The Case of the Missing Dinosaur Egg by June Whyte

class,” she said, lifting a ‘you’re late!’ eyebrow at Tayla and me. “Line up in your groups.”
    We’d been divided into three teams on the first day of our holidays. Jack, Tayla, Sarah and I were the Super-heroes . The other two teams were the Sparticans and the Poppets . One led by Tim Mathers, a real cute fourteen-year old who looked like Leonardo de Caprio’s kid brother, and the other by Mandy Standish, a long-legged smiley girl who encouraged her team-mates like a cheer-leader, by yelling, ‘Hop! Hop! Poppets are on top!’ .
    Kate waited until we lined up behind our group leaders before continuing.
    “Today you’re going to jump the water-jump,’ she told us. “But to get the horses warmed up, we’ll play a game first. I want every member of each team, one at a time, to canter slowly toward the other end of the paddock. When you hear me fire my starter gun, spin on the spot and gallop back here as fast as you can. First back gets ten points for his or her team. Right? Leaders first, then we’ll go down the line until everyone’s had a turn. The game’s called, ‘Bang and go Back!’ Any questions?”
    “What if your horse breaks into a trot on the way out?” asked Mandy.
    “You’re disqualified.”
    “Why?”
    Sarah, eyes rolling, butted in. “Because trotting is slower than cantering. If you’re trotting when the gun goes bang you’d be closer to the finish when we spin and that would be cheating.”
    After an hilarious half hour spent yelling encouragement to our team members, cantering so slowly most of us got disqualified for breaking back into a trot, then spinning when the starter gun went bang and pretending we were jockeys galloping to the finishing line, we stopped for a break.
    “Right,” said Kate after a ten minute rest. “Back on your horses everyone and walk quietly over to the Cross-Country course. I’ll meet you in front of jump number eight.”
    The time had come to either jump or sit in the water-jump.
    Kate instructed us to jump obstacles six and seven first before tackling number eight. “Don’t worry about the water jump,” she said. “It’s easy. Just use lots of leg, keep your pony straight, then pop over the log and trot out through the water on the other side. Simple as eating a Mars bar.”
    Of course our team had to go first. I could see Sarah looking edgy. Probably couldn’t wait to show us what a star she was. Tayla’s eyes were glazed over like she was pretending she was at home reading a self-help book instead of sitting on a horse. Jack’s freckles stood out like beacons on a light-house. Me…I’d worked out a sure-fire plan. Close my eyes and leave everything to Shakespeare. I figured at twenty four, he’d been around a lot longer than me, so if he didn’t know how to jump the log and splash through the water, I may as well go change into flippers now.
    Naturally, Sarah made it look easy. She jumped six and seven as though they were poles on the ground, cantered up to the log, popped over into the water and trotted out again.
    Grrrrrrrrr!
    Fair dinkum, if Sarah didn’t lose that smug smirk in the next minute and a half, I’d be forced to secretly scrub the toilet bowl with her toothbrush.
    I could see Tayla’s hands shaking on the reins as she walked Angel out of the line. Her eyes were huge. Her face had lost its wet-cement grey color but was now almost as white as her shirt.
    “You can do it, Tayla,” I whispered. “Just hang on and let Angel do the work.”
    Her jumping was shaky. It was scrambly. It was mega-slow. But at the end of three agonizing minutes, Tayla trotted back to the line, her smile wider than the Sydney Harbour Bridge. She’d made it around safely.
    Jack’s plan must have been ‘the faster you gallop the sooner you finish’. I held my breath and watched him hurtle over the first two jumps then gallop toward the water jump as though chased by a sheriff’s posse. And then, at the last moment, his plan backfired.