Trail Mates

by Bonnie Bryant

  “Well, I’ll give you that,” Stevie agreed. “Living here isn’t boring. Crazy, maybe. Certainly not boring.”

  Lisa looked down at the pot of goo she was stirring. “Guess what? I think it’s time.”

  Stevie smacked her lips. “Okay, then it’s time to mix.” At Lisa’s signal, Stevie poured the Rice Krispies into the melted marshmallows and Lisa began stirring. When the mixture had gotten wonderfully gooey and impossibly sticky, they began pressing it into the square glass baking dish, using butter-covered utensils. That didn’t mean that the sweet mess didn’t get stuck on them anyway, but it didn’t matter. That simply gave them an opportunity to lick it off, getting a taste of what was to come.

  “Not a bite. My brothers won’t get even the tiniest little taste,” Stevie vowed. “You and I’ll hoard it for ourselves.”

  They were getting down to the serious business of contemplating how delicious the concoction was going to be when a car pulled up in the Lakes’ driveway and the doorbell rang.

  A few seconds later, Alex burst into the kitchen, uninvited. “Stevie, it’s that photographer lady—Jackie something. She says she’s got some pictures to show you. She seems all excited.”

  At the very mention of the photographer’s name, the girls’ glamorized images of the Life of a Model came rushing back into their minds. “Maybe the pictures of us were really good,” Stevie said. “Maybe—”

  “Maybe we actually do have a chance, you mean?” Lisa asked.

  “Maybe,” Stevie said. “So let’s find out!”

  They washed their hands quickly and dropped their cooking utensils in the sink. Then they covered their snack with waxed paper and headed for the living room, where Jackie was waiting for them.

  “I was in the neighborhood and I just couldn’t wait to show you, girls! What luck that you’re both here together! The pictures are wonderful!”

  “They are?” Lisa asked.

  “Do we look good?” Stevie piped up.

  “You look fabulous!” Jackie exclaimed. “Come see!”

  She opened up the portfolio she was carrying and began spreading photographs all over the coffee table and the sofa. “Look, here are the boots,” Jackie said, showing them a perfectly nice photograph of a pair of high boots and then one of some jodhpur boots. “Isn’t the composition terrific?”

  “Uh, sure,” Stevie said. “Really nice.”

  “And here’s the horse blanket.” The girls looked to see Comanche standing perfectly still, modeling a navy-blue horse blanket. There was no sign of Lisa, who had been hiding on the horse’s far side, nor of Stevie, who had been off to the side, getting Comanche’s attention.

  “And look at these pictures of the bridles! Look, there you are, Lisa.”

  Lisa’s ears perked up when she heard her name. This was the moment she had been waiting for. She leaned over the table, eager to see herself—and she did. At least, she saw her hands. They were holding the reins of the bridle, but her grip was improper.

  “You can’t use that picture!” Lisa said in dismay. “I’m not holding the reins right.” Lisa wanted to kick herself. Her big chance, and she’d blown it!

  “You’re not?” Jackie asked in surprise. The girls both told her it was true. Any rider would recognize that the reins had to go between her third and fourth fingers. In this photograph, she was just grasping them. “Oh, don’t worry,” Jackie said. “I can crop that part out. What’s important is the bridle.”

  Lisa sighed. So much for her career as a model.

  “There’s your knee, Stevie,” Jackie said. The girls looked. It was a photograph of a saddlebag. There was a knee visible. The knee could have been Stevie’s.

  “Look how nicely this saddle came out,” Jackie said, showing them one of the saddles perched on the wooden saddle rack. Lisa thought she saw a shadow on the far side of the saddle that might have been her hand as she kept the equipment from toppling. She pointed it out to Jackie.

  “Oh, I think you’re right,” the photographer said. “I can airbrush that shadow out. No problem.”

  Lisa was going to end up on the cutting-room floor!

  “You girls were really wonderful,” Jackie told them. “I really appreciated your help. Being a photographer’s aide isn’t easy and you just pitched in and helped me in every possible way. I wanted you to see these right away because they came out so nicely. I’m just certain the catalog people are going to want me to do more work for them and I promise I’ll call you to help me as soon as I hear from them.”

  “We can’t wait,” Stevie said, very unenthusiastically. But she managed a smile. So did Lisa.

  “Well, it’s settled, then. In the meantime, I’ve brought you each an envelope with your pay in it. I wish it could have been twice as much!”

  “So do we!” Stevie said brightly. Jackie laughed.

  A few minutes later, she had left and the girls were alone with their envelopes and their broken dreams.

  “Fifty dollars seemed like all the money in the world,” Stevie said wistfully. “Now, for some reason, it doesn’t seem like so much.”

  “It isn’t, really,” Lisa said. “It just seemed that way when we thought the work was going to be easy. We would have agreed to model for her whether we were getting paid or not.”

  “So what are we going to do with our money?” Stevie asked. “Maybe we can spend it on something we can do together with Carole.”

  “I don’t know, but it ought to be something special. Something that might make up for the fact that we haven’t even told Carole about the pictures.”

  “That’s going to be hard to do. Personally, I feel rotten about keeping this whole thing a secret from her.”

  “So do I,” Lisa agreed. She sat on the sofa in Stevie’s living room, staring unhappily at the floor. “Maybe the only way to make it up to Carole is to share the money with her.”

  Stevie’s eyes lit up. “That’s a wonderful idea,” she said. “You know, she’s been saving every penny she can for her airfare to visit Kate Devine. I bet this money would put her over the top!”

  “Wouldn’t that be terrific?” Lisa agreed. “It’s a deal, then. Giving Carole the money will be a lot more fun than modeling ever was!”

  “Who ever said modeling was fun?” Stevie countered.

  “Oh, I don’t know. I had a lot of fun in my dreams.”

  “Me, too.” Stevie shrugged. Then she turned to the kitchen. “What was that noise?” she asked suspiciously.

  Lisa’s face fell. “Oh, no,” she said.

  The two girls dashed for the kitchen doorway. When they got there, they saw Stevie’s three brothers seated at the kitchen table, happily finishing off their Rice Krispies Treats.

  Chad, Stevie’s fourteen-year-old brother, was the first to speak. “You’ll be pleased to know that you two made the most delicious treat for us! We loved it and we thank you very much!” His eyes twinkled.

  Stevie and Lisa were so astonished by his announcement that they could only laugh.

  “At least we did something right,” Lisa said.

  “Maybe we can have a career as pastry chefs,” Stevie chimed in, secretly pleased at how much her brothers had liked their cooking.

  “Can I have some more?” Michael, the youngest, asked.

  Stevie shrugged. “Sure, why not? Come on, Lisa, let’s cook up another batch.”

  Lisa happily reached for the marshmallow bag and poured from it into a large measuring cup.

  “I JUST CAN’T wait for the dance contest,” Lynne bubbled, her eyes sparkling as she gazed at the colonel.

  “What dance contest?” Carole asked suspiciously. Since Lynne seemed so good at planning everybody’s life, Carole was more than a little bit concerned that she might find herself in a dance contest.

  The four of them—Carole, Scott Babcock, Lynne, and Carole’s father—were seated at a table in the ballroom of the Officers’ Club at the Marine Corps base at Quantico. Usually, this was the dining room, but tonight it had
been transformed. Toys for Tots was a project sponsored by the Marine Corps Reserve, in which the Corps raised money to buy toys for children whose parents couldn’t afford presents for them. The ballroom was decorated like a child’s paradise. The ceiling was hidden by fluffy pink and blue cotton puff clouds. Suspended beneath the clouds were wonderfully inviting toys: stuffed animals, trucks, dolls, baseball gloves. The walls around the room were covered with posters advertising toys and books for children. It was impossible to forget the purpose of the dance. Carole hoped they raised a lot of money for the very worthy cause. But just then she was more concerned about a certain dance contest.

  “So what about the dance contest?” Carole asked dubiously.

  “It’s a twist contest!”

  “I can’t do the twist!” Carole protested.

  “Of course not!” Lynne said. “It’s your dad and I who are going to do the twist. He and I are couple number, uh, eighteen. But not for long. Practically as soon as the contest starts we’ll be couple number one! Mitch is the greatest dancer—especially with these old-time dances!”

  “What do you mean, ‘old-time dances’?” he teased, pretending his feelings had been hurt. “I’m not so old.” He winked at Carole.

  Carole smiled at her father. He did love old songs and dances, as well as movies—not to mention jokes. And apparently he was a good dancer, too. The gyrations involved looked rather strange to Carole, but everybody said he was good, so maybe he was.

  “So what’s the prize for couple number one?” Carole asked Lynne.

  “That’s the good news, honey,” Lynne said. Carole cringed a little bit. She hated it when Lynne called her “honey.” Lynne continued excitedly. “First prize is a pair of round-trip airplane tickets, anywhere in the U.S. Can you believe it? Won’t it be wonderful?”

  That was odd. What would Lynne and her father do with airplane tickets? Her father did so much traveling for his job that he really didn’t enjoy traveling. And he would never go on a trip with Lynne and leave Carole alone. Would he?

  “What’s the matter, Carole?” Scott asked.

  She hadn’t realized she was making a face. She turned to him. “Nothing, I was just thinking,” she explained.

  “You looked like you were thinking bad thoughts,” he persisted.

  He was nice about the way he said it, but it felt like he was prying and Carole didn’t want to talk with Scott about Lynne. After all, part of her plan tonight was to try to break up two romances. So far, the plan didn’t seem to be working at all.

  “Want to dance?” he asked.

  “Sure,” she agreed, standing up from the table. It would be nice to be away from Lynne’s gushing for a few minutes at least.

  The band was playing a slow dance and Scott seemed unsure of what to do. He glanced around at the other couples.

  “Never had to go to dancing school?” Carole asked.

  He laughed sheepishly. “I always talked my mother out of it,” he explained.

  “It was my father who insisted,” Carole told him. “Here, let me show you what to do.” She put his right hand on her back and held his left with her right. “Now, we make little squares on the floor. It’s called a box step. Step slide, step slide. I go backward. You go forward. Then vice versa. Got it? Hey, not bad,” she commented as Scott more or less successfully followed her instructions.

  Within a few minutes, they were dancing easily with each other. She only stepped on Scott’s foot once. He only stepped on hers five times.

  “You can’t possibly be enjoying this, “he said, observing her grimace as he landed particularly hard on her toe.

  “Oh, it’s fine. And besides, it’s better to be here than to be there,” she said, nodding at the table where her father and Lynne were talking with their heads close together.

  “You don’t like her?” Scott asked.

  “She’s okay, I guess, but she keeps trying to manage my life.”

  “It’s hard to imagine somebody pushing you around,” he said. Then Scott began watching his feet. Carole knew he was being careful not to step on her toes again. While he concentrated on that, she could think about her father and Lynne some more.

  So far, the evening had gone well enough. Carole was comfortable at the Officers’ Club. There were plenty of people she and her father knew. The colonel had introduced Lynne to a lot of the other officers and their wives. Carole and Scott had spent some time with some of the other “military brats” she had known when they had lived on the base and Carole had gone to school there.

  The decorations were special. The food was pretty good. The music was nice. Scott was okay. So why wasn’t she having any fun? It could be summed up in one word: Lynne.

  Two round-trip tickets to anyplace in the country. If it were just Carole and her father, she knew what she would want to do. She would want the two of them to visit her new friend Kate Devine and her parents at their dude ranch. But Lynne and her dad?

  Suddenly, Carole had an awful thought. “Oh, no!” she said.

  “Did I step on something?” Scott asked.

  “No. It’s just that …” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t say the word to Scott. Because the word that was in her mind was “honeymoon.” If two people were going to get married, the one thing they would want, more than anything else, would be two round-trip airplane tickets to anywhere in the country. They wouldn’t want three. Because only two people would go.

  That would explain why Lynne and her dad were so eager to win the prize in the dance contest. That would explain why they were talking to each other with their heads so close. And that would explain why Carole had such a bad feeling about the evening!

  “Carole, what’s the matter?” Scott asked, suddenly very worried. “Why are you crying?”

  Carole was so upset that she hadn’t even realized that she was crying.

  “I’m not crying,” she said, trying to fake it, but the fact was that the tears were streaming down her face and she couldn’t fool anybody. “I’ve got to go to the ladies’ room,” she said, and then fled from the dance floor. She had to be alone!

  All the bright colors of the ballroom merged into one gigantic rainbow of confusion. The noise of the crowd and the strains of the music blended into a muddle of discordant sounds. Carole didn’t see any faces, hear any greetings, or even feel the floor under her feet. The only thing she was aware of was one word: honeymoon. It had to be the answer. Lynne and her father were planning to be married and they were going to go on a trip together afterward.

  Carole realized then, as she had never realized before, that she didn’t want to share her father with anybody; and she especially couldn’t stand the idea of sharing him with Lynne!

  The tears were pouring out of her eyes so fast that she could barely see as she wound her way through the room. Without even realizing she was doing it, Carole ran smack into a tray caddy, and before she knew what had happened she was on the floor. Her right ankle had caught in the folded-up legs of the caddy, and within seconds it swelled to twice its normal size.

  Carole’s tears of anguish and fear were suddenly replaced by tears of pain. Her ankle hurt. The first person to reach her was Scott.

  He sat down on the floor by her side, taking her hand.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “I hurt my ankle,” she told him.

  He looked at it, examining it carefully. “You sure did that,” he agreed. He turned to the waiter who was standing there and asked him to get some ice, wrapped in a wet cloth napkin. When the waiter returned, Scott applied the ice pack to Carole’s ankle, and the pain began to subside.

  When Carole’s father arrived on the scene, he and Scott helped Carole stand up and hobble back to their table. Scott grabbed a fifth chair, giving Carole something to prop her foot up on, and they soon surrounded her ankle with additional supplies of ice.

  “I’ve got so much ice here, I should go skating instead of dancing,” Carole said, trying to make light of the situati
on.

  “I don’t think you’re going to be doing either for a couple of days,” her father said wisely.

  “I twisted my ankle like that once,” Lynne said. “It took weeks for it to heal.”

  Carole groaned. “My ankle’s so swollen, I couldn’t even get my boots on to ride. You can’t mean it that it’s going to last for weeks.”

  “Probably not, hon,” her father said. “Scott was pretty smart getting the ice for it so fast, though. That will reduce the swelling. Thanks, Scott,” the colonel said to him.

  “Yeah, thank you,” Carole echoed.

  “Oh, it was nothing,” Scott said. “I was just the first one there. You would have done the same thing,” he added to her father.

  It was true, Carole thought. Scott was there because her father was too busy with Lynne to notice that she had fallen down until a big crowd had gathered around her. She had almost forgotten how upset she had been about Lynne and her father until Scott reminded her. She still wanted to leave—and the sooner the better.

  “Dad, I think I’d better go home,” she said.

  “Okay, Carole, I’ll drive you.” He stood up to go.

  “Mitch! You can’t do that!” Lynne said. “Remember the dance contest? It’s going to kick off in about a half hour. There’s no way you’ll get back in time. And it’s so important.”

  The colonel looked at Lynne, then he looked at his daughter. “She’s right, Carole. Can you wait until the contest is over?”

  Carole was about to tell her father that there was no way she could wait. This was the opportunity she had hoped for—a surefire way to upset the plans for a honeymoon trip!

  “No problem, sir,” Scott interrupted. “The friends we’re staying with live just outside the base. I can call my dad. He’ll pick us up and we’ll see Carole home. You and Ms. Blessing can stay for the dance contest. I saw you out there on the floor earlier. You guys are a shoo-in to win—you can’t miss it!”

  Colonel Hanson protested for a moment, but Lynne quickly talked him into accepting Scott’s offer, particularly when Scott reminded him that his father was a doctor and would take a look at Carole’s ankle to be sure it wasn’t more serious than they thought.