Stagecoach (4 page)

“A
T
C
PICK
up a working trot and circle left twenty meters,” Stevie read out crisply. She and Carole had finished walking through the dressage tests that Mrs. Reg had given them and had decided to saddle up and try them on horseback before leaving for the day. Max had set up a standard “small” dressage ring—twenty by forty meters—in a flat, grassy area for them to practice in. That way they could get used to the actual size of the ring they would be riding in at the rally. Around the outside Max had placed the traditional dressage-ring letters in their proper order:
A
,
K
,
E
,
H
,
C
,
M
,
B
,
F
. The letters provided reference points for transitions from gait to gait. Stevie and Carole were taking turns reading the tests to each other.

“
E
, sitting trot, prepare to canter,” Stevie continued. She looked up from the copy of the test to watch Carole and Starlight, Carole was sitting nicely in the saddle, despite the morning’s workout. Starlight still looked fresh, too, but he was more relaxed, now that the first lesson had taken the edge off him. “
A
, canter,” Stevie called. She watched Carole give the aid for the faster gait. It took a few beats past
A
before Starlight cantered.

“I’ve got to prepare him earlier.” Carole panted, breaking to a trot and then a walk to talk with Stevie.

“Yup,” Stevie agreed. “Maybe a couple of strides before
A
, you can give the aid. He looks good, though.”

“Thanks, but we’re nowhere near as good as you two. Dressage is just never going to be Starlight’s favorite event. He’s always too busy thinking about the second phase: cross-country,” Carole remarked. She leaned down and patted the glossy neck. “Won’t you be surprised when instead of cross-country, we do another dressage test?” she joked.

“At least Topside won’t mind—he’d be content doing twenty-meter circles all day,” Stevie said.

“The team is really lucky to have you two,” Carole said seriously. “As Max reminded us, the lowest score wins in dressage, and I’m sure you two are his biggest hope for low marks at the rally.”

Stevie nodded thoughtfully. Then she looked at Carole with a sparkle in her eye. “Finishing touches, huh?
All right, Hanson. I’ll take that as a challenge. I’m going to ride the test again. This time pretend you’re Max, and be as critical as possible—I mean, notice every tiny fault, okay?”

Carole was eager to agree. She dismounted and walked Starlight to the end of the ring to play judge. Stevie went through the routine. Topside walked, trotted, and cantered at exactly the right times. When she came down the center line for her final salute, Stevie was grinning. “Not too bad, huh?” she asked.

Carole consulted the piece of paper she was using to make notes on. “No, not
too
bad, although there were ten or eleven things you could work on.”

“Ten or eleven things?” Stevie demanded.

Carole nodded calmly. “That’s right. Like your stirrups look too short for dressage. And you didn’t loosen the reins enough on the diagonal ‘free walk on a loose rein.’ And Topside wasn’t really bending into the corners when you went counterclockwise. And you leaned down to check your canter lead—very amateurish. And he got a hair too strung out on that second canter. And I think you might have cut the circle a tiny bit short when you—”

“Okay! Okay!” Stevie cried. “I get the point. We’re not perfect yet.”

Carole smiled. “Not yet, but you will be soon. Now, do you want to hear the rest?”

Stevie listened while Carole finished reading her list of minor faults the pair had made. Then she asked Carole to watch one more time. “This time you won’t be able to say a thing,” she predicted confidently, trotting to the opposite end of the ring.

Unfortunately, even Topside could get his fill of dressage. He shuffled through the test like an old school horse who’d had too many lessons that day, despite Stevie’s efforts to perk him up. Then Stevie started to make mistakes—very real mistakes—in addition to the minor errors Carole had noted. About halfway through, after Stevie had been rising to the wrong diagonal for about ten beats, Carole called out for her to stop.

“I don’t remember there being a halt here,” Stevie said, when she had coaxed the now fussy Topside to stand still.

“You’re right—there is no halt,” Carole replied. “But it’s about time we both
called
a halt to practicing for today. I hate to say it, but my list of problems for this test is already longer than for the last one, and you’re only halfway through.”

“I know,” Stevie acknowledged. “I could feel Topside getting fed up with doing the same stuff again. I guess I got a little overenthusiastic, huh?” she asked. She had loosened the reins and was letting Topside walk freely. The bay gelding blew through his nostrils as if heaving a sigh.

“We both did,” Carole said. “Look—it’s almost dusk. We’ve been here all day. And I know Max wouldn’t want us going crazy this early on in the game, so let’s head in.”

Stevie agreed. She hopped off Topside and gave him a good, long pat. “I guess it’s just that when you have horses as great as Topside and Starlight, it makes you want to ride forever,” she said, grinning.

“Right,” Carole said, “and so does having a trainer who works you as hard as Max.”

They were silent as they led the horses toward the barn. Finally Stevie put both of their thoughts into words. “I wish Lisa could have been here to practice, too. Prancer’s greener than Starlight, and flightier, too. Squeezing in practice time might not cut it if she doesn’t settle down and—”

Before she could finish, she was interrupted by Lisa running toward them. Her face was easy to make out, even in the near dusk, because it was covered in base makeup, powder, eye shadow, and lipstick. “Hey, you guys!” she called.

Carole and Stevie looked at one another. There couldn’t have been a worse time for Lisa to arrive. Both of them were totally spent.

“Phew! I was so afraid I’d miss you, but we ended up getting out ten minutes early, and I came right over after
we tried on our costumes and makeup. I didn’t even take off any of my paint!” Lisa smiled happily.

“Umm …,” Carole began cautiously. “Listen, Lisa, Stevie and I are going in now. We’ve each gone through our tests a few times, we’re exhausted, and Starlight and Topside are bored. It wouldn’t be fair to them or us to keep practicing.”

Lisa looked crestfallen. “I’m tired, too, but I’m willing to keep on working. Besides, it’ll only take fifteen minutes for me to get Prancer ready, and twenty minutes to ride.”

Stevie decided to be practical. “Where are you going to ride, anyway? It’s almost too dark out here, and the indoor ring is taken up by an adult lesson.”

“And, anyway, they’ll be feeding Prancer in a half hour. Even if you could get tacked up in five minutes, she wouldn’t be any fun to ride now, because she’d be so cranky for her dinner,” Carole pointed out.

“I’m feeling kind of cranky myself,” Stevie chimed in, trying to make light of the situation.

Lisa didn’t smile. “I guess that extra ten minutes is just going to go to waste then,” she said sulkily. She could hardly believe Carole and Stevie weren’t going to make an effort to practice with her after she’d made a huge effort to get all the way back to Pine Hollow after a long rehearsal.

“Ten minutes, huh?” Stevie asked. Lisa nodded.
“Well,” Stevie continued, “if you’ve got ten extra minutes, how about we spend them together at TD’s? I know I could use an ice-cream sundae or two.”

“Sounds good,” Carole said. “We haven’t had any quality Saddle Club time in a while.”

Lisa thought for a minute and then shook her head. With a schedule like hers, spending time at the local ice-cream shop seemed like
wasting
time—something she couldn’t afford to do. She’d already wasted enough time coming over to Pine Hollow in the first place. The only thing to do now was to get her script and leave. “I don’t think I can go. I’m going to have to look at my time schedule again, and I need my computer for that.” She turned on her heel as they reached the barn doors. “See you at class Tuesday,” she added briskly. With that she hurried into the tack room to call for a ride, leaving Carole and Lisa to walk, groom, and feed the horses.

A few minutes later they saw her walking to the end of the driveway to meet her mother. Her script was open, and she was trying to read it in the diminishing light.

“Hey, I forgot to ask—how was the rehearsal?” Carole called. Lisa was already out of earshot and did not respond.

“I forgot to ask, too,” Stevie said quietly.

A gloom hung over them as they untacked and
brushed Topside and Starlight on opposite cross-ties. Neither of them talked much.

On their way out they spotted Prancer in her stall. She was munching hay. As usual, though, she wasn’t simply plowing through her two leaves of timothy and alfalfa. Instead she took a few bites and then looked up over her stall door to make sure she wasn’t missing anything. She pricked up her ears at any noise, and occasionally she would try to reach her nose into the stalls on either side of hers to get her neighbors’ attention before going back to her hay. She wasn’t doing anything wrong. And it wasn’t that she was really nervous. But she was young and a Thoroughbred and had come to Pine Hollow straight from the track—and it showed.

Carole and Stevie watched her for a few minutes, taking in her high-strung behavior. Neither of them said anything, but they were both thinking the same thing: Of all of the Horse Wise mounts, Prancer needed the most practice time.

L
ISA DRUMMED HER
fingers on the computer keyboard in frustration. Here it was, almost time for dinner, and instead of memorizing the lines to her first scene, she was still trying to perfect her schedule. Try as she did, she couldn’t squeeze everything in. And she was already planning to do homework on the morning and afternoon buses.

“Twenty-four hours is too short for a whole day!” she cried. By Lisa’s calculations she needed about twenty-nine. It had been bad enough giving up free time at Pine Hollow for rehearsals, and that was before Max had even announced the news about dressage rally. Even if she never helped out or cleaned her tack once, she wouldn’t be able to find enough time for riding. And by the looks
on their faces when she had left, Stevie and Carole weren’t too excited about her taking off without pitching in.

Reluctantly she began typing her rehearsal times onto the screen again. Every time she saw an afternoon time slot fill up, she cringed. She knew that both of the things Max had said were true: Prancer
was
a lot better than before, but she still had a long way to go to be ready for a Pony Club rally.

The phone rang three times before Lisa unwillingly picked it up. How would she explain that she couldn’t talk to Stevie or Carole right now when they had been nice enough to call?

“Hello?” she said uncertainly.

To her surprise neither Stevie nor Carole answered. Instead a cheery, low-toned voice asked, “ ‘Hello?’ Is that all ya got to say to a feller orphan?”

“Hollie?” Lisa asked.

“That’s right—guess I couldn’t fool you,” Hollie kidded. “Anyway, I just called up to talk shop—see what you thought of the cast, you know.”

Lisa settled back in her chair, suddenly glad for the interruption. “I like everyone but Anna Henchman,” she answered truthfully. “What do you think?”

“Same,” Hollie replied. “So you’re happy you tried out?”

“Definitely,” Lisa answered. “Are you?”

“Oh, I’m incredibly happy,” Hollie replied, “I’m always in a good mood as soon as I start working on a new show. Heck, I’d be a sword carrier if I had to. And I think musicals are much more fun than straight drama.”

“A sword carrier?” Lisa repeated. “I didn’t know there were any of those in
Annie
.”

“Oh, that’s just what you call people with tiny, non-speaking parts, no matter what the play,” Hollie explained.

“You’ve done a lot of plays, haven’t you?” Lisa asked. She loved listening to Hollie talk “theater-speak.” She felt the way she had when she started riding, and heard words like “tack,” “dressage,” and “palomino” for the first times.

“More than I can count,” Hollie answered. “I started as an angel in our church Christmas pageant when I was three, and I’ve been acting on and off—but mostly on—since then. I just love it.”

“Do you ever think about trying to become a professional actress?” Lisa asked.

“Only about twenty-two hours a day,” Hollie admitted, laughing.

“What about the other two hours?” Lisa teased.

“The other two hours I’m rehearsing, so I can’t think about it.”

The two girls laughed. Lisa was thrilled to be hitting it off with an experienced member of the cast. She was
even more excited to be making a new friend with such an interesting hobby. She listened, fascinated, as Hollie told her one funny tale after another about plays she’d been in. Even though Hollie made light of her achievement, it was obvious that she was a serious actress already. She took voice, dance, and diction lessons on the side to round out her acting ability. She had seen a few Broadway shows in New York and had even been backstage once, to visit a cast member who was a family friend.

“I had a part in a movie once, you know,” Lisa put in playfully.

“You
did?
” Hollie asked.

“Yup. My friends and I were in a movie with Skye Ransom,” she said. Hollie squealed so loudly Lisa had to hold the phone away from her ear.

“
What?
Did you say what I think you said? You were in a
movie
and with
Skye Ransom?
” Hollie cried.

Lisa giggled at Hollie’s reaction. The whole thing had happened in such a funny way that she and Stevie and Carole tended to forget what a big deal it was. Briefly she related the story of The Saddle Club’s trip to New York for the American Horse Show, Skye Ransom’s problems riding, their helping him out, and the subsequent movie appearance.

“Oh, my gosh,” Hollie said reverently. “I saw that one about five times. I even remember your scene. Yes, I do
—I’m positive—I remember the riding scene with the three girls because I remember thinking that they looked about my age. And you weren’t just
in
it, you
know
him—I mean, you’re
friends
with him.” Hollie paused to sigh. “Wow, that’s one of the coolest things I’ve ever heard. And here
I
was going to try to encourage
you
to think about professional acting. You should be the one convincing me!”

“Professional acting? Are you kidding?” Lisa appreciated Hollie’s compliment, but she could no sooner imagine devoting herself to the stage than she could imagine running off to join the circus. She said as much to Hollie.

“Maybe you don’t think so now, but you’re really talented, and when people find out, you’re going to have to act in a lot of plays—just to appease your fans,” Hollie said.

“You really think I’m talented?” Lisa blurted out.

“I really do, Lisa. Look, you’ve got stage presence, a good voice, a natural sense of timing, and you’re pretty, too. Not a bad start for an actress, dear,” Hollie said, putting on a funny, old-lady voice.

Lisa didn’t know how to thank Hollie enough for boosting her confidence. All day she had been doubting herself—in acting and riding—and Hollie’s words had made her feel a hundred times better.

The two girls talked awhile longer. Hollie filled her in
on all the WCCT gossip—who had been in what plays, whom Mrs. Spitz liked best in the chorus, what big cities Mr. Ryan had toured in his prime as an actor. The only problem with talking to Hollie was that Lisa felt a tiny bit fake. Yes, she was enthusiastic about the play, but she could hardly imagine being as single-minded as Hollie. She kept wanting to mention The Saddle Club and Prancer, but somehow she knew Hollie wouldn’t understand her conflict any better than Carole and Stevie did. They loved riding; Hollie loved acting. Lisa didn’t know exactly where she fit in.

Before long Mrs. Atwood called Lisa to come to dinner. Lisa glanced at her watch and grimaced. Six-thirty! She was supposed to have completed her schedule and her reading homework before dinner. So much for that. Lisa reluctantly told Hollie she had to hang up for dinner.

“Okay, Annie, see you tomorrow. It should be a fun rehearsal because we’re going to start blocking,” Hollie predicted.

“What’s blocking?” Lisa asked.

“Blocking? No one told you? That’s when you plan out the action of the play with the director. Mrs. Spitz tells you where to stand when you give your lines, where to enter and exit, all that. It’s fun because you really begin to see how the play is going to look,” Hollie explained.

“It does sound fun,” Lisa admitted. It was obvious that there were a lot of words and other things about the theater that she was still going to have to learn. On an inspiration she suggested, “Hey, maybe you can be my stage coach, Hollie, and help me understand the acting world.”

“I’m happy to help you with anything,” Hollie replied warmly. Then she commented, “Hey, you know, that’s funny—even when you’re talking about acting, you use riding words.”

“What do you mean?” Lisa asked.

“You just said I’d be your
stage coach
—you know, like a horse and carriage, right?” Hollie asked.

“Yeah, that is funny,” Lisa agreed, but she didn’t feel like laughing. She had missed the pun entirely, and for some reason it made her uneasy that Hollie knew she thought about horses a lot of the time, even though it was true.

“Anyway, don’t let mean old Mrs. Hannigan get to you tonight,” Hollie kidded.

Lisa smiled into the receiver. “Don’t worry, I’ll keep an eye out,” she promised.

After hanging up she took another glance at her schedule. It looked just as impossible as before. The worst part was that somehow she was going to have to explain her lack of free time, Pine Hollow time, riding time, and Saddle Club time to Stevie and Carole.

Lisa sighed. At the back of her mind she had known it would be hard to make them understand. Carole was totally devoted to riding and horses. She wanted to be a professional rider and trainer, an equine vet, a steeple-chase jockey, an instructor, or any one of a dozen things that meant dedicating her life to horses. Stevie didn’t talk as seriously about her favorite activity as Carole did, but she basically loved two things: horses and having fun.

Lisa had discovered riding later than her two friends. She had the kind of mother who believed girls should be well-rounded. Mrs. Atwood had enrolled her daughter in every kind of after-school activity, from ballet and music to Girl Scouts—and finally to riding. The minute she’d started taking lessons at Pine Hollow, Lisa had known that she liked riding better than almost anything she’d tried. She’d worked hard and caught up fast. But there was a part of her that occasionally missed stuff like piano and tap dancing. When she’d seen the poster at the mall advertising
Annie
auditions, Lisa had decided on her own, without any urging from her mother, that she wanted to try out. As it turned out, all the after-school music and dance lessons had paid off at the auditions. What was more, Lisa had discovered something else: She had stage presence. She loved being up on the stage, and it showed. How was she supposed to explain all that to Stevie and Carole?

As she stared at the afternoon block on the computer screen, her mother’s voice calling “Dinner, Lisa!” floated up to her again. Reluctantly Lisa stood. She usually enjoyed taking a break from homework to eat with the family. But for the next few weeks, dinner was going to mean one thing and one thing only: that the afternoon was all used up.

C
AROLE AND
S
TEVIE
stood in the doorway of TD’s. Normally, they would have slid right into their usual booth, but somehow it didn’t seem right to sit there without Lisa. They found themselves choosing a table for two in the middle of the ice-cream parlor.

“Barely recognized you guys, sitting over here,” the waitress remarked when she came to take the order. “Where’s the third musketeer?”

“If you must know, she couldn’t make it today,” Stevie said, sounding more touchy than she meant to.

“Easy does it, honey. You can come here just the two of you. I was only asking. Now, what’ll it be? Mustard ice cream with ketchup sauce?” The waitress chuckled at her own joke. She was used to Stevie’s bizarre flavor and topping combinations, and every once in a while she liked to try to one-up her.

Stevie gave her a withering glance. “Good idea,” she said sarcastically, “but I’m too upset to eat. How about a nice, plain old butterscotch sundae—on pistachio.”

The waitress shrugged. “You call that ‘nice’ and ‘plain’? That’s a good one,” she muttered.

Carole didn’t feel much like eating either. Finally she decided, “I’ll have whatever you recommend.”

The waitress couldn’t have looked more surprised if Stevie had ordered vanilla with hot fudge. “You’ve been coming here since you were little kids, and now you want me to recommend something?”

Carole nodded gravely. “I just can’t decide today.”

“Jeez, whatever’s eating you two is pretty bad. I’ll bring you a nice chocolate shake. That’ll make you feel better.” Shaking her head, the waitress went to the counter to fix their orders.

When she left, Carole and Stevie slouched back in their chairs. “I think
Annie
really means a lot to Lisa,” Carole said after a few minutes. She had been trying to think of other topics of conversation, but for once she could think of only one thing to talk about with Stevie. Everything else seemed unimportant.

Stevie nodded. “She even had her makeup on when she came to ride.”

“She really ran to make it back, didn’t she?” Carole asked.

“I guess she’ll be running a lot from now on with that schedule.”

“No doubt—you saw how fast she took off.”

“Carole, are you worried, too?” Stevie asked.

Carole looked up. “You mean about today?”

“About today, tomorrow, the next three weeks—and after,” Stevie said. “For all we know, Lisa might find out she likes acting better than riding and—”

“And decide to quit Horse Wise, Pine Hollow, and The Saddle Club altogether so she can devote her life to the stage,” Carole finished for her.

“She can’t keep up this schedule forever. That’s for sure,” Stevie murmured as the waitress set down their orders.

“Enjoy,” the woman said, looking at Carole, “and
try
to enjoy, if it’s humanly possible,” she told Stevie.

Carole mechanically took a couple bites of ice cream. She didn’t notice whose dish she was eating out of until Stevie grabbed it defensively. “Hey! Hands off my concoction. If you want something this good, you’ve got to order it, Hanson.”