Hilton Head

Chapter 2

My alarm screeched. I sat up and groggily rubbed my eyes. Reluctantly, I slid out of bed and put on my dress. I brushed my hair and put on a minuscule amount of makeup, just enough that people couldn't tell I felt like I slept five minutes last night. I looked over and Celeste was gone. She must have wanted more time to get ready. I checked my phone. It was 7:40. I quick slipped on my brown sandals and grabbed my things for first to fourth period, put them in my book bag, and left for class.
In the classroom, I glanced at the projector, which showed our assigned seats, and found my chair. I waited patiently for the teacher to arrive. Another girl came and sat at my table. The seating chart said her name was Westerling Smith. She had dark brown hair and wore a blue sweatshirt and black leggings with flip flops. She smiled at me when she sat down. She looked as if she meant to say something, but then the teacher walked in.
"Hello, class," he said in a big, booming voice, "I am Mr. Rivers. I hope you all brought your summer homework with you and completed it. It was meant to prepare you for this class. Today, you will be taking a pretest so I can see where you all are at. It won't be on any subject in particular; you will simply be writing a few responses for me and finding errors in texts." He passed out papers and warned, "The test is out. There will be no talking during the test. If I catch you talking, I will not only take your test and give you a zero, but I will do the same to whomever you were talking to. This may seem unfair, but you teenagers likely don't want your friend hating you for getting them a zero. So just don't talk."
Tough teacher, I thought. I grabbed my pencil and began the test. It was pretty simple, actually, just basic grammar mistakes for us to find and fix. Lots of comma errors, I noted.
When I finished, I brought the test to Mr. Rivers' desk. He gave me a new sheet and told me to answer the responses to the best of my ability. I nodded and returned to my seat. The testing continued.
•••
The final bell rang. I gave a sigh of relief, along with the majority of my stable management class. We were all glad to be done doing beginning-of-the-year tests. The good news was, it meant I only had about an hour of homework which I had already finished between study hall and lunch. I had met some new friends too; Westerling in first hour, Lillian in fourth hour, and Evan in fifth hour, and Celeste was in my genetics class. We all sat together at lunch along with some of their friends which was fun.
I grabbed my things and headed to my dorm quick before leaving for the stable. I only had twenty minutes between the end of stable management and the beginning of applied riding.
I walked in the stable doors and quickly went to Otto's stall. I tied him to a grooming post outside the indoor arena. There were already several riders there; some were grooming, some riding. The four trainers had yet to arrive.
I had a fast grooming session with my gelding, then saddled up, brought him into the arena, and mounted. I had done about one circumference of the arena before the trainers walked in together. One, a tall, lean man in white breeches and a black polo, black tall boots, and black belt, addressed all the riders,"Welcome, students. Throughout this semester you will be in one of four classes: novice, advanced novice, junior, and senior. For the first week, we will be observing each of your abilities and next Tuesday, you will be taking a final test to determine which class you will be placed in. Ms. Moldenhauer will be teaching the novice class, Mr. Glendale will have the advanced novice class, Mr. Furrow with the junior class, and I will have the senior class. Today, as a full group, we will have a basic dressage lesson. You may be thinking, 'Well why are we doing dressage? We signed up for jumping.' Dressage is the basis for all riding. You must master the basics to become a good rider of any discipline."
Ms. Moldenhauer stepped in front of him and began instructing the group.
"Everyone please move into a working walk counter clockwise around the arena. Feel free to ask any questions you may have."
We all clicked our horses into a walk. I only recognized one person in the group, a boy from my civics class, but I didn't know his name.
"Extend your walk, each of you, when you reach A."
When I reached the far end of the arena, I lightened my seat and hands and gave Otto some leg pressure. The other riders did the same. We walked at that speed for about half a circumference until Ms. Moldenhauer gave us the next cue.
"Working trot at C."
One by one, we all transitioned into a trot. Some transitions were a bit rough; a boy with slightly long, blonde hair and brown eyes and a girl with a sandy brown braid both took until H to get into a trot. Adagietto and I worked perfectly and he responded promptly to my cues. We had a beautiful transition into a trot. Our instructors switched places after a while and a rather short man with a white beard took Ms. Moldenhauer's place.
"Please down transition directly to a stop."
I sat deep in the saddle, breathed out, and pulled back with my reins. "Whoaaa," I said. Adagietto took two walking steps before coming to a complete stop.
"How many of you were able to come to a direct stop promptly and with no walking steps in between?" the man asked. Only one girl raised her hand.
"What is your name?" the instructor asked.
"Rowan," she replied.
"Well done, Rowan, you might just find yourself on mine or Mr. Lindell's team. You've got some talent," he praised, then addressed the entire group, "This was a hard exercise, so don't feel bad if you didn't do it perfectly. How many of you got this in two steps or less?"
I raised my hand, along with one other girl across the room.
"You two could easily make the junior or senior team as well. Now, let's move back into a trot..."
•••
Rowan and I sipped our shakes at the café. We had met up after our lesson to talk. Her horse's stall was right next to mine. She was the one who owned Greensleeves.
"Hey, so do you want to ride tomorrow after dinner? I think it would be good practice since we have the placement test next week." I hoped she would say yes; I could use help with my transitions.
"Sure! I could use someone to watch me jump. My trainer back home said I need to make my seat more forward."
"Well I can certainly help with that! Jumping is my specialty!" I winked. We laughed.
For the next week, I got into a routine. Get up, go to school, talk with friends and work on homework at lunch and study hall, finish school, go to my lesson, go to my dorm, finish my homework, eat dinner, ride with Rowan, then go back to my dorm and do what I want before going to bed and starting all over. The days flew by until Tuesday was finally here.
I hurried into my stable management class and sat down just before the bell rang. The teacher, Ms. Lancaster, got up from her desk.
"Today, we will start our semester unit." A few students gaped at the length of the unit. Seeing their faces, Ms. Lancaster explained, "There will be multiple different sub-units over the course of the semester, but the main theme will be foals. We will learn about their training, feeding, medical care, and daily needs. Our first topic will be training."
Ms. Lancaster pulled down the projector screen and a PowerPoint faded into view. The cover slide read, "Training your new foal." The teacher flipped it to the first slide, titled Month One.
"The first part of a a foal's life is crucial to whether or not it will become an obedient, loving horse. Imprinting is a good way to get your foal to trust you and other humans it will encounter during its lifetime. Imprinting is the process of rubbing and touching a newborn foal to desensitize it to human contact and to generate trust. How many of you have ever been involved in raising a foal?"
I raised my hand, as well as one other person.  I had raised plenty of thoroughbreds for the track.
Ms. Lancaster called on me. "What techniques have you used?"
I replied, scrupulously thinking out my words so as not to sound rude. It was only the second week of school and I didn't want a teacher on my back already.
"Well, I live in France and there we have actually started to not use imprinting because some of our researchers found that it can have negative affects on the foal because they don't bond very well with their mother. So we teach our foals by showing them on their moms while they watch. Because they learn so much from them, you know?"
My cheeks warmed as the teacher frowned slightly but nodded.
"New techniques are always good to learn," she said in an attempt to ease the tension. "Gabriel? How did you raise your foal?" she asked the other boy who raised his hand.
"We imprinted on him," he gave his quick response. Ms. Lancaster once again nodded. She flipped the slide.
"We will talk in more depth about this later. The reason this is our first unit is because currently we have four mares in foal. We are going to allow each of our advanced riders the opportunity to raise one of these foals throughout their academy experience." Whispers erupted through the class. This would be an amazing opportunity! "Applications will be available tomorrow morning. Mr. Lindell and I will send emails out to all students who make the advanced teams with applications."
Class continued, but I could only think of one thing. I had to make the advanced team. I would raise a foal.
Kind of a short chapter, I think, and I went through an entire week in it:/ ...I promise the next chapter will be more detailed! Vote and comment!
–KM