Horse Magic (6 page)

“Oh, rats,” Stevie said, looking disappointed. “I was going to invite you guys to have dinner at my house tonight in honor of Dinah’s first night. You heard my mom—it’s Lake lasagna tonight.”

“Sorry,” Carole said regretfully. “But you know how my dad feels about navy bean soup.”

“How about you, Lisa?” Stevie said. “You’ll come, won’t you?”

Lisa stared at her fingernails, trying not to meet Stevie’s eye. “Um, I can’t,” she mumbled. “I promised my parents I’d eat at home tonight.”

“Well, just call them,” Stevie suggested. “I’m sure they’ll let you come when you tell them why.”

“No, I don’t think so,” Lisa said.

Stevie’s eyes narrowed, and she glanced from Lisa to Dinah and back again. It finally dawned on her that the two of them hadn’t been acting particularly friendly. In fact, they had barely spoken to each other at all. She bit her lip. How could she not have noticed before now? And more importantly,
how could two of her best friends in the world not be friends themselves? She decided they just needed a little more time to get to know each other. Working together on the Halloween event was sure to do the trick.

“All right, then,” Stevie said to Dinah. “It’s just you and me, kid. And the rest of my family, of course. Speaking of which, we’d better get going, or my brothers will eat everything in the house before we get back.”

The two of them hurried away. Carole knocked gingerly on Mrs. Reg’s door, but there was no answer. “I guess I’ll have to use the pay phone. Do you have a quarter?” she asked Lisa.

Lisa dug a handful of coins out of the pocket of her jeans. “Here’s one,” she said.

The two girls walked to the pay phone in the corridor. “My dad can drop you off if you want,” Carole offered. “Your house is right on the way to the base.”

Lisa nodded. After Carole had finished her call, the girls headed outside to wait for Colonel Hanson. It was dark and chilly, and there was a hint of dampness in the air.

Carole wrapped her arms around herself. “It sure feels like fall, doesn’t it?” she remarked.

Instead of answering, Lisa said, “I don’t think Dinah likes me.”

“I don’t know about that,” Carole said. “But I definitely got the impression that you don’t like her.”

Lisa looked a little surprised. “I’m trying to like her,” she
said. “I really am. After all, she’s one of Stevie’s best friends. There’s no reason I shouldn’t like her.”

“But?” Carole prompted.

“But I guess we don’t have much in common,” Lisa said, scuffing her feet through a pile of orange and yellow leaves. “We’re completely different from each other.”

“Just like you’re completely different from Stevie, and Stevie’s completely different from me, and I’m completely different from you,” Carole reminded her. “That’s part of what makes The Saddle Club so great, remember? Not just what we have in common, but what we don’t.”

“I know,” Lisa said. “You’re right.” She shrugged. “I don’t know what it is with Dinah. I was all ready to love her, especially after everything you guys said. But she just rubs me the wrong way or something.”

“Well, if you can’t get over it, maybe you should just try to stay out of her way while she’s here,” Carole advised. “She’s only visiting for a few days, and we’re all going to be pretty busy.”

“I guess so,” Lisa said. But she wasn’t completely satisfied with that solution. Even when Dinah was back in Vermont, she would still be Stevie’s friend, and Carole’s, too. And Lisa would still be the odd one out. Even if the others didn’t think of it that way, she knew in her own mind she always would. And what would that mean for The Saddle Club?

W
HEN
S
TEVIE AND
Dinah arrived at Pine Hollow after school the following afternoon, they found Carole and Lisa already hard at work. There were no more riding lessons scheduled for that day, so they had taken over the room where the students’ lockers were, turning it into an impromptu arts-and-crafts room.

“Look at this,” Carole exclaimed when Stevie and Dinah walked in. She held up a neatly lettered sign proclaiming
COSTUMES
. “Lisa did it—doesn’t it look nice? We’re going to put it on the costume box.”

“It looks great,” Stevie agreed. “What are you working on now?” She peered over Lisa’s shoulder at the notebook she was busy writing in.

“First we made up a schedule for the day,” Lisa said.
“That way we knew how much time to allow for each activity.” She flipped back a page in the notebook and pointed at the chart she’d made. “Now we’re starting to plan what we’ll need for the treasure hunt.”

“Aha!” Stevie exclaimed, grabbing a pen from the floor. “Pass the notebook. This is my specialty. Come on, Dinah, I’m sure we can come up with some fun stuff for the kids to find.”

Lisa handed her the notebook. “I started a list on this page,” she explained. “I put down the name of the object, how many we’d need, and where we can get them.”

“Uh-huh,” Stevie said, glancing at the list.

“Let’s start our list on a new page,” Dinah suggested. “We’ll just list all the fun and crazy things we can think of, and worry about those other details later.”

“Okay,” Stevie said agreeably, flipping to a clean page. “I’ve got one. Monster masks. My brothers have a million of them, and they’ll be perfect for Halloween. We can plant them all through the woods on branches and stuff.”

Lisa bit her lip. She couldn’t believe Stevie and Dinah were just starting over, ignoring the careful system she and Carole had worked out. She glanced at Carole to see how she was taking it.

“How about stirrups?” Carole suggested. “I’m sure Max would let us use some—and we should have at least a few horsey objects. And since they’re silver-colored, they’ll really seem like treasure.”

“Great idea!” Dinah said, scribbling it down. “And we
ought to have something the kids will really want to find, like candy. Maybe lollipops.”

Lisa sighed. Obviously she was the only one bothered by Stevie and Dinah’s disorganization. “I’ll be right back,” she said quickly, escaping from the room and heading for the bathroom. She wanted to let off some steam, and she wanted to do it in private. It was clear that she was the only one who had a problem with Dinah, and she had resolved to follow Carole’s advice and keep it hidden from her friends. There was no sense in spoiling their visit just because she was unhappy.

A few minutes later Lisa felt calmer. She returned to the locker room to find that Phil had arrived. She greeted him and sat down next to Carole, who was making name tags for the Pine Hollow people. Lisa took the one with Red O’Malley’s name on it and started sketching a spooky ghost on it.

Dinah was asking Phil about Black Magic. She was disappointed that the mare was out on the trail again—she was dying to meet her.

Phil nodded seriously. “She’s one great horse, all right,” he said. “I’ve never seen anything like her.” Lisa took that to mean that Stevie had called him and let him in on the joke. She almost felt sorry for Dinah. The girl seemed so eager to see the wonderful horse everyone kept talking about, she was sure to be disappointed when she found out it didn’t exist, not to mention embarrassed that she’d been taken in by Stevie’s prank.

A few minutes later the talk turned from horses to costumes. Phil described the magician’s outfit he had put together, then turned to Dinah. “What are you going to be?” he asked.

“I’m going as Paul Revere,” she replied. “Stevie offered me her brother’s old costume, and I guess it’s better than cutting a couple of eyeholes in an old sheet like I was planning.”

Lisa’s eyes widened, and she dropped the marker she was holding. Paul Revere? But Stevie had already offered that costume to Lisa! Lisa had decided not to take it—she had come up with a better idea the day before. But she hadn’t had a chance to tell Stevie that yet.

“I hope you don’t mind, Lisa,” Stevie said offhandedly, as if guessing what her friend was thinking. “You didn’t seem too excited about it, and Dinah really needed something to wear.”

Lisa clenched her teeth. “Of course not, Stevie,” she replied carefully. “Anyway, I need to have a costume I can ride in, for when I help Max with the lessons. That’s more important than dressing up, you know.” As soon as the words left her mouth, she realized they sounded a little mean. Dinah was sure to know that Lisa was thinking that her own role in Saturday’s events was much more important than Dinah’s, especially since it was obvious to all of them that Lisa could ride just as easily in a Paul Revere costume as in anything else.

Dinah frowned, and there was a moment of awkward
silence. Finally Phil cleared his throat, “You know, Dinah, I was just thinking,” he said. “I could really use an assistant for my act. I’d ask Stevie, but she’s already volunteered to set up this treasure hunt instead. And besides, I don’t want to give away the tricks of the trade to just anybody. How about it? Do you want the job?”

Dinah’s eyes lit up and she grinned at him. “Hey, that sounds like fun,” she exclaimed. “I’ve always loved magic shows. Now I’ll get to be in one!”

Stevie stuck out her tongue at Phil, but then she smiled at him. Lisa knew Stevie was grateful to Phil for making Dinah feel included. Then Stevie turned and gave Lisa a surprised look, as if wondering what had gotten into her. Lisa didn’t meet her friend’s eye.

“Say, Stevie, speaking of my magic show,” Phil said. “I’ve been looking all over for a red stable blanket to use in my act. Do you think Max has any?”

Stevie shrugged. “There are probably some in the tack room,” she said. “In that big trunk against the far wall.”

Phil gave her a sheepish look. “Would you mind looking?” he pleaded. “I can never find a thing in that tack room.”

Stevie rolled her eyes and got up. “Yeah, sure,” she said skeptically. “If that’s your excuse for being lazy, who am I to question it?” She headed for the door.

S
TEVIE WALKED SLOWLY
toward the tack room, deep in thought. The scene between Lisa and Dinah had upset her, and she needed time to think things through. For one thing, she could tell that Lisa was upset about the Paul Revere costume. Stevie had been sure Lisa hadn’t wanted to wear it, otherwise she would never have offered it to Dinah. She had expected Lisa to know that.

She sighed. The night before, Dinah hadn’t said much about her first impression of Lisa, and that was a bad sign. Dinah and Stevie had discussed practically every other person and horse they knew at great length. But by mutual, unspoken agreement, Lisa Atwood’s name had barely come up. Stevie didn’t like that one bit. She was crazy about Lisa
and Dinah, and she knew they could be great friends if they both tried a little harder. But she wasn’t sure how to tell either of them that without making them mad at her, too.

Finally Stevie reached the tack room. “Hmm, that’s funny,” she muttered to herself. “I wonder why the door is closed?”

Pulling open the door, she stepped forward into the darkened tack room … and felt something move against her leg.

She let out a piercing shriek, stumbled backward, and fumbled for the light switch. When the bulb came on, Stevie went limp with relief and started to laugh.

She was still laughing when her friends arrived seconds later, brought running by her scream. Stevie could only gesture into the room. The others looked and saw that it was flooded in a sea of black cats. They were perched on the saddle racks, climbing in and out of trunks and buckets, and generally milling around and getting into things.

“What’s going on in here?” Carole gasped. “Where did all these cats come from?”

Stevie stooped down and reached for a small black kitten with a white spot on its nose. “Let’s see—this is Regret, and right next to her is Big Ben.” It was a Pine Hollow tradition to name all the stable cats after famous horses. “And over there, I recognize Merganser and Idle Dice and Scamper—”

“Why would someone put all these cats in here?” Lisa interrupted.

“All these
black
cats,” Dinah pointed out. “It must be
some kind of pre-Halloween prank. A pretty funny one, too.”

“Maybe it was that poltergeist Mrs. Reg was talking about,” Carole joked.