Lisa (16 page)

“Perfect for what?” Alice said so sharply that even Stevie looked at her in surprise.

“Perfect to show you that jumping is wonderful and you have all the skills you need to do it very well,” Stevie answered, sounding a little defensive.

“And who asked you to do it and said it would be okay?” Alice demanded. By now there was no mistaking the fact that she was very angry. “Max Regnery wasn’t behind this, was he?”

“No,” I said quickly. “Max didn’t know anything
about it. It was our idea. We thought it was a good one.”

“You thought wrong,” Alice said bluntly. Without another word, she turned Starlight around and began walking him back down the trail in the direction we’d come. She had him step back over the tree trunk very carefully.

“Alice?” I called after her, still not quite sure what we’d done wrong.

“Leave me alone.”

“We just want to help,” Stevie tried.

“Then leave me alone from now on,” Alice retorted. That was the last word she said to us. I was kind of worried about her, and I thought maybe we should go after her. But Stevie reminded me that we ought to move that tree trunk off the trail first. Besides that, I think she was a little hurt by Alice’s reaction to what we’d thought was a good deed. I know I was.

We talked about it as we cleared the path. “We were just trying to help,” I mused sadly. “Why is she so angry with us?”

“I’ve been thinking about it, and I’ve decided she’s probably not all that angry,” Stevie said. “It’s just that we surprised her. Maybe she’s really angry with herself for letting so many jumping opportunities go by without trying it before now. The way I figure it, by the time she gets back to Pine Hollow, she’ll be really glad we tricked her and ashamed she rode off alone.”

“Maybe,” I said, though secretly I couldn’t help thinking that Stevie, with her naturally optimistic nature, was getting a little carried away. Alice had looked really angry as she rode off. She had looked really angry at
us.

“I bet she’s waiting for us right now so she can apologize,” Stevie went on. “She’s probably talked to Mrs. Reg and signed up for a zillion jump classes for the rest of the time she’s here.”

“Maybe,” I said again.

But Stevie was wrong. When we got back to the stable, there was no sign of Alice. And when we tried to call her, she didn’t want to talk to us. In fact, just about the only thing she did tell us was that she was going to quit riding!

We definitely weren’t expecting that. For the next couple of days, I couldn’t get Alice out of my mind. By Tuesday, the day of our next riding lesson, she was all I could think about. The one thing that bothered me even more than the idea that Alice was angry with Stevie and me was the idea that she might actually have meant it when she’d said she wasn’t going to ride anymore. Horseback riding is the most important thing in the world to me, and I couldn’t bear the idea that somebody else might never do it again because of something I’d done—even if I’d meant well. I felt positively terrible.

Finally I called Stevie to talk about it. She was having the same sorts of thoughts as I was.

“I can’t believe she means she’ll never ride again,” she said.

“But what if she did mean it?” I asked. “That means we caused it even if we don’t know why.”

“Then maybe we
ought
to know why,” Stevie said.

“Maybe the why is none of our business,” I suggested. It was something I’d been thinking about a lot that morning.

There was a long pause on the other end of the line. One of the strongest parts of Stevie’s personality is her insatiable curiosity. She tends to forget that some things just aren’t her business to know. But I was starting to see that we might have made a big mistake. We’d just assumed that Alice’s reasons for not jumping weren’t important and needed to be overcome. What if we were wrong? What if Alice had serious reasons for not wanting to jump and serious reasons for not wanting to talk about it? I explained what I was thinking to Stevie.

“But what kind of serious reasons could she have?” Stevie asked.

“None of our business,” I replied.

Stevie finally seemed to catch on. “You mean we were just meddling?”

“I guess that’s the word,” I agreed.

“How soon can you get here?” Stevie asked.

I was used to Stevie’s quick changes of direction. She’s a girl of action, and it can be a little hard to keep up with her sometimes. But I just answered the question.
“Fifteen minutes,” I said. “I have to get changed and pack my stuff for riding class.”

When I rang Stevie’s doorbell fifteen minutes later, she was waiting for me. “We have to talk to Alice,” she announced. “We have to get her to come to class today. If she makes good on her threat and misses just one riding class, it may take a lot longer to get her back into the saddle.”

I agreed wholeheartedly with that. We knew we had some major apologizing to do, and we had to do it fast, before it was time for class. We walked over to Alice’s grandmother’s house.

Alice answered the door. “What are you doing here?” she demanded through the screen door.

“We came to say we’re sorry,” I began.

“You should be,” Alice said.

“We are,” Stevie chimed in.

“We thought we were being helpful,” I said.

“You weren’t.”

“We know,” Stevie said. “We were just meddling.”

“It isn’t any of your business whether I want to jump or not,” Alice told us.

“We know that now,” I said, and Stevie agreed.

“But if you don’t ever ride again and we caused it,” Stevie went on, “then it is our business. You don’t have to jump and you don’t even have to talk to us. But we know that you love riding just as much as we do, and we can’t stand the idea that you might not ride because of something we did that we shouldn’t have done.”

“Even though we were just trying to be helpful,” I added.

“We’re sorry,” Stevie said sincerely. “Really, we are.”

Alice didn’t say anything for a long time. She just stood there behind the screen door. Then, as we watched, her eyes brimmed with tears.

I wasn’t sure what to say. Luckily Stevie spoke up. “Class starts at two,” she told Alice.

“Please come,” I added softly.

Alice stepped back and closed the door, and there was nothing for us to do then but go to Pine Hollow, catch up on some chores, and hope that Alice would show up for class.

She did, thank goodness. We didn’t have time to talk to her before class, but she caught up to us afterward.

“I—uh,” I stammered. Stevie and I had both been dying to talk to Alice, but now that she was there, neither of us knew what to say.

Alice spoke up and saved us from trying to figure it out. “I just wanted to thank you two.”

“Thank us?” Stevie sounded surprised. “For what?”

“For making me come back,” Alice replied with a small smile.

This time I knew exactly what to say. “You’re welcome,” I said, meaning it with every fiber of my being. It was nice to know that we’d finally done something right.

And that was that. Alice left at the end of the week,
and we still don’t know why she doesn’t jump. I guess we’ll never know. But that’s okay, because it really is none of our business. Some things just need to stay private, and no matter how curious we are, we need to respect that.

Yikes! I just realized I’ve been writing for ages. And I haven’t even gotten to the scary stuff that happened to Carole while she was in Florida. I guess I’ll have to put that off for another day, though. Mom will be home from the mall soon, and I really want to start thinking about my writing project before it’s time for dinner.

To help remind me that I still have to write about Carole, I’m going to paste in the postcard she sent us from Florida. Unfortunately Stevie left it sitting on the edge of Topside’s stall, and I barely saved it in time—I had to yank it out of his mouth. That horse loves to taste absolutely everything! It got a little blurred by his slobber in the process, so I’m not sure if the picture on the front is supposed to be Mickey Mouse or a horse and buggy on Main Street. Knowing Carole, though, I’m betting on the horse and buggy …

Hi, guys!

This place is fantastic. And tomorrow may be even better. I’m going riding on the beach with Sheila. Can’t wait. And can’t wait to see you!

Love, Carole

FROM:
           LAtwood

TO:
                HorseGal

SUBJECT:
      A favor …

MESSAGE:

Hi, Carole! I just tried to call, but your line was busy. I need to do an assignment called “People Helping People” for my writing class, and I was wondering if you’d mind if I used the story of what happened to you in Florida. I think it would be the perfect example of PHP, don’t you? So would you mind? Can I write about you? Pretty please?

FROM:
           HorseGal

TO:
                LAtwood

SUBJECT:
      Favor granted

MESSAGE:

Of course you can write about me for your project! I’d be honored. If you want to talk to my relatives, just let me know and I’ll give you their phone number.

I can’t wait to read your assignment when you’re finished! Although if you ask me, the title should be “People and Ponies Helping People.” Just a thought!:-)

I believe it’s important for people to help other people however they can. Sometimes this means explaining homework to someone who doesn’t understand. Or it could mean volunteering at a soup kitchen or reading to younger kids or unloading the dishwasher without being asked.

But sometimes helping can be even more important than that. Sometimes it can literally mean the difference between life and death.

My friend Carole learned about that firsthand recently. She was visiting relatives in Florida, and one day she and her cousin Sheila decided to ride their horses along the beach and have a picnic. It was a perfect afternoon, and they had a lot of fun riding, eating, and napping on the warm sand.

Then they decided to go swimming. As they waded out through the gently lapping waves, Sheila gave Carole a warning that she will always remember: “Never turn your back on the ocean.”

The two girls frolicked in the surf for quite a while before Sheila decided to go back to shore and bring out a flutterboard. As she watched her cousin return to their picnic spot, Carole noticed that it seemed to have moved about fifty yards down the beach. But she didn’t think much about it.

She started to swim out toward the place where the waves began to crest. She wanted to be ready to use the flutterboard as soon as Sheila got back with it. A nice-sized wave came. Carole jumped up into it, enjoying the frothy lathering she got as the crest passed her by. But the next wave broke so quickly that she didn’t have time to take a big enough breath, so she ended up with a noseful of salty water. She coughed and tried to clear out her nose, and she rubbed her eyes, which were stinging from the ocean water.