Wild Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  “We like it,” Sally said coolly.

  Lisa walked slowly down the aisle, feasting her eyes on the fine Thoroughbred heads that looked out at her. Every stall had a large brass nameplate on it with its inhabitant’s name and the owner’s name below that. Matching blue-and-green Wentworth blankets hung over the doors. The stalls themselves were huge and immaculate. In fact, it was one of the cleanest barns Lisa had ever seen. There was hardly a wisp of hay anywhere. After she had taken her stroll down the aisle, Lisa rejoined Sally, who was waiting at the entrance with a bored expression.

  “Where’s the tack room?” Lisa asked, eager to have a look at it.

  “It’s one aisle over,” Sally replied. “But why would you want to see that? We never use it.”

  “You mean someone cleans your tack for you?” Lisa asked, realizing the implications of what Sally had said.

  “Of course,” Sally said. “You don’t think we have time for that, do you? Wentworth is very rigorous academically, you know.”

  “Right,” Lisa said. So much for making friendly conversation. She took one more stab at it. “Well, in that case, I’d love to meet your horse,” she said.

  “Cotton? Oh, I don’t know where he is now. He could be turned out or being exercised. Who knows? So, do you want to see the indoor ring? It’s one of the biggest in the state.”

  “Why not?” Lisa said. The truth was, she’d suddenly gotten a perfect picture of what riding was like at Wentworth, and she didn’t really care if she saw anything else. But she still had time to kill before her mother came, so she followed Sally out of the barn and into the spectator seats of the huge ring.

  A number of girls were riding. That struck Lisa as strange, since it was such a nice day. “Isn’t there an outside ring?” she asked Sally.

  “Sure, but it’s too much of a pain to get to. It’s a five-minute ride,” Sally said.

  Just then one of the girls riding shrieked. As Lisa watched, the girl spun her horse around and galloped pell-mell toward them. Right before she got to the side of the ring, she stood up in her stirrups, hauled on the reins, and jerked the horse to a stop. “Sally! What’s up?” she cried.

  “Ashley! This is Lisa Atwood from Willow Creek. She rides, so she wanted to see the stables,” Sally said. She sounded more enthusiastic than she’d been all afternoon.

  “Willow Creek? You’re kidding! I used to live there!” Ashley cried. “Back when I was little. Boring, isn’t it? But at least you can ride there. So, where do you keep your horse, Lisa?”

  “I—I don’t have my own horse,” Lisa said uncomfortably.

  Ashley and Sally looked at her. “You don’t?” they said in unison.

  “No, I ride one at the stable where I take lessons,” Lisa said. “At Pine Hollow,” she added.

  “At least the stable’s decent,” Ashley said. “You probably know Veronica diAngelo. She’s one of my best friends.”

  “Yes, I know her,” Lisa said. Boy, do I know her, she thought.

  “Buster, stop it!” Ashley barked, jerking on the reins again. Lisa didn’t know what, exactly, Ashley wanted Buster to stop. The beautiful black hunter had merely shifted his weight from side to side. He was restless, the way all horses were when they were suddenly halted and asked to stand still.

  “You’d get a horse if you came to Wentworth, though, wouldn’t you?” Sally asked.

  “I guess so,” Lisa said. Sally’s “if you came to Wentworth” was so impossible to imagine that Lisa figured she might as well say whatever she felt like.

  “Well, if you’re in the market, you can buy Buster here—cheap,” Ashley said, laughing at her own joke. She took her jumping bat and drummed the horse between the ears a couple of times. Buster jerked his head up and laid his ears back. “See how bad-tempered he is? Aren’t you, you stupid horse?”

  Lisa clenched her hands and forced herself to breathe calmly. What she wanted to do was drag Ashley to the ground and rub her face in the dirt for being so unfair to her horse.

  “All right, Ash, we’d better go. Lisa’s mother will be waiting for her,” Sally said.

  “Okay, but promise me you’ll come to my room tonight so we can redo our manicures,” Ashley said.

  “Right after dinner,” Sally promised.

  “Great. Nice to meet you, Lisa. Tell Ronnie I said hi and I miss her loads, and I’m going to come visit her soon, okay?”

  “Sure,” Lisa said, smiling, “the next time I speak to her.” Which hopefully will be about a decade from now, she added silently.

  With a wave of her hand, Ashley spurred Buster into a trot and rode off.

  “So you know one of Ashley’s old friends?” Sally asked on the way back, obviously impressed.

  “Oh yes,” Lisa said, “Veronica and I go way back.” Maybe not as friends, she thought, but we do go way back.

  The fact that Ashley and Lisa knew someone in common seemed to have raised Lisa’s status immeasurably in Sally’s sight. All at once Sally was friendly and talkative. She kept up a steady stream of conversation on the way to the parking lot, where Mrs. Atwood was waiting. When Lisa thanked her for the tour of the stables, Sally protested, “Oh, don’t thank me! It was my pleasure. As you can see, Wentworth is a great school, and I’m just glad to do my part to show it off. If you have any questions, please call me. You too, Mrs. Atwood,” she added.

  “Thank you, Sally. I’m sure Lisa will want to talk to you some more,” said Mrs. Atwood.

  Lisa stood by the car door holding her breath and counting the seconds until she could kiss Wentworth good-bye forever. Finally—finally—her mother finished thanking Sally for the millionth time, and got into the car.

  As soon as they were heading down the driveway, Lisa let out a huge sigh of relief. She had done her part. She had tried to make a good impression. She had kept her mouth shut when she couldn’t think of anything good to say. And now the whole ordeal was over. Her mother would forget all about Wentworth in a few days and find something else she wanted Lisa to try. As for Lisa, she couldn’t wait to get back to Pine Hollow and find out what she had missed.

  “So, tell me all about it! How were the stables?” Mrs. Atwood asked.

  “Fine, Mom,” Lisa said exhaustedly.

  “Just fine? I thought they were supposed to be top-notch.”

  “They are top-notch. They’re beautiful, Mom,” Lisa said.

  “So you liked the school?” Mrs. Atwood asked.

  Lisa closed her eyes, wishing her mother would stop asking her questions. If she told her mother the truth, she’d be in for a two-hour lecture, all the way home, about how great Wentworth was and what a privilege it would be to go there. Instead she said with a sigh, “Yeah, Mom. It was nice.” There. That ought to be enough to get her to drop the subject.

  LISA HURRIED OVER to Pine Hollow early Sunday morning. For some reason she hadn’t felt like calling Stevie and Carole the night before. By the time she’d gotten home, she’d been so fed up with seeing Wentworth and then hearing her mother talk about it in the car that she just couldn’t gear up to repeat the whole story for them. But after a good night’s sleep, she felt de-Wentworthed and back to her old self. She couldn’t wait to see Carole and Stevie.

  Luckily they’d had the same idea. As Lisa entered the stable, Carole came around a corner carrying a saddle, and Stevie ducked out of Belle’s stall.

  “I guess great minds think alike,” Stevie said.

  “I was hoping you’d both be here,” Lisa said, pleased that she’d guessed right.

  “And I was hoping all three of you would be here,” a voice said behind them. The girls turned to greet Mrs. Reg, who was carrying a bucketful of new salt blocks. “Listen, girls. I’ve got to distribute the rest of these, so how about sweeping out the tack room for me and tidying it up before you ride? It could really use it.”

  The girls were eager to comply. Cleaning the tack room was a perfect task for The Saddle Club because they could talk while they worked. A few minutes lat
er Stevie and Lisa were lugging tack trunks and sawhorses out of the room so that Carole could get busy with the broom. Stevie was dying to ask Lisa about Wentworth, but she held back, remembering Carole’s suggestion that Lisa might not want to discuss it.

  Finally Lisa said teasingly, “So, aren’t you going to ask me about it?”

  “What did you think?” Stevie blurted out.

  “That depends,” Lisa said, her eyes twinkling. “What did I think of it, or what did I think of them? It is a beautiful school with the most gorgeous stables I’ve ever seen.”

  “And them?” Stevie asked.

  “They’re horrible!” said Lisa. “All I could think the whole time I was there was that if this is how being rich makes you, I never want to have a lot of money.”

  “So the girls weren’t nice?” Carole asked, pausing with the broom in her hand.

  “I only really met two of them,” Lisa said, “but that was two too many!” She told Carole and Stevie about Sally Whitmore and Ashley Briggs, how rude they were, and how it was clear that neither of them gave a darn about their horses.

  “Ashley Briggs—that’s the girl I was telling you about, Carole. She’s Veronica’s friend,” Stevie explained.

  Lisa nodded. “Yes, she told me she used to live here. I’m supposed to say hi to ‘Ronnie’ for her,” she said sarcastically.

  “Well, here’s your chance,” Carole murmured, nodding toward the door.

  The three of them fell silent as Veronica entered the room. “Don’t mind me,” Veronica said, “I’m just here to grab a pitchfork.”

  “A pitchfork?” Carole asked. “But—why?” She didn’t mean to be rude, but Veronica’s asking for a pitchfork was shocking. She never, ever mucked out stalls or cleaned up after her horse.

  “Yes, a pitchfork, Carole. On my way in, I noticed that Belle’s stall was a little messy, and I was going to do Stevie a favor and get the worst of it out.”

  “You were?” Stevie said, agog.

  “You were?” Carole and Lisa repeated.

  “Sure, why not? Hard work doesn’t bother me,” Veronica said, to the amazement of The Saddle Club. “Now, where’s that pitchfork?”

  Stevie, Lisa, and Carole were so startled that it took them a minute to focus on what Veronica was asking. There was a long silence. “Veronica, the pitchforks and shovels aren’t kept in the tack room,” Lisa finally said.

  “They’re not?” Veronica said, her face falling.

  “No. They’re hanging in the empty stall at the end of the aisle.”

  “Oh. Right.” There was another awkward pause.

  To break the silence, Lisa said, “Say, Veronica, I met a friend of yours yesterday—Ashley Briggs. She says hello.” Lisa figured that was sufficient—she didn’t particularly want to add the part about Ashley’s missing Veronica “loads” and wanting to come visit.

  “Where on earth would you have met Ashley?” Veronica asked, startled into dropping her polite act.

  “Actually,” Lisa said, relishing the fact for a fleeting second, “I was interviewing at Wentworth Manor.”

  “You?” Veronica cried. “You were interviewing at Wentworth? I can’t believe it! Why would you interview there?” Her dark eyes flashed angrily.

  “My mother wanted me to,” Lisa said simply.

  “Your mother! That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard!” Veronica shrieked. She turned on her heel and stomped out of the tack room.

  “Could someone translate that for me?” Carole asked, unable to make sense of the scene she had just witnessed. Veronica had gone from ingratiating sweetness to openly raging hostility in a matter of seconds.

  “I’m pretty sure I can,” Stevie said. “Let’s finish up here and then go somewhere far away from her.”

  “How about we take a nice long trail ride?” Lisa suggested. After being gone a day, she couldn’t wait to tack up Prancer and go for a ride.

  “Good idea. Starlight needs to stretch his legs after all that drilling we did in Horse Wise,” Carole said. “And as a matter of fact, so do I.”

  “Oh, how was the lesson?” Lisa asked. As they finished sweeping and tidying the tack room, Carole and Stevie filled Lisa in on yesterday’s Pony Club mounted meeting. Max had made them ride without stirrups through a series of dressage movements for most of the hour. It had been intense work that required high concentration on the part of horse and rider. A trail ride would be just the right change for today.

  Working quickly, the girls had the tack room clean and the horses groomed and saddled within half an hour. They mounted up and set off at a leisurely pace, letting Starlight, Prancer, and Belle walk on loose reins. As soon as the trail was wide enough for them to bunch up, Stevie turned eagerly in her saddle. “Now, where should I start? Which do you want to know first: why Veronica was being nice or why she freaked out?”

  “I’ll bet I know why she was so nice at the beginning,” Carole ventured. “The dance, right?”

  “Exactly,” Stevie said. “She heard that I haven’t picked a cochairperson of the dance committee. Yesterday, after Horse Wise, she was hinting that I should choose her, so I hinted back that first I would need to make sure she’s capable of hard work. I didn’t think she’d actually take the bait, but it looks like I was wrong.”

  “It sure does. At least, she’s definitely working hard to get on your good side,” Carole commented.

  “What dance committee, Stevie?” Lisa asked, her interest piqued. Anything that involved Veronica’s having to kowtow to The Saddle Club was sure to be good for a few laughs.

  Briefly Stevie recounted her meeting Friday afternoon with Miss Fenton and her subsequent run-in with Veronica. “I got so mad at Veronica for insulting my dance that I pretended I’d been considering her for my cochair,” Stevie concluded.

  “So, now she’s trying to get you to change your mind, huh?” said Lisa.

  “Yes, and I must say that I look forward to watching her try—and try and try and try,” Stevie said devilishly.

  “Why not? It will be good for Pine Hollow. She’s already learned where the pitchforks are kept,” Carole said with a laugh. “That’s a lot for her to absorb in one day.”

  After walking for a while, the girls came to a grassy verge, and the horses began to pull on their bits, asking to go faster. Without further ado, Stevie challenged, “Race you to the top?” Not bothering to wait for an answer, she leaned forward over Belle’s neck and urged the mare forward. Carole and Lisa followed suit, and the three of them galloped up the small hill. Prancer beat the other two by a neck.

  “We win in a photo finish!” Lisa cried, slowing the mare to a trot and then a walk.

  “No fair riding an ex-racehorse!” Stevie called back.

  Lisa grinned. “At Wentworth, they couldn’t believe that I don’t own a horse.”

  “That’s because they all have five or six horses each. They bring a different one to school every semester,” Stevie said.

  “Really, Stevie?” Carole asked, bringing Starlight in line with the other two.

  “Okay, maybe not every semester, but I’ve heard of girls there doing badly at a show and then calling Daddy to collect one horse and send another.”

  “Boy, Veronica would fit in perfectly there,” Carole said. Veronica was known for blaming all her mistakes on whichever horse she happened to be riding.

  “Actually, Carole, you’re almost right,” Stevie began mischievously. “But instead of fitting in at Wentworth, Veronica had a fit.”

  “Huh? You mean Veronica used to go to Wentworth?” Lisa asked.

  “Correction: She wanted to go to Wentworth; she tried to go to Wentworth—”

  “But?” said Lisa.

  “But Wentworth wouldn’t have her,” Stevie replied. “I can’t believe I didn’t remember this before, but Veronica looked at Wentworth once, too.”

  “She interviewed there?” Lisa asked.

  “Interviewed there, took the tour—the works.”

&
nbsp; “So what happened? I would have thought her parents could have gotten her in,” Lisa said. Mr. diAngelo was a prominent banker and reputed to be the richest man in Willow Creek—just the kind of person Mrs. Cushing would love to brag about, Lisa guessed.

  “Naturally,” Stevie said. “And I’m sure they would have. Except for one teeny little incident: Veronica got into a screaming fight with her mother right in the admissions office.”

  “You’re kidding,” Lisa said, grinning.

  “Nope. She got so mad, she threw a vase across the room,” Stevie said gleefully.

  “Did it smash?” Carole asked.

  “It smashed all right,” said Stevie. “It hit the floor right as the director of admissions was coming out to meet the diAngelos.”

  “You mean Mrs. Cushing?” Lisa asked, imagining the outraged expression on the older woman’s face.

  “I think that was her name,” Stevie said. “The story was the best gossip in the Fenton Hall Parents’ Association for months.”

  “Wow,” Lisa breathed, “Veronica versus her mother and Mrs. Cushing.”

  “Yup,” Stevie said. “So now the diAngelos hate Wentworth Manor. If you want to see Mrs. diAngelo turn purple, just mention that school.”

  “But if they hate it so much, why would Veronica care if Lisa’s applying?” Carole asked.

  “Well, they do hate it, but it’s more complicated than that. Kind of what you’d call a love-hate relationship,” Stevie mused, warming to her subject. “The way I look at it is like this: The diAngelos know that Wentworth is one of the snobbiest schools around, so they have to respect it because they love snobs, but they hate it for rejecting Veronica. And Veronica is still friends with Ashley Briggs, but she’s probably really jealous of her for going there. On the other hand …”

  Stevie had plenty more to say about the diAngelos and Wentworth Manor, and by the time she finished, the girls had arrived back at Pine Hollow. After cooling out their horses and giving them another good grooming, they reconvened in the driveway, carrying halters and lead ropes. They were going to bring in a few horses Max needed for his afternoon lesson.