Riding Chance Read online

  For Mitchell, with love

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  SEE, THE FLOW’S THE THING. You know, we all got our swagger when we’re on the block. Don’t take no stuff from the fellas, profiling for the ladies. Well, same thing when I’m up on that horse. I got my moves and my horse got hers. It’s the flow that first grabbed me.

  It sure wasn’t what I expected. After what happened, me and my boy Foster were just trying to keep it all together. Especially me. I was messed up—confused pretty bad—but I couldn’t tell anybody. Not Foster, not my family, nobody.

  “Mr. Butler.” The social worker folded her hands on her desk and leaned toward Pops. “Our prevention program has your son’s name written all over it.” I didn’t know what she was trying to prevent. My mom had already died and, after that, it felt like I was living in a tunnel. Even when I was outside on a sunny day, everything still felt dark.

  Pops sighed real deep and shook his head. “Everything used to be fine,” he said. It must have been hard for him to hear what all I’d been doing—skipping school, hanging out with knuckleheads. He’d had to take time off from work for this. “Maybe this will help him get back on track.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed hard. They didn’t know the half of it. They didn’t know that I was there when that old man got mugged, when Lay-Lay took his forty bucks. Foster was smart enough to back away from that, but not me. Troy, Lay-Lay’s bad news, man. That’s exactly what Foster said. Maybe I didn’t listen ’cause I was still feeling like I was underwater. You know how when you’re in the big swimming pool at the Y? Holding your breath, you can’t hear everything that’s going on around you. That’s how I was feeling.

  “Well,” the social worker said, “in light of the iPhones incident—”

  “We didn’t steal them,” I broke in, “we were just holding them …” I was still trying to figure out how we got punished for what Lay-Lay did, but nobody wanted to hear it.

  The social worker held up her hand. “We’re in agreement with the police, Mr. Butler. Troy and his friend Foster would benefit from our program.”

  I guess that was the cops’ way of saying we weren’t hard-core or nothing, so they sent us to talk to this lady about working with horses in the park. My first thought was, what’s that got to do with me? I didn’t know nothing about horses, didn’t wanna know nothing about horses, and didn’t nobody I know play with horses.

  “Sounds like a good idea,” said Pops. “Troy’s been under a lot of stress lately.”

  I almost laughed. Stress. Is that what it’s called when you lose the person you love the most? I didn’t know what to say, but when I looked over at Pops, I didn’t see any brightness in his eyes. He was still struggling, too. How could I say no to messing around with some horses?

  Pops didn’t have much to say on the ride home. Used to be he’d put on some jazz and try to explain the music to me. But right then, he was quiet. Totally quiet, like our house was most of the time. I couldn’t stand everything being so dark and hushed, so I went over to Foster’s crib.

  I liked hanging out over there ’cause his mom had made their place funky, not like our house. There were candles and incense in the living room, and Foster had a parachute attached to the ceiling of his bedroom. Felt like we were sitting in a tent or something. It was our clubhouse.

  “Aw, man, I don’t believe you,” I said, looking over his shoulder. “You’re looking up horses?”

  “I’ve never seen one up close.” My boy always did his research. He shifted his body to the right to hide his computer screen from me. “Listen to this. A horse is a plant-eating animal …”

  “Horses don’t eat meat?” I leaned over to his left side and saw this mad picture of an all-black horse running on a beach. Foam from the ocean waves was bubbling around the horse’s feet, and its hair was flowing straight back from its long neck. “Other than the beach thing, looks like me on the ball court,” I said, nudging his shoulder.

  “You wish,” he said, waving me off.

  Foster lets me talk a lot of trash. He knows it’s just my way of dealing with everything. He got into trouble because of me but he never threw that in my face. Now he was looking up stuff so it’d look like we knew something when we got there. “What’s that game the social worker was talking about?” he asked. He was working his way through more pictures. “Some sport you can play if you’re good on a horse?”

  “Polo,” I said. “I thought it was just a designer shirt.”

  “Here it is.” Foster clicked through a few websites. “Polo: a high-speed game played on horseback.” He pushed his chair away from his desk so I could see a picture of a guy dressed all fly on a horse and holding a long stick. “Looks stupid if you ask me.”

  “Man, this whole thing is stupid,” I said. I threw myself down on Foster’s beanbag and looked up at his parachute. Felt like I’d been thrown out of an airplane without one. Lay-Lay set us up. There was no question about that. I squeezed my eyes shut for a few seconds; sometimes that helped me to not feel so confused. “Well, at least we’ll be out in the park.”

  “Working for free,” Foster added.

  “We can just fake it,” I said. “Nobody will know the difference.”

  GROWING UP IN PHILLY, I’d been used to going to Fairmount Park. We did all kinds of stuff, like barbecues in the summer, haunted house tours at Halloween. Me and Foster used to ride our bikes in the park, too, popping wheelies and looking at girls.

  Some days when I didn’t go to school, I’d take real long walks in the park. It’s beautiful no matter what season it is. What I liked the most is that I could be alone there, especially when it was cold and there weren’t any leaves on the trees. Maybe I needed that because I felt exposed like the bare tree branches. Even under my winter coat and hat and gloves. It seemed like I walked all over the park that winter, but the park’s so big, I guess you can never get to know all of it.

  Now it was spring and these horse people took us to a place we’d never been before. Everything was green, and the leaves were budding on the tall trees all around the stables. There was a red barn and it sat real low, almost in the ground, slurping up mud on its sides. Mostly brick but there was wood mixed in, too. The doors moved back and forth on an old pulley thing instead of opening in and out, and the windows were weird. They stuck out from the bottom like they were broken, but that’s the way you opened them.


  Horses were standing around outside stamping their feet, swishing their tails. I guess that’s how they keep the bugs away. There were lots of flies and usually I can’t stand that, but I wasn’t feeling no irritation just then. Man, it was the horses. They were so big, big and shiny. You could see all their muscles and they weren’t even flexing or nothing. I’d seen cops riding them during parades and stuff, but I never thought I’d be trying to ride one.

  The barn was surrounded by fields closed off by gates, so you had to walk on these paths in between the fields to get around the whole place. And there were horses behind all the gates, eating hay, running around, or just nipping at each other.

  Looked like the kids over on the side of the barn knew what they were doing. Riding horses like they were in the movies. Some of them were smacking a ball around with a long stick. Now that was something. They were hitting the ball all the way down on the ground while they were up on their horses. This one dude had on a black jersey with a number three real big on it. Looked like he was telling all the other kids what to do.

  “This is it.” Dre, the brother who drove us over, was smiling all over his face. I never saw nobody looking as happy as he did. He’s straight-up corny. Dre was one of the people who’d come to the house talking about how much kids can learn from horses. Said animals can teach you things like responsibility and caring. Said taking care of horses is hard work, but you can learn a lot of stuff and, maybe, get motivated to think about going to college and all like that. Dre talked about polo the whole time he was driving us over. And even after we got there, he just kept going on about how it was such a beautiful sport. Said it used to be in the Olympics, but not anymore.

  The smell was the first thing that got on my nerves. It was sickening sweet. Not really, really bad, but definitely not good.

  I pulled my shirt up over my nose like that was gonna help. Foster took off his hoodie, wrapped it around the bottom of his face, and tied the arms in the back. He’s so skinny, he looked like a string-bean bandit or something.

  “Troy, man, this where we gonna be?” His voice was muffled under the hoodie.

  I draped my arm over his shoulders. “This place has your name on it, son.” Real quick, I undid his hoodie and tied his arms behind his back. I knotted it tight and pushed him toward the horses.

  “Don’t try it, man.”

  “Who’s gonna stop me?” I’ve always been stronger than him and he knew it.

  “My posse’s saddling up now.”

  “It’ll be sundown before they get here,” I said, pushing as hard as I could.

  Me and him were both laughing. I had him up to the fence, real close to this dark brown horse’s butt. Foster’s arms were tied up, but he dug in his heels.

  “Hey, you two, cut it out.” Dre frowned at us. “Don’t mess with the horses like that.”

  “We’re just taking a look,” I said. I was busy trying to stick Foster’s head between the fence rails when I saw the horse looking at me. “Dang, is this thing cross-eyed or what?” I jumped back ’cause the biggest eyeball in the world was looking at me. It had long eyelashes and there was only one.

  “I don’t know, man, I think the other eye is all the way over on the other side of its head.” Foster backed away from the fence, too.

  “That’s not very smart.” A girl’s voice came from behind us. “You’re in the horse’s blind spot. You could get kicked.”

  I started to tell whoever it was to mind her own business, but when I turned around and looked at her, the wind was sucked right out of me.

  “Oh. Newbies,” she said, laughing. “You can always tell by the clothes on the nose.”

  Standing in front of us was the hottest honey on the planet. Big brown eyes. That horse didn’t have nothing on her in the eyelash department. She could have gone toe-to-toe with the horse in the skin department, too. Chocolate brown and fine. She walked on by in her high rubber boots and left me and my boy standing there looking stupid.

  “Did you see that?” said Foster as I untied him.

  “We definitely need to check this out.”

  Nobody told us we couldn’t, so we slid into the barn. First of all, there was no sunshine. We were in a long hall broken up into these little rooms with a string of lightbulbs running down the center. Stacks of hay were everywhere with all kinds of riding stuff hanging on hooks.

  “It ain’t exactly dark and lovely in here,” I said.

  “Quit worrying about the girl, man. We’re checking out our new offices.”

  My boy was right, but I didn’t like the smell. All the horses were outside, but that didn’t mean there weren’t animals up in there. I saw at least two dogs and a whole lot of cats laying around. Something swayed in the back of one of the stalls. Something with horns and, look like, a little goatee.

  “Yo, man, what is that?” I asked.

  “Looks like the new assistant principal, Mr. Paul.”

  “That’s cold.”

  “But true.”

  Foster was right. Our school had problems. Mr. Paul was one of them. He’d throw you in detention for the least little thing.

  We were checking the joint out when we heard something like thunder going by. Took me a minute to realize that was the sound of horses running around outside. Right on the other side of the wall.

  Then Dre came trooping into the barn with the two other new kids and this tall dude. Brother had on white, look like, stretch pants tucked into these brown leather boots. Had pads on his knees and a jersey that I could tell cost a lot of money. To top it all off, he had brown leather gloves that matched his boots.

  “I was wondering what happened to you,” said Dre. “Oh, I see you’ve met our mascot, Percy.”

  “Now we know his name,” I said, rubbing my chin, “but what is he?” I looked around at the other kids to see if they had my back.

  “A goat.” Dre’s eyes narrowed. “What did you think?”

  “I really didn’t know.”

  He laughed. “Percy brings us good luck.”

  “Aren’t we here to learn about horses?” this chunky dude asked. He looked like he really didn’t want to be there.

  “My question is, are we going to have to take care of this goat, too?” said Foster. “ ’Cause I’m going to need a raise if we are.” We bumped fists on that one.

  “Get over it.” That’s what he said. The tall dude. He said it without cracking a smile. Nobody knew what to say for a minute, but then Dre jumped back in.

  “All right, everybody, listen up.” He put his hands on his hips. “I’m Dre, as you already know.” He took a little bow and we all clapped. “I’m the barn manager. I’m pretty much here all the time.”

  “That must be a drag on Saturday nights,” said the chunky guy.

  “Ready for house rules?”

  The girl in our little group said no, but Dre went on anyway.

  “Here we go. Number one, you check in with Winston, your program director, when you arrive and before you leave.” He nodded at the tall dude. “We have to know where you are at all times. Two, you’re here to work and take care of the horses. If you’re good at that, then you can ride.”

  “Can’t we ride first to see if we like it?” Foster asked.

  Dre kept going. “No excuses, no exceptions. Three, beginners start by mucking out stalls.” I didn’t know what that was, but I didn’t like the way it sounded.

  “That’s cleaning up after the horses and, as Winston just said, you clean up after Percy, too. Four, you go to school and don’t start any trouble.” He didn’t say nothing about trouble finding us. That was more likely.

  “What do you get for all this hard work?” he asked.

  “We ain’t getting paid, that much I know.” Foster said what everybody was thinking.

  “You can’t put a price on what you’re getting.” Dre flashed a smile. “You get to ride. You’ll get to learn as much about horses as you want. And if you’re really good, you can play polo.”

>   Foster raised his hand. Dre nodded at him. “Do you think I’ll be playing polo before I get my driver’s license?” All us kids cracked up. Dre, too.

  “That all depends on you,” he said. “Depends on how hard you work and if Winston thinks you’re ready.” Dre told it straight. “Some kids are riding right away; others never make it to the saddle. If you’re interested in polo, you can try out next spring.”

  That seemed like a long time away, but none of us had ever been on a horse before.

  “Okay,” said Dre. “This is where I exit and leave you in Winston’s hands.”

  I did a quick look around. Nobody wanted him to leave us with Winston. Dre wasn’t bad. Winston was another story.

  WE LIVE ON a block of row houses with big front porches. Some of the houses are messed up, like the boarded-up ones. They make everything look mean. There aren’t that many trees to hide the bad-looking houses, either. When we were little, me and Foster used to jump the banisters and work our way down the street without ever touching the sidewalk.

  The sidewalk’s where stuff happens. Somebody got shot out there last summer. And there’s always a bunch of guys hanging on the corner. Some of them are looking for work, some ain’t no good, some just ran outta juice. The thing is, you gotta figure out which is which.

  We were over Foster’s house playing cards after that first day at the stables.

  “So, what’s on your mind?” Foster always asked me what I thought about stuff before I had a chance to ask him.

  We were sitting on the floor, leaning against his bed. Something about that day made me feel better. My chest felt open, like the thunder from the galloping horses stirred something up.

  “The horses were sweet, but I don’t like that dude Winston.”

  “Sweet, phew! Are we talking about the same place?” I knew what he was saying. Being the horse janitor wasn’t going to be fun. This was May and it smelled bad already. “And did you see those polo dudes out in the field? They looked tougher than the football team over at Dunhill.”

  Foster picks up on everything. Pops says he’s a perceptive young man, a good friend to have.

  “Yeah, the polo thing,” I said. “How come nobody ever heard of it?”