Horse Power (9 page)

“Hold on!” Stevie yelled. Chad grabbed the pony’s mane at the moment he broke into a canter. As the pony approached the table where Lisa stood ready to hand out an egg, Chad managed to slow Half Dollar down. Chad thrust a spoon at Lisa and she slid another egg onto it. He nudged the pony with his heels and once again Half Dollar spurted. The egg dropped off Chad’s spoon about ten feet from the finish line.

“Better, definitely better,” Carole said optimistically.

“But not good enough,” Stevie complained. “It’s a good thing we hard-boiled these eggs. We couldn’t possibly afford to use all the raw eggs Chad would break. At least we can recycle the cracked ones.”

Chad glared at his sister. “Speaking of ‘cracked ones,’ ” he began in a threatening tone.

“I think it’s time to concentrate on a different event,” Carole interrupted. “How about the water-gun race?”

“Fine,” Stevie grumbled. “The water’s free around here.”

“And besides, I’m good at the water-gun race,” Chad said. “Are we going to be finished soon? Our movie starts at four.”

“Are we going to the movies?” Stevie glanced at her watch. “Well, we really have to give these poor ponies a rest. We’ll quit at three-fifteen. What movie did you want to see?”

“Not you and me, Stevie,” Chad said. “You’re not invited. I invited Lisa to come to the movies.”

Stevie and Carole looked at Lisa, raising their eyebrows. She squirmed uncomfortably until Stevie spoke.

“No problem, Chad,” she said. “We can stop right after we go once through the water-gun race. That should give you plenty of time.”

Lisa sighed with relief. If Stevie or Carole had been annoyed that she’d kept her secret about Chad, they would have said something immediately—at least Stevie would have. The fact was, Lisa didn’t quite know how she felt about the whole idea herself. It was exciting to think of having a date, but she’d argued with her mother for what had seemed like hours on Monday just to get permission to spend two hours with a boy in a movie theater!

In the next fifteen minutes, the girls and Chad all practiced with the squirt gun and the target on horseback. Just as Chad had promised, he
was
very good at it. Somehow, he managed to hit the target, even while he was wobbling around in the pony’s saddle.

“You’ve got to have a good steady stream of water to be able to aim it,” he told the girls. “So squeeze hard, okay?”

Lisa tried it, but no matter how hard she squeezed, she couldn’t get the water anywhere near the target. Carole and Stevie were a little disappointed, but that made them more or less even since Lisa was the best of the team at the egg race.

When they’d finished practice, they took their ponies back to their stalls, untacked them, and cooled them down. Stevie brought a bucket of fresh water into Penny’s stall, where Lisa was brushing her quickly.

“Here,” Stevie said, hooking the bucket onto the wall, where Penny could reach it. “I don’t want you to be late for your date.”

Lisa looked at Stevie uncertainly. “You don’t mind, do you?” she asked.

Stevie grinned and shook her head. “I guess if I had a date with someone like my brother, I’d keep it a secret, too,” she teased. “But aside from that, how could I mind? It’s
so
exciting that I’m almost jealous.” She gave Lisa a little hug. “What movie are you seeing?” she asked.

“Well …” Lisa began as she stuck the brush into her
pocket and stepped out of the stall. Stevie followed, sliding the door closed behind her and latching it carefully. “We’re seeing
Revenge of the Mummy, Part Six
.”

“I take it back,” Stevie said. “I’m not jealous at all.”

Lisa burst into giggles and Stevie joined her.

They were still laughing when they arrived at the locker area.

“Ready to go?” Chad asked brightly.

Lisa nodded, and they were off.

T
HE MOVIE THEATER
was within walking distance of Pine Hollow, so at least they didn’t have to rely on anyone’s parent to drive them. Lisa had promised her mother she’d be home by six-thirty, though what her mother was so worried about wasn’t really clear to Lisa.

Lisa had been anticipating her first date for a long time. She was an organized person, a list maker, so it wasn’t surprising that she had made lists of things she could talk about on her first date. Somehow, the idea of awkward silences had filled her with terror. As it turned out, she had no such problem with Chad.

“Did you go out for a sport last year?” she asked (Item Number One on her list of conversation topics).

“Yeah,” he said, and then abandoned the subject altogether. “Now let me tell you about what happened in the last movie because it may be really important to what’s going on in this one, though probably not since that was a couple of years ago. But, see, this archaeologist
was trying to break into the tomb of the king of someplace, I don’t remember where, but it doesn’t matter because it’s this ancient cult, see? And the curse is that if somebody lets light fall on the casket, he’ll get it from the mummy—I mean the mummy of the king’s bodyguard, not the king. He’s actually dead.”

“Isn’t the bodyguard dead, too?” Lisa asked.

“Well, sure, but see, it’s his curse to return to life if somebody disturbs his master’s grave.”

“Oh.”

“So then he …” Lisa listened with growing concern as Chad described an impossibly complicated but otherwise mindless plot. The more he talked, the more enthralled he became and the more worried Lisa became.

“You really like this?” Lisa asked finally, interrupting his monologue.

“Oh, yeah, it’s cool. You’ll see,” he assured her, but Lisa didn’t feel the least bit assured.

When they got to the Triplex, Chad paid for her ticket, but he let her buy the popcorn and soda. Lisa liked it that they could share expenses. Then, with some trepidation on Lisa’s part, they went into the darkened theater and Lisa settled into her soft seat to learn the fate of the greedy archaeologist who would awaken the evil spirit of the mummy. Once again Chad assured her she was really going to like the movie.

She still wasn’t feeling assured when it began. The mummy, it seemed, had built up a lot of anger over the course of the first five movies, so his thirst for revenge was considerable. Lisa squirmed uncomfortably in her seat while the tension built and, as the bloody battles began, she tried scrunching down in her seat. Chad tugged at her sleeve.

“Don’t miss this part coming up,” he hissed, pulling her back up in her seat. Reluctantly, she sat up, but she found that she could close her eyes and Chad wouldn’t notice, since his own were glued to the screen, where the mummy was wreaking his terrible revenge.

Finally, it was more than Lisa could take. She had to get out of there. “Chad,” she whispered, “I’m not too crazy about this.”

“It’s going to get even more exciting now, just you see,” he said.

But it didn’t. The mummy just figured out creative things to do with sharp pieces of broken pottery.

“I think I’d better go,” she said.

“Didn’t you go before the movie started?” he asked.

“No, not go like that,” she said. “Go, like
go
. I don’t like this at all. I don’t want to watch any more.”

“You lost your watch?” he asked, clearly distracted.

“No, I’m
leaving
,” she said. “I’ll wait for you outside. Here, you take the popcorn,” she told him. She climbed over him to the aisle, and escaped to the lobby.

In the rest room, Lisa ran a comb through her hair,
applied some lip gloss, and looked herself straight in the eye. Since all three movies playing at the Triplex had just begun, the rest room was mercifully empty, so she could have a serious conversation with herself.

“Yikes!” she began. “That is the most awful, boring, gory movie I have ever seen and ever want to see.” Saying it out loud made her feel a little better. Ever since Chad had told her his choice of movie, she’d felt uneasy, and now she knew she’d been right.

Chad was sweet in his way. She’d liked the way he’d asked her out, and she’d liked the way he’d announced to Carole and Stevie that they were going out. He wasn’t in the least bit uncomfortable with it and that was nice. She’d been more ill at ease with her friends than he had been.

The problem was that Chad was nice enough, but he’d made a terrible mistake with her; if this was the kind of movie he liked, there was no way she’d ever go out with him again: At the same time, it was as clear to Lisa as it had been to her friends that Chad’s motive in joining the riding class was to be near her. He didn’t seem to like riding much more than she liked horror movies.

But there were other things she liked, she reminded herself. She liked ballet, she liked reading and schoolwork. Maybe the two of them had other areas of common interest. Common Interest was something she’d read a lot about in articles about dating. It was important for boys and girls who were dating to have Common
Interests.
Otherwise
—Lisa sighed, looking at herself in the mirror once again—
the girl will spend all their movie dates in the rest room, pretending her hair needs a combing, and the boy will spend all their horseback-riding dates pretending he cares which end of the horse goes first
.

“What we have here,” Lisa said, once again addressing the mirror, “is a serious lack of Common Interests.”

Lisa returned to the lobby of the theater. The movie would be over in twenty minutes now, so she would just wait for Chad. There was no way she could return to the scene of the chaos in the mummy’s tomb. In the meantime, she had twenty minutes to figure out how to tell Chad she didn’t want to go to another movie with him.

As it turned out, it wasn’t necessary at all. Chad came bounding out of the theater with worry written on his face. As soon as he spotted her, she stood up.

“You didn’t come back,” he said. “I guess you didn’t much like it, huh? I’m sorry.”

“Chad, I have the feeling I liked it about as much as you like horseback riding,” she said.

His face flushed with embarrassment. “You could tell?” he asked. She nodded. “I thought if somebody as nice as you liked it, I would, too,” he said. “Even though Stevie likes it,” he quickly added.

“That’s what I thought about the movie when you first told me what you wanted to see.”

“No fun for you at all?”

“None,” she told him honestly.

“Well, I guess we were both wrong. I won’t convert you to mummy movies, and you won’t convert me to horseback riding. Since you know why I did it and everybody knows how bad I am at it, I’ll just drop out.”

Lisa nodded absently, more than a little sad that both of their plans had failed. This wasn’t the kind of first date she’d been dreaming about for so long. First dates were supposed to be fun. It didn’t seem fair.

“I’ll just clear out my locker at the stable tomorrow,” Chad continued.

“What do you mean, clear out your locker?” Lisa asked. What Chad had said about quitting had finally registered.

“It’s time for me to quit riding,” he explained.

For a second, Lisa was going to agree with him, but then she remembered what would happen if he
did
quit riding. It would break up The Saddle Club’s gymkhana team. It might even mean they’d have to drop out altogether, since
all
the students were now assigned to teams, and, like theirs, had probably been practicing already as teams.

“You can’t do that!” she burst out.

“Why not?”

She explained what would happen with their team and how awful that would be, especially since his own sister had practically invented the gymkhana for the stable.

Chad’s face fell. “But I’m so awful at it.”

That was certainly true. He
wasn’t
very good and Lisa was tempted to agree with him, but the fact was that no matter how he rode, and dropped eggs, he was better than nothing. This was going to call for some diplomacy.

“Chad,” she began, “all of the teams have been carefully balanced with experienced and inexperienced riders. Although no two riders have the same skills, the teams are as equal as Max could make them.”

“You mean that because Carole is the best rider at the stable, your team got me—the worst?”

“I didn’t say that,” she said.

“You didn’t have to.”

“Listen—you can stop riding anytime you want to. After the gymkhana. Until then, you’re going to have to stick with us. Besides, you may not be much on a horse, but you’re absolutely terrific with a water pistol. How do you do it?”

“Years of practice,” he told her, and she knew it was true. Water pistols, mummy movies. Chad was a nice boy, but he wasn’t for her.

They left the theater together and began walking home. Since they lived near each other, they had about fifteen minutes to chat. Lisa quickly exhausted her list of conversation topics. Chad dismissed each in turn with a shrug or an okay. Finally, she resigned herself to letting him tell her the plot of the movie she’d just missed.

Her occasional nods and uh-huhs seemed to satisfy him and freed her to ponder her failed first date. If this was a date, she really wasn’t looking forward to her second. She’d enjoyed her anticipation of her first date, though. Why should she let all that fun daydreaming go to waste? If this time with Chad was such a bust, then it couldn’t possibly be a date. That meant that she still had her first date to look forward to!

That was something to smile about. She was grinning with her secret by the time she and Chad went their different ways. Very different ways.