Stevie (24 page)

“That’s the girl who was supposed to take care of me,” May said. “Now it looks like somebody ought to take care of her. What’s wrong with her?”

“She just thinks she’s so smart because she saw us first,” I
replied, my heart sinking as I realized it was true. She had spotted us. “That’s why she’s waving her arms.”

“I didn’t mean that part,” May said. “What’s wrong with her that she’s riding across Mr. Andrews’s field?”

I gasped as I realized she was absolutely right. It was the best news I’d had all day! I gave May a big hug. “You’re quite a fox,” I declared with a grin.

A little while later, all three of us were back at Pine Hollow. Actually, make that all six of us, including the horses. I was walking Topside around the indoor ring to cool him down after our ride. May was with me, walking her pony. We were being as quiet as possible because we were trying to hear every word that Max and Mr. Baker were saying to Veronica just outside.

“Veronica, you are very familiar with the rules,” Max said in his sternest voice.

“But I saw Stevie,” Veronica whined. “I had to catch up to her.”

“It wasn’t your job to catch up to her. That’s the huntsman’s job. It was your job to inform the huntsman that you’d seen her.”

Veronica continued to protest, but the two men weren’t having any of it. Finally she gave up.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It won’t happen again.” It sounded pretty insincere to me, and I figured Veronica was just tired of arguing.

What Mr. Baker said next surprised her, though—and me, too. “You’re right about that,” he told her. “And it certainly won’t happen in any hunt that I have anything to do with.
As of now, Max is withdrawing his invitation to you to participate further in this mock hunt, and I’m formally disinviting you to the junior hunt at Cross County next week.”

“You
what
?” Veronica exploded.

I could hardly believe it. It was a safe bet that nobody had ever disinvited Veronica to anything. This was better revenge than anything I could have come up with. “Isn’t it great?” I whispered to May.

Soon our horses were ready to go back to their stalls, and May and I were ready to start digging into the hunt breakfast. But first I walked to the tack room to put away my tack. While I was there, I glanced out the window and saw Veronica standing by the road, obviously waiting for her ride.

Then something strange happened. My brother Chad rode past on his bike. Or rather, he
started
to ride past. Because Veronica spotted him and waved, and Chad stopped.

I rolled my eyes. Veronica may not be much in the personality department, but a lot of guys seem to think she’s pretty. It looked as though Chad was no exception. I figured he was probably thrilled that a girl wanted to talk to him.

“You two deserve each other,” I muttered in their general direction. Then I turned and hurried out of the room, forgetting all about what I’d seen—for the moment, at least.

May and I were into our second helpings of bagels and cream cheese when the first shouts came from outside the stable.

“Here’s some more confetti!”

“It can’t be! She must have dropped that on the way out!”

“No way!”

And so on. I grinned and winked at May as the voices came closer. Phil and Lisa were arguing about whether they should have checked more places on the hillside. Others were speculating on whether I could possibly have ridden into town for ice cream. The rest of the riders just sounded confused.

Then I heard someone let out a loud “Woof! Woof!”

“They must have just spotted Topside,” I told May complacently. “It sounds like they’re right outside his stall.”

Sure enough, they had figured it out. A moment later they burst in, and May and I stood to toast them with our orange juice.

“Gotcha!” I cried. Everybody laughed, then cheered.

And by the end of the hunt breakfast, all the riders from the fox hunt—minus Veronica, of course—toasted May and me with their orange juice, bringing an end to one of the most enjoyable experiences of my whole life.

It’s way too late to call, but I figured you’d probably still be up working on your report. My dad and I just got home from a double feature in town, and I couldn’t wait until our
Horse Wise meeting tomorrow to tell you what happened on the way home from the theater.

I talked Dad into stopping by Pine Hollow on our way home, because I’d asked Judy to leave me a schedule of when she wanted me to work with her. Anyway, Dad waited in the car while I rushed in. Of course, after I picked up the note I decided to stop by for a quick good-night to Starlight. On my way to his stall, I spotted movement at the end of the hall. For a second I was kind of scared, thinking it was an intruder. I mean, it was pretty late, and there were only a few lights on. Then I decided I was being silly, that it was just Max or Red checking on one of the horses.

Still, I decided to play it safe. I stayed as quiet as a barn mouse as I crept forward, trying to see who it was.

When I reached the corner and peeped around, I got the shock of my life. It wasn’t Max. It wasn’t Red. It wasn’t some ax murderer or escaped convict.

It was Veronica!

She was wandering around the section of the stable that’s the bottom of the U—you know, the part where Rusty and Delilah and a few of the ponies are stabled. I was confused because she was nowhere near Garnet’s stall. And she wasn’t even paying attention to any of the horses, even though Rusty kept sticking his head out to snuffle at her as she walked by. She was just sort of pacing.

I was too surprised to say anything at first, and she didn’t see me at all. After a second, she stopped pacing and hurried down the other aisle (the one I wasn’t in) and disappeared. I came to my senses a moment later and raced
around the corner to ask her what she was doing there—I was afraid maybe Garnet was sick or something—but she was nowhere in sight. I looked all around the stable, but there wasn’t another human being to be seen anywhere (or Veronica either, hee hee!).

Anyway, it was so weird I just had to tell someone about it. Maybe Veronica has finally lost it! (Now if she’d just
get
lost … hee hee!)

See you bright and early tomorrow for Horse Wise!

Welcome to My Life …

Now, I didn’t know about this next part of my story until Carole and Lisa told me later. But it seems they were still worrying about what my brothers might do to me. So they decided to get involved—directly. Really directly. They actually called up the three troublemakers and arranged a meeting.

Those poor girls never had a chance. Somehow, my brothers managed to get them talking about the hunt. I suspect that Carole did most of the talking, since as you’ve seen before in this report, Miss Fenton, she
really
loves to talk about anything horse-related. Apparently she told them all about how a hunt works, and how if there are no foxes around, the would-be hunters will make it a drag hunt. Basically, that means someone goes out with a bag of scent and drags it around to create a trail that the hounds can follow, just as if they were on the trail of a real live fox.
By the time Carole finished talking, my brothers probably knew almost as much about foxhunting as she did.

But as I said, at the time I didn’t even suspect that anything like that was going on. However, I was still mighty suspicious of my brothers’ behavior, which was still nice as pie. In fact, I spent so much time worrying about it that I completely forgot about one of my math assignments, and I only had time to finish half the chapter I was supposed to read in my history book. Okay, maybe it was more like a third. I was
really
worried.

That Monday was rainy, and I was in a pretty stormy mood myself as I headed for Pine Hollow. I had seen something that day that had totally freaked me out. It was one of those things that sort of make you think the entire universe has just shifted in some cosmic way that allows the unthinkable to happen. Or something like that.

Anyway, when I got to the stable, Red told me that Carole and Lisa were in the indoor ring. I let myself in. Lisa was over on one side working with Samson, a curious young foal who was born at Pine Hollow. Carole was aboard Starlight, working on gait changes. I just stood there for a minute or two, watching them work. Carole is such a good friend that sometimes it’s easy for me to forget how truly impressive she is when she’s working with a horse. I kind of take her talents for granted. But I was aware of them right then as I watched Starlight practically grow and learn in front of my eyes. Seeing that somehow put what I had seen that day in perspective and soothed me.

Eventually Carole and Lisa noticed me standing there and came over to say hi. After a few moments of chitchat, I got down to business.

“Something is definitely up,” I told them.

“What makes you think so?” Lisa asked, looking worried as she stroked Samson’s short black mane.

“It’s Chad,” I said. “He seems to have a new girlfriend.”

Carole shrugged. “What’s so strange about that? The average life span of a romance for Chad is about four days, right? So it’s time for a switch.”

I couldn’t help smiling at that, since it was true. “I guess you’re right,” I admitted. “His lacrosse stick looks like a bowl of leftover alphabet soup! Anyway, what’s funny isn’t that he’s got a new girlfriend, but who it is. Stand back, girls.” I took a deep breath. “It’s Veronica diAngelo.”

They were stunned at that, of course. Almost as stunned as I had been.

“I saw them at school today,” I went on. “They were giggling. The only time Chad ever giggles is with his girlfriends.”

“Maybe it’s just because he’s been in love with every other girl at Fenton Hall and the only one left was Veronica,” Lisa suggested.

That made sense to me. But it wasn’t much comfort.

“And the good news is,” Lisa continued, “it will only go on for another four days.”

“Unless he marries her,” Carole chimed in, “in which case, the whole Lake family can retire on her money.”

It was meant to be a joke, but I couldn’t help shuddering
at the very thought. It was so awful that I could hardly concentrate on anything else all week. Not even my science paper.

Guess what? My brothers just got busted! They’ve been leaving these snotty little notes stuck to the front of the computer all week, and Mom finally caught them at it. They haven’t so much as poked their faces into the den since.

But that’s not really why I’m writing. I have another update on the Veronica saga. It’s a pretty annoying update, too, if you ask me. You see, this morning at Horse Wise I overheard some of the other girls talking about Veronica (who was late, as usual). Betsy said something about how she was so happy to run into Veronica at the mall yesterday after school, and how Veronica had about a million shopping bags stuffed full of things that she’d bought. Then Lorraine pipes up with some story about how she and Veronica went for a long bike ride a couple of days ago. And Meg Durham was acting all thrilled because it was warm enough this week for her and Veronica to hang out at Veronica’s pool all afternoon for two days in a row.

Normally, none of that would be the least bit surprising. But this week it is. Because this week, as you will recall from my previous e-mails, Veronica is supposed to be spending all her spare time writing a report for Miss Fenton, just like I am!

Part of me is really ticked off that’s she’s lounging around having fun while I’m killing myself working on my report. Another part is actually kind of glad about it, since it should mean that my report is guaranteed to be a million times better than hers.

However, as you know, with Veronica there are no guarantees. Knowing her, she’s probably paying someone to write her report for her or something. Ha ha!

Welcome to My Life …

The day of the fox hunt came at last. My brothers still hadn’t made their move, but I figured I was safe for one day at least, since I’d be all the way over at Cross County. The hunt was promising to be quite dramatic. And in the spirit of that idea, I now present …

A Thrilling, Action-Packed Movie Script by S. Lake

FADE IN

INTERIOR Cross County Stables, a little past seven in the morning.

CLOSE-UP on STEVIE, an astoundingly good-looking girl in flawless hunt attire, as she hurries down the hallway. PULL BACK to reveal other riders bustling around. Stevie approaches CAROLE and LISA. They are both similarly attired. All three girls look a bit sleepy but excited.