Even Demons Have Their Moments

Taking a Demon to My Doom

Dad was on the phone when I came in from feeding the chickens that morning. The weirdness of that sight should have made me know something was up, but I was too nervous to notice anything.

Why was the sight weird? Mom was the one that took the phone calls based on the fact that it was hard to convince people to call us if they always got a headache from Dad yelling down the phone at them and asking if they could hear him.

Why was I nervous? It was the day of the clinic. Not just any, run-of-the-mill clinic, oh no, The clinic. The one Peter Stevens, my all-time hero, was running. The one that probably the whole town, if not the whole country was going to turn up to watch.

And I’ll give you one guess about what had happened to the wonderful, nice mare called Wicker that I had been planning to ride. You guessed it. She was out of action. She had managed to get a splint the size of Texas on her leg and was limping like crazy. It was an effort just to convince her to move from the field to a stable.

And since all our other horses were for one reason or another unridable (Diddy too small, Poko hadn’t been ridden for six months, Kiwi’s bridle had mysteriously vanished, the list goes on and on) and Karri, who kept three horses with us (three wonderful horses that I actually would feel comfortable riding) was on a flight to Fiji right now and so we couldn’t ask her. And Dad has rules about riding people’s horses without telling them first.

Stupid Dad. Nice, but stupid.

So, if you haven’t figured it out, that only left one horse. One horse, out of all ten.

The one horse that I wanted to ride least.

The one horse that was most likely to send me flying into a pile of manure in front of everyone.

And why not? He certainly had experience at sending me flying, and good aim when it came for piles of things I would never, ever want to land in.

Demon.

There was no hope of disputing it. No call for a retrial. No cowering out.

Not after the riders and their horses had been published online for everyone to see.

Stupid Peter. Awesome, but stupid.

I was sure he wasn’t responsible for putting mine and Demon’s names up online accompanied by a brief bio of our work together and the all-together-too-preppy line of “we hope to see great things from these two,” but someone in his ‘team of camera people’ (As he called them. Everyone else would say publicists or agents or something) was so I held him personally responsible.

Suffice to say I was doomed. My life was measured out by the hands of the kitchen clock.

Might as well make the most of it, then. I grabbed a chocolate bar, named it Breakfast, and proceeded to do a magic trick. The one where you make things disappear.

“Okay, yes. I am sorry I could not be any more help,” Dad half-said-half-yelled into the phone. “Oh, okay, if you say…okay…yes, I won’t. I wouldn’t know what to say anyway…Good bye.”

He lowered the cordless phone and stared at it blankly.

“The red button, Dad,” I prompted.

“Oh, thanks,” He smiled up at me and pressed the button that would end the call, “I’m used to phones that you would hang back up to hang up.” H added with a laugh.

I paused to think this one through before looking back at him. Poor Dad had been totally helpless when phones were all digitalized.

 ‘An iPhone? What is that? A phone for your eye? And what’s this with fruits and phones? I won’t talk into a blueberry!’