Lisa (2 page)

FROM:
           LAtwood

TO:
                Steviethegreat

TO:
                HorseGal

SUBJECT:
      Where can it be?

MESSAGE:

Well, Mrs. Reg still hasn’t called. Maybe she hasn’t noticed yet. Either way, I feel as guilty as can be! Are you sure we looked everywhere? Never mind—
I’m
sure. I just keep thinking a pin can’t disappear into thin air!!! It’s all my fault … 
Aargh!

Dear Diary
,

I thought about not pasting in the above e-mail because I feel so terrible about what happened. But all those people in that article talk about how they like to record everything, good and bad. They claim that after
a few years, they often look back on the bad stuff just as fondly as they do the good. I doubt that’s going to be the case here, but I figure I might as well follow their lead and try to record everything. Besides, it’s not like anyone but me will ever see this. And since it’s almost eleven o’clock and I can’t sleep, I might as well write. Right?

It’s Monday night. Today started out nice and boring and fun, just like last week. I can’t believe I ever complained about my life being like that! I miss it now, that’s for sure.

Anyway, after jump class and our Pony Club trail ride, I had stable chores to do as usual. One of the things my friends and I were assigned to do was to check the hay in the loft for mold and mildew. Since that’s such an important job—moldy hay can make horses really sick, and it can also start fires—I went to tell Max when we finished. I couldn’t find him, but I found his mother, Mrs. Reg, which was just as good since she helps run the stable. She was on the phone when I got to her office, so I waited around for a couple of minutes until she finished her call.

One of the first things I noticed when she hung up was that she looked kind of serious. I guessed it had something to do with her phone call, and it made me feel a little embarrassed about almost eavesdropping (even though I hadn’t actually heard anything). As I was thinking that, I suddenly noticed something shiny on the desk.

“What’s that?” I asked Mrs. Reg.

“Pretty, isn’t it?” she said with a smile. “Go ahead, pick it up.”

I did, and I saw that it wasn’t just pretty—it was beautiful. It was a gold pin of a galloping horse with a diamond for an eye. Mrs. Reg told me her husband had given it to her long ago.

“It would be our fortieth wedding anniversary this week,” she explained as I admired the pin. “It was his wedding present for me.”

That made the pin seem even more special. I was sure Carole and Stevie would love it just as much as I did, so I asked if I could borrow it for a minute to show them.

“Sure,” Mrs. Reg said. “I have to talk with Max about something. If I’m not here when you bring it back, just put it in my center drawer, okay?”

“Okay,” I promised. “Thanks.” I really appreciated her trust in me.

Holding the pin carefully, I hurried to the locker area, where Stevie and Carole were already changing out of their riding clothes. They were probably wondering where I was—Stevie gets really impatient when she thinks we’re late for a Saddle Club meeting at TD’s—but they forgot everything else when they saw the pin.

“Oh, the diamond is so perfect!” Stevie exclaimed. “Wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could have a pin like this for The Saddle Club?”

I didn’t know about that. I loved Mrs. Reg’s pin, but I also love our club pins. They’re silver horse heads, and they’re just right for us.

Before I could say so, Carole started raving about the conformation of the horse on the pin, pointing out that it looked like it was supposed to be an Arabian.

That made Veronica diAngelo, who was also in the locker area, look up and take notice. Normally Veronica doesn’t bother to pay attention to us at all, unless she’s saying something snobby like how expensive her new riding boots are or which upper-crust member of Willow Creek society her family had dinner with the night before. But her horse, Garnet, is a purebred Arabian, so she came over to see what we were doing.

We didn’t have much choice but to show her the pin. While she was looking at it, the ruckus began.

At first there was just a sort of skittering sound, followed by an unmistakable squeak. Before we knew it, one of the stable cats came racing by in hot pursuit of a mouse.

Veronica jumped onto the bench, screaming bloody murder. The rest of us might have laughed—who could really be afraid of a tiny, furry creature like a mouse?—but a second or two after the cat chased the mouse out the door, we all heard a frightened whinny.

“Come on!” Carole said, racing for the door.

She didn’t have to say it twice. I’d already realized what was happening. The chase had ended up in or near Prancer’s stall. Prancer is a wonderful horse, but
like all horses—especially high-strung Thoroughbreds—she has her quirks. One of them is a fear of cats.

To make a long story short, we managed to oust the cat from the stall, calm Prancer, and shoo the mouse outside, safe and sound. After that bit of excellent teamwork, we decided it was past time to head to TD’s and celebrate.

So we did. But we’d hardly taken our seats in our favorite booth when I realized I had no idea what had happened to Mrs. Reg’s pin. We raced back to Pine Hollow and searched the locker area, but there was no sign of it. I even called Veronica at her house to see if she knew where it had gone.

“Pin … pin …,” Veronica said when I asked her about it. “I don’t know. I think I threw the darn thing at the cat.”

That wasn’t much help. I hung up, a sinking feeling in my stomach, just in time to see Max coming toward me. At first I thought he might be mad because I’d used the office phone without permission. But he was in a good mood and let it slide.

“Isn’t it time for you to get home now?” he asked me. “We want you rested for tomorrow’s jump class. You’re doing very well, you know.”

“Thanks,” I said, pleased in spite of my worry. Max is a fantastic riding teacher, and he does a terrific job running the whole stable. He’s so busy he doesn’t have much time to hand out compliments, so when he does, it really means something.

Still, part of me felt worse than ever at his nice words. If he only knew that I had just lost his mother’s beloved pin …

Mademoiselle Lisa, what a wonderful essay on the Eiffel Tower! You have such a fine command of the French language already, after less than a year of study. Keep up the good work!
Bien fait!

Dear Diary
,

I just found that note from Madame Smith last week when I was cleaning out my last year’s notebooks, and I thought I’d stick it in for moral support. I just hope I can remember everything I learned in her class when I meet the French ambassador tomorrow! Anyway, there’s lots to write about—it’s amazing how much can happen in two short days!—but I’m too exhausted to write another paragraph tonight. I’ll have to describe this busy, busy week sometime when I can keep my eyes open.

Dear Diary
,

I really wish I hadn’t used such strong glue to stick in that note from Madame Smith! I feel so stupid about what happened—today is definitely
not
a day I’m going to want to look back on and remember.

I’m just as exhausted tonight as I’ve been this whole exhausting week. I can’t believe it’s only Thursday—it feels like months have passed since Mrs. Reg’s pin disappeared! But tomorrow afternoon feels all too close. That’s when she comes back and finds out it’s lost. I guess that’s why I’m too nervous to sleep. Even though my eyelids feel like they have lead weights attached to them, every time I let them close, I start worrying about where the pin could be and what Mrs. Reg is going to say, and then I’m wide awake again. So I might as well write down what’s been happening …

All Monday evening I kept expecting Mrs. Reg to call and ask me where her pin was. I was a nervous wreck. But by the time I was getting ready to leave for Pine Hollow on Tuesday, I still hadn’t heard a peep from her. I couldn’t imagine why—unless she was waiting to yell at me in person.

Then I thought of something. Maybe the reason Mrs. Reg hadn’t called was that she trusted me. Maybe she figured that if I hadn’t put the pin in her drawer as promised, it was because I had a good reason. That idea made me feel worse than ever, since I’d obviously
proved myself totally
un
trustworthy by getting distracted and losing the pin.

Stevie and Carole were waiting for me when I got to the stable. Without a word, we headed straight inside to face the music. I really appreciated their being there for me. Even though it was my fault, they were willing to come along and support me. That’s what friends are for.

When we reached Mrs. Reg’s office, the only one there was Max. “What are you looking for?” he asked when he saw us, sounding a little tense.

“Where’s Mrs. Reg?” I asked.

“She’s gone for the week,” he replied. “She had to go visit a sick friend who called yesterday. She won’t be back until Friday, and there are a zillion and one things for me to do.”

He went on to complain about some new horse he had to train and a new class beginning and some other things, but I wasn’t really listening. I was still trying to figure out what this meant. Mrs. Reg was gone for the entire week. Could I wait until Friday to confess what I’d done, or would I go completely crazy before then?

A moment later Max dashed away, looking more harried than ever, and Stevie rubbed her hands together. “This is our chance,” she said.

“Chance?” I said. “What do you mean? You think this gives me a four-day head start on leaving the country?”

Stevie shook her head. “It gives
us
a four-day head
start on finishing what we started last night,” she said. “We’re going to run Pine Hollow for Max this week while Mrs. Reg is gone. It will be the perfect opportunity for the three of us to be everywhere, look everywhere, do everything. If that pin is here, anywhere, we’ll find it.”

Carole looked as skeptical as I felt. “And if we don’t?”

Stevie shrugged. “Then we’ll have spent the week earning dozens and dozens of brownie points. How could Max and Mrs. Reg want to kill us when we’re indispensable?”

I thought about that. Sometimes Stevie’s schemes can be pretty harebrained and impractical, but I had to admit that this one made sense. We might actually find the pin, and even if we didn’t, at least all that hard work would be a better use of time than worrying about how I was going to apologize when Mrs. Reg got home.

“It’s worth trying,” I said at last.

Carole agreed. “Then, after it’s all over,” she said, “why don’t you plan to come to my house on Friday for dinner and a sleepover?”

I wasn’t sure I was going to be in a partying mood once Friday rolled around—not unless we found the pin—but I didn’t say so.

I’m not sure how Stevie managed to convince Max to let The Saddle Club take over managing the stable. Carole and I left that completely up to her, since convincing
people to do crazy things is sort of her specialty. But she did it somehow, and before we knew it, all three of us were up to our eyeballs in work, work, work.

It’s no secret that there’s always a lot to do around a stable. Horses need to be fed every day. Their stalls must be mucked out regularly. Stable aisles have to be swept, feed needs to be mixed, tack needs to be cleaned, and about a million other things always seem to need doing.

It’s one thing to pitch in and help. Max insists that all his riders do that—it keeps costs down, and it reminds us that there’s more to riding than climbing in and out of the saddle. But in the past few days, my friends and I have found out that when you’re running the whole show, all that work can become overwhelming pretty quickly. That first day, once riding class was over and our own horses were taken care of, we got ready to begin the
real
work—filling in for Mrs. Reg. Luckily (sort of), she’d left a list of what needed to be done. The first item read, “Painting, front of stable.” That sounded like a pretty big job, but we figured we could do it if we all pitched in. After that was something about a new class of four beginners who were coming on Wednesday at eight o’clock. Fortunately Red O’Malley, the head stable hand, was scheduled to teach the class, so all we had to do was get some ponies ready for the students beforehand. Carole volunteered for that job, since her dad was dropping her off early on his way to work.

We went on with the list. The next item was “Buy food for Friday.” We weren’t sure what to do about that at first, but as usual Stevie came up with a plan.

“Whenever anybody delivers anything, there are papers,” she pointed out. “Somewhere around here Mrs. Reg must have an invoice or something from the last delivery. I’ll just call the same place and make the same order. If the stuff was okay last time, it’s going to be fine this time, too. The hardest part may be getting it here by Friday.”

“Nice thinking,” Carole said admiringly.

I couldn’t help agreeing with that. I also couldn’t help thinking it was my turn to come up with some good ideas. After all, it was my fault we had to do all this work in the first place. “What’s next on the list?” I asked.

And now I’ve come to the part of the story that still makes me blush (especially when I think about that silly note from my French teacher). “Wow,” Stevie said as she checked the list. “We’ve got a VIP coming to Pine Hollow. The French ambassador himself! It says here, ‘Thursday, eleven, Am. French. One-hour trail ride.’ ”

We were surprised we hadn’t heard about that before, but we didn’t really think about it much. Willow Creek sometimes seems like it’s a million miles away from everywhere, but the truth is, it’s really not far from Washington, D.C. That means there are always a lot of people around who work for the government
(ours or somebody else’s). Not too long ago, the ambassador from Brazil even came to Pine Hollow for a trail ride.