The a Circuit by Georgina Bloomberg Read Free Book Online

knew she’d arrived home safely. Her car was an improvement over the bike, but he still worried about her driving home alone at night.
    “I’m home,” she told him when he picked up. “How’s work?”
    “Quiet,” he said. “How’d your show go? Win any trophies?”
    She smiled. He asked the same question every time she got home from a show, referring back to her very first competition, a tiny, informal student show at her old lesson barn. She’d come in first in her walk-trot class and won a garish plastic trophy that looked as if it had come out of a gumball machine. But her father had fussed over that silly little trophy so proudly that Kate had painted it gold and given it to him for Father’s Day. Ever since, the trophy thing had been their own private joke.
    “A few,” she responded lightly. Then she paused, wondering if she should tell him that her mother was getting bad again.
    But she decided not to bother. He had to know already, right? Wasn’t that why he kept taking on more overtime? Why Andy spent less and less time at home? Why she herself escaped to the barn every chance she got?
    After she hung up, she flopped onto her bed, feeling guilty. She knew she should be more patient with her mother. It wasn’t her fault she was this way, or so everyone always said. That didn’t make it any easier to deal with—or stop Kate from wishing sometimes that she could trade lives with Tommi, or Summer, or any of the other riders at the barn, whose lives all seemed practically perfect despite their little complaints here and there.
    Kate yawned so widely it felt as if her face would crack in two. But despite her weariness, she knew she was way too wired to fall asleep yet. It was always that way after a show.
    She dialed Tommi’s number, knowing she’d still be up—she’d left the barn only a short while before Kate did, and had a longer commute back to her family’s town house in Manhattan. But the phone only rang twice before bouncing to voice mail.
    “Damn,” Kate muttered.
    Still feeling restless, she tried another familiar number. This time, someone picked up almost immediately.
    “Hey, Katie,” Natalie greeted her.
    Kate smiled. It helped to have a friend who was a night owl.
    “Hey,” she said. “What’s up?”
    Natalie had been her best friend since kindergarten. The two of them had started riding together at Happy Acres Riding Academy, and Kate knew that Nat still didn’t quite get why she’d left the homey, relaxed barn just to ride “a bunch of inbred dumbbloods with snooty Manhattan princesses,” as she often put it. Still, Kate thought of her as the closest thing to a sister she’d ever had.
    “Not much,” Nat said. “Where were you all weekend? I stopped by to see if you wanted to hit Frankie Pannelli’s party with me.”
    “Had a show.” Kate hesitated. Nat was one of the only people outside her immediate family who knew about her mother. Thanks to sleepovers in their younger days, she’d seen her in action more than once. “Um, didn’t my mom tell you that when you stopped in?”
    “Didn’t see her. Andy said you’d killed yourself by jumping off the Brooklyn Bridge.”
    Kate rolled her eyes. Yeah, that sounded like Andy, at least lately.
    “Probably just as well,” she said with a sigh. “Mom’s cheese is sliding off her cracker again these days.”
    “Really? She ever go see that shrink your dad found?”
    “I dunno.” Kate didn’t really feel like talking about it right now. Actually, she didn’t really feel like talking about it ever . She decided to change the subject. “You ride this weekend?”
    “Just when Roscoe decided to be a brat for one of the kiddies I was teaching. Had to hop on and remind him how to behave himself.”
    Kate couldn’t help wincing. Ever since Nat had started teaching up-down lessons at Happy Acres last summer, she’d gotten a little too big for her breeches, to the point where she could be kind of rough on the school