Undying Hope

Chapter 8

            After the third ring of my alarm clock, I slowly turned it off and made my way out of bed. When I look at the time, I realized that my mom had let me sleep in an extra hour this morning, which made it 6:30 now. I quickly showered and got ready for school, then pounded down the stairs for breakfast. When I arrived, my parents were having a serious discussion in the kitchen. I greeted both of them, and grabbed a bagel, some cream cheese, three apples, and slung my backpack over my shoulder. Then, I leizurely walked out to the barn where Song, Secret, and Aries were kept. As I plopped myself down on my tack truck near Song's stall, I spread the cream cheese on my bagel. Wishing I would have brought a knife, I tryed to spread the cheese with my finger. Finally, I figured that it is good enough and took a few minutes to eat it. After I finished, I grabbed the three apples and stopped at my horses' stalls to treat them. Since the horses were content and the barn was quiet, I began to wonder what my parents were talking about. I knew that the theraputic riding center was supposed to bring in more money, but we didn't have any extra currently, and now we had twenty, new, sick, needy, probably untrained horses to care for. After checking my watch, I realized I still had ten minutes, so I ran down to the fourth barn, where the new horses were kept. I peeked into each stall and saw how dishevelled each horse really was. Then, checking my watch again, I saw that I should be in the truck now, so I bolted back to the driveway and into the truck were my dad was waiting. As we pulled out of Peaceful Acres Horse Rescue, I asked my dad about the new horses, and he told me that after I went to sleep, he and my mom examined each of the horses and most of them just had minor injuries. A few of them though, including a pregnant black mare, had more serious health issues and the vet was coming out today to give all of them check ups. I nodded as asked if we had named any of them yet. Dad said that he had named a flea-bitten gray mustang Bebe, and Mom had named a gray quarterhorse, Dusty. "Alright," I said. Personally, I thought my parents naming skills were pretty weak, but that was jus my opinion. After thinking about the forlorn horses that we rescued last night, I decided that Sun Dancer would be a great name for the palomino arabian mare. After some more naming talk, Dad pulled up in the parking lot l and I hopped out, waving goodbye as I walked toward the large front doors of the middle school.

As soon as I entered the classroom, Lor came running up to me. "Why didn't you text me last night?" she asked. "I swear, I texted you like fifty times!" she continued. "I'm sorry, it's just that I was at Isaac's barn last night and left if there," I explained. I knew that she'd understand. "What, you were at ISAAC'S barn last night?" she asked agast. "Yes....," I said, not currently seeing the problem. "You mean, you just went to the hottest boy in the classes' house and you didn't even tell me?" she asked, sounding slightly, no, very, hurt. Then it dawned on me. "Oh, I'm so sorry Lor, I was just so excited that I completely spaced," I really hoped that she would understand. "I see," she said slowly. Relieved that she seemed to be understanding now. I began to walk to my locker to retrieve my materials for science class. Just as I was about out of her sight, she asked, "So why were you at his house in the first place?" she asked. "Oh, crap," I thought. That was the question that I hoped wouldn't be coming. You see, I had promised Isaac that I wouldn't tell anyone other than my parents. Lori was my best friend though.. No, I stopped myself. I couldn't just break a promise to him like that. I would just have to make something up. "Well, he has horses and he heard about our rescue and he just wanted to see how well I could ride," I said, hoping that she would believe this. "Awww, I see now," she said happily. "Maybe he'll ask me to ride with him sometimes," she said wistfully. "Yeah," I said unhopefully. I know I shouldn't be competing with my best friend over Isaac, but I really liked him. Whatever, I'll think about it later. Currently, we had two minutes to collect our things for science, and walk all the way across the building to reach the classroom. Quickly, we dashed to our lockers and grabbed our stuff, the ran to science. We arrived exactly at eight o'clock and immediately turned in our homework and got seated.

                   After sitting through what seemed like endless hours of classes, it was finally lunch time. I quickly walked up to Isaac and he slipped me my phone. Before I went to sit with Lorietta, he whispered, "Call me." I nodded and preceeded to sit with Lor and a few of our other friends. We talked excitedly about the upcoming horse show. Sally, another one of our friends, was entering her older pony in the show. We were all pretty surprised, Sally just started riding about a year ago and could barely even canter her pony, Spritzer, safely. Oh well, that wasn't something I needed to worry about. At three o'clock sharp, my mom picked me up in the parking lot. She said that we were making a much needed to trip to Stanley's Tack Shop, and then driving out the horse show grounds where we were registering the horses for the competition. "Okay," I said agreeably. Personally, I had no idea how I was going to get everything done. I had about three hours of homework, my barn chores, exercising Song and Secret, and not to mention, the gathering where our show horses get chosen. As we drove to Stanley's, I worked on my math homework and was about halfway done by the time we reached our destination. I hopped out of the truck and asked my mom what we needed, and she gladly filled me in. "We need four halters, two crops, a new pitchfork, a few new bridle pieces(used for repairs), three bottles of fly spray, a pelham bit, and...." "Mom, why don't you just give me half of the list; I don't think I can remember all of this stuff," I cut her off. "Okay," she replied. "Oh and also, shop in the sale section as much as possible, we have a pretty tight budget right now." "Alright," I answered quietly. I was beginning to feel bad about how stressed my mom and dad were. I vowed to be as helpful and polite as I could be. I ran into the store, and after a quick hello to Bennett, Stanley's son, I rushed off to the sale section. I quickly filled my basket with various supplies, and in about 45 minutes I had found about everything on my list. Mom was loading hay and grain onto the truck bed, so I parked the basket and hurried out to help her.

             "Ugh, I can't believe how much these horses eat," Mom complained. "I know, I can't wait until they go out in the pasture for the whole day." I replied. With two people on the job we finished up quickly. Mom had already found everything on her list, so we purchased our items and made our way out the the truck. One of the reasons that we bought everything at Stanley's was that we got a 20% discount on our whole purchase. Stanley was an old friend of the family and, since we spend a wad of money at that store, he lets us have the discount. About 20 minutes later, all of our stuff was packed up and we were on the road again. Now, we were going to the horse show grounds, a good 30 minutes from here, so I again pulled out my math and got started. Pretty soon, I heard a faint snuffling in the background. I looked to the driver's seat, and there was my mom, crying.