Sea Horse (2 page)

“Work,” Carole said earnestly. “As soon as you tell us what it is we’re supposed to do.”

Max showed them what he wanted. There were four bags of grain that he wanted mixed up. Two bags contained a brand the horses were being fed now. Two bags were a new brand he wanted to get the horses used to. But changing feed could be tricky, so he wanted the girls to make four different blends, gradually changing from mostly old feed to mostly new.

With that information delivered, Max left them to their own devices. As far as Lisa was concerned right then, one of the things
not
to love about Max was his utter confidence in their ability to solve a complicated problem.

“I say we just dump all the feed out on the ground and begin mixing it together,” Stevie said, reaching to open the first bag.

“No way!” Carole said. “We have to measure.”

“Sure, okay, measure,” Stevie conceded. “But measure what? And how?”

Both girls looked at Lisa. Lisa was a straight-A student at school. This was something she’d probably be good at.

Carole sighed. “This is like one of those dumb problems where the store has cashews for three dollars and fifty cents a pound and peanuts for a dollar-fifty a pound and if they sell three pounds of blended nuts—”

“I know the one, and the answer is that the customer
should mix them when he gets home. Or better still, don’t blend them. Cashews are much better by themselves,” Stevie declared.

“I agree, but that’s never on the answer sheet,” Lisa said. “So here’s what we do.” She pulled a piece of paper and a pencil out of her backpack and began scribbling furiously. She scratched out some numbers and put in new ones while Carole and Stevie waited patiently.

“Got it!” she said at last. “Bag one will be one part new feed, five parts old. Bag two will be two parts new, four parts old. Bag three will be four new, two old. And the last bag will be five new, one old. That’s twelve parts of each grain unequally divided among the bags. We need another bag or bin to hold the new mixture, a coffee can to measure, and let’s go—”

“Brilliant,” Stevie pronounced, and ripped open the first bag of old feed and began counting out five measures.

“Hold it,” Carole said. “I just remembered something. We can’t use the coffee can. We have to weigh the grain. Horses are fed by weight, not volume. All these bags weigh the same, but the bags with the new grain are larger. That would have been a bad mistake.”

Lisa was surprised, but when she took another look at the sacks, she saw that Carole was absolutely right. She bent her head to her notebook. A few more scribbles, a few more cross-outs, some more calculations, and—

“Bingo!” Lisa announced. “Here’s how many pounds of each we need in each bag.”

Stevie hauled out a scale and the three of them got to
work. It was hard, but it wasn’t unpleasant because they were working together. Carole weighed while Stevie mixed and Lisa kept track.

“Just think, Carole,” Stevie said. “Lisa’s going to spend an entire week without having to do one Pine Hollow chore!”

Lisa grinned at her friends. “Sounds too good to be true, doesn’t it?” she asked, making a note of the next six pounds of mixture to be put in the sack they were working on. “Living on a tropical island, away from winter storms and grain that needs to be weighed …”

It sounded nice to Lisa even as she said it. She felt a quiver of excitement. She could almost feel the warm breeze and the hot sun on her back. She could almost smell the mangoes and the coconut oil. She could almost taste the fresh seafood and feel the soft sand beneath her feet, hear the sound of the azure waters lapping at the shore by her cabin. The picture seemed almost perfect. Still, something was missing and Lisa couldn’t quite put her finger on it.

“Earth to Lisa!” Stevie said mischievously, startling Lisa out of her daydream. “There goes another six pounds,” Stevie added as she stirred the feed vigorously.

Lisa checked her calculations. “That’s all for that bag,” she told the others.

“Keep mixing it, though,” Carole said. “It’s really important for the feed to be mixed thoroughly.”

Stevie continued mixing. “Speaking of tropical islands,” she said, “do you know why flamingos stand on one leg?”

“Unh-unh,” Lisa said. It was actually something she’d never thought about. She didn’t even know if there would be flamingos on San Marco. “Why?” she asked.

“Because if they picked up the other one, they’d fall down,” Stevie replied, and grinned when Carole groaned.

It was then that Lisa realized the worst thing about her trip to San Marco. There would be no Stevie, and no Carole.

L
ISA PRESSED HER
nose against the small window of the airplane. The water below was a stunning turquoise. Small boats dotted the surface. To the left, she could see an island. She wondered if that was San Marco. She felt the plane descend, and decided it was.

The island seemed to be ringed by white concave crescents.

“Beaches!” she said out loud. It was strange to think that within a very short time she could be on one.

Soon, the plane landed and Lisa followed her parents down the aisle and onto the tarmac. The hot, humid air of the tropical island hit her the instant she stepped out of the air-conditioned airplane.

“Oh,” she said, surprised as she took her first breath of San Marco. The air was sweet with the scent of flowers, mixed in with the acrid smell of airplane fuel.

It took only a few minutes for the Atwoods to retrieve their luggage, pass through customs and immigration, and get into a taxi. Their hotel was a short drive from the airport. It seemed to Lisa that she’d barely gotten used to being on the ground when she found herself unpacking.

The contents of Lisa’s suitcase, which had seemed so out of place in snowy, cold Virginia, were exactly right for San Marco. She had brought shorts and tank tops, bathing suits, T-shirts, a couple of cotton dresses, and her riding clothes. Not surprisingly, her riding clothes, with her boots and her hat, took up more than half of the space in her suitcase.

With a sigh of relief, Lisa took off her wool skirt and heavy sweater and replaced them with a bathing suit covered by a pair of turquoise shorts, a bright pink top, and a pair of sandals. She found her sunglasses, her sun hat, and her sunscreen.

“I’m ready for anything,” she told her image in the mirror, and after checking with her parents and agreeing to meet them at the pool in an hour, she set out to explore.

The hotel, it turned out, was a long, narrow building, running parallel to the ocean. The dining room and public areas were situated in the center of the complex, close to the pool. Just beyond the pool, a perfect white beach stretched along the island’s coast. The water was the same incredible blue she’d seen from the air. Even up close, the color was hard to believe.

Beaches and pools, however, were not what Lisa really wanted to find. She walked out to the other side of the
hotel, which faced away from the beach, and looked for signs of the stable.

Before her arrival, Lisa had tried to imagine what a tropical island would be like. She had thought that it would be like Virginia in the summer, with palm trees. Now she knew that the idea came nowhere near the truth. It didn’t take into account the heavy, humid air, the sweet scent—now minus airplane fuel—and the unusual trees and bushes. Even the grass felt different as it brushed her feet. It was coarser than the grass at home.

She glanced at the sky above her. It seemed impossible that this was the same sky she could see out her window in Willow Creek, but it was. Now it was clear, with a few scattered puffy white clouds. In the far distance, she could see a large mass of darker clouds.

Lisa followed a footpath through the hotel’s garden and found herself at a dirt road. She looked for a sign or somebody to direct her, but no guide was in sight. Then she glanced at the road, and spotted the familiar marks of hooves. Feeling a little bit like Davy Crockett, she followed the hoofprints until they led her to her goal, the stable.

The stable was buzzing with activity. One group of riders had just returned from a trail ride, and another group was gathering to leave. Lisa was impressed with the horses. She could tell immediately that they were well cared for. The grooms waited attentively, holding the reins while the riders dismounted, and helping riders down.

A woman who was clearly in charge was standing in
the center of the yard giving the stablehands orders on which horses to put away and which to keep out. Lisa watched as the woman sized up the riders about to go on the trail, matching them with horses she thought they could manage.

“What do you mean, you’ve taken lessons?” she was asking a man.

“Well, I had some lessons a few years ago,” the man answered vaguely.

“Walk, trot, and canter?” the instructor asked.

The man shrugged. “I guess so,” he said.

“Ride Pal, then. He’s the bay over there.”

The man looked confused.

“Bay means brown with a black mane and tail,” the instructor told him. “But, actually, I think you’ll do better on Jasper, here.” She patted the flank of a gray horse.

Lisa knew that the man’s uncertainty about the three gaits and his unfamiliarity with horse colors had told the instructor a lot. As Lisa had learned, it was important to match riders and horses correctly or an instructor could have a disaster on her hands. Lisa thought the instructor had handled the situation well.

“You’re not riding in
that
outfit!” the instructor said sharply. Lisa was surprised to find she was speaking to her.

“Oh, no,” Lisa said. “I’m not riding today. We just got here and I’m looking around.”

“Look all you want, but stay clear of the horses,” the instructor said. “They’re big animals.”

The woman turned and began speaking to somebody
else as abruptly as she’d spoken to Lisa. Automatically, Lisa stepped back, out of the way. She entered the stable, hoping she wouldn’t annoy anybody there.

Lisa liked the stable immediately. It was a white stucco building, unlike the wooden structures she was familiar with. It had a wide aisle and big stalls for each horse. Lisa counted twenty-eight stalls, plus a tack room and a feed room. About half the horses were outside, either leaving or coming back from the trail. The remaining horses stood patiently, munching at their hay and sipping at their water. One horse lifted his head curiously as Lisa walked by. Lisa paused. The horse stuck his head out over the door. Lisa patted him on his cheek and neck. He sniffed at her.

“I told you, they’re big animals. Be careful!” the instructor said with annoyance. She’d entered the stable silently and now strode toward the tack room, carrying a broken stirrup leather in her hand.

“I’m okay,” Lisa assured her, but she jumped back from the horse anyway, feeling very unwelcome. She was determined to ride, though.

“Can I ask you something?” she asked while the instructor rummaged through a rack of leathers.

“Not now,” the woman said. “Wait until these riders are out, then I’ll answer your questions. In the meantime, why don’t you wait in the office?”

Lisa nodded and politely followed the woman’s suggestion. She would much rather have waited in the stable, but it was clear the woman didn’t trust her, and she
wanted to get off on the right foot with the riding instructor.

Lisa sat on a rattan chair in the office and waited for the instructor to return. She suddenly felt very lonely and somehow out of place. She’d always felt as if she belonged at Pine Hollow once she’d made friends with Stevie and Carole. How could it be so different on San Marco? She realized with some dismay that she’d only been out of Willow Creek for about six hours and she was already homesick.
More like stablesick
, she told herself, and smiled at her own joke. It made her feel a little better.

After a few minutes, the riders dispersed, some on foot, headed for the pool, others on horseback, going out on the trail. The instructor entered the office.

“Well, what can I do for you?” she asked.

“I want to sign up for a ride,” Lisa began.

The woman, whose nametag introduced her as Frederica, just half grunted in acknowledgment.

“I’ve been taking lessons for about six months,” Lisa continued. “I can walk, trot, canter, and have begun jumping.”

“Six months? Then we’ll put you on the beginner trail ride tomorrow at eight-thirty,” Frederica said.

“I’m an intermediate,” Lisa said a little impatiently. She was surprised to hear herself contradict Frederica. It really wasn’t like her to stand up to an adult, but she knew that if she got into the beginners’ group, she’d never go faster than a walk.

Frederica frowned. “You’ve only been riding six months—”

“But I ride a lot—twice a week. And I went to riding camp. I’m in a Pony Club.”

Frederica shrugged. “Okay, I’ll let you try the intermediate ride. That’s at ten o’clock. Here, fill this out. Get your parents’ signatures, too.”

She handed Lisa a registration card and then abruptly left the office.

Lisa glanced at the card, decided to fill it out later, stuck it in her pocket, and left the office. She had the feeling that a swim in the pool would feel really good about now. At least, it was certain to feel better than sitting in the office at the stable, trying to convince Frederica that she actually knew which end of the horse went first!