Stevie (5 page)

The older girl pulled the sleigh to a stop in front of us, then hopped down and tossed the long reins to Dinah, making the bells ring crazily all at once. “Here, you take the reins,” she said.

“Me?” Dinah said.

“Yeah.” That was all the older girl said in reply. Without so much as glancing at Betsy or me, she walked back the way she had come.

“That was Jodi,” Betsy told me, rolling her eyes a little. “My older sister.”

“She’s usually friendlier,” Dinah said quickly. “I guess she wasn’t crazy about having to hitch up the sleigh for us. That must be why she hurried off. Anyway, you’ll meet her again while you’re here. I’m sure you’ll like her.”

“I’m sure I will,” I agreed. But I only said it to be polite. I wasn’t too sure at all—not after the way Jodi had acted.

But I didn’t think about her for long. We were all eager to get started. Dinah and Betsy started talking about their favorite horses at the stable—the ones they would get to
ride all summer long if we won. Dinah’s was named Goldie, and Betsy’s was Mister.

We went into the Sugar Hut and collected all the equipment we would need—two large hand drills, a bunch of spiles, and an equal number of buckets. The rules of the contest stated that we had to set out every bucket we took with us. For each one we brought back empty, we would have to forfeit a bucket of sap to the other teams. So we were careful to take only as many buckets as we thought we could use. We loaded everything into the sleigh, then climbed aboard.

Then, finally, we were on our way!

Betsy drove first. She was sitting between Dinah and me on the long wooden bench-type seat. Actually, she wasn’t sitting so much as standing, with her feet braced against a board at the front edge of the sleigh.

Driving a sleigh is a very interesting process, full of educational details. For instance, I noticed that Betsy was holding one rein in each hand. When we were ready to start, she flicked the reins so that they slapped the horse’s rump lightly, and at the same time she made a sort of clicking sound with her tongue. At first I could feel every lumbering step the big horse took, because it tugged at the sleigh with each one. But once the horse picked up its pace and the runners started sliding smoothly over the snow, all I felt was an easy, gliding forward motion.

“Wow,” I said. “Now I really feel like I’ve traveled back in time a few hundred years.”

“Wait until we get to work,” Betsy said. “You’re going to wish for the twentieth century again!”

I wasn’t sure exactly what she meant by that, but she and Dinah both seemed to find it awfully funny.

As we drove, I learned that driving a sleigh is more complicated than it looks in at least one interesting way. When you want to make a tight turn, you have to make sure the horse moves in the opposite direction first. For instance, to make a quick right, you first have to tug on the left rein so that the horse will shift a few steps to the left. Then the sleigh will move way over to the left side of the path, and it can make the turn to the right without pushing its shafts—those are the long wooden pieces that stick out from the sleigh on either side of the horse—into the horse’s body.

Luckily, Betsy knew exactly how to manage the trick. So we made good time on the snowy, wooded paths.

I was still having a hard time believing I was really there. The landscape looked as though it had been painted for the front of a greeting card or something. It was really beautiful. As we drove along through the peaceful, snow-blanketed forest, I turned to count the buckets in the back of the sleigh once more. That reminded me of the fraction problems I had waiting for me back in my suitcase. But I knew I would have to worry about that later. Because now we had work to do.

I don’t like to brag, but I caught on to the tree-tapping process really fast. It didn’t hurt that Betsy and Dinah were such good teachers. They taught me all kinds of interesting things, like how to tell the sugar maples from the other trees
(they’re marked with a little maple leaf, which is painted on in the summer when it’s easier to tell the trees apart) and how to decide where to place the spile (it’s usually a good idea to tap right under a big branch, since the tree sends lots of sap to branches that are growing fast).

We tapped tree after tree, drilling holes, inserting spiles, and hanging buckets. After a while, I started to think we would never finish, that we could never possibly use up all the buckets we had brought in the sleigh. I was also starting to understand what Betsy had meant when she said I’d be wishing for a return to the twentieth century!

We kept at it until it started to get dark. By that time, we still had two buckets left. None of us liked the thought of returning empty buckets, but we knew we had to hurry if we were going to find two more sugar maples. We also realized the trees would have to be easy to find, or we might forget where they were.

We decided to look on our way back to the Sugar Hut. It was Dinah’s turn to drive.

“Mr. Daviet thinks it’s important for all of us to learn to drive a horse on a wagon or sleigh,” Dinah told me as she picked up the reins and got started. After a minute or two, she offered to let me try driving for a few minutes. I said yes, of course. It looked like fun, and I had never driven anything except a tiny pony cart back at Pine Hollow.

It took me a moment to get used to the feel of the long reins. They were much heavier in my hands than normal reins, which made sense—after all, they were more than ten feet long! I quickly realized that they would also be harder
on the horse’s mouth than shorter reins, so just a bit of pressure would be enough to signal the horse clearly. It was exciting to drive, even just a few yards, and I was determined to learn more about driving sometime soon. I just love learning!

Soon I gave the reins back to Dinah, and we continued on our way through the woods. We were all scanning the trees around us, looking for those maple-leaf marks so that we could use our last two buckets.

“There’s one!” Dinah declared. She pulled the sleigh to a halt.

“I see it,” Betsy said. In a flash, she was out of the sleigh and hard at work tapping the tree. Then we were off again, keeping a close watch for that one last tree we needed.

“There must be one, there must be one,” Dinah said, almost chanting.

My eyes were getting tired of squinting for tiny painted maple leaves, especially in the fading light. But suddenly I spotted what we were looking for. “There it is!” I shouted, pointing to the right.

They saw it, too. “Let’s get it!” Dinah cried, flicking the reins to send the horse toward the sugar maple.

I was so busy watching the little mark on the tree trunk—I didn’t want to lose sight of it, not until that last bucket was finally hanging there—that it took me a second to realize what was happening. I didn’t notice that we had a problem until I heard the sound.

The awful, terrible, terrifying sound.

It was the sound of the shafts groaning in protest.

In that split second, I realized what was happening. Dinah was so busy heading for the tree that she had forgotten the rule about sharp turns. The horse was leaning so far into the right-hand shaft that it was on the verge of breaking!

I realized all that, but I knew I didn’t have time to explain it. Dinah hadn’t noticed a thing, and I had no idea if Betsy was paying attention, either.

It was all up to me.

Luckily, I knew what to do. I grabbed the left rein and tugged. From driving before, I knew that that should be all it would take.

It was. The horse responded instantly, shifting back toward the left. Then he stopped in his tracks.

“Huh?” Dinah said. I think that’s what she said, anyway. I was too busy being grateful at escaping our close call that I was sort of distracted. I quickly explained why I had done what I’d done.

“Oh, wow!” Dinah exclaimed. “Your quick and brilliant thinking saved us all!”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said modestly. Actually, I knew she was right—I had saved us from a lot of trouble. The sleigh could have broken or tipped over, the horse could have been badly hurt.… But that was all behind us now. I didn’t want to rub it in.

“Yes, you did,” Dinah insisted. “I really almost blew it—just to tap one maple tree. It wasn’t worth it. Definitely.”

I was really starting to blush by now. Deep down, I’m really a shy and humble person. Well, sort of. “Who says we
can’t tap it now?” I asked. I grabbed the equipment from the back of the sleigh and got to work. In a few minutes we were heading back to the Sugar Hut—a little older, and a little wiser.

Hi! How’s the report going? Are you still working on the part about your trip to Vermont? Because I just remembered something that happened while you were away and I wanted to remind you in case you forgot about it. It’s Phil’s unmounted Pony Club meeting. Remember? You had promised him you’d go over to Cross County for it, and then you couldn’t reach him before you left for Vermont because he was on that class trip. So you made Carole and me promise to call him for you when he got back.… Well, you probably remember. I don’t know if that’s the kind of thing you want to include in your report, but it does become sort of important later because of what the meeting turned out to be about.

Anyway, I hope the writing is going well. We missed you at Pine Hollow today, though of course we understood why you couldn’t make it. (At least I understood. But you know Carole. She thinks school is just a place to go between
trail rides! Ha ha!) Anyway, Max let me groom our favorite new Pine Hollow resident today, and it was absolutely wonderful. What a sweetie! Let me know when you get to that part of your story. I’ll definitely want to help you all I can!

Not to totally change the subject, but you missed another exciting episode of
The Rich and the Weird
at the stable this afternoon. Veronica stopped by, which of course shocked us, since we didn’t have lessons or anything. Anyway, I heard her ordering Red to saddle up Garnet for her. So I figured she just felt like going for a ride. That’s kind of unusual, but no big deal, right? I didn’t think much about it. Then she disappeared toward the tack room, and I figured she was going to hover over Red and give him a hard time while he did her work for her. No surprises there, either. Except a few minutes later I happened to glance out the window of Diablo’s stall, and I saw Veronica rushing down the driveway. Yes, rushing. As in
on foot.
And her family’s limo was nowhere in sight. Don’t ask me where she was going, but Red was pretty peeved when he came out a minute later with Garnet all saddled and ready. Pretty bizarre, huh? Even for Veronica!

Anyway, I don’t want to distract you from your paper. I’ll see you tomorrow at lessons, and I’ll be dying to hear all about it. Don’t forget what I told you about keeping things formal and straightforward. Teachers love that. And don’t forget—substance!

Welcome to My Life …

Okay, Miss Fenton, we’re going to have a little change in format here. You see, my trip to Vermont soon got so exciting that it was like being swept up in the events of some epic film. You know, like
Ben Hur
or
Star Wars.
So I think the best way to get that across is to write it as if it were a film script. I even called my close personal friend, teen movie star Skye Ransom, to help me with the details. I spent over an hour on the phone asking questions about how real Hollywood movie scripts are written. It was a very educational conversation, and I think you’ll find that I learned a lot from it.

Without further ado, Stevie Lake Productions presents …

An Action-Packed Blockbuster Movie Script by S. Lake

FADE IN

INTERIOR Dinah’s bedroom, early morning

CLOSE-UP on STEVIE, an exceptionally attractive middle-school girl, sleeping peacefully in the spare bed. A stack of schoolbooks sits on the floor nearby, and a history textbook lies open on the pillow next to her, revealing a picture of Paul Revere.

The bedroom door opens, and DINAH enters. She is fully dressed and smiling.

Stevie sits up and rubs her eyes.

DRAMATIC MUSIC

Stevie pauses just long enough to carefully place her history book back on the pile with the other schoolbooks.

FADE TO

INTERIOR The Slatterys’ front hall. Stevie, Dinah, and MRS. SLATTERY are there.

Mrs. Slattery waves one finger warningly as Stevie and Dinah prepare to leave the house.

The two girls EXIT.