Snow Ride (2 page)

“Right,” Stevie said, putting the snack foods and the sodas on her bedside table. She picked up Dinah’s letter. “She was in our riding class, but she also went to my school, and we used to sit next to one another in art class and draw horses.”

“Oh, cool,” Lisa said. She loved to draw horses.

“I thought so, too, but the teacher, Miss Eberley, didn’t agree. See, we were supposed to be drawing grapes, so when she complained, we just explained that we were drawing an exotic and rare fruit—the equine grape.”

“I bet that got her mad,” Lisa said.

“It sure did. And it got us a free pass to the principal’s office. I think that was the time. Or maybe we got sent to the principal’s office the time we got into a meatball fight in the lunchroom. No, it wasn’t then, it was …”

While Stevie continued to muse out loud, she slit the envelope open and began reading to herself. She considered it a real skill that she could read and talk about different things at the same time.

“… when John Richman told the teacher we’d fed
the hamster some tuna salad from the lunchroom to see if it caused cancer, and the teacher
believed
him … Wow! Guess what?” Stevie said. Suddenly all her attention was riveted on Dinah’s letter.

“What?” Lisa and Carole asked in a single voice.

“She’s invited me to Vermont! Get this”—then she read out loud—“ ‘Every year, at the time of spring break, we have sugaring off. That’s when we collect the sap from the maple trees and make syrup and sugar. We make up teams of three and I just learned that my team is one person short. Naturally, I thought of you. It’s a whole week full of fun. We do it the old-fashioned way, using horse-drawn sleds and everything. You’re going to love it, Stevie. It’s a great time of year here, and I promise we won’t spend a minute of it in the principal’s office!’ ”

“Fabulous!” Lisa said. The idea of riding in snowy woods in Vermont was so overwhelming that she couldn’t think of anything more to say about it.

Carole could. She jumped up off Stevie’s bed and bounded over to where Stevie was still standing and began clapping her on the back. “Oh, it’s great! You’ll have a wonderful time!”

“Sure,” Stevie said. “Except for one thing. Who says I’m going to get to go? After all, my parents are going to insist on having something to say about this—including how much it’s going to cost. I can hear them now. In one word. And that word is
no
.”

As if on cue, Stevie’s mother knocked on the door and stuck her head into Stevie’s room. “Can I come in?” she asked.

“Sure,” Stevie said. “We’d love to have you join us.” She didn’t want to be accused of rudeness when she was about to ask her mother a gigantic favor. “Besides, there’s something I need to ask you about. Would you like a cookie? Some soda?”

“This is going to be good, isn’t it?” Mrs. Lake said brightly, accepting the snack and sitting comfortably in the chair Stevie offered her. Stevie even shooed her cat, Madonna, out of the chair. Stevie’s parents had come to enjoy those times when Stevie wanted something. Stevie was a very creative convincer and not above bribery.

“I had a letter from Dinah Slattery,” Stevie began.

“I know,” her mother said. “And it would be a pleasure to sit here and let you try to convince me you should go to Vermont for the sugaring off. But I don’t really have time. I have a brief I have to work on.” Stevie’s mother was a busy and successful attorney and she often brought work home. “So before you describe all the garden chores you’ll do this spring, or how you’ll paint the ceiling of the den all by yourself, or how you promise to do extra-credit work in Spanish,
and
change the cat’s litter box, I might as well tell you that Mrs. Slattery called me at the office today. Your father and I have already discussed this, and the answer is yes.”

“Yes?” Stevie echoed.

“Yes.”

Stevie was so astonished that she actually asked, “Why?”

Her mother smiled. “I’m not surprised that you wonder, but it’s really very simple. You and your brothers are all out of school next week and your father’s been talking about taking you fly-fishing—”

“Uch!” Stevie said.

“My sentiments exactly,” Mrs. Lake said. “The problem is that I have this big case coming up, and I can’t take time off. Since the boys are getting a trip with your father, it seems only fair that you get a trip, too. So you’re going to Vermont.” Mrs. Lake stood up and looked at the unopened soda can and the cookies that she still held. “Here,” she said. “I can’t really accept these. It amounts to bribery after the fact, and that begins to look like extortion. Whoops, I’m sounding like a lawyer instead of a mother. Anyway, you’ll leave this Saturday and come back on Sunday a week later. I know you’ll have a wonderful time. We’ll talk about this some more at dinner, okay? Good-bye, girls,” Mrs. Lake said, and then she slipped out the door.

There was a stunned silence in the room.

“Pinch me,” Stevie said. Her friends obliged willingly. Then Lisa gave Stevie a big excited hug, and Carole jumped on the bed.

“It’s going to be great!” Carole said. “Imagine—a whole week in Vermont!”

“Yeah, the entire vaca—I can’t go,” Stevie said, a sudden realization coming to her. She sat down on her bed.

“Why not?” Lisa asked, dropping down next to her.

Carole sat on Stevie’s other side. “Yeah, why not?” she asked.

“I promised Phil I’d go to the pony club meeting on Saturday. He made me promise, you know. Like it was really important. He’s my boyfriend, and a promise is a promise.”

Lisa and Carole looked at one another.

Lisa wrinkled her brows. “Sure,” she agreed, “but a trip to Vermont is a whole trip to Vermont, and a pony club meeting is just a meeting. Phil will understand. Call him.” Lisa pointed to the phone on Stevie’s bedside table.

“That’s just it,” Stevie said. “I can’t. Remember the class trip? I can’t reach him until Monday, and by then I’ll already be in Vermont. I couldn’t call him from there. The whole situation is impossible. I’ll just have to let Dinah know I can’t come.” Stevie was only half joking, and her friends knew it.

“Um, Stevie,” Carole said. “I think you ought to go to Vermont. I got the distinct impression from what your mother said that if you don’t go to Vermont, you’ll end
up fly-fishing with your brothers and your father, and you’ll miss Phil’s pony club meeting anyway.”

Stevie’s face brightened. “Then I’ll just have to go to Vermont,” she said. “But what about Phil?”

“I’ll call him for you on Monday,” Lisa offered. “I’m sure if I explain, he’ll understand.” That was all the convincing Stevie needed, so for the next two hours the girls had a wonderful time discussing the clothes Stevie should take and everything she would need to know about driving a sled pulled by a horse.

“… 
SO, THE MOST
important part seems to be keeping an even tension on the long reins,” Stevie told the man in the seat next to her on the plane. Before they had left Washington, he’d expressed some interest in the fact that Stevie was going to be involved in sugaring off, so Stevie had been talking about it ever since the plane had taxied down the runway. Stevie looked out the window as she spoke. They were about to land.

“Oh, my goodness, we’re almost here!” she said.

The man sat upright. “In Vermont already?” he asked, looking across Stevie and through the window. He rubbed his eyes. “I had a great nap. I always sleep well on planes. Now, what was it you said you were coming up here to do?”

Stevie felt her mouth drop open. The man had slept through every word she’d said! This called for an appropriate response.

“I said I’m going to be deep-sea diving as part of an archaeological exploration of the underwater caves that housed the early Viking settlers who actually turned out to be the first cousins of Kublai Khan’s publicity men who gave the recipe for spaghetti to Marco Polo. We want to see if we can find the part of the recipe that includes sauce. You probably think I’m too young to be involved in something like that, but I’m actually forty-three years old. I just look young.”

The man didn’t say another word to Stevie. That was all right with her. As the plane descended, she enjoyed looking out the window at the hilly white world below dotted with dark spots that she recognized as evergreens.

Dinah and her father were waiting for Stevie at the gate. It was great to see her after such a long time. Dinah had moved away almost two years before. It wasn’t hard to recognize her, though. She was the girl who was leaping up and down excitedly and pointing and waving all at the same time. Stevie hurried through the gate and ran over to Dinah so she could give her a hug.

“You’re finally here!” Dinah said.

“I sure am, now where’s this maple stuff you’ve been talking about?”

“Right this way,” Dinah said. She took Stevie’s carryall
and handed it to her father. He grinned good-naturedly and followed the girls to the luggage claim area. Within a few minutes the three of them were in the Slatterys’ car. Mr. Slattery drove while Dinah talked a mile a minute, telling Stevie everything there was to know about sugaring off.

“We can only do it at this time of year,” she explained. “See, it has to be when the days are warm enough for the sap to flow and the nights are cold enough to freeze it. So our job is to go get as much as we can in the daytime.”

“Sounds perfectly logical to me,” Stevie said, “only I can’t figure out where the spigot is. What do we do? Twist off a branch?”

“Ha ha, very funny,” Dinah said. “No, what we do is we make a hole. We drill it. Then we put a spigot—only it’s called a spile—into the hole. It’s a tube that fits into the hole and redirects the sap out of the tree into the bucket we hang on the spile. It’s all very clever and works very well.”

“That’s all there is to maple syrup?” Stevie asked. “We just go get it from the tree?”

“No way!” answered Dinah. “What we get from the tree is sap. That’s like very watery syrup. In fact, you can taste it and you’ll hardly be able to figure out what it is. No, what we do then is boil it. And boil it. And boil it. Depending on how you like it, it takes about fifty gallons of sap to make one gallon of syrup. Then, if you want
maple sugar, you just keep on boiling. It’s a lot of work, but it’s worth it, believe me. As far as I’m concerned, there’s nothing sweeter and more wonderful than maple syrup and sugar.”

“This is all fine and good,” Stevie said. “But what does it have to do with horses? I distinctly remember your saying that your riding class was doing this.”

“Oh, that’s the best part of all,” Dinah told her. “And it’s where you really come into the picture. See, our stable owns the Sugar Hut. The owner, Mr. Daviet, bought all the land at once for his stable and only discovered later that it was covered with sugar maples. So he named the place Sugarbush, built the Sugar Hut as well as the stable, and started this sort of off-shoot business. It’s mostly for fun, and the best part is what our riding class is doing. See, we’ve divided up into teams of three for a competition. The team that collects the most sap—and then makes the most syrup—wins the grand prize. When Mr. Daviet announced our teams and told us the rules, he didn’t say a thing about not having other friends help. So when my team was only two because of odd numbers, I figured we deserved a little bit of assistance from you. We’re sure to cop the grand prize!”

Images of trips to Hawaii, million-dollar checks, and dream vacation houses popped into Stevie’s head. Somehow she didn’t think that’s what this was about. “What’s the grand prize?”

“The winning team will always have first pick of riding horses at classes all next summer!”

“Outstanding!” Stevie said, and she meant it. Being able to ride your favorite horse for every class was a real prize. “Let’s get started right away—don’t want to waste a minute.”

“I was hoping you’d feel that way,” Dinah said. “See, it’s perfect weather for setting out the buckets because it’s still pretty cold. Later in the week, the weather is supposed to warm up and the sap will be flowing like crazy. So all we have to do is drop your suitcase off at my house and we’ll walk over to the Sugar Hut. You can meet Betsy Hale, who is my teammate for the competition, and we can get started.”

“Today?”

“No time like the present!”

It had been a long time since Stevie had seen Dinah, and now she remembered why it was that she’d liked her so much in the first place. They both thought the same way. They were both clever and mischievous and eager to get going on anything that was going to be fun, no matter how much hard work it might be, and no matter how devious they were going to have to be to accomplish it.

Stevie and Dinah stayed at the Slattery house only long enough for Stevie to take her suitcase upstairs and change into jeans and boots. The girls both donned
warm winter jackets, hats, scarves, and mittens. Then they were ready to go.

The Sugar Hut turned out to be almost exactly that. It was little more than a hut, but immediately Stevie decided that she loved it. It was a log cabin with a large central chimney. Sweet-smelling smoke curled out of the chimney. Stevie stopped and took a deep breath. “I think I’m going to love this.”