Stray Horse (2 page)

“That’s nice,” her father said.

“Oh, and I got a perfect score on the spelling test.”

Lisa’s parents didn’t seem to register the fact that their daughter was speaking to them. They were each glaring at different sections of the newspaper.

Carole wanted to help. “You always get perfect scores on spelling tests. Every other test, too!” she teased.

“Yes,” said Mrs. Atwood.

Carole squirmed.

“Well, I’ve got a science test coming up next week,” Lisa said. “It’s in earth science and that’s a really difficult subject for me. I’ve got to study especially hard for it.”

No response.

“What do you think we’ll be working on at Horse Wise today?” Carole asked. Horse Wise was the name of their Pony Club.

“Max said it would be something different. That man really loves surprises!” Lisa said. “I can hardly wait.”

The stilted conversation and the stony set of parents was more than Carole could bear. She stood up, getting ready to leave.

“Isn’t it time for you to leave for the—uh—stable?” Mrs. Atwood asked.

Carole’s thought exactly. “Come on, Lisa. Let’s get our stuff,” she said.

The girls put their dishes in the sink. Normally Carole would have rinsed them and put them in the dishwasher, but she suspected Lisa’s parents wouldn’t have noticed if she’d flown them across the room Frisbee-style, and Carole simply couldn’t wait to get out of the kitchen.

She followed her friend upstairs, unsure of what to say. She’d seen parents have arguments before. She’d seen parents and kids have arguments. But she couldn’t remember seeing anything that cold-blooded—and all about a carton of
milk
? Well, that was the point, she suspected; it wasn’t about a carton of milk. Arguments could be like icebergs. Only one-seventh was above water.

“Lisa …,” Carole began.

“Do you remember where I put my boots?” Lisa asked.

“In your closet on the floor, where you always put them,” said Carole.

A few minutes later Carole followed Lisa back downstairs, carrying everything they would need for their Pony Club meeting and the lesson that would follow. Lisa’s parents were still in the kitchen, still glaring at their newspapers.

Lisa gave them each a hug and a kiss. Carole thanked them for letting her stay over.

“Have a good day,” Mrs. Atwood said, but her smile looked forced.

Carole thought that as soon as she got out of the house,
she just might have a good day, and in any case she was certain she was going to have a better day than Lisa’s parents.

She couldn’t do anything about that, she knew, but she could do something abut Lisa. It took her a while to assemble her thoughts. She wanted Lisa to know that it was okay, Lisa shouldn’t be embarrassed about her parents’ behavior and Carole didn’t care anyway. She remembered that her own parents used to have arguments sometimes. What she couldn’t remember, and wouldn’t say to Lisa, was ever seeing her parents seething like that.

“Listen, Lisa,” Carole said carefully. “It’s okay and you don’t have anything to be embarrassed about.”

“What?” Lisa asked.

“You know—that,” Carole said. “The milk thing.”

“My dad likes milk in his coffee,” Lisa said.

It wasn’t the words as much as the tone that said Lisa didn’t want to talk—didn’t think there was anything to talk about. That made Carole think about icebergs again.
Just one-seventh
, she told herself.

“I can’t wait to see what Max is up to,” said Lisa. “I mean, what could it be?”

Carole let the first topic drop. If Lisa wanted to forget about it, if she wasn’t upset, that was good enough for Carole. “I can’t wait, either,” she said, and she meant it, too.

“W
ELL, LOOK WHO
made it!” Lisa joked, spotting Stevie, who was waiting for them in the driveway at Pine Hollow.

“Thanks for waking me up. I wouldn’t have missed this for anything!”

“What?” Lisa asked.

“This meeting,” said Stevie. “It’s going to be soooo much fun.”

“They all are,” Carole told her, heading toward the stable. “Because they’re all about horses.”

“Well, this meeting isn’t, but it’s still going to be fun,” said Stevie.

“So what’s the story?” Lisa asked, linking arms with
Stevie and following Carole toward the cluster of kids already waiting for the meeting to begin.

“I’ll give you a hint,” Stevie said. “It starts with a C and ends with A-R-L.”

“Judy’s here?” Carole asked eagerly, scanning the grounds for Judy Barker, Pine Hollow’s equine veterinarian. CARL stood for
County Animal Rescue League.
It was a local shelter run by volunteers for abandoned and ill animals. Whenever the animal in question was a horse, Judy volunteered her time, and Pine Hollow’s students often helped out, learning about animal care and veterinary medicine as they pitched in.

“Nope,” Stevie said. “It’s Doc Tock.”

Doc Tock was actually Dr. Takamura, but her patients’ owners usually shortened both the names. She was a small-animal vet. In her regular practice that usually meant dogs and cats, occasional parakeets and hamsters. At CARL, it could mean anything from aardvarks to wildcats.

Max called the meeting to order and indicated that all the students should come over to where he and Doc Tock were standing. He began by introducing Doc Tock, though most of the students already knew her.

“We’re going to do something a little different today, kids, and I’m going to let Doc Tock tell you all about it.”

The students fell silent, eager to hear what was going on.

“You were probably all in town for the big rainstorm last week,” she began. Lisa thought back to the violent storm, with strong winds, thunder, and lightning. Doc Tock continued. “There was a lot of obvious damage to the land. What isn’t quite so obvious to many people is that a storm like that is as destructive to the wildlife as it is to the woodlands. CARL has been inundated with new residents. We’ve got birds, squirrels, raccoons, a skunk, two snakes, a deer with a broken leg, plus several feral cats and the usual assortment of pet dogs, cats, and hamsters. In short, we’re overwhelmed, and we need some help. Max suggested that you all might be willing to come to our aid.”

“We’re not doctors,” said May.

“I don’t expect you to be,” said Doc Tock. “I’m just hoping you’ll be able to help with feeding and cleaning and maybe assist Judy and me in a few things. It’s just for this morning. Can I count on you?”

“You bet,” Carole said enthusiastically. Although there was nothing she loved more than horses, other animals were close seconds and she was more than willing to help—even if it meant missing out on a couple of hours with her favorites.

It turned out that just about everybody was willing to
pitch in at CARL. The one exception, which surprised nobody, was Veronica diAngelo. Veronica was Pine Hollow’s richest and snobbiest rider. Her idea of helping someone out at Pine Hollow was to let the stable hands know there was a job to do. That way she never broke a sweat—or a fingernail.

Veronica was left to ride her horse in the schooling ring while all the other students followed Doc Tock down the street to CARL. As far as The Saddle Club was concerned, there were a lot of great things about CARL. One was that it was within walking distance of Pine Hollow.

All it took was one look around for the girls to realize how much they were needed. The place was a mess.

“Okay,” Lisa said, putting her naturally logical self in the lead. “We’ve got to clean out all these cages and then begin cleaning and feeding the animals themselves. Let’s form teams of three. One, two, three; one, two, three.” She had seven teams formed before Doc Tock and Max had followed the last stragglers through the door. “The first team will start with the birdcages; teams two and three, you get the small woodland animals, be careful of the skunk. Four and five, you clean out the cats. Six and seven, we get the dogs. Okay, we’ll start at the far end.”

Stevie enjoyed watching Lisa in action. She wasn’t a loud or pushy person; she wasn’t even a particularly strong
leader. It was just that she was so utterly logical that everybody followed her lead. Stevie could have done the same thing, she told herself, but it would have taken her a half hour to figure out what size the teams should be and how to sort them around the large building. Lisa had an amazing ability to break a task down to small units and tackle it efficiently.

“Doc Tock,” Lisa said, turning to her. “Could you show the team leaders—that’s the first person I named for each team—where the cleaning supplies are?” Doc Tock was happy to do as she was asked.

Stevie, too, followed Lisa’s directions. She’d been put on a team with Adam Levine and May Grover. Once again, she admired Lisa because she’d managed to balance each of the teams with older and younger kids, as well as mixing up boys and girls. She’d paid no attention to usual friendships. Though Stevie would have preferred to work with Lisa and Carole, it meant she was working with May, one of the younger riders who had a lot to learn, and Adam, who was taller and probably a little bit stronger than she was, and that mattered when they were working with the dogs in the big cages.

In fact, if she didn’t like Lisa so much, she might envy her amazing skills.

“Oh, good,” said Doc Tock, coming over to the cage of a
small mixed-breed dog that Stevie had just cleaned. May brought over a bowl of fresh water and Adam handed the pup a treat to chew on. “I need to take a blood sample from this fellow. Who wants to hold him?”

May offered first, so Stevie and Adam let her handle it. May opened the cage door and enticed the puppy to its entrance with a biscuit. The puppy came willingly, and May easily lifted him out and carried him to the table. She patted him gently, and the puppy settled in so happily with all the attention he was getting that he never seemed to notice what Doc Tock did to him.

Stevie got to hold the next dog—a medium-sized mutt of uncertain heritage—while he got his immunization, then Adam held a female named Daisy, who looked like a mix of retriever and shepherd, while Doc Tock examined her. Daisy was scheduled to be spayed in the next few days, and the vet needed to be sure she was in good health before she operated on her.

“She’s a sweet dog,” said Doc Tock, watching Daisy’s tail swish eagerly. “I’m sure we’ll find her a good home.” Stevie found herself wishing that home could be hers, but she didn’t think her cat, Madonna, would appreciate a big dog in the house. She didn’t think her parents would appreciate it, either.

When Doc Tock was finished with the dogs, Stevie’s
team joined another team that was painting some of the vacant cages so that they’d be ready for new occupants.

Carole, who had spent several vacations working as Judy Barker’s assistant, was prepared to give Doc Tock a hand with anything. Together they took blood samples from several cats, set the deer’s broken leg, and changed the bandage on a cat whose foot had been caught in a trap.

“All the cages are clean,” Lisa reported to Doc Tock as she came out of the surgical room. “Everybody’s been fed and watered, and ten cages have been painted.”

“You guys are wonderful!” said the vet.

“What’s next?” Lisa asked, still eager to help. Carole couldn’t help noticing how Lisa had thrown herself into this whole project. Lisa was definitely good at organizing things, but she seemed to be in super mode today.

“Dr. Einstein,” said Doc Tock.

“I thought he was dead,” Lisa remarked.

“No, not the genius professor with the relativity theory. It’s the owl in the corner over there with the broken foot,” Doc Tock told her. “He won’t let anybody near him, and he won’t eat anything. I’m afraid we’re going to lose him. You’ve already worked a couple of miracles here today. Want to try for another?”

Lisa blushed. “I don’t know about that,” she said. “But I’ll try.”

Carole looked over to where the owl was cowering in the corner of his cage, sitting awkwardly on the ground while he protected his wounded foot.

Lisa picked up a bowl of fresh meat and a toothpick and approached the cage cautiously. She pulled a stool along with her and sat down on it. Then she looked into the cage and began talking gently. Carole tried to hear what she was saying, but she knew the words wouldn’t make any difference. What was important was the sound of Lisa’s voice. There were a few voices outside the room, but in the cage room, nobody spoke except Lisa.

She looked sideways into the cage, keeping her eyes from looking directly into the owl’s, which might be perceived as a challenge, a dare. She saw when the owl looked at her and then averted her eyes completely, showing submission.

The riders had all learned about this kind of communication with animals when they’d studied horse training techniques. To animals, it was important who was dominating and who was submitting. If Lisa remained submissive, the owl would feel it had nothing to fear from her.

The owl took one step forward along the side of the cage. Lisa remained still. The owl took a second step. Very slowly, very smoothly, Lisa took a bit of the meat and put
it on the toothpick, holding it within Dr. Einstein’s field of vision but not moving it toward him.