Stagecoach

by Bonnie Bryant

  Lisa settled back in her chair, suddenly glad for the interruption. “I like everyone but Anna Henchman,” she answered truthfully. “What do you think?”

  “Same,” Hollie replied. “So you’re happy you tried out?”

  “Definitely,” Lisa answered. “Are you?”

  “Oh, I’m incredibly happy,” Hollie replied, “I’m always in a good mood as soon as I start working on a new show. Heck, I’d be a sword carrier if I had to. And I think musicals are much more fun than straight drama.”

  “A sword carrier?” Lisa repeated. “I didn’t know there were any of those in Annie.”

  “Oh, that’s just what you call people with tiny, non-speaking parts, no matter what the play,” Hollie explained.

  “You’ve done a lot of plays, haven’t you?” Lisa asked. She loved listening to Hollie talk “theater-speak.” She felt the way she had when she started riding, and heard words like “tack,” “dressage,” and “palomino” for the first times.

  “More than I can count,” Hollie answered. “I started as an angel in our church Christmas pageant when I was three, and I’ve been acting on and off—but mostly on—since then. I just love it.”

  “Do you ever think about trying to become a professional actress?” Lisa asked.

  “Only about twenty-two hours a day,” Hollie admitted, laughing.

  “What about the other two hours?” Lisa teased.

  “The other two hours I’m rehearsing, so I can’t think about it.”

  The two girls laughed. Lisa was thrilled to be hitting it off with an experienced member of the cast. She was even more excited to be making a new friend with such an interesting hobby. She listened, fascinated, as Hollie told her one funny tale after another about plays she’d been in. Even though Hollie made light of her achievement, it was obvious that she was a serious actress already. She took voice, dance, and diction lessons on the side to round out her acting ability. She had seen a few Broadway shows in New York and had even been backstage once, to visit a cast member who was a family friend.

  “I had a part in a movie once, you know,” Lisa put in playfully.

  “You did?” Hollie asked.

  “Yup. My friends and I were in a movie with Skye Ransom,” she said. Hollie squealed so loudly Lisa had to hold the phone away from her ear.

  “What? Did you say what I think you said? You were in a movie and with Skye Ransom?” Hollie cried.

  Lisa giggled at Hollie’s reaction. The whole thing had happened in such a funny way that she and Stevie and Carole tended to forget what a big deal it was. Briefly she related the story of The Saddle Club’s trip to New York for the American Horse Show, Skye Ransom’s problems riding, their helping him out, and the subsequent movie appearance.

  “Oh, my gosh,” Hollie said reverently. “I saw that one about five times. I even remember your scene. Yes, I do —I’m positive—I remember the riding scene with the three girls because I remember thinking that they looked about my age. And you weren’t just in it, you know him—I mean, you’re friends with him.” Hollie paused to sigh. “Wow, that’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. And here I was going to try to encourage you to think about professional acting. You should be the one convincing me!”

  “Professional acting? Are you kidding?” Lisa appreciated Hollie’s compliment, but she could no sooner imagine devoting herself to the stage than she could imagine running off to join the circus. She said as much to Hollie.

  “Maybe you don’t think so now, but you’re really talented, and when people find out, you’re going to have to act in a lot of plays—just to appease your fans,” Hollie said.

  “You really think I’m talented?” Lisa blurted out.

  “I really do, Lisa. Look, you’ve got stage presence, a good voice, a natural sense of timing, and you’re pretty, too. Not a bad start for an actress, dear,” Hollie said, putting on a funny, old-lady voice.

  Lisa didn’t know how to thank Hollie enough for boosting her confidence. All day she had been doubting herself—in acting and riding—and Hollie’s words had made her feel a hundred times better.

  The two girls talked awhile longer. Hollie filled her in on all the WCCT gossip—who had been in what plays, whom Mrs. Spitz liked best in the chorus, what big cities Mr. Ryan had toured in his prime as an actor. The only problem with talking to Hollie was that Lisa felt a tiny bit fake. Yes, she was enthusiastic about the play, but she could hardly imagine being as single-minded as Hollie. She kept wanting to mention The Saddle Club and Prancer, but somehow she knew Hollie wouldn’t understand her conflict any better than Carole and Stevie did. They loved riding; Hollie loved acting. Lisa didn’t know exactly where she fit in.

  Before long Mrs. Atwood called Lisa to come to dinner. Lisa glanced at her watch and grimaced. Six-thirty! She was supposed to have completed her schedule and her reading homework before dinner. So much for that. Lisa reluctantly told Hollie she had to hang up for dinner.

  “Okay, Annie, see you tomorrow. It should be a fun rehearsal because we’re going to start blocking,” Hollie predicted.

  “What’s blocking?” Lisa asked.

  “Blocking? No one told you? That’s when you plan out the action of the play with the director. Mrs. Spitz tells you where to stand when you give your lines, where to enter and exit, all that. It’s fun because you really begin to see how the play is going to look,” Hollie explained.

  “It does sound fun,” Lisa admitted. It was obvious that there were a lot of words and other things about the theater that she was still going to have to learn. On an inspiration she suggested, “Hey, maybe you can be my stage coach, Hollie, and help me understand the acting world.”

  “I’m happy to help you with anything,” Hollie replied warmly. Then she commented, “Hey, you know, that’s funny—even when you’re talking about acting, you use riding words.”

  “What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

  “You just said I’d be your stage coach—you know, like a horse and carriage, right?” Hollie asked.

  “Yeah, that is funny,” Lisa agreed, but she didn’t feel like laughing. She had missed the pun entirely, and for some reason it made her uneasy that Hollie knew she thought about horses a lot of the time, even though it was true.

  “Anyway, don’t let mean old Mrs. Hannigan get to you tonight,” Hollie kidded.

  Lisa smiled into the receiver. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out,” she promised.

  After hanging up she took another glance at her schedule. It looked just as impossible as before. The worst part was that somehow she was going to have to explain her lack of free time, Pine Hollow time, riding time, and Saddle Club time to Stevie and Carole.

  Lisa sighed. At the back of her mind she had known it would be hard to make them understand. Carole was totally devoted to riding and horses. She wanted to be a professional rider and trainer, an equine vet, a steeple-chase jockey, an instructor, or any one of a dozen things that meant dedicating her life to horses. Stevie didn’t talk as seriously about her favorite activity as Carole did, but she basically loved two things: horses and having fun.

  Lisa had discovered riding later than her two friends. She had the kind of mother who believed girls should be well-rounded. Mrs. Atwood had enrolled her daughter in every kind of after-school activity, from ballet and music to Girl Scouts—and finally to riding. The minute she’d started taking lessons at Pine Hollow, Lisa had known that she liked riding better than almost anything she’d tried. She’d worked hard and caught up fast. But there was a part of her that occasionally missed stuff like piano and tap dancing. When she’d seen the poster at the mall advertising Annie auditions, Lisa had decided on her own, without any urging from her mother, that she wanted to try out. As it turned out, all the after-school music and dance lessons had paid off at the auditions. What was more, Lisa had discovered something else: She had stage presence. She loved being up on the stage, and it showed. How was she supposed to explain all that to Stevie and Carole
?

  As she stared at the afternoon block on the computer screen, her mother’s voice calling “Dinner, Lisa!” floated up to her again. Reluctantly Lisa stood. She usually enjoyed taking a break from homework to eat with the family. But for the next few weeks, dinner was going to mean one thing and one thing only: that the afternoon was all used up.

  CAROLE AND STEVIE stood in the doorway of TD’s. Normally, they would have slid right into their usual booth, but somehow it didn’t seem right to sit there without Lisa. They found themselves choosing a table for two in the middle of the ice-cream parlor.

  “Barely recognized you guys, sitting over here,” the waitress remarked when she came to take the order. “Where’s the third musketeer?”

  “If you must know, she couldn’t make it today,” Stevie said, sounding more touchy than she meant to.

  “Easy does it, honey. You can come here just the two of you. I was only asking. Now, what’ll it be? Mustard ice cream with ketchup sauce?” The waitress chuckled at her own joke. She was used to Stevie’s bizarre flavor and topping combinations, and every once in a while she liked to try to one-up her.

  Stevie gave her a withering glance. “Good idea,” she said sarcastically, “but I’m too upset to eat. How about a nice, plain old butterscotch sundae—on pistachio.”

  The waitress shrugged. “You call that ‘nice’ and ‘plain’? That’s a good one,” she muttered.

  Carole didn’t feel much like eating either. Finally she decided, “I’ll have whatever you recommend.”

  The waitress couldn’t have looked more surprised if Stevie had ordered vanilla with hot fudge. “You’ve been coming here since you were little kids, and now you want me to recommend something?”

  Carole nodded gravely. “I just can’t decide today.”

  “Jeez, whatever’s eating you two is pretty bad. I’ll bring you a nice chocolate shake. That’ll make you feel better.” Shaking her head, the waitress went to the counter to fix their orders.

  When she left, Carole and Stevie slouched back in their chairs. “I think Annie really means a lot to Lisa,” Carole said after a few minutes. She had been trying to think of other topics of conversation, but for once she could think of only one thing to talk about with Stevie. Everything else seemed unimportant.

  Stevie nodded. “She even had her makeup on when she came to ride.”

  “She really ran to make it back, didn’t she?” Carole asked.

  “I guess she’ll be running a lot from now on with that schedule.”

  “No doubt—you saw how fast she took off.”

  “Carole, are you worried, too?” Stevie asked.

  Carole looked up. “You mean about today?”

  “About today, tomorrow, the next three weeks—and after,” Stevie said. “For all we know, Lisa might find out she likes acting better than riding and—”

  “And decide to quit Horse Wise, Pine Hollow, and The Saddle Club altogether so she can devote her life to the stage,” Carole finished for her.

  “She can’t keep up this schedule forever. That’s for sure,” Stevie murmured as the waitress set down their orders.

  “Enjoy,” the woman said, looking at Carole, “and try to enjoy, if it’s humanly possible,” she told Stevie.

  Carole mechanically took a couple bites of ice cream. She didn’t notice whose dish she was eating out of until Stevie grabbed it defensively. “Hey! Hands off my concoction. If you want something this good, you’ve got to order it, Hanson.”

  Carole snapped to attention, turning her mouth down as the pistachio-butterscotch combination hit her. “Ugh, I was so busy thinking about Lisa, I forgot to think about my taste buds.” She grabbed her milk shake to wash it down, but after a few sips she pushed the glass aside. “It’s no use. This hardly tastes any better. She could serve me strawberry shortcake, and I wouldn’t feel like eating it.”

  Stevie spooned her sundae pensively. “You know what our problem is? We’re not treating this like a normal problem. What do we always do to solve normal problems?”

  “Make them Saddle Club projects,” Carole answered promptly.

  “Exactly,” Stevie said.

  “But this isn’t a Saddle Club project. The Saddle Club’s the problem. I mean, the problem is with The Saddle Club project. I mean—oh, you know what I mean,” Carole finished, exasperated.

  “What you’re trying to say is that The Saddle Club’s problem is The Saddle Club problem, and therefore, there’s no reason why The Saddle Club can’t solve it—even if that means the two of us,” Stevie announced. She was actually beginning to sound cheerful about the situation. “Right?”

  Carole looked unconvinced. “I guess so, but what are you suggesting?”

  “It’s easy. Lisa is on the brink of making a huge mistake: abandoning the two most important things in her life—riding and us, her best friends. Unless someone helps her now, she could regret this for years. She needs help—and fast. We’ll provide it. We’ll be there for her at all times. Starting with Tuesday, no matter how tired we are, we’ll stay after class, practice with her, coach her, give her advice. It’s not as if we have to go running off after the lesson ends, so we’ll just make the decision to stay. We won’t do barn chores until after she leaves. If my straight-A average suffers a little, I’ll just have to be satisfied with B-pluses.” Stevie grinned impishly. Although she was known for many things, perfect grades wasn’t one of them. In fact, she probably would have loved perfect B-pluses!

  Carole found herself smiling, too, in spite of herself. Stevie’s enthusiasm was infectious. She made it sound so simple. There was no way Lisa would quit riding if they totally supported her for the next few weeks. “Okay, Stevie, I’m in,” she said.

  With that the two girls clinked water glasses. They were about to embark on a new Saddle Club project—maybe the most serious one they’d ever attempted.

  “HAT, GLOVES, BOOTS, saddle, bridle,” Lisa said aloud. She was giving herself and Prancer a quick once-over before joining the Tuesday-afternoon lesson, which had started five minutes ago.

  The end of the previous week and the weekend had flown by, and lately she’d been so scattered that it honestly wouldn’t have surprised her to find out that she’d forgotten to put on a piece of tack. She’d already been chastised by Max for her late arrival. She didn’t want to upset him further by showing up unprepared. Besides, she had a feeling that she ought to stay on Max’s good side as much as possible or risk a lecture sometime soon. No doubt he had noticed her absence from the stable over the weekend and wasn’t particularly pleased.

  “Red, do we look okay?” she asked.

  Pine Hollow’s chief stable hand looked up from the grain he was mixing for the evening feeding. He surveyed the pair critically. “You look fine except for one thing.”

  “What?” Lisa demanded anxiously.

  “You look about as happy as a horse with a twitch on her nose.”

  Lisa let out a deep sigh. Red was right. She had also been discovering lately how hard it was to enjoy things that you barely had time for. The truth was, she wasn’t really looking forward to the lesson, because she hadn’t ridden—and more important, hadn’t ridden Prancer—in three days. She was nervous about how the mare would perform in front of the others and whether she’d be able to control her.

  She gave Red a grin. “Is that better?”

  “A little. But it would be even better if you meant it.”

  Lisa sighed again. “I know. You’re right,” she said.

  “Now, you go in there and enjoy yourself. What’s a young girl like you got to worry about anyway, huh?”

  “Nothing, Red—absolutely nothing,” Lisa said. She turned and hurried into the indoor ring, not wanting to talk anymore. She was also getting used to pretending everything was fine. If she let down her guard in front of Red, Max, her mother, Hollie, Mrs. Spitz—even Stevie and Carole—they would just tell her to quit either the play or the rally. And she was not going to quit either one. No matte
r what. Setting her jaw determinedly, Lisa mounted and trotted over to join the others.

  Max was setting up a grid of cavalletti at various heights with varying distances in between them. “We’re doing grids today, Lisa, as soon as everyone’s warmed up. Walk, trot, and canter on your own while I finish setting up,” he instructed.

  Lisa was puzzled. She had assumed they would be riding only on the flat like before in order to prepare for the rally. “Shouldn’t we be doing dressage today?” she asked.

  Max looked up from the jumps. “If you’d been here at the start of class, Lisa, you’d have heard me explain that we don’t want the horses to get bored or sour. To keep them fresh and interested in flat work, we’re going to continue to jump in lessons. And I’ve advised everyone to take trail rides as well as schooling on our off days. This particular cavalletti exercise can be very relaxing for both the horse and the rider. It should take the edge off some of these superfit horses—such as Prancer—and perk up the lazier ones so they’ll all work better later.”

  Wordlessly, Lisa absorbed what Max was saying. She was left with one question, and she hardly dared ask it. She took a deep breath. “Uh—later?” she repeated in a barely audible voice.

  “Right. We’re going to take a break at four-thirty, go over some rules questions, and have a short, intensive flat session at five.”

  Lisa was about to explain that she had to be at rehearsal at quarter after five when she suddenly lost her nerve. She glanced at Max. She had never been truly afraid to tell him something before, no matter how strict she knew he might be. But what could he say if she told him about rehearsal? It was practically the same as saying “Acting means more to me than riding.” In her mind Lisa knew the response: “No, it doesn’t. It’s just that I got a starring role my first time out, I seem to be good at it, and I like it.” But then she heard Max saying, “How can you be sure acting won’t always come first?”

  “Because it won’t,” Lisa murmured to herself. “Just please let me do both. I know I can—really, I can.”