Hot Little Hands (18 page)

“I'm Elise, this is Jenni.”

“Naomi,” said the girl.

“Dylan.”

“Indira.”

Elise and Jenni took the bunk bed at the back, near the bathroom. “Can I have the bottom?” Jenni asked.

“I wanted it,” Elise said.

They scissors, paper, rocked it. Jenni was paper and Elise was paper. They played again. This time Jenni was paper and Elise was scissors. Jenni threw her bag up the top and sat down on Elise's bed to change out of her flats and into her riding boots.

“
'Cause you're a glow stick, girl,”
a Disneyish pop song played through the tiny speakers on Indira's bed.
“Gonna light up this whole world
.
”

“What grade are you guys in?” Jenni asked.

“We're in fifth grade and Dylan's in sixth,” Naomi said.

“How do you know each other?” Elise was in the bathroom, in front of the mirror, reapplying her eyeliner.

“Me and Dylan are family friends, and me and Indira are in the same class at school.”

“Cool.”

“What year are you in?” asked Indira.

“Tenth grade.” Jenni stood up and stomped her feet to get them used to the boots. Elise zipped up her makeup bag.

“Ready?”

“Yep. Let's go.”

They left the cabin without saying goodbye to the younger girls.

The horses were standing around in a paddock across from the dining hall. There were about ten of them, all with their heads down, grazing. The girls plucked bunches of long grass out of the ground on their side of the fence and held them over toward the animals. The horses looked up. A few stood staring at them. Some went back to huffing at the ground. “Come here.” Both girls shook the grass in their hands. Jenni made kissy sounds with her mouth. Eventually, a few horses wandered over.

The one that came to Elise was acorn brown. “Hey,” she said, “are you hungry?” The horse ate the grass straight off her palm. She used her other hand to rub the white patch on its forehead.

Two horses approached Jenni; one was dusty brown with a black mane, the other one was white. At first she liked the brown one better but it tugged the grass out of her hand with its mouth, swooshed its tail, and walked away. The white one stuck around, letting her thump her hand against its side. It had long eyelashes, and its little teeth were all squashed together in its mouth, reminding her of a dolphin's.

“That one's Snowflake,” said Margot, squelching over in her gum boots. “You can ride her if you want.”

“What's this one called?” Elise asked.

“Glen.”

Margot told them their riding group would be the two of them and the other girls in their cabin. Their ride leader would be her daughter Bridget, who lived in Melbourne and had come up for a few days to help out.

The girls found Bridget in the stables, brushing down a black horse that was rolling its eyes with impatience but standing still. Bridget didn't notice the girls until they said hi.

“Oh, hey.” She smiled at them. She was petite and wore pigtails. She was probably in her mid-twenties. “Do you girls need to pick your horses?”

“No, we did already. But we're just wondering. We're in your riding group—”

“Great!” said Bridget.

“We're just a bit worried. Because we're pretty experienced. I mean, we've been here before.”

“We just want to trot and canter and that, and we're worried that the girls in our group—they're younger and they might be more at the beginning stage.”

“Okay. Margot told me you're all intermediate, but I'll check with her again. The ride today is just gonna be, like, a stroll, so everyone can get used to their horses. Tomorrow we'll get into the more intensive stuff.” She laid a saddle mat onto the horse's back. The horse stamped a foot. “Shh,” she said.

“Okay, sweet,” Elise said. “We just wanted to make sure, because—”

“Yep,” said Bridget, in a tone that could have been bitchy and could have been businesslike. “Got it.”

But once Snowflake and Glen were saddled up and the first ride had started, the girls were just happy to be sitting on their horses. They didn't care how fast they were going, or even where. Bridget had given them all quick instructions in the beginning—reminded them to hold both reins loose in one hand, tug on the left rein to go left, the right one for right, and to pull back on both and say “whoa!” if they wanted their horses to stop. All five girls had paid attention, had sat and listened with straight backs and the balls of their feet pushed out into the stirrups. But none of it was necessary. The horses knew the terrain well, and they walked along in a loose group without any guidance.

Bridget led them through a few open paddocks and up an incline, into some bushland. The path was narrow here, and the horses formed a single line. It was a bit of a climb, and Bridget told the girls to lean forward, to make it easier on the animals.

It was quiet, except for the sound of the horses' feet on the wet leaves underfoot, the breathy sounds they made with their mouths, and the occasional thump of a kangaroo bounding out of the brush, away from them. The gum trees made the air smell like Vicks VapoRub. Every now and then, they passed a pile of horse droppings left behind from a previous ride. The younger girls would point it out to one another and laugh. Jenni leaned forward and rubbed Snowflake's neck. “Hi, girl,” she said. Elise stroked Glen's mane. It was sticky and tangled and she couldn't get her fingers through. He tossed his head until she stopped trying.

There were about fifteen other girls in the dining room at dinner, all of them younger than Elise and Jenni. The two girls took a table by themselves. They had just started eating their lasagna when another tray was plopped down beside them.

“Do you mind if I sit here?” asked Bridget. “Margot and the other group leaders eat in the kitchen, but all they talk about is work. And when you grow up at horse camp and you come back to work at horse camp, it's the last thing you want to talk about after hours.” Bridget smiled and rolled her eyes.

She wasn't eating lasagna; she had made herself a Greek salad in the kitchen. As she chewed, she asked the girls questions about themselves. Where they lived in Melbourne (Murrumbeena), whether or not they had siblings (Elise didn't; Jenni had a half brother from her dad's first marriage but he lived in Perth and she only ever saw him at Christmas), what they did for fun (“Um, you know, just go to Highfern and hang out with our friends and stuff”), whether or not they had boyfriends (“No”), and what they wanted to do after they finished school (neither of them really knew. Jenni thought maybe marketing. Elise liked taking photos but obviously that wasn't really a job you could count on getting, so she wasn't sure).

Bridget was very encouraging about all of this: the marketing, the photography, the not knowing. She herself was doing a master's in community development at Deakin Uni.

The girls hadn't made up their minds about her. She had changed into a stripy Saint James top and tight jeans, which they liked. But the community thing sounded so boring, neither of them even bothered asking what it was.

“Do you have a boyfriend?” Jenni asked her.

“I have a girlfriend, actually,” she said.

Jenni and Elise shot each other a quick look. “Like a girlfriend-girlfriend?” Jenni asked.

“Yeah,” she said. “Like a partner.”

Her partner's name was Jade. She was two years older than Bridget, and they lived together. Elise asked what they did for fun, and Bridget said lately they'd been staying home a lot because they were saving up for a trip to Cambodia. “We've been watching heaps of TV shows. Jade's obsessed with
The Wire
at the moment. And sometimes we go out with friends.”

“Like, to a club or to bars?” Jenni asked.

“Just to our local pub,” Bridget said. “Nothing crazy.”

“Are your friends guys or girls?” Elise asked.

“Women mostly. Other gay couples. Oh, and one straight guy. Felix.” Bridget shook her head. “Poor Felix.”

The girls were starting to lose interest in the whole thing when Bridget smiled at them and said, “It's so cool that you guys are such good friends. Female friends are really important, I reckon. How long have you two known each other?”

“Do you mind if we take our brownies to the cabin?” Elise asked.

“We're really tired,” Jenni explained.

“Of course,” Bridget said. “Just make sure you put the lid on the bin after you throw the wrappers away. The possums like to scrounge around at night.”

Before bedtime, when the younger girls were brushing their teeth, Elise and Jenni took their backpacks and left the cabin. They walked out to the car park and sat on a droopy chain fence, facing the road. No cars came past. Elise rolled a joint and lit it. Jenni opened a Cruiser and took a sip.

“Dude,” Jenni said, “I can't believe the dress Sara-Jane was wearing at Zach's.”

“As soon as I saw it I knew you were thinking that.”

“I can't take those clear plastic straps. Everyone can see them. They're plastic, not invisible.”

“Zach obviously didn't mind,” said Elise.

“Zach was just settling for his second choice.”

“Aw, don't be hard on yourself. Maybe you were his second choice.”

“Pap smear.” Jenni reached over and pinched Elise's arm.

“Ow.” Elise pinched her back.

“I was trying to make you feel better.”

Elise took a pull on her joint, and exhaled slowly. “Oh yeah, you were.” She leaned over and rubbed Jenni's arm. “Sorry, bitch.”

Jenni laughed. She leaned her head back and looked at the sky. “Check it out. The Southern Cross.”

Elise leaned back, too. “That's the saucepan.” She pointed at the sky. “That's the Southern Cross there.”

“No it's not. The bottom one's moving. That's not a star, it's a plane.”

“Oh yeah.” They watched it for a minute. “That seems too slow for a plane. It's probably a satellite.” They stared at the moving dot until they lost track of it among the stars.

“Do you believe in aliens?” Elise asked.

“No. I mean, I think there's life on other planets. But I picture them more just like us.”

“You mean like maybe there are two girls out there right now, up on some other planet, at horse camp?”

“Yeah! They're probably staring at earth, getting wasted, and talking about whether or not there are girls down here, getting wasted at horse camp.”

“Bitching about the alien version of Sara-Jane.”

“Which probably looks exactly like the real Sara-Jane.” Jenni finished off her drink and burped. They laughed.

“Hey, how many horses do you think there are altogether?”

“I don't know, fifty?”

“No, not here. In the world. How many horses do you think there are on the entire earth?”

“Hmm. Maybe a million?”

“Wow, yeah, you're probably right. It's probably a million horses.”

The girls were buzzed and giggly on the walk back. They passed a few other cabins. The lights were out in all of them. The only way to tell which ones were inhabited was by the riding boots strewn about on the porch.

In their cabin, the main lights were off but the bathroom light had been left on. The younger girls were in bed. “Shit.” Jenni walked straight into a bag and almost fell over. “I can't see shit.”

Elise laughed. “Hey, girls—”

“Shh,” Jenni said.

“Mmm.” Dylan turned over in her sleep.

“Girls, cover your eyes.” Elise flicked the switch and the overhead fluorescents came on. Naomi and Indira lifted their heads and squinted down from their bunks.

“Sorry,” Jenni whispered. “It'll just be for a sec.”

They changed into their pajamas with their backs to the younger girls. The bathroom counter was splashed wet and littered with hair elastics and Silly Bandz.

“Yuck,” said Elise.

Someone had left a tube of toothpaste open and it had oozed onto the bar of soap.

“Gross,” Jenni whispered. “It's on my elbow.”

They brushed their teeth, turned off the lights, and climbed into their beds. One of the younger girls was breathing heavily. Jenni leaned over the edge of the bunk and looked down at Elise. Elise could see the outline of her head and her hair waterfalling down. “Hey,” Jenni whispered, “can I have Torco?”

“I didn't bring him.”

“Boo.” Jenni lifted her head up.

A minute later she was leaning over again. “How did you get the bottom bunk, again?”

Elise held up her hand in the shape of a pair of scissors. “Oh yeah,” Jenni whispered. “Good night, Leesy.”

“G-N.”

After breakfast the next morning, the five girls sat in a semicircle on their horses and listened to Bridget talk about trotting. They practiced around home paddock, digging their heels into the horses' sides until they went faster, and sitting up and down in accordance with the animals' movement. Then it was out onto a trail, alternating between walking and trotting. It was a cold morning but the sun was up and bright on their faces. Every time her horse started to trot, Elise laughed.

“What's so funny?” Bridget asked her.

“Nothing. I dunno. I just haven't been horse riding in yonks.”

At lunchtime, the girls sat with their cabin mates and talked about their horses.

“I think Rocket and Snowflake like each other,” Jenni said.

“Yeah!” said Indira. “They're always trying to walk together.”

“None of the other horses like Glen,” Elise said.

“He's just slow,” said Naomi.

“He's also the fattest,” said Dylan. All the girls laughed.