The Horsewoman(95)

Until now.

It wasn’t a case of nerves I was feeling now. This was beyond that, as irrational as it all felt. This was fear. Like that universal dream about getting ready to take a final exam without having been to class all semester.

Only the whole world was going to watch me start to take this final exam, and soon.

My dad told me one time about a famous basketball player, I forget which one, some great old-time player, who used to get sick before every single game.

I felt that way now.

Bad Becky, my ass. All of a sudden, I was back to feeling like a frightened little girl. It made no sense. There it was, anyway.

I saw Gus come around the corner.

“Been looking for you,” he said.

“Well,” I said, “you found me.”

“You okay?”

“No.”

I put my hands to my face and rubbed hard. When I pulled them away, I said, “I’m scared shitless, if you want to know the truth.”

He made a snorting noise.

“Is that all?” he said.

“Is that all?”

It was still just the two of us back here. It was as if we’d found the only quiet place at the Olympics.

“Are you kidding me?” he said. “Everybody with a horse is scared here. And not just riders, in case you were wondering. When your mother’s horse lost his shit out there, you know what I did? I covered my goddamn eyes, that’s how scared I was. Me.”

“But what if this is the day when Sky refuses again?” I said. “What if she spooks the way she did on me that day when it was just us in the ring?” The words just spilled out of me now, my voice sounding way too loud. “You heard Bitsy on that show. She said I’m the one who wasn’t supposed to be here. Well, what if I’m really not?”

He moved the chair closer to me and took my hands. I couldn’t ever remember him doing that. Behind him I could see that Emilio and Sky were here.

“We are going to get back inside this ring now, and you are going to ride your horse like a goddamn champion,” he said.

I started to say something. He still had my hands and gave them a squeeze.

“Shut up and listen,” he said.

I waited.

“In your life you have never heard me talk about what happened to me when I got thrown, or what I lost that day,” he said. “So I’m gonna tell you this just one time: I want you to think about what I would give to get the kind of chance you have today.”

“Okay,” I said finally, just because I couldn’t think of what else to say.

“We’re never having this conversation again,” he said.

“Okay,” I said.

He let go of my hands.

“Now go ride your ride,” he said.





ONE HUNDRED NINETEEN



SKY AND I WERE in the ring twenty minutes later and they were introducing me as her rider and her owner. Rebecca Atwood McCabe. Wellington, Florida. United States of America.

Gus hadn’t said another word to me, not while I was warming Sky up, not as we made our way into Etoile Royale. Mom had totally kept her distance. Forty-seven riders had been in this ring by now. Mom still had the best time, at 75.5.

I knew I didn’t have to beat her time. Didn’t need to even go clean to make it to Friday. You could make it to Friday, give yourself a chance at the gold medal jump-off, with a rail down today. Or even two, depending what happened after I finished my round.

I didn’t intend to find out if I might be one of them.

Screw that.

I still wasn’t convinced I’d rewired my brain, even after the talking-to that Gus had given me. There were still a lot of crazy thoughts spinning around inside my head. But I had made up my mind about this, now that I was out here:

I wasn’t going to ride scared.

Screw that, too.

I didn’t look around, didn’t try to take in the moment. I just focused all of my concentration on the first jump. Tried to swallow. Felt as if my mouth was full of the footing underneath me.

The buzzer sounded.

I put Sky in motion.

And from that moment on, it was as if we were being chased by the other horses. Or daring them to chase us. My horse was fearless enough for both of us. If she was scared of anything, it was going slow. Nothing else. Not the size of the ring. Not the sound of the place. She went full tilt into every fence and turn, the first half of the course flying past us, making me feel as if I was looking out the window of a speeding car.

We were past the first rollback, then the first combination, then easing into the turn along the fence where Coronado had spooked again. I just let Sky run. It was one of those times when the real truth of what was happening came by doing as little thinking as possible about the process. Just letting it happen.

Finally, we were coming up on the water jump.

And the light off the water was blinding me.

Not sunlight reflecting off the pool, the way it had in our ring at Atwood Farm that day. Not at nine o’clock at night. It was all the lights that ringed the top of Etoile Royale, making night in here as bright as day. Like all the lights of the Olympics were smacking me in the face at once, high beams hitting Sky and me when she was four strides from the fence.

When it had happened back home, the light had stopped Sky dead in her tracks, and then I was the one flying through the air before landing on a fence.