Hot Potato (Shelby and Blue) - Alyssa Brugman [22]
Shelby picked the lucerne off her shirt. 'I just think that if you always give up on things as soon as they get a bit difficult then you'd never achieve anything. Even really fun stuff has hard parts – like when you go to the zoo and at the end of the day your feet are sore and you're hungry.'
'Then it's time to go home!' Lindsey smiled.
Shelby chewed her lip. 'Anyway, that's not really what I asked.'
Lindsey raised an eyebrow. 'You want to know if I think you're a scab?'
Shelby nodded.
'It would be easier for everyone if we all had the Crooks' budget. None of us do. If you really want this horse you should try asking your mum.'
Shelby groaned.
'You think she'll say no,' Lindsey added before Shelby could interrupt. 'But it's at least worth asking, so you can cross that off the list.'
Shelby lifted the bale onto the trolley. Lindsey clambered down the stack of hay. At the bottom she brushed the dust from her jodhpurs.
'You're always trying to prove that you're as good as anyone else – talking yourself up. I don't know why you think you need to do that. Most people think you're fine already.'
Shelby took a deep breath. It had been a day of candour from both of her friends.
'Blue is a sturdy little horse. I would be proud to own him,' Lindsey added.
'Really?'
'Really.'
Shelby helped her friend load the rest of the feed buckets onto the trolley. She wondered if Lindsey was telling the truth, and, if she was making it up, was she doing it to be nice, or because she wanted Hotty out of her hair?
15 Investing
Shelby sat at the dining room table with her History book spread in front of her. She flicked the end of her pen between her upper and lower teeth. She was supposed to be choosing between Vikings, Medieval Japanese or Aztecs for her assignment, but instead she had been thinking about what her friends had said. Normally she and Erin would decide on the assignment topic together, either in class or on the phone afterwards, but they hadn't spoken all afternoon.
She wondered if she could come up with another hundred dollars to buy Lindsey and Erin out of the agreement and, if she did, whether things would go back to normal. There was more to the whole business than money.
In the lounge room Connor sat on the floor eating a bowl filled with tinned peaches and ice cream, and watching The Simpsons. Blake stood in the middle of the room, wrapped in a towel, fresh from his bath. He stared at the television screen, transfixed – rigid and unwieldy, like a department store mannequin, while his father tried to dress him in pyjamas.
Shelby's mother sat next to her at the table with her own textbooks spread out, having recently started a course in surveillance and investigation.
Shelby thought it was cool that her mum was training to be a private detective, but her mum assured her that her new part-time job as a detective at a department store was far less exciting than Shelby imagined. She told Shelby that she probably got the job because she was the most ordinary-looking person who had applied.
She still had a tea towel over her shoulder from handling hot pans at dinner time. Shelby had to admit that her mum was pretty ordinary. She was average height, average weight, with shoulder length hair that wasn't curly or straight. She had a pleasant face, but plain. Shelby thought she was perfect for a detective. It made much more sense to have the sort of person the eye slides over than all those tall, gorgeous women in designer suits that were on the TV shows.
Shelby wondered if one day, once Blake was at school, her mother might open her own business finding kidnapped heiresses, tracking stolen treasures, or exposing wildlife smugglers.
'You look lost. Need some help?' her mum asked. Shelby sighed and flipped through the pages in front of her. History was really the only subject at school that she found relevant. She hadn't quite decided if she wanted to run a big agistment centre