Track Record

by Bonnie Bryant

  Before long Carole was pulling to a stop at the curb in front of the small, ramshackle house Ben shared with his grandfather. “Well, here we are,” she announced, suddenly feeling awkward. She glanced at Ben, who was unhooking his seat belt. “Um, I’ll see you tomorrow,” she added shyly, trying not to let it sound too much like a question.

  Ben met her gaze. “You can count on it.” He leaned over, taking her chin gently in his hand and kissing her softly. Then he turned and let himself out of the car.

  Carole watched until he’d walked across the tiny yard and let himself in the house. Then she put the car back in gear. She hated to drive off—to put an end to their wonderful, magical, amazing night.

  But she was already looking forward to tomorrow.

  Stevie rested her chin on her hands, gazing at the chemistry formula in her textbook. If she stared at it long enough, maybe it would start to make sense. So far, however, that theory didn’t seem to be working.

  So much for my bright idea to spend a perfectly good Friday night doing homework, she thought, rolling her eyes. She’d hoped to get her school assignments out of the way early that weekend, since she planned to spend all day Saturday and Sunday at the stable. I should’ve known better than to go against the laws of the universe like that.

  She was about to get up and see if her brother was home—maybe he had some clue about the homework—when the phone rang. Grateful for the interruption, Stevie hurried to her bedside table to pick it up. “Hello?” she said. “I hope this is the chemistry fairy, ’cause I could really use some help.”

  “Stevie?” Lisa’s voice sounded tight and disturbed.

  “Lisa? What’s wrong?” Stevie asked, instantly concerned. “You sound weird.”

  “That’s because something weird just happened,” Lisa said.

  Stevie perched on the edge of her bed. “Tell me,” she demanded.

  “It’s Callie,” Lisa said. “Scott and I stopped at Pine Hollow to see if she was there. We were just in time to see her run out, looking all freaked out and scared.”

  Stevie gasped. “Why? What happened?”

  “That’s the thing. I don’t know.” Lisa sighed noisily into the phone, sounding worried and frustrated. “Callie wasn’t exactly in a chatty mood.”

  “But what happened?” Stevie clutched the phone tightly, not wanting to miss a single word. “I mean, what did you guys do?”

  “Scott went marching in there, all furious and everything, and came out like five minutes later with his hand bandaged,” Lisa said grimly.

  Stevie wrinkled her nose. She was having a little trouble following the conversation. “What, you mean like a Band-Aid?”

  “No.” Lisa’s voice was somber. “It was more like a polo wrap or something. It was all wrapped around his hand—you know, like his fist was sore.”

  “Oh!” Stevie let out a low whistle, finally understanding what Lisa was telling her. At least some of it. Just then the doorbell rang. “Oops. Can you hold on? Someone’s at the door.” She glanced at her watch as the bell rang again, surprised. It was after ten, and she wasn’t expecting any company.

  “Hi,” Carole said breathlessly when Stevie swung open the door. “Sorry it’s so late.”

  “Hey, that’s not your fault,” Stevie joked, though her heart wasn’t in it. “Come on in. I have Lisa on the phone—sounds like something weird went down at Pine Hollow tonight.”

  “Tell me about it,” Carole said as she stepped inside and unzipped her jacket. “I just came from there.”

  “Really?” Stevie glanced at her watch again in surprise. It was pretty late to be just leaving the stable, even for Carole. But she didn’t worry about that for long. She was more interested in whatever had happened. “So spill it. What’s the deal? Lisa said Callie was all freaked out, and then Scott—”

  “Huh?” Carole looked confused. “No, I was talking about the thing with the police.”

  Stevie was already leading the way back upstairs, not wanting to leave Lisa hanging. “What?” she asked. “The police were at Pine Hollow?”

  “Uh-huh. And they were looking for George Wheeler.”

  Stevie blinked. None of this was making sense. “Pick up the extension there,” she told Carole, pointing to the phone in the hallway. “I’ll get it in my room.”

  Soon all three of them were on the phone. Lisa filled Carole in on what she’d just told Stevie, and then Carole explained what she’d just witnessed. When they were finished, Stevie was more perplexed than ever. “It sort of sounds like it all must be related somehow,” she said slowly. “Like maybe George was bothering Callie again, so Scott beat him up—Wait,” she interrupted herself. “Then the police might be looking for Scott, not George.”

  “They were definitely looking for George,” Carole put in. “Maybe they want to see if he wants to press charges against Scott. If it really did happen like Stevie just said, I mean.”

  “I guess,” Lisa said dubiously. “I don’t know, though. Callie really looked upset. Like, more than just bothered, you know?”

  Stevie sighed. “Well, I guess that’s the main thing we need to know,” she said. “Callie’s our friend, and whatever the heck happened over there tonight, it sounds like she might need our friendship right about now.”

  “Right,” Lisa agreed.

  “Definitely.” Carole sighed. “I just can’t imagine.… Well, I guess we’ll just have to wait and find out what happened.”

  There didn’t seem to be much more to say, so they hung up. Stevie walked Carole to the door and said good-bye, then headed back upstairs. Flopping onto her bed, she stared at the ceiling and mulled over what Lisa and Carole had told her. It seemed impossible that George—the shy, gentle, friendly guy who wanted to help her improve her riding, the person she was just getting to know better—would do anything that might get him in trouble with the police. Then she thought about Callie, and remembered the pale, frightened look she’d had when George had tried to join them in the restaurant, the reluctance she’d shown when George wanted to come along on the trail ride, his constant presence at Pine Hollow whenever Callie was expected, his disappearance when Callie left. None of it had seemed like much to Stevie, but it might have been a lot to Callie. An awful lot.

  “Oh, no,” Stevie said out loud. “What did I miss? What did we all miss? Just when Callie needed us the most …”

  She wondered if she should just call Callie—see if she was all right, find out the truth about George. But glancing at the clock on her bedside table, she saw that it was pretty late.

  I’ll wait until tomorrow, Stevie thought reluctantly. And I’ll be there for her. We all will.

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Pine Hollow series

  ONE

  Stevie Lake squinted into the setting sun. The solid log oxer was just a dozen strides ahead down a slight slope. Her horse’s ears were pricked forward eagerly as she galloped. Stevie took a deep breath, keeping her body as still as possible as her horse surged beneath her, her strides coming faster and faster. “Okay, girl,” she whispered into the wind, knowing that Belle couldn’t possibly hear her but equally certain that the mare would understand. “Steady. Just let it come.”

  She allowed her body to come back toward the saddle and steadied the mare with a half-halt, bringing her stride down a notch. Belle responded well, gathering her hindquarters beneath her. Stevie sank her weight into her heels and folded up easily as Belle left the ground. The mare soared over the thick logs as if they were a couple of cavalletti on the ground.

  Stevie was already grinning when Belle’s foreleg touched the ground on the far side of the obstacle. She let the mare gallop on for a few more strides, then sat back and brought her down to a controlled canter before turning off to one side. The course continued, but the next fence was a water jump. While it was relatively mild for a late afternoon in January, Stevie had already decided that it was just too cold to ask her horse to splash through the chilly, fetlock-high water.r />
  Not to mention how frozen I’d be if I came off her and ended up in the drink myself, Stevie thought as she circled Belle at a canter, which soon turned into a slow trot. Not that it would happen—we’re totally in a groove today!

  For a moment she was tempted to change plans and continue on. They could skip the water jump, maybe turn toward the panel fence off to the south instead, or perhaps circle back to the brush fence they’d just passed and take it from there. The cross-country fences were laid out in a way that allowed endless permutations, endless options for challenging courses, with all sorts of fences for riders of different levels. Stevie loved the fact that every obstacle presented a new challenge, a new question for horse and rider to answer together. That was one of the things she enjoyed most about cross-country jumping, and one of the reasons she’d recently decided to branch out from dressage, her longtime favorite discipline, and explore combined training. She had been excited and a little surprised to find that moving into eventing had already changed her whole perspective about her riding.

  Once upon a time, Stevie had spent every spare millisecond at Pine Hollow Stables, hanging out with her two best friends, Carole Hanson and Lisa Atwood, riding and caring for and talking about horses. Over the past couple of years, though, she had found that other parts of her life were taking up more and more of what used to be stable time: high school, part-time jobs, other interests. Somehow, finding the hours she’d once whiled away at lessons and Pony Club meetings, doing stable chores, or endlessly discussing the virtues and vices of every familiar old school horse at Pine Hollow seemed much harder at sixteen than it had at eleven or twelve. Learning more about eventing gave her riding a new focus and made her more excited about her time in the saddle than she’d been in a long time.

  As Stevie glanced to one side, wondering if there really was time for a few more fences, the setting sun emerged from a cloud, its rays nearly blinding her for a moment. The daylight wouldn’t last much longer, and she still needed to cool her horse out before loading her back on the trailer for the trip home. Besides, Belle was blowing a little, her breath making frosty puffs in the chilly air. Stevie didn’t want to overdo it—a tired horse was a sloppy horse, and solid cross-country jumps weren’t forgiving. Reluctantly she decided that she’d been right in the first place. It was time to call it a day.

  “Maybe we can practice our distances over some cross rails tomorrow,” she told Belle, already planning out the next week’s training in her mind. The following day was Saturday, and she hoped to get a lot done. “Then maybe Sunday we’ll go out for a hack. We could both use a change.”

  As Stevie brought her horse to a walk and turned off the course, she spotted her boyfriend, Phil Marsten, waving to her. He was sitting on his own horse not far from his family’s truck and trailer, which had brought them all to the cross-country course at the state park. Aiming Belle in Phil’s direction, Stevie returned his wave.

  “Check you out!” Phil called as soon as Stevie was close enough to hear him, shading his eyes with one hand and holding both reins with the other. “You guys are practically ready for the Olympic team!”

  Stevie grinned at Phil and leaned forward to give Belle a pat on the neck. “Oh yeah? I’m glad you’re here instead of Max. He probably would have told me how I didn’t keep Belle straight enough on the first couple of fences. And then he might have mentioned that I anticipated that stone wall a smidge. And of course, he’s always after me about my elbows.…”

  “I didn’t notice any of those things,” Phil lied loyally, returning her grin. “Hey, but I’m easily impressed.” He reached down to scratch his horse on the withers. “Especially since ol’ Teddy and I didn’t have the guts to take it at top speed like you guys did.”

  Stevie smiled as she dropped her stirrups and swung down to the ground. Phil’s horse, a solid-looking bay named Teddy, was quite a few years older than Belle. Though he still excelled in dressage, the quarter horse gelding’s best jumping days were already behind him, and Phil was always careful not to overtax him.

  “Don’t let all this flattery go to your head,” Stevie told her horse as she ran up the stirrups. “We still have tons of work to do if we want to enter an event or two this spring.” Giving up her stern tone, she reached out and hugged the mare. “But hey. We’re getting there!”

  Stevie held both horses as Phil hurried toward his slightly battered two-horse trailer, returning moments later with halters, lead ropes, and cooling blankets. Meanwhile Stevie had traded her leather riding gloves for the warmer fleece ones in her jacket pocket, though she left her riding helmet on for extra warmth. “I wish I had one of those coolers for me,” she commented as she buckled the fleece sheet on her horse. “I worked up a sweat out there, too.”

  “You’re going to have to walk Belle for a good long time after that workout,” Phil predicted, checking his watch. “We’ll be lucky to get out of here before dark.”

  Stevie shrugged. “She won’t take that long—she always cools out fast. She must get that from the Arabian side of her family.” She couldn’t help smiling slightly as she thought about her mare’s breeding. She was sure that some people would think she was nuts even to think about eventing with a half-Saddlebred, half-Arabian horse. But so far Belle had taken to the sport like a pony to sweet feed, which only made Stevie more excited about the new venture herself.

  She and Phil started walking, the horses stepping along obediently at the ends of their leads. It was getting chillier as the sun continued to sink behind the trees, and Stevie shivered slightly as she zipped her parka to her neck.

  “Are you okay?” Phil asked. “I think there’s a scarf in the truck.”

  Stevie shook her head. “I’m fine. Thanks.” She glanced around at the rolling hills dotted with jumps. They were passing a coffin jump at the moment, and just ahead Stevie could see a bank obstacle and the water jump she’d avoided earlier. She shivered again as she remembered flying over the course at top speed, the wind making her eyes water and her heart beat faster. “This place is pretty cool, isn’t it?” she said thoughtfully. “Too bad it’s so far away. I wonder if I could convince Max to install a real cross-country course at Pine Hollow.”

  Phil laughed. “You could do it if anyone could,” he said. “But I wouldn’t bring it up just now if I were you. He’s got enough on his plate these days.”

  Stevie grimaced, snapping out of her cross-country daydreams and back to reality. Max Regnery, the owner of Pine Hollow, had recently decided to expand the stable. A lot of new families were moving to Willow Creek, Virginia, and Pine Hollow’s forty-odd stalls weren’t enough anymore to meet the demand for boarding, riding lessons, and pony rides. The construction had begun right after New Year’s, and the workers were making good progress. Stevie was excited at the idea that there would soon be more horses and riders at the stable, but she still wasn’t quite used to the fact that Pine Hollow was changing so much so fast.

  “Maybe you’re right,” Stevie said with a shrug. “Oh well. At least there’s this place. Thanks for hauling us over here.”

  “No big. It’s not that far.” Phil turned and smiled at her. “Besides, I’ll take any excuse to spend the afternoon with my favorite future Olympic star.” Shifting Teddy’s lead to his left hand, he put his right arm around Stevie’s shoulders and gave her a squeeze before returning to the gelding’s near side.

  Stevie automatically smiled in response, but her mind was still on Pine Hollow’s transformation. “It’s kind of funny,” she said thoughtfully. “Pine Hollow seemed to stay exactly the same for so long. Then all of a sudden, bang! Max starts hiring new stable hands, building additions—it’s like everything is changing all of a sudden.” She frowned, the thought making her a little uneasy.

  “Sure.” Phil shrugged. “But they’re mostly good changes, right? Besides, change keeps things from getting boring.”

  “I guess.” Stevie tugged absently on her lead line as Belle paused to snuffle at the frostbitt
en grass. “At least, sometimes it works like that—like traveling or trying new foods or changing my focus to something cool and new like eventing. But this is Pine Hollow we’re talking about. Stuff like that isn’t supposed to change. It’s a little scary, you know?”

  “Is this really the Stevie Lake I know and love talking here?” Phil commented teasingly. “The girl who always takes life—not to mention cross-country courses—at a full gallop?”

  Stevie stuck out her tongue to acknowledge the teasing, but her mind was turning over what he’d just said. It was true—she wasn’t normally the kind of person who worried about change or feared the unknown. She’d always been adventurous, which was one reason she was loving eventing so much. Life had been throwing a lot of changes at her and her friends in the last few years, though, and some of them had been difficult, if not downright disturbing. First her friend Lisa’s parents had suddenly announced that they were divorcing after twenty-seven years of marriage. Then there had been the car accident—Stevie had been driving, her new friend Callie Forester had ended up partially paralyzed for almost six months, and a horse named Fez had been killed. More recently Stevie’s friend Carole had cheated on a test and ended up banished from her job at Pine Hollow for a while. Then, of course, there were the changes going on at the stable. Thanks to the construction crew with their piles of materials and their noisy machinery and trucks, the place looked totally different already, even though the new addition was only about half finished. Also, Max’s new stable hand, Maureen Chance, just didn’t seem to fit in, as far as Stevie was concerned. And that was only the beginning. Soon there would be more new employees, new boarders, new everything.…

  “How’s Belle doing?” Phil said, interrupting Stevie’s thoughts. “We’d better get on the road soon if you’re going to have time to clean yourself up for tonight.”