By Jordan Nishkian

This Story Won Third Prize in Our Contest

Learn More About Our Contest Here

You hear the gun go off. You feel it in your teeth. 

No matter how many races your dad takes you to, you’ll never get tired of watching Great Expectations burst through the starting gate. You hang on the rail along the track, eyes following her purple saddle as she weaves between the other horses.

“Come on, come on,” your dad murmurs, anxious for her to lead. While walking through the parking lot earlier, he told you that Great was projected to win. You wanted to remind him that she wins every race, but he’s already patting the betting slips in his shirt pocket.  

“Today’s the day,” he says.

Your eyes shine when he smiles. It’s the version of him you like best.

Great Expectations flies past and into the start of the clubhouse turn, hoof-quake syncing your heartbeat with hers. The grandstand roars. A voice crackles over the speakers.

A few months ago, when your teacher assigned the class to give a presentation on your personal heroes, you got your mom to braid your hair the same way Great Expectations wears hers and buy you a lavender shirt that matches her saddle. After your presentation, Chloe said Great isn’t a hero, and Brandon called you Horse Girl. The nickname stuck. Sometimes, you respond to it. 

At each of Great’s races, you wear your braid and your lavender shirt, hoping your dad will parade you beside the winner’s circle and call you her good luck charm. Maybe today’s the day, if he can fill those two empty bags in the car with money.

Ahead of you, Great Expectations hugs the inside of the backstretch, pushing past the leader.

“That’s my girl!” Your dad claps, rustling the slips in his hand. 

You beam. You chase this feeling like Great runs the track, dust-covered and sore-lunged. You hold it like her muscles cradle the pain in her limbs.

During her last race, you asked your dad if he loved her. He answered, “Everybody loves a winner.”  

The inevitable happens in the homestretch.

The fissures finally rupture, and the bones in her right foreleg crumple into the dirt. Your white-knuckled scream blends with the shouts and cheers around you. 

The pain’s so loud, you can’t hear which horse won—but you can hear Great groaning. She looks for her jockey the way you look for your dad.

He clenches his face in his hands.

The crowd pushes forward. You lean onto the rail, searching for Great, but too many adults block your view.

“What’s happening?” you ask, trying to see between them. Your leg throbs.

Your dad, shaking, crumples the papers. 

“Dad?”

“Her leg broke,” he answers. 

But her legs were already broken. She’s been running on hairline fractures for months. You’ve felt them grow since the first time you saw her. They were broken, but she won anyway—you said so in your presentation.

“She’ll be OK, though,” you say, trying to stand. Your knee buckles. You catch yourself on your dad’s elbow. 

Your classmates get casts all the time. Mindi let you sign hers—you wrote “get well soon,” and she did. A few weeks later, she got the plaster sawed off and said her arm rose up in the air all by itself. 

You picture Great with her leg lifting, weightless, after her cast comes off. You picture her learning to walk without her horse crutches. You picture making her a crown of clover for her return.

Near the backstretch, some grounds staff wheel over a train of black panels. Men gather around Great and lower her to her side. 

A fog of cigarettes and aftershave encircles you. A current of men brushes past, moving up the grandstand and toward the exit. Someone asks someone else if he wants to watch. 

You tug on your dad’s sleeve and lean against him. “When will she race again?”

“What?” he asks, looking toward the clubhouse.

“When will Great Expectations get better?”

He tears his arm away from you, and you topple into the rail. You nearly cry, but are silenced by his glare. Your bones threaten to snap under the weight of it.

“Don’t be dense, Emy.”

Your mouth tries to form words, but the bit is too heavy on Great’s tongue. Shame hooks into your stomach. 

“Stay put. Don’t talk to anyone,” he says, but Great’s pulse floods your ears.

As your dad tucks into the crowd, you lean forward, watching the men with the panels begin to circle Great. Both your hearts have four chambers, and all of them quiver and wrestle inside your ribs. The breath starts to sputter out of you.

She’s only three. 

You stagger toward her, fighting for balance between your leg and the pain.

The sun warms the chestnut threads of your braid. Like hers, it’s loose and caught across your neck. 

You pull yourself along the rail, feeling everything—the violet bruises from heels and crops, the muscles scraped by scattered bones, the panic. Your chest heaves. Your leg is loose in your skin.

*Tell them*, you hear her whisper, *Tell them you’ll fix me*. 

You lope ahead, forgetting the hurt, and thread through the railing. 

In the movie, Pocahontas saves John Smith by using her body to shield him from her father. 

Your feet pound against the track as you bolt toward the ring of curtains. Shouts roll behind you like thunder. You think your dad screams your name.

Images of you lunging over Great’s body—of rescuing her—fill your mind.

Fix me. Fix me. 

Hearts pound like gallops. 

Fix-me. Fix-me.

You’re close enough to hear her crying for you. Sharp clicks of metal punctuate her breath.

Say you’ll feed me sugar from your palm and weave clovers in my mane.

You break through the circle of curtains, then the circle of men. One stands, feet spread, over her head. 

Tell them.

Great’s coat feels warm against your arms.

You don’t hear the gun go off, but you feel it in your teeth.