Stacy Gregg - Riding Star

Now, as she watched Blair Danner come flying out of the chute on her bronc, hanging on like she was riding a tornado, Georgie realised she was just as much out of her element here as she had been in the dressage class. She could see the concentration in Blair’s eyes as she threw herself backwards with the movement of the bronc and the strength in her skinny, tanned arms as she gripped the rigging to keep her seat. As the clock ticked on towards the ten-second bell, Georgie marvelled at Blair’s skill. Even while the bronc was trying to buck her off, Blair Danner was still lazily chewing her gum.

Georgie jumped down off the railing of the round pen. “I’ll catch you later, OK, Tyler?”

Tyler frowned. “You’re going? But class isn’t over. Don’t you want another turn in the chute?”

“No, thanks,” Georgie smiled. “I think one humiliating fall per day is my limit.”

As Georgie walked back towards the stables, she knew that she was never going back. After her epic fail in the arena she doubted that Shep would be too heartbroken to lose her, but Mrs Dubois might be a different matter. She could only imagine the look on the school bursar’s face when she broke the news that she would be changing classes yet again this term. This was starting to get embarrassing.

*

“On the plus side, at least you’re sitting with us in the dining hall again,” Alice pointed out when Georgie joined the eventers’ table. “I could never really imagine you hanging out with the Westerns – line-dancing and Stetson-wearing is so not your thing.”

“I don’t know,” Daisy King said, “I always thought Georgie would suit those white leather boots with the tassels.”

Georgie got up from the table and picked up her tray. “I have to go.”

Daisy’s face dropped. “Hey, Georgie, I was only joking…”

“I know,” Georgie said. “I have to go and report to the library. Conrad Miller has put me on Fatigues, remember?”

The prefects at Blainford were ruthless, dishing out Fatigues each week and it didn’t matter how trivial or huge the crime had been, everyone got the same punishment – and this week that involved cleaning the library.

“Right!” Mr Wainwright the librarian addressed the group of twelve pupils. “The sooner we get started the sooner we’ll get this done. It’s quite simple. Take all the books off the shelf, then using the damp cloths you’ve been provided with, give the shelf a good dust before putting the books back again.”

The students groaned. Mr Wainwright pointed to the sign above his head that said ‘Silence’.

“I’ll also need some volunteers to help me sort out the archive section.”

No one put their hand up.

“I’ll do it, sir,” Georgie offered. “Excellent!” Mr Wainwright said. “Parker, come with me. The rest of you get dusting.”

The archive room was a small windowless space at the back of the main library. The shelves were filled with rows of bound volumes.

“This is where we keep student records, school information and rare books,” Mr Wainwright explained, pulling a book off the shelf and blowing the dust off the cover before he opened it up.

“These are the Blainford yearbooks,” he said. “They date back almost eighty years to when the academy first opened its doors.”

Mr Wainwright looked up at the shelves. “These books record our school’s history – and those records would all be lost if anything happened to the library.”

He plonked the heavy volume he had been holding into Georgie’s hands.

“Which is why I am assigning you the task of digitising it. I need these books scanned for storage.”

“All of them?” Georgie squeaked.

“Oh, there’s no way you’ll get through more than a few volumes today,” Mr Wainwright said. “If you got Fatigues every week for the rest of the year then you could finish the job!”

He smiled at Georgie. “That’s a joke, Parker.”

“Very funny, sir,” Georgie said. Wainwright didn’t realise that at the rate she was going with Conrad she would single-handedly have the whole library on a hard drive in no time.

Digitising the archives sounded complicated, but in fact it was really just a matter of turning the pages of the book one at a time and scanning each side as you went. In half an hour Georgie had worked her way through the first volume of the Blainford yearbook from 1930-1940. She was about to attack the next volume from 1940-1950 when she thought better of it and pushed the book back on to the shelf. It didn’t matter what order she scanned the books in – so why not choose the era that actually interested her? Her eyes skimmed the spines of the volumes until she found the yearbook from 1980-1990. She opened the book and skipped forward to 1986 – the year that her mother had been a senior at the school. She scanned the student list, looking under ‘P’ for Parker and then suddenly realised that her mother would have been called by her maiden name, Ginny Lang.

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