Chocolate Horse (4 page)

“Ah, but it’s good news for us,” said Lisa. “You’re so tuned in to the horses’ needs that you forgot we’re going to have to make room for a dance in here. We can hardly make squares of eight if the whole place is filled with bales of hay. Come on, let’s see if we can move enough of them to make a dance floor.”

The bales of hay weighed about fifty pounds each. They were too heavy for either Carole or Lisa to lift by herself, but if each took hold of an end, they could move them around.

“You know, if we stack them right,” said Lisa, “like three high at the back, two high in front of that, and then just one, I bet we could make something like a gallery—a place where people can sit.”

“Great idea,” Carole said, seeing what Lisa had in mind. “If only we had a forklift to save us from lugging these things around by hand.”

“Ahem,” came a voice from the door. The girls turned and saw Phil standing there. “Did someone call my name?”

“Huh?” Carole said.

“Forklift,” he explained. “I’ve been working with weights to build my strength for the wrestling team, and I keep looking for an opportunity to show off the incredible force of my biceps, triceps, and lats. I’m like a knight in shining muscles looking for a damsel or two in distress. Have I come to the right place?”

Carole and Lisa never had any trouble understanding what it was that Stevie saw in Phil. They thought he was funny and nice, too, and they were glad he was their friend as well.

“Absolutely,” Carole said. “Come show off for us. Play your cards right and we might even help you.”

“Okay, tell me what you’ve got in mind,” Phil said.

The girls explained their idea about creating a gallery, and Phil helped them improve on the plan—explaining how they could strengthen the gallery and make it more secure by putting the bales at angles to one another. Then they got to work.

The three of them cleared a space that would be large enough for a dance floor, and then they began stacking the bales. Lisa’s idea, improved upon by Phil and executed by all three of them, turned out to be a very good one. The graduated stacks of hay bales gave the barn a feeling that Lisa described as “very barny.” Since it was a barn, that seemed appropriate to Carole and Phil. They completed the stacks, omitting the number of
bales that they figured the stable would use by the time of the dance, and felt that they’d done a good job.

“Okay, now, time for crepe paper,” Lisa said.

Phil had a number of ideas on how to decorate with crepe paper, and they discussed that. They also discussed where the band should stand, how the PA system could be used, how much food they would need, where it would be put, how many dancers would probably come, how they could find ways to get the kids to dance, mixing with one another so that everybody would have a chance to dance. They talked about almost every imaginable topic having to do with the dance and with Pine Hollow and with horses. They just didn’t talk about Alex.

They all knew how much Stevie always complained about her brothers, how she would pick fights with them and play tricks on them. She was a genius at revenge if one of them played a trick on her or tried to sabotage her friendship with Phil. She claimed to wish on a daily basis that she were an only child. They also knew how she would stand up for Michael, Chad, and Alex if anybody else ever dared to criticize any one of them. It was
her
right to be angry at her brothers; nobody else could have that privilege. She loved them too much to let any other person insult them.

“Look, we’ve got plenty of dancing room now,” said
Lisa. She was standing on top of the highest bale of hay, admiring all they’d accomplished.

“Want to try out the dance floor?” Phil asked. He offered his hand to help her down. She took it and stepped down regally, one bale at a time.

“They’re nice and steady,” she said. “Thanks to you.”

“You’re welcome,” he said. Then, when Lisa reached the stable floor, Phil turned to Carole. “Maestro, some music, please.”

Carole obliged. She puckered her lips and began whistling “Turkey in the Straw.”

Phil put his right hand on Lisa’s waist, took her right hand with his left, and began doing a two-step. They shuffled the full length of the floor, turning and bouncing with every step.

Carole thought they looked wonderful, enjoying themselves on the dance floor. It made her think how much she was looking forward to doing the same thing with her special friend, Cam. Cam was a rider she’d met through a computer bulletin board. They’d been sending notes back and forth furiously, each trying to prove he or she knew more about horses than the other. Then when they’d met in person, they’d realized it didn’t matter who knew more. The important thing was they both liked horses—and each other. Carole got to see Cam a little less frequently than Stevie saw Phil, but each time
was very special. This Valentine’s Day dance would be no exception to that, she was sure.

“Next!” Phil called out, delivering Lisa to the “bandstand.”

“I can’t whistle like Carole, you know,” Lisa said. “I’m all out of breath.”

“Just do what you can,” Phil suggested.

Lisa looked around for inspiration. There was a small toolbox that they’d borrowed from Max—just in case. She opened it and found a couple of screwdrivers. Then she turned her attention to the barrels of mixed grain in an alcove that had once served as a goat pen. Just what she needed. Tentatively, she tapped on the lids of the barrels. Each was filled with a different quantity of grain, so they made slightly different tones, quite like bottles filled with different amounts of liquids. There wasn’t much variety, but there was enough. Much to Carole and Phil’s amazement, she began pounding out a reggae beat—very un-barn-dance-like, but lots of fun. Carole and Phil got right into the mood and started dancing to Lisa’s music.

They were on the second verse of Lisa’s improvised song when the barn door opened, filling the room with cool winter light. Mrs. Reg came in. Her face was grim.

The music and dancing stopped immediately.

“What is it?” Lisa asked. “What’s wrong with Alex?”

“They’re doing tests,” she said. “They don’t know for sure, but …”

“He just had a cold,” said Phil. “How bad could that be?”

“It could be meningitis,” said Mrs. Reg. “That’s what they think, and that’s what they’re testing for.”

“Meningitis? How could he get that?” asked Carole.

“There’s really no way of telling how he got it,” said Mrs. Reg.

“Then how do they know he
does
have it?” Carole asked.

“All the symptoms,” Mrs. Reg said. “He started out with flu symptoms, then they got a lot worse, then he had a bad headache and a high fever. Then his neck got stiff. Finally, he got a rash. Those are all pretty strong indicators that this is meningitis.”

“What do they do about it?” Lisa asked.

“How’s Stevie?” asked Phil.

“Could she get it?” Carole asked.

Mrs. Reg sat down on one of the bales of hay. She seemed to need to rest, and it was clear she was going to do the best job she could to give them information. She took a deep breath and began. “You have a lot of questions, and I have some of the answers because I knew you’d want to know, so I talked to the doctor. Then I called my own doctor to be sure I understood. The most
important thing that he said to me was that our hospital is well equipped to take care of Alex. He’ll get the best possible treatment there. Now, here goes. First of all, Stevie’s fine, though unusually quiet—”

“She gets that way sometimes,” Phil said. He didn’t mean to be funny, but since Stevie was almost always talking or laughing, what he’d said
was
funny, and her friends couldn’t help laughing a little bit. It felt good.

Mrs. Reg smiled. “Not often, though,” she said. “Anyway, the doctor explained to me that this kind of meningitis is usually given to one person from another, about the same way cold germs are passed around. Because a person is so sick with meningitis when they’re most contagious, they’re not likely to be around other people, so it’s not easily passed around except to people who are near you. What that means is that Stevie, her parents, and her other brothers may have been exposed, and the doctors will give them a preventive vaccine. Based on what I’ve heard from Stevie, she tries to stay away from her brothers, anyway, so I think she’s safe.”

“That’s just talk,” Phil said. “She really loves them a lot.”

“I know she does,” Mrs. Reg said. “I was trying to be funny. The bottom line, though, is that the vaccine will protect her. She’ll be fine.”

“And Alex?”

Mrs. Reg shrugged. She really didn’t know. She told them that the doctors didn’t, either. “Meningitis is a very serious disease. They’ve taken a sample of the infected fluids, and they’ll test them to see exactly what kind of infection they’re dealing with.”

“They don’t know?” Phil asked.

“Not really,” said Mrs. Reg. “See, meningitis simply means there’s an inflammation of the meninges—that’s the membrane that surrounds and protects the brain. A lot of different things can inflame it. With the symptoms that Alex has, they can be pretty sure it’s bacterial, which means it should respond to an antibiotic. They started giving him a range of antibiotics before they did almost anything else to him. They’ll test the fluid to see if the specific bacterium responds to one of the antibiotics better than another. If it does, they’ll use that one. In the meantime it’s sort of a shotgun approach. They’re sure to be doing some good and no harm that way.”

“What happens next?” Lisa asked.

“Waiting. A lot of waiting. Alex is unconscious now.”

Lisa could feel her stomach tighten with fear. “He’s in a coma?”

“I guess that’s what it is,” said Mrs. Reg. “The doctor said that wasn’t unusual.”

“How long will that be?”

“That was a question I asked my own doctor. He said it could last a couple of hours or a couple of weeks. There’s no way to tell, and there’s no way to predict how he’ll be when he comes out of the coma.”

“He’ll get better then, won’t he?” Lisa asked. She needed the reassurance.

“We can hope,” Mrs. Reg said. “In fact, we should hope. A lot. In the meantime we should do everything we can to help Stevie. She’s upset—as you can imagine.”

Lisa could imagine. She looked at Carole and Phil. The three of them were Stevie’s best friends—the other members of The Saddle Club. Helping out a friend sometimes meant just being there. Lisa thought this was probably one of those times. If that was what Stevie needed, all three of them would be there for her as long as she needed it.

Mrs. Reg stood up then and said something about having to get to some desk work.

When the door closed behind her, Lisa realized that she was still holding on to the two screwdrivers that so recently had been making cheerful music on the drums of grains. She looked for a place to put them down, embarrassed by the joyful sound they’d made. Carole took them from her and put them back into the toolbox.

When she turned back to Lisa and Phil, they could see that she had tears in her eyes, finally expressing what they’d been feeling, too.

Phil reached out his arms to the girls. He needed their comfort, and they needed his as well as one another’s. Lisa and Carole came to him, hugging tightly, tears of sadness and fear rolling unbidden down their cheeks. They had one another, and Stevie had them. It seemed like a meager defense against a brutal illness.

S
TEVIE
’
S
MIND
WAS
so full that she didn’t even feel the needle when the doctor gave her the vaccine to protect her against getting meningitis. All she could think of was her brother, lying on the hospital bed on the other side of the glass wall. He wasn’t moving. He wasn’t crying or complaining. He wasn’t even being a nuisance. He was just lying there.

Stevie stood up from the chair and looked again, hoping that he might have moved a little bit, but he hadn’t. He was completely still, breathing evenly, almost as if he were asleep.

Asleep. That’s what she told herself. Alex was having a deep, restful, healing sleep. He’d awake from it in the
morning, sit up in the hospital bed, wonder how he’d gotten there, and then he’d start being a pain in the neck to Stevie again. That’s what she wanted. She wanted Alex to be himself. Even though he could be a nuisance, a tattle, a bully, and everything else in the book, that was the way she wanted him.

The neurologist’s words still rang in her ears, an echoing reminder of how sick Alex was. Meningitis. Coma. Antibiotics. Serious. Possible permanent damage. Hearing loss. Headache. Neck ache.

Alex had said something about his neck aching last night. Stevie hadn’t paid any attention to it, though. There hadn’t seemed to be anything unusual about it. She always thought of her brothers as a pain in the neck.

She should have known.

She’d taken health classes. She’d seen movies. Stiffness and pain in the neck could be serious. Could be meningitis. She should have worried last night. She should have told their mother. Maybe. Just maybe.

Stevie shook her head. She peered at her brother. Then she remembered yesterday afternoon.