Dream Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  It only took a few minutes. Mr. Denver seemed pleased to know he had a potential customer. He suggested that they come over on Thursday afternoon. He and Deborah chatted for a few minutes while Deborah tried to describe what she thought Lisa had in mind.

  “Her father and I want to get a nice horse for her—something sweet and gentle. She’s a new rider, and we can’t have her on anything too wild.”

  There were a lot of hmms and sures and one or two of courses. Then Deborah thanked him and hung up.

  “What was all that about?” Carole asked.

  “He wanted to tell me some things I should know about buying the perfect horse for ‘Little Lisa,’ ” Deborah said.

  Lisa’s eyes closed to angry slits. “I hate him already,” she said.

  “Ah, but you mustn’t let him know that,” said Deborah.

  Lisa opened her eyes and fluttered her lashes innocently. “I know that, Mommy,” she said, like a good little girl.

  “Mommy?” Max said, overhearing the end of the conversation. “I kind of like the sound of that!”

  “Oh, Max!” said Deborah. “Just let us do our job, will you?”

  LISA REGARDED HERSELF critically in the mirror. She opened her eyes wide and spoke. “Oh, what a beautiful horse! Can I have him, Mom? Please! Please!” she begged. It was the tenth time she’d tried this since yesterday when Deborah had agreed to let Lisa pose as her daughter. Now Lisa thought she had the whine exactly right.

  She smiled at her reflection. Deborah didn’t have a thing to worry about. Lisa would be perfect in her role of a horse-crazy girl. She was confident that Carole would do well in the part of the horse-crazy girl’s best friend. After all, that was what she was.

  She was only sorry that Stevie wouldn’t be there to see it. It was such a Stevian scheme.

  That made Lisa remember that Stevie had thought she’d be home from the hospital this morning. Lisa decided to call and find out.

  Chad answered the phone.

  “No, she’s not home yet,” he said. “The doctor thinks she’s okay, but he said she hit her head really hard. Of course, he doesn’t know what a hard head she has.”

  Lisa wondered briefly if there was ever a moment when Stevie and her brothers were not at odds with one another.

  “Actually,” Chad continued, “there may be something to be concerned about, because she still doesn’t remember that it was Veronica’s fault she got thrown. Like you and Carole said, when Stevie isn’t ready to blame Veronica or me for everything that ever happened to her, she’s not normal, right?”

  “Right.” Lisa had to agree.

  “Anyway, the doctor said this kind of amnesia is not unusual with a concussion, but he’s being cautious, so he wants her to stay there another day or two. There was something else about Frank Sinatra and Napoléon Bonaparte.”

  Lisa giggled. “Any doctor looking into Stevie’s mind is at a real disadvantage if she or he doesn’t know what the ‘normal’ Stevie is like.”

  “I don’t know what you mean,” said Chad. “Normal is not a word I use in connection with my sister.”

  Lisa was tempted to mention that Stevie had said the same thing about Chad not long ago, but she really didn’t want to get between the two of them. She passed up the opportunity and instead told Chad that she and Carole would visit Stevie later that day.

  “Good idea,” Chad said. “You two will probably do a better job of cheering her up than I can.”

  “Probably,” Lisa said, recognizing that Chad’s remark showed real concern for his sister. She and Carole always knew that the Lake children cared about one another. It was just that sometimes they had very strange ways of showing it. “I’ll let you know how she is,” Lisa promised. Chad thanked her and they hung up.

  Lisa quickly called Carole, and the two of them agreed to meet at the hospital when visiting hours began.

  At noon the girls walked together down the long polished hallway to Stevie’s room. Everything was quiet inside. They tiptoed in. Stevie was asleep. Lisa put her finger to her lips. The girls each slid into a visitor’s chair and waited quietly.

  Carole was a little concerned that Stevie was sleeping so soundly. She was even more concerned when she saw that Stevie’s lunch tray on the rolling table next to her bed was untouched. Carole knew that Stevie’s complaint about hospital food was strictly pro forma. Stevie had a stomach of iron—she could eat anything and frequently did. If she was getting fussy about food, then perhaps she really wasn’t getting well.

  Suddenly Stevie shifted around in her bed.

  “Ouch!” she cried out.

  Her eyes flew open.

  “Are you okay?” Lisa asked quickly.

  “Should I get the nurse?” Carole asked.

  “Oh, no, I’m fine,” Stevie said, smiling at her friends.

  “But you yelled ouch,” Lisa said.

  “I guess I was just having a dream,” said Stevie. She scratched her head in thought. “How’s your foot?” she asked Carole.

  “My foot? Nothing’s wrong with it,” Carole assured her.

  “Well, I’m glad to hear that, because in my dream Starlight stepped on your foot and it hurt a lot. That’s why I said ouch.”

  “You say ouch when I get hurt in your dreams?” Carole asked.

  “That’s what friends are for!” Stevie joked.

  Lisa and Carole laughed. Stevie was beginning to sound more like herself.

  “So what exciting things am I missing while I’m having these weird dreams in this strange hospital bed?” Stevie asked.

  Carole and Lisa exchanged glances. There was a moment of doubt about whether they should tell Stevie what they were up to with Deborah. She’d be so jealous of the adventure. But lying to Stevie was hard. It was as if she had some sort of antenna that picked up evasions, especially from her two best friends. Carole nodded at Lisa, who filled in Stevie on the plan. Stevie loved it.

  “You thought of that without me there?” Stevie asked.

  “You were there in spirit,” Lisa said.

  “Right,” Carole agreed. “Deborah said she wondered what you would think of doing.”

  “Once she suggested that, it was easy,” Lisa said. “I just thought of the craziest possible plan, which was the two of us pretending we didn’t know anything about horses, and then all the details fell into place.”

  “Oh, I wish I could go along!” Stevie said.

  “Where do you want to go?” her doctor asked, hearing Stevie’s remark as he walked into the room.

  “It’s a long story,” said Stevie. “But will I be able to go to Rock Ridge on Thursday?”

  “Don’t even think about it,” he said. With that, he brought out his penlight and went through the same exercises Lisa and Carole had seen the day before. He tapped on Stevie’s knees and ankles with a little rubber hammer. He asked her a few questions.

  “Who is the president?” he asked.

  “John Wayne,” Stevie informed him solemnly.

  “Very good,” he said, equally solemnly.

  Stevie couldn’t contain herself. She giggled.

  “Just as I thought,” said the doctor. “Okay, here’s the story. You can go home tomorrow, but you’ve got to go to bed and stay in bed. You jostled your brain around rather severely, and it needs time to settle back where it belongs. Do you understand?”

  “But Rock Ridge isn’t that far. And it would just be a quick tr—” Stevie tried.

  “Bed,” the doctor said, cutting her off. “Or I’ll keep you here to be sure you stay in bed.”

  “Home and I’ll stay in bed, I promise,” Stevie told him. “As long as my friends promise to tell me absolutely everything—and I mean everything—that happens in Rock Ridge.”

  “We promise,” said Lisa.

  “On a stack of bedpans,” Carole confirmed.

  “Well, that settles that,” said the doctor. “I’ll check on you in the morning to be sure you’re okay, and I’ll call your parents, too. For now, y
ou should rest.” He left the room.

  Carole and Lisa knew the last remark was the doctor’s way of telling them it was time to leave. Now that they knew Stevie was getting better and going home, they could. They each gave her a little hug, gentle ones so they wouldn’t jostle her brain any more than it had already been jostled. They left as they’d come in, on tiptoe, because Stevie’s eyes were closing again.

  Outside the hospital, Lisa and Carole paused to consider what they would do. There was a little time until their riding class. They decided to use the extra time in the best possible way. They were going to give Belle a complete grooming.

  “It’s the least we can do for Stevie while she’s laid up,” Carole said. Lisa agreed completely.

  Fifteen minutes later, the girls were hard at work at Pine Hollow. Belle seemed happy for the company and the attention. She stood completely still while Lisa and Carole tended to her beauty needs. By the time they were done, Belle’s coat was gleaming.

  “Stevie would be proud of us,” said Lisa.

  “More important, she’d be proud of Belle,” said Carole. Lisa realized that Carole was right. When it came to horses, Carole was just about always right.

  “Okay, Starlight, it’s your turn now,” said Lisa.

  She and Carole picked up the grooming gear and moved on to the gelding’s stall. Starlight could be frisky under saddle, but when he was being groomed, he was usually docile as could be. A lot of horses really enjoy getting combed, brushed, and washed and being the center of attention. Starlight was no exception.

  “Hi there, beautiful,” Carole greeted her horse. She reached up to clip a lead rope on one side of his halter while Lisa did the same on the other side so they could cross-tie him. Starlight lifted his head and shook it vigorously, pulling his halter out of reach.

  “Hey, Starlight, I’ve got your grooming bucket,” Carole said. It was her way of assuring him that nobody was going to do anything nasty, like check his teeth or give him a shot. She held up the bucket so he could look at it.

  He shook his head again, but this time he did it sideways. Lisa and Carole both managed to clip the leads on.

  As the girls began the grooming, Carole knew they had been smart to cross-tie Starlight. He was in a very jumpy mood. Every time one of them touched him, he shifted away. He stepped forward, and he dodged backward the half step that the cross-ties permitted.

  “Boy, is he crabby!” Carole said when he refused to lift his foot so she could pick his hoof.

  “He’s probably just jealous because we groomed Belle first,” Lisa suggested.

  Carole laughed. “Maybe,” she said. If there was one thing she’d learned about horses, it was that they each had very distinct personalities—as distinct as people’s personalities. That meant that they also had moods. Starlight was obviously in a bad one.

  “Do you think it would be a good idea to let him stand still and get calm for a while before we finish this?” Lisa asked. “We could go change into our riding clothes while he settles down.”

  “That’s a good idea,” said Carole. “But I’ve started to pick his hooves, and he’s refusing to let me do it. If I give in now, he might get ideas for the future. I’ll just finish this and then give it a rest.”

  Carole stood by Starlight’s left hind foot. She put her hand on his leg and bent to run her hand down to the foot. It was her signal to him that it was time to lift his foot for a hoof cleaning. He didn’t lift it. She tugged as a gentle reminder. He lifted it. Then he swung it forward, out of her grasp, and clumped it back down. It landed right on her sneakered foot.

  “Ouch!” she cried.

  “Wow,” Lisa breathed. “Just like in Stevie’s dream!”

  MAX TAPPED HIS riding crop impatiently against his leg. “Okay, Veronica, try that jump again,” he said.

  It was Wednesday. Lisa and Carole were at the afternoon class, where Max was working on jumping techniques—just as they had been doing with Stevie only a few days before when she’d fallen because of Veronica’s thoughtlessness. Lisa wasn’t given to thinking mean thoughts, but it occurred to her that she might feel a special piece of joy in her heart if, just by chance, Veronica were to have an accident while she was jumping.

  “I hope she falls,” Carole whispered to Lisa.

  Lisa tried unsuccessfully to stifle a giggle. She sometimes forgot how often The Saddle Club girls had exactly the same thought at exactly the same time. It was one of the things she loved about her friends.

  “Quiet,” Max said in response to Lisa’s laugh.

  The girls wouldn’t mind seeing something bad happen to Veronica, but not if it was their fault. They sat quietly and watched.

  Veronica had been riding for a long time and had mastered a lot of basic and some advanced skills. She could jump well. Her horse, however, had mastered all the skills any horse could ever need, and he was an excellent jumper. Danny could have made a rank amateur look like a seasoned rider. He made Veronica look like a champion.

  Danny was what some people called a push-button horse. All the rider had to do was push the right buttons and the horse did the rest. Veronica and Danny approached the jump at an even canter, and when they got three and a half feet from the fence, Danny simply rose and flew over the jump, landing smoothly, effortlessly.

  Carole sighed. Lisa thought maybe it was envy, but it wasn’t. It was admiration—for the horse.

  “Veronica, you can’t let your horse do all the work,” Max snapped. “You’ve got to be in charge or you are not learning anything at all.”

  Veronica frowned, and Carole and Lisa exchanged grins. It was fun to see Veronica get criticized by their instructor.

  Max gave all the riders a short break. The riders walked their horses at a comfortable gait and chatted with one another. Max’s theory was that the riders would talk about what they were learning. In the case of Lisa and Carole, he was at least half right.

  “We’ve got to get back at her,” Lisa said. “For Stevie’s sake.”

  “But with Danny, what could go wrong?” Carole asked.

  “Maybe we could startle him,” said Lisa.

  “He’s pretty steady,” Carole said.

  “Maybe we could startle her,” Lisa suggested.

  “Worth a try,” said Carole. “We do have to be a little careful, though. We don’t want to take a chance that anything bad might happen to her horse. Danny is blameless.”

  “Danny is better than blameless,” said Lisa. “He’s to be pitied just because he belongs to Veronica! I promise not to do anything that would upset him.”

  The girls decided that a way to make Veronica self-conscious was to be sure everybody was staring at her. As they rode around the ring during their break, they whispered the plan to other riders. The class was more than willing to do something that might make Veronica blunder.

  “Being stared at always makes people nervous,” Lisa said.

  It didn’t make Veronica nervous. In fact, she seemed to blossom under all the attention, and it made her ride better.

  “I think we just flunked ‘retribution,’ ” Lisa whispered to Carole.

  “But there must be a way,” said Carole.

  “And we’ll find it, but it might take more Stevian thinking than we’ve put into this so far,” said Lisa.

  “We’ll talk later,” Carole whispered.

  “For sure,” Lisa agreed.

  After class, they talked while they groomed their horses and mucked out Belle’s stall. They talked about jumping; they talked about grooming. They discussed proper attire for horse shows, and they talked about how hard it was going to be for Carole to pretend to be ignorant about horses. They even talked about the fact that Phil was going gliding with his uncle Michael. They didn’t talk about how they could get even with Veronica. It was unspoken between them: Stevie was the best at getting even; it wasn’t the same without her, and they would just have to wait until they were with her.

  “I miss her!” Lisa said, finally ackno
wledging what they both knew was true.

  “Me too,” said Carole as she put the pitchfork back where it belonged. “I wonder what we can do for her.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” said Lisa. “Why don’t we stop by TD’s on our way to her house?”

  TD’s was an ice cream shop near Pine Hollow and Stevie’s house. The girls often had impromptu Saddle Club meetings there, talking about the wonderful mysteries of horses while consuming their favorite sweets. One of the things about Stevie that seemed an eternal mystery to her friends was what constituted her “favorite” ice cream sundaes. Ghastly was one word her friends sometimes used to describe them. Revolting was another word they’d used from time to time. Inventive was what Stevie called them.

  A few minutes later they ordered butter pecan ice cream with licorice bits and caramel sauce to go and pooled every cent they had on them to pay for it.

  “Oh, and some chopped peanuts and marshmallow fluff,” Lisa added.

  Carole winced. That was how she knew they’d gotten a really good combination. If it made her stomach twinge just to hear the ingredients, it was guaranteed to please Stevie.

  The girls carried their bounty proudly.

  “She’s going to love it,” Lisa said.

  “It’s going to be her new all-time favorite,” Carole agreed.

  They knocked on the door. Chad invited them in and told them Stevie was in bed. “Isn’t it wonderful that the doctor told her she has to stay there for a whole week?” he gloated.

  The girls stopped by the kitchen to pick up a spoon for Stevie and then trotted upstairs. Stevie was sitting in her bed quietly. There was a television set in her room. It was off. There was a stereo next to her bed. No music was coming from it. A portable electronic game set lay silent next to her. She wasn’t on the phone. She wasn’t playing with her computer. She wasn’t yelling at her brothers or throwing things at them.

  “You okay?” Carole asked.

  “Of course,” said Stevie. “And I’m even better now that the two of you are here. What have you brought me?” She eyed the bag from TD’s meaningfully. Lisa handed it to her proudly.