Chapter Eleven
There aren’t many instances in my life nowadays when being a Horse Girl comes in clutch. But today, the equine angels have smiled upon me, singing in a heavenly chorus, “Natalie Hart, you are the baddest bitch in this competition!” I can hear it, I swear.
That’s right: at last, my moment to shine on Wild Co-EdVentures has arrived. Our challenge is horse-themed.
“That sure is some horse,” Finn says as we stand outside the barn at Wallingford Stables, site of today’s challenge, waiting on the crew to get set up for filming. His attempt at a Kentucky accent is probably the worst I’ve heard since I was on the set of Racing Heart.
The sip of water I’ve just taken from my bottle spews out between my lips. When I recover enough to speak, I smack his arm while he just stands there trying to bite down on his grin. “I told you my most famous feature film quote in confidence! Don’t go throwing it around like you have the right!”
“Don’t worry. If any fans try to swarm you, I can fight them off.”
When Burke Forrester met us earlier this morning, he gave the whole group the same directions for hiking to the stables and no further information—especially none to explain what horses have to do with the AT. We hiked here as one big, sleepy group, with Finn insisting upon carrying my pack along with his own after getting tired of hearing me whimper in pain every time the hip straps bumped my gigantic bruise. Enemi was the first to suggest, as we all discussed it, that the stables are probably sponsoring this episode.
“I’ve heard of them before, in equestrian circles,” she’d explained. “They have the money for it.”
This was how I learned, much to my chagrin, that Enemi and I have more in common than I ever wanted to believe—though her “equestrian circles” are sliiightly wealthier than mine, judging from everything she went on about for the rest of the hike. She’s even at school with an equestrian scholarship, which confirms my judgmental suspicion that she’s not especially in need of Wild Adventures money. That’s fine—I can’t resent her for being born into money.
I can resent her for acting like her shit doesn’t stink because of it.
I didn’t even pipe up to inform her that I ride too, though I got more and more excited as we neared Wallingford Stables. I was trying to temper the feeling anyway, in case we arrived only to learn we’d be mucking out stalls and covering ourselves in manure as a natural bug spray or something equally, well, wild.
When Burke told us we were indeed saddling up and riding later today, ass bruise or not, I was ready. To. GO. Finn, however, was immediately horrified, having never spent time around horses in his life. It’s the first time I’ve really felt more skilled at something than him—if you don’t count, like, the skill of social interaction—and I could get used to it.
“So you think we’ll have to, uh, go in the stalls with them?” His voice takes on a more anxious edge as we watch a couple of the crew powdering Burke’s face and running a comb through his hair, usually a sign that we’re about to start rolling.
I look at the cameras set up to face a few of the stalls where the doors have been propped open. Then I look to Finn’s increasingly petrified expression. The guy who is unfazed by the potential of a bear run-in is totally freaked by these gentle, giant babies.
“Probably, but it’ll be fine. They’re sweet! Just don’t sneak up on them, and stay where they can see you, not directly in front of or behind them.”
“Why?” he barks, and I flinch at the sudden volume spike.
“Um, so you don’t get kicked or anything,” I say with what I hope looks like a totally chill, you’ve-got-this smile.
He is not buying it. “You said they’re sweet!”
“They are!” I throw my hands up. “But I think I’m pretty sweet, and I still wanna kick people if they startle me!”
“Sweet is not how I would describe you.”
I scoff. “Oh, really? How would you describe me, then?”
Yet again, Burke Forrester’s timing is impeccable. “Co-EdVenturers! Are you ready to start horsing around?”
Finn answers “no” in a voice I can only, ironically, describe as hoarse. I decide I’ll save that one to tell him later.
In light of my partner’s fear, which I apparently only made worse, I take the starting position in the extended relay race Burke lays out for us. It involves a series of tasks in and around the barn—the first inside a stall with a horse in it—that culminate with both team members riding across a field to the finish line. Better if Finn has as much time as possible to prepare himself for close contact of the equine kind.
“Ready…set…adventure!” Burke rings a cowbell to signal the start of the race, and half of us sprint off the starting line and into the barn. I find the stall with a Finn + Natalie sign hanging under another sign with the horse’s name, Daisy. I slow my pace to enter without freaking out the stall’s resident.
“Hey there, pretty gal,” I coo at the beautiful palomino tied with a halter to the front of the stall. “Mind if I look around a minute?”
The horse blows out an exasperated breath not unlike one of my partner’s favorite reactions. I take it as a good sign.
Somewhere hidden in this horse’s living space—either in their food or water troughs, or the wood chip–covered floor that doubles as a giant horsey litter box—are three horseshoes. In the corner of the stall are a pair of gloves, a shovel, and a pitchfork, any of which we can use to search for our horseshoes. When we have all three, we take them to our partner for the next leg of the race.
I tug on the gloves first, then plunge my hand into the food trough, dragging it back and forth a few times and feeling for anything hard and heavy. No such luck. Peering over into the big bucket of water, I don’t see anything there, either.
“Horse shit!” The words, more of a yelp than anything, come from the next stall over. I can see Zeke’s head just over the wall, his face set in a grimace aimed down until he looks up and meets my eyes. “Horse shit. On my shoes.”
I jump back into motion and turn to reach for the pitchfork, hiding my amusement. “Hey, that’s what boots are for! You’re a real horse handler now,” I offer encouragingly.
“I think I’ll stick with my cats,” he answers with more despair than I’ve ever heard in his voice. “At least when I clean their litter box, I don’t have to step in it.”
I won’t argue there. I use the pitchfork to start hefting up piles of wood chips and all the manure mixed in with them, sifting out the clean chips and hoping one of these shit heaps also produces a horseshoe. They’ve put more wood chips in here than the stall would typically have, a layer of them blanketing the entire floor a foot deep. All the better for hiding small objects.
It takes me several scoops to find the first horseshoe, giving a victorious whoop as I hang it on the nail holding our name tag before diving back in. The cheers of the team members outside the barn are a nice soundtrack, if I pretend they’re all yelling for me. They’re interrupted by the occasional victorious cry from someone inside when they find a horseshoe.
Years of mucking out stalls just like this one, clearing the old wood chips and waste and bringing in a new layer, have prepared me well. I’m usually in a rush to get it over with, meaning I can wield a pitchfork like an automated weapon, my efficiency at scooping near machine-like.
When I locate our third horseshoe, naturally in the very last square foot of the stall that I scoop, I squeal with elation, then jog out of the barn to find Finn.
“Come on, this way!” He sets off from where he’s been standing with all the others waiting on their partners, and I realize from briefly scanning the group that I’m the first one to find all the horseshoes. It puts an extra spring in my step as I follow Finn to the next stage.
Long, straight lines of stones mark off a “lane” for each team in the grassy field beside the barn, cameras and producers already set up to capture the activity. At the end of each lane is a metal stake in the ground, at which Finn has to toss our horseshoes. For each horseshoe he lands, we earn a hay bale. I’ll stack the hay bales in any formation I can make that will help me climb up to reach a “tack shelf” atop a flat section of the barn roof, which holds everything we need to saddle up our horses.
“How’s your aim?” I ask as he gingerly holds the first horseshoe between two fingers. None of our horseshoes were covered in manure, but I understand the aversion anyway.
“Guess we’re both about to find out,” he says, then tosses the flat piece of metal. My head whips around to see its progress, all the way until it bounces off the stake with a loud clang.
“Hey, that was close!” I chirp, bouncing on my feet and giving him a small clap. It’s only when Finn looks down at me with a hint of amusement that I realize I’m alllll up in his personal-space bubble. Practically plastered against his side. I step back abruptly, dropping my gaze and muttering a quiet, “Sorry. Carry on.”
Another toss, another near miss, but I don’t barnacle myself to his leg this time.
With the third toss, he nails it. Barely even a soft clink as the horseshoe perfectly encircles the stake.
“YES!” I shout, jumping up and throwing my arms around his neck. He returns the hug, wrapping his arms around me and lifting for a moment. I’m laughing and breathless when he puts me down, and I stay holding on to his shoulders. Our eyes lock, and I feel it—another zing of something between us. Attraction, connection, whatever it is, it throws me off balance, and can’t be dealt with mid-challenge. “Go get the horseshoes!” I say hastily. “We need more hay!”
As more teams join us in horseshoe tossing, the chorus of clanging is so loud, I feel bad for the horses just trying to live life. I also feel bad for Finn, for having a short partner who needs more hay bales to reach the shelf than, say, a seven-foot-tall partner would. And I feel bad for myself for being short.
At first, I tried stacking three bales directly on top of each other to see if I could magically climb straight up them. The experiment failed, as my weight instantly toppled them over. Now I’m working on a set of hay stairs, a layer of three bales on the bottom, two stacked on those, and one at the very top.
“One…bale…mooooore,” I sing out to Finn from my perch atop my middle stair, to the tune of “One Day More” from Les Mis. “Another bale, another destiny…”
“What if you didn’t sing right now?” Enemi snarks from the lane beside Finn, determinedly lining up her next toss. “That’s the destiny I want at this moment.”
“She’s just mad we’re behind,” Zeke whispers. He’s sitting on the two bales he’s stacked beside mine, one over another. “Which wouldn’t be the case if she’d shoveled shit around and let me throw the horseshoes. I’m, like, really good at it. At my school, I’ve won the championship in intramural cornhole for two years running. I even told her that, but she was all, ‘Cornhole and horseshoes are not the same, and my skin is sensitive to hay.’?”
As he goes on, I make the appropriately sympathetic noises at the right times and try to disguise how gleeful this rant is actually making me. Another team having conflict can only be good news for Finn and me, right? Please, someone, anyone else, take the interpersonal drama torch from Team Finnatalie. My arms are tired of holding it.
“Hell yeah!” Finn’s cheer tears my attention from Zeke as Finn rings another horseshoe. I hop down and rush over to grab the last hay bale I think—hope—I’ll need to reach the tack shelf.
I haul it up there as Finn keeps cautioning me to go slow, and be careful, and watch my step. I’m beginning to wonder if I should’ve claimed a hay sensitivity when, finally, I wrestle it into place and climb up….
And I’m just high enough to reach the tack shelf.
From there, it’s a blur as I single-mindedly focus on keeping our lead, carrying armfuls of bridles and blankets and saddles down, load after load, to where Finn now waits warily by Daisy and a second horse, Donald. They’ve been tied to a fence, their coats already brushed down and their shoes cleaned by stable hands. Finn is now tasked with using all the stuff I bring over to ready them for riding. He even has a list of instructions, to make it easier.
It quickly becomes clear that no part of this is easy for him.
“How do I know they’re not going to kick me when I put stuff on their backs?”
“They won’t!” I call back, climbing the hay stairs for what I think will be my last load. “Forget I ever said the word kick! You can do this, Finn, so get started!”
By the time I’m back, he’s only gotten the saddle blankets on Donald’s and Daisy’s backs, and Zeke and Enemi are starting this leg with their two horses a ways down the fence from us.
“Finn, I’m gonna need you to channel your inner cowboy,” I whisper urgently, mustering Finn levels of sternness.
“I don’t think I have one of those.”
“I think you do. He’s just been trampled on your whole life by the unlikely pairing of your inner uptight professor and inner off-grid-granola-barefoot-naturalist…guy.”
He stares at me in silence for a moment, until I give him a push toward the gear I’ve been draping over the fence. “Whatever, you know what I mean. Let’s go! I’ll talk you through it!”
And so I do, watching his ease with the animals grow, slowly but steadily, as he layers each new item onto the horses. I direct him to move that saddle back a little, tighten that buckle by one notch, make sure the bit goes in just right, and the reins don’t get twisted up there. Finally, it’s time to mount. I haven’t seen anyone pass us on horseback to head down the field toward the finish line, so we still have a shot at winning this one.
I demonstrate for Finn how to mount a horse—foot in stirrup, swing your other leg up and over, basically—before he tries it himself. He gets it right away, only remembering once he’s up on Donald’s back that he is absolutely terrified.
“This is very much not like riding a bike,” his shaky voice calls from behind me as we walk our horses into the open field, a teeny tiny orange flag a speck in the far distance. Donald is making a lot of snuffling noises back there, and his rider has yet to buy into my assertion that he’s not going to die.
“It totally is!” I chirp back, winking into one of the cameras that are rigged to both the fronts and backs of our saddles, likely capturing all my least flattering angles.
“My bike doesn’t have free will,” he grumbles. “Or weigh a thousand pounds and have the ability to trample me.”
Fair points, but not the time to agree.
Even as we’re still racing—or fast-walking, which is all Finn can really manage—to the checkpoint, this is the least anxious I’ve felt since coming to Wild Adventures. These animals calm me like little else. My cousin Liv is actually a therapist who uses horses in her practice, helping kids work through trauma by letting them bond with the animals. It’s only just occurred to me to wonder if that kind of therapy exists for adults.
You know, if I had time or money for such a thing.
For the time being, I’m trying to manage Finn’s mental state more than my own, distracting him from his fear.
“Did you know there are almost five hundred horse farms in Kentucky?” I say, projecting my voice to the back of my outdoor theater.
“No,” he says, valiantly trying to hide the waver in his voice. “Why is that?”
“It’s the horse capital of the world,” I say, but as I think about that, I tilt my head to the side. Is that really the “why”? “Or it might be the horse capital of the world because there are that many farms. Kind of a chicken-or-the-egg thing, I guess.”
It isn’t even especially clever or funny. Not my best work by far. But the throwaway comment prompts one of the most magical things that’s happened in this experience.
Finn laughs.
I almost fall off Daisy when I hear it. I turn my head, my jaw dropping as I find that it is indeed Finn back there, laughing.
“What?” he asks as his chuckling tapers off.
“You’ve never laughed in front of me before!” I am openly gawking.
His forehead creases. “No way. I definitely have.”
“When?”
“Uh, I don’t know? But I’m not a robot.”
“Mm-mm.” I negate him with a shake of my head before looking forward again. “I would have noticed if you’d laughed like that. It’s so…”
“Oh boy,” he mutters.
“…jolly.”
“Jolly?”
I nod. “You sound like a cartoon Santa Claus. Ho-ho-ho! I didn’t know you could even produce such a laugh without a red flannel suit and belly full of Christmas cookies.”
Finn scoffs. “I do not laugh like that!”
Donald whinnies.
“He disagrees,” I say. After a moment’s pause, we both lose it.
Our laughter cuts off abruptly, however, when we hear hooves approaching at a rapid clip. I turn my head to see Enemi on a snow-white horse, blazing toward us like she’s got a monster on her heels. But in fact, it’s just her poor partner, doing his best to keep up with her pace despite how he obviously has no idea what he’s doing. His horse is weaving at least as much as Finn’s, but faster and looking more agitated about it. Zeke is attempting all kinds of soothing words, but they’re canceled out by his continued efforts to make the horse go as fast as Enemi’s.
“Out of their way,” I call to Finn, steering Daisy as far clear of their path as I can before they reach us, and Finn actually manages to get Donald distanced too.
“Should we try racing them?” Finn shouts back once they’ve blown by, but his eyes are saying, “Please don’t make me race them.” Realistically, I could get Daisy up to a run, try racing Enemi to the checkpoint. But it’s the team with both partners there first who wins, and I don’t see how pushing Finn to do that will end well for anyone.
“I’m good with second place,” I say before turning forward and keeping Daisy plodding along. To myself, I add quietly, “Especially if it means getting there in one piece.”
As we go, slow and steady—and I try to tell myself that, per the old saying, we have any chance whatsoever at winning this race—we have a clear view of Zeke’s and Enemi’s progress. Or Enemi’s progress, and Zeke’s increasingly wild detours, his horse taking him in big, wavy circles while he tries to rein it in. Enemi gets fed up waiting for him and brings her horse over, taking the reins to Zeke’s horse and starting to lead it along by force. Zeke’s horse doesn’t like this one bit and looks more and more distressed, slowing them down enough that Finn and I actually start to catch up.
But not quite. Enemi, Zeke, and their horses make it to the orange flag at least twenty yards ahead of us. Enemi drops the other horse’s reins and screams as she throws her arms up in victory.
And Zeke’s horse rears up on its hind legs, throwing Zeke to the ground.