Hobbyhorse (9 page)

“She didn’t know the horses would stampede,” Stevie pointed out. “She said so, and I believe her. She’s not
that
bad. She’s just a little kid, and she didn’t know what would happen.”

“I believe her, too, but she’s the same age as the Pony Tails,” Carole said indignantly. “They’re very responsible.”

“Yeah,” Stevie said, “but Amelia really hasn’t been around horses for very long.”

“So you think we should let her keep riding?” Lisa asked.

“Not at all,” Stevie said cheerfully. “All I said was that she wasn’t trying to kill Max. She was definitely trying to scare Patch, and she definitely told lies, and she probably would have climbed on Prancer and had a horrible stupid accident. Plus, I’d rather not have her around.”

“Max is right that riding is a privilege,” Carole said. “I guess—I mean, she
should
be punished—”

“I think that’s why she’s such a brat,” Lisa said. “She never has to take responsibility for what she does. Nobody makes her. When she ripped my books up three years ago, nobody made her say she was sorry. She broke our hobbyhorse, and my parents are acting as if nothing happened. She whines and throws a fit, and boom! she gets whatever she wants. So she keeps whining and throwing fits. I think she thinks that if she just keeps pushing for it, she’ll get to ride Prancer, too.”

“So you think that this time she ought to be punished,” Carole said.

“Yes,” said Lisa. “I do.”

Carole sighed. “So do I.”

“So we’re in agreement,” Stevie said. “She can’t ride at Pine Hollow.”

The three girls looked at each other. “That’s right,” said Lisa. “Only …”

“Only what?”

Lisa made a face. “It’s hard to explain. She did do all these things she shouldn’t have, and I think she should be punished, only … Did you hear what she said to Veronica in the locker room?”

“ ‘I’m just going to go ride Prancer right now?’ ” Stevie asked. “I heard that.”

Lisa smiled but shook her head. “I mean when she said, ‘I’m having a miserable vacation, and it’s Lisa’s fault. If she had been nice to me, everyone else would have liked me.’ ”

“What about it?” Stevie asked. “It’s not even true. You did warn us about what a brat she was, but it wouldn’t have taken us long to figure it out on our own. I personally don’t think I would have liked her anyway.”

“Except that I shouldn’t have told you she was a brat,” Lisa said. She looked down at the ground. “I knew she was a brat the last time I saw her, but that was three years ago. People change a lot in three years.”

“Please,” Stevie said. “She’s still a brat, Lisa. You can’t deny it.”

“I know, but right from the start, I haven’t been nice to her. At home, I mean. And when I brought her here, I
didn’t act like she was somebody special, like I really wanted you guys to meet her. I can tell she wants to have friends, but I didn’t help her make friends at all, and I think I should have.” Lisa sighed. “The truth is, I was pretty annoyed about having her come during my vacation. I’m a lot nicer to all the Pony Tails than I am to my own cousin.”

“The last I checked,” Stevie said, “the Pony Tails weren’t mouthing off to you because Max wouldn’t give them the horse they wanted.”

“The Pony Tails have their own ponies,” Lisa said. “Amelia and I don’t. I know she can’t ride Prancer, and I don’t think she should, but I do know what it’s like to want to have one special horse.”

“So you think we should let her off the hook?” Stevie asked. “Pretend none of this happened, just like with the hobbyhorse?”

“No.… I don’t know. I just don’t know.” Lisa sighed. “I didn’t expect this to be so confusing!”

“Stevie,” Carole said softly, “you’ve been in trouble a few times yourself—”

“A few hundred,” Stevie said with a laugh.

“If you were Amelia, wouldn’t you want a second chance?” Carole continued. “I bet she’d behave better now. And Lisa’s right, you know, we were all expecting her to be a brat. If she were a horse and she misbehaved, we wouldn’t
just punish her. We’d try to correct her.” Carole thought about the enormous patience that horse training required. Probably rider training took the same amount of work.

Stevie shook her head ruefully. “I can’t believe that you two are passing up the one perfect chance to get Amelia out of our lives. Wait. No, I can believe it. And you’re right, Carole, Max has given me lots of second chances.

“Besides,” she added, “you almost lost your assistant instructor job over this. If you want to let Amelia keep riding, I’ll go along.”

“Me too.” Lisa put out her hand and pulled Stevie to her feet.

W
HEN THEY WALKED
back into Max’s office, Lisa was surprised to see that Amelia’s face was deathly pale. She jumped to her feet when they came in and stared at them with wide, anxious eyes.

Max smiled. “Well?”

Lisa nodded. “We all agreed. As long as she behaves from now on, she can still ride.”

Amelia blinked hard. “Thanks,” she said, moving shakily toward the door. Her eyes widened, and she struggled not to cry. Suddenly Lisa had the feeling that these tears were more real than any of the others Amelia had shed recently. “Thanks very much,” Amelia said. She wiped the back of her hand across her eyes and tried to smile nonchalantly.
“I’d better go saddle up, since I’m riding. Delilah, right, Max?”

“Wait a minute,” Max said. He gave The Saddle Club a proud smile and put his arm around Carole’s shoulder. “Amelia,” he said, “meet Carole, my assistant instructor. I’m putting her in charge of you.”

“O
KAY
,” C
AROLE SAID
, “first you go for the big piles.” She leaned over the door of Delilah’s stall. Behind her, Stevie and Lisa suppressed giggles. The first part of each day of camp was called stable management—a fancy name for manure mucking, tack cleaning, and all the other chores done around a stable. Amelia was the only camper who had never cleaned a stall before. The big pitchfork looked awkward in her small hands.

“Be careful not to get the wheelbarrow too full,” Carole cautioned. “It’ll be too heavy for you to push it. You’re going to have to make several trips.”

“Oorgh,” Amelia muttered. Her pitchfork tilted, and its
contents dropped back onto the stall floor. “I can’t do this!” she cried in frustration.

“Of course you can,” Carole said cheerfully. “Look at it this way: It’ll build up your arm muscles, and that’s great for riding.”

“It’s hard,” Amelia said.

“Well,” Carole said, “it is hard, but you’re doing a super job. Delilah will be much happier with a clean stall.”

Amelia straightened and put her hands on her hips. “I hope so. Is this really part of camp, or is this part of my punishment? Because it seems like punishment. It even smells like punishment.”

Stevie snorted and Lisa rolled her eyes.

“It’s really part of camp,” Carole said mildly. “Not only that, it’s part of life. Every rider needs to know how to take care of her horse, and keeping its stall clean is the first step. I cleaned Starlight’s before you got here this morning—and I know that when you get a horse of your own, you’ll want to take really good care of it. Besides, if you don’t do stable management here at camp, you don’t ride.”

Carole smiled, even though she didn’t feel like it. She hadn’t expected Amelia to be thrilled about cleaning Delilah’s stall, but she had hoped that maybe she would be able to work a little faster. Now that Carole was back to being Max’s assistant, she had a lot to do, and she still had to soak Starlight’s sore foot. She looked at her watch worriedly.

Stevie saw and immediately understood. “Hey, Assistant Instructor,” she said. “What if Lisa and I become assistant’s assistants? We’ll help Amelia here while you go take care of Starlight.”

“Thanks,” Carole said. “It’s only for fifteen minutes—Amelia won’t be done with the stall yet …” She hurried off.

“I’m glad you thought of that,” Lisa told Stevie, as they took up Carole’s position by the stall door. “I know Carole’s worried, but I’ve been so”—she glanced at Amelia—“preoccupied lately, I haven’t been much help.”

“She still thinks it’s navicular,” Stevie said in an undertone. “I hope Judy can come today.”

“We’ll keep our fingers crossed,” Lisa said. “Poor Starlight!”

“Out of my way, please.” Amelia had filled the wheelbarrow three-quarters full and pushed it to the door of the stall. Lisa scooted to one side, and Stevie held the door open. Amelia struggled to steer the barrow without overturning it.

“Hey, that’s pretty full,” Lisa said. “I bet it’s heavy, and your arms are short. Why don’t you let me take it outside?”

“I can do it,” Amelia said. “I’m strong enough.” She made a tremendous effort and got the wheelbarrow rolling down the aisle.

Lisa shook her head.

“She’s tough enough, anyway,” Stevie remarked. “I’d like
to see her take on my brother Chad. I bet she’d win.” When Amelia came back with the empty wheelbarrow, a scowl still on her face, Stevie added, “You know, Amelia, this honestly isn’t punishment. Everyone works at Pine Hollow.”

Amelia wielded the pitchfork with vigor. “I don’t mind working, but I’m behind everybody else,” she said. “The Pony Tails are already finished with their stalls. They’re in the tack room. They’re telling jokes.”

“They’re cleaning their saddles,” Lisa told her. “That’s what you’ll be doing as soon as you’re done here.”

“By then they’ll probably be riding,” Amelia said.

“Probably,” said Stevie.

Lisa shot Stevie a look. “They won’t start the lesson without you,” she assured her cousin. Amelia looked relieved.

After Amelia’s third wheelbarrow load, Stevie and Lisa declared the stall clean enough. “Good,” said Amelia, dusting her hands on the seat of her jodhpurs and heading for the tack room.

“Not so fast,” Stevie said, grabbing her shoulder. “You took three loads of dirty sawdust out, so you’ve got to put three loads of clean sawdust back in.” She pointed down the aisle. “The sawdust pile is next to the grain room. Use a shovel instead of a pitchfork. It’ll go faster.”

Amelia grunted as she grabbed the empty wheelbarrow. Lisa and Stevie watched her march down the aisle. “Think I should clean Delilah’s water bucket for her?” Stevie asked.

“No way,” Lisa replied. “She’s not being punished. She’d have to do this work whether she’d gotten in trouble or not.”

“I know,” Stevie said. “But the fact is, she is a lot slower than the rest of the campers, just because she’s never done this stuff before. If we helped just a little, she’d be even.”

“Stevie!” Lisa burst out laughing. “One minute you want to kick her out of the stable entirely, and the next you want to do her work for her. I said I’d try to be nicer to her, and I will, but she needs to do this herself.”

Stevie grinned. “You’re right. Only the faster she gets done, the sooner we can go ride!” They’d agreed to take a trail ride while Carole helped Max teach the morning camp lesson.

Stevie was demonstrating how to properly fluff the new bedding in Delilah’s stall when Carole came back. She paused in the aisle to hug Delilah, who was waiting patiently on cross-ties for her stall to be cleaned. “Good old girl,” Carole murmured soothingly. She had always loved Delilah.

“You know,” she said to Amelia, “besides Starlight, of course, Delilah is my favorite horse at Pine Hollow. I rode her for years, starting when I first came here. You should be glad to ride her. A horse doesn’t have to be high-strung and have a fancy pedigree to be good. I always knew that Delilah
would try to do anything I asked. You can’t expect a horse to be better than that.”

Amelia shrugged. “Prancer is prettier. Her legs are longer, and her face is nicer.”

Lisa sighed. Max had told Amelia in front of all of them that she would not ride Prancer this week and that she was not likely to ride a horse like Prancer for years. He had told her that she would ride Delilah for the rest of the week, without complaining, or she wouldn’t ride at all. Amelia hadn’t complained.

“Prancer and Delilah are just very different,” Carole explained patiently. “Prancer’s a Thoroughbred. Delilah is mostly quarter horse. Why are you so sure you’d like Prancer better, anyway?”

Amelia pressed her lips together, which made her look pouty. “Lisa rides Prancer,” she said at last, without looking at her cousin.

“Ohhh,” Carole said, in an understanding tone. She glanced at Lisa. “And you want to be like Lisa.”

Amelia shrugged. “Not really.” She looked up at Lisa, then continued, “My mom said that Lisa was riding a Thoroughbred, a very valuable horse. She thought it was really neat. So I thought she’d like it if I rode Prancer, too.”

Lisa felt a sudden rush of sympathy for her. To Amelia, riding Prancer must have been like having fancy
jodhpurs—a status symbol. “Whether a horse is valuable or not isn’t an important thing about riding,” she said. “The best horses aren’t always the fancy ones, and the best riders are the ones who really love it.”

“I know,” Amelia said. “But my mom doesn’t.”

“Hey,” Stevie reminded her, “don’t you ride a pretty fancy horse at home anyway? You were telling us all about her.”

“Star,” Lisa remembered. “Star the Wonder Horse.”