Horse Power (5 page)

“Could you believe it?” Stevie asked. “At lunch, when he started doing that stupid cowboy imitation? What does he think this stable is? And then all the little kids were laughing—”

“It
was
funny,” Carole reminded Stevie. “Even I laughed.”

“Maybe. But why? What’s he trying to do to me?”

“Stevie!” Carole said in exasperation. “What he’s doing doesn’t have anything to do with you.”

“Of course it does,” Stevie protested. “Why else would he be making a fool of himself? He’s just trying to embarrass me. And the worst part is that he’s succeeding.”

“Stevie, think,” Carole said.

“I can’t think,” Stevie said. “Every time I try to think, all I can think
of
is doofus. So what are you talking about?”

Carole took a spoonful of her sundae, hoping a pause in the conversation would help to calm Stevie a bit. When she’d finished swallowing, she spoke.

“Your brother is just doing what you say Chad
always
does,” Carole said patiently and calmly. “He is trying to get a girl’s attention.”

“Okay—but why does he have to do that around
me
?” Stevie demanded.

“Because the girl in question is always around you,” Carole said.

Stevie looked at Carole sideways. Carole could tell from the look on her face that Stevie was beginning to see the light. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying?” Stevie asked after a pause.

“If you think I’m saying that Chad has a crush on Lisa, you’re right. I don’t think he’s really into riding—he just wants to be where she is.”

Stevie furrowed her brow and stared at her glass of water.

“Does Lisa know this?” Stevie asked finally.

“I’m not sure, but she’ll figure it out soon enough,” Carole said. “After all, Chad isn’t exactly being subtle.”

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of that myself!” Stevie said. “Of course, you’re absolutely right. He’s been talking about her, but I didn’t think anything of it, since I talk about both of you all the time. Well, I’ll just tell him Lisa hasn’t got the slightest interest in the whole wide world in being his girlfriend and that’s that. He can just get lost.”

“Hold it,” Carole said, raising her hand as if to stop traffic. “You can’t do that. If Lisa wants to stop Chad, she can tell him herself. And if she doesn’t want to stop him—well, then you shouldn’t butt in.”

“You mean one of my best friends may actually
want
to be my brother’s girlfriend?” Stevie asked.

“I don’t know,” Carole said. “But I do think that you should let true love take its course,” she added with a grin.

“Oh, groan,” Stevie said.

“Don’t worry about it. Lisa’s pretty smart,” Carole reminded her. “She’ll know how to handle it.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. But the hardest thing to remind myself is going to be that I shouldn’t just tell him to drop dead.”

“Maybe Lisa will,” Carole suggested.

“My brother? She’d say
that
to
my
brother?” Stevie asked, suddenly on the defensive.

“Let’s change the subject, huh?” Carole suggested. “Here comes Lisa. And it looks like she’s got something on her mind.”

Lisa walked toward the booth slowly. She slid in next to Carole, almost without seeing her. Lisa pushed up her sleeves and leaned forward on the table until she was looking Stevie straight in the eye.

“There’s something I have to tell you,” Lisa said. “I think I’ve figured out the reason Chad suddenly wants to learn to ride,” she began. She was about to continue when Stevie interrupted her.

“I know,” she said lightly. “He’s got a crush on you.”

Lisa stared at her. “How’d you know?”

“It just sort of hit me,” Stevie said, glancing at Carole. “Like a ton of bricks. Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t really
mean
anything, you know—” Carole
gave her a quick, dirty look. “I mean, it doesn’t mean anything to
me
.”

“I feel pretty confused, you know.”

“Who wouldn’t?” Carole said. “But we’ll have all night on Friday to talk, and maybe figure out what to do. For now, let’s talk about something
really
important.”

“What?” both Stevie and Lisa asked together.

“Kate Devine!”

W
HEN
S
TEVIE FINALLY
stopped to think about it calmly, a few days after Chad had started at the stable, she realized that she was going to be too busy there to pay much attention to her brother—and that he was going to be well-occupied, too.

“You know,” she said to Carole as they were sitting on the bench in the tack room, cleaning tack, “I’d forgotten how much the beginners have to learn.” She tugged at the bridle she was cleaning. While she was trying to get accumulated dirt off the leather, one of the stable’s kittens was chasing the throatlatch, which dangled invitingly from the bridle. Stevie swished it across the floor. The kitten pounced on it happily.

“There’s a lot of information beginners have got to
master just to ride safely—even at a walk,” Carole agreed.

“You sound like a professor when you talk that way,” Stevie told her, grinning. “Actually, all I care about is for Max to keep Chad so busy he can’t get in my hair.”

“Room for one more?” Lisa asked, entering the tack room.

“You bet there is,” Stevie said, welcoming her. “Mrs. Reg seems to think every piece of leather in the place is dirty. That’s about forty saddles—not counting the special ones—and of course,
they
need cleaning, too.”

“I’ll get a fresh dish of water and a sponge for myself. Make room for me on the bench, will you?”

“Sure!” Carole said, scooting over. “Don’t complain, though—I want to have all the tack clean by this weekend.”

“What’s so special about this weekend?” Stevie asked. “The three-day event and the gymkhana aren’t for another couple of weeks—how many hours, Lisa?”

“Um, exactly—I don’t remember,” she confessed as she joined her friends on the bench. She sat down, picking up a bridle of her own. The kitten who had been chasing Stevie’s bridle jumped up on the bench near Lisa. She patted its soft fur and then set the animal back down on the floor. The kitten then seemed confused about which bridle to attack. “Oh, they
are
cute, aren’t they? If only I thought Dolly would put up
with a kitten …” Lisa said, referring to her dog, a Lhasa apso. “But she’s too set in her ways now. Anyway, we were talking about this weekend. What’s the rush on cleaning tack?”

“Well, I’m going to bring Kate Devine here on Saturday,” Carole explained.

“You think she’ll be inspecting the tack?” Stevie asked, glancing at Carole.

Carole just glared at her. Stevie decided that meant that Carole
did
think Kate would care. Stevie found that hard to imagine.

“Speaking of Kate,” Stevie began. “Meg Durham and Polly Giacomin were asking me about her this morning.”

“Why didn’t they ask
me
?” Carole said, surprised.

“They wanted to know who she was and how come she was so famous. Since you’ve been talking about her so much, they were embarrassed that they hadn’t heard of her. Meg thought maybe Kate Devine was some kind of superstar—”

“Oh, but she
is
,” Carole began. “Do you have any idea how difficult it is for anyone to become a championship rider? I mean, that’s hours and hours of studying over years and years, including hard physical work, to say nothing of the horse care involved—and then the tension of the competition—and the thrill of victory …” Carole got a dreamy look on her face as her voice trailed off.

Stevie and Lisa exchanged glances, winking at each
other. Carole was like that. She was their friend and they were more than willing to accept her hang-ups. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t share a grin about them from time to time.

“You know, Carole, I’ve been thinking about the costume race in the gymkhana. Do you think you could get a Marine Corps uniform from your father? That would be neat, especially if it had a lot of buttons some
other
team had to do up.”

“Oh, sure,” Carole said, returning abruptly from her daydream. “He’s got some junky old ones we can use. The only thing he’ll insist on is that we remove the Marine Corps emblems before using it for games.”

“Guess what I heard,” Lisa said. “Max is going to make up the gymkhana teams next week. He’s just
got
to let us be on a team together.”

“It probably depends on having evenly matched teams,” Carole reminded her.

“Well, I’ve had my fingers crossed,” Stevie said. “But it makes it awfully difficult to ride that way!”

Carole and Lisa both burst into laughter at Stevie’s joke. Their noise frightened the kitten into retreat.

“I hear more talk than tack cleaning going on in there,” Mrs. Reg called from her office next to the tack room. She leaned across her desk so she could see the girls. Stevie could tell Mrs. Reg was trying to look stern. She wasn’t very good at it.

Mrs. Reg was Max’s mother. When her husband had died and her son had taken over management of the
stable, she had continued being in charge of the stable’s equipment, as she had done for half a century. She also sometimes served as substitute mother to the young riders when one was called for and she was always full of stories about horses and riders. The students at Pine Hollow claimed that Mrs. Reg had a story for every possible circumstance. She’d seen it all—or at least she
said
she had.

“Mrs. Reg,” Stevie said. “Give us a break. We’re working very hard. It’s just that there’s so much to talk about.”

“I know, I know,” she said, relenting and stepping into the tack room from her office. “We once had a rider here—oh, it was before you girls were born …”

Mrs. Reg had found the surest way to have the girls stop chitchatting among themselves—not that she really cared. Stevie suspected that sometimes Mrs. Reg would pretend to chide them about one thing or another when she actually just wanted an excuse to tell a story. It was okay as far as Stevie was concerned. Stevie reached forward to the tin of saddle soap and rubbed her sponge on the soap until she’d worked up a lather.

Mrs. Reg joined the girls on the bench and went on. “This woman, I’ve forgotten her name, was the kind that really kept to herself. She rode here often, and even took lessons from Max. My husband, Max, that is. Not
your
Max, as you sometimes call him. Anyway, this woman rode here and did chores here, just the same way you girls do, but she never said anything to
anybody. Never made friends at all. Too bad.” Mrs. Reg stopped talking. The girls were surprised because she sounded as if she were finished with her story, but it didn’t seem to be an ending.

“What do you mean by ‘too bad’?” Carole asked after a few seconds.

“I mean it was too bad she never talked to anybody,” Mrs. Reg said, as if that were an explanation.

“So,
what
happened?” Stevie asked.

Mrs. Reg looked at the girls’ faces and apparently realized that the ending wasn’t clear. “What happened is that she stopped riding. See, she didn’t have any friends. Riding is a friendly sport and if you never talk with anybody about it, you’re missing half the fun.”

“Boy, can I understand that,” Stevie said. “Does that mean we should talk with one another whenever we want to?”

“It does not,” Mrs. Reg announced. “Now, finish up. Max told me you three were going to talk to the beginner class about the gymkhana. I’m sure they’re almost ready for you now.”

“Yes’m,” Carole said. Mrs. Reg returned to her desk, and the girls put the cleaning gear back on the shelves.

“Mrs. Reg is something, isn’t she?” Lisa asked as they walked toward the beginner class.

“She sure is,” Stevie said. “But sometimes I wish it were clearer exactly what she was saying.”

“You understood that story, didn’t you?” Carole asked Lisa.

“Easy!” Lisa chimed in. “I think she was saying it was okay to talk, even if the rule says we aren’t supposed to, because being friends is important. So it must be your favorite kind of rule, Stevie. It’s the kind you’re supposed to break!”

Stevie laughed. Her friends knew her well. She felt very sorry for that woman who had given up riding because she didn’t have friends. She had missed out on two of the best things in the world.