Best Friends (11 page)

“If snow kept the door from closing, it ought to keep it from opening,” Lisa said, admiring the foot-deep pile of snow she’d pushed against the door.

Stevie shifted her weight, releasing the door from her guard. It shifted toward her a bit, but then compressed the snowdrift that Lisa had created and stayed where it belonged.

Stevie took one of the shovels and helped pack the snow up against the door. Then, when Lisa had cleared enough of the drift from the other half, the two of them swung it shut as well. Lisa began piling more of the indoor snow up against the door.

“Nice job,” Stevie said.

“But now it’ll get warmer in here and the snow will melt.…”

Stevie figured out what she was driving at. This was temporary. They were going to have to do something else to keep the doors closed.

While Lisa finished her snowbank, Stevie opened the tool cabinet. She found a couple of sturdy boards, some hammers, and some nails. Until Max could replace the broken latch, they were going to have to make do with what she could find.

The two girls nailed four boards across the old doors and then strung fence wire from each of the hinges in a big X pattern, straddling the entire doorway.

“Genius,” Stevie declared. “Pure genius.”

Lisa clapped her on the back. “Yes, we are,” she agreed. “Now let’s help Carole.”

They put the tools away and each found an empty bucket to use to finish watering the horses.

That was the easy part. Carole had saved Danny until last, and when the three girls returned to his stall, he was even more nervous than he had been before.

“I thought he’d get better when the wind stopped,” Carole said.

“And it
is
a little warmer,” said Lisa.

“Right, like it’s zoomed up to maybe fourteen degrees in here,” Stevie said.

“Well, none of that is making him feel better right now. I’m worried about what he might do,” said Carole.

Stevie and Lisa watched the horse twitch, jump, rear, and buck. The ever-calm Chip in the stall next to him seemed to be catching it from him. He, too, was stomping.

“I think we have to tranq him,” Carole said.

“How?” Stevie asked, wondering exactly how Carole figured she was going to give this high-strung, nervous, agitated horse a shot of tranquilizer.

“Very carefully,” Carole said.

That did not make Stevie feel better.

Lisa and Stevie followed Carole into Mrs. Reg’s office, where the medications were kept. Nobody ever liked to give a horse a tranquilizer, but sometimes it was necessary, and the girls had seen it done. They’d each given shots to their horses. It was something every owner needed to know how to do. It was also something they’d always done with the supervision of Max or Judy Barker, Pine Hollow’s equine vet. But this time they were on their own.

Carole opened the medicine chest with the key she found in Mrs. Reg’s desk.

“It’s a good thing you know where everything is,” said Stevie.

“Well, I’ve worked here. And I’ve been Judy’s assistant sometimes, remember?”

“I remember,” Stevie said. “And that memory comforts me greatly.”

Carole played the flashlight through the cabinet, selecting a syringe and finding the bottle of medicine labeled
TRANQUILIZER
in Mrs. Reg’s refrigerator. Expertly, she stuck the needle into the little bottle and drew out the proper dosage.

At least she hoped it was the proper dosage. Last time she’d done this for one of the ponies. Danny was bigger than a pony, but he wasn’t a
lot
bigger than a pony. She was guessing. She knew it was a guess, and she hoped it was a smart one. She flicked her finger authoritatively at the syringe, brought the little bubble to the top, and pushed it out with the plunger.

“Well, that part’s done. Here, you take the flashlight,” she said, handing the light to Lisa.

Carole wasn’t at all sure how she was going to convince Danny to let her give him a shot. But as they passed their food coolers, she got an idea.

“Don’t we have some oatmeal cookies in there?” Carole asked.

“Are you kidding?” Stevie asked. “You’re hungry now?”

“Not me,” said Carole. “I just wonder if Danny wouldn’t like a sweet snack.”

“And who’s going to hold it for him while he bites her hand off?”

That was a problem Carole hadn’t considered, but she had an idea.

“Let’s hand it to him on one of those shovels,” she suggested. “They ought to be clean enough by now.”

And so they did. Lisa put the cookie—and a piece of apple in case that seemed like a better idea to the horse—on the flat blade of one of the shovels she’d used to move snow. Carole went into Chip’s stall and climbed up on the divider between Chip’s and Danny’s stalls. Stevie stood behind her to hold on in case she lost her balance.

“Okay. Now,” Carole said, once she was in place.

Slowly and evenly, Lisa pushed the goody-laden shovel into the stall. Danny, cowering in the corner, didn’t move. He shifted his glance back and forth between Lisa and Carole. Outside, the wind howled and a fresh burst of snow pummeled the wall behind him, startling him forward.

Lisa didn’t move. She didn’t even breathe. She held the shovel close to the wall of Chip’s stall and waited, hoping to entice Danny into range of Carole and the syringe.

Carole watched from above, ready.

Danny’s ears went back again. He stepped forward, snorting and then sniffing. Carole knew that when horses were
frightened, their constitutions gave them two options: fight or flight. She didn’t think eating an oatmeal cookie or an apple was really a third option, but it seemed worth a try.

The girls waited. The wind quieted for a moment, just long enough for Danny to let his guard down and for his smelling sense to tell him something good was being offered. He stepped over to the shovel, regarded Lisa suspiciously, and then leaned forward.

He chose the oatmeal cookie.

As he did, Carole reached forward ever so slightly and slipped the needle of the syringe into his neck. The oatmeal cookie was so distracting that he didn’t seem to notice until she completed the injection and pulled the needle out again.

Then he got upset, and he was further irritated by another blast of wind against the barn. Startled, Carole lost her balance and slipped forward. Fortunately Stevie was on the job, too. She had a firm hold of Carole’s belt and yanked her friend back. The two of them tumbled into the corner of Chip’s stall, startling him.

“You okay?” Stevie asked.

“Fine,” said Carole. “Never better, in fact.”

Lisa came into the stall to look after her friends.

“What do you mean by that?” she asked.

“Well,” Carole said, sticking the cover back on the needle. “I just realized how much fun it’s going to be when we get to tell Veronica we had to drug her horse!”

That was going to guarantee each of them good memories for some time to come.

I
S IT MORNING
? Lisa wondered. She sat up in her sleeping bag and looked around.

It was definitely lighter outside, but the light didn’t feel like daylight. It felt like filtered light, somehow very different from a regular morning.

Stevie was the lump in the sleeping bag next to hers. Lisa gave her a shake.

“I think it’s time to wake up,” she said.

That was when she looked at her watch. It was almost eight o’clock in the morning. They were supposed to have left at six-thirty!

“Carole?” she said.

Carole’s sleeping bag was empty.

Lisa stood up and pulled on her boots. Stevie followed her example, not yet feeling awake enough to talk.

“Good morning, sleepyheads!” Carole said, carrying mugs of cocoa into Max’s office. “Time for breakfast!”

“It’s time to be on the road,” Lisa said. “We should have left an hour and a half ago. Red’s going to be annoyed and Max will be furious!”

“I don’t think so,” said Carole.

“Ye-es,” said Lisa. “He’s such a stickler for promptness and his friend is expecting us this afternoon and we’ll never make it—”

“ ‘We’ll never make it’ is right,” Carole said, cutting her off. “Look out the window.”

Lisa walked to Max’s window and saw why the light had seemed so odd. The window in the office was completely covered with snow.

“We’re buried?” she asked.

“Not exactly,” said Carole. “I’ve been exploring. The drifts are deeper on that side, but it’s at least three feet all around the place, and the snow is still falling.”

“You mean we’ve gotten three feet of snow in less than, say, eighteen hours?” Stevie asked.

“No,” said Carole. “I checked the weather report on the
portable radio. Officially it’s about twenty inches so far, but this place isn’t called Pine
Hollow
for nothing. Lots of snow has drifted down here.”

Then, like a dream remembered, Lisa recalled everything that had happened the night before: the struggle with the door and what they’d had to do to keep Veronica’s horse safe.

“How’s Danny this morning?” she asked.

“Still calm,” Carole told her. “He’s a little dazed, but he seems healthy: He ate some grain and let me pat him.”

Lisa took her first sip of the cocoa, which turned out to be chocolate milk. “Still no electricity?” she asked.

“Yeah, and no phone service, either.”

“Do you think a cell phone would work?”

“It might, if we had one,” said Stevie.

“Mrs. Reg usually keeps an extra in her desk,” Carole said.

“Well, then we have to call somebody who has phone service,” said Stevie.

“Or a cell phone,” Carole said.

The girls dug through Mrs. Reg’s desk and found the cell phone. It had a very slight charge left. They crossed their fingers as Lisa dialed a cell phone number they all knew: Judy Barker’s.

There was no answer, but she did have her voice mail on.

“This is Lisa Atwood at Pine Hollow,” Lisa said, speaking
quickly before the phone’s charge ran out. “I’m here in the stable with Stevie and Carole. We have this phone, but the battery’s running out. Just want you to know that we’re fine. We’ve got food for us and for the horses. If you can find a way to let people know—”

The phone beeped four times and then was clearly dead.

“I hope she gets the message,” said Carole.

“I hope she passes it on,” said Stevie.

“I wish Mrs. Reg had charged this thing,” said Lisa.

“People know we’re here,” said Stevie. “Someone’s bound to come get us.”

“And until they do, you know what?” Carole asked.

“What?” Lisa answered.

“We’re in heaven. I mean, all our lives, all we wanted was to be left totally alone to enjoy the company of horses, and now we’ve got it. Nobody to tell us when to do what. It’s just us and horses.”

“It’s like Christmas all over again!” Stevie declared.

“Christmas!” said Lisa, clapping her hand on her mouth.

“What?” Carole asked.

“We forgot Christmas. We were going to do it last night,” said Lisa.

“But we got too tired,” Carole recalled.

“It’s never too late for Christmas,” said Stevie. “But I’m not sure—”

“Come on, let’s get cleaned up and have a nice Christmas breakfast,” Carole said.

Fortunately the heater was working and there was running water, both hot and cold, though the hot wasn’t very hot. Lisa and Stevie freshened up while Carole assembled breakfast. Their coolers had protected their food from freezing. They had orange juice and bowls of cereal, plus breakfast bars and all the chocolate milk they could drink. It was almost like home.

They settled in the locker area, where there was a small table.

“Okay, who goes first?” Stevie asked.

Carole and Lisa glanced uncertainly at each another. Stevie shrugged. “Okay, I guess that means me. Not that it makes much difference now. But it’s Christmas.”

She reached into her bag and pulled out two things. One was a medium-sized package and the other was an envelope. She handed the package to Lisa and the envelope to Carole.

“Lisa, you go first,” she said, looking at the package she’d given to her. “I hope it’s okay with you, because I thought it was just about perfect for you and would never do for me. My grandmother sent it to me and I don’t think she knows me very well, though I’m sure she loves me, but I couldn’t see myself in it, and—”

“Oh, Stevie! It’s beautiful!” Lisa said. “What a great color!” She ran her hands along the soft, fluffy bodice of the angora sweater. “Peach is my absolute favorite!”

“I thought it was,” said Stevie. “I’m glad you like it.”

“Like it? I love it! How can you give it up?”

Carole began laughing. Lisa looked at her quizzically. “Well, can you really see your friend Stevie, Ms. T-shirt and torn jeans, wearing angora?” Carole asked.

“No, I guess not,” Lisa said. “All the better for me. And I’ll even help you write Granny’s thank-you letter.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” Stevie said. “I spoke to her on the phone on Christmas. I told her it was beautiful and a great color. I even said, ‘Peach is my absolute favorite!’ because I knew that’s exactly what you would have said.”

“You’re a great friend,” said Lisa.