Kit Meets Covington Read online

  That was quite an admission coming from someone like Will. “I like snakes,” Kit said. “Have you seen the video where the snake eats the entire porcupine?”

  “No, no . . .” Will grimaced a bit in horror at the mere idea, but caught himself and focused on Kit. “Okay, quit stalling. C’mon, you can do it.”

  Kit tried to feel gung ho. “I can do it. I got this.” She placed her left foot in the left stirrup, grabbed the reins and mane in her left hand, made a little hop —

  And fainted.

  Kit awoke with a start. Had she been napping? It was broad daylight. Why was her bed so lumpy and cold? And why was Will staring at her? And her dad? And . . .

  Oh.

  She struggled to a sitting position with a moan. “Did I do it?” she asked weakly. Her head was spinning, and her stomach didn’t feel so great, either. Thankfully, she didn’t think she was going to hurl.

  “So close,” Will said to her. “Sooooo close.”

  With help from Will and her dad, Kit managed to stand. “You need a snack and a rest. Come on.” Rudy wrapped an arm around her and pulled her close.

  Kit leaned into him, gratefully letting him take her weight since her own stupid legs refused to do it. “Feel like I’m four again,” she grumbled. “Thanks anyway,” she said over her shoulder as Rudy steered her toward Rose Cottage.

  “That’s all right,” Will answered.

  “I was talking to Mrs. Whiskers.”

  Kit didn’t see Will’s worried smile.

  He led Mrs. Whiskers back to her stall, removed her tack, and gave her a light rubdown. Then he headed for Juniper Cottage. He was still determined to help Kit get on a horse, but in the wake of their recent disaster, what could he possibly do? It was time to lie back in bed, snarf some junk food, and do some serious thinking.

  He never got the chance. The sight that greeted him when he opened his dorm room door shocked him so much that, at first, he thought he’d walked into the wrong room.

  Someone had violated his personal space and done unspeakable things to it. His side of the room was . . . it was clean. It was more than clean. It looked like a magazine ad! It was tidy, organized, spotless! Perfectly made bed, floor clear and hoovered, knickknacks sorted, piles of laundry folded and put away — for goodness sake, someone had actually placed a ripe red apple on his neatly stacked schoolbooks!

  It was like looking at the bedroom of his evil twin.

  “Oh, gross,” Will muttered, dropping his bag. “Where am I going to find clean socks? Where am I going to find anything?” His system was completely ruined!

  He knew who to blame, of course. Nav. As revenge for his having won their tack-cleaning contest, Nav must have cleaned his side of the room, or rather, hired someone to do it. Nav would never clean such a mess himself. Well, there was only one way to respond, wasn’t there?

  Will snatched up Nav’s spotless white cricket uniform.

  Not long after, Will stood atop a damp grassy hill waiting for Nav. He had sent his roommate a mysterious text: “Trailhead Hill. 2:00. Be there.”

  Trailhead Hill wasn’t very far from the main school building. It wasn’t a very big hill, either. It only had a name because it was the starting point for one of the best riding trails on campus. But everyone knew where it was, and it was the perfect spot for Will to exact his revenge.

  Nav arrived on time, expecting to witness some kind of prank. When he saw Will dressed in his cricket whites, he said in a bored voice, “Ha, ha, you’re wearing my clothes. Okay.” He did not expect what came next.

  With a wild, “Woooo!” Will threw himself down the hill, deliberately rubbing his arms hard in the muddy grass and making sure to get as much dirt all over the cricket whites as possible. By the time he reached the bottom and leaped back to his feet, arms raised in victory, he was absolutely filthy.

  Nav watched all this from the top of the hill, hands in his pockets, his face impassive. Then he sighed. “Barbarian,” he said, and walked away.

  Kit ate a snack as Rudy requested: a packet of trail mix, a banana, and a glass of milk. It made her feel slightly better, but only slightly. She decided to study the Covington Training Manual for a while. What she really wanted to do was talk to somebody about what had happened. She considered calling Charlie, but the thought of that just made her feel sad. Maintaining a close relationship from across the globe was proving to be more difficult than either of them had anticipated. Besides, Charlie was just getting to school for the day in Montana.

  After twenty minutes or so, Anya skipped through the door carrying a load of fresh laundry.

  “Where have you been?” Kit asked, relieved to see her.

  “I was in the room of washing machines and drying machines!” Anya chirped happily.

  Kit didn’t notice Anya’s happy demeanor. She just needed to talk. “My worst totally happened!” she blurted out.

  “I’ve never done laundry before. It was exhilarating — wait, what?”

  “I fainted,” Kit told her miserably. “In front of Will. I tried to get on this pony, and she looked like a toy, but still . . .”

  “Oh, no.”

  Kit used her hand to mime a tree falling down. “Timber! Right into the dirt.” An awful thought came to her. “Do you think you drool when you faint? Because if I drooled on Will, it’s my turn to never leave this room.”

  “Definitely not,” said Anya. “It probably just looked like you were resting your eyes.”

  Kit’s chest tightened up. The world seemed to get dark. “I’ll never ride,” she whimpered. “I mean, Mrs. Whiskers was, like, this big!” She pinched her finger and thumb together.

  Anya set her laundry down. “Okay, let’s revamp,” she said reasonably. “Best/Worst.”

  It was just what Kit needed to hear. Her chest loosened up. The world got a little brighter again. “Okay. Best is obvious. I climb up on TK, and it’s wonderful, and we gallop through the fields with a rainbow coming out of his tail like some kind of unicorn magic.”

  That made Anya laugh. “Worst?”

  Kit didn’t even have to think about it. “I’m eighty-six, and I still live here, in this room, and I can’t go anywhere because I haven’t managed to ride — oh, and Elaine’s granddaughter is shoving schedules in my face all day long, and you live in Italy —”

  “Oooh, I love Italy!” Anya interrupted, then she caught herself. “Wait, let’s start with the small things.”

  “Like?”

  “Well, I needed to learn how to do my own laundry, and see?” She pulled a shirt from her pile and proudly held it up.

  It was pink. It wasn’t supposed to be pink. It had been white. Now it was pink. And small, very small, as in, small enough to fit a three-year-old child.

  Kit tried to look sympathetic. “Wow, you decided to start with the really small things.”

  Anya threw down the shirt. “Oh, I’m a failure!” She flopped onto her bed and hid under the duvet.

  “No, wait!” Kit moved over to the Anya bed lump. “You tried. Did you know how to use a washing machine at all before yesterday?”

  “No,” the bed lump admitted.

  Kit pulled the duvet back. “Now you do! Sort of.” She knew her next words would sound silly, but she meant them: “You’re my hero.” She paused. “And I’ll teach you the cold cycle. And how to sort.”

  The offer made Anya’s heart glow. Kit was proving to be one of the nicest people she’d ever met. There she was, shoulder-deep in her own misery, and she was trying to make Anya feel better. “But I wasn’t afraid of washing machines,” Anya pointed out, trying to turn the conversation back to Kit.

  “As far as you know. Maybe you were attacked by one as a baby and just blocked it out.”

  “Unlikely.”

  Silence followed as both girls wallowed in their pity party. Then Kit declared, “We both need to keep going. Just like you said — small things. Baby steps.”

  Josh worked at the little tuckshop in the school’s main build
ing because he needed to ease his school fees in any way possible. But he quickly discovered that clerking at the tuckshop, the only retail outlet on the Covington campus, also put him in a most advantageous position.

  For one thing, he’d met everyone in the school within the first two weeks of term. Nearly every student and teacher had come by to purchase something, whether it was a roll of breath mints, a mobile phone charger, or a pair of mittens. Second, working at the shop forced him to learn British terminology, which confused him to no end. For example, pants weren’t pants: they were called trousers. Sweaters were called jumpers, though no jumping was involved. Undershirts were called vests, and a vest as he knew it was called a waistcoat (pronounced “westcut”). Raincoats were macs, short for mackintoshes, and no, those weren’t computers. And uni didn’t mean “uniform” but “university.” Sometimes it made his head spin, but he was slowly getting it all straight.

  Now Anya was standing at the service counter ordering a ton of clothing that, frankly, she should already have. “The show shirts are fifty-five dollars — er, pounds,” he informed her, checking the price chart.

  Anya nodded. “I’ll take five.”

  “You mean, instead of the regular riding blouses?”

  “As well as,” she corrected him. “And the uniform blouses.”

  Josh totaled up her order. “That is, then, twenty shirts.” He started to look up tax information but had to stop. “Wait, go back, go back — you’re saying that she actually fainted?”

  That was the other advantage of working at the tuckshop: gossip. Josh heard about everything, every little private tiff, student crush, and even teacher rivalry. His job had turned out to be the mother lode of gossip, a treasure trove of information that was sure to come in handy. And this latest tidbit was priceless — Kit had fainted while trying to mount the school pony, Mrs. Whiskers!

  “Yeah,” Anya told him, “but please don’t make a big deal about it, okay? She’s totally embarrassed. Kit’s truly afraid . . . you know, like Will and his snake troubles.”

  Josh practically felt his ears grow bunny-big with this news. “What do you mean?” he asked, trying to sound only casually interested.

  “Oh, he’s so sweet,” said Anya of Will. “Kit was all nervous, so he told her that he was afraid of snakes to make her feel better. And I think it worked.”

  “Huh.” Josh tucked the tidbit in the corner of his mind labeled Juicy Personal Phobias to Exploit Later. Then it was back to Anya’s order, which was a mystery in itself. “So for real,” he said, “why are you getting all this stuff?”

  Anya stood up straighter and adopted a determined expression. “Because I am doing it. I am making plans and getting organized and getting on top of things.”

  “But who needs twenty shirts? I didn’t know you were such a princess.”

  Anya’s determination turned to anger. “What did you call me?”

  Josh gulped. “A princess?”

  She scowled at him.

  “What, is that some kind of gigantic insult here?” Good grief, yet another British term he didn’t know!

  “Don’t call me that. It’s rude!”

  Josh was lost. “How?”

  “Princesses are spoiled,” Anya explained with distaste, “and they can’t do anything for themselves. Why would anyone want to be friends with one?”

  He made a wild stab in the dark. “They throw awesome parties and have private jets?”

  “Yes, because of what they have, not who they are!” Anya forced herself back to calmness. “I have to go. Can you please put this on my account?” She hurried away.

  “Wait, Anya!” Josh called. “Don’t be mad!” He had meant it as a joke. What was with her, anyway?

  In summary, current goals for Rose Cottage include earlier bedtimes, tidier corridors, and a long-term philanthropic plan. I intend to restore Rose Cottage to the top of the house standings.”

  “Best of luck with that.”

  Elaine did not appreciate Poppy’s sarcastic remark. The prefects of all the girls’ houses were having a meeting in Lady Covington’s office, and Elaine was proud of what she’d just told the headmistress. She had plans for her house. She had goals. Poppy and the rest of the prefects were just messing around and wasting their opportunities, as far as she could see. That wouldn’t get them into the best universities — that was for sure. “Yes, Poppy, I have been burdened with some challenging pupils this year,” she said primly, “but I intend to rise to the challenge.”

  Lady Covington, seated behind her desk, seemed pleased with Elaine’s report. “Thank you, Miss Whiltshire. Ladies, you’re dismissed.”

  The girls rose and began to file out of the office.

  “Miss Whiltshire,” Lady Covington said before Elaine had moved a step, “would you mind?” She handed Elaine a letter.

  Elaine smiled. The headmistress was handing her a handwritten letter! Usually that meant an invitation to tea! Was she finally being invited to tea with the headmistress personally? That was Elaine’s dream, to finally reach such status that she was invited to tea! She accepted the letter with a trembling hand.

  “Make sure that Miss Bridges gets that,” Lady Covington instructed her. “It’s rather important.”

  Elaine’s smile threatened to melt, but she managed to freeze it in place. The second Lady Covington could no longer see her face, though, she snarled, and she kept snarling all the way out the door.

  Back at the tuckshop, things were getting weirder for Josh. He was facing the back corner, prepping a clothes order, when the service bell went clang! He knew every sound the little bell made, and mostly it made a nice, soft ting that meant a customer was waiting for him. When the bell made a sharp clang! it meant that a customer in a rotten mood had given it a good whap.

  He didn’t much like clang! customers, but they came with the job.

  He turned around to find a glowering Nav at the counter. “Cricket trousers,” Nav said impatiently.

  “Nav. Hey. Um, yes . . .” Josh decided it was safest to adopt a professional attitude. “Yes, those are a thing, and we do carry them.” He turned away to pull a pair of neat white cricket trousers from the shelf. When he turned back around, a still-glowering Nav was holding up the trousers that needed to be replaced. They were covered in mud. “Where were you playing cricket, the dump?”

  “I don’t know what a dump is, exactly,” said Nav. “This was Palmerston.”

  “Will did that to your pants?”

  Nav’s glower became darker, if that was possible. “They’re called trousers. Pants are what you wear underneath.”

  Will gave up. “Just forget I asked. . . .”

  “He did it because I had his half of our room cleaned,” Nav explained in a more reasonable tone.

  “Seriously?” Josh asked. “That’s ungrateful!” And then Josh got an idea, one of those prime ideas that could only be acted upon in certain prime moments. This was one of those moments. “Listen, dude,” he said, “I need to fill you in, okay? You are looking at one of the tidiest dudes you will ever meet. I mean, I alphabetize my shirts.”

  “How does that even —?”

  “And do you know who my roommate is? Leo Ducasse. And do you know what we call him? He-Laine. I seriously need to move out, like, now. So, Palmerston can move into my room, and I’ll move into yours. I travel light! I won’t even bring stuff! I won’t bring anything! I’ll be way, way tidier —”

  “It’s definitely not that I want you to move in —”

  “I bake! Did you know that? And I will throw these cricket trousers in for free —”

  “I would genuinely prefer to pay for them, though that is a generous offer.” Nav clenched his jaws. “And I will pay my roommate back for what he’s done.”

  Josh wasn’t about to let this opportunity go, not yet. He retrieved the latest piece of gossip from Juicy Personal Phobias to Exploit Later, only the later was now. “You know, I actually heard something rather interesting about him. . . .�
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  The Covington Training Manual was quite informative, as training manuals go, but it was dull. After having the heart-to-heart with Anya about taking baby steps, Kit had gone back to reading, but she just couldn’t get her brain to engage. She decided to visit TK.

  He’d been put in the outdoor practice arena to graze, since nobody was using it. When Kit arrived there, she found her dad leaning on the fence, one foot up on a low rail, his elbows propped on the top rail. He was watching TK. He was not smiling.

  Kit came up beside him, and he immediately said, “You should still be in your room.”

  “I just got a little freaked out.”

  “Fainting is not a little freaked out. Fainting is your body saying, Hey, stop it. And if I have to choose between my daughter passing out and that jerk of a horse getting shipped out” — he pointed at TK — “it’s hasta la vista, TK.”

  “Because family comes before a horse?” Kit asked.

  “Because I still remember having to pick my kid up off the ground, take her to the hospital, and worry that she had a concussion, feeling like I was the worst father ever for letting her get anywhere near a horse.”

  Kit grasped her dad’s arm and gave it an affectionate squeeze. “It wasn’t your fault, Dad. It wasn’t anybody’s fault, not even Freckles, and that horse was a jerk.” She expected her dad to say, “No, he wasn’t,” because Freckles had been a sweet horse really. She just couldn’t help but think of him as a jerk ever since she’d fallen off him. “Falling happens,” she said, once again recalling that day when she was eight and Freckles had carried her peacefully along Streamside Trail in the summer sun with the scent of lilies in bloom and the songbirds trilling in the brush. She never did find out what had spooked him, but Freckles had suddenly hopped to the left, startling her so badly that she fell right out of the saddle. “You don’t even have to be on a horse to fall,” she said, getting caught up in the memory. “It’s just that he was . . . was running . . .” Oh, he had started to run, all right, galloping in a full panic. “And I couldn’t get my foot out of the stirrup, and my head was bouncing along the ground, and his hooves were so close it felt like they were on my head. . . .” She could almost hear the drumming of those hooves again, loud, so horribly loud, the drums that had beaten so close and so loud that she’d thought her skull would explode.