Nightmare (8 page)

“All right, I’ll do that,” said Mrs. Atwood, continuing to the phone.

“I think we can wait until after dinner,” said Mr. Atwood. “From what Carole says, Dr. Barker has had a very long day and could use a quiet time for her dinner before you call her.”

“Okay, dear,” said Mrs. Atwood.

Briefly, it crossed Carole’s mind that it must be difficult for Lisa to spend so much time with a mother who constantly needed to be calmed and reassured. Maybe that was one of the things that made Lisa so good at reassuring. Carole could still feel the nice little glow of comfort from the back rub Lisa had given her while she cried. Carole was very glad that Lisa was her friend.

The two things that Carole and Lisa both noticed about dinner that night was that they’d spent the meal taking turns explaining everything they knew about EIA and that neither of them had eaten very much. In the face of such a dire problem, food didn’t seem important.

Then, when dinner was over, the two girls walked to Stevie’s house to tell her what had happened. Stevie was a much better listener than Mrs. Atwood.

“Oh, poor Belle!” Stevie said when Carole told her that she’d helped get blood samples from all the horses. Belle was a good-natured horse most of the time, but she wasn’t a very good patient.

“She didn’t fuss at all,” Carole told Stevie. “I held her halter and told her knock-knock jokes. I was trying to make her think I was you.”

Lisa and Stevie laughed. Everybody knew that it was good to talk calmly to a horse when it was upset, and Stevie had decided that if she liked knock-knock jokes, her horse undoubtedly did, too.

“Which ones?” Stevie asked.

“Isabel necessary on a bicycle,” Carole said.

“Well, she’s already heard that one,” Stevie said. “If she believed you were me, she probably thought I’d slipped a cog!”

“I didn’t say I fooled her,” Carole said. “I just said I tried.”

“Thanks,” Stevie said.

The girls knew that their joking contrasted sharply with the concern each of them felt, but it was a way of keeping themselves from crying, which seemed to be the only alternative. Given a choice, laughter was almost always better.

“I bet those horses are going to be fine,” Lisa said. “I mean, the more I think about it, the surer I am that they just weren’t exposed—well, probably not, anyway. I mean, Delilah was at Hedgerow Farms for three weeks and she’s not showing any symptoms. That’s what Judy said, right?”

“Right,” Carole said, but she didn’t sound as if she meant it, and her friends picked up on that immediately. Stevie glanced over at Lisa, who shrugged quickly, out of Carole’s sight. Carole could agree out loud; she could hope that Judy was right; but her jacket pocket still had carrots in it that belonged to Delilah. She couldn’t bring herself to tell anybody that, because then she might have to acknowledge out loud that something was wrong, really wrong. Loss of appetite was only one symptom of swamp fever, but it was a symptom.

Carole and Lisa didn’t stay long at Stevie’s house. For
one thing, Stevie still had to clean up the kitchen. For another, so did Lisa and Carole. And then Lisa mentioned that she wanted to leave plenty of time later in the evening to read the book Chad had given her.

They wouldn’t all be able to meet at Pine Hollow the next day because Lisa said she had to go to the library. Stevie frowned ever so slightly when she heard that, but she remembered that she and Carole weren’t going to try to stop Lisa from doing her work. They were just going to watch to see if they ought to. Okay, so she’d wait. Stevie said she’d see Carole at Pine Hollow the next afternoon.

“I know, I know,” said Carole. “You just want to make sure that Belle is okay after having to hear that old knock-knock joke from me, right?”

There was a twinkle in Stevie’s eyes. “Well, I did hear a good one today,” she said. “I’d tell it to you now, but I want to try it out on Belle first.”

L
ISA
SLAMMED
HER
lunch tray down next to Carole.

“Not a happy camper today?” Carole asked, surmising that so far, at least, Lisa wasn’t having a good day.

“Definitely not,” Lisa said. She examined the contents of her tray to see if she’d done any damage. Since only a container of yogurt and an apple rested on it, no harm was done.

“What’s the matter?” Carole asked, somewhat more sympathetically.

“It’s that Fiona,” Lisa said. “You wouldn’t believe her! Kissing up to the teacher all through history class. Mr. Mathios couldn’t even see through it. He just seemed to lap it up. Every time she said anything, he said, ‘Very
good, Fiona,’ like nothing anybody else in the class had to say was very good.”

Carole opened her milk carton and considered the situation. “Well, what did he say when you commented on something?” she asked.

“Once he said, ‘Good question,’ and another time he said he was glad I’d mentioned something. Oh, and about my quiz he said, ‘Nice work, Lisa,’ like that was a compliment or something.”

“Sounds like he said pretty much the same thing to you that he did to Fiona,” Carole said, treading carefully.

“No, it’s not the same at all,” Lisa countered. “Maybe you just had to be there, but I’m telling you, this girl is the teacher’s pet, and it’s making me sick to my stomach. She is
so
obvious!”

It was all Carole could do to keep from asking Lisa if she thought other people might consider Lisa the teacher’s pet in some of her classes. Lisa was such a good student that teachers naturally liked and respected her. If that wasn’t being a teacher’s pet, Carole wasn’t sure what was. This was a sensitive area for Lisa, though, especially where it concerned Fiona.

“Lisa, do you think it’s possible that you might be envious of Fiona?” Carole asked.

“Envious?” Lisa asked in return, saying the word as if it was totally odious to her. “How could I be envious of her?”

“Well, it seems like you wish Mr. Mathios had given
you the attention he gave to Fiona. Would it feel nicer if he’d said, ‘Very good, Lisa,’ instead of ‘Fiona’?”

“No, you don’t get this at all,” Lisa said, disturbed that her friend was so completely missing the point. The point was that Fiona was trying so hard to be nice to Mr. Mathios, and he didn’t even see through it!

“I think I do get it,” Carole said. “Really, I do, Lisa. It’s frustrating and annoying when someone else is getting the attention and admiration that you’ve earned and deserve. But the fact is that not everybody can always be ‘best,’ whether that means in one class on one day or even in a class throughout a year. You are a very good student, you get nothing but As—”

“I got a B-plus in math last year.”

“That was only the spring semester grade. Your overall grade for the year was a nice little A, as usual. You don’t always have to get As,” Carole said. “It’s okay if you are better at some things than others
and
it’s okay if somebody else is better than you are at something.”

“No, you don’t understand, Carole,” Lisa said. “The point is that you and Stevie can be satisfied with second best—”

Carole could feel anger rising in her. She didn’t like being told she was second rate. But she knew that this conversation wasn’t really about her. It was about Lisa, who seemed to need a reminder of what was important and what wasn’t. Carole stayed as calm as she could
manage and spoke to her friend as warmly as possible under the circumstances.

“That’s not fair,” Carole said. “And besides, second best doesn’t matter at all as long as you, or I, or anyone, knows that they’ve done their personal best. If I work at something really hard, put everything I can into it, and it’s not wonderful, I have the satisfaction of knowing that I did the best I could. Maybe I learned something from doing it and maybe the next time I do it, I’ll do it better. You should keep that in mind.”

“But you’re always the best at riding,” Lisa said. “It’s your way of knowing that you are the best at something.”

“Maybe,” Carole said. “But I’m not always the best. A lot of times other people do things better than I do. Stevie’s much better at dressage than I am.”

“Stevie’s horse is better at dressage than Starlight,” Lisa said.

“No, not really. Stevie just enjoys dressage more than I do, so she works at it harder and Belle has learned better.”

“But you’re both better riders than I am.”

“I’m not sure that’s true,” said Carole. “But I am sure that if it is true, it doesn’t matter. You are my friend and Stevie’s friend and that’s much more important to us than if you can do a turn on the forehand or a flying change.”

Lisa looked distressed. She took two spoonfuls of her yogurt and then pushed the tray away. She’d spent more than an hour the previous Saturday trying to get Prancer to do a flying change, and she hadn’t managed it. That was another area in which she was failing, just like in history.

Carole wasn’t done. She had one more thing to say to her friend. “There’s something else I’m sure of,” she said. “I do understand how much success in school means to you, but it’s not really the way I feel about horses. No matter how much I love horses—working with them, riding, taking care of them—I’m never going to let them make me sick.”

Lisa opened her mouth to say something, but before she could speak, the bell rang. Lunch was over. It was time to get back to class.

“I’m going to the library after school,” Lisa said, standing up, “so I’ll see you at home. And, uh, thanks.”

Carole watched Lisa head for her math class and knew that Lisa’s “Thanks” was sincere. Her message had been received, though not welcomed. It was okay. Sometimes being a friend meant hurting someone’s feelings. Carole knew that being honest and being right weren’t always fun.

She picked her books up from the table and then gave it a final glance. Lisa’s lunch was almost completely uneaten. She’d just tasted the yogurt and left the apple untouched. Carole was going to Pine Hollow after
school. She could put the apple to good use. She stuck it in her book bag, knowing instinctively that, unlike either Stevie or Lisa, she wouldn’t forget she’d brought the apple for the horses at Pine Hollow. Lisa was right about one thing. When it came to horses, Carole always did her very best.

C
AROLE
DROPPED
HER
book bag in her cubby at Pine Hollow, but not before she had fished Lisa’s apple out of it. She found a knife by the refrigerator and cut the apple into quarters.

It hadn’t been a very good afternoon for Carole. She’d spent most of it wondering where her father was and what he was doing. She’d spent the rest of it worrying that Lisa would be angry with her for speaking her mind. She’d spent almost none of it paying attention to anything any of her teachers had said. Nobody, but nobody, was saying, “Very good, Carole,” that afternoon.

Finally, after her last class had ended, she’d grabbed her things and run for the door. Going to Pine Hollow was always “very good, Carole,” as far as she was concerned. And then, on her way out, she’d seen Lisa, who was heading for the library. Lisa had waved cheerfully and told her she’d see her later. Carole hoped that meant that she had taken in Carole’s message and wasn’t angry. It could also mean that Carole’s message hadn’t begun to sink in, and therefore Lisa wasn’t holding a grudge because she didn’t know she had anything to
hold a grudge against. Life could be so complicated sometimes!

Carole put the apple pieces in a plastic bag and headed straight for the feed shed. Delilah seemed to be waiting patiently for her. She looked up solemnly when Carole walked in. Carole checked her over. The mare looked okay. Nothing was obviously wrong, though she was a little more restrained than usual. But then, usually, she was surrounded by a lot of activity, and that could stimulate any horse to be livelier.

“How you doing, girl?” Carole asked. Delilah nudged her gently, then nuzzled her neck. Carole loved that feeling. She took one of the apple pieces from the plastic bag and held it out to Delilah.

“It’s a present from Lisa,” Carole explained to the mare. Delilah sniffed at it curiously and then picked it up with her teeth, brushing the palm of Carole’s hands with her soft warm lips. She muched methodically, dripping some saliva and apple bits, swallowed, and then waited expectantly for a follow-up to the snack.

“Oh, no you don’t,” Carole told her. “You’re not the only horse I care about in this place. You have to share this apple with Starlight, Belle, and, um, well, I guess Nero, to celebrate his getting well. I just wanted to be sure you were okay. I’ll come back again tomorrow to see you. Okay?”

Delilah didn’t answer. Carole took that for an okay.
She gave the horse a final hug and headed out of the feed shed to dole out the rest of the apple.

The first person she saw when she got back to the stable was Stevie, who was busily picking out Belle’s hooves and chattering to the mare as she worked.

Carole picked up a mane comb from Stevie’s grooming bucket and went to work next to Stevie.

“Trying out that new knock-knock joke?” she asked.

“I did,” Stevie said. “She didn’t like it, though. She said she’d already heard it from Barq.”