Summer Rider

by Bonnie Bryant

  “So how about those cookies?” Todd prompted hopefully.

  “You can count on me,” the cook replied. “You’ll have your cookies, even if I have to stay up all night making them.”

  TUESDAY AT LUNCH, Lisa stared at her grilled cheese sandwich, willing herself not to eat it. Her stomach was growling hungrily—she had skipped breakfast to work with Major—and she loved grilled cheese. But she was determined to stick to her diet, and the sandwich was much too fattening to allow herself even one bite. Instead she speared a cucumber slice with her fork and popped it into her mouth, chewing slowly and carefully to make it last longer. After eating a little more salad and a few bites of cole slaw, she carefully cut the sandwich into three pieces. Then she waited until Carole and Stevie weren’t looking and slipped one of the pieces into a napkin in her lap. She repeated the process twice more until the entire sandwich had disappeared from her plate. It was the easiest way to keep her friends from finding out about her diet and asking lots of pesky questions. What they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them.

  STEVIE WAS CLEANING Belle’s bridle on Wednesday afternoon when Mike raced into the tack room, looking frantic. “Bad news,” he said when he saw her. “Someone must have clued in the local TV station about our little project. There’s a news team headed for Barry’s office right now.”

  Stevie gasped and dropped the bridle. The bit landed on her foot, but she hardly noticed. “We’ve got to stop them!” she cried. “If Barry finds out now, it will ruin everything!” She raced outside with Mike right behind her.

  The news truck was parked in the driveway near the mess hall, and several people were climbing out. One had a large video camera on his shoulder, and another had a microphone in her hand.

  “Hi,” Stevie gasped, skidding to a stop in front of them.

  The woman with the microphone looked a little surprised. “Hi there, young lady,” she said. “Who might you be?”

  “Well, I might be the President of the United States someday,” she said with a grin. “But for now I’m Stevie Lake, a camper here.”

  The reporter looked puzzled by Stevie’s joke. “Um, in that case maybe you could point us toward the camp director’s office,” she said. “I’d like to interview him about the fund-raiser he’s running here.”

  Stevie gulped and glanced at Mike. He looked just as panicked as she felt. Suddenly she remembered something Carole had mentioned the other day, and relief washed over her. “I’ve got it!” she exclaimed. “Oops, I mean, of course I’ll point you toward the camp director.” She winked at Mike and pointed to the mess hall. “He’s in there. Mike will take you inside if you want—I’ve got to go.” As she raced past a confused-looking Mike, she hissed, “Just play along!”

  When Mike led the news team into the mess hall a moment later, Stevie and the cook were there to meet them. Stevie hid the cook’s apron behind her back and grinned as he stepped forward to meet the visitors.

  “Hi there,” the cook said, extending his hand. “I’m Barry, the camp director. How can I help you?”

  “I STILL CAN’T believe you got those reporters to believe the cook was Barry,” Carole told Stevie the next day at breakfast.

  Stevie winked at her smugly. “Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” she said. “I’m just glad you guys had filled him in on our whole plan so he knew what to say.”

  “I’m just glad Barry doesn’t watch much TV,” Phil put in, wiping orange juice off his chin. “Can you imagine if he’d turned on the news and saw the camp cook posing as him?”

  Carole grinned at the thought. Then her grin faded as she glanced over at the empty seat beside her. She had been saving it for Lisa, but so far Lisa hadn’t shown up. Carole quickly drained her milk glass and stood up. “I’m finished,” she said. “I’ll meet you guys at the stable, okay? I’ve got to check on something back in the cabin.”

  She found Lisa reading on her bunk.

  “Hi,” Lisa greeted her without looking up from her book.

  “Hi,” Carole replied. She cleared her throat. “Breakfast is almost over. I thought you were going to come join us once you finished your chapter.”

  This time Lisa glanced up briefly before returning her attention to the page in front of her. “Sorry about that,” she mumbled. “I kind of got caught up in the story.”

  Carole waited for her to say something more, but it was as if Lisa had already forgotten she was there. “Aren’t you hungry?” she said at last. It wasn’t what she had wanted to ask, but she didn’t know the right way to ask her if she was ever going to start acting normal again.

  Lisa just shrugged. “Not really. I had a huge dinner last night.”

  Carole remembered that they had had cheeseburgers and home fries the evening before. Now that she thought about it, Lisa’s plate had been clean when dinner was over. “Okay,” she said uncertainly. “Well, classes start pretty soon. Do you want to walk up to the stable with me?”

  “You go ahead,” Lisa said, turning a page. “I’ll catch up in a minute.”

  Lisa didn’t look up from her book until she heard the cabin door close behind Carole. Then she let out a long, loud sigh. Carole was getting nosier and nosier. Lisa was starting to have trouble coming up with enough excuses to satisfy her.

  She rubbed her stomach, thinking about the breakfast she had just missed, imagining what it would have tasted like. But she quickly shoved those thoughts out of her mind and did her best to concentrate on her book. She was a little worried about her reading—she still had more than half a dozen books to read, and that meant she was going to have to find more time somewhere. Maybe she could stay up later and wake up earlier in the morning. It wasn’t going to be easy, but nothing important ever was, was it?

  Besides, it would all be worth it, she told herself. Soon she would be able to show her friends, her parents—the world—that she wasn’t playing catch-up anymore. She would prove that she, like Piper, had her life together at last. When she finished the last book on her list and won the blue ribbon in show jumping, her life would finally be perfect.

  BEFORE ANYONE QUITE realized it, it was the day of the show. It was a perfect summer day, with a flawlessly blue sky stretching from horizon to horizon. People started pouring down the hard-packed dirt road an hour before the first event was scheduled to start, and before long the seating area was filled to capacity.

  Stevie came across Barry near the stable entrance. He was peering in confusion at the crowd milling around outside. “Where are they all coming from?” he muttered to himself.

  Stevie stepped forward and tugged on his sleeve. “It seems to be getting kind of crowded out there,” she said innocently. “Do you want me to round up some kids and bring out the chairs from the mess hall?”

  “Good idea,” Barry said. “Thanks, Stevie. You’re a real help.”

  As she hurried away, Stevie grinned. “You don’t know the half of it,” she said under her breath.

  It didn’t take long for the new supply of chairs to be filled as well, but most of the spectators didn’t seem to mind standing. They milled around the meadow, munching on the cook’s delicious chocolate chip cookies (fifty cents apiece) and commenting on the lovely scenery and the gorgeous day. By showtime, the camp’s parking area was overflowing, and still the people kept coming, parking along the road and walking the rest of the way.

  “This is great,” Carole said when she ran into Stevie coming out of the tack room. “Can you believe how many people came?”

  “Of course I can believe it,” Stevie said airily. “Who wouldn’t want to come to our horse show?”

  One of the instructors happened to be walking by at the moment, and she overheard Stevie’s words. “Who, indeed?” she commented with a wink and a grin before hurrying on her way. By this time, most of the staff knew about the fund-raiser. Some had seen the news story and had asked the cook about it; others had overheard campers talking or had been told by friends in town. Barry and Betty were just about the onl
y ones who were still in the dark about the whole thing.

  Just then Phil walked past, leading his horse, Teddy. “Phil!” Stevie exclaimed. “Did you have a chance to talk to Barry about the videotapes?”

  “Mission accomplished,” Phil said. “I convinced him that all the parents would appreciate the tapes even more if they had to pay for them instead of getting them for free.”

  Stevie laughed. That sounded like something she might say. “And that worked?”

  “Well, not really,” Phil said with a shrug. “But then I suggested that he could use the money for staff bonuses—you know, when he tells them the camp is closing down. That did it.”

  They stopped talking as Betty hustled past, carrying a clipboard. “Better get a move on, people,” she said when she spotted them. “The dressage event starts in fifteen minutes flat.”

  In between her fund-raising efforts and everything else, Stevie had somehow managed to find the energy to work hard with Belle in all their classes, especially dressage. The practice paid off, and at the end of the event, they rode away with the blue ribbon. Phil came in second, and Carole was third.

  Lisa, who had come in seventh, watched as all kinds of people came up to congratulate Stevie on her win.

  “Don’t worry about it, boy,” she whispered to Major, rubbing his nose as she walked him to cool him down. “This one didn’t matter. We’ll have our turn in the spotlight a little later.”

  After dressage came hunter seat equitation. This was an event in which the rider’s ability was judged, rather than the horse’s. First each competitor jumped a course of six low fences. Then the judges called the riders back into the ring one by one and asked them to perform various maneuvers and gaits.

  Stevie held her breath during the jumping portion of the event, and it wasn’t because she was worried about her own performance. Every time a hoof grazed a rail, she winced, and the few times a fence came down, she groaned out loud. She could almost hear the cash slipping away with each mistake. There were only about a dozen jumping faults in the entire group, but Stevie wasn’t comforted. The equitation fences weren’t supposed to be very challenging. The real test would come later, in the hunter-jumping and show-jumping events.

  Stevie was so distracted that she ended up placing out of the ribbons in equitation, but she didn’t really mind. She cheered loudly for Carole, who had come in first, and Phil, who was fourth.

  As the hunter-jumping event got underway, Stevie pulled out her calculator and did her best to figure out how many rails the riders could afford to miss. But the fund-raising project had become so huge and complicated that she really wasn’t certain how close they were to their goal. She could make a pretty good estimate about the take from the ticket and food sales, but beyond that it was anybody’s guess how much money they had raised so far. Tucking the calculator back into her pocket, she decided she would just have to cross her fingers and hope for the best.

  “DID YOU SEE my awesome ride?” Todd cried, almost running into Lisa as she walked out of the stable. He was leading his horse toward the water trough, and Lisa saw that there was a yellow ribbon clipped to Alamo’s bridle.

  “You came in third? That’s great,” she said, hoping she sounded enthusiastic. The truth was, she couldn’t care less about Todd’s ribbon in hunter jumping. All she could focus on right now was the event ahead of her. Soon it wouldn’t matter that Carole and Stevie had finished ahead of her in all the other events. Soon nobody would remember that she hadn’t been riding as long as her friends had. She could almost picture the blue ribbon fluttering from Major’s bridle; she could almost taste the victory. And it tasted sweet—as sweet as the chocolate chip cookie she had bought and tucked into her pocket for luck. As soon as the ribbon was hers, she would eat every bite of it.

  More than twenty campers had decided to enter the show-jumping event, and Lisa had drawn number seventeen. She wished she could go earlier and get it over with, but maybe it was better to go near the end. That way she would know exactly how well she had to do to win. She found a spot near the fence and settled in to watch the earlier riders take their turns.

  Carole had checked Starlight’s tack as soon as the hunters had finished. When he was ready to go, she left him in his stall and went outside to watch the first few riders. The crowd around the ring was bigger than ever—everyone wanted to find a spot with a good view for this event. Carole heard someone calling her name, and she turned to see Stevie, Phil, and Todd waving at her. She joined them and congratulated Todd on his ribbon, which he was wearing clipped to the neck of his shirt.

  “It’s a new fashion statement,” he explained. “If you want people to think you’re a winner, you’ve got to dress like one, right?”

  Stevie rolled her eyes. “What number did you get?” she asked Carole.

  “Five,” Carole said. “How about you?”

  “I got number twelve,” Stevie said. She jerked a thumb at Phil. “He’s seven.”

  Todd glanced at the ring, where the first rider was warming up. “Look, it’s your friend Melissa from the woods,” he commented. The girls had told him and Phil about the couple they had mistaken for Barry.

  “Very funny,” Carole said. “Hey, where’s Lisa? I don’t think I’ve seen her since she finished her round in equitation.”

  “She’s around somewhere,” Todd said. “I saw her outside the stable a few minutes ago. I wonder what number she got?”

  Before they could discuss it any further, the event began. Melissa and her horse, a large, muscular chestnut, started at a strong canter. The horse seemed to fly over the first obstacle with no effort at all, and the rest of the round followed suit. The pair finished with no faults.

  “Wow,” Phil said with a low whistle as Melissa rode out of the ring to the crowd’s applause. “Talk about setting the pace. That was beautiful. If anyone else does that, it’s going to mean a jump-off.”

  Carole felt her stomach flip with excitement. She glanced at Stevie, who looked just as thrilled.

  “Fantastic,” Stevie said. “The more riders in the jump-off, the more fences people have to pay for.”

  Carole stayed to watch the next couple of riders. Number two knocked down two rails, including a formidable-looking oxer near the end of the course. Number three rode clean but too slowly, which meant a time penalty. As the fourth rider entered the ring, Carole took a deep breath. “I’d better go get ready,” she said. “Wish me luck.”

  Carole rode Starlight toward the ring just in time to see the rider ahead of her bring down the final rail after an otherwise clean round. The crowd groaned sympathetically, and Carole did the same. Then it was time to forget about everything else and concentrate on her own ride.

  Starlight felt alert and strong under her as she entered the ring and warmed up. She nodded at Betty, who was the timekeeper for the event, and prepared to start.

  When Betty gave the signal, Carole was ready, and so was Starlight. He leaped forward, breaking into a smooth, fast canter immediately. Carole aimed him at the first fence, which looked very large as they approached it. But they had practiced this often enough, and their approach was flawless. Starlight soared over the fence, and though there was no way for Carole to know for sure, she would swear that there were at least six inches of daylight between his hooves and the top rail.

  He snorted a little as she brought him around and steadied him for the approach to the second fence. Carole almost laughed out loud at the sound. She could tell her horse was fired up and enjoying himself. But she forced herself to focus as they neared the obstacle, a post-and-rail fence.

  The jump flew beneath them as easily as the first. So did the next one, and the in-and-out combination that followed that. Even the monster oxer couldn’t stop them. By the time they reached the final jump, a brush fence, Carole was grinning ear to ear. Starlight landed the last jump as perfectly as he had the first. She glanced at the clock, saw that they were within the allotted time, and let out a triumphant whoop tha
t was loud enough to carry to where Stevie, Phil, and Todd were standing. They grinned and whooped back. Then Phil hurried off to prepare for his round.

  “This means a jump-off,” Todd told Stevie.

  Stevie nodded. “And there are still plenty of riders to go. This is good. This is very, very good.” The next rider was already entering the ring. Stevie glanced at her. “Ugh, it’s that snotty girl, Arianna,” she said. “Even though I can’t stand her, I hope she goes clean. The more people that ride in the jump-off, the more fences you have to clear to win, and the more money we’ll have when this is all over.”

  Stevie got her wish. Arianna rode clean. So did Phil, who went next. That meant that not only was there a jump-off, but a rider had to be in it to have any chance at one of the top ribbons.

  By the time Phil finished his round, Lisa had bitten her fingernails down to the nubs. It was getting harder and harder to watch and wait and worry about how she would do when her turn came. Finally she couldn’t take it anymore. She had to think about something else. As the rider after Phil brought down the top rail on the very first fence, Lisa did her best to remind herself of everything she had accomplished in the last couple of weeks. She had stayed up until almost three A.M. the night before finishing another book, so now she only had six books left to go on her reading list.

  For a moment she frowned, wishing it could be fewer. Camp was ending the next day, and she wasn’t going to be able to finish six more books by then. But she comforted herself with the thought that she was sticking to her diet, even though she was hungry almost all the time now. Despite how hard everything else seemed to be these days, dieting had actually turned out to be pretty easy.

  Lisa hardly heard the polite applause that accompanied the rider’s exit from the ring as she thought about her diet. She had stopped eating breakfast entirely, except for the sips of juice she would take whenever her friends were looking at her. At lunch and dinner, she tried not to eat more than three bites of anything, and if something looked particularly fattening, she would skip it. For instance, that day she had eaten three carrot sticks, a single spoonful of the rich beef stew, and half a piece of unbuttered toast, but she had left the chocolate pudding untouched.