Lisa (12 page)

Thornbury Hall

London, England

Dear Lisa
,

I got your last letter. Thanks for writing. I’m sorry your trip out West wasn’t more of a vacation—sounds like you didn’t have much time for fun. Still, what you wrote gave me some more good inspiration for my screenplay. I’m hoping to start putting some thoughts on paper soon. Keep writing if you can! The more stuff you send, the better.

I guess by the time you get this, Mom probably will have told you that I got a job offer. It was in response to one of the resumes I sent out, to a real estate office here in London. I was actually only interested in a position working on their company newsletter, since that would at least be writing-related. Instead, they want me to work in the contracts office. It doesn’t sound like the most exciting job in the world, but the money’s good. And I’m sure Mom and Dad will be thrilled to know that their son won’t be sleeping in some London gutter this summer, right? Ha ha!

Anyway, since it looks like I’ll be staying in London, I’m going to start bugging Mom and Dad about bringing the family to visit. You’d like it here, I think—there are lots of beautiful old buildings and interesting museums and things to see.

I’d better go—I have an exam tomorrow. But write again if you can. And I hope you’ve cheered up since your last letter. You know what they say about all work and no play!

Love,
Peter

Dear Diary
,

Well, I guess that mature, factual letter I wrote Peter last time didn’t quite do the trick, either. He totally missed the point of what I was saying, and when I look back at the draft of the letter I wrote here in my diary, I can’t blame him. I know Ms. Shields says that even a grocery list can be creative, but the description I gave of our trip out West was less exciting than any grocery list I’ve ever read. It’s a little embarrassing, actually. But all I can do is try again. Maybe my next creative writing assignment will help—it’s a letter, of all things, and it’s due right before winter break. Naturally, I’ve already decided to make my next letter to Peter my assignment. Maybe I’ll try drafting it in here again.

But not right now—I got a little distracted looking back at the last few pages of my diary, but I didn’t open it to write about Peter at all, let alone homework. There are too many other things to write about, like Briarwood, which is coming up in just six days now. Believe it or not, even Stevie’s silly screenplay thing gave me shivers, just because it reminded me that the show is coming up soon!

I’ve hardly been able to think about anything else since Max gave us the news. I guess that’s why I had that incredible dream last night … But before I write about that, I want to jot down a few notes about what’s been happening lately, since I haven’t written in almost a week and a lot has been going on.

The more I ride Prancer, the more thrilled I am with her. We had our first trail ride together the Monday after we found out about the show. It was wonderful, even though she was a little frisky and fidgety. She fought the bit a little and kept switching to faster paces without my permission. Once she actually started to gallop on the trail! I was pretty embarrassed when I finally pulled her up—I knew I had messed up in a big way.

“I just broke every rule the most amateur rider in the world knows and let my horse run away with me,” I told my friends ruefully.

“Prancer, you bad girl!” Stevie scolded my horse.

“It wasn’t Prancer, it was me,” I reminded her, even though I was sure she was joking. “I never should have let her trot without signaling her.”

“Well, maybe,” Stevie agreed. “But it seems to me that you paid too high a price for a little slip. I mean, you did make a mistake, but at some point before a gallop, Prancer should have listened to you. You gave her every signal in the book. She just wasn’t paying attention.”

“I can’t blame her,” I replied. “I wasn’t doing it right.”

My friends seemed kind of surprised—I guess they’ve both been riding for so long that they’ve forgotten how complicated everything can seem sometimes when it’s still new. I wasn’t sure exactly what I’d done wrong, but obviously I’d messed up somehow, and I know I can do
better. I
have
to do better if I expect to keep riding a valuable, beautiful horse like Prancer.

By the way, before I forget to mention it, Carole has been thinking about something other than horses, horses, horses for once. Well, sort of, anyway. She met this girl Cam on a computer bulletin board thing for riders, and they’ve been e-mailing back and forth for a little while now. I guess Cam must know almost as much about horses as Carole does, because Carole keeps talking about her. It turns out that she’s going to be at Briarwood, too, so she and Carole will have a chance to meet in person. Isn’t that nice?

Anyway, back to Prancer. I’ve been working with her all week. And yesterday before our riding class, Max called the four of us (me, Carole, Stevie, Veronica) into his office to talk more about the show.

“There’s one other aspect of Briarwood I wanted to discuss with you,” he told us. “It’s not official from Briarwood’s point of view, but it is from mine. As you know, I believe all my riders must meet certain standards—nothing unreasonable, mere excellence …”

I smiled along with my friends at that, feeling kind of nervous. Max’s tone was light, but I knew he was only half joking. I also knew that riding an excellent horse like Prancer would challenge me even more than usual.

“I believe that excellence comes from within,” Max went on. “I also believe that one person’s excellence cannot be judged by another’s standards. So here’s
what I want you to do. I want each of you to think about what your own goals are for riding, especially for riding at Briarwood. You’ll each be in five classes, and that means you should be thinking about your goals for each class. For instance, in the Fitting and Showing class, one of you may think of her goal as keeping her horse calm. Another may feel that there’s progress to be made in hoof cleaning. When you’ve decided what your personal goal is, you are going to write it down on a piece of paper and put it in an envelope—one for each class. Then you are going to seal the envelopes and give them to me. After the show we’ll meet again. I’ll return the envelopes to you, and you can open them to remind yourself of what you thought was important before the competition. You then get to grade yourself. I won’t ask what your goals were; I’ll simply ask you if, in your opinion, you met them. I will then give you whatever ribbon you tell me you deserve.”

I thought that was kind of an interesting idea. While my friends (and Veronica) asked Max some questions, I started thinking about what my goals might be. I was still thinking about it when I started tacking up Prancer for class. There were so many possibilities—I still sometimes have trouble keeping my legs perpendicular to the ground and my heels down; sometimes I lose track of which diagonal I’m supposed to be posting on; stuff like that. But somehow, when I looked at Prancer, none of those things even seemed worth writing down.

Prancer was still pretty frisky in class, though I’m sure it was just because she’d been cooped up in her stall for so long during her recovery. She was eager to go faster than Max was letting us go a few times, and when we started jumping she practically sailed over the low jumps, clearing them by yards (well, it seemed that way to me, anyway). It was kind of hard to keep up with her sometimes, but it was fun, too. She’s such a great horse! I’m sure she’ll settle down in time for the show next Saturday. And by the way Max kept paying extra attention to us in yesterday’s lesson, singling us out to try things while the others watched, I’m pretty sure he’s expecting big things from her at Briarwood.

And so am I. Actually, by the time I got home from the stable last night, I wasn’t too sure anymore that Max’s idea about writing down goals made much sense. When I thought about it, wasn’t that what the judges were there for? Still, if he wanted us to do it, I’d do it. I got ready for bed and then settled in against my pillow with pen and paper. I closed my eyes to think about everything I’d learned so far about horseback riding. I guess the long day at the stable caught up with me then, because I fell asleep before I’d written a word. And that’s when I had the dream.

It started out kind of scary. It was sort of like one of those dreams where I walk into class and find out there’s a big test that day and I haven’t studied any of the material for it. Only in this case, I found myself riding Prancer into a show ring where a jump course
was set up, and I realized I had no idea what the path was. I almost panicked, but then I realized that Prancer knew what she was doing and there was nothing for me to worry about. We started the course at a smooth canter, and we cleared every jump perfectly. Prancer made her way easily through the complicated course as if she’d jumped it a thousand times before. All I had to do was focus on my own form, keeping my head up, eyes forward, legs in, heels down, hands firm but not tight, and so on. And I was doing it all right as if it were the easiest, most natural thing in the world. When we finished the course, Prancer drew to a halt in front of the judges’ stand while the judges tallied the scores. Then the judge in the middle stood up. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he announced, “there is no point in continuing this competition. This rider, Miss Lisa Atwood, is simply the finest rider any of us has ever seen. And her horse, Prancer, defies all description. This may be just a local horse show, but you have been treated here to a performance that could take the blue even at the American Horse Show. We don’t need to see any other riders, we have our winner right here!” The audience broke into loud applause as I rode forward, knowing that we deserved every word of praise. And that wasn’t all. When the judge clipped the blue ribbon to Prancer’s bridle, I suddenly remembered that we’d already won the blue in every other class we’d entered. That meant there was just one prize left. I leaned forward to speak to the judge. “Does this
mean that I’m—” The judge didn’t even let me finish. She smiled. “Champion,” she said. “Yes, you are the champion.” The audience went wild at that, making an incredible amount of noise … and a moment later I woke up to the buzz of my alarm clock. But the wonderful feeling of the dream still lingered. It’s still with me now, actually, as I write this.

That feeling made it easy to know what to do about Max’s little assignment. As soon as I woke up, I realized I was still clutching five pieces of white paper. My pen was beside me, and I picked it up and wrote the same word on each piece of paper:
Blue.

With a horse like Prancer to ride, what other goal could I possibly have?

FROM:
           LAtwood

TO:
                Steviethegreat

TO:
                HorseGal

SUBJECT:
      It’s almost time!

MESSAGE:

Just a reminder—let’s meet at Pine Hollow a little early so we can help each other check all our tack and stuff like we discussed, okay? I know we went over everything today before we left, but better safe than sorry, right? We wouldn’t
want a worn stirrup leather or a dusty saddle to cost us any ribbons!

See you tomorrow—I just hope I can manage to sleep tonight. I’m not sure I’ll be able to, though. I’m too excited!

Dear Diary
,

What a difference a day can make. It’s Saturday night, and I’m writing this by the night-light in the hall outside Carole’s room. Carole and Stevie are both sound asleep, and so is Carole’s dad, but I’m wide awake. I just can’t stop thinking about everything that happened today—so much happened, so many things, so many emotions and thoughts and everything … I thought maybe if I wrote it all down here it would start to make more sense, and then I could stop thinking about it and go to sleep.

This morning I woke up with butterflies in my stomach. I remembered right away that it was the day of the show, and I hopped out of bed immediately, not wanting to waste a second. I met my friends at Pine Hollow, and after that the next hour or two were a blur as we got our horses and equipment ready and loaded onto the van for the ride over to Briarwood. Even Veronica was on time for once, and the trip came off without a hitch. Soon we were set up in our temporary stalls at the show grounds, and I set to work on Prancer’s grooming. I wanted to make sure she
looked her very best, especially since she would be judged partially for her grooming in the first class, Fitting and Showing.

By the time the class was about to start, there was no doubt in my mind that Prancer was going to be the most beautiful and best groomed horse in the ring. Her coat was gleaming, her mane and tail lay perfectly smooth and flat, and her incredible breeding and conformation showed in every move of her muscles. I led her out of her stall, following my friends to the east ring, where we would wait until it was time to enter the show ring. Most of the other horses looked good, too, but none of them could hold a candle to Prancer.