rented this one. She had a stock horse gelding called Ajax that Shelby didn't like very much.
Shelby loved most horses, but she was wary around Ajax. He was kept in a day-paddock on his own because when he was left with other horses he would herd them into the corner and kick them. He also smelt funny – more like a dog than a horse. You could see the whites of his eyes, even when he was resting, and his rump was short and sloping – not round, like an apple – so he always looked tucked up at the back.
Shelby wasn't such a big fan of Tammy either. If she had been a Disney cartoon she would have been drawn all angles and dark shadows.
Tammy only came to the stables once a fortnight. She didn't always ride. She often brought friends with her and she always had some complaint to make. She wanted extra rice hulls for her stable floor. She didn't think the girls were cleaning it properly. She wanted to know exactly what time Ajax's rugs came off in the mornings, and insisted that they took his off last when the weather was cooler.
One time Tammy had written a letter of complaint about Lindsey and Shelby because she overheard them laughing in the feed shed. She had said that the whole place would run more efficiently if the two girls were made to work separately.
'What a witch!' Lindsey had said. 'You know she pulled me up the other day for not hanging her rugs straight? She said they were getting damaged from being scrunched!'
'She's a witch who pays two months in advance,' Mrs Edel had remarked. 'She's not asking for anything we can't do with a little bit of effort.'
'She's only got a horse so she can say that she has one,' Lindsey added under her breath.
Shelby opened the gate and walked