Horse Talk (6 page)

“Ask Carole,” Lisa said. “She’s in the locker room.”

“Okay.” Stevie wandered away, still muttering, and Lisa breathed a sigh of relief. Now, where was that dictionary?

Stevie nearly tripped in the doorway to the locker room. All her attention was focused on her paper. Trying to be twenty different people wasn’t easy. In fact, it was impossible! She was sure she was going to sound the same no matter what. She didn’t have Lisa’s gift for acting. But she would certainly do her best.

“ ‘Whenever I try to bridle him,’ ” she repeated in a slightly different tone. “No, that’s not right. ‘Whenever I try to bridle him—’ ”

“Why don’t you just ask Red to do it?” a snotty voice said. Stevie looked up from her paper to find Veronica looking down her long nose.

“What?” Stevie asked. She was so distracted she hadn’t even heard what Veronica had said.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you just ask Red to do it?’ ” When Stevie still looked confused, Veronica added, “To bridle your horse. Never mind. It was a joke, but clearly some people are so wrapped up in themselves
that they can’t see humor when it smacks them in the face.”

Stevie stared at Veronica. Could the girl actually be trying to make a joke? And what was she talking about? Bridles? Red? “Huh?” Stevie asked, in her Patricia voice.

“You guys are getting
way
too involved in your little radio show,” Veronica said, and huffed off.

“Carole,” Stevie said, “listen to this. I think my Patricia voice is sliding into my Betty Sue voice. And the Janet voice is all messed up. What’s wrong?”

Carole was searching through the pile of old clothes on the floor of her cubby. “I’ve lost my sixth sheet of answers,” she said frantically. “I can’t find it anywhere.”

“I didn’t think you were going to write out the answers,” Stevie said. “I thought you and Lisa just had a short list of stuff to say back.”

“Last night I couldn’t sleep, so I got up and wrote the answers out for real,” Carole explained. “I mean, what if I get nervous and totally blank?”

Stevie understood. “We weren’t this nervous about the first show,” she said. She helped Carole search through the pile.

“Here it is! Good.” Carole wadded the sheet of paper into the pocket of her hooded sweatshirt. “We weren’t this nervous because we were too clueless to realize what could go wrong,” she told Stevie.

Stevie knew that that was true. “Let’s go,” she said. “By my watch, I ought to be heading for Max’s home phone already. Look—I brought my boom box today. I’ll be listening to the show from Max’s living room, so I’ll know what’s happening even when I’m not on the phone.”

They found Lisa hurrying Max out of the tack room. “I just need to find Barq’s bridle—” Max was saying.

“Do it later!” Lisa said firmly. “Shoo!”

Carole felt her stomach flop and wondered how Lisa could be so calm.

“Two minutes,” Lisa said. Carole nodded, and they took their places behind the table. Lisa took a deep breath and flipped the switch that would start the broadcast.

“Good afternoon, Willow Creek!” Carole said. “We’re coming to you live from Pine Hollow. We’re
Horse Talk
!” She recited the phone number. Exactly on cue, the phone rang.

“
Horse Talk
,” said Lisa. “You’re on the air.”

“My name is Janet,” said Stevie.

“Hello, Janet,” Carole said. “How may we help you?”

“Well, I’m afraid my horse might have been mistreated by his previous owner …”

T
HE FIRST QUESTION
went smoothly. Best of all, Lisa thought as she hung up the phone, it took nearly six
minutes to answer. At that rate, leaving time for advertisements and station identification, they would only need eight questions an hour. Lisa read a short script about the school’s radio project and played the first set of advertisements. Just as the tape finished, the phone rang again. It was Stevie, as Patricia, with prepared question number two. Carole answered it smoothly, and Lisa cut in with a short joke. All three of them laughed on cue.

Lisa hung up and repeated the phone number for the listening audience. The phone rang again, and Carole answered it. “
Horse Talk
! How may we help you?”

“My name is Augusta,” said Stevie.

“Hello, Augusta!” said Carole and Lisa.

“I was wondering …”

T
HE SHOW PROGRESSED
to the final fifteen minutes. Lisa eyed the clock with relief.
Horse Talk
was going fine, just as they had planned, but it had taken an awful lot of preparation, and she was tired. Carole looked strained.
Only two questions left to go
, Lisa wrote on a piece of paper. Carole nodded and smiled.

The phone rang again. “
Horse Talk
! How may we help you?”

“This is Roosevelt Franklin Godfreys the Third,” announced an unfamiliar voice that was certainly not Stevie’s.

Lisa waited for the caller to say more, but he didn’t. “Uhh—Roosevelt Franklin what?”

“Godfreys the Third,” replied the voice. “You can call me Rosie.”

Carole recovered enough to say, “How can we help you, Rosie?” Lisa slapped her hand over her mouth to stop a giggle.
Rosie
?

“Well,” drawled the caller, “you see, I have a horse. It’s a very nice horse, but it’s had several owners in the past. First when it was a baby it was owned by some very nice folks in Ohio. Then they sold it to a woman in Kentucky, and then I believe—but I’m not positive—that it came to Virginia, but not around here. I think it lived in Roanoke first, then Manassas, and finally it ended up with me. Or so I believe.”

Lisa looked at Carole, who looked back. What was this about? “Go ahead,” Lisa said into the microphone.

“Well,” said Roosevelt Franklin Godfreys the Third, “the problem is, each owner messed up a different part of the horse. The first person made it inclined to kick with its back left foot only, but never from farther away than six feet. The second owner made it kick with the front right foot as well; the third owner made it tend to shimmy its hips; and the fourth cut my horse’s tail off way too short. As a result of all this, my horse looks like a buzz-cut jitterbugging clog dancer, and I want to do dressage. What do you think I should do?”

“Uh,” said Carole. She was pretty sure this was a joke, not a serious question, but what could she do? She was on the air. “Let its tail grow long,” she said at last. “Don’t cut it again.” She looked at Lisa, who opened her eyes wider as if to say, “Don’t ask me.” “I think you’ll find the ability to jitterbug an advantage in dressage,” Carole added. “Any horse that can use its back end that well—”

“Thank you, caller!” Lisa said, and hung up the phone. Carole gave her a look of pure relief. Lisa looked at the clock, but all that silliness had hardly taken a minute of their time. The phone rang again.

“This is Julie,” Stevie said, in a much more hurried voice than usual. “I want to learn to jump, but I’m worried about falling off. Do you have any advice?”

“Well, certainly,” Lisa said, while Carole flipped through her papers to find the answer. “First of all, fear is something we all have to cope with …”

The question didn’t last long enough. The very second that Lisa hung up the phone, it rang again. “This is Stonewall Pepperpot Maxwell the Second,” another deep voice said. “I’m a friend of Roosevelt Franklin Godfreys the Third. You were so helpful with his question that I hoped you might answer mine.”

“Sure,” Lisa said. No matter what, it couldn’t be more ridiculous than Rosie’s question.

“My friends claim that when I’m riding my horse, it does all the work,” the caller said. “But since I get hot
and sweaty and, I might add, extremely stinky whenever I ride, I’m pretty sure that I must be doing some work, too.”

“Well, of course,” Carole responded quickly. “Riding is excellent exercise—”

“What I’d like to know is this,” the caller cut in. “Is there any way I can get the horse to do all the work? Because really, the stinkiness is gagging my whole family. It’s so gross, you wouldn’t believe. The way my riding boots smell—”

Lisa and Carole stared at each other. Lisa leaned closer to the microphone. “Buy some Odor-Eaters,” she said.

“Next caller!” said Carole, hanging up the phone.

It rang again immediately. “
Horse Talk
!” Lisa said, hoping fervently that it was Stevie.

“Odor-Eaters might work for the boots, I admit. But what about those smelly riding breeches? And then there’s all that manure. No matter what, I come home smelling like manure.…”

Lisa stared at the phone. They were trapped inside their own talk show with nine minutes of airtime left. Where was Stevie when they needed her?

T
HEY ANSWERED THREE
more long-winded, hopelessly ridiculous questions before Carole cued the exit music and Lisa signed off. “Was that the same person over and over?” Lisa asked quietly.

“I couldn’t tell,” Carole said. “I think whoever it was thought they were pretty humorous.”

“Well, I didn’t!” Lisa felt ready to burst. “We’re doing a lot of hard work here, and I don’t like being made fun of! Manure!”

“I know,” Carole said soberly. “At least we’ve only got to do this two more times. I wonder why Stevie quit calling? Look, here she comes.”

Stevie stormed down the stable aisle. Her eyes glittered with rage. “I’ll kill him!” she said. “I’m really going to do it this time. Didn’t you guys recognize that cretin on the phone?”

Lisa and Carole shook their heads.

Stevie’s face was crimson. “That was Chad!”

“H
E ADMITS IT
,” Stevie said indignantly into the phone. She had called both Carole and Lisa (the Lakes had three-way calling) to tell them the news. “I accused him of calling our show and pretending to be five different people, and all he did was shrug and say he had a whole bunch of horsey questions that he needed to have answered. He was smiling, the creep! You could tell he thought he was just hilarious. And worse yet, he said he still had a few questions left!”

“Oh no!” Lisa groaned. “The ones he asked were hideous. Imagine what he might come up with for next week!”

“We’ve got to stop him,” said Carole.

“I know,” Stevie said with venom in her voice. “I’ve
been thinking of ways. I wish we could infect him with laryngitis. Or lock him in a jail cell, without a phone.”

“Even criminals get to make one phone call,” Lisa said with a weary laugh. She couldn’t believe how ugly
Horse Talk
was becoming. At the start she’d thought it was a great idea. Now she just wished it was over.

“The worst part is that he really did get us,” Carole said. “He didn’t even do anything wrong. We’re a talk show, and he called in with questions. We had to answer them. From his point of view, it was a perfect crime.”

“They weren’t even obvious crank questions,” Lisa said in agreement. “I mean, if he’d called up and said, ‘Is your refrigerator running?’ we could have just hung up on him. But he’s smart enough to ask actual questions about riding and horses.”

“Strange, imaginary horses,” Carole added. “Real horses don’t shimmy their hips.”

“I’m going to tell my parents, but I don’t know if even that will do any good,” Stevie said. “I’m sure they’ll tell him to knock it off, but—”

“All he has to do is get a friend to call in for him,” Carole interrupted.

“Sure,” said Stevie. “That’s what I would do.”

“It’s what we did do,” Lisa reminded her. “We had you call in with questions because nobody else would. This whole talk show is just a disaster. We’ve got to do
something, or Carole and I are going to be the laughingstocks of the entire school.”

“We’ll come up with a plan,” Carole said. “We’ve got all week.” She was upset, but not as much as Lisa was. Carole didn’t worry about school as much as Lisa did. What bothered her most was that here they were, willing and ready to teach people about horses, and no one wanted to learn. Carole knew that she would listen to a radio show about horses. “Maybe we just need more publicity for
Horse Talk
, so that legitimate callers phone in.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of posting Chad’s naked baby pictures all over Fenton Hall,” Stevie said. “Or maybe we could come up with some good reason for blackmail.”

“Why don’t we try talking to Chad?” Lisa suggested. “Maybe if we appeal to his better side—tell him how important this is to us—he’ll knock it off.”

“He doesn’t have a better side,” Stevie growled.

“Yeah,” Carole said. “I mean, he might have a better side, but from what we’ve seen of Chad before, telling him how important
Horse Talk
is to us will just inspire him to bother us more. Maybe if we leave him alone, he’ll leave us alone, too.”

“I wouldn’t count on that,” Stevie said. “Revenge is the best option. But, like you said, we’ve got all week.”

* * *

O
N
T
HURSDAY MORNING
at school Lisa ran into Carole in the hallway. “How’s it going so far?” she asked. Carole looked a little weary.

“You wouldn’t believe the number of comments I’ve gotten about
Horse Talk
,” Carole said. “I guess a lot more people listened to yesterday’s show than the first one.”