Show Horse (3 page)

“Starlight, of course. It’ll be a challenge for him, and I know he could use some more training, but I
think the experience will be good for him, as well as me.”

“I agree,” Max said. He jotted down the name.

“Veronica?”

“Garnet,” she answered. “She’s so beautiful, she’s sure to catch the judges’ attention.”

“Yes,” Max said. Stevie had the sneaking suspicion
he
wanted to groan then.

“Stevie?”

“Topside. He knows more about horse shows than I do.”

“I agree,” Max said. “And Lisa?”

It seemed like the chance of a lifetime to Lisa. Without hesitation she spoke her answer. “Prancer,” she said.

Max looked at her. For a second Lisa thought he was going to object. Carole began to speak, but Max held up his hand to silence her. “Interesting,” he said. Then he nodded. “Well, then, Prancer it is. All right, I’ll see you all next time. Bring those permission forms.”

They’d been dismissed.

“A
RE YOU CRAZY
?” Stevie asked. She didn’t have the patience for diplomacy. The three girls were on their way to their favorite hangout, an ice-cream shop called TD’s, for a much-needed talk about the upcoming horse show. Stevie, however, couldn’t hold her thoughts in for one minute longer. “You can’t ride Prancer in the horse show!”

“Sure I can,” Lisa said. “Max said it was all right.”

“Well maybe he’s crazy, too,” Stevie said.

“Why? What’s wrong with riding Prancer?” Lisa challenged her friend.

“Everything!” Stevie said. “Prancer is a very valuable horse—”

“You think I’m not good enough to ride a Thoroughbred like you are?” Lisa asked. She was getting really angry at Stevie, and it wasn’t like her to do that.

“That’s not what I meant,” Stevie said.

“It’s what you said!”

“No, you didn’t let me finish saying what I was going to say,” Stevie persisted, trying to get her point across. “Prancer is valuable and beautiful, but all of her training has been for speed and none of it for horse-show skills. She’s just not ready.”

“Oh, come on,” Lisa said. “How many times have you two told me that a horse is only as good as the rider in the saddle? Prancer can do anything!”

“Sure she can,” Stevie began. “With the proper training …”

Lisa scowled at Stevie. Then Carole came to her rescue.

“Prancer certainly is a wonderful horse,” Carole began carefully.

“See? I told you, Stevie!” Lisa said. “All you have to do is try riding her. I’m telling you, it was like love at first sight between us.”

“I know the feeling,” Carole said. “Remember, I’ve ridden Prancer.”

The girls continued toward the ice-cream shop in silence. It was unusual for there to be a disagreement among them, but that was clearly the case now. Stevie and Carole were worried about Lisa’s decision while Lisa was convinced she was right. In spite of her conviction, Lisa didn’t like being at odds with her friends. She decided to change the subject. They entered TD’s and took their favorite booth at the back of the shop.

“None of this may matter anyway,” Lisa said, sliding across the smooth red plastic of the seat. “The hardest part of the horse show may be getting my mother to sign the permission form.”

Stevie’s eyes lit up. This sort of thing was right up her alley and had the sound of a real Saddle Club project. Her mind raced.

“Got it,” she said, reaching for the menu. “Have your father sign the form.”

“I’ve been trying that tactic for years,” Lisa said. “My parents figured it out the first time I tried to get an allowance from each of them. I can’t split their ranks. Try again.”

Stevie was only too willing to try. “Okay, then, there’s the burnt-out light bulb ploy. You can only use it once, though.”

This was definitely classic Stevie Lake. Lisa could feel the tension drain from among the three of them, and she was very relieved about it. These were her two best friends in the whole world. She didn’t like being angry at them or having the feeling that she couldn’t trust them.

“Okay, the light bulb thing works this way: All of the light bulbs in the room burn out at once—really what you do is flip the circuit breaker, and later you tell them you were ironing and making toast at the same time and you’re awfully sorry—and just at that moment, you ask your mom for her autograph. Then you give her the permission form. She’s so flattered you want her autograph that she doesn’t even look at the paper.…”

“Has this actually ever worked for you?” Carole asked in disbelief.

“Not for me, but it’s definitely worth a try. Besides, my parents are always suspicious of me. The minute I’d say I was ironing, they’d know something was up.”

“What’ll you have?” the waitress asked the three girls. She dutifully wrote down the two hot-fudge sundaes that Carole and Lisa wanted and then grimaced as she steeled herself to take Stevie’s order.

“Oh, uh, coffee ice cream,” Stevie began. “Then I want some maple-walnut syrup and blackberry preserve, plus peanut-butter crunchies and, naturally, whipped cream. Oh, don’t forget the maraschino cherry this time, will you? I think you forgot it last time.”

“And you noticed?” the waitress asked. Carole and Lisa stifled smiles. Since Stevie’s sundaes always combined so many strange ingredients, it
was
amazing that she had noticed one was missing—even if it was the maraschino cherry.

As soon as the waitress was gone, Stevie leaned
forward conspiratorially. “I think they do that sometimes just to check on me,” she said to her friends. “As a matter of fact, I think they have bets about it!”

Lisa and Carole were quite sure Stevie was right, because they would have done exactly the same thing if they’d had to make up the sundaes that Stevie invented!

“Okay, now, back to business—you could just try forging your mother’s signature,” Stevie suggested.

“I could,” Lisa said, “but she’d find out. No, the trick here is going to be to get her to sign it and want to sign it.”

“Harder, much harder,” Stevie said. That didn’t mean she was defeated. Just that the challenge was going to be more fun.

“You could ask Max for help,” Carole suggested.

Stevie gave her a withering look. Asking adults for help when a mischievous and sneaky method was available was out of the question. She scratched her head.

“Three hot-fudge sundaes,” the waitress announced.

“That’s not what I—”

“I know. I’ve brought you what you ordered,” the woman assured Stevie. “I just can’t bring myself to say what’s in it. Here, eat it.”

The concoction appeared. Stevie looked at it and smiled. “Oh, good, you gave me two maraschino cherries this time!”

“Trying to make up for last time,” the waitress said.
Then she hurried away before she had to watch Stevie eat any of it.

For the next few minutes, the girls were quite occupied with their sundaes. They couldn’t even talk about horses, but their minds weren’t far from the subject. As they ate, each thought about Briarwood and how wonderful the show would be.

“I’m just going to have to get my mother to sign it!” Lisa blurted out. “I mean, they have to let me and Prancer ride in the show!”

“Oh, they will,” Carole said. She couldn’t imagine how a parent could refuse to give permission for something that exciting. Certainly her father would be as excited as she was.

Lisa took a final spoonful of her sundae and then took a big gulp of cold water. “I’d better get going,” she said, fishing enough money out of her wallet to cover the sundae and a tip for the poor waitress. “I’ve got some work to do—on my parents.”

With that she stood up and waved good-bye to her friends. “See you Monday—and I’ll talk to you before then. For sure.”

“For sure,” Stevie agreed.

“Bye,” Carole said.

“I still think she’s crazy,” Stevie said to Carole when she was sure Lisa was out of earshot. “Prancer is no more ready to ride in that horse show than my pet turtle is.”

“You don’t have a pet turtle,” Carole said.

“That’s what I mean,” said Stevie.

“But Max agreed—”

“I wonder why,” Stevie mused. “He usually has his reasons.”

“He usually does,” Carole agreed. “So let’s you and me worry about other things. There’s something I want to ask you about. What do you think about working on jump training with a lunge line?”

Stevie thought for a moment. A lunge line was a long leash attached to a bridle on a horse and could be used for training. It gave the trainer a different perspective on the horse’s movement than being in the saddle did. “Sounds good to me,” she said.

“I don’t know,” Carole said thoughtfully. The reason she was asking Stevie about it was that Cam had suggested it and Carole was still annoyed that Cam had been right about the need to x-ray Prancer. On a computer note Carole had told Cam that jumping was best done in the saddle, but now she wanted Stevie’s opinion. “Don’t you think it’s better to practice jumping in the saddle?” she asked Stevie.

“Most of the time, sure,” Stevie agreed. “But using a lunge sometimes would be helpful. You’ve lunged Starlight to keep his gaits even. Why not do it for jumping?”

“Maybe,” Carole said, but she didn’t like saying it. Although she’d asked Stevie’s opinion, what she had really wanted was for Stevie to agree with her. She wasn’t too pleased with the fact that Stevie seemed to be siding with Cam—even though Stevie didn’t have the faintest idea in the world that Cam even existed!

Stevie looked at her oddly. She wondered what was going on. But Carole’s face told her she wasn’t going to get any more information, so she changed the subject.

“What do you think Veronica will do to try to mess up the horse show for the rest of us?”

Now there was a topic they could both enjoy discussing at length!

“R
EALLY
,” S
TEVIE SAID
into the telephone. “We’re going to be at Briarwood! Isn’t it great?” She was curled up on her bed, talking to her boyfriend, Phil Marston. Since he was a rider, too—in fact, he even owned his own horse—she loved talking with him about riding as much as she loved talking about it with Lisa and Carole.

“All three of you?” Phil Marston asked. “Competing against one another?”

“What?” Stevie said, startled by his comment. “I hadn’t thought of it that way. I was thinking of it as
us
competing against everyone else.…”

“That’s not how it works,” Phil said. “I’ve been in horse shows. Believe me, when you’re out in the ring in a class, or performing individually, you’re alone.
You and your horse are the only two creatures on the earth that matter—except for the judges, of course. I know you, Stevie. You’ll want to win.”

Will I? Stevie asked herself. Would she want to win so badly that she’d want to beat her two best friends? She didn’t want to think about that.

“You’re all good riders, of course,” Phil continued. “But I have my favorite of the three of you.”

“You do?” Stevie asked coyly. “And just who is your favorite?”

“Well, I’ll give you a hint.…,” he began. Stevie fluffed up her pillow and leaned back on it to relax. She was having a really good time. But she also couldn’t help wondering how much she would tell Carole and Lisa about her talk with Phil when she saw them on Monday.

“I
T
’
S A REALLY
important horse show,” Lisa said to her parents. “It’s a regional AHSA show, and it’s rated A-minus.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means that even just competing in it is important, Mom,” Lisa explained carefully. “And winning in it would be even more important.”

“Horse shows are dangerous,” her mother countered. “You’ve even said so yourself. Why, that friend of yours who was riding in New York—Dorothy what’s her name?—didn’t she get badly hurt?”

“Dorothy DeSoto,” Lisa said patiently. Dorothy was a former student of Max’s who had been successful in
international competitions. Her career had been cut short by a freakish accident at a horse show in New York. A careless woman in the front row of the audience had spooked Dorothy’s horse. “She wasn’t hurt all that badly,” Lisa continued. “I mean she had to go to the hospital and all, but what her doctor said was that she couldn’t risk being hurt again. The next time would be much more serious. So she had to give up riding.”

“Well, I don’t want that to happen to you.”

“It won’t, Mom. I promise,” Lisa said. She hoped she was being convincing, but the look on her mother’s face didn’t encourage her.

“Of course it won’t happen to you,” said Mrs. Atwood. “Because you won’t be competing.”

“Dad?” Lisa implored.

Her father shrugged. “I don’t know,” he began hesitantly.

That sounded to Lisa like an opening, and she took advantage of it, Stevie-style. “See, Mom? Dad’s in favor of it—”

“I, uh,” her father protested.

“No, he isn’t,” Mrs. Atwood snapped. “He knows that riding is dangerous and competing is even more dangerous. There’s no way he would want you to hurt yourself, is there, dear?”

“I, uh—”

“See, Mom? He wants me to have this wonderful opportunity to ride with the best. It’s a way I can learn from the best. Riding is a safe activity when you follow
the instructions you’ve had drilled into you, and Max Regnery has done an awful lot of drilling, and he says I’m a good student and you know that’s true because I’ve always been a good student, and I always get A’s at school and it’s no different at Pine Hollow, where I work hard and study hard and try to do my best, and Max and my other teachers and my friends tell me I’ve learned an awful lot, which includes riding safely—” She had to stop to take a breath. Her mother was too surprised by the outpouring to interrupt. Lisa didn’t have a clue if her flood of words was having any positive effect on her mother, but she knew that as long as she kept on talking, her mother wouldn’t have a chance to say no.