MSRA ⇢ Starting New

⇢ 5 ; falling

After Cami and Mason had their dramatic reunion, the whole cross country class headed over to check out their teams.

"I'm with you," Abby smiled, coming over to take Mojo from my grasp. I held him while she read the board.

"This is gonna be interesting," I said, playing with the buckle of my reins. "We just gotta work hard."

Our team consisted of me, Abby, a nice girl named Julia, and two guys named Jake and Collin. Anne gave us a break because of how intense yesterday was, so we did some team bonding instead. We did barrel racing relays against another team, and we won.

-

"I can't believe he didn't know," Noah said as we rode together to dressage. "I feel like he'd be the first to know."

"Nope," I said. "And I was right in the middle of it all."

"Okay, guys, today we're going to do a basic dressage test," Mason said, clapping to get our attention. "This is the test, try to memorize it as best as you can, and in ten minutes we'll take turns performing it. If you get stuck, I'll call out what's next to help you out. Go."

I rode into the ring and started with circles to warm Hope up. I had to avoid the other riders, but in ten minutes, I got the test down fairly well.

"Who wants to go first?" Mason asked when we all regrouped.

"I'll go," Bridget offered, gathering Scarlett's reins and beginning the test. She had some choppy transitions and she messed up the pattern a few times, but all in all it was a good test.

"Next?" Mason asked, and Noah volunteered. Dressage isn't really my thing, I scoffed in my head, mentally quoting Noah. His test looked very well put together and blue ribbon worthy.

"I'll go," I said as Noah exited the ring. We had a good start to the test, but when I asked Hope to do a simple lead change, she started bucking. Great. I sat back in my seat and held on as she bounced down the rail. With one last effort, Hope successfully got me out of the saddle. I flew off and hit the fence before dropping on the ground.

"Kat!" I heard people yelling, but I just sat on the ground in pain.

"Kat, are you okay?" It was Mason.

"Ugh," I groaned, opening my eyes and trying to get up.

"Hey, hey, hey, stay down," Mason said, pushing me back down by my shoulders. "Talk to me, what hurts?"

"My back," I said, becoming aware of the sharp pain in my back.

"You hit the side of your body on the fence, luckily," Mason said. "That was a nasty fall."

"Got her!" someone yelled.

"Thank you!" Mason called back. "Abby just caught your horse for you."

"Great," I said, leaning my head back against the ground and closing my eyes.

"What do we have here?" a chirpy female voice asked. I opened my eyes and saw what could only be the campus doctor. "I'm Dr. Amy, I'll be helping you out Kathleen, okay? Do you think you can walk?"

"With difficulty," I said, gritting my teeth in pain. "But yes."

"Okay, let's get you back to my office and we can do a full exam there, okay?" Dr. Amy said. "I'll just need you to walk to the wheelchair so I can get you there."

With her help and the help of Mason, I was able to shakily stand up and limp to the wheelchair. The rest of the class was in a different ring, continuing on with class.