Carole shook her head. It was all too much. “Okay, let’s eat,” she said in a brisk, businesslike tone. She sat down across from Tessa and began assembling a sandwich without looking up.
Stevie and Lisa sat down on either side of her, forming a line facing Tessa, who sat alone on the other side of the food. None of them looked at her. None of them spoke.
Lisa was suddenly finding it difficult to keep the tears back. Her logical mind told her she was being silly. Tessa had proved herself unworthy of membership in The Saddle Club. She had betrayed Stevie by flirting with Phil. She had caused tons of extra work for Lisa and her mother without so much as offering to help. She had endangered Topside with her sloppy care. And to top it off, she had cast her friends aside in favor of their greatest enemy, Veronica diAngelo.
Her logical mind knew all that. But somehow her heart hadn’t received the message. It still ached for the friendship she’d thought they had with Tessa. Lisa had to keep her eyes trained on her sandwich and blink rapidly to keep them from spilling over.
“So,” Tessa said. Her voice was as bright and cheerful as ever, though Stevie thought she detected a slight quaver. “Did you all have a good day today?”
As Carole murmured a vague affirmative answer, Stevie gritted her teeth. She knew the best thing to do would be to keep silent. The sooner Tessa realized they weren’t interested in small talk, the better. Then they could finish their dinner quickly and change into their pajamas. The earlier they all went to sleep, the earlier they could wake up—and the earlier this miserable sleepover would be over.
But Stevie had never been very good at keeping quiet. And she was even worse at keeping her feelings to herself. Why should she spare Tessa’s feelings, anyway? Tessa was the one who was in the wrong. She was the one who had cast her eye on Stevie’s boyfriend. She was the one who had caused problems everywhere she turned, whether it was with the point-to-point plans or at the stable. “We had a great day,” she blurted out angrily. “At least until you got here.”
Tessa’s eyes widened in shock. Her cheeks flushed a mottled pink.
Carole and Lisa gasped, but neither of them said a thing.
“Oh,” Tessa said in a small voice. “I see.”
“And that’s not all.” Now that Stevie had started, she couldn’t stop. “If you think Phil likes you, even a little bit, you’re sadly mistaken. He would never fall for your pathetic flirting. And in case you haven’t figured it out, we don’t appreciate you inviting Veronica to our sleepover. And furthermore—”
“Wait.” This time Tessa’s voice was loud and firm. Even Stevie was startled into silence. “I think we have a problem here.”
The comment was so ridiculously inadequate that Lisa almost laughed. “No kidding,” she said instead. “But it’s not we that have the problem. It’s you.” She knew that didn’t make much sense, but Tessa seemed to understand perfectly.
“Just let me explain,” she said. “We seem to have a few large misunderstandings.”
Stevie and Lisa both looked stubborn, but Carole finally met Tessa’s gaze. “All right,” she answered for all three of them. “If you think you have something to tell us, you’d better go ahead.”
Tessa took a deep breath. “All right, then,” she said. “First of all, I want to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit daft—I just didn’t see until now how much my behavior has been upsetting you.”
Stevie’s eyes widened in indignation. “What?” she sputtered. “How could you not realize it? You knew that Phil and I—”
“Wait,” Tessa said again. “That’s the first thing I want to clear up. I have no interest in Phil—except as a friend. I just needed him to help me with my plan.”
“Your plan?” Lisa repeated, sounding confused.
Tessa nodded. “That’s what this has all been about,” she said, her words coming in a rush. “Plotting with Phil, befriending Veronica, gaining her trust …”
“Wait a minute.” Understanding was dawning on Stevie’s face. “Back up a second here. Don’t you really like Veronica?”
Tessa laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she exclaimed, sounding more like the Tessa they knew and loved than she had all week. “Who could possibly like that insufferable girl?”
“But—But why?” Carole still felt bewildered by all this—she was starting to realize that something very strange was going on. Something strange and, perhaps, not altogether terrible. “What’s your big plan?”
Tessa shook her head reluctantly. “I can’t tell you that,” she replied. “I’m sorry, but it would ruin everything. The whole point of this was to make sure Max couldn’t possibly fault you for what’s going to happen.” She sighed. “Although I’m beginning to suspect I went a bit too far in making sure you didn’t know what was going on. I thought I was dropping a few hints here and there, but maybe they were too subtle.”
“I guess they were,” Lisa replied. Like her friends, she was realizing that they might have jumped to some incorrect conclusions in the past week—especially the one about Phil. After all, plotting against Veronica sounded a lot more in character for him than flirting with one of Stevie’s best friends. But Lisa still had some questions that Tessa hadn’t cleared up yet. “What about all that extra work you’ve been causing me and my mom with all your bright ideas about the point-to-point? Are you telling me you didn’t realize you were doing that, either?”
Tessa gave her an apologetic look. “I realize my suggestion about the scurry race was rather impulsive,” she admitted. The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “Although actually it ended up working out perfectly.”
“Not for me,” Lisa replied. “I spent that entire afternoon as Mom’s personal secretary.”
“I’m really sorry about that.” Tessa’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “I meant to help out, I really did.” She sighed. “But Veronica was so insistent that we go over to the Penningtons’ that very day, even when I told her I thought I should go straight home with you to help out. And then once we were there she kept running off to make Miles show her this or that. I think she’s really smitten with him.”
“Hmmm,” Stevie said. “I wonder.”
Lisa gave her a surprised look. “Huh?” she said. “You mean about Veronica’s crush on Miles? I thought that was obvious to everyone.”
“Oh, it is,” Stevie assured her. “No, I was just thinking about something else. Go on, Tessa.”
Tessa shrugged. “I was finished.”
“No, you weren’t,” Lisa insisted. “What about the other stuff? Like deciding to move the scurry race to the end of the schedule after the program was at the printer’s?”
Tessa looked confused. “What does that have to do with me?” she said. “I thought Max decided that. That’s what Veronica told me, anyway.”
“But Veronica told me …” Lisa’s voice trailed off. She glanced at Stevie, who was looking more and more thoughtful by the second. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”
Carole still looked troubled. “There’s something else,” she said. “We’ve been covering for you so far. But I really thought you would take better care of Topside. No matter how distracted you were with your plotting and everything, there’s no excuse for carelessness in the stable.”
This time Tessa looked downright insulted. “What do you mean?” she protested. “I would never neglect a horse. I’ve taken perfect care of Topside ever since I got here!”
“Do you call leaving a metal water bucket sitting around his stall perfect care?” Carole shot back. “Plus, Max hates it when we go riding and leave the stall a mess. We told you that.”
Lisa nodded. “And maybe being careless with tack isn’t quite as bad as being careless with the horses themselves,” she said, “but it took Carole ages to clean up after you in the tack room that time.”
Tessa waved her hands wildly. “Hold on here!” she cried. “Have I been riding at a different stable all week? I don’t know what you mean by any of this.”
“I do.” Stevie spoke so suddenly that all three of her friends turned to stare at her. She was smiling, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who had finally figured out exactly what was going on. “We’ve been idiots,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Huh?” Carole said.
Stevie shrugged. “Don’t you see? We’ve missed a really obvious point here. Namely, that there’s no way that Veronica would ever want to be friends with Tessa.”
“Hey,” Tessa protested. “That’s not very nice.”
“No, listen,” Stevie insisted. “Veronica hated you last week—because you’re friends with us, because of what happened in England, and, well, just because you’re a nice person instead of a shallow snake in the grass like her. And then you helped us humiliate her yet again—you can bet she knew that, even if Max didn’t.” She shrugged. “And suddenly, after that, she wants to kiss and make up? I don’t think so.”
Now that Lisa thought about it, it really didn’t make much sense. She couldn’t believe she’d missed it before. “Wait,” she said. “But that means—”
“That Veronica was using Tessa for her own sneaky reasons,” Stevie finished for her with a nod. “And I think it’s obvious now what she was doing. Just think about it. Veronica invited Phil to the tack room with them. Then she left him alone with Tessa—with the door shut—and started talking about them in Danny’s stall, where she knew we’d probably overhear.”
Carole gasped. “That’s true!” she said. “If we hadn’t heard Veronica saying how she thought Tessa liked Phil, that never would have occurred to us.”
“Actually, I was the one who shut the door, not Veronica,” Tessa admitted. “And I may have given her the idea about liking Phil because I kept hinting for her to leave us alone. But it was only because I didn’t want her to hear me talking about her. I never imagined she’d turn it into that sort of gossip.”
Stevie nodded sympathetically. “That’s Veronica for you,” she said. “She found a surefire way to get me mad at Tessa. Then there was Lisa.”
“Right,” Lisa said. It was all becoming clearer by the second. “When she found out Tessa and I were going to the mall with Mom, she made sure to turn up and drag Tessa away.” She smiled ruefully. “I guess even Veronica realizes that shopping with my mom isn’t the highlight of my day.”
“Then she must have come up with the idea to switch the order of the program,” Tessa said, catching on. “She told me it was Max’s idea, but she told you it was mine, so you’d think I was the one causing you and your mum all sorts of work.”
Carole thought all of that was very interesting. But she was still thinking about Topside. “But what about that metal bucket?” she said. “And the dirty stall we cleaned up for you?”
“I never knew a thing about either,” Tessa told her. “I never used anything but Topside’s regular plastic bucket. And I always attached it to the hook.”
“Veronica again,” Stevie said with grim satisfaction. “She’s the only person I know who would endanger a horse like that and not even think about it, except as a means to her own ends.”
Lisa shook her head. “Actually, I’m a little shocked,” she admitted. “That’s nasty, even for her.”
Tessa was looking thoughtful. “Which day did you find the stall dirty?” she asked.
“Um … It was Wednesday, I think,” Lisa said, thinking back. “When you and Veronica were out on that long trail ride.”
Tessa nodded. “Just as I thought,” she said. “That was the day Veronica suddenly remembered she had to call home. We were halfway across the first pasture, but she insisted she would just be a few minutes.” She laughed ruefully. “I must have ridden Topside around that pasture fifty times while I was waiting for her to get back. But I never thought twice about it.”
“Veronica can be pretty sneaky,” Stevie agreed. “She must have run back and carted some old manure into the stall from the muck heap.” She glanced at Carole. “Which explains why you thought it looked funny. I’ll bet she was the one who knocked down all that tack in the tack room after Tessa and Phil left. She probably snuck in while we were checking our horses and quietly made a mess. And I’m sure she planted that icky sandwich by her new boots, too, just hoping I’d do something about it and she could tattle to Max.”
“So Veronica was trying to mess up our friendship with Tessa all along.” Carole finally understood.
“And it almost worked.” Lisa scooted around the picnic cloth until she was sitting next to Tessa. Then she smiled tentatively. “Can you forgive us?” she asked.
Tessa nodded immediately. “Absolutely,” she assured all of them. “And can you all forgive me for being so thickheaded? I still can’t believe it reached this point before I noticed. I guess I was too caught up in my own plans to pay enough attention to you.”
“It happens,” Stevie said sympathetically. “Believe me, I know. Anyway, it’s partly our fault, too. We should have trusted you more.”
“And even if we had doubts, we should have talked to you about them,” Carole put in. She scooted around until she was sitting on Tessa’s other side, and gave her a hug. “But don’t worry. No matter who should have done what, the important thing is that we’re all still friends.”
“We are, aren’t we?” Tessa asked, still looking a little worried.
This time all three original members of The Saddle Club grabbed her in a big group hug. “Absolutely,” they said in one voice.
Soon they were all hungrily chewing their sandwiches, washing them down with the drinks Tessa had brought. “This is great,” Carole said, her mouth full of potato chips.
Stevie was eating just as enthusiastically as the others. But she was thinking about something at the same time. “So, Tessa,” she said, a bit too casually. “About this plan of yours …”
Tessa held up one hand warningly. “Sorry, Stevie,” she said with a grin. “I already told you. I really can’t give you any details about that. I have to protect your—your—” She searched for the words.
“Plausible deniability?” Lisa offered helpfully, reaching for another slice of cheese.
Tessa nodded. “That’s it,” she said. “If you don’t know anything, you can’t be blamed.”
Carole and Lisa nodded agreeably, but Stevie still wasn’t satisfied. “But Tessa …,” she began in a whine.
“Stevie, really!” Tessa cut her off. “Please let it drop. I assure you, all will become clear tomorrow. Even after all this, don’t you trust me?”
Stevie sighed with frustration. “That’s not the problem,” she said. “I’ll trust you till the cows come home. I’m just afraid I’ll die of curiosity way before then!”
DESPITE HER DIRE prediction, Stevie managed to survive the sleepover. And soon after the morning of the point-to-point dawned, she was too busy to spare a thought for Tessa’s scheme.
Max put The Saddle Club to work as soon as the four girls clambered down from the loft, yawning and rubbing their eyes. There were horses to be fed and groomed, stalls to be cleaned, horse trailers to be readied, tack to check, traveling bandages to put on … the list went on and on. Luckily Tessa had remembered to have Mrs. Atwood pack the clothes Lisa and she would be wearing to the event, along with everything Stevie and Carole had brought to Lisa’s. They washed up and changed in the stable’s bathroom moments before it was time to load the horses that would be competing in the event into Pine Hollow’s trailers.
Soon a caravan of horse trailers was trundling through Willow Creek on the way to the country club on the other side of town. Carole and Stevie were crowded into the cab of the one being driven by Red O’Malley. Starlight and Belle were in the back, along with a couple of horses belonging to Max’s adult riders.
“This is exciting, isn’t it?” Carole said happily.
Stevie nodded. “Maybe even more exciting than we think,” she said. “I wonder what Tessa is—”
Carole elbowed her before she could say anything about T
essa’s plan. She glanced at Red worriedly. But the stable hand didn’t seem to have heard a word. He had just steered his vehicle over a slight rise in the road, and the grounds of the Willow Creek Country Club were spread out before them. “Wow,” he commented with a low whistle. “Those country club folks really went all out for this.”
The girls saw what he meant. It really was amazing. The broad, sweeping fields that flanked the golf course had been transformed into a sort of fairgrounds, with large, colorful tents dotting the landscape. The girls could also see where several courses had been marked off for the races, with broad timber fences all along them. Temporary grandstand seating had been set up near the finish line of each course.
“Amazing,” Carole said breathlessly. Her heart started to beat a little faster with excitement. She couldn’t wait for the point-to-point to start!
The girls helped unload the horses and make them comfortable in the large tents serving as temporary stables. Then, with Max’s permission, they hurried off to check out the scene.
Visitors were already pouring in through the front gates. People of all ages crowded into the refreshment and craft booths, wandered over to look at the course, found seats in the stands, or set up tailgate picnics in the parking lot. Lively music played over the public-address system, mostly patriotic marches in honor of July Fourth, which was the following day. Volunteers scurried around, answering questions, picking up trash, and generally being helpful. Lisa spotted her mother behind the counter at one of the craft booths, helping an elderly woman choose a T-shirt for her small granddaughter.
“It looks like the fund-raiser is going to be a big success,” Carole remarked as the girls strolled past the ticket table, where half a dozen volunteers struggled to tear tickets and make change fast enough to keep up with the demand.
“Cool,” Stevie said with a smile. “That means they’ll probably want to do this every year!”
“I hope so.” Lisa glanced at a nearby refreshment tent. “Hey, is it just me or did we forget to eat breakfast? I’m starving!”
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