Broken Prodigy | COMPLETED ✓

Chapter 3

(Above) My idea of what the inside of Wilson Creek Stables looks like! 

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The sun peeks over the edge of the shed as I walk down the driveway to Wilson Creek Stables. I spent the night worrying if my leg could take the work of being a stable hand, but I decided this morning it's not up to my leg. If I want to have a job, so be it. My left leg will just have to toughen up.

The stables are much quieter than yesterday. There's only one car parked out front, and I head straight into the stables to find Elliot.

Now, with hardly anyone here, I can see the rest of the building. The door I walked through before opens up to a huge alleyway, with stables lining either side. Halfway through it is the office I went in yesterday, with the entrance to the indoor arena opposite of it.

The arena is huge. It has pole jumps hidden away in the corners, ready for use, and the surface material is no doubt sand with its light beige colour.

"Olive!"

I turn to see Elliot walking up to me. "Oh. I prefer Ollie, actually," I say. I hardly ever get called Olive. I've never really liked the name.

"Okay Ollie. You're right on time. I'll show you around and get you started."

"Cool." I follow after him and he takes me into a feed room. There are feed tins lined up along the walls, and a couple of stacks of black rubber buckets in the corner. Elliot grabs a stack of five buckets and places them in front of the closest feed tin, before opening the metal lid and gesturing for me to see.

"You've fed horses before?" he checks. I nod. "Great. So on the left we've got plain lucerne chaff, and then we've got bran." 

Elliot shows me where all the feeding ingredients are and we both make five feeds, some of them the same, whilst the rest are customised for the horse. He introduces me to the horses, and we give the feed out, making sure they each had their one and that they weren't mixed up. By the time we're done with that, some of the early agistees have arrived to exercise their horses, and I help Elliot turn out a few of them.

"Now, the classic chore for every horse owner- mucking out stalls. You excited?" Elliot asks, feigning enthusiasm.

I'm not excited. My leg is already throbbing from all the moving and hauling stuff, and someone's going to notice if I limp. But my dad needs the money.

"Sure," I answer anyway.

Elliot walks with me to the tack room, and shows me where the rake is. "You won't need a wheelbarrow. My brother's already doing some as well, so you can share with him," he says as we head to the the stalls of the horses that have been turned out into the paddock. I spot the top of a head poking up from inside one of them, and Elliot calls out.

"Gus. This is the girl I told you about, Olive," he says. The guy stands up as he lifts a rake full of manure into the wheelbarrow. He has caramel-blonde hair that's wavy. Though his hair is a different colour to Elliot's, I now notice the similarity in their eyes. They both have bright blue eyes, exactly the same colour as each other's. The boy is a bit taller than Elliot, and almost a head taller than me, but they look the same age. There's no doubt that's he's good looking too, with his tan skin making a nice contrast to his grey t-shirt. But I can't deal with boys right now. Plus, it's not like anyone would want me. I'm just a broken teenager. I've got way too much baggage for any boy.