• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

'This is so unfair!' she said to no one.

There was Blue, too. She hadn't gone for a day without seeing him for as long as she could remember. She hoped they didn't expect her to give him up as well. She wouldn't – no matter what the doctors said.

'You'd better drive me over there every day or else!' She was pretty sure her mum wouldn't be able to hear through the brick wall. 'Or else I'm going to be so mad!'

Speaking of tempers, she wondered what had happened with Lindsey and her mum. What would she say when Shelby couldn't come to work for five whole weeks?

Then Shelby had a splendid idea.

* * *

'Mrs Edel said that since I can't work for five weeks she'll need money for Blue's agistment. She said fifty dollars would cover it,' Shelby told her mother, as she hung up the phone. 'I can give it to her at the barbecue tomorrow.'

'That sounds reasonable,' her mother replied, gathering her handbag from the back of the dining room chair and rummaging for her wallet.

'So I can go then?'

'We'll see how you feel tomorrow,' her mother replied.

Shelby had, in fact, been talking to Erin and not Mrs Edel, but her mother would never know. During the conversation Erin had offered to stand in for her at the stables until she was better.

'That would be so great. I owe you one,' Shelby had said, with a twinge of guilt for the way she imagined her friends earlier.

'You can be my slave for the rest of the year,' Erin joked. 'Seriously though, you only broke your face because you were trying to stop me from getting hurt, so if you think about it, I'm the one who owes you. When are you coming back?'

'The doctor says that I'm not supposed to go near horses for four to five weeks, but only because they might bump my face accidentally, so I'm sure it would be OK if I just stood out of the way.'

'Yeah,' Erin agreed. 'You could just stay on the other side of the fence. That would be all right.'

'And Blue has nice manners and he would never bump me, so I don't think he counts.'

'Or Bandit,' Erin added. 'You'll have to come to the barbecue tomorrow anyway. Everyone will be there. I'm pretty sure that it's compulsory since you're staff.'

'Definitely. So basically it means that I just can't go in with the bad horses.'

Shelby was glad she had talked to Erin. It made her realise that the dumb fracture was not going to be a problem at all. One thing that Erin said did worry her – everyone will be there. That meant Tammy too. Tammy would never miss an opportunity to tell everyone how she thought the stables should be run.

Shelby was going to have to find a way to get fifty dollars back in Tammy's tack room before lunchtime Sunday.

24 Night Ride

The only way Shelby could stay awake was to sit at her desk. A few times she heard the squeaky board in the hallway as her parents came to check on her. She would jump into bed and pull up the covers before the door opened.

At first she tried reading her English novel, but then she switched to her dog-eared, chocolate-stained, quarto edition of The Complete Book of the Horse.

The painkillers were making her extra drowsy and so she passed the time writing a list of breeds alphabetically, then by size, then by order in which she intended to buy them when she was a grown-up.

Finally, she heard the television turn off and her parents moving about in the bathroom, brushing their teeth as they prepared for bed.

Shelby waited for ten minutes after her parents' bedroom door closed and then left the house by the laundry door at the back of the house. She collected 'Misty', her old bike, which she had stashed next to the back gate earlier in the evening.

When she hit the colder air her face began to ache. The painkiller was wearing off, but she didn't want to take another one. She was groggy enough already.

Shelby stood on the gutter in front of her house. The front windows were dark and blank. She could vaguely see her own reflection from the streetlight.

For a moment she felt a wave of uncertainty wash over her. She'd gone out in the night without permission before, and she'd been in