Back in the Saddle
Pine Hollow, Book Twelve
Bonnie Bryant
ONE
“Thanks for the ride, Stevie,” Scott Forester said as he undid his seat belt and crawled out of the backseat of the small two-door car, tilting his broad shoulders sideways to squeeze through the narrow opening.
Alex Lake climbed out after him. “After riding with Stevie, I bet you can’t wait till your own car’s back from the shop, huh?” he joked, slapping Scott on the shoulder.
Scott laughed and pretended to shudder. “Well, I wasn’t going to say anything, but …”
Stevie Lake rolled her eyes as her twin brother and their friend jogged toward the front steps of Fenton Hall, the private high school they all attended. Then she turned to Callie Forester, Scott’s sister, who had gotten out on the passenger’s side and was waiting by the car. “So,” Stevie said, glancing up at the grand old school building towering above the student parking lot. “I guess this means Thanksgiving break’s really over, huh?”
Callie yawned and tossed her long, straight blond hair over her shoulder. Then she picked up the smooth wooden cane that was leaning against the car’s battered blue fender. “Guess so,” she agreed. “Ready to head in?”
Stevie nodded, slightly distracted from the conversation by the sight of that cane. It had been about six months since the car accident that had left Callie unable to walk on her own. Many, many hours of hard work and determination had helped her regain control over her body, and a week ago she had finally been able to shed the metal crutches she hated so much.
“Just a sec.” Stevie leaned down to retrieve her trigonometry notebook from inside the car. “By the way, I have to tell you, you totally amaze me. I can’t believe you’re walking so well already.”
“Thanks.” Callie sounded pleased. “I didn’t use my crutches at all last week while we were away. I’ve hardly had to use this cane, either, though Mom and Dad insist I carry it around in case I get tired.” She slung the handle of the cane through the strap of her backpack and then pulled the pack onto one shoulder. “And now that I’ve got this independent walking thing down, I can’t wait to get back into training again. I want to start right away. As in, like, today. I called Max yesterday afternoon as soon as we got home from the airport to make sure Barq would be available.”
Stevie nodded, guessing from the satisfied expression on Callie’s face that Max Regnery, the owner of Pine Hollow Stables, had agreed to let her ride the horse she wanted. “That’s great,” Stevie said sincerely. Callie was a pretty private person a lot of the time, and she hadn’t said much to her friends about just how hard the past few months had been on her. In some ways, Stevie suspected that not being able to ride as well as she once had must have been even harder on Callie than not being able to walk without crutches. Even though Callie had done a lot of therapeutic riding as part of her physical therapy, Stevie knew that walking and trotting around the indoor ring at Pine Hollow couldn’t really compare to training for and competing in endurance races. Callie had been a junior endurance champion before moving to Willow Creek, Virginia, the previous June. “Barq will be a great horse to get you back into the swing of things,” Stevie commented. “And maybe soon you’ll be ready to start looking for your own competition horse again.”
Callie nodded but didn’t respond, which Stevie took as a cue to change the subject. A horse Callie had been interested in buying was killed in the same accident that had injured her, and Stevie certainly didn’t want to bring up those memories again. “Come on,” she said eagerly. “Let’s practice that new independent walking of yours and get inside.”
Callie shot her a surprised and slightly suspicious look. “What are you sounding so chipper about? This is school, remember? And last I heard, school wasn’t exactly your favorite place to be. Especially on Monday mornings. And even more especially on Monday mornings after weeklong vacations.”
Stevie grinned. “I almost forgot, you weren’t around this past week,” she said. “You don’t know about my fabulous new career as an internationally renowned journalist.”
“Huh?” Callie looked confused.
Stevie started walking toward the school as she explained. “Well, like Alex and I were saying in the car on the way here, Mom and Dad finally ended our grounding last weekend, right after Thanksgiving break started.”
Callie nodded. “I just wish Scott and I had been around to help you guys celebrate.”
“I know.” Stevie shrugged. “Believe me, I was wishing that too all last week when I was forced to actually hang out with my brother at Pine Hollow for lack of anything more interesting to do.”
She paused for a moment, feeling a twinge of guilt. The last thing she wanted to do was sound ungrateful for the fact that her parents had finally let her and Alex off the hook for drinking at a party back in October. But it really had been kind of disappointing to suddenly be free and to realize that none of their friends was around to help them appreciate it. One of Stevie’s longtime best friends, Carole Hanson, had been grounded herself for cheating on a test. Her other best friend, Lisa Atwood, had been in California visiting her father, stepmother, and half sister. Stevie’s boyfriend, Phil Marsten, had been home in bed all week fighting off a mild case of pneumonia. And finally, Callie and Scott had been visiting their old hometown on the West Coast, partly to see old friends, but mostly so that their congressman father could keep in touch with his constituents.
“Anyway,” Stevie continued as she and Callie walked slowly across the fractured pavement of the parking lot, heading for Fenton Hall’s broad stone steps. “The point is, I guess I was a little bored. It was great to hang out at Pine Hollow again, to spend time riding Belle and just be free, you know? But I missed having all you guys around.” She shrugged. “So when I found out that Deborah was working on a story about retired show horses, I was totally psyched to help her out.”
“A newspaper story, you mean?” Callie looked interested. “What was the article about?”
Stevie smiled. “I’m just getting to that.” Deborah Hale, Max Regnery’s wife, was a reporter for a major Washington, D.C., daily. She and Max had met and married several years earlier, soon after Deborah had come to Pine Hollow to do some background research for her first horse-related story. Since then, she had written several other equine articles, though she also reported on a wide variety of other topics, from politics to social issues to the environment. “The story didn’t sound too thrilling at first, actually,” Stevie admitted. “It was just supposed to be a nice little article about an old lady who takes care of old horses. But then we got out there and realized there was a lot more to it than that.”
She quickly filled Callie in on the rest of the details. At first, when she and Deborah had arrived at the retirement farm, everything had seemed fine. The place was clean, the woman running it was friendly, and the horses looked healthy—from a distance. When Stevie got closer to one of the retirees, though, she’d noticed some subtle health problems that made her suspicious. After that Deborah had taken over, digging out all the details of the real story: The woman was cutting corners on the horses’ care to make more money. Deborah had launched a full investigation, and the resulting story had run in the previous Friday’s issue of the newspaper.
When Stevie finished, Callie looked suitably impressed. “Wow,” she said as the two of them started up the school steps toward the heavy wooden front doors. “Sounds like Deborah was lucky you were there and paying attention.”
“I guess she was,” Stevie agreed, not bothering with false modesty. She was proud of herself for the part she’d played in helping those horses, and she didn’t care who knew it. “But I was pretty lucky, too. See, Deborah let me help
her out a little with the writing, and she talked her editor into mentioning me in the byline. That was totally cool. So I figured, hey, why not try to recapture the feeling?”
Callie nodded thoughtfully. “So you’re going to join the school paper?”
Stevie grinned. “You’re a genius, Forester,” she said. “And you’re exactly right. The Sentinel needs me. I mean, what other Fenton Hall student has actually been published in the Washington Reporter?”
“Probably none,” Callie agreed with a smile.
Stevie took the last few steps two at a time and then held the door open for Callie, who was following more slowly. When they were both inside, Stevie checked her watch. She still had plenty of time before she had to be in homeroom. “I’d better get up to the media room.”
“Okay. Good luck.” Callie waved and hoisted her backpack a little higher on her shoulder. “See you at lunch, if you’re not busy tracking down breaking news or something.”
The two of them parted ways. Stevie headed straight for the south stairwell, which would lead her up to the school’s media room on the third floor. She was so busy making a mental list of all the brilliant story ideas she’d come up with over the past few days that she wasn’t paying much attention to where she was going. As she rounded the corner into the stairwell at a swift trot, she almost crashed into a tall, slender, attractive girl with long dark hair.
Stevie pulled herself up just in time. “Whoa! Sorry!” she exclaimed breathlessly before she’d even had a chance to recognize the other girl. Then she frowned. “Oh. Veronica. It’s just you.”
Veronica diAngelo gave Stevie an annoyed glare. Glancing down at her suede jacket, she brushed an invisible spot of lint off the lapel. “Stevie Lake,” she said in the slow, haughty, deliberate tone she saved for anyone she thought was beneath her, which was just about everyone. “Doing your best ladylike impression of a freight train again, I see?”
Stevie rolled her eyes. Yeah, right, she thought. Like Veronica has ever actually seen a freight train. Stretch limo is more her speed.
But she didn’t bother to respond out loud. Back in junior high, when Veronica had been taking riding lessons at Pine Hollow, the two girls had been at each others throats almost constantly. Veronica’s snobby, superior attitude always rubbed Stevie the wrong way, while Stevie’s rambunctious, fun-loving nature had often clashed with Veronica’s sense of self-importance. In the past few years, however, Veronica had turned her attention from expensive horses to rich guys. She and Stevie had separate groups of friends, and it was pretty easy for them to ignore each other most of the time. And Stevie had to admit that their truce—intentional or not—made her life a lot easier.
“Whatever,” Stevie told Veronica shortly. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have something important to do.”
“I’m so sure.” Veronica rolled her eyes with a slightly bemused expression that indicated exactly how important she thought anything Stevie had to do could be. As she turned, though, she paused and glanced at Stevie again. “By the way,” she said, “I hear Nicole Adams is taking up riding again. And that your very own twin brother has been playing the happy little tour guide for the past week. I guess it’s true what they say: When the cat’s away …” She let her voice trail off suggestively, then smirked and hurried out of the stairwell before Stevie could come up with a suitable reply.
Gritting her teeth—why did Veronica still have the ability to get to her, even now?—Stevie headed up the stairs. She knew exactly where Veronica was going with her stupid little remark. Up until a year ago, Stevie never would have guessed that her twin brother and one of her best friends would fall in love. But Alex and Lisa had been a couple for the better part of a year now. They’d had a few rocky patches in their relationship lately, but Stevie was really starting to believe that they were meant to be together forever, just like her and Phil. When Lisa had left for California the weekend before Thanksgiving, Alex had spent the first day or two moping around and bemoaning her absence. Then he’d run into Nicole Adams at the stable.
Poor Alex, Stevie thought, her mind flashing to the image of her brother gazing at Nicole’s bouncy blond hair and amazing figure. What does he know about dealing with a total flirt like Nicole? He was just being friendly. Even though she’d discovered that Nicole had been a rider at Pine Hollow way before Stevie had started taking lessons there, she wasn’t convinced that the other girl’s sudden resurgence of interest in horses was the only reason for her return. Stevie still remembered how her drunken brother had slow-danced with Nicole at their party after a huge fight with Lisa. I’m sure Veronica remembers that, too, she thought grimly. And I’m sure she’s totally grooving on the idea that Nicole might be causing trouble between Alex and Lisa. Not that there’s really any chance of that. Now that Lisa’s back, everything will be fine.
Stevie banished Lisa, Alex, Nicole, and especially Veronica diAngelo from her mind as she approached the media room. The glass-paneled door was propped open with a large dictionary, and classical music was playing softly from somewhere inside. Stepping over the threshold, Stevie cast a curious eye around the spacious, window-lined room. She’d been there many times before, usually to drop off a student government announcement for the paper or to check out a tape from the extensive video library. But for the first time, she really took it all in. The media room had been created by knocking down the walls between two rooms, allowing enough space for the newspaper and yearbook staffs to work, as well as plenty of storage for the bulky audiovisual equipment that wouldn’t fit into the cramped, dungeonlike library on the ground floor. Unlike most of the classrooms at Fenton Hall, which echoed the building’s old-fashioned exterior with their arched windows and scuffed wooden floors, the media room had a modern look. Metal shelves stretched along two of the walls, holding hundreds of video- and audiotapes, CD-ROMs, and miscellaneous pieces of computer equipment. A separate shelving unit against a third wall provided a home for a few TV sets, a couple of handheld video cameras, and an old-fashioned film projector, as well as the portable stereo that was the source of the classical music. The floor had been covered with sisal carpeting, and long, low-slung tables were scattered here and there, along with a few armchairs. There was even an old, slightly battle-scarred couch resting beneath one broad window. At the moment the place was almost empty, with just a couple of students bent over their work in different parts of the room. Still, Stevie was sure that by Thursday morning the place would be bustling as the entire staff worked to meet their deadline and pull the paper together in time to print it.
Wow, Stevie thought, a slow smile spreading across her face. So this is where I’m going to be spending my time from now on. Not too shabby.
Just then a girl sitting at a computer near the window glanced up from her keyboard and spotted her. “Hello?” she called. “Can I help you?”
“Hi! I was looking for the editor,” Stevie replied, vaguely recognizing the other girl as a freshman named Mary or Marnie or something like that. “Is she around?”
“She just ran to the bathroom,” the freshman replied. “Should be back soon.”
Stevie nodded her thanks, then wandered toward the long wall opposite the door. Framed past issues of the Sentinel decorated the spaces between the windows, and as Stevie looked them over, she felt more and more excited about her plans.
Wow, she thought, walking slowly down the length of the wall and scanning each framed page. I guess this is one of those “advantages” Mom and Dad are always talking about when they tell people why they decided to send us to private school.
Over the years, Stevie had occasionally wished that her parents had decided to send her to Willow Creek High, the public school across town, where she could be with her best friends all day long. But at that moment, she really did feel incredibly lucky to be at Fenton Hall. She knew that Lisa had briefly joined her school paper during her sophomore year, but she’d quit in frustration after just a couple of months. Although the middle school managed t
o put out a respectable paper, Willow Creek High’s Crier was published sporadically at best, and the previous year the three student editors had spent more time juggling for power than they had in doing any actual work. The result was a dull, error-riddled publication that rarely filled more than eight pages, and which most of the student body ignored unless they were making it into spitballs.
By contrast, the Sentinel came out every Friday morning without fail, had won numerous local awards, and had even been a finalist in the state journalism competition the previous year. The current editor, a senior named Theresa Cruz, was continuing the tradition of lively and varied reporting on all sorts of topics, from the smallest student concerns to serious national controversies. Like most Fenton Hall students, Stevie never took her seat in homeroom on Friday morning without first grabbing a copy of that week’s Sentinel from the basket near the door.
Stevie was reading an article from the previous spring about the public school board’s proposal to institute a school uniform when she heard the girl at the computer speak again. “Hey, Theresa,” the freshman called. “Someone’s here to see you.”
Stevie spun around and saw that a short, pretty, olive-skinned girl with large, serious dark eyes and close-cropped black hair had just entered the room. “Hi, Theresa!” Stevie exclaimed, hurrying toward the older girl. “I’m Stevie Lake.”
Theresa Cruz nodded, a slight smile brightening her serious face. “Yes, I know who you are,” she said. “What can I do for you, Stevie?”
Stevie grinned, wondering if Theresa had seen her byline in the Reporter the previous week. Then she realized that Theresa probably knew her from before that. For one thing, reporters from the Sentinel had interviewed Stevie several times just a month earlier. She had been Scott’s campaign manager when he’d won the office of student body president. Besides that, Stevie had never exactly been shy, and Fenton Hall was a relatively small school. She knew just about everyone, and just about everyone knew her.
Back in the Saddle Page 1