“Okay, Skye, let’s begin,” Oliver said.
“Wait a sec, Skye,” Lisa interrupted, suddenly remembering something. “You forgot the good-luck horseshoe.”
Skye looked at her doubtfully. “I think this is going to take more than a horseshoe.” Still, he reached over and brushed the worn iron shoe that was nailed to the stable door. Then a stable hand took the horse’s bridle and led Skye outside. Since Lisa’s instructions were to wait inside until they were ready for her in about ten minutes, she couldn’t see what was going on. Considering the last look she’d seen on Skye’s face, maybe that was for the better.
Lisa didn’t mind waiting in the stable. She was always happy in the Pine Hollow stables. She saw that Veronica diAngelo’s horse, Garnet, needed some fresh water. She took the mare’s bucket and filled it at the tap. Garnet drank deeply and seemed to thank Lisa with her eyes. Garnet didn’t get much attention from Veronica. Lisa wished she owned a horse like Garnet—her horse would get all the attention it could possibly want.
Patch, a pinto gelding, was the first horse Lisa had ever ridden at Pine Hollow. Although she didn’t ride him much now, she always felt a special warmth toward him. He needed some hay. She took a flake of hay from a nearby bale and put it into his feeder. He munched contentedly.
Lisa walked along the aisle until she came to Starlight’s stall. As long as she was checking on special horses, she certainly ought to include Carole’s own Starlight. But Lisa didn’t see him there. She walked right up to the door of the stall and stood on tiptoe to see if he’d decided to lie down and rest, but there was no sign of him.
That was odd. Very few people except Carole would ever ride him, and she hadn’t seen Carole that morning. Would Carole come into the stable and take Starlight out without even saying hello to her? Besides, Carole was supposed to be at home, setting up the birthday party for tonight.
Confused, Lisa decided to investigate further. She walked around to the other side of the aisle to Topside’s stall. He was missing, too. Next, she checked the tack room. As she was beginning to suspect, Starlight’s and Topside’s tacks were both missing. The only thing it could mean was that Stevie and Carole had gone riding without her.
Lisa felt an odd twinge. As much as she was enjoying being part of the movie and working with Skye Ransom—the dream of only about one hundred million girls around the world—she once again felt that she was missing something, and that something was her friends. There she was, standing in a stable, surrounded by horses she couldn’t ride, waiting to be told when she should come outside and say “Beautiful dog!” while her friends were having a wonderful ride in the fields and woods around Pine Hollow.
Then she reminded herself that the movie-making would be over soon enough. Tonight there was Colonel Hanson’s birthday party, and tomorrow she could go for a ride with Stevie and Carole. She had a lot to look forward to while she waited for her cue.
PEOPLE OFTEN TOLD Skye Ransom that he was a perfectionist. He always thought it was a compliment, although some people didn’t say it in a way that sounded like a compliment. What they meant, he suspected, was that he always tried too hard, made too much of too many little problems. Good enough should be good enough. But good enough wasn’t enough for Skye. Best was what he insisted upon, always.
Oliver believed that it was important for an actor to understand the motivation of the character he was playing. The director had been over Gavin’s character and motivation so many times, Skye thought he could recite the speech himself.
“He’s a boy who loves animals. He can practically understand what’s on their minds. It’s people Gavin doesn’t understand.”
That was where Skye and Gavin split. Skye loved people—as long as they weren’t chasing him. He liked a lot of animals, including Maverick, but he didn’t understand horses at all. Horses were big. They could move fast, and they seemed to have a knack of trying to get him out of the saddles on their backs. He’d fallen off of horses’ backs more often than he wanted to recall. He didn’t want to do it again in front of a camera.
Pepper sensed Skye’s nervousness and took advantage of it right away. Skye could feel the horse taking charge. He was afraid that this day’s shooting was going to be a carbon copy of their last attempt at this scene. That wouldn’t be good enough by anyone’s standards.
“Okay, take your place, Skye,” Oliver said. “Let’s do this and do it right, okay?”
Skye nodded. He turned Pepper around and headed for the wooded area where he was to begin riding. He knew what to do. He’d done it often enough; he’d just done it wrong before. He wanted, more than anything, to do it right this time.
Pepper trotted willingly into the woods. Skye liked riding in woody areas. He enjoyed the fresh green of the trees and the quiet of the forest. He hoped it would give him a chance to collect his thoughts and become Gavin, the boy who wasn’t afraid of animals.
“Hi, there, pardner!” a familiar voice greeted him.
It was Stevie and she was on horseback. There, next to her, was Carole, riding Starlight.
“Hi! What are you two doing here? Does Oliver know?”
“Of course not,” Stevie whispered. “Nobody’s allowed to be anywhere near the set, but we have our ways, and we figured out how to get here without anybody noticing. You don’t mind, do you?”
“I don’t think so, although I’m not too crazy about the idea of a couple of people I like a lot watching me blow this scene one more time.”
“That’s what we’re here for,” Carole said.
“To watch me blow it?” Skye asked, a little horrified.
“No, that’s not what she means,” Stevie said. “We’re here to keep you from blowing it. Remember? I told you that you had The Saddle Club behind you. We won’t let you down.”
“The Saddle Club is a real full-service organization, isn’t it?”
“We aim to please,” Carole said, and she meant it. She and Stevie had decided the day before that they just had to keep Skye from messing up again. For one thing, they liked him and they wanted to help him. For another, he seemed so upset about having failed that they didn’t want him to have to go through that again.
“Now, first things first,” Carole continued. She hoped she sounded a little bit like a Marine Corps colonel. She wanted Skye to know that she knew what she was talking about. “When you’re riding at a canter, you have to do two things that seem impossible to do at once. You have to sit up straight and you have to rock with the motion of the horse, shifting your weight as he shifts his from front to back.”
“Aw, come on—” he began to protest.
“And here’s how you do it,” Carole went on authoritatively. “Your lower body has to be relaxed, almost as if it were draped around the saddle. Your knees have to be relaxed enough to flex with the forward motion of your body. That happens automatically, though, as long as you’re not gripping for your life with your knees. The part of your body that you have to consciously allow to move is your hips. That’s where the rocking in the saddle part starts. The upper part of your body doesn’t have to be rigid, but it helps if you pretend that you are a puppet suspended from a string that comes from the button in your hat. It holds you nice and tall in the saddle.”
“That’s a lot to learn in the next five minutes,” Skye paid, complaining.
“It isn’t,” Carole insisted. “It’s not hard because it’s right. If you’re doing it right, it feels right and you know it.”
Skye looked as if he were going to protest. Stevie decided not to give him the chance.
“Try it,” she said. “Let’s take a little ride together away from the camera.” She shifted her weight and Topside began walking. She reached back with her left foot and touched him behind his girth. Topside immediately began his rhythmic canter. Pepper followed suit. Carole, on Starlight, came up at the end.
“Let your legs hang,” she said. “They are very heavy.” Skye’s legs relaxed immediately. As a result, Pepper’s
stride relaxed and became smoother.
“Sit up! The string is pulling you straight up!” Carole said.
Skye rose in the saddle, still allowing his hips to move with Pepper’s strides.
“Much better!” Carole said, very pleased with her lesson.
Stevie circled around in a clearing in the woods and led the way back to Skye’s starting point. She pulled gently on Topside’s reins, and she and her friends all came to a stop.
“You did it!” Skye said.
“No, you did it,” Carole insisted.
“Well, whoever was responsible, it worked. Thank you. Now all you have to do is remind me of everything right before I go—and it looks like they are about ready for me,” he said, glancing through the woods. “What is it again?”
“Don’t worry, you’ll know,” Carole said. “It’s like riding a bicycle.”
“Besides,” added Stevie, “if we run over the rules again, that’s all that will be on your mind. You can’t look exhilarated if you’re thinking about strings out of the top of your head and hips sliding in the saddle!”
Skye laughed.
“Places!” a megaphone shrieked from the stable.
Skye’s laughter stopped. His face became stony, and he looked as if he were concentrating very hard on something.
“Uh-oh,” said Carole. “That expression is definitely not exhilarated.”
“Skye, did you hear the one about the three vampires who went into a bar?” Stevie asked.
“Huh?” Skye said.
“Three vampires,” Stevie repeated. “They went into a bar and sat down at a table. The waitress came over to take their order.”
“Stevie!” Skye said. He was trying hard to concentrate, but that was the last thing Stevie and Carole thought he ought to be doing. Stevie persisted.
“The first one said, ‘I’ll have a blood.’ The waitress wrote that down. She looked at the second one. ‘Same for me,’ he said.”
“Lights! Camera!” the megaphone blurted. Stevie had to hurry.
“The waitress looked at the third vampire. ‘I’ll just have some plasma,’ he said. The waitress jotted that down, too. She turned to the bartender and said, ‘Two bloods and a blood light!’ ”
Skye started laughing.
“Two bloods and a blood light!” He repeated the punch line between bursts of laughter. “That’s a good one!”
“Action!”
Without thinking, Skye signaled Pepper to begin their scene. The horse responded instantly. The last thing Stevie and Carole saw as Skye rode away was that he was still grinning at the silly joke. He was so focused on the joke that he wasn’t even noticing that his legs hung like heavy weights around the horse’s belly, his hips swayed easily with Pepper’s gait, and his torso sat straight up, as if suspended from the sky.
“He looks exhilarated, don’t you think?” Stevie asked Carole.
“Definitely,” she agreed.
“NOW!” A PRODUCTION assistant signaled Lisa. She stepped out of the shadow of the stable and watched Skye approach. Maverick bounded out from the underbrush and kept pace with Pepper’s gait. The most astonishing thing, however, was the look of exhilaration on Skye’s face. Lisa grinned just looking at him.
Maverick arrived first. Lisa knelt down and gave him a pat and a hug. He licked her face. She nuzzled against his soft fur.
“Beautiful dog!” Lisa said to Skye. Saying that line wasn’t acting at all.
“Thanks,” he said. “Here, take my horse, will you? Give him some extra grain today. He really deserves it!” Skye looked as if saying that line wasn’t acting, either. Lisa wondered what had happened to make it all work so well, but whatever it was, she was grateful for it.
She took Pepper’s reins and led him into the stable.
“That’s a take! Print it! Great job, Skye!” Oliver said. There was a lot of relief in his voice.
“Thanks,” Skye said.
“What’s your secret?” Oliver asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I guess it’s that, like Gavin, I’ve learned you can do anything with a little help from your friends.”
He winked at Lisa. She didn’t have any idea why he did that, but then she remembered the two horses missing from their stalls. Whatever Stevie and Carole were up to, it worked. She winked back.
“That’s a wrap, Lisa,” Oliver said. “You’re all done here and you can go on home. It’s been a pleasure having you work with us. I think we’ve all learned something from you.” He shook her hand and then turned to his cameramen. “Now, for the close-ups …”
It was over. She was being dismissed. Lisa’s moment as a star was done. She wanted to talk to Skye, but he was immediately drawn into a rehearsal for the next scene. He had only a second to wave good-bye. “I’ll see you at Carole’s at six, I hope,” he said, and then he was gone.
Lisa wanted to talk to Stevie and Carole, but they were nowhere to be seen.
Now that the end of her career as a film actress had come, she wanted to share her thoughts with someone, almost anyone. She looked up. She realized she was still holding Pepper’s reins. “Come on,” she said. “I’ll tell you all about it.”
Slowly she led the horse back into the stable, where she untacked and groomed him.
A few minutes later, Stevie and Carole arrived.
“We’ve got loads of stuff to do!” Carole said, untacking Starlight quickly. “We’ve got to set up the table and pick up the cake, and then we have to—”
“Talk,” Lisa said, interrupting. “We have to talk.”
“Of course, that, too,” Stevie said. “There’s lots to talk about and lots to tell.”
“Horses come first,” Carole said. That was just like Carole to insist that they take care of the horses before satisfying their own curiosities. They were so curious that taking care of the horses took only a few minutes.
The three of them linked arms and headed for the door of the stable. They almost couldn’t get through, though, because of the overnight express delivery man, trundling up the path to the stable, carrying three giant cardboard cartons.
“Somebody here named Ransom?” he asked.
“That way,” Stevie said, pointing through the stable. “You’ll find him wherever somebody is yelling ‘Action!’ ”
The delivery man gave her a weird look, but followed her directions through the stable.
“Now, speaking of ‘somebody here named Ransom,’ what were you two up to in the woods with Skye?” Lisa asked. “Don’t try to fool me; I know you were there.”
Carole and Stevie exchanged looks. “Did you hear the one about the three vampires?” Stevie asked.
IT WAS TIME. At six-thirty Carole and her friends and her father’s friends ducked behind all the furniture in the Hansons’ living room. Two people stood behind the drapes. Several more ducked into the dining room and were prepared to pop open the double doors at just the right moment. The house was silent.
Colonel Hanson marched up the walk. The thing about being a Marine was that he always marched everywhere. Carole could tell her father’s march from a great distance. Now it wasn’t a distance away, it was just a few feet from the door. He climbed up the steps onto the porch.
Thump. Thump. Thump.
There was silence for a few seconds. Carole knew her father was reaching in his pocket for his keys. She heard the familiar jingle of his key ring. She held her breath. The key scritched as he slid it into the lock. He turned the key, the lock released.
Thump. Thump. Thump. He was inside. The door closed behind him.
“Carole? You home?”
“Surprise!” The word burst out in chorus from all the guests. The dining-room doors flew open. More guests popped out. The drapes flapped aside. “Surprise!”
Colonel Hanson was bowled over with astonishment. His jaw dropped, his eyes opened wide.
“For me?” he asked, looking around at the crepe paper that festooned the living room.
“Of course it’s for y
ou!” Stevie said. “Is it anybody else’s birthday? Did you really think we were going to ignore your birthday when you’re turning so old?”
Colonel Hanson turned to his daughter. “Who was in charge of the guest list? Do I get to uninvite people who make fun of my age?”
“Sure,” Carole said. “Unless it’s Stevie. She’s practically the mastermind of this whole operation. She’s got to stay.”
“Oh, all right,” he said, pretending to be annoyed, but he gave Stevie a hug, which he knew she deserved.
“Anyway, you look like you could use a party,” Lisa said. She took him by the hand and led him to the dining room, where she poured him a glass of punch.
Lisa was thrilled with the fact that they’d surprised the colonel, and she knew it was going to be a fun party, but there was one thing missing. Skye hadn’t shown up. Movie-making was unpredictable, she had certainly learned, but she had hoped Skye would be able to leave the set in time to join in on the fun. After all, it was just his kind of party.
By then all of the guests were helping themselves to the goodies that the girls had laid out. In keeping with the theme of a children’s party, there wasn’t a vitamin in sight. There were brownies and Rice Krispies treats. There were even peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Stevie had wanted to figure out a way to make s’mores—her personal favorite junk food—but Carole wouldn’t let her light a fire in the barbecue. It didn’t matter, though; everybody seemed to be having a great time.
Colonel Hanson was thrilled with everything The Saddle Club had done for his birthday party. He loved the punch and the food; he loved the hats and the noisemakers. It turned out that they weren’t just noisemakers. They were slide whistles that could make different notes. Colonel Hanson got all his guests to play “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” and then divided them into groups so they could do it as a round. A lot of people had trouble with that, because it’s hard to laugh and play a slide whistle at the same time.
“This is the sloppiest group of musicians I’ve ever seen. Next year, kazoos!” called Colonel Hanson.
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