“We have to be patient,” Carole said, gathering the medical supplies and putting them in a bucket. “It takes a lot of repetition to teach a horse anything, and trust is no exception. Once she’s sure we aren’t going to hurt her, she’ll come around.” She paused, then added, “I hope.”
“It’s no wonder she’s head shy,” Stevie said. “If those marks on her back are any indication, she must have been beaten a lot. That would make any animal nervous around people, men or otherwise.”
Carole nodded. “We’re lucky she lets us touch her at all,” she said. “Some horses probably wouldn’t differentiate between us and men. They’d just avoid people altogether.”
“I guess you’re right,” Lisa said. “But I wish we could let her know somehow that we’re just trying to help.”
“We are letting her know that just by being here,” Carole assured her. “But we can’t rush her. She’ll trust us when she’s ready. Right now the only important thing is that she gets well.”
Stevie glanced at her watch. “I hate to nurse and run, but I’d better get over to Belle’s stall. If she doesn’t get some exercise soon, she’s going to be just as hard to handle as this girl here.” She paused. “By the way, it seems a little strange to just keep calling her ‘girl.’ Shouldn’t we give her some kind of name?”
“I guess so.” Carole avoided meeting her friends’ gaze. “But I can’t think of anything that fits right now, can you?”
“I don’t know,” Stevie said. “Lisa? What do you think?”
Lisa gazed at the horse, whose thin body seemed to sag as if it was difficult for her even to keep standing. “I can’t think of anything right now, either,” she said. “Maybe we should keep thinking about it until one of us has a good idea.”
Carole nodded. She felt a little relieved to put off the decision for a while. As hard as it would be for all of them if the mare didn’t pull through, it might make it even harder if they gave her a name. She guessed that her friends were both thinking the same thing, though neither of them said so out loud. “Okay, then,” she said. “Starlight needs some exercise, too.” She glanced at Stevie. “How about if we work him and Belle together in the ring?”
“Sounds good,” Stevie said. “Lisa, do you want to come for a ride with us? I’m sure Prancer wouldn’t mind a little exercise.” Unlike Stevie and Carole, Lisa didn’t have a horse of her own. Prancer, a spirited Thoroughbred mare, was the stable horse she usually rode.
“No, thanks. I’ll stay here,” Lisa said. For once she was glad not to have her own horse. It freed her to spend all of her time with the mare. “I’d like to try to do a little grooming if she’ll let me. We got the worst of the filth off yesterday, but she’s still pretty grimy. I’d like to see what color she really is under all that dirt.”
“Okay,” Stevie said. “We’ll see you in a while, then.” She and Carole headed for the tack room.
After they had gone, Lisa leaned on the half door of the stall, hoping that her presence would help the mare get used to people. But the mare seemed to be doing her best to ignore the girl. She stood at the back of the stall, facing the wall. Lisa tried talking gently to her, and for a moment the mare seemed to be listening. Her ears flicked back and her head lifted a little. But then her neck drooped again and her ears went slack.
After standing and talking to her for another twenty minutes, Lisa decided it was time to try some grooming. Picking up her grooming bucket, she carefully slid open the stall door, talking quietly to the mare all the while. The mare watched Lisa warily as she entered the stall but allowed the girl to put her in cross-ties with a minimum of fuss.
“There, that’s not so bad, is it?” Lisa murmured. She suspected that the mare’s relative docility had more to do with exhaustion than anything else, but she didn’t let herself think that way for very long. Instead she continued chatting while she wiped the mare’s back and sides with a soft cloth, doing her best to avoid the worst cuts and abrasions. The mare flinched a few times when Lisa touched an injured spot, but otherwise she stood quietly. Still, Lisa could tell by the tenseness in the horse’s body that she was far from relaxed.
Moving very slowly and carefully, Lisa ran the cloth down the horse’s legs one by one, stopping well short of the swollen forefoot. She decided not to press her luck by working on the horse’s face. That could wait for another day. Instead she picked up a soft body brush and carefully tried to work out some of the dirtiest spots from the mare’s coat.
“Don’t worry, girl,” she said soothingly as she worked, moving the soft-bristled, wood-handled body brush over her bony sides. “This won’t hurt a bit, I promise. I’m not even going to try to use a dandy brush on you until some of those cuts heal. But this will be enough to get you cleaned up a little. I bet you have a pretty gray coat underneath all this dirt, don’t you?”
A few minutes later Lisa dropped the body brush into the bucket. “I guess you’ve had enough grooming for today,” she said as she carefully released the mare from her cross-ties and shut the stall door. Then she leaned against the opposite wall and watched the horse for a few minutes. The mare’s head drooped as she turned around to face the back of the stall. Within moments she looked just as she had for most of the time since Lisa had known her. The only difference was that this time a few patches of relatively clean coat peeked out from the mess of bandages and dirt that covered her. The clean spots shone gently in the dimness of the stall.
“I bet you were awfully pretty once,” Lisa said in a low voice, talking more to herself than to the horse. “Silvery gray and beautiful.” Lisa thought of Pepper, another gray she had known. Pepper had been her favorite horse to ride at Pine Hollow until his retirement. He had died of old age not too long ago, and sometimes Lisa still missed him. “It’s hard to believe anybody could be coldhearted enough to let you get like this,” she told the mare. At the thought, tears started to come to her eyes, and Lisa blinked them away quickly. This was no time to get weepy. She decided to go find Red and make sure he remembered that the mare needed special attention at feeding time.
When she returned to the gray mare’s stall some time later, Lisa saw that the horse had turned around and was facing out. Approaching carefully, Lisa made sure to keep her voice low and unthreatening. “Hi, girl,” she said. “Did you miss me?”
The mare pricked her ears toward her for a moment and didn’t turn away as Lisa stood outside the stall. Still, Lisa couldn’t help starting to feel sad again as she looked at the poor, pathetic creature. It seemed like such a long shot that the horse would ever recover completely from the terrible state the girls had found her in.
SEVERAL HOURS LATER Carole and Stevie found Lisa perched on a stool outside the mare’s stall, reading a book about equine foot care. She had borrowed both the stool and the book from Max because she had wanted to read about thrush. She knew a little about it already—for instance, she knew that it was an infection of the frog, a part of the horse’s foot, and that it was generally a sign of poor care, since it occurred when a horse’s feet were allowed to remain wet or dirty for an extended period of time. But she’d never had to treat a case before and she wanted to make sure she knew exactly what she was doing.
“We’re going to call it a day,” Stevie said. “Are you ready to go?”
Lisa looked up from the book, marking her place with her finger. “You go ahead. I’m going to stay for a while.”
Carole peered into the stall at the mare, who was standing in her usual position with her head drooping down tiredly. “How is she?”
“About the same,” Lisa admitted. “She’s definitely calmer here than she was at CARL. But her mood doesn’t seem to have improved much otherwise.”
“Too bad,” Stevie said. “I guess I was hoping that just coming to Pine Hollow would make her feel better.”
“Me too,” Lisa said. “But when you’ve been through what she’s been through, that kind of thing probably doesn’t seem so important.”
C
arole nodded. “She’s pretty far gone. We shouldn’t expect too much, especially at first. Her recovery might be very slow.”
“I just hope she starts to get better soon,” Lisa said. She hesitated for a moment, then added, “I can’t help wondering sometimes if she even wants to get better.”
“I was wondering the same thing,” said Carole, turning away from the stall to look at Lisa. “It seems like more than her body is broken. Her spirit is broken, too. And that can be much harder to treat.”
“Well, we’ll just have to find a way,” Stevie said with determination.
Lisa sighed. “Once or twice today I thought there were little signs that she recognized me, but they were too subtle for me to be sure. And it doesn’t seem to make her trust me any more than she did.”
Carole squeezed Lisa’s arm. “She’ll come around,” she said. But Lisa thought her friend didn’t sound totally certain about that.
Carole and Stevie said good-bye to Lisa and left. Most of the other riders had also left, and the stable was quiet except for the sounds of horses settling down for the evening.
Lisa leaned back against the wall and returned to her book. But as she tried to read, her mind started to wander. She thought about what Carole had said about the mare’s spirit being broken. It seemed to be true, and the thought disturbed Lisa. With Judy’s guidance, Lisa was confident that she could do a good job taking care of the mare’s physical ailments. But what if that wasn’t enough? The best medical care in the world wouldn’t make much of a difference if the patient had lost the will to live.
Lisa didn’t know how long she’d been sitting there alone when she heard footsteps coming toward her from the direction of the entrance. It was Red O’Malley. “Lisa? There you are,” he greeted her. “Your mother just called looking for you. She’s wondering where you are.”
“Oh, thanks, Red,” Lisa said, glancing at her watch. “I’ll call her back right away.”
The groom nodded and hurried away. Lisa picked up the book and the stool and returned them to Max’s office. Then she headed for the phone to call home. Unfortunately she wouldn’t be able to come to the stable until after school the next day. Once again she found herself wishing that Christmas vacation would come quickly. This time it had nothing to do with the Starlight Ride—somehow that didn’t seem nearly as important now—and everything to do with spending time with the sick mare. Lisa wanted to do all she could to help the mare get better. She just hoped that all she could do would be enough.
“ALL RIGHT, GIRLS. Line up in alphabetical order.”
Lisa followed her gym teacher’s order automatically, taking her place in line between Melissa Albright and Caitlin Avery. It was Monday, and the students were being tested in physical fitness. The boys were gathered on one side of the big gymnasium and the girls on the other. The teacher was telling the girls about the tests they would be taking. She was having some trouble getting her message across, since many of the girls were ignoring her and peeking across the gym at the boys, who were already warming up by doing push-ups. Lisa wasn’t paying attention to any of it. She was too busy thinking about the sick mare.
She had called Pine Hollow first thing that morning. Max had told her that the mare had had a restless night and seemed no better than yesterday. That wasn’t the answer Lisa was hoping for.
She watched blankly as Sue Adams started doing sit-ups while the teacher counted. In her mind’s eye she was looking over the edge of the hill in the state park at the bonethin, miserable mare in the tiny, dirty pen below. It was an image she doubted she would ever forget—just as she would never forget the sight of poor Sal struggling through his final days in the corral at CARL. She remembered the way he had reached forward and gently taken a clump of grass from her hand. Even though his owners had left him to rot, he had still trusted humans, and there was something heartbreaking about that.
She hadn’t been able to do anything to help Sal. But this time things would be different. Lisa was going to do everything she could to make sure of that. That morning she had given her father the roll of film she’d used on Saturday. He had promised to have the pictures developed that day and to stop by the police station to drop off copies of the ones Lisa had taken of the mare. Lisa hoped her photos would help the police to convict the mare’s owner.
Her thoughts were interrupted when Melissa Albright nudged her in the ribs. “Hey, Lisa,” Melissa said. “Did you hear who just asked Kimberly Poe to the Christmas dance at Fenton Hall?”
Lisa just shrugged. She really couldn’t care less right now about who was taking Kimberly to the big holiday dance at Stevie’s school.
But Melissa didn’t seem to notice her disinterest. “Bobby Effingwell! Do you know him? He’s the class president over there, but he’s kind of a nerd. Still, Kimberly is excited about going.”
“That’s good,” Lisa said with a sigh. “I’ve met Bobby. He’s nice.”
“He may be nice, but I wouldn’t go with him,” Melissa chattered on. “Hey, but speaking of Christmas, I heard that Mrs. Norton’s homeroom class is chipping in to buy her a Christmas present. They’re trying to get enough money to buy her a silver necklace to replace the one that fell down the drain when she was chasing that hamster around the science lab. Isn’t that nice? My homeroom class would never do something like that, but that’s because we have Mr. Ernst. We can’t stand him—he never lets us talk after the first bell. What a grouch. I’d be surprised if he ever gets presents from anybody. So what are you getting for Christmas this year, Lisa?”
Lisa breathed a sigh of relief when the teacher finally called on Melissa to take her turn at sit-ups. Now she could go back to thinking about the mare.
But once the sit-up test was over and the group began the next activity—rope climbing—Lisa found herself standing near a cluster of girls discussing that Friday’s performance of The Nutcracker in Washington.
A girl named Christy Marks noticed Lisa and drew her into the group. “Didn’t you tell me that you’re going to the ballet on Friday, too, Lisa?” she asked.
Lisa nodded halfheartedly. “My friend Stevie’s parents are taking us.”
“It should be great,” commented a short, cheerful girl named Emma. “I don’t like most ballets that much, but The Nutcracker is great. It makes everything seem so Christmassy!”
“No, I’ll tell you what’s Christmassy,” Christy said. “It’s hearing them play the same carols over and over again while you’re shopping at the mall.”
The other girls laughed, and Lisa did her best to pretend to join in.
Another girl, Amy Russo, finished her turn on the rope and joined the group. “What are you talking about?” she asked.
“What else? Christmas,” said Emma.
“I can’t wait for vacation to start,” Amy said dreamily. “I’m going to spend the first three days sleeping. Then I’ll spend the next three days at the mall. Then I’ll probably just do nothing for the rest of the time. It’ll be great.”
“My parents are having a big formal holiday party on New Year’s Eve,” Christy confided. “My mom said I can wear a strapless dress if I can find one that’s not too expensive. So that’s my goal for the holidays.”
As Lisa listened to the other girls talk, she began to wonder if everybody in the world had been infected with the Christmas bug except for her. She couldn’t imagine getting excited about the holidays or stupid parties or strapless dresses. She had much more important things to think about.
She sighed as the teacher announced it was time to start the fifty-yard dash. It was turning out to be a very long day.
STEVIE’S DAY WAS going just as badly as Lisa’s, but for a different reason. The reason was Alex.
It seemed that every time Stevie turned around, someone else was telling her about how ridiculous her twin was acting these days. One girl had stopped her in the hall to describe how Alex and Paige had held hands under their desks all through homeroom. Another had told Stevie about how Miss Fen
ton, the school’s headmistress, had caught the couple smooching in the science lab. A third had spotted them feeding each other bites of cookie at lunchtime. And worst of all, every time Stevie spotted Alex herself, he had the dopey, lovesick expression on his face that she was quickly growing to hate.
“Stevie, you’ll never guess what happened today in history class,” exclaimed Patty Featherstone, catching up with Stevie in the hall between classes.
Stevie sighed. “Don’t tell me,” she muttered. She already knew that it was going to have something to do with Alex.
“Ms. Galloway caught your brother passing a mushy love note to Paige,” Patty said with a grin. “She took it away from him and read it out loud in front of the entire class.”
This was getting out of hand. Normally Stevie loved to see Alex humiliated, but normally she was the one humiliating him. The longer her brother’s romance went on, the more eager he seemed to be to make a fool of himself at every opportunity. And Stevie was afraid it was starting to rub off on her.
She smiled weakly at Patty. “I’d better go. I don’t want to be late for English,” she said. She turned and headed down the hall. As she passed a group of kids standing by an open locker, they all turned to look at her. Then they turned back to the locker and started giggling. Stevie recognized some of them as members of Alex’s history class, and she sighed. That must have been some note.
She had almost reached her English classroom when she saw them. Paige was standing against the wall, a pile of books by her feet and a single yellow flower in her hand. Stevie recognized the flower. Just that morning it had been happily growing from the orchid plant her mother had spent months coaxing into bloom. Stevie wondered if her mother had missed it yet. She had a feeling that when she did, Mrs. Lake was going to be very, very upset, but that pleasant thought would have to wait. Right now she had to try to talk some sense into her twin.
Alex didn’t notice his sister approaching. He was leaning forward, his face only inches from Paige’s, one hand against the wall by her shoulder. His other hand was brushing wisps of hair away from her face.
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