“Molly!” called a photographer. “I need one with you holding the envelope!”
“Molly!” called another. “I’d like to get your story for the Orangeville Banner !”
“Molly!”
“Molly!”
“Molly!”
They were closing in.
Evie stuffed the big envelope into her waistband. She cupped an ear with one hand and shook her head, pretending she couldn’t hear their questions over the din of the crowd. “Let’s go, Kazzam,” she whispered, and squeezed her calves together with purpose.
Kazzam leaped forward into a canter. Evie guided him toward the stands, waving and mouthing thank-yous to the appreciative audience. She and Kazzam had given them a show and now the show was over. Almost.
She pulled on Kazzam’s reins and sat back, asking the horse to rear straight up in the air. He did, and she held him in the pose for as long as he was steady, and then released the pressure so he’d drop his front feet to the ground. As soon as his hooves touched down, he galloped through the hole in the crowd, past the entrance gates, and directly toward the gravel road behind the stands.
Exit, stage right.
Yolanda
The morning began to heat up as Evie and Kazzam trotted toward home. They took a shortcut down a lane beside a stone barn, which had been built into the hill more than a century ago. Evie liked these old Ontario “bank barns,” because the thick stone walls kept the inside cool all summer and held the heat of the animals in the winter. Evie thought that horses seemed more content in them than in modern barns.
She glanced behind herself. No sign of the dented black sedan that had tailed them from the fairgrounds. She and Kazzam had ducked off the road and trespassed through the fields to avoid it. She hoped that they’d lost it for good.
She slowed the little black racehorse to a walk as they neared the gravel road. He really needed cooling down. They must get back to Maple Mills Stables before anyone noticed Kazzam was gone, but there was no rush, Evie thought. He wouldn’t be missed until noon.
Kazzam’s real name was No Justice, and no justice was exactly how it felt to be misunderstood and underrated. She and Kazzam shared those labels. Too bad today’s success had to be kept secret. Evie snorted. How she’d love to look her father in the eye and say, “We won!” But she couldn’t. And wouldn’t. He was terrifying. Her own personal bogeyman.
Her father could go from smiling to white rage in two seconds. Worse, she was never exactly sure what would cause his anger or how he would react. He was able to reduce her to jelly with a whisper.
It had always been like that. When Evie was eight, she had a paint pony named Chiquita. She loved her with all her heart, and used to climb on her bareback in the field and go for little jaunts when nobody was around. Her father disapproved. One day, he caught her at it. Without saying a word, he grabbed Chiquita by her halter and began to beat her with a whip. The pony was frantic. Evie begged him to stop. It didn’t make sense. He should punish her, not the pony. It was her fault, not Chiquita’s. Her pleas fell on deaf ears.
Grayson Gibb knew that the most effective way to make his point was to hurt the animals Evie loved. She never rode Chiquita again without permission, but she also never trusted her father again. He baffled her. He made her wary. He’d taught her a lesson that day. There was only one way to survive, and that was to keep quiet and as far away from him as possible.
And then, there was her stepmother. Evie sighed in frustration. Paulina was much less complicated but totally irritating. Evie was eight years old when Paulina had moved to Maple Mills with her daughter, Beatrice, and made it very clear that Beatrice was the princess of the house, not Evie. Simply put, Paulina and Evie had never gotten along.
The birth of their brother, Jordie, had helped a little because it tied the family together — Evie was Grayson’s kid, Beatrice was Paulina’s kid, and Jordie was both. It also helped that Jordie was such a nice kid. Aside from Jordie, Evie’s family life was a mess. She shook her head to erase the images of her unpredictable father and selfish stepmother. Anyway, that was old news.
The new news was that she’d totally embarrassed herself at school. Actually, “embarrassed” didn’t cover it a fraction, thought Evie. Try “mortified.” She blushed deep red just thinking about it.
It had all started when her friend Amelia told her that Mark Sellers liked her. So she asked him to a party. He told Evie that he couldn’t go and then said snarky things about her to Amelia, who thought they were funny and posted them on her Facebook wall. It was awful. Really awful.
When Evie read how everybody, even her so-called best friends Cassie, Hilary, and Rebecca, plus kids at other schools, jumped on the bandwagon, she panicked and hurled her cellphone from the school bus window into the Credit River in Cheltenham. She didn’t want to know how crazy they thought she was to imagine that Mark, a really popular guy, would want anything to do with her.
Immediately, she’d rued her impulsive reaction. If she could’ve leaped into the river after her cell, she would’ve. Now she had no phone, no connection with school, and no way to know what was going on. She couldn’t even check Facebook, because she wasn’t allowed to use the computer at home. Worst of all, she had no idea if she had any friends left. Evie’s face twisted with regret as she pictured her phone at the bottom of the deep, fast-flowing river. Too late now, she thought.
Whatever, the fact remained that Mark Sellers had made it impossible for her to return to school. Jerk.
Evie allowed herself to wallow a bit. It’d be nice to have a mother at a time like this. Someone whose shoulder she could cry on. A loving mother who would help her figure out what to do.
She patted Kazzam’s neck as they walked along the country road. “You are the only good thing in my life.”
Kazzam, a.k.a. No Justice, was a Thoroughbred of impeccable breeding and great speed, a descendant of some of the great sires. But he also had a problem. Twice he’d bucked jockeys off in a race, and twice was once too many. His future was now in question. But Evie loved Kazzam because of his problems, not in spite of them. It was like they recognized each other as misfits. He was a kindred spirit. She couldn’t explain it any other way.
He had spunk, and Evie admired that. He held his head with pride and he strutted like a champ. Of the thirty horses on the farm, it was Kazzam who caught Evie’s eye. She stroked his neck again as they ambled along.
Six months earlier, Kazzam kicked a groom across the aisle of the barn. The groom howled in anger and grabbed a broom to smack the horse. Something in Kazzam’s eye alerted her that the broom would only escalate to war, so she stepped between it and the horse and stopped the blow by grabbing the broom. The groom begged her not to report him. Evie assured him that she would not.
That was the day she’d nicknamed him Kazzam, because it was like they’d made a magical connection. From that moment on, Kazzam looked at her as his friend. He allowed her to handle him easily, unlike any other person.
After that incident, the exercise riders were only too happy to let her bathe him and cool him down after workouts. And she’d never forget the first time she got on his back. Never had she dreamed of such athleticism, such muscular tension. Even at an easy walk, she could feel his power!
Then, on June 1, her sixteenth birthday, several events coincided, causing a plan of action to form in her head. Her association with Kazzam became serious.
Firstly, that day he dumped a jockey at the starting gate for the second time in a stakes race, causing him to be banned from racing by the Ontario Jockey Club. His training schedule was immediately discontinued.