No Horse Wanted by LLC Melange Books Page A

this,” he whispered.
    “If you help me, I won’t,” I said, in just as
soft a voice.
    After dinner, I had dish duty. Once the
kitchen was clean, I started looking for Jack. He was nowhere in
sight. I stopped in the den and printed off the letter. I stuffed
it in my three-ring binder. Carrying it, I headed down to the barn
with a brief pause in the garden to pull up a few carrots for
Twaziem. As soon as I walked into the barn, he lifted his head and
nickered at me.
    “Hey, you know me.” I gave him a carrot.
“That’s awesome.” While he crunched away, I went over to Nitro’s
stall. “You said you’d help me.”
    “I will.” Jack kept grooming his horse. “But,
Nitro and I need to practice for the races on Saturday. What do you
want?”
    “Weaver says I have to do a brainstorm. What
does that mean?”
    Jack stopped and Nitro gave him a dirty look.
Jack ignored him. He put the currycomb in his tote and walked up to
the front of the stall. “Let me see your rough draft.”
    “Why does everyone keep calling it that? I
worked on this letter for hours.”
    “If it’s the first version, it’s rough,” Jack
said. “If you had more time, you could add more details,
right?”
    “Well, sure. But, why should I spend more
time on it?”
    “Because if you don’t, you’ll be walking like
the rest of us and hearing about the cross-country team at morning
announcements. You won’t be part of it.” Jack held out his hand for
my letter. “Do you want that?”
    “No way.”
    While he read through the letter, I went back
to Twaziem and gave him another carrot. He sucked it up like a
giant vacuum cleaner. Zip. Crunch. Gone. He was definitely getting
the hang of treats, so I gave him a third carrot and then a fourth.
We were on number six when Jack called me.
    “What do you have?” I asked as I headed back
over.
    He showed me the corrections he’d made to the
letter. Jack flipped to a blank page of notebook paper and drew a
series of circles with lines that connected them. “You’ll want to
create a web, and then you can see where your argument needs to be
strengthened. You’re trying to convince your teacher that you’ll
learn a lot from Dr. Larry, not just have a good time.”
    “This looks like so much work.”
    “Yeah, but if you get in the habit of doing
the brainstorms and developing your writing, you’ll have an A in
English at the end of the semester, and that’ll mean fifty bucks
toward your car. Add in your other classes, and you’re looking at
three hundred and fifty, plus the bonus for a four-point GPA.”
    “Any other words of advice?” I asked
sarcastically.
    “Considering how hard you work at
cross-country, you should ask the folks for a bonus whenever you
beat last year’s times and improve your P.R.”
    “That won’t happen until this Thursday at our
first meet,” I said, “if I’m lucky. And there are no guarantees.
People fall, get shin splints, twist ankles—it’s like your football
team. You guys can get hurt.”
    “So could you,” Jack said. “And I play
because it’s fun, but if the team goes to State again this year,
I’ll get an extra two hundred bucks for busting my butt all season.
I’m just saying that you should take your shot. You won’t know if
it’s a go until you ask Dad.”
    I nodded. He had a point. I eyed the letter
again and closed my notebook. “Okay, I’ll get out of your practice
and go do my homework. Do you want me to set up the barrels for
you?”
    “No. I want to work on stops and starts. If
Nitro sees the barrels, he forgets to focus.”
    I left Jack brushing his horse, just the way
he was when I arrived. I stopped by Twaziem’s stall and gave him
the last carrot before I left the barn and headed up to the house
to do homework. I went into my room and turned on the computer. I’d
do my English paper first, then move onto Algebra and History. My
teachers would probably die of shock when I turned in the
assignments, but it’d keep them off