A WALK ON THE BEACH …
Lisa explained. “Carole and Stevie are my best friends. We do almost everything together You’d love them. They’re great.”
Tec smiled, lighting up her world again with his dimples. “I bet I would.”
“Although they might not like you, because I don’t think they’re very happy with me at the moment. See, Stevie had this great idea—Stevie has a lot of great ideas, only sometimes they’re not actually great, but they usually turn out okay, as long as Carole and I help, but I can’t help this time because I’m here and the stable is a zillion miles north. On the other hand, Stevie said Phil would help and I’m sure he’ll do a better job than I would, so I shouldn’t worry, and maybe Red was going to help, but I know Veronica would be useless.…”
Lisa realized she was blathering. She interrupted herself. “Am I talking too much?”
“Absolutely,” Tec said. “And you should stop because I want to kiss you, and it’s very hard to kiss a girl who’s talking.”
Lisa stopped talking.
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HORSE LOVE
A Bantam Skylark Book / July 2000
“The Saddle Club” is a registered trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller.
The Saddle Club design/logo, which consists of a riding crop and a riding hat, is a trademark of Bantam Books.
“USPC” and “Pony Club” are registered trademarks of The United States Pony Clubs, Inc., at The Kentucky Horse Park, 4071 Iron Works Pike, Lexington, KY 40511-8462.
All rights reserved
Text copyright © 2000 by Bonnie Bryant
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information address: Bantam Books.
eISBN: 978-0-307-82598-8
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Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada
Bantam Skylark is an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc. SKYLARK BOOK and colophon and BANTAM BOOKS and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.
v3.1
Special thanks to Laura Roper of Sir “B” Farms
Contents
Cover
Other Books You Will Enjoy
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
About the Author
LISA ATWOOD OPENED one eye. It was Saturday morning. One eye was all that was necessary. She glanced at her clock and her mind registered the fact that there was no rush to get up. She closed the eye again, shifted her pillow, and settled back down for a few minutes.
Not only was it Saturday, but it was also spring vacation. She had ten whole days to sleep late, spend time with her friends, ride horses, and just plain enjoy herself. Not that she didn’t do some of those things when school was open, but she could do more of them this week.
Lisa reopened her eye to check the weather. It was going to be a nice day—a good day to ride. She opened the other eye. Thinking about riding made her think about wanting to get up. She was going to meet her two best friends, Carole Hanson and Stevie Lake, at Pine Hollow Stables, and the three of them were going to do something together.
Normally, Saturday meant a meeting of Horse Wise, their Pony Club; but their instructor, Max Regnery, was taking a vacation, so there wouldn’t be any Pony Club for the next two weeks. They’d have their regular riding class, but there was no rush to get to it, since class wasn’t until the afternoon.
Well, maybe there was a reason to hurry, just a little. Stevie had said something the night before about a project. Specifically what Stevie had said was “I have a great idea.” It sometimes made Lisa nervous when Stevie made that kind of announcement. Stevie often had ideas, and some of them were great. Others, however, tended to fall into the harebrained category. A few were just downright disastrous.
Lisa, Stevie, and Carole were best friends because they were all totally horse-crazy, not because they were alike in any other way. In fact, they all knew it would be almost impossible for them to be more unalike. Stevie, for instance, had a wild imagination; she was flamboyant; she was impulsive; she was sometimes even a little weird. She was a practical joker who occasionally forgot to consider the consequences of her humorous escapades. She could be sharp-tongued with people who displeased her—usually her brothers or Veronica diAngelo, Pine Hollow’s chief snob-in-residence. Stevie lived life on the edge, running a little late for everything and garnering grades at school that just got her by. She sometimes said it was her teachers’ fault: If they wouldn’t send her to the principal’s office so often, she wouldn’t miss so much class time. That was what Carole and Lisa referred to as Stevian logic. It wasn’t logical at all.
Stevie also had a heart of gold. She would go way out on any limb for a friend, risking days in the principal’s office, grounding at home, and even restricted riding privileges at Pine Hollow. She had a strong sense of justice and loyalty. These were qualities that endeared her to her friends almost as much as her wacky sense of humor, and it made them willing to help her when she needed it—which she often did.
Lisa could not have been more different from Stevie. She was cool and rational, never impulsive. She planned her days and weeks well in advance so that she could accomplish all she needed to do. She never handed in a school assignment late. In contrast, Stevie had once had to explain to a teacher that the reason a lab report hadn’t been completed had to do with a brother filling her pen with disappearing ink in retaliation for a phone call Stevie had made to his girlfriend, telling the girlfriend that he had bad breath.
Lisa was always neatly dressed in clean, freshly ironed clothes. Stevie’s idea of clean was something that came off the top of her dirty laundry pile. When Stevie got herself and often her friends into a pack of trouble, she was the one who would come up with a wild scheme that might, just might, work. Lisa, with her naturally analytical mind, was the one who would come up with a sensible way to solve the problem.
Carole was as different from Stevie and Lisa as they were from each other. While all three girls were horse-crazy, Carole was the horse-craziest. She’d begun riding when she was just a toddler living on Marine Corps bases where her father, now a colonel, was stationed. She’d been devoted to ponies and horses since that first day, and one of the few things of which she was absolutely sure was that she’d be with horses all her life. She didn’t know exactly what she wanted to do—be a vet, a trainer, a competitor, a breeder, or an instructor. Sometimes she thought she’d be all of those things, and then some.
She was so horse-crazy that everything else took a backseat. On a day when she had
school and a riding lesson, she might leave her school backpack with books and assignments at home, but she would never, ever forget to take her riding clothes. If a horse stumbled and the rider fell off, Carole would ask someone else to look after the rider while she checked to make sure the horse was okay.
Since the girls shared a love of horses and a willingness to help one another out, they’d decided to form a club of their own and call it The Saddle Club. The only requirements for membership were those two things. The girls often extended the rule about helping one another to helping others, and that was what Stevie’s great idea had been about. She hadn’t elaborated, just assured Lisa it was going to be wonderful, even if it meant a little work.
Stevie’s idea of “a little work” often meant a gigantic task and usually one that someone else had to do. Lisa was definitely nervous about Stevie’s plan—whatever it was. She closed her eyes again.
She could hear her mother puttering in the kitchen downstairs. Actually, it wasn’t really puttering. The coffeepot hit the counter a little too loudly and a glass landed in the sink with a clank.
From the hall near the door, Lisa heard her father ask, “What’s going on?”
“As if you didn’t know!” her mother called back.
Lisa pulled the covers over her head.
She heard her father walk down the stairs and into the kitchen. She couldn’t totally muffle the conversation, nor could she hear it all. They were annoyed with one another. That had been happening quite a bit lately.
Lisa’s father was traveling a lot for his job, and her mother often complained about it. Lisa didn’t like to know that her parents were arguing, and she especially didn’t like to get any details about the arguments from her mother. Lisa understood, though. Her mother was lonely. She loved to travel, but she had a job, and a daughter, that kept her home. Lisa’s father got to travel. And even though he said that his business travel wasn’t much fun, Mrs. Atwood felt left out.
And the night before at dinner, Mr. Atwood had told them that he had a business trip to Europe coming up. Mrs. Atwood had been grumbling ever since. It gave Lisa a chill.
The phone rang. The noise was loud enough to convince Lisa that she wasn’t going to go back to sleep. She climbed out of bed, deciding to get dressed and go over to the stables to find out what Stevie’s great idea was.
She washed up and slipped into some jeans and a shirt and a sweater, packing her riding pants, boots, and hat into her stable bag. Then she went downstairs to get some breakfast.
Her parents were sitting at the kitchen table when she got there. There was a smile on her father’s face, and her mother wasn’t looking grumpy at all.
“Guess what?” her mother asked.
“What?” Lisa countered.
“We’re going on a trip!” said her mother.
“Oh, really? Where are you going?” Lisa asked, suspecting that her father had arranged to take her mother along on his trip to Europe.
“No, I mean we. All of us,” her mother said.
That didn’t make sense. The European trip was in the middle of her spring semester.
“We are?” Lisa asked.
“Yes! We’re going to San Felipe.”
“That’s in the Caribbean, not Europe,” Lisa said. One of the things she was good at was geography, and she knew that the Caribbean was nowhere near Europe.
Lisa’s father could see that she was confused. “Well, your mother and I talked about this last night and decided it would be good for all of us to get away, together,” her father said, emphasizing the word together. “So I called the travel agent, and she’s found a last-minute bargain for us.”
“What do you mean, ‘last-minute’?” Lisa asked.
Mrs. Atwood’s eyes brightened. “Tomorrow! We’re leaving on a flight at eight-thirty tomorrow morning and we’ll be on the beach by, well, I would say three o’clock. Does that sound about right, sweetheart?”
“It sounds about perfect, darling,” he said.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” Mrs. Atwood asked.
Lisa swallowed, taking the time to think. Her idea of wonderful was a week spent with her friends at Pine Hollow. Her parents could be together all they wanted in San Felipe, but she’d rather be with her friends. On the other hand, it had been a while since they’d taken a trip together, and her father had been doing a lot of traveling alone. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad—not that she had a choice.
“Well, I—”
“Oh, sweetie,” her mother said. “Think of the palm trees and the tropical breezes and the moonlit beaches …”
Her mother was directing the words at her, but Lisa knew she was talking to her father. It gave her another pause for her own thoughts. Being in San Felipe would mean missing out on Stevie’s great idea. Now that had something going for it!
“And there’s so much to do! We’ll have to shop and buy some resort clothes.…”
The idea of shopping anywhere, anytime, was enough to thrill Mrs. Atwood.
“I don’t need any clothes,” Lisa said. “I’ve got all my summer stuff.”
“Well, you’re going to need a new sun hat.”
“I can’t get that here. I’ll bet they have them at the resort.”
“And some sunscreen.”
“They’ll definitely have that on San Felipe.”
“I guess they will. Well, even if you don’t have to shop, I certainly do.”
“The car will be here for us at five-thirty tomorrow morning,” her father said.
“I’ll be ready,” Lisa promised him. “For now, though, I’m going over to Pine Hollow. I’ll stop at the drugstore on my way back and I’ll pick up some sunscreen just in case. I could use another bottle of shampoo.”
“See you later, sweetie,” her mother chirped.
“Bye,” she said, taking a piece of toast with her on her way out the door.
Parents, Lisa thought, are infinitely confusing. Last night and this morning, she’d been able to feel the ice between the two of them, and now, at the ring of a phone her mother was happy and her father was hopeful.
“Hey, look who’s here!” Stevie declared brightly as Lisa walked into Pine Hollow a few minutes later.
“Sleepyhead,” Carole teased.
“Don’t waste time making fun of her,” Stevie said. “There’s too much to do.”
“Listen, I—”
“Yeah, right, wait until you hear what Stevie’s cooked up this time,” Carole said.
“Well, but I—”
“No buts,” Carole said firmly. “It’s a good thing you didn’t wear your dressy clothes because—”
Lisa realized that she’d never be able to get a word in edgewise. The only thing she could think of was to move the conversation out of the aisle.
“Let’s get into the tack room,” Lisa said, shooing her friends in that direction.
“Exactly what I had in mind,” said Stevie. “Did you come up with the same plan?”
“What is she talking about?” Lisa asked Carole.
“It’s her great idea,” said Carole.
“What is?”
“The tack room,” Carole said, though her reply didn’t tell Lisa anything. She was beginning to think that her friends were more confusing than her parents.
The three of them stepped into the tack room and Stevie closed the door.
“Well, what do you think?” Stevie asked.
“About what?” asked Lisa.
“Start from the beginning,” Carole said.
“Oh, right,” said Stevie. Starting at the beginning was not the easiest thing for her. She took a deep breath. “Okay, so here’s my idea: Max’s birthday is next week, and he and Deborah have taken baby Maxi on a trip. They’re going to be gone for a full week. That should give us just enough time to clean and repaint this disaster of a room.” She gestured, pointing out the obvious: smudged walls with peeling paint, hooks bent askew, and drooping tack.
“He’s been complaining about t
he condition of this place for months,” Carole said.
“You’re right, he has,” Lisa agreed. Max was not only their riding instructor, but also the owner of Pine Hollow, and he always cared about its condition.
“Won’t it be great?” Stevie asked.
Lisa nodded. It would be. And Stevie was right: It was a weeklong project for three hardworking volunteers. The bad news was that there would be only two of them, and she had to tell her friends that.
“Um,” she began.
“You’re not going to disagree, are you?” Stevie asked.
“No, I don’t disagree. It’s a perfect project and birthday present for Max. I don’t disagree at all. It’s worse than that, though. I can’t help.”
All the enthusiasm drained out of the room.
“Why not?” Carole asked.
“I won’t be here,” Lisa answered. Then she told her friends about that morning’s events at home. “I can’t say no to my parents. They were really happy about the trip and about being together as a family.”
Stevie was not one to be daunted when she was on the trail of a great idea. “Don’t worry,” she said. “We can do it without you.”
“What do you mean, we?” Carole asked. “The two of us can’t possibly do this alone.”
“I didn’t mean just the two of us,” she said. “I talked to Phil last night and he was all excited about it. He said he’d help, and he told me he’d get A.J. to help, too. Those two guys together will be almost as good as one Lisa.”
Lisa laughed for the first time all morning. Phil Marsten was Stevie’s boyfriend, and A.J. was Phil’s best friend. The two of them lived in a nearby town, and both were riders who owned their own horses. They had been talked into joining in on more than one of Stevie’s great ideas before, so it didn’t surprise Lisa and Carole that they’d been enlisted this time around.
“Okay, look,” Stevie said, pulling a large piece of paper out of her pocket. “I’ve worked out this schedule.” She unfolded the paper to reveal a chart. The chart broke down the task of emptying the room by setting up a temporary tack room in the feed storage room, and it included a plan for cleaning, spackling, painting, and then restocking the tack room. It broke the tasks down by half days and showed the entire job being completed by the following Sunday morning, a few hours before Max’s anticipated return—and, incidentally, Lisa’s return as well.
Horse Love Page 1