Horse Play (6 page)

“And only ten minutes until class,” Stevie groaned.

Carole looked around. “There has to be an answer,” she declared. “We just have to figure out what it is.” She began examining the other tack racks. Although their classmates had already taken their tack, it appeared,
from the remaining tack for the horses that wouldn’t be used in their classes, that the tack for the other horses hadn’t been switched around. That meant that somebody had deliberately mixed up the tack on
their
three horses. This was somebody’s idea of a joke.

“Some joke,” Carole said, disgustedly.

“About as funny as mixing up our boots,” Lisa said.

“That was easy to solve,” Carole reminded her as she began sorting through the extra bridles.

“You wouldn’t say that if you still had oat dust in your boots,” Stevie said.

The girls nodded. Somebody had a pretty strange sense of humor and was pulling some mean tricks on them. She wondered if the other kids in the class were having the same kind of jokes pulled on them. She thought she would have heard about it, but since The Saddle Club spent most of their time with one another, they might not always know.

“Here! I think this is Diablo’s bridle,” she said, locating it in the middle of a large collection of spare bridles. “And this one next to it could be Pepper’s. Do you recognize it?” she said, holding the bridle up for Lisa’s inspection.

Lisa looked carefully. One bridle looked pretty much like another to new riders, but Lisa was becoming an experienced rider and she could tell the difference.

“I think that’s it,” she said. “It looks like it, anyway.” She took it from Carole’s hand. Then she saw the nick in
the leather of the reins that she’d felt so often and had come to use as a guide for correcting the length of the reins. “Definitely,” she said. “Thanks, Carole.”

“You’re welcome,” Carole told her, replacing the incorrect tack on the racks. “Now let’s solve Stevie’s problem.”

“Stevie’s problem is easy,” Stevie said. “I just went to the pony’s tack rack and found the biggest saddle there. It’s Comanche’s. I’ve made the swap and now we’ve got exactly six minutes until class. We’ll never make it on time and Max is going to be really teed off. He cares so much about promptness, you practically have to have a doctor’s note to be five minutes late.”

W
HEN THE GIRLS
arrived at the ring four minutes after the start, Max just glared at them. There was no point in trying to tell Max about the mix-up with the tack. It wasn’t the sort of thing he’d be sympathetic to. Promptness was very important in Max’s book. Excuses weren’t.

Embarrassed, they joined in on the exercise. Max was having the class do a sitting trot without using stirrups. For Carole, this was easy. She’d been doing it for a long time. But for the less experienced riders, it was very hard because it required good balance, and good balance was hard at a bouncing gaitlike trot.

She took the opportunity to look around at her classmates. She watched Veronica, especially. Much as she disliked Veronica, she had to give her some credit for
being a better-than-average rider. She wasn’t having any trouble with the exercise either. In fact, she was smiling smugly as her horse circled the ring.

Then a thought occurred to Carole and she didn’t like it at all.
Why is Veronica smiling smugly
? Was it because she was well-balanced on her horse? Maybe. Was it because she had just played a mean trick on some of her classmates by switching tack on them and thereby getting them into trouble. More likely, Carole thought.
But why
? After all, Max would get really angry if he learned about it.
But there would be no way he could punish Veronica if her father took over the stable
! Carole shivered at the thought.

No, she told herself.
That can’t be the case. Veronica is looking smug because Veronica always looks smug
.

She hoped she was right.

L
ATER THAT DAY
, Lisa slunk through the back door of her mother’s car and slid down on the seat, hoping no one could see her. The problem was that her mother had come to pick her up after class and when she’d explained that The Saddle Club was having a drill practice, her mother had insisted on
watching
so she could wait to drive her back home again.

“That was so interesting, dear!” Mrs. Atwood said.

Interesting wasn’t the word. The practice had been a disaster. The girls had forgotten everything they’d known about drill work and spent entirely too much time arguing with one another and with their horses. Drill work
was supposed to be precision riding, like military marching formations or halftime bands at football games. Their practice had looked more like the antics of the Three Stooges!

Aunt Maude, seated next to her mother in the front, nodded. “Oh, yes! And how did you get the horses to all come together at the center at the same time?”

“They weren’t supposed to do that, Aunt Maude,” Lisa said with more patience than she felt. “The horses are supposed to pass in front of and behind one another where the circles cross in the center of the ring.…”

“Oh, but I liked it the way you did it, dear,” Aunt Maude said reassuringly.

“And did you like it when Stevie’s horse shied, and mine started bucking?”

“You stayed on so well! I’m sure the judges would like that,” Aunt Maude said.

Lisa sighed. “You get points for staying on a bucking horse at rodeos, Auntie,” she said. “In English riding, you lose points for letting the horse buck in the first place.”

“Oh, dear,” her aunt said. “Then what about the sort of roping thing when one of your friends chased down the other girl’s horse for her? She’d get points for that, wouldn’t she?” she asked.

Aunt Maude was referring to the lowest point of the practice. Stevie had dismounted from Comanche to pace off her circle, hoping she’d be able to control Comanche’s
timing better. Uncharacteristically, Stevie had gotten careless and dropped Comanche’s reins. The poor horse had had about enough of the hopeless practice by then, too, and had walked off toward his stall. Carole had had to intervene. At that point, Comanche had decided to play tag and began running freely around the ring. He’d even come close to jumping the fence, but Carole and Diablo caught up with him just in time.

“Wouldn’t that be worth a lot of points?” Aunt Maude asked insistently.

“I guess so,” Lisa said. It was easier to agree than to explain. She looked out the window of the car, wishing she were walking with her friends instead of driving with her mother.

“As soon as we get home, dear, I want you to change your clothes. You and I are going with Aunt Maude to the decorator store at the mall this afternoon. I want to choose a new wallpaper for your room. What do you think of a turquoise? We can then recover your chair in matching fabric. I’d like a white flounce on your bed and a solid bedspread—or would you like it to match the wallpaper and the chair? How about a sort of English country chintz?”

What was the
matter
with her mother?

“We just redecorated my room last year, Mom,” Lisa reminded her. “I don’t want to do that again. I like it the way it is.”

“You do?” Mrs. Atwood said, sounding hurt.

She had an annoying way of making her feel guilty, but Lisa didn’t like to hurt her mother’s feelings. It was time to be tactful. “Yes,” she told her mother. “You did such a nice job of it last time that it doesn’t need to be done now.”

That closed the subject temporarily, but unfortunately, it wasn’t the only subject on her mother’s mind. “I heard about a wonderful woman in town who gives computer lessons,” Mrs. Atwood said a few seconds later. “They’re being given at the Club,” she began.

“Mother, I take computer at school,” Lisa reminded her. “And besides, I’ve already taken ballet, piano, and painting, plus horseback riding. That’s enough.”

The car pulled into their driveway. Lisa got out of the back seat and escaped to her room before her mother could suggest that they sit and have a “nice little snack” in the kitchen. Lunch was going to be ready in a little while. Lisa didn’t want to spoil her appetite.

Lisa showered and put on clean clothes. She retreated to her room, and took her book off her beside table. It was a book on riding.

A moment later she heard a knock. “Lisa dear!” her mother called. “Open up, please. I have something for you.”

Lisa opened her door. In spite of the fact that she hadn’t wanted a snack, her mother had brought her milk and cookies. Homemade cookies. She smiled polite thanks at her mother, took the snack, and retreated to her bed with a sigh.

Lisa had a passion for organization and logic. Some of the things going on around her didn’t seem very logical, and it upset her. She went over to her desk and took out a pen and some paper. She wanted to make a list of the possible reasons for her mother to be behaving so strangely.

“1. Hates horses,” she wrote. Her mother thought girls should know something about riding, just like they should know something about tennis, golf, sewing, and cooking, but that didn’t include being horse crazy. Since Lisa had spent so much time at Pine Hollow, her mother was definitely cooling on the subject of horses.

“2. Something to do with Aunt Maude.” That had real possibilities. Her mother was often overbearingly concerned with her, but it seemed to have stepped up since Aunt Maude’s arrival. It was quite possible this didn’t have to do with her so much as it did with another family issue, Lisa thought. Then the word “family” echoed in her mind and she had a weird thought.

“3. Misses my brother?” Lisa wrote. Lisa’s brother was away at camp for the summer. Was it possible that she was simply upset about that? It seemed unlikely as an explanation for the overbearing motherliness. Besides, she’d never showered so much attention on Lisa’s brother. He wouldn’t put up with it. Lisa had always just accepted it. Only now, there was too much to take. She was acting like a total mother hen.

Mother …

Her pen nearly shook as she wrote her next thought—a possible explanation for weird behavior:

“4. Pregnant?”

Could that be possible? Lisa was almost 14 years old!
No way!
she told herself, hoping that wasn’t just wishful thinking. But pregnant women got strange cravings for food, not interior decorations, she reasoned. Not computer lessons! Homemade chocolate chip cookies, maybe? She shuddered at the thought.

Lisa looked back over her short list and reconsidered each possibility. Number four was too weird. Number two was too vague. Number one made
some
sense.

Except at dinner that night, Mrs. Atwood kept talking about how interesting the drill practice was. And then, for dessert, she served red gelatin with bananas in it, from a horse-shaped mold!

Does red gelatin with bananas in it qualify as a strange food craving under number four?
Lisa asked herself.
What can it mean if it’s shaped like a horse?

F
OR THE NEXT
couple of weeks, things seemed fairly normal. Lisa’s mother continued to be too much of a mother, but Lisa got used to it. The Saddle Club had classes three times a week, and drill practice three times a week, too. Max was too busy with all his new students to notice the frenzy of activity at the drill practices. But from time to time, as he passed by the ring where the girls were yelling at one another and trying to control their horses, he would note that there was steady improvement.

“Better!” he said one day—and from Max that was a big compliment. Then he followed up with, “Lisa, don’t forget to keep your toes in. Stevie, stop talking to your
horse in English. Comanche talks sign language. Tell him what you want him to know with your legs and your hands. Carole, sit back in the saddle!”

Lisa wondered, as she had from her very first lesson, how Max could see so many things wrong at the same time!

After practice that day, the girls were going to begin publicity work for their show. Lisa had made a flyer on her family’s computer and it even had a picture of a horse on it. Stevie had her mother take it to her office to copy. Mrs. Lake’s secretary had made them copies in blue, yellow, and red to put on local bulletin boards and in shop windows. They were going to paint some large posters too.