“Uncle Michael, this is Veronica diAngelo. She rides at the same stable as my girlfriend, Stevie Lake,” Phil said. He wouldn’t normally have bothered to explain that Stevie was his girlfriend. Uncle Michael certainly didn’t need to know it, but from the way Veronica was blinking at him wide-eyed, it seemed to Phil that she needed a reminder that Phil had a girlfriend.
“Ooooh, are you going to go flying in that thing?” she asked, pointing at Uncle Michael’s glider.
“Yes,” Phil said, sighing.
“I’m going for a ride in Daddy’s plane,” Veronica said, answering a question that hadn’t been asked. “It’s that big one over there.” She pointed to a plane that was parked behind the main building. Next to the plane a man was waving at Veronica, telling her it was time for them to take off. Veronica waved back at him, as if it were a greeting. The man began walking toward Veronica and Phil. “Daddy’s pilot, Hubert, is taking me up for a ride. It’ll be the first time I get to go up in the private plane. I just know it’s going to be great.”
“I’m sure it is,” Phil said. He had long since learned that it didn’t pay to engage in any conversation with Veronica. The less said to or by her, the better.
“Our tow is about ready,” said Uncle Michael. “Shall we go? Nice meeting you, Veronica.”
A small golf cart arrived to pull the glider onto the runway, where the tow plane would take them up as high as they needed to go to find thermals—approximately two thousand feet.
Ten minutes later, Phil had clipped on his parachute and was in the backseat of the glider. He fastened his safety harness securely and closed the clear plastic canopy over his head. Uncle Michael was in front of him. They finished their preflight checklist, including testing all the controls—the rudder, ailerons, elevator, flaps, and spoilers. Phil loved the sounds of the names. The very words were exciting to him.
Uncle Michael snapped his own canopy tight and gave a thumbs-up to the pilot of the tow plane. With the help of the ground crewman, they double-tested the towline release. Then they were ready to go. The ground crewman held the glider level so the craft balanced on its single central wheel, then signaled to the tow pilot that he could proceed. The tow pilot moved the airplane forward, making the towline taut, and then he began to taxi. It didn’t take long. In less than a hundred yards, the glider lifted up off the ground, trailing behind the still earthbound tow plane. A few seconds after that, the tow plane was in the air, too.
Without thinking, Phil held his breath. It was as if he didn’t want anything to interfere with his concentration on the extraordinary fact that he and Uncle Michael were flying through the sky and in a few minutes they’d be on their own—just the two of them in a beautiful glider with an eighty-four-foot wingspan and nothing but air to hold them up.
“You okay?” Uncle Michael asked over his shoulder.
“Never better,” said Phil. And he meant it.
VERONICA LOOKED AT the neat little plane she and Hubert were going to fly in. She couldn’t imagine why anybody would fly in a plane without an engine. What did Phil see in gliding around? Then again, she wondered what Phil saw in Stevie Lake. Veronica had much nicer clothes. Perhaps Phil hadn’t noticed, any more than he’d noticed her father’s bank’s very expensive airplane. Well, she could see to it that he did notice. She could see to it that he noticed a lot of things about her, in fact.
“Are you ready now?” Hubert asked.
“Oh, yes,” said Veronica.
He opened the small door of the plane and helped her up the cute little set of steps and into a seat. It seemed like a very small seat—much smaller than she was used to in first class on a commercial airliner. But this wasn’t a commercial airliner. This was Daddy’s bank’s plane. And Veronica was going to remind Phil of that.
“Anywhere in particular you want to go, Miss Veronica?” Hubert asked politely.
Veronica looked up into the sky. She could still see the tow plane that was launching Phil and his uncle. In fact, as she watched, she saw the long towline drop from the nose of the glider. The glider found a patch of rising air, circled upward on it, and then floated regally to the east.
“That way,” said Veronica, pointing west.
“As you wish,” said Hubert.
Of course it’s as I wish, Veronica thought. You work for Daddy. You go where I tell you.
She smiled, listening to the efficient rumble of the engine as it sparked to life. Wasn’t Phil going to be surprised!
CAROLE PEERED CAUTIOUSLY around the door of Stevie’s room.
“There you are!” Stevie said excitedly, welcoming her friends. “I’ve been waiting for you for hours! Do you have any idea how lonely it is just sitting here in bed, wondering when my friends are going to arrive?”
Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. Now that sounded like the Stevie she knew and loved.
“It’s only a few minutes past noon,” Lisa reminded her. “And your mother said you just woke up half an hour ago. How lonely can you get in half an hour?”
“Very,” Stevie assured her. “But now that you guys are here, I’m not lonely anymore. I’m just happy as can be to see you. Tell me everything that’s been happening in the world without me there to make it interesting.”
Carole burst into giggles. It felt wonderful to have Stevie back in form. She was relieved, too. Maybe the doctor was right that there had never been anything to worry about.
“Well, nothing very exciting since the sign on Veronica’s back and our visit to Mickey Denver’s horse ranch,” Lisa said. “We did have a mounted Horse Wise meeting this morning, and it was a lot of fun. More fun than usual, in fact. I wonder why.”
“There’s only one thing that would make Horse Wise more fun than usual, and that is if Veronica isn’t there,” said Stevie.
“How did you know?” Carole asked her.
“So she wasn’t there?” Stevie responded.
“No,” said Lisa. “How did you know?”
“It’s just logical,” Stevie said simply. “Veronica’s a damp rag on any party. We all know that.”
“Yes, but you seem to know things we all don’t know,” Carole said.
Stevie rolled her eyes up at the ceiling. “Give me a break,” she said.
“Give me a break,” Carole countered. “I mean, you knew about Phil getting thrown by Teddy and you knew Starlight was going to step on my toe and you knew Lisa was calling Deborah Mom.”
“Just coincidences,” Stevie said.
“But what about your dream with the Point and Laugh sign?” Lisa asked her.
“What about it?” Stevie asked.
“Well, it was like you knew what was going to happen,” Lisa said. “Not that I really believe in that supernatural stuff or extrasensory perception or whatever it is; but Stevie, you’ve got to admit there’s something a little bit creepy going on here.”
“I don’t either,” said Stevie. “You guys just have the most fantastic imaginations.”
“Right,” said Carole. “Like we made it all up?”
“Just like that,” said Stevie. “You have made up a lot of things in the past few days, and I have to tell you, it’s upsetting to me when you do that.”
Lisa realized that Stevie meant what she was saying. She really was getting upset. Her face was reddening, and her eyes were welling with tears. Clearly the idea that she had some sort of superpower disagreed with her.
“Oh, Stevie, we’re only kidding,” Lisa said. “I guess when you’re not around with all your crazy schemes, Carole and I don’t know what to do with our time, so we make stuff up. Don’t worry about it. It’s just that we miss you. The thing you have to do is concentrate on getting better. In the meantime, we’ll try to stay out of trouble, okay?”
Stevie pulled her covers up and slid down into her bed a little. “Thanks, Lisa,” she said, smiling weakly. “It confuses me a little bit when I don’t feel well. All I really want is to be myself again.”
“That’s all we want, too
,” Carole assured her. “And I didn’t mean to upset you. I was just being foolish and thoughtless.”
“You two are never thoughtless,” said Stevie. “You’re my best friends.”
“Yes, we are,” Lisa said.
With that, Stevie’s eyelids closed, and in what seemed like a second, she was breathing deeply and evenly. She was asleep.
Lisa tiptoed over to the window on the far side of Stevie’s room and motioned for Carole to join her.
“I thought she was okay,” Carole whispered.
“Me too,” said Lisa. “At first she seemed like the same old Stevie, and then, all of a sudden, Miss Concussion came back. Weird.”
“Well, maybe it’s not so weird,” said Carole. “Maybe we are making up all these connections between Stevie’s strange dreams and the things that are happening. Maybe it is just total coincidence.”
“Maybe,” said Lisa. “And maybe when she gets tired so fast because of her concussion, she just seems to have an instant personality transplant.”
“I want the good old Stevie to come back and stay back,” Carole said.
“Me too,” Lisa said. “As long as we’re here, we might as well stay and wait until she wakes up. Then we won’t mention any strange coincidences related to anything she might tell us she dreamed about. That should make her feel better, right?”
“Sure, but will it make us feel better?” Carole asked.
Lisa smiled at Carole, because that was exactly what was going through her mind. “Probably not,” Lisa conceded. “The only thing that will really make us feel better is when Stevie stops behaving like—”
“Phil!”
The cry from Stevie startled Carole and Lisa. They turned to look at Stevie, who was still asleep.
Lisa giggled. “Oh, so she calls out his name in her sleep!”
Carole laughed, too. “I guess when you’ve got a really nice boyfriend like Phil—”
“Look out!” Stevie cried. There was a terrible look of fear on her face, even though her eyes were closed.
“Oh no, she’s having a nightmare,” Lisa said.
“We should wake her up,” Carole said. She started to walk over to Stevie’s bed.
“No,” Lisa said, tugging on Carole’s sleeve. “I don’t think you’re supposed to do that. See, if someone’s having a nightmare, you’ve got to let them finish it. Nightmares usually come out all right, but if you cut into the middle of it, the dreamer never knows what the real end is. I read that in a magazine somewhere.”
“Pull your feet up!” Stevie cried out. She waved her hands frantically in front of herself, almost as if she were blind and trying to reach out in the blank darkness.
“Are you sure about this?” Carole asked Lisa.
“Well, I’m sure I read it in a magazine,” Lisa said. “But I can’t guarantee you the person who wrote the article had any idea what they were writing about.”
“The trees!” Stevie yelled. With that, she sat bolt upright and her eyes flew open.
“Stevie, are you okay?” Lisa asked.
“What is it, Stevie?” said Carole.
Stevie scratched her head. There was a puzzled look on her face, far from the panicked look she’d had during her dream. “I know this sounds strange,” she said, “but Phil is in a tree.”
Lisa and Carole exchanged looks. The last thing they wanted to do was to upset Stevie any more than she had been. That was what they’d promised one another.
Lisa smiled warmly at Stevie. “I’m sure he is,” she said.
“I bet it’s a nice tree, too,” said Carole.
“Are you guys nuts?” Stevie asked.
Carole and Lisa were wondering the same thing.
PHIL COULD BARELY speak. He and Uncle Michael had been up in the glider for almost an hour, and Phil still couldn’t believe it was real. He’d been in many airplanes, but the feeling of a glider was entirely different. It was more as if they were floating than flying. An airplane, Phil realized, vibrated from the engines. The glider rode gently on the wind. Phil could hear the wind everywhere, whistling past the ship and whishing around the wings. It was a natural sound, unlike the clatter and roar of the huge engines airplanes used to stay aloft.
The glider seemed to rise then, and Phil knew Uncle Michael had found another thermal to give them lift. They banked, turning gently to the right, circling within the thermal. Phil looked down. Four thousand feet below them lay the foothills of Virginia’s mountains and the rolling countryside of Willow Creek.
Phil squinted to see if he could get his bearings. He and Uncle Michael had flown east, and he wondered if he could recognize any landmarks. Something in a field below moved. Phil smiled. That wasn’t a field, that was a paddock. And that wasn’t just something. That was a horse. He studied the land carefully. Could it be?
“Look! There it is!”
“What?” Uncle Michael asked.
“It’s Pine Hollow! That’s where Stevie rides her horse! She lives nearby, too. Let me see, it’s …”
Phil tried to envision the walk from Pine Hollow to Stevie’s house. There was the main road, and then Stevie’s street curving off to one side, and then there were three houses on the left and two, three, four on the right, and then—
“It’s Stevie’s! That one with the swimming pool, see it?”
“And the three bikes on the front lawn?” Uncle Michael asked.
“There would be four there if Stevie weren’t sick now,” Phil said.
Uncle Michael laughed. “I used to drop my bike on the lawn, too,” he said. “Now, let’s go see how things are doing back at the mountains,” he said.
With that, Uncle Michael leveled the craft and began flying back to the west, toward the mountains and Rock Ridge.
“HUBERT!” VERONICA WHINED into the microphone of her headset. “I told you not to let them out of our sight!”
“I thought you wanted to take pictures of clouds and mountains,” said the beleaguered pilot, who sat right in front of her. “Clouds are up there and the mountains are—”
“I already took a picture of the dumb mountain,” said Veronica. She growled under her breath, making little effort to hide her irritation from Hubert. Hoping Hubert would do something for her to please her father was one thing. Being nice to him while he did it was another. Veronica looked through her camera’s viewfinder. To the west, she saw big white fluffy clouds piled on big white fluffy clouds, topped by a deep blue sky. She snapped six pictures in quick succession.
There, that ought to get her to Rome. Now, where was Phil Marsten?
At Veronica’s insistence, Hubert brought the airplane to a lower altitude. Veronica didn’t see how something without an engine could go very high. And they couldn’t have gone far. Veronica thought that Phil and his uncle Michael were totally nuts to fly in that little plane thing without any power, or else they were very brave. It probably took a lot of skill to fly a plane without an engine. Probably it took a lot more skill than dumb Hubert would ever have.
Skill. That was it. Pictures of clouds didn’t really meet the contest requirement of pictures that showed somebody doing something that required skill. But a picture of someone flying a glider—now that showed skill. Probably.
If she could take a picture of Phil’s uncle Michael, then Phil would be really impressed when she won the contest. It would also be an excellent way for Veronica to point out to Phil that she had a good deal more to offer than Stevie Lake.
Veronica grinned proudly. She loved it when things worked out perfectly for her. And this was going to be perfect. If only Hubert would find them!
“Why don’t you call someplace on the radio to find out where they’ve gone,” she said.
“Unfortunately, that will only work if they’ve called the tower to say where they are,” said Hubert.
“So?”
“Yes, Miss,” said Hubert. He clicked on the radio obediently. The radio operator in the tower said he had no idea what the flight plan was for the
glider.
Veronica was about to suggest that Hubert call another tower when she was spared the trouble. For there, coming from the east, was Uncle Michael’s glider!
“There they are!” Veronica squealed. “Don’t lose sight of them.”
“Yes, Miss,” said Hubert.
“NOW, THE RIDE here may be a little rougher than it was out over the valley,” said Uncle Michael. “That’s because we’re near the mountains. We’ll get updrafts off the ridges, but we may get rather sudden downdrafts, in which case, we’ll need plenty of airspeed to get through them. So we won’t get too close to the mountains. However, the care we have to take is worth it because of the views we’ll have along the tops of the ridges. This area is spectacular from any angle, but this is my favorite way to see it.”
Phil looked to his left through the clear plastic canopy. The view took his breath away. The ridges of the mountaintops rushed past beneath the glider. Their path was so smooth and effortless that it seemed to Phil it must be the mountains themselves that were moving. He smiled at the thought, knowing, of course, that that was ridiculous.
Suddenly there was a roar. The glider bounced downward and jogged to the left toward the mountain ridge, then leveled out.
Unconsciously, Phil grasped the arms of his seat. “What was that?” he asked.
“That was an airplane,” said Uncle Michael, gripping the stick tightly. “Some dumb hotdogging pilot who isn’t paying any attention to what he’s doing—or ought to be doing, anyway. He has no right to pass us on our right when we’re so near the mountains!”
Phil saw the tail of the small plane that had whooshed past them. The glider shuddered in the wake of the other craft.
“Jerks!” Phil called out.
“That won’t do any good,” said Uncle Michael. “But this will.” He reached for the radio to warn off the airplane. Phil kept his eye on it nervously.
“He’s turning, Uncle Michael,” he said.
“Good. They want to get out of here before I report them to the tower.”
“No, I mean they’re turning around. The plane is coming back this way!”
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