Show Judge (12 page)

“How many times have I told you that the only person
you’re competing against is yourself? The only reason to compete at all is to inspire and challenge yourself to grow. You should be taking delight in each other’s achievements, cheering each other along, not complaining and cutting your fellow riders down. In fact, the only sincere case of good sportsmanship I’ve seen in some time was when two of you made the effort to find a helmet to replace May’s missing one.” Stevie felt good for a tiny second, until Max continued. “A nice thing to do, but sadly that may have been the only action of its kind this week.”

Again Max paused, looking at everyone. It was small consolation to Lisa and Stevie, but they knew he wasn’t just angry at them. He was angry at everyone.

“We are suspending this competition for today. I don’t know what I want to do about tomorrow or about the full Pony Club rally. At the moment, I’m too upset to make a rational decision.”

“But, Max, we put in so much work!” Veronica protested.

Stevie’s mouth fell open. She turned to make sure it was actually Veronica who had uttered those words. It was.

“I can’t believe she said that,” Stevie gasped to Lisa.

“And here I thought nothing she ever did or said
again could surprise me,” Lisa said, shaking her head in wonder.

“I am well aware of the amount and the caliber of work each and every one of you has put in,” Max said to Veronica.

Veronica squirmed under his gaze.

“Nonetheless, until I see a marked change in the behavior and attitude around here, we will not be going forward with this rally. I want you all to go home and give some serious thought to what it is you expect to get out of riding. If you’re only in it for the trophies and blue ribbons, you have no business being at this stable.” Max scooped a piece of paper off his desk. “Carole, I want to thank you for all your hard work these last couple of weeks. I believe this belongs to you.” He held out the paper.

Carole took it from him and examined it. “Max, this is a copy of the judging criteria. You already gave it to me.” She offered it back.

“Actually that
is
the one I gave you. I needed to make some copies for myself so I borrowed it from your cubby a while back. I should have mentioned it to you sooner, but it slipped my mind. I apologize.

“Anyway,” Max continued, “you don’t seem to have missed it, so no harm done. Whether you’ll still be
needing it remains to be seen. That said”—he turned back to the class—“we will all meet again tomorrow morning to see if any one of you can come up with a good reason for us to continue with the meet.” He walked out of the room. Slowly everyone began to file out.

Carole remained standing by Max’s desk. She was staring at the paper in her hands, her face a war of emotions.

Stevie was about to suggest to Lisa that they go and see what was going on when Lisa bolted out of the room. “Lisa?” she called after the fleeing figure. She stood there, torn. Should she follow Lisa or should she go over to Carole? She decided to talk to Carole first, and then the two of them could go after Lisa. She approached her friend. “Is something wrong, Carole? You look kind of funny.”

“Oh, Stevie, I’ve done something terrible!” she exclaimed.

The stricken look on her friend’s face caught Stevie off guard. “What?”

“I’ve betrayed a friendship,” Carole replied, looking sadly at the door Lisa had disappeared through.

“What do you mean?”

Carole quickly filled Stevie in on what had been happening between her and Lisa over the last week:
her suspicions, catching Lisa in the act, and how badly she had been treating her since then.

Stevie was shocked. “I can’t believe I didn’t notice things weren’t right between you two.”

“You’ve had other things on your mind,” Carole replied. “I expect Lisa has told Max all about it by now. Some judge I turned out to be, huh?” she said, hanging her head.

Stevie didn’t know how to console Carole. Lisa certainly had every right to be angry, and no one could blame her if she complained to Max about Carole’s behavior.

Carole sighed deeply. “I guess I’d better go find him and face the music,” she said glumly. “Not to mention apologizing to Lisa. I have no idea how I’m going to make this up to her!”

“How about starting with a sleepover in the loft tonight?” Lisa asked, appearing in the doorway. “I just cleared it with Max.”

S
ATURDAY EVENING FOUND
the three girls holding their first Saddle Club meeting in weeks. Lisa hadn’t complained to Max about Carole at all. Figuring that the three of them needed some time alone to set things right between them, she had asked him if they could have their sleepover in the loft after all. Now they were sitting in a semicircle on their sleeping bags, armed only with sodas, chips, and very bruised feelings.

“I can’t believe you guys didn’t tell me what was going on,” Stevie complained.

“I did tell you,” Carole said quietly.

“Oh sure, about five minutes ago,” Stevie grumped,
reaching for another potato chip from the bag at her feet.

Lisa smiled. “As usual you’re exaggerating. It was closer to five hours ago. Chips please.”

“Whatever. The point is, one of you should have at least mentioned it.”

“Actually,” Carole said, “I think the point is that none of it should have been going on in the first place.” She looked sadly at Lisa. “I still don’t know how I could have thought you would do something like that, Lisa. You’re one of the most honorable people I’ve ever met.” She hung her head.

“Carole, stop! You’ve already apologized twenty times and I’ve accepted.” Lisa took a sip of her soda before trying to put her feelings into words. “It hurt a lot that you thought I could do something like that, but what made it worse was that I couldn’t think of how to prove my innocence to you.”

Carole shook her head. “You shouldn’t have had to prove anything to me. I was supposed to be your friend.”

Watching Carole struggle to come to terms with what she had done over the last week, Lisa couldn’t help thinking that it was often easier to forgive someone else than it was to forgive yourself. She
leaned across the space between them. “I’ve got news for you. You
are
my friend.” She held out the bag. “Chip?”

Carole took a big handful and smiled for what might have been the first time in weeks.

“Speaking of proving something,” Stevie said, leaning back on her elbows and eyeing Carole. “Why have you been so hard on Corey and me? Did we do something to make you mad?”

Carole looked surprised. “No!” She thought a moment. “Well, to tell you the truth, I did think you should have been teaching her better organizational skills, but other than that I don’t think I’ve treated you any differently than the others.”

“You’re kidding, right?” Stevie said incredulously.

Carole looked defensive. “Actually, I’m not.”

“I don’t know about Lisa, but you’ve been twice as hard on me and Corey as you have been on everybody else.” She saw the doubt on Carole’s face. “Remember the day you patted Samurai on the flank and he was dusty?”

Carole nodded.

“That same day Natalie’s horse had been so badly groomed that he had mud crusted on his belly.”

“That’s true,” Carole confirmed.

“I would be real curious to see what you wrote in
your notes about the two things,” Stevie challenged her.

“I’m not sure I should be doing this, but for the sake of fairness …” Carole took out her judge’s folder and thumbed through a few pages.
“Corey’s pony was filthy today,”
she read from her notes.
“Extremely lazy grooming habits.”

“Now read us what you wrote about Natalie that day,” Lisa urged.

Carole flipped a few more pages.
“Natalie’s pony had a trace of mud on his belly. Probably an accidental oversight.”
She closed the folder.

“ ‘Filthy’ with ‘lazy grooming habits,’ versus ‘accidental oversight,’ ” Stevie said. “You still think you weren’t being overly harsh on us?”

“I have to admit, in that instance I might have overstepped a little with you,” Carole acknowledged. “But I’m sure it was only that one time.”

“Carole, I’m sorry, but I really have to side with Stevie on this,” Lisa said as gently as she could. This might not have been the best time to hash all this out, but she felt she had as much of an obligation to stand up for Jasmine as Stevie did for Corey.

“You too, Lisa?” Carole asked. “Are you sure you don’t feel that way because of what was happening between us?”

Stevie sat up. “Yeah, Lisa, as far as I could tell, Carole was bending over backward to help you and Jasmine every time you asked.”

Lisa was completely surprised. “What are you talking about?”

“When I went to make that phone call in Mrs. Reg’s office, I came out and Carole was helping you with cavalletti.” She looked at her friends accusingly. “I don’t know what training secrets she shared with you, but it didn’t seem fair to the rest of us.”

Lisa and Carole exchanged looks. “What you saw, Stevie, was Carole giving me the brush-off,” Lisa explained. “I did ask for advice that day, and she told me that until the meet was over I was on my own, like everybody else.” She turned to Carole. “By the way, I think you were right.”

Carole looked grateful. “For what it’s worth, I never doubted you would figure out what to tell Jasmine, and you did. You just needed to have confidence in your own teaching abilities.”

“So all this time you weren’t helping her?” Stevie asked.

“Helping me? I thought she was helping you!” Lisa confessed. “When you guys stopped calling me, I figured you were talking to each other, about me and about … stuff.” Now that she’d said it aloud it
sounded even more ridiculous than it had in her head all those weeks. “But Carole, I really do think you were being harder on our two Pony Partners than on the rest of the group.”

“Look, you two, I’m a judge. I have to be hard.”

“Hard, yes—” Stevie agreed.

“But equally hard on everybody,” Lisa finished.

Carole looked at them both. “You two are saying I’ve been harder on both of you?”

The girls nodded in unison.

“Tell you what,” she said, putting her folder on the floor in front of her. “Give me some specific instances and I’ll check them out. That way we can settle this, one way or the other. Okay?”

Again Lisa and Stevie nodded their consent. For the next fifteen minutes they rattled off incidents where they felt they had been punished for being Carole’s friends. Carole checked out each of the complaints in her folder. Lisa and Stevie were surprised a few times to find out Carole had been just as strict with other competitors as she had been with them. However, when they were finished, Carole had to admit there were many more instances when she had definitely come down harder on her friends.

“It looks like I owe you both an apology,” Carole said, closing the record book. “I guess I didn’t realize
how paranoid Veronica diAngelo’s comment must have made me.”

“You’re only human,” Lisa consoled her.

“That’s more than anybody can say about Veronica,” Stevie cracked.

Lisa and Carole laughed.

“You know, Max is right,” Lisa said suddenly. “Riding shouldn’t be about the ribbons and trophies, it should be about this.” She indicated Stevie and Carol. “It should be about friendship.”

“And horses,” added Stevie.

“I feel so much better now,” Carole said, smiling. “I can’t tell you how much I’ve missed talking to you guys.”

“Why didn’t you pick up the phone and call us?” Lisa asked. “Before the thing with your notes I mean,” she added hastily.

Carole smacked the folder on the floor in front of her. “It was this … thing!” she cried in frustration. “I felt in order to be absolutely impartial, I couldn’t tell anyone what I was thinking or how overwhelmed I was feeling.”

Stevie looked surprised. “But Carole, we were the ones under pressure to be perfect. You only had to choose who was doing it better.”

“Do you have any idea how hard it is to decide who,
out of all the riders here, does the best job picking a hoof clean?” she moaned. “I felt terrible taking off points for mistakes that normally wouldn’t mean a thing.” She threw herself flat on her sleeping bag. “And everybody hates me!” she howled.

Stevie turned to Lisa. “Did you know she could be this melodramatic?”

Lisa considered Carole writhing on her bag. “No, I have to say this is a new side to her. She’s almost as good as you.”

“Carole, don’t be dense,” Stevie chided her. “You’re going to be a hero around here. Don’t you know that?”

Carole sat up. “What do you mean?”

“She means,” Lisa said, taking over, “our team is almost certain to take every prize at that under-twelve pony rally, thanks mostly to your being such an irritating, nitpicky perfectionist.”

“She’s right,” Stevie assured her. “They may want to burn you at the stake today, but a couple of weeks from now they’ll be carrying your ashes in a parade.”

“It’s true,” added Lisa.

“You really think so?” asked Carole.

“Absolutely,” Stevie assured her.

“It’s really too bad Max canceled our rally,” Lisa said wistfully. “Even though we were all pretty bad sportsmen, we did get a lot of other things accomplished.”