Trail Mates (9 page)

“Yeah, it reminds me of my first trail ride. Remember her ‘shortcut’?”

It would have been hard for anyone, but especially Lisa, to forget Stevie’s shortcut that day. Stevie had taken them through a field inhabited by a very unhappy bull. The three girls had ended up jumping over a big fence—a difficult feat for an experienced rider, an astonishing feat for Lisa, who had only been riding for a few weeks at the time.

“Hey, there’s a road up ahead,” Stevie said. “At the least, we can follow the road signs—”

“To Timbuktu!” Lisa finished her sentence for her. Riding with Stevie, it seemed, was always an adventure.

Rather sheepishly, Stevie led the way onto the two-lane road. “Which way, fearless leader?” Carole asked.

“I’m not sure,” Stevie told her. “But either left or right, I think.”

“What thinking!” Lisa teased.

“All right, my mind’s made up,” Stevie said. “We’re turning left.” With that, she turned Comanche to the left and got him walking along the edge of the road. Smiling at each other, Lisa and Carole followed her.

It was a little annoying to be lost, but the girls knew perfectly well that they couldn’t be
too
far from the stable and they would get back there before long.

A few cars whizzed past them as they continued along the road, alternately walking and trotting. Since Stevie was supposedly leading them, it was up to her to stop somebody to ask where they were.

Another car came up from behind them but it didn’t pass. It just kept going slower and slower.

Then a familiar voice spoke from the car’s window.

“Carole?” Carole turned to see Scott, waving at her. “What are you doing here?” he asked.

“We’re having a sort of off-trail ride,” she explained.

“Max told me you guys were on a trail ride, but I thought you’d be heading home by now.”

“We are,” she said.

“But you’re going
away
from the stable,” he said.

“We are?” she responded, only a little bit surprised.

“Sure, Pine Hollow’s back that way. We just came from there,” he said to her. “We took a left off of Attington Way into this old road.”

So
that’s
where they were! That meant this was the old country road that skirted the forest land outside the town of Willow Creek. It led to a camping area. Since people who lived in Willow Creek didn’t usually camp there, it wasn’t familiar to The Saddle Club. They were really lucky that the Babcocks had come along that route. It might have been another hour until they got to the camping area and realized their mistake!

“Yo! Lisa, Stevie!” Carole called. When her friends turned around to see why she was calling, she waved them over to Scott’s father’s car. “We’ve certainly enjoyed this scenic tour, Stevie,” Carole teased as they joined her. “But I think it’s time to head back to Pine Hollow now, don’t you?” She really didn’t want Scott to know they had been lost, but she wasn’t fooling him at all.

“Does that mean I’ve saved
your
life now?” he asked.

She smiled at him. “I suppose so,” she admitted. “I guess that makes us even.”

“Right,” he said, grinning back at her. “Anyway, I’m glad I could help you out.”

“So am I,” she admitted. “We’ve got to get the horses back now, though. See you around.”

“Sure,” he said, waving as she walked off. Then, before his father had a chance to start the car moving, Scott turned in his seat and hung out of the window of the passenger side of the car. “In fact, how about Saturday? Could I see you then? Want to go out?”

Scott caught her by surprise. She glanced quickly at her friends, who were unsuccessfully suppressing grins.

“Uh, w-well …” she stammered. Then she realized that this might be a blessing in disguise. “Hey, there’s a dance at the Officers’ Club I have to go to. Want to go to that?”

“Do I ever!” he responded.

What
was
she doing? she asked herself.

“Okay, then, come to my house about six-thirty, okay?”

“I’ll be there,” he said, drawing himself back into the car. His father started driving away. Carole watched as the car suddenly screeched to a halt and backed up to where she was still halted on Diablo.

Scott’s embarrassed face emerged from the window once again. “Uh—where do you live?” he asked.

She told him, and the Babcocks drove off for the final time.

“You really know how to shake off a guy, don’t you?” Stevie asked in mock admiration.

“Well, I’ve got to have a date for this dumb dance, so it might as well be dumb old Scott,” Carole retorted. “Besides, maybe it’ll be easier to kill two birds with one stone, don’t you think?”

“No,” Lisa and Stevie said at the same time.

C
AROLE GAZED AT
herself in the mirror of her bedroom on Saturday evening. All week long, it had seemed as if she couldn’t make up her mind whether she wanted Saturday to come or stay away. Now, here it was Saturday and she
still
couldn’t make up her mind. Stevie and Lisa were having a sleepover at Stevie’s house. She wished she were there.

Then she glanced over at her bed, where her new white dress was laid out. She smiled. It
was
pretty. She really liked the neckline and the simple eyelet lace. She slipped the dress on over her head and zipped it up. She was trying to reach the hook to fasten it when she passed her mirror again. Studying her reflection, she decided she was glad it was Saturday after all.

Carole heard the Babcocks’ car pull into her driveway.
She glanced out the window and watched Scott emerge. He gazed up at the house uncertainly and then approached the front door. Carole heard the doorbell ring. Her father answered it. A few seconds later, Dr. Babcock drove away.

There was a knock at her door. “Honey, I know you saw the car so you know Scott’s here. I’m pretending you don’t, though, so I have a chance to come see you and see if you need any help. Any hooks that need hooking?”

Carole smiled to herself. Her father was just about the neatest guy in the world. No wonder Lynne couldn’t leave him alone. “Yes,” she said. “There
is
one.” Her father came into her room and helped her with the hook at the top of her zipper. When it was all done, she wrapped Lynne’s shawl around her shoulders and spun around for effect.

“Well?” she asked.

“Well, what?”

“Well, how do you like it?”

“I love it—except for the shawl. Where did that come from?”

Carole giggled. “Lynne loaned it to me. She said it ‘accents the outfit perfectly.’ I think I have to wear it, Dad,” Carole said.

“Oh.”

“It’s time now, huh?”

He nodded, then offered Carole his arm.

*  *  *

“A
RE THE MARSHMALLOWS
melted yet?” Stevie asked Lisa. The girls had shooed everybody out of the kitchen right after supper so they could make a special dessert for themselves.

“What
are
you making?” Stevie’s twin brother, Alex, asked from outside the kitchen door. “It smells great. Can I have some? Please?”

Stevie turned to the closed door and put her hands on her hips. “None of your business. No. And no.” She turned back to Lisa. “You are
so
lucky, having only one brother. You don’t know.”

“Maybe,” Lisa said noncommittally. “But there’s always so much going on here. It’s exciting. Fun! My family is just plain boring.”

“Well, I’ll give you that,” Stevie agreed. “Living here isn’t boring. Crazy, maybe. Certainly not boring.”

Lisa looked down at the pot of goo she was stirring. “Guess what? I think it’s
time.
”

Stevie smacked her lips. “Okay, then it’s time to mix.” At Lisa’s signal, Stevie poured the Rice Krispies into the melted marshmallows and Lisa began stirring. When the mixture had gotten wonderfully gooey and impossibly sticky, they began pressing it into the square glass baking dish, using butter-covered utensils. That didn’t mean that the sweet mess didn’t get stuck on them anyway, but it didn’t matter. That simply gave
them an opportunity to lick it off, getting a taste of what was to come.

“Not a bite. My brothers won’t get even the tiniest little taste,” Stevie vowed. “You and I’ll hoard it for ourselves.”

They were getting down to the serious business of contemplating how delicious the concoction was going to be when a car pulled up in the Lakes’ driveway and the doorbell rang.

A few seconds later, Alex burst into the kitchen, uninvited. “Stevie, it’s that photographer lady—Jackie something. She says she’s got some pictures to show you. She seems all excited.”

At the very mention of the photographer’s name, the girls’ glamorized images of the Life of a Model came rushing back into their minds. “Maybe the pictures of us were
really
good,” Stevie said. “Maybe—”

“Maybe we actually do have a chance, you mean?” Lisa asked.

“Maybe,” Stevie said. “So let’s find out!”

They washed their hands quickly and dropped their cooking utensils in the sink. Then they covered their snack with waxed paper and headed for the living room, where Jackie was waiting for them.

“I was in the neighborhood and I just couldn’t wait to show you, girls! What luck that you’re both here together! The pictures are wonderful!”

“They are?” Lisa asked.

“Do we look good?” Stevie piped up.

“You look fabulous!” Jackie exclaimed. “Come see!”

She opened up the portfolio she was carrying and began spreading photographs all over the coffee table and the sofa. “Look, here are the boots,” Jackie said, showing them a perfectly nice photograph of a pair of high boots and then one of some jodhpur boots. “Isn’t the composition terrific?”

“Uh, sure,” Stevie said. “Really nice.”

“And here’s the horse blanket.” The girls looked to see Comanche standing perfectly still, modeling a navy-blue horse blanket. There was no sign of Lisa, who had been hiding on the horse’s far side, nor of Stevie, who had been off to the side, getting Comanche’s attention.

“And look at these pictures of the bridles! Look, there you are, Lisa.”

Lisa’s ears perked up when she heard her name. This was the moment she had been waiting for. She leaned over the table, eager to see herself—and she did. At least, she saw her hands. They were holding the reins of the bridle, but her grip was improper.

“You can’t use that picture!” Lisa said in dismay. “I’m not holding the reins right.” Lisa wanted to kick herself. Her big chance, and she’d blown it!

“You’re not?” Jackie asked in surprise. The girls both
told her it was true. Any rider would recognize that the reins had to go between her third and fourth fingers. In this photograph, she was just grasping them. “Oh, don’t worry,” Jackie said. “I can crop that part out. What’s important is the bridle.”

Lisa sighed. So much for her career as a model.

“There’s your knee, Stevie,” Jackie said. The girls looked. It was a photograph of a saddlebag. There was a knee visible. The knee
could
have been Stevie’s.

“Look how nicely
this
saddle came out,” Jackie said, showing them one of the saddles perched on the wooden saddle rack. Lisa thought she saw a shadow on the far side of the saddle that might have been her hand as she kept the equipment from toppling. She pointed it out to Jackie.

“Oh, I think you’re right,” the photographer said. “I can airbrush that shadow out. No problem.”

Lisa was going to end up on the cutting-room floor!

“You girls were really wonderful,” Jackie told them. “I really appreciated your help. Being a photographer’s aide isn’t easy and you just pitched in and helped me in every possible way. I wanted you to see these right away because they came out so nicely. I’m just certain the catalog people are going to want me to do more work for them and I promise I’ll call you to help me as soon as I hear from them.”

“We can’t wait,” Stevie said, very unenthusiastically.
But she managed a smile. So did Lisa.

“Well, it’s settled, then. In the meantime, I’ve brought you each an envelope with your pay in it. I wish it could have been twice as much!”

“So do we!” Stevie said brightly. Jackie laughed.

A few minutes later, she had left and the girls were alone with their envelopes and their broken dreams.

“Fifty dollars
seemed
like all the money in the world,” Stevie said wistfully. “Now, for some reason, it doesn’t seem like so much.”

“It isn’t, really,” Lisa said. “It just seemed that way when we thought the work was going to be easy. We would have agreed to model for her whether we were getting paid or not.”

“So what are we going to do with our money?” Stevie asked. “Maybe we can spend it on something we can do together with Carole.”

“I don’t know, but it ought to be something special. Something that might make up for the fact that we haven’t even told Carole about the pictures.”

“That’s going to be hard to do. Personally, I feel rotten about keeping this whole thing a secret from her.”

“So do I,” Lisa agreed. She sat on the sofa in Stevie’s living room, staring unhappily at the floor. “Maybe the only way to make it up to Carole is to share the money with her.”