Stagecoach

by Bonnie Bryant

  At the sound of Max clapping his hands, Lisa shook the confused thoughts from her mind. Prancer had already shied at imaginary ghosts twice, and Lisa had had to quiet her. The important thing now was warming up quickly and riding for as long and as well as she could.

  TO LISA’S SURPRISE Prancer behaved far better for the rest of the lesson. As soon as they began jumping through the grid, the mare seemed to settle down to business. Max’s comments of “Nice!” and “Good job!” made Lisa glow from head to foot.

  Everyone looked happy and relaxed as they jumped the cavalletti, first without stirrups, then without stirrups or reins—their arms crossed on their chests—and finally, without stirrups or reins and with their eyes closed. “Whoo-eee!” Stevie hollered after going through the last time. She grabbed the knotted reins from Topside’s neck and asked him to slow to a trot. “It felt like Topside was taking off for the sky,” she said.

  “It is a great feeling, isn’t it?” Max asked, summoning them all to the center. “Why do you think so?”

  Carole raised her hand. “You really feel together with your horse. You feel totally balanced, and so does he. And there’s a perfect rhythm because of the spacing between the cavalletti: five bounces in a row.”

  Max nodded vigorously. “Exactly. You got what I was hinting at, and that’s rhythm. Rhythm is always important in riding. You’ve got to establish a good, working rhythm on the flat and learn to keep it over fences. The spacing of the jumps, as you said, Carole, forced them to jump in an even rhythm. That’s what I want you to keep in mind most today as you ride your tests. I want to be able to set a metronome to Topside’s trot, Stevie. And Lisa, I want Prancer’s canter to make me think of a Beethoven sonata. All right, everyone take ten minutes for a water break, and be back at five. Sharp.”

  Lisa stared numbly at Max. She had gotten so caught up in riding Prancer that she had forgotten about rehearsal. The big clock on the wall read five minutes to five. Lisa would just have time to untack, give Prancer a quick grooming, and fly. For a second she let herself think of lingering at Pine Hollow, eating ice cream at TD’s, and heading home for a relaxed family dinner. It seemed like forever since she’d been able just to hang out, but it had actually been less than a week.

  Gritting her teeth, she swung off the big mare and gave her a pat. “Thank you for being so good even though I haven’t ridden you,” Lisa whispered in her ear.

  “Keep up the good work, Lisa,” Max said as he dragged the cavalletti to the side of the ring. Lisa nodded silently. She still couldn’t say anything. She just couldn’t.

  “COME ON, YOU two—let’s talk, ‘Enter working trot sitting’ back in the indoor ring,” Carole called. She led Starlight toward the ring, beckoning for Lisa and Stevie to follow. The three of them had watered their horses and grabbed a quick drink for themselves before regrouping for the flat session. Or at least Carole and Stevie had. Unknown to them, however, Lisa had untacked Prancer and put her away for the evening.

  “Ready?” Stevie asked.

  Lisa bit her lip. “Stevie,” she began, “I know this is kind of a big request, but could you tell Max that I, uh, can’t make the five o’clock flat lesson?”

  Stevie looked puzzled. “Sure, Lisa. But don’t you want to tell him yourself?”

  Lisa shook her head. “I would, but I can’t. I’ve really got to run. Rehearsal starts at quarter after five, and I told my mom to get here five minutes ago. She’s going to drive me over. I don’t want to explain to Max about—you know.”

  Stevie put a reassuring arm around Lisa’s shoulders. “I do know, and listen, don’t worry. I’ll tell Max that you’re going to ride later. Carole and I can meet you back here at seven. Prancer will have eaten by then, and she’ll be all ready for an evening schooling session with The Saddle Club.”

  Lisa looked surprised. “Oh, I can’t come back, Stevie,” she said. “I’ve got a history essay due tomorrow, and I’m one assignment behind in math—which even if I do in the morning on the bus, I’ll only get halfway through—and I’ve got to memorize all my lines by evening rehearsal. It’s not as if I’m an apple seller with two words to say. Annie is a huge part—the biggest. There are pages and pages of cues and blocking to learn, too, in addition to the actual lines. Hollie’s been studying her part every night. But thanks for telling Max. ’Bye!”

  As she spoke, Lisa had begun to edge away. When she called her good-bye, she was through the door and running up the driveway as fast as she could. Stevie stared after her. Cues? Blocking? Hollie? Was this the new Lisa with new words and new friends? Stevie frowned. If so, she didn’t like the new Lisa. The old one would have faced Max and told him about her rehearsal. But then, Stevie thought, the old Lisa wouldn’t have had a rehearsal to tell him about. She sighed and went to get Topside.

  Five minutes later, when she told Max the news, he raised his eyebrows but said nothing about Lisa and Prancer. Instead he told Stevie to pick up a trot and quit slouching. Stevie was relieved. She would much rather have Max correct her position than get angry at Lisa. On the other hand, she didn’t necessarily think that his silence was a good thing. It probably meant that he was brooding and that Lisa would hear about it later.

  The rest of the lesson went well. Rather than go through all their dressage tests from start to finish, Max had them select the parts they thought were the most difficult. He worked with them all individually. Betsy was enjoying riding Barq but had trouble keeping her canter circles small enough. Carole couldn’t get Starlight to bend around the corners. Veronica and Polly wanted to work on their entrances and exits. Finally Stevie was the only one left.

  “All right, Stevie, how about it?” Max asked.

  Stevie had been thinking as hard as she could while Max coached the others, but she had come up empty. Topside just didn’t have one problem area. “I couldn’t think of anything Topside was bad at,” she said, steeling herself for the worst. Max always said it was the rider’s fault if he or she didn’t know what to practice. It also sounded a lot like something Veronica would say. To her surprise Max simply asked her to show him what she’d been working on. Happily, she put Topside through his paces, throwing in a few circles, two halts, and even some leg yielding on the diagonal. Max nodded knowingly. “Just as I suspected,” he said. “You’re completely right.”

  “I am?” Stevie asked incredulously.

  “Yup. Topside has never looked better.”

  Stevie sat up straighter in the saddle and smiled. “Why, thank you, I—” she began.

  “But you, my dear, could use some work,” Max finished.

  The class burst out laughing at the shocked expression on Stevie’s face. “Me?” she asked.

  “You,” Max said succinctly. The class tittered. “Seriously, Stevie, do you understand what I mean?”

  Stevie thought for a minute. “I think so. You’re saying that Topside is doing everything perfectly even though I’m not always telling him to do everything perfectly.”

  “Precisely.” Max turned to the rest of the class. “That’s an important lesson to learn. You’re all going to have a perfectly schooled horse someday, just like Topside—a good mover, an old hand at dressage—and he’s going to make you look great. But you have to live up to your horse. You can’t just, ahem, slouch along for the ride like a sack of potatoes. In many ways you’re lucky with a horse like Topside. You don’t have to worry so much about his behavior, so you can work doubly hard on your own skills. Got it, Stevie?”

  “Got it,” Stevie said. Then she leaned over his neck and in a loud stage whisper, added, “Don’t worry, boy. As of right now, this sack of potatoes is turning back into a girl.”

  Everyone laughed again until Max called an end to the lesson. On their way in Carole and Stevie were too caught up in discussing what the two of them had learned in the lesson to remember to worry about what Lisa hadn’t.

  LISA PUT DOWN her pen with a flourish. “History paper, done,” she said aloud. How good the paper was,
she couldn’t be sure. “At least it’s done,” she told herself.

  The digital clock by Lisa’s bed read 9:09. Unbelievably, she was right on schedule—actually, three minutes ahead of time. She even had a five-minute break scheduled between “Write paper” and “Memorize Lines.” That meant eight whole minutes of free time. Without another thought she dialed Stevie, who conference-called Carole.

  The first thing Lisa wanted to hear about was what she had missed in the dressage lesson. Carole and Stevie described the class to her, including Max’s advice to Stevie and Stevie’s reply.

  “A sack of potatoes?” Lisa demanded. “You’ve never looked like a sack of potatoes in your life!”

  “I know! Maybe a sack of carrots or a sack of onions or even a sack of flour—but potatoes? Really!” Stevie said haughtily.

  “To Max, hunching your shoulders for two beats translates as looking like a sack of potatoes,” Carole commented dryly.

  Lisa asked how Starlight had done. Carole said she was pleased. “I really think he’s improving every day. Today was perfect for him because we’d already jumped, so he was a lot quieter on the flat. He’s still not bending around the corners, but at least he seems to be listening.”

  “I wish I could have been there,” Lisa said. “Prancer and I really could have used that individual attention.”

  Tactfully Carole changed the subject to Lisa’s rehearsal. Lisa obviously felt bad enough about not riding in the second lesson without their going on and on about it.

  “You really want to know?” Lisa asked.

  “Of course! We just haven’t seen you very much, so we haven’t had the chance to ask you,” Carole said.

  Naturally, Lisa couldn’t wait to tell them about being in the play. She had saved up stories about the different actors and the funny mistakes people made—like the time Mr. Ryan had come onstage at the wrong time. Instead of stopping the rehearsal, he had said, “Oh, dear, I seem to be in the wrong scene. Won’t you excuse me?” and walked offstage, still in character.

  When she had finished, Stevie said, “It sounds great, Lisa.” She really meant it, too. Before, she had thought actors all took themselves very seriously. From what Lisa said, though, there was at least as much clowning around at Annie as there was at Pine Hollow.

  “It is great. It really is. It’s just—” Lisa stopped mid-sentence. In the middle of talking her voice had choked up.

  “What?” Carole asked. “What’s wrong?”

  Lisa gulped. She went on, her voice quavering. “It’s just that everyone else is ten times more experienced than I am, and I have to ask stupid questions every two seconds. It’s so embarrassing. Hollie—this girl who’s a great actress and really nice, too—she’s been helping me. But I feel like a total ignoramus! I didn’t know what ‘blocking’ was, or ‘downstage’ or ‘stage right’ or anything. And everyone else knows. It’s not like the school plays, where there are always a bunch of little kids in the chorus. WCCT is really serious. I feel like I’m out of my league.”

  “But even though they’re really experienced, you’re the one who got the lead, Lisa. You can’t forget that,” Carole said.

  “I guess so,” Lisa said glumly. “Sometimes that makes it worse, though. I have the feeling that they think I don’t deserve the lead.”

  “Who’s ‘they’?” Carole asked. “The director? She cast you as Annie. Mr. Ryan? You said he told you you had a great voice. Hollie? She sounds really friendly.”

  “Oh, she is,” Lisa said. “I know you both would like her. She’s as crazy about acting as you—I mean, we—are about riding. But I still wish there were a production just for idiots. This afternoon I had to ask what ‘off book’ meant.”

  “Well, what does it mean?” Carole asked.

  “Just what it sounds like: It means you don’t need to use your script anymore. We’re supposed to be ‘off book’ by tomorrow, or the end of the week at the latest. Of course I had to interrupt Mrs. Spitz to ask that.”

  “Everybody has to interrupt the director to learn that stuff when they get their first part. If I started to act, I wouldn’t know,” Stevie pointed out.

  “That’s right, they should be sympathetic,” Carole added.

  Lisa had to admit that most of the cast was helpful and nice to her. “I guess I’m letting one girl get to me too much,” she said. She told them about Anna, the girl who didn’t like the smell of horses. Since that first incident she had continued to be rude to Lisa, laughing when Lisa asked a question and whispering behind her back.

  “Sounds like she’s the Veronica diAngelo of the play,” Stevie said.

  In spite of herself Lisa started to giggle. Stevie had really hit the nail on the head. Anna was the Veronica of the play. She was stuck-up, she was spoiled, and she was mean. Somehow, comparing the two girls helped put things in perspective. After all, Lisa had always been able to handle Veronica, so why should she let this other rude girl get the better of her?

  “Too bad we’re not in the play, or we could really make things hard for this Anna character,” Stevie said, doing her best to imitate a gangster in an old movie.

  “I’ll just have to rely on Hollie’s and my ability to get even,” Lisa said. “She’s my stage coach, you know.” Lisa explained what the term meant and how Hollie had noticed that Lisa used horsey words even to describe things that were totally unrelated to horses.

  “That’s the spirit, Lisa. You’ve got to wake these actors up to a whole new world outside of stage right and stage left. Maybe they’ll learn something, too,” Stevie said enthusiastically.

  “Exactly,” Carole added. “Who knows—in some way Hollie might learn as much from you as you do from her. It’s like when you and May Grover teamed up.”

  Lisa had to laugh. Carole was referring to Lisa’s partnership with May Grover, a younger rider at Pine Hollow. Supposedly Lisa had been teaching May how to harness a pony to a cart. Instead, May had taught Lisa everything.

  “One thing’s for sure,” Lisa said, “I’d like to teach Anna Henchman a thing or two!” She was surprised to hear herself joking around. Then again, she thought, with Stevie and Carole it was impossible not to. Of course the eight minutes had long since passed. Lisa didn’t mind, though. She always got more work done when she was in a good mood. She did have to go, however. Reluctantly she got ready to say her good-byes.

  “Time to memorize, huh?” Stevie asked.

  “You got it,” Lisa said. Before hanging up she thanked Stevie and Carole for all their support and apologized for all the time she hadn’t spent with them. And there was one more order of business to take care of. If they were going to be at Pine Hollow, Lisa wanted them to assure Max that she was doing everything she could to spend all the time possible at the stable. “Could you tell him I’m working with Prancer as much as I can?” she asked. “I’m absolutely, positively going to be there for the rally—although I might have to leave just a tad early—and I promise, cross my heart, to do everything I have to so Prancer will be completely ready in two—I mean one and a half—weeks,” Lisa finished breathlessly.

  Stevie and Carole knew that Max would respond better if Lisa’s pledge came from Lisa, not from them. They didn’t want to add another worry to her list, though. Both girls promised to do all they could to persuade Max that Prancer would be ready.

  After Lisa hung up, Stevie wasted no time in summing up the situation. “Well, she hasn’t forgotten about us yet,” she said.

  “No, she hasn’t. And we’re not going to forget about her, either. We’ll smooth things over with Max about practice,” Carole vowed.

  “Even if everything’s okay with him, though, it’s going to be tough for Lisa to get Prancer ready. I think the worst thing would be for her to go and really mess up, like she did at the last show with Prancer,” said Stevie.

  Carole agreed. “I might want to quit riding after two horrible shows,” she speculated.

  “I can hardly see you wanting to quit, Carole Hanson,”
Stevie remarked.

  “You’re right,” Carole wailed. “I don’t have anything else to do!”

  Stevie burst out laughing. She knew exactly what Carole meant, but it sounded hilarious. Both she and Carole were completely happy riding, doing Horse Wise, seeing their boyfriends, Phil and Cam, when they could, and—for Stevie’s part—getting in and out of trouble. They liked to think of school as something they did on the side.

  Lisa was different. She cared a lot about grades, and judging from her success at the auditions, she was a talented actress.

  “I understand what you’re saying,” Stevie said when she had controlled her chuckles. “We’re both afraid that being great at two things—four if you count acting, singing, and dancing, all of which she has to do in the play—is going to force Lisa to choose.”

  “And she might not choose riding,” Carole finished. “Especially if she thinks she’s not doing a good job.”

  “You know what I say? Saddle Club meeting at Pine Hollow tomorrow afternoon,” Stevie decided.

  “Without Lisa?” Carole asked. She didn’t want them to get too used to having two-person meetings.

  “Lisa will be there in spirit, because that’s what we’re going to talk about,” Stevie answered, “Getting her to this rally and keeping her in The Saddle Club. If we don’t have the meeting, her days being there for real might be numbered.”

  Carole had to agree.

  WHEN CAROLE GOT to Pine Hollow the next day, she was all set to sit down with Stevie and plan their attack. She had spent her English and math classes jotting down points they could use to persuade Lisa to put acting second—at least once the play had ended. Stevie, however, seemed to have already made—and activated—her own plan. She was saddled up and riding outside. She waved to Carole from the outdoor ring. Carole waved back automatically and then stopped in her tracks. Instead of Topside Stevie was riding Prancer.

  Suddenly it hit Carole. Why hadn’t they thought of that before? Prancer needed work, and so did Stevie. Topside, on the other hand, did not. The most important thing was keeping him fresh and interested for the rally. A little light schooling and a trail ride or two would do the trick. Riding Prancer, Stevie could sharpen her skills and help Lisa get the mare ready.