Hayride (5 page)

Munching earnestly, neither noticed the blond boy waving in their direction until he was standing in front of the table.

“Stevie! Hello! Earth to Stevie Lake!” Distractedly, Lisa and Stevie looked up … and into the smiling
face of Bob Harris. It took all of ten seconds for Lisa to blush about nine shades of red. Luckily, Stevie rose to the occasion just as fast.

“Bob! Great to see you! How’s it going?” she said between mouthfuls.

“It’s going well, Stevie. How are you?”

“I’m fine, except we’re looking for a birthday present for a friend, and everything’s too cheap or too expensive.”

“I know the feeling,” Bob said. “I remember when I was shopping for my mom’s birthday, I couldn’t find anything here. I ended up making her a lamp out of a hollowed-out log.”

“What a good idea!” Lisa blurted out. Bob glanced at her, looking surprised at her enthusiasm.

“Thanks,” he said with a grin. Lisa gulped. She twisted her napkin in her lap. She stared at the grease dripping off her pizza.

“Hey, haven’t I met you before?” Bob asked.

“I, uh …” Lisa’s voice gave out temporarily.

“Of course you know Lisa, Bob!” Stevie said. “Remember, my evil brother introduced you last summer.”

“That’s right. Of course. I remember you were wearing your riding clothes,” Bob said.

Lisa managed a nod. Why was he still standing there? It wasn’t surprising that he’d stopped to say hi to Stevie; he was Alex’s friend, and besides, everyone liked outgoing
Stevie. But wasn’t Bob meeting friends here? Why was he alone? Why was he talking to them? Why was he asking her to scooch over so he could sit down?

Stevie kicked Lisa underneath the table.

In a daze Lisa slid over. Bob sat down next to her. Their elbows brushed. By now Lisa was so red that she was surprised no one had called an ambulance. So much for subtly meeting Bob at the party! Her interest in him might as well have been posted on a neon sign.

To her surprise, when she dared to look up from her pizza, Stevie and Bob were chatting away as if the situation were completely normal.

“That’s too bad about the earrings,” Bob was saying. “They sound nice.” Lisa eyed his profile cautiously. It was as nice as she remembered—blond hair brushed carelessly off his face, a straight, longish nose, and brown eyes. Suddenly the brown eyes turned and focused on her. “Some friends are hard to buy for,” he said.

“Yes,” Lisa managed to croak out. Her throat seemed to have lost all moisture.

“So do you ride at Pine Hollow, too?” Bob asked.

“Yes, I mean, I ride there, I do go riding at Pine Hollow. We went riding there today, didn’t we, Stevie?”

Stevie grinned. “Sure, Lisa.”

“So you must know Veronica diAngelo,” Bob said.

Lisa and Stevie flinched. “We know her,” Lisa said. Her stomach turned. She prepared for the worst.

“You know, at school she seemed like such a great girl.”

Stevie raised her eyebrows. At Fenton Hall, Veronica was even worse than at Pine Hollow, if that was possible.

“But now …” Bob’s voice trailed off. He seemed to be debating whether he should talk about Veronica with them. Stevie and Lisa prayed that he would. “But now,” he finally went on, “I’ve had it with her.”

Lisa’s heart started beating again. “Oh?” she said, copying the innocently interested tone Stevie usually adopted in these circumstances.

“You see, I’ve been saving up for a mountain bike. My allowance won’t cover it, so I decided to baby-sit to make some extra cash. My neighbor has a little boy, a great little kid, and it’s been fun. But Veronica acts like it’s the funniest thing she’s ever heard—that a
boy
would baby-sit.” Bob shook his head ruefully. “Last week was the last straw. She comes up to me at practice and says, right in front of the whole soccer team, ‘All that baby-sitting hasn’t made you too delicate for playing defense?’ So of course I’ve been getting ragged on by the rest of the team and the coach all week. She just
had
to go and try to wreck a good thing.”

“What does she know?” Stevie asked.

“Exactly,” Bob replied fiercely. “So now I guess I’ll know better than to fall for her type,” he concluded.

How could Veronica be so obnoxious? Lisa wondered.

She
loved the idea that Bob baby-sat. Most guys she knew wouldn’t admit to having fun with a little kid. She wanted to tell Bob that she didn’t think it was funny at all. Her tongue, however, felt like it was tied in a knot.

Stevie once again took command of the situation. “You know what the best cure for a broken heart is, don’t you?” she teased.

Bob shook his head. “What?”

“A good party.”

Bob grinned.

“Luckily, our friend Carole—the one whose present we’ve been shopping for—is having one on Saturday night. And I’m sure she’d love to have you come.”

“Really?” Bob said. He looked pleased.

“It’s a hayride birthday party,” Lisa said.

Bob gave her a big smile. “Sounds fantastic. I’ll be there. And now I’ve got to run, because I have to be at the Appletons’ in an hour.”

“Have fun,” Stevie said.

“Don’t worry—it’ll be easy tonight. Nicholas has a friend over to keep him occupied.” He got up with his tray and headed toward the door. Halfway there he turned around and called back, “Nice to see you again, Lisa!” He flashed them both a crooked grin and was gone.

“Oh, Stevie,” Lisa breathed, watching him leave. “Can you believe he baby-sits? How
adorable
!”

“My mother always says it’s important for a man to have a job,” Stevie pointed out.

“He’s perfect,” Lisa said with a loud sigh.

“He
is
perfect—perfect for
you
,” Stevie told her. “So why the sigh? You heard him: Veronica’s completely out of the picture.”

“Maybe Veronica,” Lisa said. “But what about all the other millions of girls out there?”

“Don’t worry, there are only about a hundred at Fenton Hall,” Stevie teased Lisa.

Lisa gave her a withering look.

“Anyway,” Stevie went on, “he likes
you
, Lisa.”

“Me?” Lisa fairly shrieked.

“Yes. You. Lisa Atwood of Willow Creek, Virginia,” Stevie explained patiently. Lisa’s eyes widened. “He kept trying to catch your eye during the whole conversation, but you kept staring at your pizza. I’ve never seen you so interested in crust before, Lisa. Lisa? Lisa!” Stevie poked her friend.

“Yeah?” Lisa asked dreamily. “Did you say something, Stevie?”

Now it was Stevie’s turn to sigh. She knew she’d acted the same way when she first met Phil at riding camp. Stevie would just have to direct Lisa’s actions. She definitely couldn’t be trusted to think for herself in this state. “I said, we’ve got to go finish looking for Carole’s present. The mall’s going to be closing soon.”

“Carole’s present?” Lisa asked vaguely. “What’s wrong with those horse earrings we found?”

“They’re one hundred and fifty dollars, that’s what’s wrong!” Stevie cried in exasperation. “Remember?”

“Oh, right.”

Obviously, Lisa wasn’t going to be any help. Then Stevie got an idea. She might as well put Lisa’s spaced-out condition to good use. “Come on, Lisa,” she said. “We’d better go buy you that sweater on sale right now before someone else gets it. You do want to wear it to the party now that Bob’s coming, don’t you?”

Lisa made an effort to focus her attention on what Stevie was saying. “Oh. Yes. Bob. Sweater. Bob. Right. Yes,” she said, obediently following Stevie out of the restaurant.

“S
TEVIE
! I
T
’
S
P
HIL
!” Mrs. Lake called up the stairs to Stevie’s bedroom. Stevie slammed her science book shut at the magic words.

“Got it!” she called back, picking up the receiver to the phone in her room and settling back onto her bed.

“Don’t talk too long. You’ve got a lab report due tomorrow!”

Stevie shook her head in disbelief. How could parents think about science of all things when she had a coed hayride birthday party to plan?

“Five days and counting,” Phil said by way of greeting. Stevie laughed. She had called him last night after getting home from the mall to invite him to Carole’s party.
He had told her that he’d be there, and that he’d be counting the days.

“Me, too,” Stevie said. “I hope everything worked out with Mr. Toll’s Clydesdales. Colonel Hanson was supposed to ask today.”

“You’ve got the Marine Corps on your side. What more could you want?”

“How ’bout the Army, Air Force, and Navy?” Stevie joked.

“I don’t know if they could fit in the hay wagon,” Phil countered.

Part of the fun of having Phil as a boyfriend was that they could each kid around to their heart’s content and still know that, underneath it all, they seriously liked one another.

“Do you know who’s going to be there?” Phil asked.

Through Stevie he had met some of the invited guests at Pine Hollow and at Pony Club events, but he didn’t expect to know many people. Stevie gave him the list, updating it as best she could.

Phil groaned. “Meg Roberts
and
Meg Durham! I can never remember which is which.”

“But it’s easy—one’s short and the other’s tall,” Stevie said.

“Yeah, but they both have dark blond hair.”

“So do I, Phil Marsten!”

“Yours is different,” Phil said. He sounded shy all of a sudden. “Yours is nicer.”

Stevie glowed with pleasure. “Thanks,” she said.

“And it’s a good thing,” Phil declared, raising his voice to its normal tone again, “because when we get out there in the open, I want to make sure it’s you and not someone else I smother in hay!”

Stevie knew a challenge when she heard one. “You couldn’t smother me if you tried! I’d jump on the back of one of those Clydesdales and make him take off!”

“Sure you could stay on—bareback?”

“Why, afraid you couldn’t?”

Abruptly Phil changed the subject back to the guest list.

Stevie almost always loved talking with Phil. They were both good riders, and they had a lot in common. Sometimes, though, the two of them could be very competitive, and their joking could get out of hand. They both knew that when that happened, it was time to talk about something else.

They went over who was coming, couple by couple.

“What about Lisa?” Phil asked.

Eagerly Stevie told him about their encounter with Bob Harris in the mall the day before. Phil was glad to hear that Lisa liked someone, especially when Stevie explained that, one, Bob was a great guy, and two, she was almost positive that Bob liked Lisa as well.

“So it should be a wonderful night for the entire Saddle Club,” Stevie predicted.

“I hope the weather’s nice,” Phil said.

Stevie agreed. “I know. If the stars are out, it’ll be perfect.” They both fell silent for a moment, envisioning the late-night ride.

All too soon Mrs. Lake interrupted Stevie’s thoughts a second time, this time not so magically. She knocked on the door. “Better say good-bye, dear. You don’t want to be up too late finishing your lab report.”

Privately, Stevie wouldn’t have minded at all staying up all night, if it meant talking to Phil, but she knew her mother wouldn’t see the situation quite the same way. Mrs. Lake was a lawyer, and, unlike some mothers, was not of the opinion that rules were made to be broken.

“Just a minute, Mom!” Stevie called.

Phil, who had overheard Mrs. Lake’s warning, said that he should probably go, too. “My mother’s called me twice already,” he confessed. Stevie was glad to hear that he’d been stalling for time to talk to her. Reluctantly but happily they said their good-byes and hung up.

Stevie looked at the unappealing lab notebook that lay open on her desk. Tables and graphs and figures. Yuck. She closed her eyes and lay back on her bed. All at once it was a crisp, starry night. The bells on the
harness were jingling. She breathed in the familiar smell of timothy and alfalfa.…

“Stevie?”

“Yes, Mom.” Stevie sighed resignedly, opened her notebook, and began to write.
“By steadily raising the temperature of the liquid, we discovered …”

C
AROLE EASED HER
left foot up onto the couch. Her ankle was still throbbing, but now that she’d convinced her father that it was only a minor bruise, she wasn’t about to let it bother her. Besides, she was finding that having a birthday party to plan was the best distraction.

Carole looked down at her guest list and made another neat check mark. She’d been calling people for almost two hours. And so far, she noted with satisfaction, it had been a total success. Everyone she had called could come to the party. After the first few calls, it had seemed that everybody already knew about it and was just waiting for an invitation.

There were only two names left to check off. Carole smiled to herself at the circles, doodles, and scrawls around Cam’s name. She had saved him for last so she could talk to him the longest. The other name remaining was Veronica diAngelo’s. She had tried her several times with no luck. The line had been busy for over an hour. Stevie had probably already asked her in school, but Carole wanted to be sure.