Riding on Air (5 page)

“No wonder she decided to send me home.”

“She didn't,” Dad said, with an automatic glance in his mirror as a ute moved past us in the other lane. “I did.”

I stared at him, amazed, thoughts of the gymkhana and the presentation I'd be missing tomorrow—and the dance tonight that William might have been at—galloping through my head. “But why?”

“I believe you when you say you've never hoarded pills before—Jennie and I do trust you to manage your medication sensibly—but until you're eighteen those prescribed meds are ultimately our responsibility and we keep track. You might have a hard time convincing your mother, but I do still think you're careful with your painkillers. And that being the case, there's only one reason you'd make sure you had an extra pain pill and that's extra pain. Tell me I'm wrong.”

I swallowed the automatic and incredibly stupid retort that actually they hadn't kept track as well as they thought. Yeah, way to go to convince Dad that I really was a pill-stealing junkie. I shrugged uneasily, uncomfortably aware of something horribly like guilt burning in my stomach. It was one thing to make sure Dad didn't find out I was having a flare-up with pony club camp so close, quite another to lie to his face. But surely having a little bit of insurance against the really bad times wasn't so terrible? I was careful, always.

“I'm sorry,” I said eventually. That seemed safe enough.

“Are you? Or are you just sorry you got caught and have to come home?”

A very good question. Typical of Dad and something I always find kind of cool—except when it's directed at me.

“I just wanted to make sure I could ride,” I began hesitantly, aware that Dad expected me to explain myself and that if it came out wrong, if I couldn't make him see how this was a once-in-a-lifetime remedy for a once-in-a-lifetime situation, the only riding I'd be doing for the next few months was likely to be in my dreams. Then I'd have embarrassed myself, upset Dad (and God knows how Mum'd react) and made a really bad impression on William for nothing. “The selector for the dressage squad gave me a lesson this morning and she really liked Jinx. She thought he had heaps of potential. If I'd been too sore to ride she'd never have even seen him.”

“Too sore to ride? Why?”

“I fell off yesterday.” I carefully raised my arm so I could swipe at an annoying strand of hair clinging to my face with the back of my wrist. My forehead was hot and damp with anxiety, sweat was prickling at the roots of my badly-in-need-of-a-wash hair—the queues had been too long and my hands too sore to tackle a shampoo at camp, so I'd just left it. Eleni had re-done it for me yesterday after my plait had got totally feral from four sweaty days in a riding helmet and three nights sleeping like the dead on a soggy pillow.

“You fell off? How?”

“Cross country. I'm not very good at that, not like Eleni or Tash. I misjudged a jump.”

“Do any damage?”

“I was a bit stiff all over but nothing major. Everyone falls off sometimes.”

“Mmm.”

“No, really.”

“So why the pill?”

“It was just insurance. I just had to make sure I was OK to ride this morning so Petra Hein could see how great Jinx is. She asked if I was going to Goulburn next month.” I tried not to let any questioning note enter into that, but I was fishing a bit. Dad had listened to me prattle on about the Goulburn competition for weeks, so he knew what I was getting at.

Dad seemed to be accepting my story, but I couldn't tell what he was thinking. In that, he was very different to Mum—she'd be sure to tell me exactly what was on her mind. I definitely take more after Dad. It drives Tash bonkers that she always has to interrogate me (her word, not mine) if she wants to know my opinion on something. It might help if she'd actually ask me in the first place rather than expecting me to read her mind.

I glanced sideways at Dad, who slid his gaze to his left, to briefly meet mine.

“We'll have to see about that.”

I opened my mouth to plead my case but made myself shut it again. ‘We'll see' was a lot better than ‘there won't be any Goulburn for you young lady!'. I knew he hated whining, so I quit while I was ahead.

And I was ahead. I might have crocked-up hands that had plagued his life with medical appointments, prescriptions and physical therapy, but apart from that I reckon I was about as good as a daughter could be. I didn't really have much opportunity to be bad; there isn't too much hell you can raise when your hands don't work and most of your body hurts a lot of the time.

“I'm sorry to have caused such trouble,” I said, thinking of how he would have had to leave work early to come to pony club and talk to Stacey.

“Now that I do believe. Let's just hope your mother does, too.”

I let my head fall back against the seat and swallowed a groan of dismay. I'd been feeling pretty optimistic up until he reminded me that I still had to call Mum when I got home. I was not looking forward to
that
.

I put it off as long as I could, but eventually I couldn't pretend I was still busy settling Jinx back in his paddock without Dad or Jennie coming out to make sure I wasn't lying dead somewhere. I gave Jinx the last of his carrot and reluctantly made my way back up towards the house, boots swishing through the pasture that Gary carefully maintained for the horses' grazing. I went inside through the back door into the kitchen and stood staring glumly at the phone mounted on the wall by the corkboard where we left messages, bills and reminders for appointments.

This was the phone with Mum's number programmed in so I only had to press one button. The phone with the headset attached so I didn't have to hold the phone while I talked to her. The phone that took away the last of my excuses.

Jennie, my stepmother, came into the kitchen from the hallway leading to the rest of the house and cocked her head at me.

“Getting over it or getting up your courage?”

You could always count on Jennie to tell it to you straight, even if you didn't particularly want to hear it. Years ago I'd brought a sickly abandoned lamb to her and asked if it was possible to save it. Jennie had told me we could try but the lamb was almost certainly going to die. We did try, but it died anyway. At least I'd been prepared when the tiny thing lost its battle. I still cried buckets though. Stupid.

“Contemplating running,” I said, equally honest.

“Don't keep her waiting, Melissa. The worry won't sweeten her any.”

“You're right,” I said, eyeing the phone as if it might bite me.

“As usual,” Jennie said. Grinning as though she knew exactly what I was thinking, she grabbed the headset off the phone base station and stuck it on my head. Lifting the handset, she pressed the appropriate number and then tucked the phone into my hoodie. Mouthing ‘Good luck' at me, she picked up the half-drunk cup of coffee she'd obviously come in for and headed back down the hall.

I stared after my stepmother as the phone started ringing, waiting for my mother to answer and trying unsuccessfully to squash all the disloyal thoughts and comparisons trotting through my brain. The rhythmic bleep-bleep cut off with an abrupt squawk.

“Hello?” Mum said.

“Hi Mum.”

“Melissa, thank God, are you alright? I've been imagining the worst. Your father is infuriating; he wouldn't tell me a thing until he'd spoken to you. What's this about drugs? And being caught with a boy?”

I explained, careful to minimise the role riding Jinx had played in the need for an extra pill.

“Melissa, honey, this really won't do. It sounds like you shouldn't be riding any more. We've always been able to trust your judgement but really, it seems that isn't the case anymore where that horse is concerned.”

I tucked my hands carefully into my pouch pocket, the hard lump of the phone nestled into my palm. I should have known Mum would zoom in on the one fact I was trying to slide past. She's like that. She's worked as a paralegal ever since she left school and she's picked up more than a trick or two over all the years she's worked for barristers. It's pointless trying to win an argument with her, but I sometimes forget that. Just like I forget how she never calls Jinx by his name. He's always just ‘that horse' to her, like he's no more important than a chair or a pot plant or a handbag. Actually, the way Mum is about her handbags, he probably rates far below those.

“Of course you can still trust me, Mum. I would have wanted an extra pill if I fell over in the dining room. It had nothing to do with Jinx.” I couldn't cross my fingers over a fib, they were too lumpy, so I crossed my ankles instead, leaning precariously against one of the kitchen chairs.

“That's a poor argument. If you weren't riding at camp you wouldn't have even been there at all to take the hypothetical fall you mention.”

“Mum, you know what I mean. I've been looking after my own meds for years and I've never ever abused that. I still don't see how I did this time. It's not my fault there are stupid rules that mean I have to go begging for a pill.”

“I agree with those rules and they aren't the problem. Why did you fall off?”

“People fall off all the time.”

“You're not people. Was it your condition that made you fall off?”

“No,” I said, crossing my ankles again.

My brother Brendan banged into the kitchen and gave me an odd look on his way to the fridge. I mouthed ‘Mum' at him and he grinned, raising his eyebrows sympathetically.

“Are you telling me the truth, Melissa Marie?”

“Yes Mum,” I said firmly, stifling a wince at her use of my proper names. She only did it when she meant serious business and I hated to be telling her a fib when she'd pulled out the full deck on me. But if I didn't convince her everything was cool, when she asked to talk to Dad (as she inevitably did after talking to me) it would be to demand that I stop riding and come to stay with her for a while, where I was safe from temptation. Or some variation of that, anyway.

She'd been singing the same tune for years, but she and I both knew a little secret we never mentioned: she didn't really want me to come and live with her. She was saying what she thought a good mother would say, but she liked her inner-city, high-powered life just the way it was; uncluttered by responsibilities or distractions, namely, me. She might bitch about Dad's attitude to my condition and she was sure to give him an earful over letting me handle my own medications, but she was the one who hadn't been able to deal with it at all. Otherwise she'd never have left me behind when she left Dad. She didn't even leave him for another guy. She just left.

I do love my Mum. She's super-smart and she can even be funny, as well as being a bit uptight and impossible to argue with. I just don't want to live with her. I like it here on the farm with Dad and Jennie and my stepbrothers and the animals. And Jinx of course. That goes without saying.

“Dad's in the workshop when she's ready,” Brendan said, going past me with a bottle of ginger beer in one hand and one of Jennie's giant peanut cookies in the other.

I gave him a nod to show I'd heard him, then caught myself nodding in answer to Mum when she repeated herself, annoyance tightening her voice.

“Yes, I'm telling the truth Mum,” I said hastily. I didn't want to wind her back up again as I thought she was moving into the calming-down phase of the call, getting ready to speak to Dad so she could ask him all the same questions and hash over all the same arguments she'd just raised with me. I wondered if she had any idea just how clearly that showed me she actually didn't put much faith in what I told her. I guess not, or she wouldn't be so habitual about it.

“I guess I better speak to your father,” she said.

“Yes Mum.” Hah. Escape was imminent.

I wondered, too, if she ever would believe me without checking with Dad and whether that was normal parent behaviour or just another side effect of having a kid with JRA. I guess I'll never know.

At breakfast the next morning I opted for marmalade toast (easier to handle than the spoon required for cereal, which would have been a dead giveaway of the state of my hands) and made the most of the holiday privilege of remaining in my pyjamas. I still had the second week of my school holidays to go, which meant plenty of time for riding. Actually, more than a week now—since I'd come home from camp early I had an extra day where I could concentrate purely on Jinx's dressage. Guess it's true what they say about a silver lining.

My hair hung loose over my shoulders and I carefully slid my hand underneath it to push it back over my shoulder to keep the dangling ends out of my marmalade. I'd gone to great pains—literally—last night to wash it, so no way was I letting it get grotty again already. Brushing it and putting it in a ponytail though had been quite beyond me this morning. Dad had been in to my room last night to check the medications lined up on my dresser and when I gave him the greasy eye he'd told me to get used to it. I was really tired, but I got the lecture on ‘trust once broken is slowly regained' anyway. Whatever. Obviously I was going to have to be nearly fainting in agony before he'd think taking any of the Clydesdale-strength pills was legit. Lucky I had a couple tucked away for exactly that situation.

I eyed Gary, sitting opposite me slurping up his second cup of coffee, wondering if he could be bribed into doing my hair for me. He was capable, having spent years plaiting the horse's tails for polocrosse matches, but he'd have to be in an exceptionally good mood to be willing. He worried it made him look girly.

Jennie would be glad to do it, of course, but she'd tell Dad and then he would know how bad my hands were. Anyway, Jennie had already left for work. She's a veterinary nurse and has a job-share at the local vet's. She and Dad are always talking about whether she should try to get a full-time position at one of the larger vet practices in the city, but I know she likes it where she is. They always have the same discussion about commuting times, the cost of fuel and working with farm animals versus cats and dogs. In the end they always make the same decision for her to continue where she is. I don't get it. I mean, nothing ever changes, so why keep going over the same old stuff?