Carole (13 page)

Wondering if she’d forgotten about our sleepover plans, I called home. “Hi, Dad,” I said when he picked up. I felt a little shy—I’d never stayed angry with him for so long before. “I just wanted to make sure Marie is there with you.”

“Marie?” he said, sounding confused. “But she’s at Pine Hollow with you.”

Well, that made me start to feel kind of worried. If Marie wasn’t at home and she wasn’t at Pine Hollow, then where was she? I did my best to reassure Dad, telling him she was probably around the stable somewhere. But I was already pretty sure that wasn’t true.

I went to see if Stevie and Lisa had any ideas about where Marie might be, but both of them seemed to have disappeared, too. I wasn’t worried about them, though. All my worries were for Marie.

I sat down to think. Where would she go? I tried to put myself in her place to figure it out.

At first I still had no idea
where
she was, but I think that’s when I started to realize
why
she might want to disappear. I had spent so much time that day trying to avoid Marie that I hadn’t stopped to think that Marie might also be trying to avoid
me
. After all, I’d been pretty mean to her for the past few days. Why would she want to spend her birthday with someone who couldn’t speak to her without snarling?

Finally I figured out where she might have gone. I headed for the tack room and then Starlight’s stall. After slipping a bridle on him, I led him out of his stall and mounted bareback. A few minutes later we were riding across the fields and through the woods toward the Danas’ house, which is
just a couple of miles from the stable. When we got there, the house looked deserted and still. I dismounted and tried the doors, but they were locked tight.

I was starting to think that Marie wasn’t there after all when I heard a noise from the little garden shed in the side yard. It was Marie, and she was crying. I called to her, feeling terrible.

“Who is it?” she called back suspiciously. When I opened the door of the shed and poked my head in, she frowned through her tears. “What do
you
want?” she demanded. “Did you track me down so you could yell at me and humiliate me some more?”

I knew I deserved that. I had been mean and spiteful toward Marie all week. Somehow all my good intentions for her visit had turned sour, which meant that I’d done more harm than good when Marie was feeling her loneliest.

“Marie,” I told her hesitantly, “I think I owe you a big apology. I mean a
really
big apology.”

Marie looked wary. “I’m listening.”

I poured out everything I was thinking, like how I hadn’t been seeing her point of view at all, and I was jealous of all the attention she was getting, and that kind of thing. It was all true, too. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t seen it until then. I still can’t.

“The funny thing is,” I told her, “I’ve always wanted a sister or a brother. But now that I’ve actually had the chance to have one, I’ve realized that I’m just not very good at it.”

“Well,” Marie said thoughtfully, “I guess I wasn’t really going out of my way to look at things from your point of view,
either. I was pretty busy worrying about how I’d be able to deal with my mom’s being gone and all, so I didn’t stop to think about how you’d have to deal with having me in your house.”

I thought that was pretty nice of her to say. We sort of smiled at each other a little then and promised we’d both try to do better from then on. We even shook on the deal. Oh, and I finally remembered to wish her a happy birthday.

By the time we got back to Pine Hollow, Dad had called there three times looking for us. We called him right back to let him know we were both safe and sound, and while Marie was talking to him, he told her he wanted to take the three of us out for a big birthday dinner before our sleepover.

I smiled when Marie put her hand over the receiver to tell me that. “He’s probably plotting ways to get us to be nice to each other,” I said. “Maybe he thought a restaurant meal would put us in a friendlier mood.” I took the phone from her. “Hi, Dad,” I said. “I wanted to tell you, Marie and I don’t need to go out to dinner together.”

“Carole!” he began, sounding angry. “I had hoped you’d—”

“No, no, it’s not that,” I interrupted him with a laugh. “What I meant was that Marie and I are friends again. I apologized for being such a rotten hostess all week.” I caught Marie’s eye. “And such a rotten friend. So you don’t need to try to make us like each other anymore. We took care of that ourselves.”

Dad chuckled. “Boy, am I glad to hear that,” he said. “But still, that’s all the more reason for me to take you girls out.
What better way to celebrate friendship than with a nice dinner? Besides, it’s still Marie’s birthday. Don’t you want to give her our present?” It turned out that he had gone ahead and gotten her a present on his own. It’s a nice case for her to carry her music CDs around in, and it even has a picture of a horse embossed on top, so it really did seem like it was from me, too.

Dinner was nice, and Marie and I were both in a great mood when Dad dropped us off for the sleepover. We went into the stable and climbed the ladder to the loft, where we could hear Stevie and Lisa talking.

“Hi, guys,” I greeted them cheerfully. “Sorry we’re late.”

I noticed that Stevie had that sort of guilty look on her face that she always gets when someone
almost
catches her getting into trouble. But she just jumped to her feet. “No problem,” she said. “Let’s get this sleepover on the road!”

Marie and I put our stuff down. Then I remembered something sort of odd I’d noticed on the way in. Since my friends had been at the stable longer than Marie and I had, I figured they might know something about it. “So why’s that fence netting hanging on the wall down there?” I asked them.

Stevie gulped. “Uh, what netting would that be?”

I gave her a strange look. She was definitely acting guilty about something. “Don’t tell me you didn’t see it.”

Stevie shrugged. “I didn’t see a thing. Did you, Lisa?”

Lisa just rolled her eyes and didn’t answer.

“I have a feeling these two have something to hide,” Marie said.

I nodded. “I think you’re right. Should we try to bribe
them into telling us with the leftover birthday cake we brought with us?”

“Nah,” Marie said. “Let’s just toss them over the side and eat it all ourselves.”

Stevie and Lisa gasped simultaneously. That made me more suspicious than ever.

“Aha!” Marie said. “That got a reaction. It must be a clue!”

“But what could it mean?” I said. “Were they planning to ambush us and steal our cake, maybe toss us off the loft during the night?” When I glanced at Stevie I noticed that the guilty look was stronger than ever. “Hey, what
were
you guys planning, anyway?”

Lisa glared at Stevie. “Well, it certainly wasn’t my idea.”

Stevie gave us a weak grin. “I’m just glad to see you two are getting along,” she said.

We finally had to threaten her with tickling to get her to tell us the truth about what she’d been up to. It seems that Stevie had come up with one of her crazy plans to get Marie and me to be friends. It involved that fence netting, which she planned to string up as a safety net beneath the loft. Then she was going to somehow push Marie off the edge of the loft so that I would have to leap to her aid and save her life, thereby making us lifelong pals. (By the way, I definitely got the impression that Lisa wasn’t totally on board with this idea. If I know the two of them, she was probably trying to talk Stevie out of it the whole time, and Stevie was just plowing on ahead and ignoring all her sane, sensible advice.)

It was a pretty crazy plan, even by Stevian standards. But
it just goes to show how crazy I was acting to make my friends go to such extremes.

Anyway, the rest of the sleepover was a lot of fun. And the second week of Marie’s visit was a
lot
better than the first. I realize now that I was trying a little too hard to think of her as a sister, when I should have seen that just being her friend through a difficult time is important enough. I also realize (partly from reading a little bit more of my old diary the other day) that I should have already known better than to take out my own feelings of jealousy or helplessness or anger or whatever on other people, especially when those people are the very ones who could use my understanding the most.

Wow, I’m sounding an awful lot like some kind of psychologist here, aren’t I? Maybe that’s what I should be when I grow up, but it doesn’t involve horses.… Unless … Unless there’s such a thing as a
horse
psychologist.

Yikes, I can’t believe I haven’t made any notes in here in weeks. It’s partly Snowball’s fault—I left this journal on the floor of my room, and she batted it under the bed (even though it’s almost as big as she is!), so it took me a while to find it.

But I have good news to report, so I guess it was worth the wait. Pine Hollow is entering a team in the regional dressage rally in two weeks! Isn’t that amazing? I mean, we enter the combined training rally every year, of course. But Max has never sent a team to the more specialized rallies, since he
believes it’s more important for students to ride as much as we can rather than competing as much as we can. But he thinks this rally will be a good learning opportunity, so we’re in!

I can’t wait! I think the only one more excited than me is Stevie. Dressage is really her sport, and I’m sure she’ll do great. I hope we all will. I’m still considering pursuing competitive riding as my career, and if I decide to go into combined training like Cam, dressage will be a big part of that, even though I’m not as into it as Stevie is. So this rally really could tell me a lot about what it might be like.

The rally isn’t the only big surprise we had today, either, though the other one doesn’t have much to do with horses. Well, actually it does, but only because it means Lisa is going to be so busy that she won’t have as much time as usual for riding. Of course, that’s not about riding so much as it’s about
not
riding, so maybe I should say—

Uh-oh, I’m even starting to confuse myself here. So let me start again. The second piece of big news is that Lisa has been cast as the lead in the Willow Creek Community Theater’s production of
Annie
. She’s going to be an actress!

It’s a little weird, actually. Ever since we started The Saddle Club, my best friends and I tell each other just about everything. But Lisa didn’t breathe a word to Stevie or me about her decision to try out for the play until after she found out she’d won the lead. Not that I’m mad about that or anything, of course—just a little surprised. But maybe it seems more surprising because I didn’t realize Lisa was so interested in acting. I never would have guessed she would do something
like this, which seems kind of strange. I mean, she’s one of my best friends, right?

Anyway, she says she’s definitely not going to give up riding while she’s rehearsing for the play, but it sounds like she’ll have to cut back the time she spends at the stable. A
lot
. She actually made up a whole schedule, noting when she has to be at rehearsals and costume fittings and stuff, allowing time for Horse Wise and riding lessons, and working in time for meals, sleep, and homework. Of course, some of the times seem a little tight—like the way she’s only allowed herself eight minutes to eat dinner. And she hasn’t scheduled in any time for things that seem pretty important to me, like Saddle Club meetings or going to TD’s for ice cream after lessons.

Besides, that was before we found out about the dressage rally. Now she has to work extra practice time into her schedule as well. And it’s not as if she’ll be entering on a well-trained show horse, like Topside, or even a fairly seasoned one like Barq. Max decided he wants her to ride Prancer in the rally, since Lisa has been making so much progress with her lately. He told her that if she put in two solid weeks of practice between now and the rally, he was sure she could do really well. But what I want to know is, how’s she supposed to do that when she’s spending all her time at rehearsals?

It’s only been a few hours, really, since we found out about the play, and Stevie and I are already worried about how she’s going to fit everything in. We talked about it a little after we finished practicing the dressage tests Mrs. Reg gave us after
today’s lesson. Lisa had already rushed off to a rehearsal, so the two of us took turns reading the tests to each other.

Actually, I ought to make a few notes about the practice here. After all, that’s what this journal is supposed to be for! So I should mention that Starlight did okay on our first time through the test, but it took him a few beats to get into some of the gait changes. I’ve got to prepare him earlier, as I told Stevie.

“Yup,” she said in reply. “Maybe a couple of strides before the A-mark, you can give the aid. He looks good, though.”

“Thanks, but we’re nowhere near as good as you two,” I told her sincerely. “Dressage is just never going to be Starlight’s favorite event.”

Stevie remarked then that Topside would probably be happy doing twenty-meter circles and serpentines all day, which I had to agree with.

“The team is really lucky to have you two,” I told her. “After all, the lowest score wins in dressage, and I’m sure you two are Max’s biggest hope for low marks at the rally.”

We went back to practicing then, staying at it until the horses started to get fussy and tired. It was getting on toward dusk by then anyway, so we decided to put the horses away and go to TD’s for some ice cream to reward ourselves for our good practice session.

As we were heading into the barn, we saw Lisa running up the driveway toward us. It turned out her rehearsal had ended ten minutes earlier than scheduled, so she had rushed back to Pine Hollow, expecting to join us for some dressage practice.

We explained that we had just finished and really couldn’t practice anymore. The horses were tired, it was getting dark outside, and the indoor ring was in use for an adult lesson.