At last, class was almost over. They paired up for their final trot—this time through the center of the ring to change directions. She brought her horse up next to Carole’s.
“Come to my house this afternoon? I’ve got something really important to show you,” Stevie invited her friend.
“I thought you’d have work to do. I was kind of planning to go to TD’s with Lisa. Can she come over, too?”
Stevie frowned. She knew Carole was becoming Lisa’s friend, but she couldn’t forget that Lisa was the one who had tied her sneakers into all those knots. And Lisa was the one who wouldn’t sit for the Ziegler twins when she’d needed somebody to do that job. And Lisa was the one—
“You know, Stevie, she thought you were the one who slammed the door when she was on Patch that first day.”
“Is she crazy? What kind of person does she think I am?”
“Well, she knows better now, and she’s really sorry about the sneakers—just like I’m sure you’re sorry about the stirrups. Remember the stirrups?”
She did, of course. She remembered them well. She remembered how funny Lisa looked while she groped for a way to get on the horse. It was so funny, in fact, that she snickered now. But she also remembered that Lisa had been near tears. And she remembered that since that day, Lisa had learned a lot about horses and riding and had stuck with it, which a lot of new riders didn’t.
“Okay, she can come,” she said. “But what I want to talk about is the MTO. Is she going on it?”
“She and her mother are meeting with Max on Tuesday after class to talk about it. She wants to come and Max thinks she’s learned enough to ride on a trail safely. Her mother’s the problem.”
“That’s funny,” Stevie said. “Max asked me if I could stay after class on Tuesday. He was a little mysterious about it.”
“You don’t think—” Carole began.
But they were interrupted then by the very person they were discussing. “Girls!” Max said very sternly. “Class is not over yet and I am the only one who is allowed to talk while class is in session. I cannot have you continue to break this rule. Do you understand?”
“Yes,” they said in unison.
“NOW, LISTEN TO this one,” Stevie said, sliding a CD into her machine and skipping ahead expertly to the song she wanted to hear. She pressed play.
It was a wonderful song, Lisa thought. She’d heard it on the radio, but it sounded much better on Stevie’s CD player. It was a dreamy, romantic song. She leaned back in the comfortable overstuffed chair in Stevie’s room to enjoy the music. It wasn’t easy to relax, though. She felt like an intruder. She could tell that Carole was trying to make her like Stevie, and make Stevie like her, but it wasn’t easy. Lisa’s disastrous first day at Pine Hollow hung like a dark cloud between them. Lisa felt badly about the sneakers and she thought Stevie probably felt badly about the stirrups, but those things had happened, and it was going to be hard to forget them. She was trying, though. Hard. She wished Stevie would try, too.
“If you like this song, you’re really going to like the next,” Stevie said to Carole.
“Boy, you sure have a lot of discs here,” Carole said, shuffling through the selection. “I thought you didn’t have any. Are these Alex’s?”
“No, they’re mine. I told you, he’s got junky taste in music. He likes heavy metal. UGH!”
“Right!” Lisa agreed. It made her feel better that she and Stevie like the same music.
“You bought them?” Carole asked suspiciously.
“Sure, they’ve got a good selection at Sights ’n’ Sounds.”
“You bought them?” Carole asked again. “Like you paid for them?”
“Sure I paid for them. They gave away a CD player, but they didn’t give me any CDs to go with it!”
“Where’d you get the money?” Carole challenged her.
“It was in my wallet. Hey, what did you think I did? Shoplift? No way. I can’t believe you think I’d steal the CDs!” Stevie said, extremely agitated. “Look, here’s the receipt!”
“Of course I don’t think you stole them,” Carole said. “I know you’d never do anything dishonest. But I am worried that you spent every penny you had earned for the MTO!”
Stevie’s arms dropped to her sides and she stood up, looking at Carole. She clutched a CD in her right hand. While Lisa watched, Stevie’s face turned pale.
“No, I couldn’t have done that. I had lots of money. I couldn’t have spent it all. I only bought a few—just those few you see there and two more that I’ve loaned to Alex for the day. That’s all. There has to be a lot of money left. I mean, what does on CD cost?”
Lisa thought about the CDs she’d seen in the stores. They were pretty expensive. She counted eight on Stevie’s bed, plus the two Alex had. She supplied the answer to Stevie’s question. “Ten CDs at twelve dollars each. It’s about one hundred twenty dollars, plus tax—”
“You spent all your money!” Carole yowled.
“Not all of it,” Stevie said defensively. “I have some left.” She grabbed her wallet from her purse and opened it. “I have exactly—” She dumped the contents on her bed. “Four dollars and eighteen cents.”
Stevie was transformed before Lisa’s eyes. The scene that followed made Stevie’s ranting about the knots in her sneaker laces look like a picnic. Stevie was so furious with herself that she began grabbing all the papers on her desk and tossing them up in the air.
“I don’t believe I did that! Can you believe it? Do you know how many hours I worked and how I made one zillion phone calls—make that two zillion—to get jobs for everybody so I could earn a measly fifty dollars to do the one thing I really care about, which is to go on the MTO? I even sat for the Ziegler twins myself when I couldn’t get anybody else. And what have I got to show for it?” A dozen slips of paper flew out of her right hand into the air. “Nothing!” She flung more paper toward the ceiling with her left hand. “And look at this!” She picked up her notebook. “Night after night was ruined because of the bookkeeping I had to do. Look at this!” She tossed the notebook toward the overstuffed chair where Lisa was sitting. It slammed onto the floor and slid under the chair’s skirt.
When the first tears appeared in Stevie’s eyes, Carole grabbed a tissue and went over to comfort her, but Stevie was inconsolable. The MTO was a once-in-a-lifetime trip. She’d wanted it so much that she’d done something she absolutely hated—she’d worked. And now she wasn’t going to go anyway. “And it’s all my fault!” Stevie wailed.
Lisa felt very bad for Stevie, but she was also a little embarrassed. After all, they weren’t exactly close friends. While Carole comforted Stevie, Lisa retrieved the notebook from under the chair. Idly, she glanced at it. On the first double page, there was a neat chart. It only took a second to realize that it was Stevie’s record book of the jobs she’d taken on. Until she looked at the record book, Lisa had no idea how much work had been done by Stevie, her brothers, and her friends. But the situation became clear as she glanced at the page in front of her. Across the top of the page were headings: Date, Job, Employer, Employee, Rate, Time, Amount Paid, Amount Due Employee, Amount Paid Employee, Commission. There were four pages like this, listing everything that had been done. That meant that a lot of jobs had been done. It was a tremendous amount of data.
In the back of the book were pages with the names of all the kids who had worked for her. Stevie had made careful notes about them. On Polly Giacomin’s page, for example, it said, “Orthodontist on Wednesdays. Mrs. Ellerman says she was good with the dog.” There was a page with her own name on it. “Lisa Atwood,” it said. “Didn’t seem interested.” It made her uncomfortable to read it. But it was true, of course. Stevie had asked her to sit and she wasn’t interested. She’d given her an excuse about studying for a test, but Stevie had obviously known it was just an excuse. Then there was Carole’s page. It said, “Will do anything for Cobalt. Natch.” That was true, too, Lisa knew.
She looked up f
rom the notebook. Stevie was sniffling. I’ll take the CDs back,” Stevie said, gathering them up, and trying to sort discs and cases. “I’ll tell the store they were damaged and demand my money back.”
“Stevie!” Carole said, a little exasperated.
Suddenly, Lisa got a wonderful idea. “Uh, Stevie?” Lisa tried to interrupt. Stevie didn’t hear her.
“I’ll tell them my family’s fortune was wiped out by a tornado and we are desperate for cash.”
“Stevie,” Lisa said again. No luck.
“A hurricane, maybe—”
“Stevie! Get yourself together, girl,” Carole chided.
“Listen, Carole,” Lisa said, clutching the notebook. Carole didn’t hear her, either, because she was so busy with Stevie.
“Stevie, you only have one choice,” Carole told her in a matter-of-fact tone of voice. “You have to do a math project.”
“No!” Stevie wailed. “I can’t!”
It was Lisa’s chance. “Yes!” she wailed, imitating Stevie’s cry. “You already have!”
“Have what?” Stevie asked, looking bewildered.
“Have a math project,” Lisa said.
“What do you mean?” Stevie asked, suddenly interested.
“Here,” Lisa said, pointing to the notebook. “You have a math project. You said you did a lot of work. And you did. But you also did a math project when you started keeping this ledger.”
Stevie started listening. She sat down on the bed facing Lisa and pulled her knees up to her chin. Carole sat next to her, dangling her legs over the edge of the bed.
“Look, you’re supposed to do a project on percentages and decimals, right?” Lisa continued.
Stevie nodded.
“Well, what’s more decimal than dollars and cents and what’s more percentage than commissions?”
Stevie nodded, a slow smile spreading across her face.
“So, all you have to do is make sure you’ve got all the jobs entered, finish doing the arithmetic, and do some analytical percentages, like such and such percent of the employers paid on the spot. Such and such percent never paid. You got such and such percent of the money. The average job paid so much money, et cetera. The math isn’t hard. You can even use a calculator. The only hard part is making sure you have all the information. Where are your records on the other jobs?”
“Other jobs?” Stevie asked.
“Yeah, this stuff only goes through Friday a week ago. I know other jobs have been done since then and there are some blanks before that. Where are your records?”
Stevie looked up to the ceiling and then down to the floor. The entire floor was scattered with the scraps of paper she’d thrown in the air when she was so angry.
“Oh, no,” Stevie groaned.
“Oh, no!” Carole said.
“Well, there’s just one thing to do,” Lisa announced. “And that is to pick them up and start working on Stevie’s math project. We can’t have her at home alone while we’re enjoying the MTO, can we, Carole?”
“No, we cannot,” Carole agreed, lowering herself to the floor. She began picking up crumpled and torn scraps of paper.
Lisa and Stevie got onto the floor as well. There was still a lot of work ahead of them—and when a big job needed to be done, it was better if friends did it together.
CAROLE SPOTTED LISA in the main-floor hall of the school between her science and gym classes on Monday morning. She knew right away it was Lisa because of the perfectly pressed blouse and matching skirt. Lisa’s mother still liked to dress her up like a doll. Carole wondered when Mrs. Atwood would start letting Lisa make her own decisions.
“Hey, Lisa, wait up!” she yelled, running down the hall. Lisa stopped and smiled when she saw her. Or maybe she was smiling because of the trail of papers Carole had dropped behind her. They picked them up together.
“How’s it going?” Carole asked eagerly. She knew that Lisa had spent most of Sunday at Stevie’s, working on Project Math Project, as they’d dubbed their joint effort.
“Its going okay, sort of. You wouldn’t believe the amount of work Stevie did. When she said she’d made a zillion phone calls, she was only slightly exaggerating! And just during the time I was there, she had at least ten more calls—”
“Did she take the jobs?”
“No, she told people she was out of business. A lot of her customers seemed very disappointed, too, but we had a giant pile of work to do so she couldn’t spend any more time on the phone getting workers.”
“How big a giant pile? I mean, like it’s due on Friday. Is she going to get it done on time?”
“With a little help from her friends,” Lisa said. “Really, it’s going to be a terrific report, someday.”
“By Friday?” The question hung in the air. Lisa shrugged. “You know what I think?” Carole continued. “If Stevie could do all that work to earn the money, she can certainly account for it all so the three of us can go on the MTO.”
“Well, that’s another thing,” Lisa said, ominously. Suddenly, Carole got the feeling that a bombshell was coming. “My mother is getting convinced that there’s no way I can be trusted on a three-day trail ride. I mean, at first, she really wanted me to ride because that’s what well-bred people supposedly do.” Lisa grimaced. “But then, she met the sainted Veronica, who was a real jerk when she was at my house. Now Mom thinks too much riding isn’t a good idea for a young lady. Besides, she thinks three days in the mountains sounds too rough. So, Stevie may be able to go. But I probably won’t.”
Just when Carole had thought things were looking up, she found out they weren’t.
On Monday afternoon, Lisa was back at Stevie’s, piecing together the scraps of information that would someday be a math project.
“Okay, then, you had three jobs going on the afternoon of the twentieth. But I don’t understand how you’ve got ‘Alex’ down for all of them. I mean, I know he’s terrific and all, being your twin brother, but he’s not exactly Superman, is he?”
“No, he’s not,” Stevie said. “But he must have done the jobs if I said he did.”
“Well, here, you look at these slips of paper. Isn’t that what these say?” She handed Stevie the crumpled pieces of paper with notes scribbled on them. Stevie took them reluctantly. It seemed to her that in the last two days all she’d been doing was staring at crumpled notes—in her own messy handwriting.
“No, no, this isn’t Alex,” she said once she’d decoded her scratchings. “It’s Alexa. That’s Alexa Hammond, our neighbor. She’s a demon in the kitchen. That’s why I had her work with Mrs. Alcott—”
“But you said Mrs. Alcott was the one who never paid you and you’ve got this marked ‘Paid.’ ”
“Well, I mean, I paid Alexa. It’s just that Mrs. Alcott hasn’t paid me. Or at least she hadn’t then. I’m pretty sure she did pay me. I know I wrote a note about it.”
Lisa sighed. “If you made a note of it, we’ll find it.” For now, that closed the subject. Lisa concentrated on the notebook on the desk in front of her. Stevie watched her, amazed at Lisa’s ability to concentrate totally on something so dull. While Stevie watched her, Lisa reached for the pencil behind her right ear—no doubt changing “Alex” to “Alexa.”
“Should I get us some sodas?” Stevie asked.
“Hmmm,” was all she got in reply. Lisa was so focused on the notebook that Stevie doubted she’d heard her at all. Quietly, she left the room. As she scouted for sodas and cookies in the kitchen, she mused at the generosity of a friend—and she knew now that Lisa was a friend—who would spend so much time helping another girl with schoolwork.
She pulled two straws out of their box and returned to her room, determined to concentrate as hard as Lisa. Together, she was sure they could do the project—as sure as she’d been that she could earn the fifty dollars. She’d been right about that, too, she thought just a little smugly.
ON TUESDAY AFTERNOON, Carole wasn’t certain whether she wanted her riding class to end or
to go on forever. She was very aware of the fact that both of her friends had been summoned to Max’s office after class, and she’d noted the arrival of Mrs. Atwood. According to Lisa, Mrs. Atwood was still determined that her daughter should not go on the MTO. Carole thought that was weird since it was Mrs. Atwood who had insisted Lisa take riding lessons in the first place. Lisa was equally determined to go. Carole had had one or two opportunities to see Lisa face up to her mother, especially that first day Lisa had come to Pine Hollow. She wasn’t really very good at standing up to her mother, Carole thought glumly.
And then there was Stevie. If Stevie ever did finish her math project, she’d still have trouble convincing Max to let her go after the way she’d been acting in class recently. She’d even been late today, saying she’d had to stop and borrow a calculator from a friend before riding class. Being late to class was one of Max’s pet peeves. But just one of them. He had loads, and these days it seemed that every time Carole turned around, Max was yelling at Stevie for one thing or another.
After class, Carole finished untacking Delilah, and then checked to see that Veronica had given Cobalt fresh water. She hadn’t, of course, so Carole did it for her. Then she returned Delilah’s tack to the tack room, where she’d decided to wait for the results of her friends’ powwow with Max.
But just exactly what was going on? Why were Lisa, her mother, and Stevie in there all at once? Was Max just letting both of them know at the same time that they couldn’t go on the MTO?
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