Young Adult Contemporary (General and Christian markets)
Publisher: CrossLink Publishing
Date Published: June 1st, 2021
First choices out. Second choices in.
It’s been that way since dialysis left fourteen-year-old Krissy disabled. Her limitations went from none to a ton, and now they stand in the way of her dream—to compete in dog agility with her new sheltie pup, Aslan.
She’s seen videos of agility handlers sprinting, spinning, and twisting as they race with their dogs through the intricate obstacle courses. It’s a beautiful sport. Like dance. Like art.
And surely impossible for someone like her.
Her suspicions are confirmed when an agility instructor says Krissy’s inability to run will keep her and Aslan from successfully competing against other lightning-fast agility teams and suggests Krissy choose a less physically demanding, second-choice dog sport.
Second choices—once again.
And on top of all that, Krissy is pretty sure she doesn’t even like her own dog.
Excerpt:
Chapter 1
Whickery Gone
May: Six Weeks Old
The butt end. The butt end was the last thing
she would see of her beautiful, spirited Whickery. Why did that somehow feel
like payback?
Krissy leaned against the dirty white
post-and-rail fence, her thin arms resting on the top rail as Whickery’s thick
chestnut tail cleared the back of the horse trailer. Two dust-covered stable
hands dressed in the usual cowboy hats and boots closed the trailer’s door,
locking away the mare and all the dreams she represented. One of the men
slapped an open palm against the closed door—as if that somehow tested its
integrity—and the two climbed into the cab of their battered baby-blue pickup.
The engine sputtered to life, and the truck with its attached one-horse trailer
crunched a dirge across the gravel drive as it pulled Whickery away from the
stables.
Krissy’s eyes burned. She blinked hard,
refusing tears. No way would she show weakness in front of Mom. Besides, tears
would be a distortion of the truth. She wouldn’t be crying because Whickery had
been sold. If tears came, they would come because deep inside—where even she
didn’t like to snoop around much—she was glad. And that felt very, very wrong.
The trailer turned west onto the highway and
disappeared. And with that, Whickery was gone. There would be no more trips to
the decaying stables at the edge of the suburbs. No more acting as if she
enjoyed riding round and round the sandy, boring, and way-too-small horse
arena. No more hot days grooming an animal weighing a thousand pounds.
No more pretending she wasn’t afraid of her
own horse.
Mom put her arm over Krissy’s shoulders. “I’m
sorry, honey. I know this is hard.” Krissy pushed off the fence and stomped
toward the car. Keys rattled as Mom hoisted her purse and followed.
After sliding into the passenger seat of the
silver Avalon, Krissy slammed the door shut. Mom would figure her anger was
prompted by grief over losing Whickery. That was okay. That made sense. But the
truth? The truth festered in fear caused by her own abnormal and inescapable
body.
Posture stiff, Mom lowered herself into the
car and after starting it, drove away from the stables—for the last time.
Krissy didn’t look back. She knew what the rows of stalls with their peeling
white paint and beautiful equine occupants looked like. It had seemed like a
princess’s castle when her parents took her there for the first time to meet
her new horse. A year later, the stables had lost their royal luster. Now, she
saw it for what it truly was—two rows of deteriorating horse stalls with a
miniscule outdoor arena. She was glad to see the last of it.
After a couple minutes driving southeast on
the Northwest Expressway, the suburbs of Oklahoma City began to crowd the
scenery. Soon, they passed strip malls with familiar storefronts: Kohl’s,
Walmart, PetSmart, Target. These big-box stores were packed cheek to jowl
beside multiple car dealerships, their latest models sparkling in the early summer
sun.
Mom broke the tense silence. “We didn’t want
to do this. If I had my way, you’d still have her, but your dad and I agree
with your doctor. If you fell off Whickery the wrong way, you could damage your
new kidney. Then where would we be?”
Krissy stared
out the passenger window, teeth clenched against suppressed anger—and guilt.
“I know owning a horse was your dream since
you first rode Molly. How old were you?”
Krissy said nothing, wanting to forget the
whole owning-a-horse thing had ever happened.
Mom answered for her. “Six, I think. I’m so
very sorry this had to happen, but there’s no other option.”
It was a rare show of sympathy from Mom, but
Krissy refused to respond. Sympathy from others had annoyed her more than
anything else all through her dialysis treatments and subsequent kidney
transplant. Why that enraged her so much, she couldn’t say, but call her brave
or a trooper, and she’d be gone—if not physically, then at least emotionally.
She fiddled with her seat belt, trying to get
it to lie without pressure over her lower abdomen and the pink scar from her
transplant surgery hidden beneath her shorts. As the car turned onto Rockwell
Avenue, the old Warr Acres Cemetery appeared out of nowhere. Messing with her
seat belt, Krissy almost missed it. She gasped a shallow, hasty breath just
before reaching the first corner of the graveyard.
Her eyes widened as the car in front of them
slowed for no apparent reason. An irrational dread gripped her; she hadn’t
inhaled enough air to make it to the cemetery entrance at this speed. Moments
later her lungs began to burn. She fought against the desire to push on the
Avalon’s dash in a useless attempt to make the traffic move faster so the car
could reach the cemetery’s entrance. Only then could she release the small gulp
of air and take a deep, refreshing breath.
Krissy’s face was hot and her cheeks puffed
out as they finally crept by the gates. Gasping as if surfacing from a dive,
she filled her lungs with the car’s chilled air. Judging the distance to the
end of the cemetery, she did a quick accounting of the car’s speed and her
oxygen inventory and determined that this time she could make it on one breath.
Years ago, her father had taught her this
game. “Everyone, take a deep breath,” he’d say as they approached a graveyard
in the family car. Krissy and her older brother, Peter, would gasp in air. The
rules were firm: you held your breath until you passed the cemetery, with one
exception—you could breathe at any entrance. This entrance rule meant it was
usually a breeze to make it past most graveyards, unless you forgot and didn’t
get a lungful of air before you reached its border. The consequences of the
game were, however, harsh. If you breathed anywhere alongside a cemetery other
than the entrances, you’d be the next person buried there.
It was a pretty gruesome game to play with
little kids, and at fourteen she should be too old for such superstition. Yet,
with her history, what if? If a person could cheat death, shouldn’t they try?
Determined, she held her breath to the border of the cemetery where Mom, used
to the game and ignoring Krissy’s gasps, changed lanes and passed the loitering
car that had caused all the breathing drama in the first place. Exhaling,
Krissy left the dead behind.
The uncomfortable silence with Mom, who’d
surrendered to Krissy’s lack of communication, continued until the car rolled
into the driveway of their home, a two-story red-brick colonial. The garage
door opener began its grinding work, and the summer sun disappeared as the
comparative dark of their clean multi-car garage swallowed the Avalon.
Krissy closed the car door and sulked into the
house, making a beeline for the fridge. The kitchen’s cheery
yellow-and-cranberry wallpaper clashed brutally with her vicious mood. Peter
sat at the granite-topped kitchen table, wrapping overgrip tape around the
handle of his tennis racket. He glanced up at Mom, who walked in behind Krissy,
and their brief visual exchange must have tipped him off because he went straight
back to work without saying a word. This nonverbal communication heightened
Krissy’s temper as she yanked a Diet Coke from the fridge and turned her back
on her family and the irksome kitchen. She marched through the dining room,
wheeled toward the staircase, and climbed to the bedrooms above.
After reaching her room, she slammed her door,
creating a loud, satisfying crack. The Diet Coke whispered its familiar hiss as
she opened it, and, leaning against the door, she looked around.
Hers was the smallest room in the house.
Decorated in a puerile purple she’d chosen as a seven-year-old, it felt dated
and held many of the usual trappings of a kid—a dresser, a nightstand, a bed
that was made up only because it was a requirement for her weekly allowance,
and a desk crowned with an old computer. In the corner stood a painted
bookshelf filled not with books, but with her Breyer model horse collection.
The glossy plastic representations of equine perfection were frozen in various
poses. She’d spent hours as a child playing with those miniature toy horses,
dreaming of the intense and special bond she might someday develop with a real
horse.
She’d been so naive—even stupid. Because of
those delusions, Whickery had been sold. A living, breathing animal had been in
her care, and she’d failed her.
Krissy pulled her eyes away from the Breyer
collection and tried to avoid glancing at the multiple horse posters tacked
over the purple-striped wallpaper. After placing the bottle of Diet Coke on the
nightstand, she threw herself on her bed and rolled to give her back to the
bedroom horses.
In this position, she faced the small corner
devoted to her other passion. Well, her only passion, now that horses weren’t
her thing. She propped her head on her elbow and examined the magazine and
computer-printed photos of collies and shelties. The collies stood tall and
regal with their long flowing coats, but the shelties ran, flying over white
jumps and weaving through white poles.
Horses and dogs. It had always been horses and
dogs.
Unable to look anywhere in her room where one
or the other wasn’t staring accusations at her, she lay back on her pillow and
shut her eyes. Whickery appeared in her mind, the trailer’s door locking her
away. Krissy opened her eyes, banishing the image. She closed her eyes once
more, fighting to recall a happier memory. For a moment, she relaxed as she
daydreamed about the pond near Grandma’s house on a warm summer’s day.
Suddenly, the pond was gone, and Whickery’s
left front hoof weighed heavily in her right hand, while her left held a metal
hoof pick. In agonizing slow motion, the sharp pick carved through the
accumulated debris pressed into the hoof. It crunched as it ground its way, and
she smelled the sour manure, mud, and keratin released from the hoof’s crevice.
Her mind screamed in horror as the pick hung up on a small piece of gravel and
slipped. It plowed into her right wrist, half an inch below the artery just
beneath her skin that had been surgically lifted for dialysis.
Krissy’s eyes snapped open, her stomach
lurching. Although safe in her bed, she clutched her right wrist with her left
hand. With her left palm, she could feel the buzzing rhythm of the right
wrist’s artery racing. She hadn’t realized she’d been breathing hard until that
comforting beat, which proved all was well with the vein, calmed her, and her
panting breaths slowed.
That day in the barn seven months ago had been
petrifying. The surgically raised artery in her wrist was called a fistula.
Before her transplant, nurses had inserted needles into the large veins created
by the fistula to pull her blood into a dialysis machine, which filtered toxins
from her blood, taking the place of her failed kidneys. Injure the fistula
badly enough, and she could have ruptured the artery and bled to death. Even a
lesser injury could have prevented her from being hooked to the dialysis
machine, meaning more procedures, more needles, and more pain. A lot more pain.
After the pick had slipped, she’d dropped
Whickery’s hoof and pressed her right wrist against her ear to listen for the
healthy whooshing sound of the blood in the fistula. Except for the cold wind
whipping through the barn’s corridor, silence reigned.
Leaving Whickery tied, she’d frantically run
to the tack room, closed the door to block the wind’s obscuring howl, and
raised her wrist to her ear to try to hear again. Unaccustomed tears sprang to
her eyes, and panic raised bile to her throat. For several seconds, there was
no sound. Shifting her wrist back and forth by her ear, she tried to find the
vital whoosh. Then, a faint, rhythmic rushing sound vibrated in the hush. At
that point, adrenaline had sent her heartbeat racing, making the whoosh,
whoosh, whoosh gallop. She’d inhaled deep breaths, trying to control both her
heartrate and her tears.
For ten minutes, she’d sat alone in the dark
tack room, left hand on her wrist, making sure the steady vibration remained
and examining the fistula’s scar for any signs of bruising or injury.
She’d survived, but the whole thing had rocked
her. And the truth she’d been denying began to scream. She was afraid. Afraid
of Whickery’s size, of her hooves, of being crushed, of hurting herself, of
losing her fistula, of more pain. More hospitals. More dialysis.
Now, as she lay in the bed holding her wrist
in memory, a shiver ran along her spine.
Her tongue stuck to the roof of her tacky
mouth. She reached for the pop and took a few gulps. Rolling to her right side,
Krissy placed her wrist under the pillow and listened to the soothing whoosh,
whoosh, whoosh. Eyes closed to the room filled with horses and dogs, her
heartbeat relaxed, and the Diet Coke leaned precariously in the loosened grip
of her left hand. Minutes later, she slept.
She dreamed of maddened horses being herded by
snarling shelties.
About the Author
Kristin Kaldahl is an agility instructor, national-level agility competitor, and dog agility blogger with twenty years in the sport. Her dogs have earned eight agility championships and have qualified for the AKC Agility National Championship twelve times. In addition, Kaldahl is a semi-finalist in the 2018 Genesis Awards in the YA category, an award-winning former journalist, and a long-term kidney transplant survivor. #ownvoices
Contact Links
Twitter:@Sheltiebeast
Instagram: kristinkaldahl2
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