Hot Potato (Shelby and Blue) - Alyssa Brugman [19]
'Whoever is going to buy her is going to want to ride her when they come to look at her,' she answered. 'I think we should try a different saddle. If we're going to make our money back, we can't have her bucking like that.'
'Are you volunteering yours?' Lindsey asked.
Shelby considered for a moment. Her saddle was ugly and old, and had suffered through all of her adventures. It had been dragged along the ground, rained on, stepped on – not to mention the normal wear and tear from riding almost every day. She had needed a new one for a long time, but she didn't have a whole rack to choose from like Lindsey, or a sympathetic mother like Erin. It was the only saddle she had.
Still, if she was going to talk the other girls into keeping Hotty for just a little while longer, she was going to have to show commitment.
She nodded. 'We'll try it tomorrow.'
'And what if she does that crazy thing again?' Erin asked.
'The chiropractor will be able to tell us if she has a sore back,' Shelby replied.
'Yeah, and who's going to pay for that?' Lindsey asked.
Erin's face split into a grin. 'Gwen Stefani, of course!'
13 The Worst Part
Erin was late for class the next day. She scurried into Maths with her head bowed and flopped into the chair next to Shelby. She flipped to the back of her exercise book and wrote a message.
I can't take this any more!!!!
'What?' Shelby murmured.
The stupid saddle!!!! Erin wrote.
'Tell me!' Shelby whispered.
At the front of the room their teacher, Mrs Tapley- Hook, spoke. 'If X in this equation equals two-thirds and Y equals fifteen, can you calculate Z?'
Erin cupped her hand over her mouth and kept her eyes fixed on the whiteboard at the front of the room, hoping that their teacher wouldn't notice.
'We dropped Hiccup's saddle at the saddler's this morning, but he remembered it. I said that it had been Mrs Edel's, but she sold it to the Crooks and the Crooks were giving it to me. Then he said that the Crooks had never owned a stock saddle. They'd only ever had dressage saddles, so he didn't understand why they would buy one – especially a second-hand one, and then he said that it wouldn't fit any of their horses anyway.'
Shelby shook her head. They should have anticipated that this might happen. Even in a city horse people always know other horse people.
Mrs Tapley-Hook pointed her whiteboard marker at the boy sitting in front of the two girls. 'Jasper? Can you tell me the answer?'
'Z equals twenty-seven,' he answered.
'Very good.' The teacher turned around to write some new problems on the board.
'Then what?' whispered Shelby.
Erin's eyes widened. 'Then mum stared at me like I'd stolen it or something, and I said that . . .'
'What does Z equal in this equation, Shelby?' Mrs Tapley-Hook asked.
Shelby froze. She looked for cues from her classmates, but her eyes met only vacant faces.
'Thirty-two?' she guessed.
'You haven't been paying attention. You need to concentrate now or you won't understand the rest of the lesson. I won't ask you again.' Her teacher stalked past the girls' desk to the back of the room.
Erin wrote another note in the back of her book and underlined it.
And that's not even the worst part!
Erin's face was pale and pinched, as though she was sick. Shelby was bursting to hear the worst part, but now she would have to wait until the end of class. She frowned into her equations. Who cares what Z equals? she thought. There were so many more important things to talk about.
Finally the bell rang and all around Shelby could hear the rumble of students talking at once, teachers raising their voices with last-minute instructions, and the scrape of chairs