Stevie (9 page)

“Makes me feel like having oats for supper,” Dinah said with a giggle that told me she was feeling a little better already. She even whinnied.

I chuckled along with her, enjoying the sound of her laughter. I hadn’t heard it since before the accident, and it sounded really great.

“Now it’s time to walk you around the paddock a few times,” I said. “If you don’t keep moving at least a little, you’re going to stiffen up.”

Explanatory note:

Miss Fenton, what follows is an official medical diagnosis from a member in good standing of the local medical community. I explained what happened to Dinah to Dr. Levine and asked her to diagnose her symptoms so that you could understand exactly how serious her condition really was. I trust you will find it informative and helpful.

Stevie          

Disclaimer: What follows is not to be construed as a true diagnosis, since I have never met the patient in question nor observed her symptoms (which Stevie tells me are long since cleared up anyway). In addition, I write this with no access to my medical references, since I am currently standing in a stable aisle after my son’s Pong Club meeting. Besides which, being a cardiologist I wouldn’t normally handle this sort of patient anyway. But Stevie Lake can convince anybody to do just about anything, and for some reason this seems quite important to her, so against my better judgment, here goes …

The patient, Dinah Slattery, was injured in a fall from a bolting horse, followed by exposure to a snow-related rock slide. Her injuries include the following:

• Sizable epidermal abrasion on the right cheek-bone

• Numerous purpura (braises) caused by falling rocks and/or by falling from a horse to the ground

• Several lacerations to the arms, legs, and torso of unknown size and severity

• Possible minor stress injury to the patella
and/or lower femur caused by a violent blow from a blunt object (most likely a horse’s hoof)

DIAGNOSIS: The patient should see (or, rather, should have seen) a physician immediately for general first aid and a close examination of her injured knee as described above, as well as to ascertain that there were no internal injuries or head trauma.

You’ll never believe who I ran into last night. Never. I must have the worst luck in the entire universe!!!!

Here’s what happened. I took a teeny, tiny break from my writing, just long enough to go out for pizza and a movie with Phil, Carole, Lisa, Phil’s friend A.J., and a couple of other kids from Cross County. I’ve been working so hard on my report all week that I figured I deserved a break—
needed
one, before my brain exploded from all that writing and remembering and research. Obviously my parents agreed, since they let me go. As I was leaving, Mom even said something about being proud that I was being so RESPONSIBLE about the project. (She really said that. I only wish I’d had
a tape recorder with me! I could have included it in my report. Oh well, maybe I can get her to repeat it later.)

So anyway, I was feeling pretty good about things as we left the movie and headed to this pizza place near Phil’s house. Hungry. Happy. Proud.

Then we walked into the restaurant, and my heart totally stopped. I swear it did. I mean, I know people say that all the time. But I am one hundred percent sure that I was probably legally dead for a second there.

Because sitting at a table right near the door, chomping down on a slice of mushroom pizza, was … (drumroll, please)

MISS FENTON!!!!!!

Can you believe that? I couldn’t. Naturally, she spotted me right away.

“Good evening, Stephanie,” she said in that dry, deliberate voice of hers. “I’m surprised to see you so far afield.”

I suppose I must have stammered something in response. I seem to recall trying to introduce my friends and forgetting Carole’s name. And I think I called Phil “Philip Marlowe” instead of Phil Marsten.

Because I was sure I knew exactly what she was thinking:
There’s that irresponsible Stephanie Lake, goofing off when she’s supposed to be working hard to save her grades. Too bad. I guess I’ll have to flunk her out of school after all. HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!

Okay, she probably wouldn’t have laughed about it, even to herself. But the rest is probably pretty close, don’t you
think? I mean, do you remember what she said to us that time we got sent to her office for stealing all the frogs from the high-school biology lab and releasing them into the school toilets because we thought they’d go down into the sewers and breed into a mutant race of superfrogs that would destroy the school? You started crying and saying we were sorry, while I tried to convince her that, as third-graders, we deserved a second chance. She just stared at us and said, “I’m sorry, girls. A second chance is not something to be deserved; it is something to be earned.” Then she made us help the janitor clean the high-school bathrooms every day for a month. :-)

And that was when we were little kids! So I’m afraid I may have blown it. If my report had to be good before, now it has to be beyond great. It has to be stupendous. Extraordinary. Unsurpassed. Inimitable. Unparalleled. Transcendent. (See? That thesaurus I borrowed from Lisa is coming in handy!)

So if all that is true, what am I doing spending valuable report time writing to you??? Oops. Gotta go …

Welcome to My Life …

Dinah and I managed to keep anyone from suspecting anything for the next few days. We redid her makeover each morning and blamed her imaginary stomachache for the fact that she still spent an awful lot of time hiding out in her room. But every day it got harder to keep it up. Mrs. Slattery
started talking more and more about things like doctors, milk of magnesia, and Kaopectate. We knew it wasn’t going to be easy to trick her much longer.

But that was nothing compared to how hard it was getting to keep the truth from Betsy. I thought we should just go ahead and tell her—I was sure she could be trusted—but Dinah disagreed.

“We can’t take any chances,” she said, limping along with me through the snow toward the Sugar Hut one morning. We were going to meet Betsy to do some more collecting.

I just shrugged. I figured it was her decision to make. That didn’t mean I had to agree with it. But it did mean I had to honor it.

“Okay,” I said. “But it’s not going to be easy to fool her once we start collecting. It’s going to be an awful lot of work. Are you sure you’re up for it?”

“I was thinking about that,” Dinah said. “I have an idea. We have to convince Betsy to let me do all the driving today.”

I immediately saw what she meant. “That’s a great idea!” I cried. “If you’re driving, that means you won’t have to do any walking and collecting because you’ll have to stay with the sleigh.”

“Right,” Dinah said. “And Betsy will never have to know the truth.”

Betsy didn’t seem thrilled about the idea of Dinah driving, but she agreed. And our plan worked for a while. But before long I could tell that in Dinah’s current condition,
even driving was a pretty big strain. Soon she was wincing every time she had to pull on the reins to get the horse to stop.

Finally Betsy noticed, too. “Is something wrong?” she asked.

“No,” Dinah assured her quickly. “I’m just not as good at this as you are.”

“Then let me do it,” Betsy said. It wasn’t the first time she had said it. It was clear she was itching to take her turn at the reins, though Dinah and I kept putting her off.

“No, I’m fine,” Dinah said now. “I’ve just got to learn to do this right.”

“That’s for sure,” Betsy replied.

I winced at the tone in her voice. She didn’t sound very happy with Dinah, and in a way I couldn’t really blame her. I knew I had to change the subject.

“There are some more of our buckets!” I sang out as cheerfully as possible.

Betsy and I set to work. We emptied the buckets into the vat on the back of the big, flat sleigh. Then we removed the spiles from the tree trunks. Sugaring time was coming to an end, and we had been instructed to remove our equipment that day.

“That’s another four spiles down,” Betsy commented as she tossed the equipment onto the sleigh.

I nodded and quickly counted the spiles already there. “Why, yes,” I said, thinking of the fraction homework waiting for me back in Dinah’s bedroom, as I frequently had
over the past few extremely busy days. “And by my calculations, that means we have collected exactly four-fifths of the total number of spiles we set out.”

“Boy, you sure are good at math, Stevie,” Betsy said admiringly.

Dinah heard us from the driver’s seat and nodded. “Stevie is always talking about how much she’s learned in Ms. Snyder’s math class this year. It’s just too bad her test grades don’t always reflect her true comprehension and love of fractions and everything else about math. I think that really says something about our constrictive educational system.”

I sighed. “I could stand around here and talk about math all day. But we’d better keep moving if we want to collect the last one-fifth of our spiles.”

The others nodded. Betsy and I swung up onto our seats on the sleigh, and Dinah got the horse started again.

A moment later the sleigh went over a bump in the road, jolting us all around in our seats.

“Ouch!” Dinah cried before she could stop herself.

“What’s the matter?” Betsy asked.

“Nothing.” Dinah and I both said it at the same time. I gulped, realizing that Betsy might find it rather strange that I was answering for Dinah.

Luckily, Dinah changed the subject before Betsy could comment. “How are your parents coming with their riding lessons, Betsy?”

Betsy smiled. “Oh, they’re doing great,” she said. “In fact, they’re going on a trail ride this morning.”

“They are?” Dinah said, looking surprised. “I thought Mr.
Daviet said nobody could go out on any of the trails until sugaring off was over.”

“He did.” Betsy shrugged and laughed. “But you know how convincing my father can be. He told Mr. Daviet he wouldn’t have time to go for another few weeks if they couldn’t go today. And guess what? Mr. Daviet said he’d take them on a trail that’s been closed because of the snow this winter. He wants to see if it’s ready to be opened to other riders.”

All of a sudden I had a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. I could tell Dinah was thinking the same thing I was. She sort of stiffened on the seat next to me.

“What trail?” we both asked in a single voice.

“Rocky Road,” Betsy replied. “Isn’t that neat? I’m sure they’re going to love it. It’s such an exciting trail ride—or so I’ve heard.”

Sure it’s exciting
, I thought.
At least if you consider tumbling rocks, landslides, and avalanches exciting.

I was really feeling sick by now, and it had nothing to do with the bouncing sleigh ride. All sorts of horrible images were flashing through my mind. Falling rocks. Terrified horses. Horribly injured riders.

I knew we had to do something. That trail wasn’t safe, not even for an expert like Mr. Daviet. It certainly wasn’t safe for inexperienced riders like the Hales.

I guess Dinah was thinking the same thing. “They can’t go!” she blurted out.

Betsy looked surprised at her outburst. “Of course they can,” she said. “Like I said, Dad told Mr. Daviet—”

Dinah’s face was white. “I don’t mean they can’t go riding; they can’t go on Rocky Road.”

“Why not?” Betsy asked.

“It isn’t safe!” Dinah said urgently.

Betsy looked a little annoyed. “I think Mr. Daviet’s a better judge of that than you are,” she said. “After all, if
he
thinks my parents—”

“That’s not what I mean,” Dinah said. “The trail isn’t safe. I mean, it can’t be safe at this time of year. All that snow melting is probably dislodging some of the boulders and rocks, and it could—” Dinah stopped talking because Betsy was staring at her.

“You were on it,” Betsy said. “That’s how you know.”

Dinah didn’t answer. She just nodded.

“That’s what happened, and you’re hurt, aren’t you?” Betsy asked.

I gulped, glancing at Dinah to see what she would do. I guess we should have known that Betsy would guess the truth.

Dinah stared at the reins in her hand for a moment. “It was a big boulder,” she said finally. “It missed me by inches. Stevie saved me. The same thing could happen to your parents—only Stevie won’t be there to save them. We can’t let them go on that trail.”

Betsy turned pale. “We’ve got to warn them,” she said, grabbing the reins from Dinah. “Hold on tight, or we won’t get there in time! They’re going out at eleven.”

I glanced at my watch. It was ten minutes to eleven. That didn’t leave us much time.

Betsy slapped the horse’s rump vigorously with the reins, and the lumbering old workhorse sprang to life.

I held on tight as we raced over the snowy roads. We didn’t talk much. We were all concentrating grimly on the horse, the sleigh, the road. I suspected that the horse’s brisk trot was faster than he had gone in many years. Would it be enough?

It seemed to take forever. But finally the Sugar Hut came into view. I checked my watch again. Five past eleven. Were we too late?

As we pulled up at the door, Betsy flung down the reins and we all leaped out of the sleigh. Betsy was in the lead as we dashed inside. “There’s an intercom that connects the Sugar Hut with the stable,” she explained breathlessly as we ran.

Seconds later she was waiting for someone to pick up at the other end. I held my breath. My mind was swirling with all sorts of different thoughts. I was still scared for Mr. Daviet and the Hales. But I also couldn’t help feeling a strange sense of relief. At last our secret was out. And I, for one, was glad. Usually I like secrets. But this hadn’t been the fun kind of secret. Not at all.