Stevie (15 page)

Carole moves as if in a daze. Mr. McLeod tells her where the tack is, and she rushes to get the filly ready. She is going to ride a real racehorse! It’s unbelievable!

(Actually, it
was
unbelievable. Carole had to tell me and Lisa at least three times before we figured out that she wasn’t pulling our legs.)

Finally the filly is all set. The lightweight racing saddle is much smaller than the ones Carole is used to, and the stirrups a bit higher. Still, a saddle’s a saddle.

And moments later, Carole finds herself high up on the back of a real, live racehorse! It’s like a dream come true.

Prancer’s motions are smooth, almost seamless. Every movement she makes is sleek and graceful. Carole walks her, then trots her, while Judy and Mr. McLeod watch.
Carole feels kind of self-conscious, but she soon realizes they aren’t watching her. They’re watching Prancer, trying to see if her leg is bothering her in any way.

“Let’s take her around the practice track,” Mr. McLeod suggests. He points the way to his farm’s practice track—which looks like a real racetrack, just a little bit smaller—and Carole rides Prancer there, still enjoying the filly’s fluid gaits.

Then the dream gets even better. Prancer steps onto the track. Following Mr. McLeod’s directions, Carole takes her to a trot, then a canter.…

And then, with just the slightest pressure from Carole’s legs, the filly breaks into a gallop!

Carole adjusts her position, leaning forward to maintain her balance at the new, much faster gait. She can feel the incredible power and speed of the horse beneath her as the filly’s long strides eagerly gobble up the track. Wind whistles past her ears, whipping back her hair even under her hard hat. Prancer is practically flying! And Carole is the pilot!

All too soon, Carole realizes it’s time to stop. She pulls up the filly, who is dancing with eagerness to keep running but obeys Carole’s commands.

It is one of the most special days of Carole’s life. She knows she will never forget it—or Prancer.

Miss Fenton, being the astute and erudite woman that you are, you can probably already guess that Carole had totally fallen in love with Prancer. But what you may not realize is that she was also falling in love with her job helping Judy. I’m not saying she’s definitely decided to be a vet or
anything—it’s still on the list, but so are lots of other careers (like being a jockey, now that she’s seen what that can be like)—but she loves to learn about anything having to do with horses, so hanging out with someone who knows as much as Judy was her idea of big fun. Even though she had to witness a lot of sad and upsetting things, like sick and injured and poorly treated and dying horses, as well as wonderful things, like newborn foals and miraculous recoveries.

Anyway, my point is that I thought it would be useful to this part of the story if we had a word from Judy Barker, the vet Carole has been working with. I asked her to write a brief statement explaining how important Carole is to all her patients, especially Prancer. Her statement follows.

Statement from Judy Barker

My name is Judy Barker. I am an equine veterinarian from Willow Creek, Virginia. Stevie Lake has asked me to write a few words about Carole Hanson. I’m not much of a writer, but I’ll do my best, since Stevie seems to think it’s important.

I asked Carole to assist me on my rounds because she’s one of the best young horsewomen I’ve ever met She takes horse care and horse health very seriously. I had already been considering asking her to Join me on my rounds when her own horse, a bay gelding named Starlight, developed a slight swelling in his foreleg. Knowing that Carole would need something to take her mind off her worries, I made the offer, and she accepted.

Since that time, Carole has been an invaluable part of my practice. She accompanies me on my rounds as frequently as her schedule
allows. Her understanding of and enthusiasm for horses has helped carry us through good times and bad.

Carole was especially helpful with one patient recently, a Thoroughbred filly named Prancer. Carole had a good rapport with this horse, which came in handy when the filly needed comforting and soothing after a terrible accident when she was suffering a great deal of pain and fear. Carole’s steadfast courage and helpfulness throughout a very tense and tragic situation were of great comfort to me and also, I strongly suspect, to Prancer.

To sum up, Carole has been a wonderful assistant. Through her young and enthusiastic eyes, I see my patients in a whole new way.

Welcome to My Life …

See, Miss Fenton? Wasn’t that a touching note? Judy really appreciates Carole’s help, and no wonder. Carole is good for the horses she works with. Just like those same horses are good for her. They help her learn, and they took her mind off Starlight’s leg problem enough so that she wouldn’t worry too much.

People are good for horses. Horses are good for people.

Isn’t that a life lesson more valuable than anything that we could learn from mere homework? I leave it to you to decide.

I just had another idea for an essay I could write for your report. That last one (about Starlight’s leg) turned out pretty well, if I do say so myself. I’m glad you’re using it. But sometime, if you don’t mind, I’d like to see exactly what you cut out. I know you said it was just a few words here and there, but I want to make sure everything is still clear. There are a few places where it could be easy to get confused, like the part where I explain the positioning of the navicular bone in the foot versus the flexor tendon and pedal bone, or the section about the differences between introductory-level and training-level tests in dressage. And since Miss Fenton isn’t really a horse person, well, you can’t be too careful, right?

But anyway, my new idea is that I could write something
giving my impressions of the whole racetrack scene. I spent a lot of time thinking about it afterward, as you know. And I still think it’s really interesting (and kind of weird) that the whole racing industry centers around the connection between horses and making money. I mean, we ride and love and care for and appreciate horses every day, but we never expect them to repay us by earning money for us the way Mr. McLeod and other people in the racing industry do. It still seems like such a strange way to think about such wonderful animals, to me at least.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the racetrack isn’t an exciting place. I mean, we all had fun that day, didn’t we? At least until the accident. It’s a whole world devoted to horses, and that can’t be all bad. In fact, it was pretty exciting.

So anyway, I could talk more about that stuff in my essay, along with the interesting information I learned about racing (I just found a book at the library about the history of racing, so I could include some of that info, too) and my experiences behind the scenes with Judy and Prancer and all the rest of it. I could probably turn that into ten pages or so pretty easily, and I’m sure your headmistress would be really impressed, especially if I made sure to include a lot of cool racing terms like “furlong” and “photo finish.” What do you think?

So get this. Now Carole wants to do some ten-page dissertation on horse racing for my project. If Miss Fenton only knew how many millions of words I was saving her from reading, she’d probably just give me an A for the rest of my school career! Well, maybe not. But you know how Carole can get when she’s enthusiastic about a subject. And of course, when it comes to horses, she’s enthusiastic about EVERY subject. Anyway, I managed to talk her out of her latest contribution by telling her that I was afraid all the research she’d done might end up making me look bad—you know, as if I was making my friends do my assignment for me. Come to think of it, that might work equally well the next time Lisa starts blabbing on about footnotes.…

Anyway, despite how it sounds, I really do appreciate all their help and support. Yours, too, of course. That stuff you wrote about me being honest and responsible was brilliant. I
was
pretty worried that some of the facts of the story up to that point might have made me sound, well, you know—not quite as honest and responsible as someone like Miss Fenton might think I should be. You know? So thanks again.

Now all I have to do is convince her that spending the day at the track instead of working on my English paper was
the right thing to do. Naturally, I know it was. But teachers and other adults can be so unreasonable sometimes. Thank goodness Mom and Dad didn’t suspect I hadn’t even gotten past chapter one of
To Kill a Mockingbird
by the day we went to the track (let alone started the paper, which was due the next Tuesday), or they never would have agreed to it. Instead of cheering on all those beautiful Thoroughbreds, I would have spent the day locked in my room with my nose buried in my book.

Speaking of which, you’ll never guess who I saw at the school library today with her nose buried in a whole huge stack of books.

Veronica!

Yes, you read right. Veronica diAngelo was making like a study buddy after school. Don’t ask me why. But I saw it with my own eyes when I stopped in to return a book. I assumed it must be just one more symptom of her weirdness disease. But then I noticed that she didn’t even seem to be reading. She had a book open in front of her, but she was just sort of staring into space. She didn’t even see me watching her.

I was about to go over and say something to her—I mean, I was pretty curious about this. She hasn’t made a snotty remark or insulted me in well over a week now. But just then Betsy Cavanaugh came into the library and saw me looking at Veronica.

“Poor thing,” she whispered, with this really sympathetic look on her face. “She’s just killing herself on that assignment.”

“What assignment?” I asked quickly. Veronica is in a lot of my classes, and I started to panic that while I was concentrating on my extra-credit report, one of my teachers had slipped in some huge project when I wasn’t paying attention.

Betsy looked uncertain. “Well, I guess it’s not really a secret,” she said, glancing around to make sure no one else could hear. “Miss Fenton is making Veronica write an extra-credit report. You know, because her grades have slipped these past few weeks.”

I tell you, my jaw practically dropped on the floor at that one. I couldn’t believe it. So Veronica has the same assignment I do! Isn’t that bizarre? Who would have guessed that Little Miss Perfect could ever have problems with her grades just like the rest of us? I’d always assumed that she just paid all the teachers to give her As and Bs, or maybe paid her servants to do her homework for her. I wouldn’t put it past her.

That’s not all. After Betsy wandered away, I got ready to leave. But just then I saw Veronica suddenly glance at her watch. Then she gasped, jumped up with a worried expression on her face, and rushed straight out of the library, brushing right past me without even noticing I was there. Naturally, she didn’t bother to put away any of the books she’d been using, either.

I can’t even begin to imagine what’s up with her. It’s totally mysterious. Maybe after I finish my report I’ll have time to figure it out!

But it will definitely have to wait until after I finish. Because right after I left the library, I ran into Miss Fenton. And from what she said, I know now—if I didn’t before—that this report had better be good. It went something like this:

MISS FENTON: Hello, Stephanie.

STEVIE: Hi, Miss Fenton. I was just on my way home to work on my report.

MISS FENTON (looking down her nose like she always does): Good. Because I’m really looking forward to reading it. And I expect all your hard work to show.

STEVIE: Oh, it will! And I am. Working. Hard, that is. Um, gotta go.

MISS FENTON (calling after me): Monday morning, Stephanie! Bright and early!
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!

Okay, I made up that wicked laugh at the end. But the rest is true. She was giving me this really intense look when she said it, like she suspected I was really goofing off all day instead of working on the report. Which is so totally not true this time. I’ve just got to make sure there’s no way she can possibly think that I didn’t put my best effort into this.

So I’d better get to it, huh? I’m going to try to call Dorothy DeSoto now to ask her some questions about that dressage demonstration she did. I want to include a lot of information about it in the report. Do you happen to know the time difference between here and London? Never mind. I’ll just go ahead and call—if she’s sleeping, she won’t pick up the phone, right? And I can just leave a message.

Wish me luck—I’ll need it!

As some of you may have heard by now (thank you, S.L.), the Cross County Pony Club has invited all members of Horse Wise to participate in their upcoming fox hunt. We will be holding a mock hunt of our own prior to the real hunt to give us all some practice in the field. Well discuss that further next week.