English Rider (13 page)

Moments later all three girls were leaving the stable building and heading toward the Atwoods’ car. Mrs. Atwood was standing near the open trunk, waiting for them.

“All right,” she said briskly when the girls reached her. “Here are your things.” She waved a hand at the trunk, which was stuffed full of suitcases, sleeping bags, and pillows. Lisa recognized her own things and Tessa’s, as well as Stevie’s and Lisa’s, which their parents had dropped off at her house that morning.

Lisa stared at her mother, completely mystified. “What?” she said. “What’s going on? Why did you bring this stuff here?”

Mrs. Atwood laughed. “Surprise!” she cried. “You’re having your sleepover here—in the hayloft.”

“But Max—” Carole blurted out, her brown eyes wide with confusion.

“It’s all arranged,” Mrs. Atwood said, her eyes twinkling. “Max gave his permission. It was all Tessa’s idea.”

“Tessa?” Stevie sounded stunned. “What are you talking about?”

Mrs. Atwood shrugged. “For some reason, Tessa really wanted your sleepover party to be in the hayloft.” She wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I can’t imagine why—it must be terribly dusty and hot up there. But I suppose it will be a novelty for her. She even promised to bring you all dinner.”

Lisa wasn’t really listening to her mother. She was trying to figure this out. “So Tessa decided we should have the sleepover at Pine Hollow,” she murmured. “And she arranged it with you and Max.”

Her mother gave her a perplexed look. “Of course, dear,” she said. “Isn’t that what I’ve just been saying?”

“I
STILL CAN
’
T
believe she came up with the same idea we did,” Lisa said. It was a few minutes later. The girls’ things were safely stowed in a corner of the big hayloft. Now Carole and Stevie were watching Lisa finish grooming Derby.

Carole nodded. She felt more confused than ever. “I
guess this goes to show that we’re not on
totally
different wavelengths,” she suggested.

“I don’t know about that,” Stevie said. She had gone to retrieve and fill Derby’s water bucket. Now she hooked it in place. “She probably has some other motive in mind. Maybe she wants to ignore us as much as we want to ignore her.” Her expression brightened at that thought.

Lisa sighed. “Well, I guess with Mom out of the picture, this sleepover might not be quite as bad,” she muttered.

Carole was beginning to wonder if that was true. At least with Mrs. Atwood hanging around, the girls would have had to be polite to each other. With the way Stevie and Lisa were feeling about Tessa, Carole feared the worst.
Especially since I’m not exactly in the mood to play peacemaker
, she thought, remembering the water bucket incident. She bit her lip anxiously. No, she wasn’t looking forward to this sleepover at all.

S
TEVIE
, C
AROLE, AND
Lisa managed to keep themselves busy for the next few hours. They mucked out stalls. They swept the stable aisles. They knocked cobwebs out of the corners. They caught and led in horses that had spent the day in the paddocks and fields. Even after Tessa arrived, they hardly had time to say two words to her.

But after they finished helping Red with the evening feeding, there wasn’t much left to do. Finally the girls had no choice. It was time for the sleepover to start.

Lisa reluctantly led the way as they climbed the wooden ladder to the loft. Tessa was already there. She had arranged their sleeping bags in a circle near the window and was busy unwrapping cold cuts and cheese on a picnic cloth on the loft floor. Other sandwich ingredients were ready nearby, along with bags of chips and popcorn. Several cans of soda and juice waited in a bucket of ice.

Lisa’s stomach grumbled, and she realized she was famished. She was impressed that Tessa had laid out such a nice picnic. But she wasn’t about to admit it. “Oh,” she said with a bored shrug. “Is it time to eat already?”

Tessa smiled tentatively. “I hope it’s okay,” she said. “I picked up most of the food at the mall, and I wasn’t sure what you’d like.”

Stevie shrugged, too. “I guess it will do,” she replied. “If I’m hungry enough, I can choke down almost anything.”

Tessa’s face fell. Carole, watching, felt a pang of guilt. This was all wrong. They shouldn’t be acting so cold and mean. Tessa was their friend! Wasn’t she? A vision of Tessa and Phil giggling together in the hallway outside the tack room floated into her mind. It was followed by the image of Lisa bent over a computer keyboard as the clock ticked toward midnight and Tessa slumbered in her cozy bed. And worst of all, there was the picture of Topside stepping into that metal bucket and pitching forward, his leg crumpling beneath him.…

Carole shook her head. It was all too much. “Okay, let’s eat,” she said in a brisk, businesslike tone. She sat
down across from Tessa and began assembling a sandwich without looking up.

Stevie and Lisa sat down on either side of her, forming a line facing Tessa, who sat alone on the other side of the food. None of them looked at her. None of them spoke.

Lisa was suddenly finding it difficult to keep the tears back. Her logical mind told her she was being silly. Tessa had proved herself unworthy of membership in The Saddle Club. She had betrayed Stevie by flirting with Phil. She had caused tons of extra work for Lisa and her mother without so much as offering to help. She had endangered Topside with her sloppy care. And to top it off, she had cast her friends aside in favor of their greatest enemy, Veronica diAngelo.

Her logical mind knew all that. But somehow her heart hadn’t received the message. It still ached for the friendship she’d thought they had with Tessa. Lisa had to keep her eyes trained on her sandwich and blink rapidly to keep them from spilling over.

“So,” Tessa said. Her voice was as bright and cheerful as ever, though Stevie thought she detected a slight quaver. “Did you all have a good day today?”

As Carole murmured a vague affirmative answer, Stevie gritted her teeth. She knew the best thing to do would be to keep silent. The sooner Tessa realized they weren’t interested in small talk, the better. Then they could finish their dinner quickly and change into their pajamas. The earlier they all went to sleep, the earlier they could wake
up—and the earlier this miserable sleepover would be over.

But Stevie had never been very good at keeping quiet. And she was even worse at keeping her feelings to herself. Why should she spare Tessa’s feelings, anyway? Tessa was the one who was in the wrong. She was the one who had cast her eye on Stevie’s boyfriend. She was the one who had caused problems everywhere she turned, whether it was with the point-to-point plans or at the stable. “We had a great day,” she blurted out angrily. “At least until
you
got here.”

Tessa’s eyes widened in shock. Her cheeks flushed a mottled pink.

Carole and Lisa gasped, but neither of them said a thing.

“Oh,” Tessa said in a small voice. “I see.”

“And that’s not all.” Now that Stevie had started, she couldn’t stop. “If you think Phil likes you, even a little bit, you’re sadly mistaken. He would never fall for your pathetic flirting. And in case you haven’t figured it out, we don’t appreciate you inviting Veronica to our sleepover. And furthermore—”

“Wait.” This time Tessa’s voice was loud and firm. Even Stevie was startled into silence. “I think we have a problem here.”

The comment was so ridiculously inadequate that Lisa almost laughed. “No kidding,” she said instead. “But it’s
not
we
that have the problem. It’s
you
.” She knew that didn’t make much sense, but Tessa seemed to understand perfectly.

“Just let me explain,” she said. “We seem to have a few large misunderstandings.”

Stevie and Lisa both looked stubborn, but Carole finally met Tessa’s gaze. “All right,” she answered for all three of them. “If you think you have something to tell us, you’d better go ahead.”

Tessa took a deep breath. “All right, then,” she said. “First of all, I want to apologize. I’m afraid I’ve been a bit daft—I just didn’t see until now how much my behavior has been upsetting you.”

Stevie’s eyes widened in indignation. “What?” she sputtered. “How could you not realize it? You
knew
that Phil and I—”

“Wait,” Tessa said again. “That’s the first thing I want to clear up. I have no interest in Phil—except as a friend. I just needed him to help me with my plan.”

“Your plan?” Lisa repeated, sounding confused.

Tessa nodded. “That’s what this has all been about,” she said, her words coming in a rush. “Plotting with Phil, befriending Veronica, gaining her trust …”

“Wait a minute.” Understanding was dawning on Stevie’s face. “Back up a second here. Don’t you really like Veronica?”

Tessa laughed. “Don’t be ridiculous!” she exclaimed,
sounding more like the Tessa they knew and loved than she had all week. “Who could possibly
like
that insufferable girl?”

“But—But
why
?” Carole still felt bewildered by all this—she was starting to realize that something very strange was going on. Something strange and, perhaps, not altogether terrible. “What’s your big plan?”

Tessa shook her head reluctantly. “I can’t tell you that,” she replied. “I’m sorry, but it would ruin everything. The whole point of this was to make sure Max couldn’t possibly fault you for what’s going to happen.” She sighed. “Although I’m beginning to suspect I went a bit too far in making sure you didn’t know what was going on. I thought I was dropping a few hints here and there, but maybe they were too subtle.”

“I guess they were,” Lisa replied. Like her friends, she was realizing that they might have jumped to some incorrect conclusions in the past week—especially the one about Phil. After all, plotting against Veronica sounded a lot more in character for him than flirting with one of Stevie’s best friends. But Lisa still had some questions that Tessa hadn’t cleared up yet. “What about all that extra work you’ve been causing me and my mom with all your bright ideas about the point-to-point? Are you telling me you didn’t realize you were doing that, either?”

Tessa gave her an apologetic look. “I realize my suggestion about the scurry race was rather impulsive,” she admitted.
The corners of her mouth turned up slightly. “Although actually it ended up working out perfectly.”

“Not for me,” Lisa replied. “I spent that entire afternoon as Mom’s personal secretary.”

“I’m really sorry about that.” Tessa’s forehead wrinkled with concern. “I meant to help out, I really did.” She sighed. “But Veronica was so insistent that we go over to the Penningtons’ that very day, even when I told her I thought I should go straight home with you to help out. And then once we were there she kept running off to make Miles show her this or that. I think she’s really smitten with him.”

“Hmmm,” Stevie said. “I wonder.”

Lisa gave her a surprised look. “Huh?” she said. “You mean about Veronica’s crush on Miles? I thought that was obvious to everyone.”

“Oh, it is,” Stevie assured her. “No, I was just thinking about something else. Go on, Tessa.”

Tessa shrugged. “I was finished.”

“No, you weren’t,” Lisa insisted. “What about the other stuff? Like deciding to move the scurry race to the end of the schedule after the program was at the printer’s?”

Tessa looked confused. “What does that have to do with me?” she said. “I thought Max decided that. That’s what Veronica told me, anyway.”

“But Veronica told
me
 …” Lisa’s voice trailed off.
She glanced at Stevie, who was looking more and more thoughtful by the second. “Oh,” she said. “I see.”

Carole still looked troubled. “There’s something else,” she said. “We’ve been covering for you so far. But I really thought you would take better care of Topside. No matter how distracted you were with your plotting and everything, there’s no excuse for carelessness in the stable.”

This time Tessa looked downright insulted. “What do you mean?” she protested. “I would never neglect a horse. I’ve taken perfect care of Topside ever since I got here!”

“Do you call leaving a metal water bucket sitting around his stall perfect care?” Carole shot back. “Plus, Max hates it when we go riding and leave the stall a mess. We told you that.”

Lisa nodded. “And maybe being careless with tack isn’t quite as bad as being careless with the horses themselves,” she said, “but it took Carole ages to clean up after you in the tack room that time.”

Tessa waved her hands wildly. “Hold on here!” she cried. “Have I been riding at a different stable all week? I don’t know what you mean by any of this.”

“I do.” Stevie spoke so suddenly that all three of her friends turned to stare at her. She was smiling, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was the smile of someone who had finally figured out exactly what was going on. “We’ve been idiots,” she said matter-of-factly.

“Huh?” Carole said.

Stevie shrugged. “Don’t you see? We’ve missed a really
obvious point here. Namely, that there’s no way that Veronica would ever want to be friends with Tessa.”

“Hey,” Tessa protested. “That’s not very nice.”

“No, listen,” Stevie insisted. “Veronica hated you last week—because you’re friends with us, because of what happened in England, and, well, just because you’re a nice person instead of a shallow snake in the grass like her. And then you helped us humiliate her yet again—you can bet she knew that, even if Max didn’t.” She shrugged. “And suddenly, after that, she wants to kiss and make up? I don’t think so.”

Now that Lisa thought about it, it really didn’t make much sense. She couldn’t believe she’d missed it before. “Wait,” she said. “But that means—”

“That Veronica was using Tessa for her own sneaky reasons,” Stevie finished for her with a nod. “And I think it’s obvious now what she was doing. Just think about it. Veronica invited Phil to the tack room with them. Then she left him alone with Tessa—with the door shut—and started talking about them in Danny’s stall, where she knew we’d probably overhear.”

Carole gasped. “That’s true!” she said. “If we hadn’t heard Veronica saying how she thought Tessa liked Phil, that never would have occurred to us.”