Don't You Trust Me? by Patrice Kindl

Author:Patrice Kindl
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Atheneum Books for Young Readers

AFTER THE RACE IS RUN . . .

SADDLE UP AND ENJOY A DAY

AT TWO AREA HORSE FARMS!

FUNDS RAISED WILL BENEFIT

RETIRED RACEHORSES

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 23RD

Rain Date, October 30TH

After the race is run, after the cheering dies down and the crowd goes home, after a racehorse’s running career is over—[blah, blah. Lots of stuff here about poor old racehorses].

The junior class of Lebanon Hill High School is proud to sponsor this event to raise money to benefit Pegasus Stables in their work to help provide new lives for animals formerly in the racing industry.

We had to really scramble to get ready in time, but we had sponsors and volunteers standing in line for the chance to participate. You’d think everybody had been waiting all their lives to aid retired racehorses or something. I mean, what about the poor little doggies and kitty cats being done out of a square meal? Didn’t anybody care about them not getting any horse meat to eat? It made no sense to me. Don’t get me wrong—I enjoy riding, but once an animal outlives its usefulness, I’m not sentimental. I did get some idea of why this event was so popular, from Brooke’s father, who thought it was a nice, “cultural” cause for his daughter to be involved in. Meaning, I guess, that it smelled of old, established money, and that definitely appealed to a car salesman. I had no difficulty signing Uncle Karl up as a major sponsor.

Albany is kind of worthy but dull. Pretty much its major purpose is as a place for legislators to gather and state workers to put in their forty hours a week until retirement age. But thirty-five miles north is the summer resort of Saratoga Springs, where the rich people go to gamble. Identifying with that sophisticated, glitzy world was a winning strategy.

And of course there were lots of juniors and seniors at school who needed to put in their volunteer hours and hadn’t gotten around to it yet. As the committee chair, I used my power to give my own classmates preference, saying that this was a special junior class effort. Besides making me popular with my fellow juniors, it had the extra advantage of irritating Helena, a senior, who had had her heart set on running the fancy hat contest. Sophomores and freshmen were restricted to tasks like following the horses around and doing poop-pickup duty.

Because the weather in this part of the world tends to turn pretty grim after Halloween, we were under pressure to complete our preparations quite quickly. Brooke, Emma, and Melanie served capably as my immediate underlings, churning out publicity, organizing volunteers, and coaxing donations of goods and services out of their nearest and dearest. When Brett realized that the event would not take place in a gymnasium and that there were no bouncy orange balls involved, he lost focus and wandered off to practice layups, and I didn’t see much of him. Honestly, sometimes I wondered if I shouldn’t let Helena just have him.

I, naturally, was in charge of finances.

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