Riding Chance Read online

  I couldn’t answer my boy. It was too hard to say.

  FOR THE FIRST time since I started riding, I didn’t go to the stables the next morning. I would’ve gone if I could’ve just snuck in to see Chance, but I knew I’d run into everybody else. Just didn’t feel like dealing with it, so I told Pops I didn’t feel good.

  “Thought you were serious about riding,” he said.

  “I am, but my stomach’s acting up.” I folded my hands over the front of my shirt like I was holding something in.

  “Does your not feeling good have anything to do with the party?”

  “Maybe I ate something I shouldn’t have,” I said, heading back upstairs to my room. I couldn’t tell him how I’d messed everything up again.

  I stayed there for a little bit but I got tired of hiding out, so I went outside to sit on the porch. Mr. Glover must have heard the screen door close ’cause he looked up from sweeping his front steps. After he finished, he took his time cleaning the sidewalk before coming over to our house.

  “Stables must be closed today,” he said, leaning on his broom.

  “Stables open. I’m sick.”

  “I see. What about your horse? Chance—is that her name? Wonder who’s taking care of her this morning.”

  What was it about Mr. Glover? He had a way of making me feel like a chump without coming right out and saying it.

  I slumped over in my chair, trying to look sick. “She’ll be all right. There’s other kids who can cover.”

  “What about your dad?”

  “What?”

  “Your dad. He borrowed money from your uncle Ronnie to buy you those riding boots.”

  Mr. Glover wasn’t a doctor. How’d he know I wasn’t sick? And Pops never told me he had to borrow the money for all my riding gear.

  “Let’s hope you feel better tomorrow,” he said. “Otherwise, I may have to go over there and take care of Chance myself.”

  “You, mucking out a stall? It’s not easy like sweeping the sidewalk.”

  Mr. Glover straightened up. He was holding the broom by his side like a sword. “What makes you think keeping this block clean is easy?”

  I’d never seen Mr. Glover mad, but he looked pretty close to it. The thing is, he made taking care of the block look easy. He looked like he enjoyed sweeping the sidewalks, cleaning the gutters, and shoveling snow, even in front of the abandoned houses. He kept the block together. Always calling the city to complain about things that weren’t right.

  “If something’s yours, you gotta take care of it,” he said, turning to see who was pulling into an open parking spot a few doors down. He went over to say hello.

  I knew I needed to be with Chance. Everything bad disappeared when I was with her. I had to get over to the stables, but Pops would guess something was up. First I was sick, then I wasn’t. Whatever. I couldn’t wait until tomorrow to see my horse.

  I opened the screen door and looked into the living room. Pops was sitting in his recliner, reading the paper. He had his music on. He looked up when I opened the door.

  “How are you feeling?” he mouthed over the music, putting the paper down.

  “A lot better.” I bent over to touch my toes. You know, trying to show that everything was working again.

  “Be back at the stables tomorrow?”

  “Yeah, um, I could even go today.”

  “What’d you say?” He turned the music down so we could hear each other.

  “I’m thinking of going to the stables this afternoon,” I said. “It’s not really fair to stick the other kids with my work.”

  “Sure you’re up to it?”

  “Yeah, I miss Chance,” I said.

  “Okay.” He went back to his paper. “See you at dinner.”

  The music was back up the way he liked it when I brought the bike through the living room. I waved at him before heading out.

  I was used to riding over to the stables in the morning when everything was quiet. Now everybody was outside and they were loud. Like the bunch of little kids playing at the open fire hydrant. They sprayed me with their water guns when I rode past.

  Maybe I would get lucky and not see anybody who’d been at Alisha’s party. The one thing on my side was that it was late. Some of the kids would have gone home already. I wanted to tell Winston and Alisha I was sorry while nobody else was around.

  Riding through Fairmount Park, I smelled a million barbecues. Well, it was the end of June. I was in the park every day but I didn’t notice all these folks out here enjoying themselves. Maybe I didn’t really want to.

  THE STABLES WERE QUIET when I rolled up on my bike. This was different from the morning hustle I was used to. It was hot and the air wasn’t moving. Most of the horses were standing together in the shady part of the yard, stamping their feet and flicking their trails, trying to chase the flies away.

  It took a few minutes for my eyes to adjust to the light in the barn. Just looking at the pitchforks and smelling that horse smell made me feel better. Hadn’t even seen Chance yet. She wasn’t in the stables. Nobody was, as far as I could see.

  I saw something move, though, out of the corner of my eye. Percy. He didn’t come over to me. Me and him weren’t close ’cause I always got hung up on how he looked. Just stupid, I guess. He wasn’t different from Chance, really. Watching me, waiting to see what I was gonna do. I went over and pet him a little bit. I hoped he wasn’t hurt. I added water to his bowl just to be sure he had enough.

  Instead of going out the front, I took the side door. It would be easier to look for Chance behind the barn that way. She was there. She was dripping water ’cause somebody had just hosed her down. That’s what I usually did.

  “Boy, am I glad to see you,” I said. She nickered and moved her ears forward when she heard my voice.

  I went back inside the barn and got a sweat scraper. I was scraping the water off of her when somebody came up behind us.

  “Glad you could make it.” It was Winston.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, still working on Chance.

  “Sorry for what? For fighting, for not showing up, for what?” He walked around Chance so we were facing each other.

  “I wasn’t fighting,” I said, still not looking at him. “Jerome’s the one who crashed into the table.”

  “Well, we all agree on at least one thing,” he said. “Jerome fell into the table but he says you tripped him, intentionally.”

  “I didn’t trip nobody. He fell over that girl’s shoes.”

  “He’s not here to dispute you, now is he?” Winston’s voice was tired. “For your information, Jerome’s hurt pretty badly. Besides spraining his ankle, he also hurt his shoulder. That’s bad news for a polo player.”

  Neither one of us said anything. I’d finished drying off Chance but I kept my hand on her.

  “What am I supposed to do with you?” Winston said, stepping back and leaning up against the barn. “You say one thing; Jerome says another. The truth is probably somewhere in between.” Winston sighed. “Jerome’s not nice. I know that. I thought I could build a powerhouse polo team, but my two best horsemen trying to kill each other.”

  “I ain’t try to kill nobody,” I said. “Told you he tripped on that girl’s shoes.” Chance was shifting her weight on her back legs. She wasn’t any more comfortable than I was. I wanted Winston to just disappear so I could be alone with my horse.

  “What makes this so hard is that I like you,” he said.

  “Yeah, why’s that?” I was petting Chance with both hands now. She was snuggling her head into my chest. I could swear she was telling me to fess up. Admit I tripped Jerome.

  “You don’t give up,” he said. “I had a hard time fitting in when I first started riding, too. Took me a while to figure out that it was my own fears holding me back.”

  Well, he probably didn’t have no cops jumping on him in the street. I wondered how he would’ve handled that. Both me and Chance were nervous. If he was going to suspend me, I wished he’
d just hurry up and do it.

  “But it wouldn’t be fair to suspend you and not Jerome,” he said. “Unless you really did trip him.”

  I couldn’t look at Winston. Just shook my head no with my hands on Chance’s neck. Winston looked at me and Chance for a long minute. I don’t know if he really believed me, but he knew that losing Chance would’ve done me in.

  “Okay,” he said, sighing again, “let’s get back to your training.”

  I nodded, still holding on to Chance. Winston walked back into the barn. “See you in the morning,” he said over his shoulder.

  I WAS STILL HOLDING CHANCE when I got a text. I thought it was Winston trying to tell me some polo stuff but it was Alisha.

  Call me. That’s all it said.

  I wasn’t trying to play her off, but I wanted to just be alone with the horses. I led Chance down the aisle in the barn, stopping to say hello to Luke and Magic.

  “Jerome will be all right,” I said, leading Chance into her stall. “He started the whole thing.” She nuzzled my shoulder as I turned her around to face the front of her stall.

  I called Alisha but she didn’t answer, so I left a message. “Hey, Alisha,” I said. “First off, I want to say I’m real sorry about how your party ended up. It wasn’t my fault, though. Jerome’s the one who fell into the table. I saw Winston a little while ago. Me and him are cool. I’m with Chance now.”

  I checked Chance’s water bucket before closing her stall door. “See you tomorrow,” I said.

  Then I got another text from Alisha. I read it out loud. Don’t leave i need to see u. Chance pricked up her ears. “I guess we’ll just wait to see what she wants,” I said.

  We didn’t have to wait long. Alisha came into the barn, carrying her saddle. She put her stuff away in the tack room and marched right over. She started petting Chance, hardly looking at me. Chance liked Alisha. I could tell by the way she had her ears cocked in her direction.

  “What’s up?” I said.

  Alisha sighed but she still didn’t look at me. “Troy, I know you think you got over … but I know you tripped Jerome.”

  “He fell …” I started saying, but she held up her right hand.

  “Don’t worry. I’m not going to tell anybody.” She turned to look at me then. “Just like I didn’t tell anybody about you kicking Percy.”

  “I only kicked Percy once,” I said. “How many times do I have to tell you that?”

  “You need to get a grip!” she shouted. Chance’s ears twitched and she switched her tail. “Now look what you’ve made me do,” said Alisha, sighing again. “We’re scaring Chance.”

  She was the one scaring Chance. “Let’s go outside,” I said. She didn’t move at first, but I started walking away. If she was gonna holler again, she could have all the horses in here upset. We walked to the front of the barn to the same spot where we’d seen that hawk.

  Alisha took a third deep sigh. “Troy, you’re not the only one who’s ever had problems with the cops.” I tried to wave her away. “I know you don’t want to hear this, but you better listen.” I was just standing there, leaning up against the wall.

  “I, for one,” she said, “know the cops better than you ever will.”

  “I doubt that.”

  “Just listen,” she said. “I had a real hard time when my parents died. Hanging out with some mean kids, not going to school …”

  I rolled my eyes and looked up at the sky. She went on.

  “The worst was when I was stealing stuff. That’s when Uncle Winston brought me to Philly to live with him. He knew that being with the horses would help straighten me out.”

  “You got caught shoplifting?” I said. “That’s how you got in trouble with the cops?”

  She nodded.

  “Alisha.” This time I had to sigh. “You got caught doing something wrong. The cops jumped me for walking down the street.” Her head jerked back like she didn’t know that before. “Now, tell me, what’s wrong with that?”

  She closed her eyes. “Why can’t you just get over it?” she said, shaking her head.

  I looked at her standing there with her eyes closed. She thought she knew everything but this was something she just didn’t get.

  “Because,” I said. “Because, I’m afraid …” I stopped ’cause my throat started tightening up. “I’m afraid it’s going to happen again.” I hadn’t even admitted that to myself.

  She opened her eyes and looked at me. “Well … maybe you can … move.”

  I laughed. “I don’t have a rich uncle who can just swoop in and take me away.”

  “It wasn’t like that.” She twisted her mouth to one side. “Uncle Winston didn’t swoop in. He had to leave the polo circuit to take care of me.”

  Maybe me and Alisha weren’t meant to get any closer. The thought hit me right in my face when she said that. I mean, I knew she had a nice life. A life that was different from mine, but all those brick walls around her house prevented her from seeing what was happening on the other side. It felt like one of those walls was standing between us.

  “I’m telling you all this ’cause you aren’t the only one who’s had to deal with bad things,” she said. “So do what you gotta do, but … you need to know I don’t think it’s cool. You need to stop lying.”

  I jammed my hands into my pockets and squeezed my eyes shut. Felt like Alisha was asking me to choose between her and Chance. Chance understood me; Alisha didn’t. Maybe she never would.

  THE NEXT FEW WEEKS flew by. Everybody knew I was gonna play in exhibition, especially since Jerome was out. Sounded like he was pretty messed up. He didn’t need surgery or nothing like that, but between his ankle and his shoulder, he had to rest for a whole month. Winston told me that. Everybody was wondering if he’d be back before the end of the summer. Alisha was the only person who knew how Jerome really got hurt. Girl must have been psychic. Or maybe she had superpowers where she could see in the dark. I never asked her how she knew. She just did. She was acting cold ’cause I didn’t tell anybody what really happened. Wasn’t any need to rock the boat.

  I was riding Chance every morning and doing polo in the afternoons. Winston had me working on my swings in the little barn at the end of the polo field. That’s where the wooden horse was. Had to learn the basic strokes on that first. I wanted to be fierce like the players out at Blanchard, hanging off the sides of their horses at full gallop. Well, I couldn’t do that yet, but that’s what I was going for.

  I was in the barn with Dre one afternoon when Miss T and Foster dropped by, looking for Winston. They needed him to sign some papers so Foster’s record wouldn’t say he’d dropped out of the program.

  “Look at you,” said Miss T with a big grin. “You’re fantastic with that mallet.” I was already pretty good at nearside fore and back shots. Had to show off a little bit, so I did the offside shots, too.

  “This is harder than it looks,” I said. I had on my brown leather boots and gloves, looking a little bit like Winston. I wondered if Foster was sorry he wasn’t training with me.

  “You look good.” Foster nodded as he watched my little performance. If he was jealous, he did a real good job of hiding it. “I saw you and Chance coming up off of the trail last week. Your flow was tight.”

  “Oh, he’s definitely on it,” said Dre. “No question about that.”

  “Yeah, this is my thing,” I said.

  It was true. I felt good even on the wooden horse, and that was nothing compared to riding. Jerome wasn’t around, so I could just be myself and not worry about who was scared of me, who was trying to take me down, nothing like that. Miss T went off to find Winston.

  “When will you move off this wooden thing and play polo on a real horse?” Foster asked.

  “Pretty soon. Have to learn how not to knock myself upside the head first,” I said, dismounting from the wooden horse. I used to hold the mallet all crazy. Now I knew to hold it down below my waist with other people around. I didn’t know what else to say, s
o I asked about that girl he’d met at Alisha’s party.

  “How’s Niki?” I said. Me and Dre were walking around the barn, picking up my practice balls.

  “Everything’s cool.” Trying to hide his grin, Foster walked over to the corner and took a mallet out of the barrel. Fooling around with it gave him something to do. I never saw my boy like this. He was all lit up. Pops used to look like this when he was around my mom.

  “Might be going to a barbecue at her crib on Saturday.” He was still fooling with the mallet, not looking at me.

  “So you’re going back down to Society Hill?” We’d found all my practice balls. My pockets were stuffed with them.

  “No, they live around Rittenhouse Square.”

  “Didn’t we drive past there with Miss T?”

  “Yeah.” He put the mallet back in the barrel.

  “So, let me get this straight,” I said. “You don’t like people out at Blanchard, but Rittenhouse Square is okay?”

  He shrugged. Dre was taking the saddle off the wooden horse but he stopped and looked at me.

  “This what you came to tell me?” I asked.

  “Just came to check you out,” he said.

  “Well, check you out,” I mumbled under my breath.

  “Huh?” Foster said.

  “Guess I ain’t no girl,” I said through tight lips.

  “And I ain’t no horse,” he said, swallowing hard.

  Dre looked like he was sorry he was there. Felt like all the air was sucked out of the barn. Me and Foster were standing right next to each other but there was a big space between us.

  “Okay, look,” Dre said. “I know this isn’t my business, but you need to listen to yourselves. You’ve been friends forever; you’re practically brothers.” His face was wide open like he didn’t have any secrets. “There’s nothing wrong with friends developing different interests. Just give each other some room. That’s all.”

  The truth was I missed Foster. The problem was, I couldn’t say it. I couldn’t say it ’cause he knew who he was way more than I did. He wasn’t following anybody else’s rules, not mine, not anybody’s.