Callie smiled. “Thanks,” she said. “I must have woken up on the right side of the bed this morning. First I get an A on my chem lab, thanks to my brilliant lab partner, George”—she tossed a brief, grateful smile at George, who was still standing beside Stevie at the fence—“and now I have the best session in weeks. That one, of course, is thanks in large part to Emily.”
“It pays to have friends in the right places,” Stevie joked. “Especially when those places are all on horseback.”
Callie, Carole, and George chuckled. But Stevie noticed that Emily was frowning. It was an unusual expression for her—she always seemed to be smiling or laughing or just generally looking happy. At the moment, however, her face looked as taut and anxious as Stevie had ever seen it.
“Are you okay?” Stevie asked, suddenly concerned.
“Listen, Callie,” Emily said abruptly, not bothering to respond to Stevie’s question. “We’ve got to talk. Privately.”
Callie looked surprised. “Okay,” she said. “Come on, let’s take the horses in.” She cast a confused glance at Stevie and the others and shrugged slightly.
Emily was usually one of the most forthright, friendly, and outgoing people Stevie knew. It wasn’t like her to demand secret meetings with people. She watched curiously as the two girls dismounted carefully, gathered up their crutches from where they had left them near the mounting block, and headed inside with the horses in tow.
“What do you suppose that was all about?” Carole asked after they had gone.
George looked worried. “I hope it isn’t, you know, bad news for Callie.”
Stevie would have laughed if she hadn’t been so busy wondering about Emily’s odd behavior. George has it bad, all right, she thought absently. No doubt about it.
As she gazed at the stable doors, another figure appeared. It was Ben Marlow, Pine Hollow’s youngest full-time stable hand. Stevie wished she could like Ben more, especially since she could tell that Carole liked him a whole lot more than she was willing to admit. But Ben rarely expended much effort to make himself likeable as far as Stevie could tell, at least not as far as mere human beings were concerned. He was much more interested in horses than in people, and he didn’t bother to hide it.
Ben was hurrying toward them. “I’ve been looking for you,” he said in his usual brusque manner.
“Me?” Carole stepped forward.
“All of you,” Ben replied, his dark eyes flicking from Carole to Stevie and George. “The three of you. Max wants to see you all in his office right away.”
“Why?” Stevie asked.
Ben shrugged. “I’m just the messenger,” he muttered. “But it’s important. So come on.”
Stevie gave a perplexed glance to Carole, who shrugged. Then she glanced at George, who looked just as clueless as she felt.
“Come on,” Carole said, sounding a bit worried as she turned to follow Ben, who was already striding back toward the stable. “We’d better go see what this is about. You know how Max hates it when we keep him waiting.”
THREE
“Intangible, intractable,” Alex muttered. “Why does English have to have so many words that sound so much alike? I wish I’d been born speaking some other language. Taking the PSATs in Russian or Swahili or—or Icelandic would probably be a lot easier.”
Lisa glanced up from her physics lab notebook and chuckled sympathetically. As much as she loved Alex, she would be the first to admit that he didn’t exactly have a long attention span when it came to schoolwork. “I don’t know about that,” she joked. “If you were taking the test in Iceland, you’d probably have to keep stopping to chip the icicles off your pencil.”
She started to return her attention to her own work, but before she could put pen to paper, Alex reached across the table and took her hand. “Maybe we should take a break,” he suggested, stroking her palm gently with his thumb. “Go for a walk, maybe get a bite to eat or something.”
Lisa sat back in her chair and stretched, taking a deep breath of the warm, musty, faintly leather-and-mothball-scented air. The Willow Creek Public Library had always been one of Lisa’s favorite places to study. Its dusty collection of books wasn’t exactly exhaustive, but its dim, oak-paneled reading room and creaky wooden furniture had a charm that was missing from the public high school’s gleaming modern facility. As a little girl she had imagined the public library to be the kind of place where an old-fashioned princess or sorcerer might have sat reading far into the night. Now it just felt cozy and comfortable and homey, especially when Alex was sitting across the scarred old table from her.
Obviously the room had failed to work its magic on Alex. He looked decidedly restless, and when he got that way, it was next to impossible to get him to focus. “But we just got here,” she protested. “And you need to work. The PSATs are coming up a week from Saturday. That doesn’t give you much more time to study.” She glanced at her physics notebook and swallowed a sigh. “I’ll quiz you on the vocab if you want.”
“No good.” Alex grinned and pointed to the sign above the checkout desk nearby. SILENCE IS GOLDEN, it read. “But you could quiz me if we were taking a walk outside.” He gazed at her with that hopeful puppy-dog look he always got when he really wanted something from her.
It was a look she was never able to refuse. “Well …” She glanced at her watch. “All right. But just for a few minutes, okay? I really need to get this physics lab written up tonight.”
Alex was already gathering up his books and stuffing them into his well-worn leather backpack. “Deal,” he promised. “Now come on. This will do you as much good as it will me.”
As soon as she stepped through the library door into the crisp, clear autumn afternoon, Lisa decided he was right. It was one of those perfect days when the air was balanced between the cool, clean feeling of fall and the lingering, insistent warmth of the long Virginia summer. Lisa tipped her head back for a moment and closed her eyes, enjoying the sun on her face and the slight breeze in her hair.
Alex’s quick kiss brought her eyes flying open again. “Hey,” she said with a giggle. “No fair. You sneaked up on me.”
“Guilty as charged.” Alex did his best to look contrite. “I’d better make it up to you. How’s this?” Before she could protest, he grabbed her around the waist and planted another kiss on her lips.
She pushed away after a moment, laughing. One of the many things she loved about Alex was the way the two of them could goof around like this, just being silly and carefree. It was that endearingly playful side of his personality that had helped her overcome her sad and angry feelings after her parents had split up—that, along with his more serious side, the side that had listened and understood and cared.
The two of them set off down the street hand in hand, wandering aimlessly past the old-fashioned storefronts and small office buildings that surrounded the library. Despite her protests, Lisa wasn’t really worried about their interrupted studies. Her physics lab report wasn’t due until Wednesday, and Alex was in pretty good shape for the PSATs, thanks to a prep course he’d taken over the summer. Besides, she was still feeling good about her mother’s improved state of mind. That morning at breakfast Mrs. Atwood had been just as cheerful as the day before. She had even risen early to make pancakes for Lisa before school—something she hadn’t done, as far as Lisa could recall, since before Mr. Atwood had moved out.
Maybe Mom’s finally turned the corner, she thought hopefully. Maybe she’s finally coming out of her funk once and for all—getting on with her life without Dad, accepting that things have changed and just dealing with it. She felt her heart lift slightly at the thought, and she sighed happily as she imagined once again having a mother who could take care of herself, who didn’t spend most of her days sunk in her own feelings of bitterness and despair.
“What?” Alex glanced down at her, swinging their arms slightly back and forth as they crossed a tiny side street. “What are you thinking about?”
Lisa told
him, describing her mother’s pleasant new mood—new dress, pancakes, and all. “I just hope it lasts,” she added. “Maybe those gripe, er, group therapy sessions really have been doing her some good after all.”
“I hope so.” Alex kicked at a stone on the sidewalk. “So when do I get to see that hot new dress she bought you?”
“When you take me out someplace nice,” Lisa countered with a grin. “Maybe we should go have some fancy dinner in the city to celebrate the great news about Prancer.” The night before on the phone, after swearing him to absolute secrecy, Lisa had told Alex what Carole had confided in her. She knew Carole wouldn’t really mind—Lisa just had to share the news with someone or she was afraid she might burst. After all these years, it was hard to believe that she was finally getting a horse of her own, and that that horse was going to be Prancer.…
Of course first they all had to survive this pregnancy, and Lisa was suspecting she might have more trouble with that than Prancer herself. Twins were quite unusual in horses, and both foals rarely survived, though so far Prancer was still successfully carrying both of hers. Still, at least Lisa now knew that once the mare finally foaled, she would have more to look forward to than watching her baby or babies grow up. She would also be able to look forward to riding and caring for her for the rest of the mare’s life.
“So you’re finally going to have your own horse after all this time,” Alex commented, still swinging her hand back and forth as they strolled. “How’s it feel?”
He had asked her that before, when she’d first given him the news. But once again she stopped to think about it before answering. “Mostly good, I guess.” She chewed on her lower lip. “But in a way, it makes me more worried than ever about this pregnancy. Makes me feel more responsible for her, I guess.”
Alex nodded sympathetically. He hadn’t been riding nearly as long as Lisa had, so she knew he didn’t understand as much about the risks Prancer faced in this pregnancy as she did. But he understood her, and that was just as important. “Well, at least now you have something great to look forward to when it’s all over,” he said, as if reading her thoughts. He paused for a moment and grinned. “Come to think of it, so do I. I’ll get to see Stevie’s face when she finds out I’ve known about it all along.”
Lisa chuckled. Despite their lifelong teasing and bickering, Stevie and Alex were closer than most siblings—being twins could do that to you, Lisa supposed. She knew that Alex would never keep anything truly important from Stevie, nor she from him. The news about Prancer was different, though, because it was something that Stevie didn’t really need to know right away, since it didn’t affect her directly. And Alex knew as well as Lisa did that Stevie would find out about it soon enough. Stevie might pretend to be annoyed with them for keeping it from her, but deep down she wouldn’t really mind.
That was all very well and good. But then there was the other secret, the much more important one—or so it seemed to Lisa—that she had asked Stevie to keep from Alex, at least temporarily, until she found a way to tell him herself. She sighed, annoyed at herself for putting it off for so long. She wasn’t normally a procrastinator, but somehow the right moment had just never presented itself.
Right now definitely isn’t the right moment, either, Lisa told herself as she glanced quickly up at Alex’s familiar, contented, adorable face. She felt a bit uncomfortable for putting off the difficult discussion once again. But every time she was alone with Alex, she found herself veering away from this particular topic, like a nervous horse shying at a frightening new object.
Rather than stewing over it any longer, she decided to change the subject. “So, I haven’t asked you,” she said. “How were things at school today for Scott and Callie?” It was Monday, the Foresters’ first day back at Fenton Hall since the article had appeared in the newspaper on Saturday. Lisa attended Willow Creek’s public high school, so she hadn’t gotten to observe the reactions firsthand, though she had thought of Callie and Scott often during the day.
Alex shook his head. “About how you’d expect,” he reported. “A lot of people seem to believe everything they read in the papers. That means a lot of them suddenly think Scott’s some kind of binge-drinking alcoholic.”
Lisa winced on Scott’s behalf. One of the secrets Callie’s so-called friend had revealed was that Callie had once caught Scott sneaking a bottle of Scotch out of their parents’ liquor cabinet. Personally, Lisa thought it had probably been just one of those experimental things that a lot of kids did—an isolated incident, not a habit. She had known Scott for only a short time, but he hadn’t shown any signs of a drinking problem, and as far as Lisa was concerned, that meant he was innocent until proven guilty.
“As for Callie,” Alex went on, “well, let’s just say her days of anonymity are over.”
Lisa raised one eyebrow. “Anonymity?” she joked. “Do my ears deceive me, or did you just use one of your PSAT words in a sentence?”
Alex stuck out his tongue at her. “Bleah,” he said. “You would have to bring up the PSATs just when we were having such a nice time.”
Lisa laughed, then shivered as a cool breeze tickled the back of her neck. “Brr!” she said, shaking off the sudden chill. “It’s really starting to get cooler in the afternoons these days.”
“I thought fall was your favorite season.”
“It is.” Lisa shrugged. “I wasn’t really complaining. I love fall—the leaves turn all those gorgeous colors, there’s that nice crispness to the air, the apples are ripe.…”
“Football season starts,” Alex picked up. “And soccer season. Oh, and of course there’s Halloween, just a few short weeks away now.” He let out a ghostly cackle. “Now, that’s really something to love about the fall.”
Lisa rolled her eyes. Halloween was a popular holiday in the Lake family. When they were a little younger, Stevie, Alex, and their two brothers had expended a lot of energy competing with each other to come up with the scariest costumes and most ghoulish practical jokes. “True,” she said. “But if we’re talking fall holidays, I’ll take Thanksgiving every time.” Flashing onto an image of her mother scowling into the oven and muttering about how she had no idea how to carve a turkey because she’d never had to do it before, she shuddered slightly. “Even now.”
Alex shot her another sympathetic look, immediately guessing what she was thinking. “At least last year your aunt and her family came down,” he said. “Maybe they’ll do that again this—Hey!” He grinned. “Forget your aunt. Why don’t you and your mom come over to my house for Turkey Day this year?”
Lisa was already wishing she’d never brought up the subject. Her father had called the week before to invite her to spend the holiday in California. She hadn’t given him an answer yet, mostly because she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving her mother to fend for herself on such a family-oriented holiday. But if her aunt invited her mother up to New Jersey, there was no reason Lisa had to go along …
“You’re sweet to offer,” she told Alex lightly. “But Thanksgiving’s a long way away yet. Why worry about making plans now?”
“It’s not that far away,” Alex insisted, turning to face her and grasping both her hands. “Just think—we could spend the whole day together stuffing our faces and watching football on TV. Wouldn’t that be awesome? And you know my parents would love to have you. So would Stevie. And Chad will be home, of course. You can talk to him about campus life at UNV. You’re still planning to apply there, aren’t you?”
Lisa’s head was spinning. How did one little secret manage to make everything so complicated? And why did Alex have to bring up the topic of college applications when she was already feeling so anxious about her secret from the summer? It was true that she planned to apply to the University of Northern Virginia, a college about forty miles from Willow Creek where Alex’s older brother, Chad, was a sophomore. But she’d also sent away for applications from a number of other schools, including a few she hadn’t quite mentioned to Alex ye
t—particularly the ones in California.
She knew that Alex wanted what was best for her. He really did. But he also wanted to be with her as much of the time as possible, and he couldn’t seem to get it through his head that the two things might not be totally compatible. Though he had always seemed to understand just about everything else about her, he had never really understood her decision to spend the summer in California. He’d seen it as a choice she had made to go away from him, rather than seeing that she might be going toward something else—like her father, her baby half sister, an exciting summer job, a new experience. All he had been able or willing to focus on was that the two of them would be apart for more than two months, which made her think that it would be even more difficult for him to accept the possibility that she could choose to be away from him for four whole years when there was a good school like UNV so close by. Lisa didn’t much like the thought of a long-distance relationship either, but she could accept that it might be a necessity, at least for a while. She wanted to choose the college that would be the right one for her, would prepare her best for the rest of her life. And what was four years in comparison to her whole life, their whole lives together? A long time, she admitted reluctantly. Still, she wished Alex would at least try to understand.
Meanwhile, he was still waiting for a response to his invitation. “Let me think about it, okay?” Lisa said. “And I’ll need to talk to Mom, of course. I’m afraid she may have her heart set on going up to New Jersey this year.”
Alex shrugged. “Sure. But while you’re thinking about it, don’t forget to think about how totally romantic it would be to snuggle together on the couch in the den, feeding each other little bits of pumpkin pie.…” He leaned over and playfully kissed her on the earlobe, then on the cheek.
For a moment, Lisa’s worries and secrets disappeared and she pushed him away, giggling. “That doesn’t sound romantic at all,” she said. “I hate pumpkin pie, remember?” She giggled again as, undeterred, he grabbed her around the waist and planted a big, wet kiss right on her nose. “Okay, okay,” she said. “Make it apple, and we can talk.”
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