Stable Witch (9 page)

But just what did that say about Stevie?

A
S FAST AS
she could, Lisa gathered up her stuff and tore out of Pine Hollow. She ran toward home, her head spinning, but there was one clear thought in her mind: she just had to talk to Carole. That was her only chance of sorting through this horrible mess.

What would Stevie say when she found out that she might not be allowed to ride in the show? And what if Carole and Lisa didn’t defend her to Max? Would she ever talk to them again? But what could they say to Max when they didn’t know what to think themselves? Lisa ran faster and faster.

As she ran, jumbled-up bits of Max’s conversation and her own thoughts floated back to her. “Have to
be fair to all my students—no proof that Stevie Lake was the perpetrator—both a horse and a rider in extreme danger—extreme danger—both a horse and a rider …” The words ran through Lisa’s head almost faster than her feet ran over the ground. Something was wrong with the picture. Something was definitely wrong, but she didn’t know what. Her burning lungs forced her to slow to a jog. Why couldn’t she figure out what was bothering her?

Then it came to her.
Someone had risked putting both a horse and a rider in extreme danger.
How could she have been so blind? Lisa came to a complete standstill. She stood panting by the side of the road, as her mind went over and over the evidence.

Stevie wouldn’t be above doing something that would make a fool of Veronica diAngelo, any more than she’d be above serving plaster of paris pancakes or expecting Lisa to climb into a saddle without stirrups. Humans could take a knock or two and be fine. Making them look stupid was part of the joke.

But there was no way, ever, at any time, that Stevie would do something to imperil a horse. And yet, sabotaging a stirrup leather would do just that. If a leather broke in the middle of the jump, unseating the rider, the horse could become equally imbalanced. A jumping horse who took a spill could break a leg! As sure as
Lisa had brown hair and freckles, Stevie Lake was innocent.

Never had the thought of a horse’s breaking its leg made Lisa so excited. She forgot all about her spent lungs. Remembering the unfair assumptions about Stevie that everyone—including her and Carole—had made spurred her on, and she sprinted flat out toward home.

Carole picked up the phone after one ring. Breathlessly, Lisa poured out her story of overhearing Mrs. diAngelo’s call. “All the way home, I felt like a sleuth in a mystery story who knows she’s heard enough to crack the case but just can’t sort out the information. But it’s simple, really. Veronica got so hysterical that everyone focused on how hurt she was. The only thing that happened to Garnet was that she got scared and ran around the ring. But think about what would have happened if the leather hadn’t broken when Veronica was mounting. What if it had snapped, say, in midair, over one of the fences?”

Carole, who would rather have broken her own arm than seen Starlight with a sniffle, didn’t need much more prompting than that. Her train of thought followed the same path Lisa’s had, and she came to the same conclusion. “Stevie would never put Garnet at
risk like that!” she cried. “She would never make the horse an innocent victim of her feud with Veronica.”

“Exactly,” Lisa said, relieved that Carole was now as convinced as she was of Stevie’s innocence. “We forgot that cutting the leather was an attack on Garnet, too.”

Now that the two girls realized that they were back on Stevie’s side where they belonged, a huge weight seemed to have been lifted off them. They could hardly believe that they had truly doubted their friend. And now there was one thing they had to do and do it right away: call Stevie and apologize. It wasn’t going to be fun, but both Carole and Lisa knew their friend deserved the apology.

Lying on her bed at home, Stevie stared up at the ceiling. She had spent practically the whole day in her room, feeling awful. There was a knot in her stomach that wouldn’t go away. It was one thing to know that the biggest snob at Pine Hollow had it in for you, but it was another thing entirely when your friends betrayed you. She had seen the doubt in Lisa’s and Carole’s eyes, and it hurt. She couldn’t believe that they, of all people, thought she was capable of such an attack. Since running out of T.D.’s, she had racked her brain trying to find a way to convince them of her
innocence. But the fact was, it made her mad to have to convince them at all. If they were going to join the diAngelo camp, then nothing could stop them.

With a sigh, Stevie rolled onto her stomach, letting her left arm drop to the floor. She knew she couldn’t just stay there forever. Without Saddle Club plans, though, it was hard to get motivated to do much of anything.

The shrill ringing of her bedroom phone broke through Stevie’s thoughts. She had nearly fallen asleep, she was so exhausted with worry.

“Stevie, it’s for you!” Mrs. Lake called.

“Who is it?” Stevie yelled back.

“Who do you think it is? It’s Lisa and Carole!” Mrs. Lake answered.

Listlessly, Stevie sat up to take the call. She really didn’t feel like talking to Lisa and Carole. There was nothing they could say to her that would make any difference if they were still unsure about whom to believe. And it would only make her feel worse to listen to them avoiding the subject. After a long pause she picked up the receiver. “Yes?” she said curtly. “What do you want?”

Lisa jumped right in with the story of Mrs. diAngelo. “She’s really trying to persuade Max to keep you out of the show because of what happened to
Veronica. Max was defending you, but he’s under a lot of pressure. He hasn’t decided what to do yet, and we’ve been thinking—”

Before Lisa could explain the purpose of her call, Stevie broke in, furious at her friends. “Well, I’ve been thinking, too!” she practically yelled. “And you know what I’ve been thinking? That one of the rules of The Saddle Club is that we be willing to help each other out in any kind of situation. Or is that not one of the rules anymore? If you guys think I shouldn’t ride in the show, fine!”

Stevie’s fingers were trembling as she gripped the receiver, waiting for Carole and Lisa’s reaction to her angry torrent. She hated to talk that way to her friends, but Mrs. diAngelo’s attempt to keep her out of the show was the last straw. How could The Saddle Club just stand by and let it happen?

“Stevie?” Carole asked quietly.

Stevie could hardly respond. Finally she managed to get out a choked “Yes?”

“We were calling to tell you that we’re sorry we ever doubted you, we believe in your innocence one hundred percent, and we’ll stand behind you no matter what,” Carole said.

Stevie stared at the receiver suspiciously. “But, I
don’t get it—why did you change your minds?” she asked.

In a rush, Lisa and Carole explained how they had come to their conclusion. They had known that Stevie would do anything to beat Veronica—or at least almost anything. What they hadn’t realized until today was that a trick like slashing the stirrup leather was just as dangerous for Garnet as for Garnet’s rider.

“We know you’d never do anything that would put a horse at risk,” Lisa finished.

Again there was a pause, as Stevie tried to absorb everything that her friends were saying. It was funny, but she had been so surprised that someone else seemed to have it in for Veronica, she hadn’t thought of Garnet either. And now it was nice to hear her friends apologize, but the memory of yesterday still stung. These were her two best friends in the world, and their doubting her had hurt—badly. Stevie couldn’t just put on a cheery face and pretend everything was perfect.

“It’s nice of you to call,” she said, finally. “But it would have been even nicer if you had been there for me yesterday.”

“We know,” Carole and Lisa responded in unison.

“And you’re right—the way we acted was completely
out of line with The Saddle Club ideals,” Lisa added.

“Well try to make it up to you,” Carole said gravely.

Stevie paused before saying, “I guess I am a little too competitive with Veronica. I can understand why you thought I might have gone overboard this time.” Then, with an effort to laugh, she added, “I sure look guilty, though, don’t I?”

Lisa hesitated. “I hate to say it, Stevie, but you’re the obvious culprit.”

Lisa and Carole went on to apologize nine or ten more times before Stevie could cut them off.

“Listen—apology accepted, okay?” she said. She knew it might take a while longer for her to completely forgive Lisa and Carole, but there was no point in making them grovel.

Now that the air was cleared, Lisa decided that it was time to get back to the practical aspect of the problem.

“I think there’s only one solution,” she continued. “We have to find the real perpetrator and expose him—or her—to Max.”

“But that’s practically impossible. Veronica has so many enemies, how can we single out one?” Stevie joked.

“With some good old-fashioned sleuthing,” Lisa replied.

“Some good old-fashioned, lightning-fast sleuthing, you mean,” Carole put in. “We’ve got to clear Stevie’s name in less than a week.”

“There’s no better time than the present,” said Lisa. “Let’s get back to the scene of the crime.”

The girls agreed to meet at Pine Hollow that afternoon. They would do some investigating, as well as take a Saddle Club ride together.

That prompted Stevie to ask Lisa how the jumping practices were going. Lisa sighed. “They’re going nowhere fast,” she said glumly. She described her torturous sessions with Veronica. “The worst thing is, she’s right most of the time. I make so many mistakes that I can’t even remember all of them. I wrote down a list of problems, but it’s not helping. As soon as I remember one thing, I forget the other twenty-five. Poor Prancer has just about given up on me. Every time we go near a fence, I can practically feel her cringing.”

Stevie and Carole were sympathetic to Lisa’s problems. Both of them felt bad that they hadn’t helped her out more. And both agreed that trying to learn anything from Veronica—or even in her presence—was probably next to impossible. They promised to try and help figure out what was going wrong.

“You know what?” Lisa said. “I feel better already. Somehow, when The Saddle Club works together, I feel like there’s no obstacle we can’t conquer.”

“Or jump over,” Stevie added, giggling. With a click she put down the receiver. In one phone call, her day had gone from total frustration to total relief. She was so glad that Carole and Lisa were back on her side that even the news about Mrs. diAngelo seemed unimportant.

Humming happily, she began to fish her riding stuff out of her overflowing hamper.

“B
UT
I
THOUGHT
I was
supposed
to lean forward,” Lisa said. The three girls had set up a short course of jumps in the outside ring—nothing big, but with enough variety to bring out whatever problems Lisa felt she had. Carole and Stevie were watching Lisa go over them. Unfortunately, Lisa seemed to be getting more and more uptight as the practice session progressed.

Carole thought for a minute. “You are supposed to lean forward—just not that far forward.” She didn’t know how else to put it. That was the hard thing about being an instructor: you not only had to know what to do, you also had to be able to explain it in such a way that your student understood. It was part
of what made teaching fun, but right now, Carole just wanted to zap the information into Lisa’s brain.

On her next time around, Lisa’s jumping position was better, but she was still having problems with her hands. She either dropped them completely before the fence or held on too late. Again Carole struggled for the right words, but all she could say for sure was that Lisa’s timing was off. She knew Max would have been able to assess the problem in a matter of minutes and provide encouraging and useful advice.

“I can’t seem to get into any kind of a rhythm,” Lisa said. “I’m either ahead or behind.”

“That’s because you’re too worried about it,” Stevie told her. “You’ve got to relax.”

Ruefully, Lisa thought of the list she had made. “I know I do, but it’s like a catch twenty-two. I can’t relax into a rhythm because I’m too worried about it, and I can’t stop worrying until I relax.” Lisa knew how frustrated she sounded, and, for once, she didn’t care. At least with Carole and Stevie critiquing her, she didn’t feel that she had to pretend to be pleased with her performance. Unlike Veronica, they truly wanted her to do well. Besides, they had seen her do well previously so they knew she could. But even all their help wasn’t helping. Every adjustment she made seemed exaggerated and uncomfortable. She didn’t
want to admit it, but for the first time since she’d made her resolution, she felt like giving up.