For Sale Or Swap Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1 The Dumb Trophy

  Chapter 2 Lost and Found

  Chapter 3 Pikers

  Chapter 4 The Inquiry

  Chapter 5 Brat

  Chapter 6 A Civil Matter

  Chapter 7 A Disturbing Idea

  Chapter 8 Like Grandpa's Hair

  Chapter 9 Hayley's Verdict

  Chapter 10 Irresponsible

  Chapter 11 Cat and Mouse

  Chapter 12 Gully Way

  Chapter 13 Relief for the Mulligans

  Chapter 14 Lime

  Chapter 15 A Favour for Santa

  Chapter 16 Poppy Goes Home

  Chapter 17 Hatching a Plot

  Chapter 18 Christmas

  Chapter 19 A Trap for a Bushranger

  Chapter 20 A Change of Plan

  Chapter 21 Stupid and Dangerous

  Chapter 22 Winging It

  Chapter 23 Bandicoot Bait

  Chapter 24 Pillion Passenger

  Chapter 25 Justice

  Chapter 26 A Long Tail

  Chapter 27 A Mental Blank

  Chapter 28 Pete's Pony Rides

  Chapter 29 Tilt-a-Whirl

  Chapter 30 A Police Matter

  Chapter 31 Fair and Square

  Chapter 32 Honorary Member

  Chapter 33 A Magic Trick

  About the Author

  For Sale

  or Swap

  ALYSSA

  BRUGMAN

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted by any person or entity, including internet search engines or retailers, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including printing, photocopying (except under the statutory exceptions provisions of the Australian Copyright Act 1968), recording, scanning or by any information storage and retrieval system without the prior written permission of Random House Australia. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  For Sale or Swap

  ePub ISBN 9781864715514

  Kindle ISBN 9781864717082

  Random House Australia Pty Ltd

  20 Alfred Street, Milsons Point NSW 2061

  http://www.randomhouse.com.au

  Sydney New York Toronto

  London Auckland Johannesburg

  First published by Random House Australia 2005

  Copyright © Alyssa Brugman 2005

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Brugman, Alyssa, 1974–.

  For sale or swap.

  ISBN 0 75932 098 5.

  1. Ponies – Juvenile fiction. 2. Horse stealing –

  Juvenile fiction. I. Title.

  A823.4

  Cover photograph by Alamy.com

  Cover and internal design by Sandra Nobes

  Typeset in Sabon 11/15.5pt by Midland Typesetters, Maryborough, Victoria

  Printed and bound by Griffin Press, Netley, South Australia

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  I had a Blue when I was twelve.

  Her name is Shadow.

  I could have swapped her

  many times but I never did.

  She now works as my organic lawn mower.

  This book is for her.

  Many thanks to the students at Ogilvie High in

  Hobart for their enthusiastic and diligent

  contributions to 'Stupid and Dangerous'

  and 'Winging It'.

  Special thanks to Paul and Michelle Becker.

  1 The Dumb Trophy

  It was the Pony Club Christmas Party slash Awards Night and Shelby had won 'Most Improved'. It was a slap in the face really – 'Most Improved' meant you used to suck, but now you're slightly better.

  Hayley Crook's dad was in charge of the barbecue. Erin's mum was buttering bread and squeezing too much sauce on the sausage sandwiches as she handed them out in red and green Christmas serviettes, so that everybody who was eating them had to lean over, dripping sauce and sausage fat on the ground.

  Tubs of soft drink cans floating in icy water lined the side wall of the clubhouse. Someone, probably the Club President, Mrs Hockings, had decorated the kitchenette with old tinsel, bald in patches and matted with sticky tape.

  Erin had won 'Rider of the Year', which was a complete joke. Shelby thought it must have been because Erin's parents had bought her a fancy new dressage saddle. It wasn't even a real one. If it was real, it would have had the brand name on a badge somewhere, but it didn't. Shelby had checked.

  The awards were supposed to be for the whole year, and Erin had only got her copy saddle two months ago. Before that she used to flop around like a bag of potatoes in an old all-purpose saddle the same as Shelby's.

  Shelby thought that she'd won 'Most Improved' as some sort of consolation prize. The committee felt sorry for her because she always came on her own. Everybody else's parents came along to Pony Club with fold-out tables and chairs, thermos flasks, plastic containers of coleslaw and plates of homemade slice. Shelby usually had to make do with a packet of home brand chips from the Pony Club tuckshop.

  The Christmas Party slash Awards Night was worst of all. Even parents who didn't make it to the normal Club days came along. A few parents brought video cameras, as though this night might be worthy of revisiting some time in the future. Not Shelby's parents, though. They'd sent her along by herself with a plastic-wrapped Madeira cake, bought from the supermarket.

  'Are your mum and dad here?' Hayley's mum asked her, looking around at the crowd.

  When Shelby shook her head, Mrs Crook raised an eyebrow towards Mrs Hockings.

  Shelby spent most of her time with Erin's family, but after Erin had won 'Rider of the Year' people crowded around to congratulate her. Shelby wandered away from the others, down to the empty yards, munching away on her sausage sandwich. Behind her she could hear the happy hum of conversation and laughter, and the hiss of burning fat on the barbecue. A large blob of sauce slipped from the edge of her soggy serviette and onto her shirt. Shelby rubbed it into the fabric with her thumb.

  Erin's copy saddle had elevated her from beginners to advanced as well. That had been a greater humiliation to Shelby than winning 'Most Improved', because Shelby had been riding for three years, and yet there she was on the flat grassy area behind the clubhouse, going over boring cavalletti poles on the ground with a bunch of little kids, some of whom were still being led by their mothers. Meanwhile, Erin, who'd only been riding for one year, was in the real arena with the guest instructor.

  It wasn't fair. It wasn't even close to fair.

  To make matters worse, Mrs Hockings had pulled Shelby aside after the ceremony and told her that she was only allowed to take her trophy home after she'd paid her membership fees, which were overdue. Then she'd waited with her hands on her hips for Shelby to answer.

  'I forgot,' Shelby had stammered. This was partially true. She'd forgotten on purpose because she didn't want to ask her mother and see that strained, despairing look that she always got when Shelby asked for money.

  At the end of the night Shelby left her little silver you-used-to-suck trophy next to a plate of Mrs Hockings's dried-out lamingtons. Let them keep it.

  Erin's parents dropped Shelby home. Erin sat next to her in the back of their four-wheel drive clutching her giant gold trophy and
grinning.

  When she climbed out Shelby thanked Erin's parents for the lift and mumbled congratulations to Erin, even managing to plaster a passable smile on her face. 'How was it?' Shelby's mother asked as she walked into the house. Her mother was standing against the kitchen sink washing dishes. Her shoulder-length hair was frizzy and the fluorescent kitchen light shining through it made it look like a halo. Her face was shiny. She brought an arm up to wipe it and then plunged her gloved hands back into the scalding water.

  'OK,' Shelby replied, shuffling up the hallway into her room. There was no point telling her mother about the dumb trophy. It was embarrassing. Besides, then she would have to explain about the membership fees.

  She pulled on a pair of tracksuit pants and an old tee-shirt. 'I'm going out,' she said, scuffing past the kitchen.

  Her mother called out to her before she got to the front door. 'Have you thought about what you might like for Christmas?'

  Shelby tilted her head to the side. 'Not really.'

  Every Christmas and birthday was the same. It was a time for Shelby to get something she really needed for riding. For her birthday she got a winter combo rug, and last Christmas it was a saddlecloth embroidered with the Pony Club emblem.

  Most of the other girls at the Pony Club didn't have to wait for their birthdays – they got things when they needed them, and sometimes when they didn't. Hayley Crook had jodhpurs in every colour imaginable, and matching saddle blankets to go with them. It didn't make any sense at all, because Shelby's father went to an office all day, just the same as Mr Crook did, and yet the Crooks lived in a big fancy house with a pool area, and a gardener, and a cleaning lady three days a week, while Shelby's family (as her dad was always telling her) didn't have two pennies to rub together.

  Maybe if I lived in a parallel universe I would have been born into Hayley's family, she wondered. If she had, her life would have been way better.

  The screen door slammed behind Shelby, and she walked along the road. Loose gravel crunched underneath her shoes. It was almost dark now, but the summer air was still dry and warm. Streetlights arced over, lighting her way. She could see families inside their new brick bungalows and the flickering blue light from their televisions.

  Maybe for Christmas she could get a new saddle like Erin's? That might get her out of the beginner's ring. Perhaps she could ask for a few lessons? There was an instructor at the stables where Erin and the others kept their horses. She could just ask for her Pony Club membership fees. That was the most boring present ever.

  At the end of the block she turned left. There were only two houses on this cul-de-sac, but new blocks were zoned, with thin pickets and fluttering tape marking their proposed location. Shelby trudged along with her head down, her arms folded, and when she looked up again, what she saw made her pause for a moment. There in the gloom stood the skeleton of a house, its pale pine beams glowing. It hadn't been there that morning – only a flat grey concrete slab.

  She knew it would happen sooner or later – new houses springing up, one after the other, in a slow procession towards her paddock. Of course, it wasn't her paddock, and that was the problem. She didn't know who it belonged to. When she and her father had patched up a ramshackle fence of wire, wood pallets and baling twine around a nice flat piece of vacant land, nobody had said a word. They were squatters – that's what her dad called it. Now the land around it was being sold off, piece by piece, and one day soon her paddock would be sliced up and marked with pickets and tape. Then what would she do? She couldn't exactly keep a horse in the back yard. It wasn't big enough for starters, and there was Dad's precious vegie patch.

  Shelby's dad got a bit cross when the kids went near his vegies. That might have been because her little brothers had taken to 'helping' and squashed a whole row of his beloved tomatoes.

  The only thing he got more cross about was his car. He wouldn't let anyone eat in it and he always opened the doors for the kids so they wouldn't get greasy marks on the windows. Shelby's parents had two old-fashioned Alfa Romeo Spyders. One of them worked, but the other one, the one her mother drove when it was working, was really just a spare that her dad had bought for the parts. Half the time her mother's car was in pieces all over the garage floor. Neither of the cars were worth much because they were very old, but her father loved them. Shelby's mum said that owning a Spyder was a dream that Shelby's father had had since he was young.

  Blue's shaggy paint face stared out at her over the wooden sliprail that served as a gate. He whickered to her in his deep voice. Shelby smiled. He was always pleased to see her.

  'Hello there, lovely boy,' she said to him, sliding under the rail. Blue nibbled at her fingers, and nosed around her pockets.

  'No treats tonight, I'm afraid.' In her glum mood she had forgotten to bring him any.

  Shelby bounced twice so she could land on her belly over Blue's back, scrambled across until she was astride, and then leaned forward, resting her face against his wiry mane.

  'Of course I'm a good rider. I have to ride you,' she said to him, patting a drum roll on his chest.

  Blue was horrible to ride. He had short stubby legs and struck his hooves hard on the ground, so that every stride was sharp and jangling and made her teeth clatter, and yet she managed to sit still and balance. He was forever tossing his head around, so her hands had to be supple and forgiving. She had no choice.

  'I'd like to see Erin try to win "Rider of the Year" on you,' she grumbled into his mane.

  He put his head down to graze and Shelby slid off his back and crouched on the ground beside him, watching him eat.

  Blue looked like he had been made from leftover bits of other horses. He had a short blunt face, and blue eyes – which is where he got his name. He had a long thin ewe-neck and a disproportionately large round rump. The only part of him that was any good was a thick, flowing tail, so long that it dragged on the ground. His brown blotches on white added to his patchwork appearance.

  That's when it struck her. It wasn't her poxy old all-purpose saddle that was holding her back. It was ugly Blue. If the Pony Club committee saw her on another horse – something delicate and smooth – they'd see a world of difference.

  'It's you,' she said. His ears flickered towards her voice. She crept forward and wrapped her arms around his neck.

  Shelby knew what she wanted for Christmas.

  2 Lost and Found

  'Absolutely out of the question,' Shelby's mother said.

  'Aren't you even going to think about it?' Shelby protested.

  'What's to think about? You should be grateful that you have one horse. Lots of girls don't have any at all.'

  'I might as well not have one,' grumbled Shelby. 'Blue is hopeless. He was good while I was learning, but now I need to move on to something more advanced.'

  Her mother leaned against the kitchen bench and sighed. 'Then we'll have to sell him.'

  Shelby's mouth dropped open. 'But you can't. He's one of the family!'

  Her mother shook her head. She took a cloth from the sink and began wiping down the benches, collecting crumbs in her hand. 'Those are your options, honey.'

  Shelby couldn't sell Blue. He was her best friend.

  'I'll get a paper run.'

  'That's a good idea,' said her mother, washing out the cloth under the tap.

  'You'll let me have another horse if I get a paper run?' she asked.

  'No, but it would help you get all the things you want,' replied her mother. She wrung out the cloth and began wiping around the stove hotplates.

  'It's so unfair,' Shelby said, stamping her foot.

  Shelby's mother stopped wiping and stared at her. 'Unfair? I don't think so, young lady. You have two little brothers who don't have hobbies that are even half as expensive as yours. You get more than your fair share.'

  'What about Dad? He has two cars!'

  'Yes, and when you bring in as much money for the family as he does, then you can have two horses.'

  '
Hayley Crook has three horses,' countered Shelby.

  'Well, she hasn't got three bottoms, has she? She can't ride them all at once. Maybe she'll lend you one?' suggested Shelby's mother.

  The next morning at the stables Shelby related the conversation to Erin in full.

  'I tried to explain to Mum that people don't lend out their horses. It's just not done.'

  Erin was sweeping out her storeroom with a threadbare broom, deftly flicking dirt and wisps of hay from around the drums of feed.

  'Yes they do,' she said. 'It's called leasing.'

  Shelby, sitting on a bale of hay, lifted her feet up so that Erin could sweep under them. It irritated Shelby when Erin talked about horses as though she knew more than Shelby did. She didn't know anything about them before she started hanging around with Shelby at school.

  One Monday morning when they were sitting in the playground and Shelby was telling Erin about what she had done with Blue on the weekend, Erin had said, 'If I get a horse too, we can ride together,' as if she'd only just thought about it. Then, hey presto, Bandit turns up at the stables. The next weekend, Erin's family had arrived at Pony Club and started talking to the Crooks and Mrs Hockings and all the other parents as though they had known each other for years. It was so easy for Erin. Shelby had had to beg for one whole year.

  'But leasing is different. You have to pay.'

  'Not necessarily. Some of them are free.' Erin leaned her broom against the wall, the handle fitting neatly into the galvanised groove. 'Look, I'll show you,' she said, reaching into her bag to pull out a horse magazine. She flicked through the pages, and then sat down next to Shelby, handing her the magazine.

  Lease/option to buy. Thoroughbred gelding. Off the track.

  Free lease. Pretty black mare going to waste in paddock.

  'That one looks good,' said Shelby.

  Erin shook her head. 'It's in Victoria. You'd have to pay to bring her up here. You might as well buy one.'

  Another advertisement caught Shelby's eye.

  For sale or swap. Eye-catching brown pony. Fully educated. Royal quality. Consider swap for beginner's mount.