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'So then what?' Shelby prompted.

'I confessed.'

Shelby gaped. 'Really?'

Erin shoved her book into her bag and the two girls shuffled behind the other students towards the door. 'I didn't tell her about CC. I said that we'd broken the saddle and that we had to get it fixed before Lindsey's mum found out.'

'Was she cranky?'

A frown crossed Erin's brow. 'Of course she was cranky!' she huffed. 'I knew it would be more than fifty. I just never thought it would be three hundred!'

'Dollars?' Shelby gasped.

'No, broad-beans, you ninny. Mum was mad because she didn't see why our family should pay to fix the saddle when you broke it.'

'You told her I broke it?'

Erin continued. 'I just keep thinking of all the other ways I could spend three hundred dollars.'

Shelby knew Erin would be thinking of shoes, or mobile phone covers – something dumb like that.

'I don't want to do this any more, Shel,' Erin continued. 'I've decided. It would be different if we could ask for help, but doing it in secret is driving me mental.'

The two girls joined the flow of students in the corridor.

'We can do this by ourselves,' Shelby assured her. 'We just need some more time.'

Erin jutted her chin out and folded her arms. 'Don't you get it? More time means more money. How much is this chiropractor going to be?'

Shelby shrugged and looked at her shoes.

Erin tossed her head. 'You don't even really want to share CC with us, do you? You want to keep her for yourself. You're just using Lindsey and me for things you need.'

Shelby stopped still in the corridor and the other students streamed around her. Somebody shoved her in the back. 'Hurry up, will ya?'

Shelby didn't notice. She was stinging from Erin's words. 'You take that back, Erin!'

'Anyway, I already have a good horse. You're the only one who needs a proper horse. If you want to do this then do it by yourself.'

Shelby followed Erin down the corridor, fuming. When they reached the Computer Studies room she waited until Erin picked a seat and then she sat on the opposite side of the room.

She stared at the blank computer screen with a lump in her throat, as though she'd swallowed a whole walnut. She was afraid she was going to cry, not because she was sad, but because she was shocked – and also because what Erin had said was a little bit true.

Shelby thought back to all the things she'd thought and said since she'd seen the pony at the sales. Erin was right. She had never really wanted to share Hotty at all.

14 Candour

At the end of the school day Shelby walked over to the place where Erin's mum usually picked them up to take them to the stables. Erin was already waiting. She had her bag over one shoulder and looked the other way when Shelby approached.

'Are you sorry for what you said?' Shelby asked.

'No.'

Shelby bit her lip. 'Can I still have a lift?'

Erin shrugged.

Shelby looked over at the turning bay but the doors of the school bus she used to catch home were already closing. The engine rumbled as the bus pulled away from the kerb.

Shelby scuffed her heel across the edge of the gutter. She didn't know what to do. Her parents wouldn't worry until five, when they went to pick her up from the stables. Would they think to look for her here? She wondered how long it would take to walk home.

'You can be mad at me, but I need a lift,' she mumbled. 'I don't have any other way of getting there. I don't have a mobile. I haven't even got any money to ring my mum at a public phone.'

Erin narrowed her eyes. 'It's always the same with you, Shelby.'

'What do you want me to do, Erin?' She held her hands out, palms up. 'This is how it is for me.'

'You could be more grateful.'

Shelby looked away for a moment, swallowing her anger. 'So far I have paid my share. You offered to fix the saddle. Nobody made you.'

At that moment Erin's mum drove up in front of them. The two girls climbed into the car. Erin slammed the passenger-side door.

'Steady on there!' Erin's mum said. Her eyes met Shelby's in the rear vision