Free Riding on Air by Maggie Gilbert

although we’re only in the same classes for English and Home Ec, which is lucky as I read out the recipes and do the easy stuff and Eleni does the more delicate or demanding hands-on parts. We eat lunch together, which usually means I watch as Eleni devours her lunch and then helps me with mine because I’m never hungry and she always is. Sadly, Tash goes to a posh private school in town, so we only get to see her on the bus home.
    She hadn’t been on the bus that afternoon though, because she had to go to the dentist. As I shed my school clothes as quickly as my stupid hands would allow and wriggled into some comfy old jods, I wondered how she’d gone. Tash wasn’t daunted by much, but the dentist totally freaked her out. She reckoned it was having their face so close to hers, them peering down at her, that made her claustrophobic. No matter how quick the visit, she’d come home with a screaming tension headache. Lucky she had pretty good teeth; God knows how she’d cope if she had to have a tooth out or something.
    I took a carrot with me when I went out to get Jinx, who’d been eating down the grass in the Jenny Craig paddock beside the shearing shed. Not that Jinx needed to lose weight; we put him in there whenever the pasture was getting too lush. As Brendan said, not much point having a starvation paddock for the fat horses if it was full of grass. Jinx was definitely not one of the fatties. He was more like the Posh Spice of the horse world.
    As I slipped his halter on—Jinx had a hatred of the alpacas we kept to protect the sheep at lambing time and we had to pass them from this paddock, so the halter and lead was a reminder not to indulge his urges to shy and snort at them—I thought with satisfaction that he was looking very well at the moment. Grudgingly, I had to admit that Dad had been right and Jinx had come home from camp a little light-on in condition. The break had done him good.
    He’d had a couple of sessions in the round yard since we came home, but that wasn’t much work, really. I was always careful not to over-stress his joints (I’m perhaps a bit paranoid where joints are concerned) and the round yard was only small—about 15 metres across. Too much work on a tight circle was asking for trouble and as Jinx had raced for a couple of years, his legs probably weren’t in the best shape to begin with.
    I gave Jinx a quick brush and then saddled him, grateful as always for the modified system of straps that gave me greater leverage than on a standard saddle’s girth and allowed me to saddle him myself, except for the times my hands were really, really bad. It struck me then that William had never commented on my odd girthing system, even though he’d unsaddled Jinx after I fell off at camp. Maybe one of my stepbrothers had mentioned it to him; after all, Brendan and Gary had come up with the design for me.
    I put Jinx’s bridle on, picked up my helmet and decided I better give Jinx a few circuits around the round yard before I hopped on. After basically a week off and all that sweet grass he could be feeling a bit full of himself.
    Going into the round yard made me think again of William and I could feel a stupid grin turning my mouth up. Last week, by the time we put Jinx away, it had been too late to catch the movie he’d wanted to see and William was leaving the next day for a week rouseabouting. But he’d asked me for my mobile number and said he’d call later after he looked up the times for the following Tuesday when movies were half price. I’d given him the number and watched his ute disappear into the shadows as dusk fell and kind of expected that to be the end of it.
    But he had called. He actually wanted to go out with me. Me. We were going to the movies tonight; the 6 o’clock session, seeing as it was a school night (and you bet I was amazed that Jennie had given it the OK, but not enough to push my luck