Chocolate Horse (12 page)

She stayed in her room, sitting on her own bed, thinking. She heard voices, cheerful, relieved, welcoming, just the way they ought to sound. She even heard Alex’s voice, saying how glad he was to be home.

“Where’s Stevie?” he asked.

“Somewhere,” Chad answered.

“I think she has something special planned for you,” Mrs. Lake said. “She’ll show up soon, I know. Now, it’s time for you to get into bed and to rest. We’ll make some lunch and bring it up in a little while, okay?”

“Okay.”

There were more fussing sounds, and then Alex’s door was opened and closed and feet shuffled along the hallway and down the stairs. Then there was quiet.

Stevie didn’t move.

She could hear cheerful family sounds downstairs, sounds of her mother making soup and sandwiches while the cousins opened and closed cabinet doors in the kitchen, looking first for the soup bowls, then for the proper silverware. Upstairs, nobody spoke.

Stevie found herself thinking about Alex’s illness and her reaction. She thought about all the assignments she’d done, all the good, virtuous acts she’d committed, all the silly things she’d resisted doing, all the fun she’d
missed. Now that Alex was definitely better and was soon going to be completely better, her vow of perfection seemed a little silly—almost as silly as the eruption of anger and resentment that had come over her so recently.

Stevie shook her head in annoyance at herself. She wasn’t a perfect person. She wasn’t an evil, angry person, either. She was Stevie, and although that fact often seemed to get her into trouble, on the whole she rather liked herself. Her friends did, too. There had to be a happy medium somewhere. She just wasn’t sure exactly where that somewhere was.

There was a knock at her door.

“Come in,” she said, expecting to see her mother. Instead, it was Alex.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Me? Of course. You’re the one who’s been sick. You should be in bed, resting.”

“I’m tired of resting,” he said. “I feel pretty good. I think I can be up for a little while anyway.”

“I think Mom’ll kill you if she finds you’re out of bed, so why don’t you come sit on mine? That’s almost as good, isn’t it?”

“Sure,” he said, and he sat down next to her, accepting her offering of pillows. “So what’s been going on at school?” he asked.

“Mostly it’s been people asking about you. If you ever get the idea that no one cares about you, just ask me. I’ve been telling a zillion people about you every single day. Everybody asks—I mean
everybody
. I actually have had eight conversations with Miss Fenton that didn’t have to begin ‘Let me explain my side …’ ”

Alex laughed. Stevie was famous for explaining things so people would see them her way. It was her favorite technique for getting out of hot water.

“At least my getting sick has had one advantage for you,” Alex teased. “But how are you doing? I’ve been worried about you.”

“You, worried about me?” Stevie asked.

“Yeah, sure,” he said. “Beverly, the nurse, told me you were there at the hospital every afternoon, working on your homework. Naturally, I thought she was joking. I told her that maybe you’d been drawing pictures of horses or rereading
Misty of Chincoteague
or something, but not homework. Then Friday, when you left your book bag, Beverly brought it into my room. I took a look because I thought it would be a good idea to see what I’ve been missing. And what do I see?”

“What?” Stevie asked.

“No horse pictures, no
Misty
. All I see is homework papers without ‘Late’ written up at the top. They all
have really good grades, too. And they’re in your handwriting. And so I ask myself, ‘Has Stevie had a personality transplant? And if so, how am I going to learn to live with it, and who’s going to tell me how to get out of trouble when
I
get into hot water?’ ”

Stevie didn’t have to answer the question; he didn’t really expect an answer anyway. It was just nice to have him home and well, and she was surprised to find that all her concern about her own confusing behavior didn’t need an explanation—at least not to her twin brother.

They began chatting. Stevie told him more about things that were going on at school, some things that they’d been learning and that she’d help him catch up on. She also told him about the dance at Pine Hollow the night before.

“Oh, that explains the balloons and hearts in my room,” Alex said. “There was a note on them from Carole. That was very nice of her.”

“Yes, it was,” Stevie said, though she was surprised. Carole and Lisa hadn’t said anything about bringing balloons and hearts for Alex. She smiled to herself, though, understanding that her friends had worked very hard to make this morning’s treat be for and about
her
. They were very good friends, indeed.

“Well, then this morning when they brought the balloons for you, they brought
me
breakfast in bed.”

“Really?”

“And you won’t believe what they brought me, either.” She tried to describe the sundae, and just talking about it made her mouth water.

“Sounds wonderful,” said Alex. It seemed that being twins gave them a few things in common that nobody could have anticipated.

“Yeah, I wish I had it right now,” Stevie said.

“Me, too. I’m hungry.”

“Mom’s making lunch,” Stevie reminded him.

“No, I mean I’m hungry for real food—like a good sundae, you know, something sweet.”

Stevie shook her head. “No way. Mom would freak out if I brought you that before you had lunch.”

She looked around her room to see what she might have that was edible and sweet. “The horse,” she said. “The chocolate horse.” It was there, still on her windowsill and looking very unhealthy. All the leg wraps Horse Wise could devise wouldn’t cure what ailed him. Stevie stood up and went to get the poor old horse.

“No,” Alex said. “I couldn’t. You shouldn’t, either. You don’t have to, I mean. I never should have tried to eat it. Put it back, Stevie.”

But there was no stopping Stevie. She was hungry,
Alex was hungry, and the horse was there, useless as a decoration, ready to be eaten. Somehow it seemed like the most right thing in the world to share the melted chocolate horse with her brother, right then, right there.

“We shall dine,” she said, unwrapping the twisted foil.

“I ruined it,” said Alex.

“I don’t think so,” Stevie told him. “I think he got ruined because I left him by the window in the sun. You probably didn’t help him, but it was my mistake in the first place.”

“We shouldn’t eat it. He’s special to you.”

“He isn’t special. He isn’t even a ‘he.’ It’s an ‘it,’ and it’s candy, and it’s time for a treat—if only I hadn’t put it
back
in the sunlight, because it’s pretty gooey.”

“Just the way I like it,” Alex said, relenting. “Here, I think there’s an end of the foil here, and if we tug at it just the right way—”

It worked. In a matter of seconds the foil was completely off, and the twins had found a way to share the candy relatively equally. It was very good milk chocolate—just the very thing that Stevie and Alex were both hungry for.

When the last bit of chocolate was gone and the last
finger licked clean, Stevie said, “I think it’s time for you to get back into bed and get some rest.”

“I think you’re right,” he said. “And I think it’s time for you to return to normal and stop trying to be perfect.”

“I think you’re right,” she said.

“D
O
MY
EYES
deceive me, or is that Stevie Lake climbing out of a car?” Carole asked Lisa, peering through the dusty window of a freshly mucked-out stall.

“Wearing riding clothes!” Lisa added excitedly. “She’s going to come with us on our trail ride!”

“And she’s absolutely back to normal because she’s arrived here at the exact second when we’ve finished doing all the work!” Carole said.

Lisa knew she was just joking. Stevie had a million ways to wriggle out of doing work, but not when the work came to horses. She was always willing to do something at the stable.

“Is it too late, or can I come along?” Stevie asked, when her friends greeted her at the door with big hugs.

“Of course it’s not too late, and of course you can come along,” Carole assured her. “We just have to do a little more work taking down decorations from the dance. Come help, will you?”

“Definitely,” Stevie said.

The three of them went over to the scene of the Valentine’s dance, where most of the decorations were still in evidence.

“You lied to me,” Stevie accused them. “I can just tell looking at this stuff that you guys really had a wonderful time. Didn’t you?”

“Yeah, we did,” Lisa confessed. “The dance was totally great. The part we didn’t lie about, though, was that it would have been more fun if you’d been here.”

“We just didn’t want you to feel sad and sorry for yourself,” said Carole.

“That’s what friends are for,” Stevie confirmed. “I’d do the same for you, too. But don’t worry about me. I called Phil after lunch and already told him that I’ll be here next Valentine’s Day and it’ll be even more fun. Now we have the fun of ripping all this stuff down. I got dibs first on the ladder!”

In contrast to the days and hours it had taken to put all the decorations up, it took only a very few minutes
to take them down, and just a few minutes after that for the girls to tack up their horses, touch the good-luck horseshoe, and aim themselves for the trail.

Stevie didn’t think that anything had ever felt so good as being on horseback riding with her friends, and she started to tell them so but decided against it, thinking they probably already knew that, anyway.

The horses seemed as glad to be out of the stable and on the trail as the girls were. It was a very warm day for February, suggesting an early spring. That was something else to look forward to as far as the riders were concerned.

Before too long the girls were at the edge of Willow Creek. They secured their horses and climbed up onto their favorite rock. Stevie couldn’t resist. She took off her boots and her socks and dangled her toes in the water.

“Stevie!” Lisa said. “That stuff’s cold.”

“Feels great,” Stevie insisted, though she did take her feet out rather quickly. It didn’t make Carole and Lisa want to put theirs in. It did, however, remind them how glad they were that they had a friend who could do silly things—and then deny that they were silly.

“Did you eat the sundae?” Lisa asked.

“Every bite,” Stevie said. “Except that I shared it with Alex. He loved it, too.”

“You mean weird taste buds are genetic?” Carole asked.

“Maybe, but Chad and Michael didn’t want any. Actually, that’s not true. Michael begged me for the cherry. I told him he couldn’t have it, and then I turned away for a minute, and guess what, he took it. I knew he would. And, of course, it tasted weird, but he couldn’t admit he’d stolen it, so he couldn’t admit it tasted weird. It was a fine sibling moment! Thank you guys for making it possible.”

“Oh, you’re more than welcome,” Carole said. “But I don’t think we’re going to do a repeat performance as soda jerks. Looking at all that gunk at six o’clock this morning was really more than I could ever take again.”

“Yeah, I think in the future we’re going to leave the ice-cream-sundae making to some poor man or woman at TD’s. They get paid to put those things together for you.”

Stevie pretended to be offended by the fact that her friends didn’t share her taste in sundaes. It was a joke she was very comfortable with, and so were they. In fact, she was feeling totally comfortable just being with her friends—as if the recent apartness had made her less than whole, and now, like Humpty-Dumpty, she was all back together again.

Something about that reminded her of the story Mrs.
Reg had told her on the way to the hospital—about the two horses who’d been separated. In a way it applied to The Saddle Club, too, as if it had been about three horses instead of two. Being together with her friends made Stevie more than she was when she was alone, and certainly more than she was when she was trying to be something she wasn’t, like perfect. When she was with Lisa and Carole, all she ever had to be was Stevie. That was good enough for them, and that was good enough for her.

She wanted to tell Carole and Lisa some of what she’d been thinking. Maybe there was a way to make them understand how much their friendship meant to her.

“You know, I’ve been thinking,” she began. “It’s about you two and The Saddle Club.”

“Uh-oh, Stevie’s sounding serious,” Lisa interrupted.

“Definitely time to get her to TD’s,” Carole said. “She needs a sundae fix.”

“Right you are,” Stevie agreed. “That sundae this morning just had vanilla frozen yogurt. I’ve been thinking all day about how much better the whole thing would have been with banana-nut-fudge ice cream.”

There were some things you just didn’t have to say to real friends. They knew it all anyway.

B
ONNIE
B
RYANT
is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, the Pony Tails series, and Pine Hollow, which follows the Saddle Club girls into their teens. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.