Shying at Trouble

by Bonnie Bryant

  Mrs. Atwood reached to adjust the collar of Lisa’s dress. “All right then,” she said. “You’d better take it off and hang it up before it gets wrinkled. Why don’t you two girls run along upstairs and do that? I’m dying for a cup of tea.”

  “Okay,” Lisa said, hardly daring to believe her luck. For once, it seemed, her mother wasn’t desperate for her company. That was certainly unusual, but she wasn’t about to question it. “See you later, Mom.”

  “It’s lovely to see you as always, Carole,” Mrs. Atwood said. “Now you make sure Lisa hangs up that dress right away, okay? Don’t get her talking about horses so she forgets.”

  “I won’t,” Carole promised with a smile that looked a bit forced.

  Mrs. Atwood smiled back. Then she headed toward the kitchen, humming under her breath.

  Once the two girls were alone, Carole turned back to Lisa, her large, deep brown eyes serious once again. “I’ve been thinking,” she said earnestly. “I feel terrible that we’ve been fighting.”

  Lisa wasn’t sure what to say. She felt bad about their fight, too. But she couldn’t help remembering how it had started—Carole had kept an important secret from her. “Me too,” she said. “But the thing with Prancer—”

  “I know,” Carole interrupted. “That was mostly my fault, I guess.” She shifted her feet nervously and bit her lip. “Things have just been so busy lately, with work and school and Samson’s training.… I’m not making excuses. I’m just trying to explain. But mostly I’m trying to say that I’m really sorry for what happened.”

  Her face and voice were so sincere, so completely Carole-like in their trusting hopefulness, that Lisa softened immediately. Suddenly everything she’d been so angry about didn’t seem quite as important anymore—not as important as a four-year friendship, anyway. Maybe Mom’s mood really is rubbing off on me, she thought. “Why don’t we go upstairs?” she said to Carole. “If I don’t put this dress away, Mom will freak out. Then we can talk.”

  Carole nodded quickly. “That would be great.”

  Neither girl said a word as they walked up the stairs together and entered Lisa’s room. Pushing the door closed, Lisa headed for her desk and perched on the edge of the chair. Carole seemed slightly uncomfortable. Instead of flopping into the rose-patterned lounge chair as she usually did, she hovered near the door, leaning tentatively against Lisa’s dresser.

  “Well,” Lisa said after another moment of silence. “Um …”

  “I’m really sorry,” Carole said in a rush. “I should have known you’d be worried about Prancer. I should have realized how you’d be feeling.”

  You should have told me the truth, Lisa thought. But she didn’t say it. “Well,” she said instead, “I wish Max hadn’t asked you not to tell anyone. I really thought Prancer must be horribly sick or dying or something, since no one was talking.”

  “I know.” Carole looked contrite. “That wasn’t fair. I know Max wanted to keep this quiet, but sometimes secrets are more trouble than they’re worth, you know?”

  “I know.” Lisa’s mind flashed to Alex for a moment. But she pushed the thought aside. “I just wish you’d trusted me. You know I wouldn’t have breathed a word to anyone if I knew Max didn’t want people to know.”

  “I know that,” Carole said. “I guess maybe I just forgot. Or I was confused, you know? Trying to do the right thing … Anyway, I don’t blame you for being mad and everything. But I wanted you to know why I did what I did. It wasn’t because I’m a bad friend, or because I didn’t care about your feelings.”

  Lisa winced as she remembered some of the horrible things she’d said to Carole during their fight. “I’m sorry, too,” she said. “For the stuff I said, I mean. I know you’ve been busy.” That wasn’t an excuse for what Carole had done, but Lisa knew it wouldn’t do any good for her to hold a grudge. What had happened had happened, and all they could do now was take it from there. If that meant compromising a little, letting Carole off the hook a bit too easily, so be it. “Anyway, I’m just glad Prancer’s not sick.” She paused. “Although this twin thing is pretty scary, isn’t it?”

  Carole nodded. “Sure, but we’ll get her through it,” she said. “And listen, while we’re on the subject of secrets, there’s something else I think you should know.”

  As Lisa shifted in her seat, the fabric of her dress rustled around her legs. Suddenly remembering her promise to her mother, she stood and reached around to unhook the closure in the back. “What is it?” she asked, her voice slightly muffled by the fabric as she slipped the dress off over her head.

  “It’s something else about Prancer.” Carole’s voice suddenly sounded brighter. “Something great. Max made me promise not to tell anybody this part, either, but I figure it’s the least I owe you after putting you through all that stuff with her pregnancy and everything.…”

  Still holding the dress, Lisa shook her hair back and stared at Carole. She wasn’t sure she was ready for another surprise today. “What is it?”

  Carole was grinning. “Max and your dad have been talking for a couple of months now,” she said. “It’s all arranged. Well, almost, you know, except maybe for some final financial details or whatever. I guess there’s no real rush with that, since they weren’t going to tell you until your birthday, and I know your dad wants it to be a big surprise, but I thought it would help you get through the next few months while Prancer’s out of commission, and so I thought if I told you—”

  “Told me what?” Lisa demanded impatiently, clutching the dress so tightly that the fabric started to wrinkle. At times like this, Carole could be awfully aggravating. She tended to talk in circles and interrupt herself so often that whatever she was saying got completely lost in the shuffle. “What are you talking about?”

  “Prancer, of course,” Carole replied matter-of-factly. “Your dad’s going to buy her for you. Once her foals are weaned, she’ll be all yours!”

  TWO

  “Callie’s really making great progress, isn’t she?” Carole commented, leaning on the fence of Pine Hollow’s main outdoor schooling ring. Her gaze was trained on a tall, blond girl aboard a sturdy palomino. Watching Callie Forester riding around the ring on PC right then, it would have been impossible for a stranger to tell that she was still suffering from residual brain damage as the result of a bad car accident. Even Carole was having trouble seeing the weakness in Callie’s right side, and she knew exactly what to look for. She had followed the other girl’s recovery every step of the way. It was only natural, since she had been in the car at the time of the accident a few months earlier.

  Stevie, who was perched on the fence a couple of feet away, nodded. “She’s amazing, isn’t she?” She shook her head, her voice deep with admiration. “When Callie puts her mind to something, it gets done.”

  “Of course, we should probably give Emily some of the credit, too,” Carole reminded Stevie, glancing at the other rider in the ring with Callie. Their friend Emily Williams had been born with cerebral palsy, and she couldn’t walk without crutches. But that hadn’t stopped her from becoming an accomplished rider, with a little help from PC, who had been specially trained to compensate for his rider’s physical differences. Emily’s expertise and support—not to mention her cheerful, unwavering encouragement—had been instrumental in Callie’s relatively rapid recovery. At the moment, she was sitting aboard Patch, one of Max’s gentlest school horses, watching with rapt attention as Callie cantered around her on PC.

  Carole watched the workout in the ring silently for a moment or two. Then Stevie glanced over at her. “By the way,” she said, “it was cool what you did yesterday. Going over to apologize to Lisa, I mean. She can be pretty scary when she’s mad at someone.” She shuddered elaborately. “Believe me, I know.”

  Carole shrugged. “It wasn’t that big a deal,” she muttered. She still felt a little bit uncomfortable about the whole incident. Their fight had gone on for longer than she’d quite realized at the time, which probably
explained why Stevie seemed so relieved that it was over now. Carole supposed that was partly her fault. She had been terribly upset for the first day or so after the fight, but then, somehow, she had gotten distracted for a couple of days. She figured that probably had something to do with how busy she was at the stable with Samson’s training and everything else. And of course, worrying about that stupid history test hadn’t helped much, either. In any case, it had taken Lisa’s cold glares on Saturday to really bring their problems back to the front of her mind. After stewing about it a little bit longer, she had finally decided that the best thing to do was just to apologize, which seemed to be what Lisa wanted. She had wanted to end this fight before it got any farther out of hand.

  Of course, Carole had been pretty angry herself at the time. Lisa had really jumped to conclusions about Carole’s intentions, and Carole still didn’t think she’d been fair. In fact, her reaction had been downright shocking—she was so even-tempered most of the time that when she really lost it she could be pretty scary, as Stevie had put it.

  Still, Carole knew better than anyone that horse love could make people do crazy things. And Lisa was definitely crazy about Prancer. She had been in deep horse love practically from the moment she’d first laid eyes on the elegant Thoroughbred mare.

  And now Prancer was going to be hers.… Carole still felt a warm glow when she remembered breaking the good news to Lisa the day before. Lisa hadn’t really believed her at first, but after countless assurances from Carole that it was the truth, she had been thrilled.

  In Carole’s opinion, it was long past time that Lisa had her own horse. She couldn’t help noticing that Lisa was spending less time at the stable these days. Carole hated the thought that Lisa might be getting too distracted by other things to remember how much she loved riding. Owning a wonderful horse like Prancer would be just the thing to renew her enthusiasm.

  She didn’t tell Stevie what she was thinking, though. As much as she would have liked to share her excitement about Lisa’s wonderful new secret, she thought it should be Lisa’s place to break the news. Besides, Stevie wasn’t like Lisa—she wouldn’t be hurt when she found out that Carole and Lisa had known something she didn’t. She would be too busy being excited for Lisa. That was the kind of person she was. She rarely looked on the dark side of things when she had the chance of seeing the bright side.

  That reminded Carole of A.J. She had to admit that she hadn’t paid much attention to his problems until a few days ago. Even then she had been a little distracted by her fight with Lisa, her plans for Samson’s training, and other things.… Like that stupid test, for one, she thought before she could stop herself.

  She bit her lip, wishing there were a switch in her mind she could use to turn off her thoughts on that particular subject. The week before, Carole had peeked at her textbook during a makeup history test. She still couldn’t even think of the blunt, ugly word for what she’d done—cheated—without cringing. She had vowed to put the whole incident behind her, but that wasn’t proving to be easy. Thoughts of the test kept popping up at odd times—when she was in the shower, while she was picking out the hooves of her horse, Starlight, and of course every time she walked into history class—and she couldn’t do anything to stop them.

  To distract herself now, she forced her thoughts back to A.J. “So what’s the latest on the A.J. front?” she asked Stevie.

  Stevie glanced at her and rolled her eyes. “Who knows?” she said glumly. “The other day was such a disaster, we’re not quite sure what to try next.”

  Stevie sighed as she thought back to the events of Saturday. She and Phil had had such high hopes—they had arranged with A.J.’s parents to have the house to themselves, had gathered most of A.J.’s closest friends—but in the end it hadn’t done any good at all. Finally they hadn’t had much choice but to give up and leave without any new answers or breakthroughs.

  That conclusion hadn’t been to Stevie’s liking at all. She hated having to sit back helplessly, waiting and wondering, without any way of making things better. She had thought and thought about A.J.’s weird behavior so much for the past few weeks that it sometimes felt as though her thoughts were running on some kind of endlessly repeating loop. At the moment, even hearing his name made her feel weary. She decided it was time to change the subject. Fortunately, she knew an easy way to do that. “So anyway, Carole,” she said. “I’ve been meaning to ask. How’s Samson’s training going?”

  Carole’s whole face lit up. “He’s great!” she said eagerly. “Today we did some jumping in circles to test his suppleness, and then we practiced his downward transitions for a while, and then we …”

  Stevie’s mind drifted as her friend launched into a detailed description of the technical aspects of Samson’s latest training session. Max had asked Carole to take on the big black gelding’s training as a special project, and Carole had taken to it the way a horse takes to hay. Samson had been born at Pine Hollow, and Stevie still remembered how brokenhearted Carole had been when Max had sold him a couple of years earlier. The spirited horse had always been special to Carole because she had loved his sire, who’d been killed in a tragic accident long ago, and so it had been harder for her than for anyone to see Samson go. Now that he was back, she really seemed to be trying to make up for lost time. She rarely let an hour pass these days without mentioning her favorite new pupil at least sixty-five times.

  Stevie listened patiently to Carole’s chattering about transitions and pacing and cavalletti for a few minutes. Finally, when Carole paused for a breath, Stevie broke in. “Sounds great,” she said with a grin. “I just hope all this fancy training stuff isn’t going to your head. You might get too big for your breeches and think you’re too good to muck out stalls with the rest of us peons.”

  Carole giggled. “That reminds me. My pitchfork awaits. I should get back to work soon.”

  “But you just got here,” Stevie protested. “Come on. Max won’t fire you if you relax for an extra two seconds and talk to me. And I was just kidding about mucking out. Really.”

  “It’s not that.” Carole flicked at a horsefly that had just landed on the fence in front of her. “I really do have a lot to do today; and Dad’s already complaining that he’s barely seen me since he got back the other night.”

  Stevie nodded, remembering that Carole’s father, a retired Marine colonel, had recently returned from a weeklong business trip. Colonel Hanson was one of Stevie’s favorite people, and she couldn’t blame Carole for wanting to hurry home to spend time with him. “Still,” she said, “you know what they always say about all work and no play.”

  Carole grinned. “You’re a bad influence,” she teased, picking at a hangnail as she spoke. “But seriously, I just came out here to take a five-minute break after I finished grooming Samson. Our training session today went so well that I thought I deserved a little rest before I tackled Starlight’s grooming and the rest of my chores for the day.”

  Stevie opened her mouth to tease Carole about her phrasing—since when had grooming her beloved Starlight become a “chore”?—but before she could speak she heard footsteps on the packed dirt path leading to the ring. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw George Wheeler approaching.

  George’s family had moved to Willow Creek the year before from downstate. He was in Stevie’s grade at Fenton Hall and a regular rider at Pine Hollow, but she didn’t know him very well in spite of all that. What she did know was that he was a fantastic rider, though he hardly looked like one. He looked more like a moon-faced eighth-grade tuba player than the accomplished eventer he actually was. Together with his horse, a polished, agile Trakehner mare, he had won countless ribbons at shows all over the region.

  “Hey, George,” Carole said, briefly glancing at the new arrival before returning her attention to her hangnail.

  “Hi.” George greeted Stevie and Carole politely in his soft, slightly high-pitched voice. “How’s it going?”

  Stevie couldn’t help gri
nning. Fortunately George didn’t notice—in fact, that was what Stevie was grinning about in the first place. The short, stocky boy’s gaze was trained on the action in the ring.

  “Not bad,” she answered. “We were just watching Callie’s session. She’s really doing well, don’t you think?” She was careful to keep her voice neutral, not wanting George to guess that she was on to him. She had noticed a week or two ago how often George seemed to turn up when Callie was around.

  “She’s incredible,” George replied. His deep-set gray eyes darted toward Stevie and Carole. “I mean, she’s been so brave about—you know, the accident and everything. You know.”

  Stevie swung her boots against the fence post. “Sure,” she said agreeably. It’s really too bad, she thought as George’s attention focused on Callie once again. Callie’s not a shallow person or anything, but I really can’t see her going for someone like George. Although you never know about some people’s taste.…

  When she turned to glance appraisingly at Callie, she saw that the therapeutic riding session seemed to be winding down. Callie and Emily were riding slowly toward the gate. Callie’s pretty face was flushed pink with exertion, and she looked pleased as she chatted with Emily. Emily wasn’t saying much in response for a change, but Stevie didn’t think much about that. She was too glad to see that Callie looked happier and more relaxed than she had since that horrible newspaper article had appeared three days earlier. Stevie hadn’t known Callie long, but she knew her well enough to know that it would take longer than a few days for the sensitive girl to get over her old friend’s betrayal. But at least she didn’t seem to be dwelling on it.

  Soon the two riders reached the others. “Nice job out there today, Callie,” Carole called out encouragingly.