Sea Horse (13 page)

The band leader turned to his microphone and announced that it was just two minutes to midnight—two minutes to a whole new year.

“I’ve kind of liked the last year,” Stevie said. “There are parts of it that have been a lot of fun.”

“Then I bet you’ll like the new year even more,” Phil said. She suspected he was right.

When there were only thirty seconds to go, the band-leader started counting backward. By the time he reached twenty, everybody had joined in. Stevie held Phil’s hand and the two of them counted together.

“H
APPY
N
EW
Y
EAR
!” Lisa was with her parents when the social director of the resort informed them all of the passing of the old year and the arrival of the new. Both her mother and father gave her big hugs. She hugged them back. Jill came bounding over to them, squealing with excitement.

“Happy New Year!” she yelled. Lisa hugged her, too.

But what she was thinking about was Stevie and Carole.

The words flashed across the bottom of the television screen, almost disappearing in the white water of the wild African river upon which Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn were being tossed.

“Happy New Year, Carole,” Colonel Hanson said, standing up from his lounge chair to give Carole a New Year’s hug and kiss.

“And to you, too, Daddy,” she said, squeezing him hard. She loved her father and she couldn’t think of anyplace in the world she’d rather be right then, but her mind was suddenly filled with two thoughts: Lisa and Stevie.

“S
HOULD AULD ACQUAINTANCE
be forgot

And never brought to mind …”

Stevie was barely aware of the music and the singing around her. It was the first moment of the New Year and she was standing in the middle of the dance floor with Phil Marston, who had his arms around her and who was, at that moment, kissing her.

Her mind was too full of other thoughts to hear the song. All she could think of was Lisa and Carole.

“L
IIIISSSAAAA
!” S
TEVIE SHRIEKED
as she dashed up the stairs at Lisa’s house to her friend’s room. “Was it fabulous?” She flung the door open. There, holding a pile of recently unpacked clothes, was a tan and happy Lisa.

“It was fabulous,” Lisa informed her, dropping the clothes and hugging Stevie.

“I know it was. I got your postcard today!” Stevie produced it from her pocket. It seemed odd and distant to Lisa. It had been so long since she’d written that postcard. So much had happened.

“Hello? Hello?” Carole called from the Atwoods’ front door and then followed Stevie’s path upstairs, breathlessly calling out to Stevie and Lisa. “Don’t tell anything until I get there!” She didn’t want to miss a word.

Within a few minutes, Lisa’s laundry was in the
hamper, her suitcase was put away, and the girls had a chance to talk—the first chance they had had in a week to have a Saddle Club meeting.

“You wouldn’t believe this place, it’s so gorgeous,” Lisa began.

“The horses, were they okay?” Carole asked eagerly.

“One especially. His name was Jasper. At first, I thought he was sort of an old plug, you know, the reliable fleabag they put the beginners on, but then, when he had to get someplace fast—”

“What were you doing riding the horse they have to put the beginners on?” Carole wanted to know. It didn’t surprise Lisa that Carole picked up on that.

“It’s a long story,” she began. And she told her friends everything that had happened. “In the end, it worked out all right, actually a lot better than all right because you wouldn’t believe this place where we picnicked and what a wonderful feeling it is to canter along the seashore, but, oh, boy, I missed you guys! The whole thing would have been a lot easier if you’d been there to help me.”

“I had exactly the same feeling,” Carole said. “I was having a pretty hard time with Starlight. He’s wonderful and all that, but the work was just better and more fun once Stevie had some time to help me.”

Lisa looked at Stevie. “What were you so busy with that you—” Then she remembered. “Oh, your dress! What did you get? Tell me all about it! You must have had a blast at the mall.”

“I’d almost forgotten,” Stevie joked. “But it’s a long story, too.”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got time,” Lisa said. “Lots of it. I want to hear everything.”

“Well …” Stevie began. She didn’t leave out the slightest detail, from her first minute at the mall onward. By the time she got to the part about Phil’s blue sweater, all three of the girls were laughing. Only Stevie could make such an embarrassing mistake seem so funny.

“Oh, I wish I’d been here to help you!” Lisa gasped between giggles.

“Thinking back on it, I’m not sure I needed help so much,” Stevie replied. “After all, if you’d been there, you would have helped me find exactly the right dress, I would have fought with my mother like crazy to buy it, and then I would have been horribly out of place at the dance.”

“Okay, so you didn’t need help,” Lisa said. “You did it all by yourself. If I’d been here to help I would have just made matters worse.”

“No, the whole thing would have been a lot more fun,” Stevie said.

“So, now, the dance?” Carole asked. She hadn’t talked to Stevie since the dance and wanted all the details of the glamorous evening. Stevie supplied them.

“So what happened at midnight?” Lisa asked. “Did he kiss you? You’re supposed to kiss at midnight, aren’t you?” Lisa could have sworn Stevie blushed when she asked the question. When Lisa saw that, she knew. “Okay, so he did kiss you. It must have been a really good kiss, don’t you think, Carole?”

Carole just laughed. Stevie did, too. “Sure it was,”
Stevie admitted. “But the funny thing about it was that I wasn’t even paying much attention to him at the time.”

“You weren’t?” Carole asked. “Isn’t that a little bit like not watching where you want your horse to go?”

Stevie looked at Lisa. “Only Carole would think of comparing kissing to riding!” she teased. Then she continued. “The funny thing about the kiss was that at midnight, I found myself thinking about you two. Remember when we promised we would? Well, I’d forgotten the promise, but I did it anyway.”

“You know what?” Lisa said excitedly. Carole and Stevie looked at her. “There I was, more than a thousand miles away from you guys, in a world like you’ve never seen, under tropical starlight with the Caribbean lapping at the nearby beach, and at midnight, all I could think of was you two! How about you, Carole? Did it work for you, too?”

Carole nodded. “This isn’t funny, this is weird. I was watching a movie with my father and all of a sudden, as the words
Happy New Year
crawled across the television screen, you two popped into my head. I think we can declare our ESP experiment a total success.”

“I don’t know that it was really ESP,” Lisa said thoughtfully after a while. She was prone to thoughtful considerations. “Maybe it was just logic.”

“How’s that?” Stevie challenged her.

“Well, although you two spent some time together, the three of us have basically been separated for a whole week. We each had something difficult we had to do and we did it, but, for me at least, the whole time, all I kept
thinking was how much I wanted you two to be there with me. See, thinking of you at midnight on New Year’s Eve is really just an extension of that reality.”

“
Extension of that reality
?” Stevie echoed. “Where’d you get that from?”

Lisa shrugged modestly. “I made it up,” she said.

“Well, then I can make up the ESP thing. I like it a lot better,” Stevie said.

“So do I,” Lisa agreed.

“Me, too,” Carole said. “And the really good thing about that is that if we ever have to be apart again, we have a way of being together in spite of it.”

“An even better thing is if we never have to be apart again!” Stevie said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Lisa said, raising her soda can. “So, Happy New Year, Saddle Club!”

The cans clunked together for Lisa’s toast. It was nice knowing that each of them could solve problems on her own. It was nicer to think that they didn’t always have to.

Bonnie Bryant is the author of nearly a hundred books about horses, including the Saddle Club series, the Saddle Club Super Editions, and the Pony Tales series.