Chocolate Horse

Stevie and Phil returned to Pine Hollow as quickly as possible. In less than ten minutes, the stable was in sight.

That was when Stevie started getting worried, for she could see Carole and Lisa in the field at the back of the stable, perched on the fences. As soon as they spotted Stevie and Phil, they began waving. It wasn’t a greeting, it was a hurry-up wave. Stevie nudged Topside and got him to quicken his gait. She felt a little knot tighten in her stomach. Something was wrong, and the closer she got to Pine Hollow, the surer she was something was really wrong and it had to do with her.…

Many thanks to Lisa Scott of Breyer Horses for her help and expertise, and to Sue Cook of Transworld, whose research inspired this story
.

“L
ET
ME
JUST
say one more good-bye to Starlight,” Carole Hanson said to her two best friends, Stevie Lake and Lisa Atwood.

“Sure,” Stevie agreed. “You won’t be seeing him for another full day, will you?” She was teasing and Carole knew it.

“If Starlight were your horse, you’d be doing the same thing, wouldn’t you?” Carole asked, giving the horse a final farewell hug.

Stevie smiled because Carole was right, and just to show there were no hard feelings, she gave Starlight a hug, too. He liked the attention. The girls liked giving it to him.

The girls had just finished their Tuesday riding class at Pine Hollow. They had a class every Tuesday, and their Pony Club, named Horse Wise, met on Saturdays. Since twice a week wasn’t anywhere near enough horses for the three horse-crazy girls, they tried to get to Pine Hollow almost every day. When they couldn’t ride, they could just talk about horses, and there were always chores to do around the stable. The stable owner, Max Regnery, and his mother, affectionately called Mrs. Reg by all the riders, encouraged everyone to pitch in at Pine Hollow. “Encouraged” wasn’t the word they usually used, though. “Insisted” was more like it.

The girls didn’t mind. They were so horse crazy that they’d do anything to be around horses, and when they weren’t around horses, they talked about them. They called that having a Saddle Club meeting. The three of them had formed the club, and it had only two rules. Members had to be horse crazy, and they had to be willing to help one another out. They were such good friends that they never had trouble following either of those rules.

Stevie slung her book bag over her shoulder, grimacing under the weight, and then followed her friends out the stable door. It was time to get home; she had a lot of homework. She’d do it, too, but not because she liked doing it. She knew that if her grades slipped, Max
wouldn’t let her ride. He insisted that his riders maintain a satisfactory grade average. Stevie’s grade average hovered perilously close to Max’s idea of satisfactory. At the moment she was in hot water because two of her math assignments had mysteriously disappeared somewhere between her desk and her teacher’s desk. Her teacher wasn’t happy about it and refused to believe that Stevie’s cat, Madonna, had eaten the homework.

“Cats don’t like prealgebra,” Miss Snyder had said. Stevie had resisted the impulse to add that she didn’t either.

“So what are you going to wear to the dance?” Lisa asked, bringing Stevie’s attention to a more fun subject. Valentine’s Day was just a week and a half away, and Pine Hollow was celebrating the event by holding a barn dance for its young riders.

Lisa was the most clothes conscious of the three girls, always perfectly turned out. Stevie favored casual clothes—jeans and turtlenecks. Carole never much cared what she wore as long as she could ride horses in it.

“I guess as long as it’s a barn dance, I’ll wear my jeans,” Stevie said. “And I have a cowboy shirt and my cowboy boots. How’s that?”

“Sounds perfect,” Lisa said. It wasn’t often that she totally agreed with Stevie’s wardrobe. “Your boots are
really nice, too. I remember you bought them before you and Carole went out West last summer.”

“Yup, and they got scuffed up, too, and that’s a good thing, because there’s nothing worse than looking like a dude—with shiny boots.”

Carole beamed at her friends. “Have you ever noticed that even when we’re talking about clothes, we’re still talking about horses?” Stevie and Lisa grinned. That was the kind of thing that made The Saddle Club special to its members.

Stevie’s house was the closest to Pine Hollow, and when the three of them reached it, she said good-bye to her friends, and the Saddle Club meeting ended. They promised they’d talk later that night. Stevie waved and went into the house.

She paused on her way through the family room, shrugging off her coat and her backpack. Her mind was not on those things, though. All she could see was the box of tissues next to the most comfortable chair. That reminded her that her twin brother Alex had stayed home from school today. The lucky guy. He’d claimed he had a cold. Since Stevie’s day at school had been especially rotten, it didn’t seem fair that Alex had had a nice quiet day at home—watching game shows and soap operas.

Stevie grumbled jealously. “He probably spent the
rest of the day copying the math homework he stole from me that Miss Snyder was so upset about.” Only her cat heard her say that.

“Stevie, don’t drop your backpack on the floor and don’t forget to hang up your coat,” her mother called from her home office. Stevie picked up the backpack and the coat, barely registering the fact that her mother’s admonition had been delivered from a place where she could not have seen the coat and the backpack on the floor. She just
knew
.

Stevie stomped upstairs. She wished she could get a cold and stay home, too. In fact, it might be a good idea to get a cold on Thursday morning, because she had a history test that day. It was on the Spanish Armada, and it still wasn’t clear to her how a bunch of fishing boats could possibly overthrow a gigantic navy. Her teacher, Mr. Thiele, seemed to think it was very important, though.

The door to Stevie’s room was ajar. That was odd. It was usually open wide when she wasn’t there, or else closed completely. The fact that it was neither of those seemed suspicious to Stevie. She slowed down as she approached the door and peered in.

Alex was in her room. He was wearing his pajamas—in his case that meant a pair of sweatpants—and he was holding something in his hand.

“What have you got?” she demanded, storming into the room.

Alex spun around in surprise. He looked pale, and to Stevie that meant guilty. She’d caught him in the act. In his hands he held a gold-foil-covered chocolate horse. She’d bought it at the mall one day when she’d been looking for a birthday present for Carole. She’d thought it was really pretty and liked having it in her room. She’d never thought of eating it. Alex, however, clearly
had
thought of eating it.

The wrapper was torn on one of the horse’s forelegs.

“What are you doing with that?” Stevie asked angrily.

“I just wanted—my throat’s so sore and I’ve got a headache and, well—I thought maybe some chocolate would help,” Alex stammered meekly.

“Well, just think again,” Stevie said. She marched forward and grabbed the horse out of Alex’s hand. She was outraged when she discovered that the horse’s leg was broken, and she was going to tell Alex exactly what she thought about what he’d done, but she found that he’d fled to his room. She marched across the hall and flung his door open.

“Just because you can find some excuse not to go to school doesn’t mean you’re going to get any sympathy
from me! And don’t try to come up with any more lame excuses about stealing my things. That horse was mine—not yours! You had no right—”

Stevie was just warming up to her lecture about property rights and respect for others’ belongings (it was a lecture she could deliver well, because it had been delivered to her many times) when she noticed that Alex was behaving peculiarly. Instead of standing up to her as he usually did, he just backed down, literally, sitting on his bed, then lying down and pulling the covers up. His eyes closed.

Stevie was so astonished, she didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t going to yell back, or make fun of her?

“I’ll get back at you,” she went on, but with Alex just lying there, her heart wasn’t in it anymore.

She spun on her heel and strode back into her room. He could hide under the covers if he wanted. In the meantime she had to find a way to fix the horse’s leg.

Stevie decided to use a toothpick for a splint. She got a box of them from the kitchen and began the painstaking job of inserting toothpicks into the sun-softened chocolate. When the leg was as straight as Stevie thought it was going to get, she carefully rewrapped it in the gold foil and put it back on her windowsill. It tilted to the right. She adjusted it. It listed to the left. Then it
occurred to her that she could do a leg wrap on it, the same way she would with a real horse whose leg had gotten wounded.