Victory and the All-Stars Academy (10 page)

“Dee Dee! What is going on in…here…” Issie's tongue-lashing trailed off when she saw what Dee Dee had been up to.

“Wombat! Ohmygod!”

Wombat raced up to Issie, grinning his goofy puppy grin. His tail was wagging so hard it was spinning like a propeller.

“Wombat!” Issie fell on her knees next to the puppy and gave him the most enormous hug. Wombat began to lick her face.

Issie turned to Dee Dee. “Where did you find him? We've been looking everywhere!”

“He was under the shed by the driveway,” Dee Dee said. “I was walking back from the stables and I heard
this weird whimpering noise. I went to take a look and all I could see was his nose sticking out. He'd got stuck under there. I had to drag him out by his front paws. I brought him straight back to our room and I've been waiting here for you to come back.”

She looked at Issie. “It's him, isn't it? He's the thing you were hiding. That day when I saw you down at the stables and you wouldn't let me look in the stall?”

Issie was about to answer when there was a loud knock at the door. Wombat instinctively responded with a throaty growl.

“Shhhh!” Issie said to him. “Wombat, no! Be quiet!”

There was another knock, louder still, and this time Issie could hear the voices of Tara and Digger on the other side of the door. Issie looked at Dee Dee with pleading eyes. Dee Dee looked straight back at her and then reached out a hand and opened the door.

“Hi!” she said brightly to Tara. She had opened the door, but only enough to stick her head out and not enough for Tara and Digger to see Issie and the puppy cowering behind the bed by the window.

“Hi, Dee Dee,” Tara said. “We're just doing a room check in case the puppy has come into the house.”

Dee Dee looked back over her shoulder at Issie and Wombat. Then she turned back to Tara and smiled. “My room is pretty messy, but I'm sure I'd have noticed if there was a puppy in here!”

Tara smiled. “OK, thanks.”

“No problem!” Dee Dee smiled back and shut the door on Tara and Digger, locking it once more.

“Ohmygod!” She lay back against the door and took a deep breath. “That was close, huh?”

Issie looked at Dee Dee with amazement. “I thought when you opened the door that you were going to tell them about the puppy.”

“But why would I do that?” Dee Dee said, aghast.

“Because you can't stand me?” suggested Issie.

Dee Dee shook her head. “I brought the dog back here for you, didn't I?”

Issie realised that was true—Dee Dee could have taken the dog straight to Digger if she'd wanted to, but she hadn't.

“Anyway,” Dee Dee added, “it's not like I can't stand you. OK, you have been pretty mean to me, and
I know you don't like me, but I've been trying really hard to be friends with you since we got here.” She looked down at her feet. “I'm not very good at it…making friends…Mum says that I should just be myself, but I don't know, because being myself usually involves knocking something over or getting on someone's nerves. And I know I get on your nerves, but I'm really not trying to and…”

“It's OK.” Issie sighed. “It's not your fault. I've been looking for reasons to blame you for stuff. Stella says I'm not a very good room-mate because I'm an only child and I'm not used to sharing.”

“I don't like sharing either,” Dee Dee said. “And I've got three sisters!”

Issie smiled. “Anyway, I'm really sorry. I've been pretty horrible to you.”

“No, it's not you. It's me. I'll try and be tidier,” said Dee Dee.

“You're not that untidy,” Issie relented. Then she looked at the mess on Dee Dee's side of the room. “Well, actually, you are really untidy. But so am I usually. My mum is always telling me off because my room is a pigsty. I think I only became obsessed with
being clean because you were messy and it was bugging me…”

There was a snuffling sound. The girls both turned to see Wombat busily munching his way through a tired-looking leftover sandwich that had been languishing for three days now on a plate beside Dee Dee's bed.

“You see?” Issie giggled. “If you weren't such a slob, we'd have nothing to feed Wombat!”

Dee Dee grinned. “I guess not.”

Issie looked down at the strip of masking tape beneath her feet, dividing the room in two. Suddenly she felt silly and mean for treating Dee Dee like that.

“You know what? I'm getting rid of this,” she said. She bent down and grabbed the end of the tape. It ripped up easily in a single long ribbon and she crumpled it into a ball and threw it in the bin.

“Shall we be friends and start again?”

Dee Dee smiled and bounded over the line where the tape had been, throwing herself on to Issie's bed. Issie fell back next to her and the girls lay there giggling—until Wombat jumped up next to them and began barking and they both had to shush him to be quiet again.

The boundary had been crossed and the roommates were on the same side at last. And just in time. In a week from now, they would be in the arena at the Royal Showgrounds for the Express Eventing Challenge against Australia. Issie just hoped that they would be ready.

The thrill of Wombat's return wore off pretty quickly when the girls arrived at the stables the next morning and found the pup up to his ears in trouble.

When Issie had locked him up for the night, she had mistakenly left behind a bucket full of grooming brushes. Overjoyed with his new chew toys, Wombat had spent the night munching on the contents of the bucket, destroying a body brush, a dandy brush and a rubber curry comb. Even the hoof-pick had tooth marks gouged into it.

“Well, this is a disaster!” Stella said when she saw the state of their brushes.

Wombat had no idea why the girls were cross with
him, but he could sense that he had done something wrong, so he tried his hardest to look cute, wagging his tail and smiling his puppy grin.

“Poor Wombat!” Issie leant down to give the blue heeler a cuddle. “It's not really his fault he's…ewww! Ohmygod! What is that awful smell?”

The smell turned out to be Wombat. After he had gobbled up the grooming kit, the pup had noticed some horse dung in the corner of the stall and had taken a good, long roll in it. His fur was caked with it and he totally stank!

“Come on, Wombat,” Issie said. “It's bath time.”

The young dog whined and whimpered as the girls hosed him down in the wash bay at the back of the stables, but he didn't try to run away, even when they soaped him with horse shampoo. As soon as they were done though, the pup got his revenge by giving the most enormous shake, showering everyone in soapy, smelly dog water in the process.

“Oh, great!” Charlotte complained. “Now we're all going to smell like wet dog while we're out on our hack.”

“At least there's no lesson today,” Kate said as she tucked her blonde bob behind her ears and slipped her
helmet on. “We've got the whole of Sunday to ourselves.”

“Why don't we bring Wombat with us when we hack out?” Dee Dee suggested. “He's bored being cooped up inside all the time. No wonder he's chewing stuff.”

Kate wasn't so sure about this idea. “What if he runs away?”

“I can put a rope on him and lead him while I ride Victory,” Issie offered.

As they set out along the track they had galloped on with Tara earlier in the week, Issie began to worry that it may have been a bad idea to bring the dog along. What if Wombat got trampled or tried to nip at the horses' legs? But the pup behaved perfectly right from the start. He loved being around the horses and trotted happily at Victory's flank as the girls rode on, chatting as they went.

On the way back to the stables they passed a paddock with a mob of sheep in it and Wombat lowered his body into a sheepdog crouch and began to stalk towards them. But Issie growled at him and gave a shake of the lead rope to let him know he was being naughty and Wombat obediently returned to Victory's side and didn't
try anything again for the rest of the ride.

After dinner that night Issie smuggled a plate of macaroni cheese to the stable for the puppy's dinner. “It's vegetarian tonight,” she told him. “No sausages, I'm afraid.” Wombat didn't care. He wolfed down the food hungrily and sniffed Issie in the hope that there might be more.

“G'night, Wombat,” Issie said. She nudged the pup back into the loose box and tried to shut him in, but Wombat leapt up and put his paws on the door to stop her. He cocked his head to one side and stared up at Issie, his big black eyes pleading with her.

“Oh, all right!” Issie sighed, changing her mind and unbolting the door. “But just for tonight, OK?”

Outside her bedroom back at the house Issie rapped on the window and called out to her roommate in a hoarse whisper. “Dee Dee! Dee Dee!”

The window slid open and Dee Dee stuck her head out. “Issie! What are you doing out there?” Dee Dee was confused—until she saw the pup bundled up in Issie's arms.

“I couldn't leave him there all alone tonight,” Issie told her. “Please, Dee? Can he stay in our room with us?”

Before he went to sleep that night, Wombat managed to chew up a plastic plate, an empty yoghurt container, one of Dee Dee's socks and the first three chapters of Issie's
Palomino Princess
novel—which wasn't so bad because she had read them already anyway. Issie had made a bed for the pup on the floor in the corner using an old towel, but Wombat had other ideas. Issie woke up in the middle of the night to find that she had been almost pushed out of her own bed and the pup was in her place, fast asleep with his head on her pillow!

On Monday morning training got under way again and the New Zealand team was on its own. Minka had kept the Australians back at Whispering Moon Station so she could give them some extra dressage tuition and Tara was left alone to work with the New Zealand team. Tara spent the morning coaching them through their individual dressage tests, but in the afternoon she handed the reins over to Captain Kate for pit-stop training.

While the other riders were practising their dressage, Kate had been busy creating a pit stop in the
outdoor arena. She had roped off an area about the size the real pit stop would be in the competition on Saturday and had set up a changing area, with a bench stacked with cross-country clothes and showjumping gear, ready to practise the quick costume swaps that would be required in the event.

“This is a dress rehearsal, so we need to make it as real as possible,” Kate told the others. She had chosen Laura and Morgan to act as guinea pigs for the practice run and both of them were standing by with their mounts, dressed in their showing jackets, velvet hard hats and gloves.

“Laura and Morgan are going to ride to the pit stop at a gallop,” Kate explained. “Then they'll jump off as fast as they can and I want one of the pit crew to take the reins while the rest of you get them dressed. Morgan's pit crew will be Stella, Emily and Issie. Laura, your crew is Charlotte and Dee Dee. We'll do a few runthroughs against the stopwatch to see whose technique is fastest.”

The quick-change practice started out fine. The two girls both galloped into the roped-off pit stop and leapt down from their horses in unison. But as Issie,
Emily and Stella pulled Morgan's cross-country sweatshirt up over her head, the neck got stuck on her helmet, and the more they struggled with it, the more they all got a case of the giggles.

“Come on!” Morgan was frustrated. “Don't be silly! Laura is almost done. We have to finish!”

“It's no big deal,” Emily told her, fighting back her giggles. “It's only a practice run.”

“Come on, Stella,” Morgan implored. “You're supposed to be helping!”

Stella finally managed to get the sweatshirt wrenched free from Morgan's helmet, but then she messed up again when she put the back protector on back to front and the girls burst into fits of giggles all over again. This time Morgan couldn't take it any more. She stormed off in a huff.

“Hey! Where are you going?” Stella called after her as she stomped out of the arena.

“Back to the house to learn my dressage test,” Morgan said snippily. “Let me know when you guys want to practise properly. I'm not going to waste any more of my time.”

Morgan was still holed up in her room when the
girls returned to the villa. At dinnertime, when she still hadn't emerged, Issie went looking for her. She found Morgan curled up on her duvet, pretending to study her dressage test.

“I suppose they all think I'm a total nutter,” Morgan said, without looking up from her dressage papers, “for getting my knickers in a knot and storming off like that.”

“Don't be silly!” Issie said. “Come on—we're waiting for you. Dinner's ready.”

“I just get fed up when they don't take it seriously,” Morgan continued as they walked down the hall to the dining room. “I feel like I'm the only one on this team who really cares.”

“We all care, Morgan,” said Issie.

They had reached the dining room and Issie was just reaching for the door handle when Morgan grabbed her arm. “I'm willing to do whatever it takes to win on Saturday,” she said, and Issie could tell by the intense look on Morgan's face that she really meant it.

With the competition day looming there was a very real sense now that they were running out of time. The final practice sessions flew by and on Friday afternoon Avery called his team together to talk tactics.

“We truck out to the showgrounds before dawn tomorrow,” he told them. “It's a two-hour drive. Once we're there, we'll have our own team area in the stable block and the Australians will have a designated area too. The dressage begins at 9 a.m. and the last rider should finish before lunch. After that we'll walk both the showjumping and the cross-country courses. If you have any questions on the day, look for me or Tara.”

Tara spoke up. “I'm going to be your assistant team coach and Minka will be working with the Australians.”

“We can expect the Australians to all turn out a decent dressage test,” Avery continued. “They've been schooling with Minka for months, so there's no chance of us getting a big lead in the competition at that stage. Our aim is to stay in the zone with them. Then I think we stand a real chance to win the event in the showjumping and cross-country phases. That's where the strength of our team lies.”

“Don't the dressage scores matter?” Kate asked.

“They do matter,” said Avery, “but the big points will come in the jumping phases. It's four faults for a rail down in showjumping and eight faults for a refusal. Then twenty faults for a refusal on the cross-country. Plus, there are very severe time faults.”

“How do they figure out the team's score?” Issie asked. “Do they add up all of the riders' tallies?”

“Only the best ones,” Tara replied. “At the end of the day, they keep the four top scores from each team and the four worst scores are discarded.”

“What if we all have clear rounds and we all get really good scores?” Stella asked.

“I don't think that's likely,” said Tara bluntly. “It will be a very hard cross-country. I know Delaney Swift, who has designed the course, and she will have built the jumps to their maximum height limit. I'm certain that it will be the most challenging cross-country any of you have ever ridden.” Tara hesitated. “Perhaps too challenging…When the final phase comes, there will be eliminations—from both teams. I think we should expect that not all of you will make it to the finish line.”

“Man, she really needs to work on her pep talks!” Dee Dee said as the girls headed back to their rooms. She mimicked Tara's voice. “
Not all of you will make it back alive!
”

“I know!” agreed Issie. “She makes it sound like a horror movie, not a cross-country!”

“That's just Tara's weird manner,” Kate said. “I'm sure she doesn't mean to scare us.”

Issie nodded. “You know, I don't think it even occurred to her that we might be scared. It's like she's got these nerves of steel and she just expects everyone else to be the same.”

Issie's nerves felt more like jelly than steel as she stood in Victory's stall giving him his hard feed that evening. The brown gelding seemed to sense her mood. He stood quietly beside her, letting Issie lean across his withers as she chatted away to him.

She talked to Victory as if he were a friend, the same way she spoke to Blaze and Comet back at home. It was hard to believe that she had only been riding
this horse for two short weeks. Victory was such a star and she knew how to handle him now. It felt like she'd been riding him forever. She instinctively understood his little quirks, the way he liked to be given his head before a jump and how he always swished his tail when he was doing canter transitions. Issie felt safe on Victory's back, ready for anything. She had total faith in him.

“See you in the morning,” she told the dark brown gelding, stroking his nose as she slipped his halter off. “Bright and early.”

It was on the way back from the stables, when the light was almost gone and darkness was falling, that Issie finally allowed herself to think about Mystic. Despite her deep fears and the dark dreams she'd had lately, she somehow remained convinced that her pony was there with her, watching over her. Or maybe Issie just hoped that he was. She needed him. After all, tomorrow was a very big day.