“Issie, I can’t let you have another horse. It was so terrifying when you were in that hospital bed and I didn’t know whether you would even wake up. I couldn’t go through that again. I am your mother and…oh, Issie, you have to understand I can’t risk something else happening to you. I know that you want to get another horse and—”
“No, Mum, you don’t understand!” Issie felt hot tears well in her eyes. How could her mum even think she would want a new horse? All she wanted was Mystic. She wanted her horse to come back to her. How could she explain to her mother that Mystic was more than just some pony to her? That he had been her closest friend, the one soul that she could confide all her secrets to, because he would never betray her. A kindred spirit who she could trust totally and love absolutely. The most important thing in her life. The truth was, she couldn’t explain it to her mother, or to anyone.
Issie took a deep breath and kept her eyes on the bowl of cereal in front of her. “I don’t care anyway.” Issie could feel the tears running down her cheeks; she wanted to stop crying but she couldn’t. She wiped her cheeks roughly with her sleeve and faced her mother. “I said that I was never going to ride again, and I meant it.”
“You know Lisa Jones?” Stella was chattering away and looking absent-mindedly for a book in her school bag as they walked into Mrs Carter’s classroom for fourth period maths. “Well,” Stella continued, “her family moved to the Hawkes Bay and she had to go to this new school. I think it’s called Iona College. Anyway, it’s very posh and they get to ride horses at school. Can you believe it? Horse riding is actually a school subject! So instead of doing a stinky old maths class, you could go riding instead. Lisa grazes her horse there and she’s allowed to go and check on him at lunchtimes, and they even have proper stables with loose boxes to keep them in. I mean, that would be so cool, wouldn’t it?”
Issie just nodded, and headed for the back of the classroom, taking her usual seat at the far corner of the room. She was sick and tired of hearing stories about horses and how much fun they were. It seemed like ever since she told Stella and Kate that she wasn’t going to ride any more, the pair of them had been trying to come up with new ways to get her interested in riding again. OK, she knew her friends were just trying to help, but she wished they would leave her alone.
Stella leaned over from her desk and whispered to Issie, “Hey, Kate and I were thinking that after school, if you’re not busy—”
Issie groaned and cut her off in mid-sentence, “Stella, I don’t want to go riding. Not this afternoon. Not ever!”
“OK, OK, get over yourself,” Stella sneered back. “What I was going to say is that me and Kate, well, you know how Kallista Field has a pierced belly button? Well, they do piercings at Lacey’s chemist shop and we were thinking of getting them done too.”
Of course Issie knew all about Kallista Field. There were always stories about the young dressage rider in PONY Magazine. Issie even had pictures of Kallista up on the wall in her bedroom. Kallista wasn’t just a good rider, she was also tall and beautiful with long blonde hair. And she had a pierced belly button. Issie had seen it in photos and she had to admit, it did look pretty cool.
Stella kept on talking, “Kate says she still can’t decide whether to get one or not. But we were talking to Louisa Bull – she’s really cool, she’s a fourth former but I know her because she’s in my house—anyway, she has one and it looks so fab and she says it didn’t hurt much at all.” She poked Issie in the tummy and grinned. “You would look so good with one, Issie. So what do you say? Are you in?”
Issie winced and pulled up her jersey to look at her naked belly button. It was an innie, not an outie, a small, delicate whirl in the middle of her olive-skinned tummy. She imagined the piercing gun clamped over it, driving a steel ring through her skin.
“I don’t know…” Issie muttered. “Mum wouldn’t be too keen on it…”
“It’s OK,” Stella insisted. “I asked Penny and she said she would take us, so you don’t need to ask your mum.”
Penny was Stella’s older sister. She was much older than Stella and was in her first year at university. The two sisters both had the same curly red hair and freckles—and the same naughty streak too. If anything, Penny was even wilder than her little sister. And Stella always wanted to do what Penny did. Penny already had her belly button pierced – and her tongue!
“Come on,” Stella was whining. “Your mum won’t even notice. We’ll all do it together. It’ll be fun.”
Issie took her hand off her stomach and tucked the thin cotton of her school shirt back into her skirt, smoothing it down flat. She had always wanted to get a piercing. Even plain pierced ears weren’t allowed at Chevalier Point High. But a belly button? Who would ever notice it underneath your school uniform?
OK, so her mum would kill her if she found out. But who cared? Besides, why shouldn’t she have some fun and do something exciting for once? She was so tired of feeling this way, tired of being numb and depressed. Maybe Stella was right. It would look pretty cool to have a belly-button ring like Kallista.
“What sort of rings are there?” Issie sighed.
Stella let out a squeal of delight. “Yay! I knew you’d say yes! This is going to be great! There’s plain silver ones, or you can get ones with a stone in them,” Stella continued. “I was thinking of getting maybe a purple stone like an amethyst but you can get whatever you want.” She looked at Issie’s screwed-up face. “I swear. Honestly. It doesn’t hurt!”
A couple of hours later, Issie wished she had never taken Stella’s word for it. There she was, lying flat on her back on the thin white chemist shop bunk bed, looking down at her skin stretched taut under the clamp of the piercing gun. There was a felt-tip dot on her belly button where the ring would pierce the skin, and a woman with too much make-up on was busily daubing her tummy with antiseptic solution.
“Now take a deep breath and breathe out as the needle goes through,” the woman instructed. Issie looked away from the gun, trying not to think about it as she sucked in a deep lung full of air. As she breathed out she felt a sudden rush of pain.
“There. You’re done.” The woman smiled. Issie looked down at her newly decorated navel. It was red and tingling. “You’ll have to keep it very clean for the first couple of weeks while it heals, and whatever you do, don’t take the ring out,” the woman instructed, passing Issie some antiseptic to take home with her. “And try not to wear clothes that rub on it and irritate the site.”
“I can’t believe you two went through with it!” Kate shrieked as the three girls came out of the chemist into the bright sunlight to meet her.
“What? I can’t believe you chickened out on us!” Stella teased her back.
“I didn’t!” Kate insisted. “I never said I would get one. I only said I was thinking about it.” She leaned down and peered closer at Issie’s red, swollen belly button and pulled a face. “Eugh! Does it hurt?”
Issie looked pleased with Kate’s reaction. “Not really,” she lied. In fact, she could feel her tummy button all hot and throbbing where the ring had gone through.
“You know,” Stella began, “when Louisa Bull had hers done she told me that it went all infected and she woke up one morning and, oh, this is really going to gross you out, her mum had to take her to hospital because—”
“Stella! I thought you told me that Louisa’s belly button looked really cool?” Issie yelped. “What happened?”
“Nothing happened!” Penny snapped. “Stella! She didn’t go to hospital, she just went to the