So anyway, I was feeling pretty good about things as we left the movie and headed to this pizza place near Phil’s house. Hungry. Happy. Proud.
Then we walked into the restaurant, and my heart totally stopped. I swear it did. I mean, I know people say that all the time. But I am one hundred percent sure that I was probably legally dead for a second there.
Because sitting at a table right near the door, chomping down on a slice of mushroom pizza, was … (drumroll, please)
MISS FENTON!!!!!!
Can you believe that? I couldn’t. Naturally, she spotted me right away.
“Good evening, Stephanie,” she said in that dry, deliberate voice of hers. “I’m surprised to see you so far afield.”
I suppose I must have stammered something in response. I seem to recall trying to introduce my friends and forgetting Carole’s name. And I think I called Phil “Philip Marlowe” instead of Phil Marsten.
Because I was sure I knew exactly what she was thinking: There’s that irresponsible Stephanie Lake, goofing off when she’s supposed to be working hard to save her grades. Too bad. I guess I’ll have to flunk her out of school after all. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!
Okay, she probably wouldn’t have laughed about it, even to herself. But the rest is probably pretty close, don’t you think? I mean, do you remember what she said to us that time we got sent to her office for stealing all the frogs from the high-school biology lab and releasing them into the school toilets because we thought they’d go down into the sewers and breed into a mutant race of superfrogs that would destroy the school? You started crying and saying we were sorry, while I tried to convince her that, as third-graders, we deserved a second chance. She just stared at us and said, “I’m sorry, girls. A second chance is not something to be deserved; it is something to be earned.” Then she made us help the janitor clean the high-school bathrooms every day for a month. :-)
And that was when we were little kids! So I’m afraid I may have blown it. If my report had to be good before, now it has to be beyond great. It has to be stupendous. Extraordinary. Unsurpassed. Inimitable. Unparalleled. Transcendent. (See? That thesaurus I borrowed from Lisa is coming in handy!)
So if all that is true, what am I doing spending valuable report time writing to you??? Oops. Gotta go …
Welcome to My Life …
Dinah and I managed to keep anyone from suspecting anything for the next few days. We redid her makeover each morning and blamed her imaginary stomachache for the fact that she still spent an awful lot of time hiding out in her room. But every day it got harder to keep it up. Mrs. Slattery started talking more and more about things like doctors, milk of magnesia, and Kaopectate. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to trick her much longer.
But that was nothing compared to how hard it was getting to keep the truth from Betsy. I thought we should just go ahead and tell her—I was sure she could be trusted—but Dinah disagreed.
“We can’t take any chances,” she said, limping along with me through the snow toward the Sugar Hut one morning. We were going to meet Betsy to do some more collecting.
I just shrugged. I figured it was her decision to make. That didn’t mean I had to agree with it. But it did mean I had to honor it.
“Okay,” I said. “But it’s not going to be easy to fool her once we start collecting. It’s going to be an awful lot of work. Are you sure you’re up for it?”
“I was thinking about that,” Dinah said. “I have an idea. We have to convince Betsy to let me do all the driving today.”
I immediately saw what she meant. “That’s a great idea!” I cried. “If you’re driving, that means you won’t have to do any walking and collecting because you’ll have to stay with the sleigh.”
“Right,” Dinah said. “And Betsy will never have to know the truth.”
Betsy didn’t seem thrilled about the idea of Dinah driving, but she agreed. And our plan worked for a while. But before long I could tell that in Dinah’s current condition, even driving was a pretty big strain. Soon she was wincing every time she had to pull on the reins to get the horse to stop.
Finally Betsy noticed, too. “Is something wrong?” she asked.
“No,” Dinah assured her quickly. “I’m just not as good at this as you are.”
“Then let me do it,” Betsy said. It wasn’t the first time she had said it. It was clear she was itching to take her turn at the reins, though Dinah and I kept putting her off.
“No, I’m fine,” Dinah said now. “I’ve just got to learn to do this right.”
“That’s for sure,” Betsy replied.
I winced at the tone in her voice. She didn’t sound very happy with Dinah, and in a way I couldn’t really blame her. I knew I had to change the subject.
“There are some more of our buckets!” I sang out as cheerfully as possible.
Betsy and I set to work. We emptied the buckets into the vat on the back of the big, flat sleigh. Then we removed the spiles from the tree trunks. Sugaring time was coming to an end, and we had been instructed to remove our equipment that day.
“That’s another four spiles down,” Betsy commented as she tossed the equipment onto the sleigh.
I nodded and quickly counted the spiles already there. “Why, yes,” I said, thinking of the fraction homework waiting for me back in Dinah’s bedroom, as I frequently had over the past few extremely busy days. “And by my calculations, that means we have collected exactly four-fifths of the total number of spiles we set out.”
“Boy, you sure are good at math, Stevie,” Betsy said admiringly.
Dinah heard us from the driver’s seat and nodded. “Stevie is always talking about how much she’s learned in Ms. Snyder’s math class this year. It’s just too bad her test grades don’t always reflect her true comprehension and love of fractions and everything else about math. I think that really says something about our constrictive educational system.”
I sighed. “I could stand around here and talk about math all day. But we’d better keep moving if we want to collect the last one-fifth of our spiles.”
The others nodded. Betsy and I swung up onto our seats on the sleigh, and Dinah got the horse started again.
A moment later the sleigh went over a bump in the road, jolting us all around in our seats.
“Ouch!” Dinah cried before she could stop herself.
“What’s the matter?” Betsy asked.
“Nothing.” Dinah and I both said it at the same time. I gulped, realizing that Betsy might find it rather strange that I was answering for Dinah.
Luckily, Dinah changed the subject before Betsy could comment. “How are your parents coming with their riding lessons, Betsy?”
Betsy smiled. “Oh, they’re doing great,” she said. “In fact, they’re going on a trail ride this morning.”
“They are?” Dinah said, looking surprised. “I thought Mr. Daviet said nobody could go out on any of the trails until sugaring off was over.”
“He did.” Betsy shrugged and laughed. “But you know how convincing my father can be. He told Mr. Daviet he wouldn’t have time to go for another few weeks if they couldn’t go today. And guess what? Mr. Daviet said he’d take them on a trail that’s been closed because of the snow this winter. He wants to see if it’s ready to be opened to other riders.”
All of a sudden I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I could tell Dinah was thinking the same thing I was. She sort of stiffened on the seat next to me.
“What trail?” we both asked in a single voice.
“Rocky Road,” Betsy replied. “Isn’t that neat? I’m sure they’re going to love it. It’s such an exciting trail ride—or so I’ve heard.”
Sure it’s exciting, I thought. At least if you consider tumbling rocks, landslides, and avalanches exciting.
I was really feeling sick by now, and it had nothing to do with the bouncing sleigh ride. All sorts of horrible images were flashing through my mind. Falling rocks. Terrified horses. Horribly injur
ed riders.
I knew we had to do something. That trail wasn’t safe, not even for an expert like Mr. Daviet. It certainly wasn’t safe for inexperienced riders like the Hales.
I guess Dinah was thinking the same thing. “They can’t go!” she blurted out.
Betsy looked surprised at her outburst. “Of course they can,” she said. “Like I said, Dad told Mr. Daviet—”
Dinah’s face was white. “I don’t mean they can’t go riding; they can’t go on Rocky Road.”
“Why not?” Betsy asked.
“It isn’t safe!” Dinah said urgently.
Betsy looked a little annoyed. “I think Mr. Daviet’s a better judge of that than you are,” she said. “After all, if he thinks my parents—”
“That’s not what I mean,” Dinah said. “The trail isn’t safe. I mean, it can’t be safe at this time of year. All that snow melting is probably dislodging some of the boulders and rocks, and it could—” Dinah stopped talking because Betsy was staring at her.
“You were on it,” Betsy said. “That’s how you know.”
Dinah didn’t answer. She just nodded.
“That’s what happened, and you’re hurt, aren’t you?” Betsy asked.
I gulped, glancing at Dinah to see what she would do. I guess we should have known that Betsy would guess the truth.
Dinah stared at the reins in her hand for a moment. “It was a big boulder,” she said finally. “It missed me by inches. Stevie saved me. The same thing could happen to your parents—only Stevie won’t be there to save them. We can’t let them go on that trail.”
Betsy turned pale. “We’ve got to warn them,” she said, grabbing the reins from Dinah. “Hold on tight, or we won’t get there in time! They’re going out at eleven.”
I glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes to eleven. That didn’t leave us much time.
Betsy slapped the horse’s rump vigorously with the reins, and the lumbering old workhorse sprang to life.
I held on tight as we raced over the snowy roads. We didn’t talk much. We were all concentrating grimly on the horse, the sleigh, the road. I suspected that the horse’s brisk trot was faster than he had gone in many years. Would it be enough?
It seemed to take forever. But finally the Sugar Hut came into view. I checked my watch again. Five past eleven. Were we too late?
As we pulled up at the door, Betsy flung down the reins and we all leaped out of the sleigh. Betsy was in the lead as we dashed inside. “There’s an intercom that connects the Sugar Hut with the stable,” she explained breathlessly as we ran.
Seconds later she was waiting for someone to pick up at the other end. I held my breath. My mind was swirling with all sorts of different thoughts. I was still scared for Mr. Daviet and the Hales. But I also couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of relief. At last our secret was out. And I, for one, was glad. Usually I like secrets. But this hadn’t been the fun kind of secret. Not at all.
“Mr. Daviet?” Betsy said, interrupting my thoughts. “You’re still there?” Her voice was filled with relief.
I let out the breath I’d been holding. We were in time!
It didn’t take long for Betsy and Dinah to explain. Finally Dinah hung up the intercom. She sat down on a wooden bench, leaned back against the rough-hewn log wall, and started to cry. All I could do was sit down and put my arm around her, being careful not to touch any of her injuries. I didn’t say anything, figuring she needed to let it all out. I guess Betsy thought the same thing, because she just sat silently on Dinah’s other side, patting her on the knee until Dinah’s parents arrived a few minutes later to take their daughter to the doctor.
They dropped me off at their home on the way. I went inside, feeling unsettled and worried. I was worried about Dinah’s injuries, of course, but now that she was going to a real doctor, I was sure she would be fine. I was a lot more worried about other things. After all, we’d had some pretty good reasons to keep that secret. In some ways it really was a relief to have it out in the open, but that didn’t mean there wouldn’t be consequences. For one thing, Jodi was in big trouble with Mr. Daviet now. But more importantly, we had given Dinah’s parents something real to worry about. They might tell her she couldn’t ride anymore. That was about the worst thing I could imagine.
I spent the next hour or two trying to figure out how to convince the Slatterys not to make Dinah stop riding. At the same time, I was thinking about how all this had happened. I felt kind of guilty about it, because I knew it was partly my fault. If I hadn’t been there, Dinah wouldn’t have been on that trail.
Still, I knew at least one person was more to blame than I was: Jodi. I was realizing that I didn’t like Jodi at all. She had sent us out on that trail, knowing full well that we could get into trouble, just so she could be alone with her boyfriend. That wasn’t cool. Some people may consider me kind of a rule-breaker sometimes, but there was no way I would ever even think about putting someone else in danger like that. That was just wrong.
I was still thinking about that when the Slatterys finally got home. I hurried to meet them. First I checked to make sure Dinah was going to be okay.
“I’m fine,” she told me. “In fact, the doctor admired the leg wrap. I thought you’d want to know that.” She smiled.
Next I turned to Dinah’s parents. “Mr. and Mrs. Slattery, there’s something I need to say. This wasn’t Dinah’s fault, really. It was mostly mine. It wouldn’t have happened if I hadn’t been here.”
“Thanks, Stevie,” Mr. Slattery said. “Dinah told us everything. We have an idea where the fault lies. We understand what the two of you were doing and why.”
“So you’re not going to punish Dinah?” I asked hopefully.
“No, we don’t mean that,” Mr. Slattery said.
My heart sank like a stone. So this was it. I was sure they were going to tell Dinah she could never ride again.
Mr. Slattery went on. “Dinah won’t be allowed to ride for a month,” he said. “I mean a month after her cuts and bruises heal.”
I could hardly believe my ears. A month? In one way, that seemed like a lifetime. I couldn’t imagine not being able to ride for a month.
But it wasn’t a lifetime. Not even close. Dinah would be riding again before summer!
I tried not to look as happy and relieved as I felt. I didn’t want Dinah’s parents to get the idea that their punishment was too light or anything.
Dinah and I went upstairs so that she could change. As soon as we were safely inside her room, she turned to me and grinned.
“Isn’t it great?” she said. “It was all I could do to keep from cheering. I was sure they’d tell me I couldn’t ride ever again.” She shrugged and sighed happily. “My parents are okay.”
I had to agree with that.
After Dinah had changed, we lay back on the twin beds in her room. Something was still bothering me a little. I couldn’t help wondering if what had happened had changed Dinah’s opinion of Jodi. It bothered me that my friend admired someone like that, although I sort of understood why she did. It was because Jodi was older, and sort of glamorous, and a good rider. Still, I didn’t like the thought that even after all that had happened, Dinah might still like her.
I’m not very good at keeping quiet when I’m wondering about something. So after a few minutes, I spoke up. “I’ve been thinking about Jodi,” I said hesitantly. “I’ve been thinking she was wrong.”
“You bet she was,” Dinah said. Her voice was angry, which surprised me. I had been expecting her to jump to Jodi’s defense.
I sat up on the bed. “She shouldn’t have let us go out on the trail, and she shouldn’t have asked us not to tell.”
“That, too,” Dinah said.
“What else?” I asked.
“What she said to me that night …,” Dinah began, blinking a few times.
I thought back to that night outside the Sugar Hut. Everybody had been laughing, playing Frisbee, having fun—everyone except Dinah.
“Is that what made you upset?” I asked.
Dinah nodded, blinking again. I guessed that she was trying not to cry, which meant that whatever had happened must have really hurt her. I waited for her to go on.
“Jodi found me outside,” Dinah said. “She’d figured the reason we’d gone outside was because I didn’t want to take off my overclothes and show my cuts. I guess she was afraid I’d change my mind, so she came over to convince me that that wouldn’t be a good idea.”
“What did she say that upset you so much?” I asked.
“She told me that if I told anybody, she’d see to it that I’d never ride Goldie again. She also said I didn’t deserve to ride him anyway because if I couldn’t stay on a horse like Goldie, I was never going to be a good rider. I had this awful picture of spending the rest of my life riding in circles in a little ring. I was on a pony and Jodi Hale had the lead rope. It was awful!”
Even with everything else I knew about Jodi, I could hardly believe she’d been so mean. I also couldn’t believe Dinah hadn’t told me, though I guessed she had felt too ashamed to share it with anyone, even me.
“Let me tell you something,” I said. “I may not be the best rider in the world, but I’m pretty good. Just about nobody could have stayed on Goldie at that moment. If a horse is totally determined to lose his rider, he’s going to lose his rider, and I never saw a horse more determined than Goldie was right then. I couldn’t have stayed on him. Even Carole would have gone flying. The miracle was that you stayed on through that tremendous rear. You were fabulous!”
Dinah sniffled, looking astonished. “I was?”
“You were. And you are.” I gave her a very careful hug.
Suddenly Dinah remembered something important. “Tonight is the annual Sugaring Off Square Dance!” she exclaimed.
We only had a few hours to get ready. But we were pretty sure we were up to the challenge. The only tricky part would be dismantling Dinah’s now unnecessary “fashionable” hairdo!
FROM: HorseGal
TO: Steviethegreat
SUBJECT: Hi!
MESSAGE:
I would have called, but I don’t want to interrupt your writing. How’s it going? By the way, I meant to tell you this at Horse Wise today: If you want, I can write you a complete description about Topside’s condition and training during the time you were in Vermont. If you’re going to feature him more in the rest of your report, it could be really helpful to include that information so that Miss Fenton will understand what kind of horse he is and everything. I could probably have it finished by Tuesday’s lessons if you want. Just let me know how many pages you need!
Stevie Page 8