Horse Gods: The Dressage Rider’s Betrayal

Trey’s horse is tall. Really tall. And all of it legs. Typical Thoroughbred. He looks especially weedy and thin surrounded by the blocky warmbloods in the boarder’s barn. Rooting around in the working students’ tack room, I locate his saddle and bridle. Trey had marked his saddle peg with the horse’s name, Tucker, next to the outline of a fish. I run my finger over his handwriting, neatly penned with a Sharpie, and wonder for about the millionth time where he could be. It’s been almost three weeks, and no one has heard anything. At first it seemed like the police took his disappearance seriously and came by the barn for follow-up questions, but now everyone is just waiting. For what? For him to waltz in again and tell us he was in a hospital suffering from amnesia or was kidnapped and narrowly escaped? A feeling, like electricity shooting right through me, hits as I look at his handwriting. The feeling whispers, Trey is dead.