“Take five!” the director called out disgustedly. He was as tired of the scene as everybody else was.
The cast collected by the buffet table, where sodas had been laid out for them.
“I’m going to kill her,” Skye hissed to The Saddle Club under his breath.
“Roulette?” Carole asked with concern.
“Oh, no!” Skye said. “She can’t help herself and I can’t keep her from doing it. No, the one I want to kill is Molly. Every time I get near her horse the way the script says, she clicks her tongue in her cheek. It’s too quiet for the microphones to pick it up, but Roulette hears it all right and takes off. Molly is trying to make me look like an idiot—and she’s succeeding! She’s still sore that I got this part. She wanted her boyfriend to do it. This is probably her way of getting back at me.”
“It’s true that a lot of horses will recognize tongue clucking as a signal to speed up,” Carole said, frowning thoughtfully. “Also, mares can be feisty and a little unpredictable sometimes. This may be one of those times for Roulette. There isn’t much you can do about it, except hold tight on the reins.”
Skye took a soda. “I’ve been trying that. My hands are all sore. This horse has the best of me. I knew she’d be trouble from the time I first mounted her. I tried to get my costar to switch horses, but it’s like she knew I’d have trouble with Roulette.”
Stevie was steaming. “This is sabotage!” she hissed. “That jerk needs to be taught a lesson. I think I saw a nettle bush back in the woods. The four of us can grab her and dump her in there.”
Skye laughed. “Great idea. I don’t think the director will go for it, though.”
“There’s got to be a way,” Stevie said stubbornly.
Stevie looked over to where the five horses were tied up under the shade of an elm tree. They looked so peaceful. Roulette and Topside were off to one side. The two bay horses looked a lot alike. As they stood there, sipping gently at their water, it was hard to tell that one was a skittish mare and the other was a championship Thoroughbred gelding. Very hard.
“I think I have the answer,” Stevie said.
“ACTION!”
The three girls walked their horses in front of the camera. Thumbs up.
“Molly! Molly!” Skye trotted toward his costar.
“It’s over between us, Brad, don’t you understand?” Molly asked.
From where the girls waited, off-camera, they saw her cluck her tongue. It didn’t faze Topside. Skye maintained an even trot. Molly clucked again.
“That’s your cue, Molly!” the director called. “You’re supposed to be cantering now!”
“Oh,” she said weakly. She’d been so busy trying to make Skye look bad that she’d missed her own cue.
The girls exchanged glances and smirked to themselves. Skye just looked at Molly sympathetically. “Sometimes it’s a little tricky controlling a horse, isn’t it?” he asked. She sneered in response.
Again, the path was prepared, the cameras shifted back to their starting position. The girls returned to their starting places.
“Action!”
It went perfectly. Topside performed like a trouper.
“Just because your father can’t accept me, doesn’t mean we can’t love each other!” Brad said clearly, declaring his love for Molly. At that moment, as planned, Topside broke into a canter. Topside almost seemed to sense Skye’s discomfort and, when Skye’s weight became unbalanced, Topside shifted his step to come under his rider.
They cantered around a bend in the path, disappearing into the woods.
“Cut!” the director said. There was an entirely different tone to his voice this time. It was joy, it was relief.
In a few moments, Skye and Molly reappeared down the path.
“Okay this time?” Skye asked.
“It was fine,” the director said. “Now let’s finish up and go home for the day.”
The rest of the scene was easy. It was all dialogue and was going to be done at a walk, using close-ups. A complete nonrider could have done it. The tricky part was done and Skye had succeeded. So had Topside, and nobody was any the wiser!
The girls were allowed to wait and watch from behind the barriers. They joined Max and Mrs. Reg.
“Have you taken care of the horses?” Max asked. The girls nodded and laughed. It was just like Max to worry about the horses before even asking about their experience in front of the camera.
“They all got fresh hay and water,” Carole promised him.
“Topside seems to have some natural acting ability,” Max said. “Even without any makeup or costume, he’s passing as a mare!”
Stevie grinned at Max. She should have known that he would have noticed the difference. “He’s a pro,” Stevie said.
“I should have known you’d come up with some wild scheme,” Max said.
“A wild scheme that worked,” Stevie reminded him.
“I wish I’d thought of it first,” Max confessed. “Nice job.”
Stevie sighed, filled with satisfaction. That was a very high compliment from Max. “It’s not me who deserves the congratulations,” she said. “It’s Topside.”
“Cut! It’s a wrap! Everybody go home!” the director declared.
A few minutes later, Skye arrived to thank the girls. He gave each one of them a hug.
“You were terrific,” he said. “You were really good friends to me when I needed them.”
“It was fun for us,” Stevie said. “We liked teaching you. We’d be glad to do it some more, too.”
“I wish,” Skye said, removing his riding hat and handing it to a wardrobe assistant. “There’s a promotion meeting tonight, followed by a press dinner. Then, we finish the city scenes tomorrow and head back to California the following day. I have a couple of weeks of studio shots, then three days off until I begin my next movie.”
“More horseback riding?” Carole asked eagerly.
“No, next time, it’s ballet. How are you on pirouettes?”
“We’ll learn,” Stevie said. “All you have to do is put out the word, and we’ll be there. Lisa took a couple of years of it. She can help.”
Skye looked at hen “I bet she could,” he said, giving Lisa a smile.
“But this time, I don’t have to do the performing. See, I just fall in love with a ballerina. Not one jeté for me!”
Lisa felt genuinely disappointed that she and her friends wouldn’t have a chance to see Skye again.
“It’s been lots of fun,” she said. “Really.”
“And exciting,” Stevie said.
“For me too,” he told them. He shook hands with Max and Mrs. Reg and thanked them for all their help. Then, before they could say any more, somebody began calling his name.
“I’ve got to go,” he said. He dashed off toward his trailer.
Lisa had a strange mixture of feelings. She knew that a very exciting adventure was over. She’d probably never see Skye Ransom again. She wasn’t going to be his girlfriend, the way she’d dreamed so many nights after reading articles about him. But she didn’t want to see that boy she’d read about—not since she’d met the real thing, and gotten to know him. He had a life that was very different from hers, and very different from anything she’d want. She didn’t envy him anymore, but she found that, after all was said and done, she liked the real Skye a lot more than she’d ever liked the one in the magazines. It was odd that fate had brought them together once. Would it ever—
“Let’s get this horse back to its stall,” Max said, gesturing toward Topside.
Lisa abandoned her daydream and turned her attention to Topside.
“YOU SHOULD HAVE seen us switching off lead ropes while they put the horses in the vans!” Stevie told Dorothy excitedly the next morning at the hospital. “We had to get everybody totally confused so no one would know we’d made the switch. But trust me, when you see that movie, it’s Topside!”
“I’d know Topside anywhere,” Dorothy said. “And it’ll be
nice to have one more look at him on film.”
Carole, standing at the foot of the hospital bed, looked at Dorothy quizzically. “What’s that supposed to mean?” she asked.
“Oh, I thought you knew,” Dorothy said. “I have to sell Topside.”
Stevie looked at Dorothy in astonishment. “But you can’t!” she said. “He’s too wonderful!”
“He’s too wonderful to be useless, you mean,” Dorothy said. “That horse was meant to be ridden, to compete. I can’t ride him myself and I can’t just keep him as a pet. That’s not fair to Topside.”
There was a long silence in the room. Stevie didn’t know what to say. Dorothy was right, but that didn’t make Stevie want to know it in her heart. “There must be a way,” she said. “I can’t stand the idea of some stranger riding that horse.”
“I know what you mean, Stevie,” Dorothy said. “But the fact is that I’ve been over this dozens of times in my mind and it always comes up the same way. Topside needs to be ridden and I can’t do it. He’ll be much better off with a new owner. I’d like to think that he might not spend so much time traveling from show to show. He’s good about traveling, but I’ve always thought he really doesn’t like being in vans. Anyway, he does like being in shows and being made to do his best. He’s good with inexperienced riders, like Skye, and he’s good with experienced ones, too.”
Stevie remembered how much she had enjoyed riding Topside, even for that short ride in the park on Staten Island. She’d never been on a horse like that, so full of spirit, yet so controlled.
“Whoever gets him is going to be awfully lucky,” Stevie said. For one wild and crazy moment, it occurred to Stevie that she could ask her parents to buy Topside for her. She had to laugh as she imagined their reactions. It was totally hopeless. Stevie reluctantly accepted the fact that her one ride on Topside would be her only ride on Topside.
“I agree.” Dorothy said. Then she changed the subject. “So what time does your train leave?” she asked.
“In three and a half hours,” Lisa replied. “This has been such a wonderful trip that I can’t stand that it’s almost over.”
“It turned out to be quite different from what we all expected, didn’t it?” Dorothy asked.
“Well, we didn’t see as much of the horse show as we expected,” Carole said. “But we did do a lot of riding and we did a lot of other wonderful things, too.”
“Like star in a movie?”
The girls giggled. “The only way Skye could get the director to use us at all was to agree that we’d only be blurs on the screen. Even our parents probably won’t recognize us!” Carole told her.
“We could even end up on the cutting-room floor,” Lisa said, reminding her friends about the facts of life in Hollywood.
“Listen, you girls don’t want to spend your last hours in New York hanging around a hospital room. I know where there’s a nice ice cream shop. I’d like to finance a round of sundaes—small pay for taking care of my horse and getting him into the movies!”
The girls would have stayed with Dorothy, but it looked like she was getting tired, so they accepted her offer and, map in hand, returned to the crooked streets of Greenwich Village. Max and Mrs. Reg were expecting them back at Dorothy’s in an hour and a half.
“If this place is anything like TD’s, we can make it an official Saddle Club meeting,” Stevie suggested.
They followed the map and instructions, only got turned around twice, and finally found the shop Dorothy had in mind. It was bright and cheery and had inviting pictures of overwhelming sundaes in the window.
“I feel a Saddle Club meeting coming on,” Lisa said.
They were quickly seated in a window booth. As they looked at the menus they couldn’t believe the selection. They also couldn’t believe the prices!
“Oh, well, it’s a fitting way to celebrate our film careers,” Carole remarked.
“Sure, by ruining our figures,” Stevie agreed.
Lisa leaned back against the soft seat of the booth and closed her eyes.
“Going to sleep?” Stevie teased.
“No, I was just thinking over the trip. It’s been like a dream, the whole time … even though some of the dream was a nightmare, like Dorothy’s accident and the fact that she has to sell Topside. But the rest of it—it’s been magical.”
“Too bad it can’t go on forever,” Stevie said.
“Actually,” Lisa said, “I don’t think I’d want that. In order for there to be magic, there has to be ordinary stuff … you know, otherwise, there’s nothing magical about the magic. We do have a great secret, you know, about meeting Skye and teaching him to ride and being in the movie.”
“We didn’t promise we wouldn’t tell about being in the movie!” Stevie reminded her. “We just said we wouldn’t tell the producers that Skye couldn’t ride.”
“It doesn’t matter anymore,” Lisa said. “The movie is almost done and Skye proved he could ride in front of the cameras. So there’s no reason we couldn’t tell if we wanted to. But who would believe us? People would just say we were making it up. I think it’s better if it’s a secret.”
“Then it’s going to be the most special secret I know,” Stevie said.
A contented smile came over Lisa’s face. “Yes, it is,” she agreed.
“Say, on the subject of horses,” Carole said, switching directions to her favorite topic, “what would you think about making Dorothy an honorary member of The Saddle Club?”
“I think it’s a great idea,” Lisa said right away.
“Me too!” Stevie added. “But how do we tell her?”
“I’ll make up a certificate,” Lisa said eagerly. “Our computer can do anything. As a matter of fact, we ought to have certificates for the full-fledged members, too. And the certificates should be different from one another. I can put sort of curlicues around the edge and I’m sure there’s a horse graphic. There are a bunch of different type styles. I wonder if I can make the letters go in a circle … and if I get really busy with this, then maybe I won’t be as likely to tell our secret to everyone on the planet!”
The waitress arrived then to take their orders. Lisa and Carole ordered vanilla ice cream with hot fudge and caramel, respectively. Then they waited, curious to see what Stevie would do. At TD’s she always ordered truly outrageous sundaes. They suspected she did it to keep them from taking tastes of her sundae.
“Is it French vanilla?” Stevie asked.
“Yes,” the waitress said patiently.
“And the fudge swirl is made with Swiss chocolate?”
“Yes,” the woman said, twirling a lock of hair with her pencil. She looked like she’d answered these questions before.
“Okay, then, I’ll have bubble-gum ice cream with butterscotch sauce.”
“Okay,” the woman said, jotting down Stevie’s order. She turned slowly, and then fled.
“I just wanted to see how she would react,” Stevie said. “New Yorkers have probably seen it all, but I thought maybe I could get to her.”
“You got to her, all right,” Lisa said. She pointed to where their waitress stood, surrounded by other waitresses and waiters. They were staring at the order pad and then glancing curiously at Stevie. “Now the question is, will you actually be able to eat that mess?”
She ate every bite. And when the waitress asked her to sign the check, just to prove that somebody had actually eaten it, Stevie agreed immediately.
She signed it “Princess Di.”
* * *
“I CAN’T BELIEVE this, Lisa,” Max said. “You arrived in this city with four suitcases, and you’re going home with five!” He hefted two of them down the stairs at Dorothy’s house to put them with the rest of the luggage. It was time to go.
“Well, Max, you know what they say about this being a great place to shop! Look at the T-shirts we got today!” Each girl wore a shirt that read “Oi luv Noo Yawk!”
Max smiled indulgently. “Okay, all right.” He shook his
head, though. The girls hid their giggles. Lisa actually still only had four suitcases. They’d just told Max Stevie’s was hers, too, to get a rise out of him. It had worked.
There was a car waiting for them at the door. It took them a few minutes to load everything in. Then they turned to thank Jean DeSoto.
It was hard to say thank-you to her. The trip had been so special that Lisa didn’t know how to tell her. And, at the same time, the DeSotos had a difficult time ahead with Dorothy’s recovery. Lisa felt awkward.
Mrs. DeSoto made it easy for her and the other girls. She held out her arms and hugged them all at once.
“You come back, now,” Mrs. DeSoto said. “We can use a little excitement from time to time!”
The girls grinned and hugged her back.
“Come on, the car’s ready to go,” Mrs. Reg said from the back seat. The girls piled into the car with Mrs. Reg and Max and they were off.
THE TRAIN STATION wasn’t far, and Max, in his usual superorganized manner, had allowed plenty of time.
Carole looked out of the window of the car and gazed at the city streets as they passed. She saw the place where they’d first seen Skye’s movie company, in the park. She saw the place where Lisa had gotten her hair cut. There was the ice cream parlor, the store where they’d bought their T-shirts. Then she spotted the entrance to the subway they’d taken to the Plaza. It seemed everywhere she looked there were hundreds of great memories.
Soon, she knew, they’d be passing Madison Square Garden, where the horse show was still taking place. But Dorothy wasn’t part of it—and she never would be again. Carole shook her head, trying to loosen the thought. Dorothy wouldn’t want her to dwell on it, either.
They stopped at a light and she watched three girls jump rope in a little park. She hoped those girls had as much fun together as she did with Stevie and Lisa. Their friendship was the most important thing in the world to her—next to horseback riding.
Beyond the little girls, she saw a whole row of trailers parked.
“Look at that,” she said. “Looks like the kind they take on a movie location!”
Horse Show Page 9