Carole (14 page)

“And anyway,” I pointed out, “they’ll be feeding Prancer in a half hour. Even if you could get tacked up in five minutes, she wouldn’t be any fun to ride now because she’d be so cranky for her dinner.”

“I’m feeling kind of cranky myself,” Stevie joked.

Lisa didn’t seem amused. “I guess that extra ten minutes is just going to go to waste then,” she said sulkily.

“Ten minutes, huh?” Stevie said. “Well, if you’ve got an extra ten minutes, how about we spend them together at TD’s?”

Lisa didn’t bite. “I don’t think I can go,” she said. “I’m going to have to look at my time schedule again, and I need my computer for that. See you at class Tuesday.” With that she took off, leaving the two of us to finish grooming our horses.

It was weird to be at TD’s without Lisa. We didn’t even sit in our usual booth. Instead we took a table for two. After we placed our orders, we sat back to talk about Lisa’s big news and about how hurried she seemed already with her new schedule.

Suddenly Stevie leaned forward. “Carole, are you worried, too?” she asked.

“You mean about today?” I asked, thinking about the way Lisa had rushed back to Pine Hollow and then rushed away again just as fast.

“About today, tomorrow, the next three weeks—and after,” Stevie said grimly. “For all we know, Lisa might find out she likes acting better than riding and—”

“And decide to quit Horse Wise, Pine Hollow, and The Saddle Club altogether so that she can devote her life to the stage,” I finished for her. I’d been thinking more or less the same thing all afternoon.

“She can’t keep up this schedule forever, that’s for sure,” Stevie said.

I had to agree with that. After talking about it a little more, we decided there was only one thing to do. We had to make it a Saddle Club project. Actually, I guess you could say that the project is
saving
The Saddle Club, because it really wouldn’t be The Saddle Club at all without Lisa.

As usual, Stevie was the one who came up with a plan to get started. “Lisa is on the brink of making a huge mistake: abandoning the two most important things in her life—riding and us, her best friends,” she said. “Unless someone helps her now, she could regret this for years. She needs help—and fast. We’ll provide it. We’ll be there for her at all times. Starting with Tuesday, no matter how tired we are, we’ll stay after class, practice with her, coach her, give her advice.…” And so on. She had a lot more to say, though I don’t remember all of it. The point was, we’re going to do our best to be there for Lisa however she needs us so that she can make it through the next couple of weeks without feeling like she had to quit riding.

I just hope this doesn’t turn out to be like the time over the summer when we tried to change Stevie’s mind about buying Stewball. After all, those plans totally backfired—if she hadn’t realized on her own that she was making a mistake, Stewball might be munching hay in his stall at Pine
Hollow right now. Of course, that’s not the only time that a Saddle Club project has backfired.…

Never mind, though. This time will be different. It
has
to be. Lisa is counting on us, even if she doesn’t know how much.

Are the phones at your house ever
not
busy? I thought it was girls that are supposed to talk so much on the phone. But your brothers must spend all their free time calling their friends, because I’ve been trying to get through for almost an hour!

Anyway, I’ve been thinking more about Project Lisa (or maybe I should say Project Annie—no, on second thought, I think it should
definitely
be Project Lisa). I can’t remember if we talked about this at TD’s earlier, but maybe we could help out (more than usual, I mean) with Lisa’s stable chores. She didn’t really include any time on that schedule of hers for stuff like mucking out or cleaning tack, or even grooming Prancer after lessons. So we could pitch in and take care of most of that if she needs us to.

But I also realized that the physical stuff is really only the start of what we’ll be doing. The more important part of our
plan is just to support her and make her see that we’re totally committed to getting through this situation and being there for her, and she should be confident that we can work together to make it happen. I was also thinking about that stuff with Stewball last summer, and also about the way we tried to set up Max with all those single women, and I think this is sort of like those situations in at least one way. It will be best if this is a realization that Lisa can come to sort of on her own, though of course we should do all we can to put her in a position to do that. Luckily our plan is perfect in that sense, don’t you think?

Anyway, call me if you get this message tonight—if you can manage to chase your gossipy brothers away from the phone!

I just noticed your e-mail about Lisa when I went to the computer to send you an e-mail about the horrible dream I just had. I had to tell you about it right away (the dream, that is, not the e-mail), and I figured your dad might not be thrilled if I called, since it’s three o’clock in the morning. I mean, the Colonel is pretty cool about most things, but …

Anyway, back to your e-mail for a second—I guess you
sent it on Saturday night, right after we came up with our project, so maybe it’s a little out of date since it’s already Tuesday. But I still think you’re right about pitching in with stable chores. Of course, after the way Lisa ducked out halfway through today’s lesson (not to mention the way she kept talking about that Hollie girl who’s in the play with her as if she were the fourth member of The Saddle Club! Humph!), I think it’s going to take a lot more than cleaning tack to get us all through this. By the way, I’m not exactly sure what you were driving at with all that other stuff about realizations and commitment and everything, but if what you’re saying is that we have to keep doing everything we can to smooth her way for the next couple of weeks, then I’m with you.

At least she still sounded pretty much like the old Lisa when we talked to her on the phone earlier tonight (or maybe I should say
last
night, since it’s technically Wednesday morning—oh, never mind). I mean, she really sounded like she wants to be in the rally as much as she wants to play Annie. Almost, anyway. But that doesn’t mean we can relax. Now that I think about it, it was kind of, you know, un-Lisa-like for her to ask us to tell Max she was working with Prancer as much as she can. For one thing, “as much as she can” doesn’t seem like much. For another, it’s just not like her to ask people to cover for her. (That’s
my
specialty, ha ha!)

Anyway, I guess the bottom line is that we have to do even more to help Lisa remember how great riding is. In fact, I’m starting to think we need to do more than that. We have to
convince her that she definitely likes riding better than acting, just so there’s no question of which one she’ll choose in the end. After all, it’s like we were saying on the phone after Lisa hung up—we’re both afraid that being great at two things (riding and acting) is going to force her to choose. And if she doesn’t do well at the rally because she hasn’t had enough time to practice, she may think she’s not as good at riding as she is at acting. And then … Uh-oh!

Speaking of not being good enough at riding, in between all this helping and convincing and Saddle Club projecting, I hope I have time to figure out how to stop riding like “a sack of potatoes,” as Max put it in class this afternoon. (Double humph!) Still, I guess I really can’t hold it against him. Topside is so wonderful that he could make any rider look bad by comparison. I just have to try harder to be worthy of him.

Oh, that reminds me of the whole reason I started writing this—my dream! Actually, it was more like two dreams in one. I’m getting kind of sleepy, so I’ll just give you the short version. First I dreamed that Topside and I were getting ready to ride into the ring at the dressage rally. But instead of being at the Sunny Valley fairgrounds right here in Virginia, the rally was taking place in the middle of the track at Churchill Downs—you know, the racetrack where they have the Kentucky Derby. (Whoa, I know I must be getting tired—I can’t believe I just informed Carole Hanson, the girl who knows everything about every riding sport, where the Kentucky Derby takes place! Ha!) Anyway, that was strange enough. But then when I went to mount Topside, I couldn’t
remember how to do it. I started to panic and ended up climbing into the saddle
backward!
But Topside was so professional and unflappable that he just walked right out into the ring and saluted the judges all by himself (he actually
saluted
, too—he lifted his hoof right up and touched it to his forelock and sort of bowed). It was all pretty much downhill from there. Sitting backward like that, I had a perfect view of Max watching from the audience, and he kept shaking his fist at me and yelling, “Sack of potatoes! Sack of potatoes!” over and over again. Then when we finally finished the test, instead of clapping, the audience threw potatoes at us. Not just whole ones, either. I got hit in the face with a big wad of mashed potatoes. Oh, and did I mention the horrible moment when I looked up and realized the judges for the event were my three brothers? I’m surprised my hair didn’t turn white from shock as I slept.

The next part of the dream was even stranger. I was back at Pine Hollow after the dressage rally, cleaning Topside’s tack. For some reason it took so long that I was still there scrubbing away at the stroke of midnight. (Maybe it took a while to wash off all those potatoes.…) The big, spooky grandfather clock in the hall outside Mrs. Reg’s office chimed off the first few chimes. (I know, I know, there’s no clock there. But this is a dream, remember?)

Suddenly an apparition appeared in front of me. It was the ghostly form of good old Pepper. “Greetings, Stevie,” Pepper said in a dramatic voice. “I am the Horse of Pine Hollow Past.”

I was so surprised that Pepper was talking (not to mention
the fact that he was there at all, since he died last fall) that I almost dropped my saddle soap. “What do you wish of me, Pepper?” I asked in a quavery voice.

“I wish to show you the past,” Pepper replied.

So then I jumped on his back and he galloped off into the clouds. When we came down again I saw myself riding Comanche in the outdoor ring. Only it wasn’t me the way I am now. It was me the way I was a few years ago, when I hardly knew you because you’d just moved here, and neither of us knew Lisa at all. Dinah was riding beside me on Barq, and we were laughing and having a good time.

So far so good. Pepper took me back to the tack room, and I went to work on that saddle again. But before I knew it, another ghostly form appeared. This time I recognized Cobalt. “Greetings, Stevie,” Cobalt said, arching his neck dramatically. “I am the Horse of Pine Hollow Present.”

“Okay, let me guess,” I said, hardly even surprised this time to see him alive again. “You want to show me the present. Well, isn’t it right here in front of me?”

I guess Cobalt didn’t think much of my smart mouth, because he just grabbed my sleeve in his big teeth and dragged me off into the clouds again. A few seconds later we were looking down at the three of us (you, me, and Lisa, that is) in the hayloft at Pine Hollow having a sleepover, sort of like we did a little while ago when Marie was staying with you, only Marie wasn’t there. It was just The Saddle Club, and I could tell we were having a great time. We were having a hay fight, and Lisa and I were trying to stuff as much hay as we possibly could down the back of your pajamas while you
wriggled and laughed and tried to get away. It looked like so much fun that I wished I could go right down there and join in (even though I was technically already there). But Cobalt just grabbed me again and pulled me back to the tack room.