I also drew a picture of Chad’s lacrosse stick, before and after, at the bottom of the page. The sign looked pretty good, if I do say so myself. I took some tape out of my backpack and posted the sign high on the mirror where everyone who came into the girls’ room would be sure to see it. I was pretty confident that it would stay there all day long, since the teachers never go in there because they have their own bathroom.
The second sign involved Alex. As I said, it has been destroyed. In fact, I never saw it again after posting it on the mirror that day. But the basic gist of it was that Alexander Lake was having trouble deciding which of his classmates he liked better—Andrea or Martha. It also mentioned that he was currently leaning toward Andrea, but that he might ask Martha to the upcoming middle-school dance because he’d been talking about how great she’d looked doing jump shots in basketball the other day. (Which was totally true, by the way—all the stuff on my signs was true. That was what made them so great.)
Finally I pulled out the third and last sign. It was addressed to all the fourth-grade girls and stated that Michael Lake wore Spider-Man underwear. (Also true.)
I was zipping up my backpack and preparing to return to class when the door opened and Veronica walked in. I was curious to see what everyone’s reaction would be to my signs, so I stuck around and pretended to wash my hands while she read them. (That doesn’t make much sense, does it? Actually, I really did wash my hands. I just pretended they were dirty in the first place.)
Veronica finished reading and then turned to stare at me. “Girlfriends’ initials? Spider-Man underwear? Is this what you meant by saying yours is a fine family?” She smirked in this really nasty way, the way she always does when she thinks she’s just proven she’s better than someone else. Then she brushed past me and left the room.
I was fuming. It was one thing for me to dump on my brothers and make fun of them and try to wreak revenge on them. It was another thing entirely for Veronica to put them down. After all, they’re my brothers. Our family honor was at stake. That’s why I decided I’d better extend my revenge plans to include Veronica. Someone needed to take her down a few pegs, and I’ve never been one to shirk my duties.
We had a special Horse Wise meeting the next day after school to prepare for the mock hunt. I was in a good mood when I got there. And as soon as I arrived, my mood got even better as people started rushing over to clap me on the back and tell me how great I was. I knew it was because of my signs—they had been a big hit at school the day before, and everyone was still talking about them. Everyone except my brothers, that is. I hadn’t seen much of the three of them the evening before, since Lisa and I had been invited to Carole’s house for dinner and we had stayed kind of late watching an old movie on TV with Carole and her father and then talking about the fox hunt.
However, I hadn’t quite gotten around to telling Carole and Lisa about my revenge signs. They don’t always approve of my little conflicts with my brothers, mostly because the two of them sometimes end up getting involved. And since they don’t go to Fenton Hall, I figured I wouldn’t burden them with it, at least not yet.
But they couldn’t help noticing that something was going on. After Polly Giacomin patted me on the back and said, “Nice going,” Carole and Lisa were starting to look really suspicious. They started muttering to each other, and I heard Carole say something like “We’d better look into this.”
“Look into what?” I asked.
“Look into why everybody is clapping you on the back and congratulating you,” Lisa said. “What have you done now?”
I decided since my friends already suspected something, I might as well tell them. Besides, I was still feeling kind of proud of myself. I was sure they would appreciate the clever and rather subtle method I had chosen to get back at my brothers. “Oh, it’s just a touch of revenge,” I said modestly. “Another ingenious plot by the famous, or should I say infamous, Stevie Lake.”
“Big trouble,” Lisa said to Carole, who nodded.
I wasn’t sure what they meant by that, but I rushed to explain. “It has to do with my three troublesome brothers,” I began. “See, when Phil came to dinner on Saturday, they were total pains, teasing us and making fun of foxhunting. I couldn’t let them get away with that, could I? I just had to take steps.”
“Steps, maybe,” Carole agreed. “Leaps, definitely not. What did you do?”
I reached into my pocket and brought out a copy of each sign. Carole and Lisa scanned them quickly, then let out loud gasps.
“Aren’t they wonderful?” I asked proudly. “I think I’ll go into the Revenge Hall of Fame.”
“If you live that long,” Carole said rather darkly.
“What do you mean?” I suddenly realized that their gasps might not have been gasps of awe and admiration as I’d thought. When I took a closer look at them, they both seemed kind of horrified.
The two of them stared at each other for a moment. “You tell her,” Carole said at last.
“We mean you’re crazy!” Lisa said promptly.
Carole nodded. “A little teasing is one thing, but what you’ve done to your brothers is public humiliation. They aren’t going to let you get away with that!”
“And there are three of them,” Lisa added.
I didn’t see why they were making such a big deal out of this. I figured it was probably because they didn’t know what sibling rivalry was all about. I mean, Carole’s an only child, and Lisa’s brother is so much older that it’s almost like she doesn’t even have a brother at all. I shrugged. “Come off it,” I told them. “You two just don’t know how it goes between me and my brothers.”
“Oh, yes we do,” Carole said. “And it starts with a T, and that stands for Trouble. You haven’t heard the last of this.”
“It’s no big deal,” I assured her.
“If that’s the case, why does everybody keep clapping you on the back?” Lisa asked.
I noticed that Carole had this really worried look on her face. Then I saw her lean over and mutter something to Lisa under her breath. Lisa muttered something back.
“What are you two whispering about?” I demanded.
“Nothing,” they said at the same time.
I was about to insist they tell me when Max called the meeting to order. That made me forget all about my friends’ silly concerns. Although, as it turned out, that was a serious error on my part. More about that later …
We decided to have a Saddle Club meeting at my house after the Horse Wise meeting. When we arrived, still talking excitedly about the mock hunt, we went into the kitchen to get a snack, pausing just long enough to call hello to my parents, who were watching TV in the den. Then we headed for the stairs.
“Where are your brothers?” Carole asked casually as we went.
That should have made me suspicious. But my mind was too full of other things, like fox hunts and revenge plots. “Who knows? Who cares?” I replied airily. “Chad’s probably listening to that awful music he likes. Unless, of course, his ear is tired from all the phone calls he’s had from his girlfriend yelling at him.” I giggled at the thought. “Alex, on the other hand …” I continued to describe my brothers’ individual plights as we walked upstairs to my room. I suppose to an outsider, my comments might have sounded a little heartless. But I knew my brothers deserved every bit of the humiliation they were suffering right then. It was only fair after the humiliation they’d put me through Saturday night.
As we walked down the upstairs hall toward my room, we could see that all my brothers’ doors were closed. Heavy metal music was blaring from behind Chad’s. Some electronic bleeps and bloops were emerging from Alex and Michael’s room.
I looked at my friends and shrugged. “See? Nothing’s happening. The three of them just know they got what they deserved. There’s no trouble brewing here. Trust me.”
They seemed to believe me. (Little did I know …) We started our Saddle Club meeting talking about our favorite subject—horses.
“How are you and Comanche doing?” I asked Lisa. She hadn’t talked about him much since that first ride, and I was curious, especially since she seemed to be having a little trouble controlling him. I was starting to think she didn’t quite understand his mischievous personality very well—probably because Lisa’s own personality isn’t mischievous at all.
“Only so-so,” Lisa replied. “The last time I rode him, I spent an awful lot of time trying to get him to do what I wanted him to do instead of what he wanted to do.”
“He’s very headstrong,” Carole agreed. “I always thought that was why he and Stevie got along so well.”
I laughed. “We were quite a pair, weren’t we? But now that I’m riding Topside, I realize that Comanche could be difficult.”
“It may be that Comanche isn’t a good horse for you,” Carole told Lisa. “It’s really important that a rider and a horse be matched carefully. Horses have personalities—”
“—just like people,” Lisa finished for her. “See, I figured that since I like Stevie so much, I’d like a horse with a personality like hers.” She sighed. “What I found, however, was that liking Stevie and trying to tell her what to do are two different things.”
It took me a second to work through that sentence again and figure out whether Lisa was insulting me or not. By the time I realized she was—and that it was pretty funny—Carole was already cracking up. I joined in. Lisa’s a lot funnier than some people give her credit for, probably because a lot of her funniest comments are sort of subtle, like that one.
Anyway, we continued to discuss Lisa and Comanche, and in the end Carole advised her to ask Max if she could try riding Diablo instead.
“You think he’d let me ride Diablo?” Lisa asked.
Carole nodded, and I jumped in to agree. “Oh, he’s a sweetie,” I said. “And remember Max saying that he used to belong to someone who did a lot of hunting. I bet he’ll be great in the field. It’s important to have a horse with experience—one who won’t bolt off when he hears the hounds barking and baying. Say, what is baying, anyway?”
That brought us into yet another discussion of the upcoming hunt, and that kept us busy for the rest of our meeting.
But my friends’ comments about my brothers that day had made me think. I realized, kind of belatedly, I guess, that what I had done to them really was pretty humiliating. I mean, I know that was the goal, but still. Everybody at Fenton Hall—not to mention most of the remaining population of Willow Creek—seemed to be talking about what I’d done … except my brothers. It was kind of weird that they hadn’t even reacted yet (except for Michael begging to stay home from school the day after the signs appeared).
That wasn’t like them. Then again, I told myself, maybe they were finally maturing a little. Maybe they had realized I was just evening the score, paying them back for what they had done to me. Maybe they wouldn’t retaliate at all!
But I couldn’t quite believe that. No way. So as I headed off to school the next day, I kept one eye out for trouble. There was no telling when my brothers would strike. Or how. The only certainty was that they would do something.
Chad was the first one of them I saw when I got to school. “Hi, Stevie! I missed you this morning!” he called cheerfully as he dashed past in the hall.
I waved and smiled in return, not knowing what else to do. Chad doesn’t usually bother to speak to me in the halls at all, let alone nicely like that.
Before I had a chance to worry about that, Alex tapped me on the shoulder. “Hey, I picked up your workbook by mistake. Sorry about that, but when I checked the work you’d done last night, I saw you’d made a few mistakes. I corrected them for you. Okay?” He shoved the book into my hands and took off.
Expecting the worst, I opened the workbook to see what he’d done. I almost fell over in shock as I realized he’d done exactly what he’d said—corrected my homework.
I ran into Michael a little later. He loaned me a quarter.
It was too weird. My brothers were being nice to me. Something was definitely up.
Meanwhile, although I didn’t know it at the time, my two loyal best friends were plotting against me. Actually, to be fair, they thought they were trying to help me. They were worried that the battle with my brothers might somehow affect my riding privileges or something like that. They tend to worry more about things like that than I do, I think. But they mean well.
So they were spending a lot of time trying to figure out how to help me. That’s our Saddle Club creed, as you know. So I guess they thought it was their duty.
Unfortunately, they’re far too trusting and naive ever to hope to outwit my dastardly brothers. To begin with, they were working under the assumption that those three monsters are actually normal human beings. Poor, innocent Carole and Lisa … But more on that later.
I was having my own problems figuring out what my brothers were up to. Besides that, I still had to deal with everyday problems like Veronica diAngelo. She approached me in the cafeteria. I was a little distracted at the time, since my brothers had just offered to go and find me some lunch to replace mine, which I’d left at home that morning. I was trying to figure out whether they were more likely to pick some half-eaten food out of the garbage or find me something even more disgusting in the biology lab.
Veronica’s arrival interrupted these thoughts. “Hi, Stevie!” she said sweetly. “Can I ask you a question?”
“You just did—and that’s your limit,” I snapped. I know that wasn’t very polite, but I wasn’t in a very polite mood just then.
Anyway, Veronica didn’t take offense. Instead she laughed as if it were the funniest thing she’d ever heard. “You’re so funny, Stevie!” she exclaimed.
I just stared at her in amazement, wondering if aliens had come down to earth and replaced her personality with a nice one.
She didn’t notice my stare. “What I wanted to ask,” she said, “is what happened between you and your brothers? I mean, you guys fight all the time, but what did they do to you that was so bad you decided to put those signs in the girls’ room?”
“It’s a family matter, Veronica,” I said. There was no way I was going to tell her about that dinner with Phil.
Just then Lorraine Olsen (who also rides at Pine Hollow) sat down next to me. “What’s up between you and your brothers?” she asked me.
I launched into a detailed answer to her question, explaining how my brothers had made fun of the fox hunt, Phil, and me. Meanwhile, I watched Veronica out of the corner of my eye, hoping she could appreciate the irony (another term I learned in English class, by the way) of my telling Lorraine what I had just refused to tell her.
I had just gotten to the part about the boys making fun of the mock hunt when Alex arrived. “Here you go, Stevie,” he said, offering me a lunch bag.
I accepted it, mostly because I was curious to see exactly what hideous items he and the others had come up with. I peered into the bag as Alex hurried away and disappeared into the lunchtime crowd.
A sandwich was inside. Bologna and cheese on white. With mayo. Just the way I like it. I guessed that it had come from Michael’s lunch, since that was his favorite sandwich, too. There was also some apple juice—Chad’s drink. And an orange—Alex’s favorite. I was confused. Each of my brothers had contributed something he really liked to my lunch. That was odd. Very odd.
I spent the rest of the lunch period pondering the situation. Could it be? Could my brothers really not be mad about what I’d done? Could they have accepted it and moved on?
It seemed impossible. But I was starting to wonder.…
I hadn’t come any closer to figuring it out by the time Saturday rolled around. And brothers were the last thing on my mind as I arrived at Pine Hollow bright and early for the mock hunt. My friends and I—along with the other riders from Horse Wise and Cross County—were properly dressed in riding pants and boots, white shirts and ties, and jackets, as well as our usual hard hats. There were more than fo
rty people participating in the hunt, so it was a pretty wild scene that morning, with everyone scrambling to get themselves and their horses ready on time.
But finally everyone was ready, and Max and Mr. Baker called for our attention.
“I am now ready to assign parts to all of you,” Max announced. “Most of you will be in the field, but a few of you will have special jobs. First of all, we need a junior master of the hunt. This job is going to the person who has been the most serious student of foxhunting—the person who worked hardest at understanding all aspects of it.”
Being junior master sounded like fun, but I was pretty sure Max would never pick me for the job. Like a few other people, Max has the mistaken impression that I could never be a serious student of anything, except maybe dressage or practical jokes. I wondered if he would give the job to Carole. I suspected he wouldn’t, since she had started off knowing more about foxhunting than the rest of us and so hadn’t worked that hard at learning about it lately. That left Lisa—the perfect choice.
Max was still speaking. “… and that person is Lisa Atwood.”
I cheered loudly as Lisa grinned modestly and thanked Max.
Then Max went on to name a few of the other positions. Phil was chosen to be the huntsman. Carole was one of the five whippers-in. He also assigned six or seven riders to play the hounds.
“And now we come to the fox,” Max said at last. “For this, we needed to find somebody who could be wily, clever, devious, cunning, sneaky, shrewd, sly, and deceitful.” He paused, and I glanced around, trying to figure out who was left who would fit that description. I was surprised to find that absolutely everyone there was looking straight back at me!
Carole started giggling. So did Lisa. Within seconds, all forty riders were laughing.
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