Horse-Sitters

Stevie watched, dumbfounded, as Veronica pulled out a credit card and paid. “I can’t believe it,” she whispered to her friends. “She’s buying
my
bridle! It’s just not fair.”

“She’s just doing it to make you mad,” Carole whispered back soothingly.

“Well, it’s working,” Stevie snapped. She glowered at Veronica, but the other girl didn’t even glance at The Saddle Club as she took the bag from the clerk and sauntered out of the store.

“What a jerk,” Lisa said when Veronica had gone. “Maybe we should be glad we’re not rich like her, if that’s what money does to your personality.”

The salesclerk walked over to them. “Hello, girls,” she said pleasantly. “I noticed you were looking at the bridle that young lady just bought. Are you interested in it? I have another one just like it in the back.”

“No, thank you,” Stevie said. “I’ll just take this.” She held up the cheek strap. “I don’t have enough money for a whole new bridle.”

But as the woman turned to lead her back to the cash register, Carole and Lisa heard Stevie mutter under her breath, “Not yet, anyway.”

“O
KAY
. I’
M FINISHED
,” Stevie Lake said, licking the last few drops of tomato sauce off her fingers. “Let’s go. I want to get to The Saddlery before it closes.”

Stevie—short for Stephanie—and her two best friends, Carole Hanson and Lisa Atwood, were at the mall near their hometown of Willow Creek, Virginia. They had just finished a post-riding-lesson snack at the pizza parlor.

“Don’t worry, we have plenty of time. It’s too bad about your bridle,” Lisa told Stevie sympathetically, pulling her wallet out of her backpack. “You haven’t had it very long.”

That day in riding class one of the cheek straps on Stevie’s bridle had snapped in two. She was planning to buy a new cheek strap at The Saddlery, the tack shop at the mall. “I know. But
I’m not surprised. I bought it secondhand, and it was pretty well worn when I got it.” Stevie shrugged. “But it was the best I could afford.”

Carole peered into her change purse glumly. “Speaking of affording things, I hope I can afford that pizza I just ate,” she commented, pouring a small pile of pennies onto the table. “I’m practically broke. Thanks to the library fines for that book I just found under my bed, I’m already borrowing against next week’s allowance.”

Lisa giggled. “I still can’t believe you lost a book under your bed for six months.” Lisa was very neat and organized, and it was sometimes hard for her to understand how disorganized Stevie and Carole could be. Stevie cared much more about having fun than about being organized and responsible. She was so messy and chaotic that her parents had long ago declared her bedroom a national disaster area. Carole could also be disorganized, but in a different way. She could be flaky, and she tended to forget what she was doing—except at the stable. There, Carole was anything but scatterbrained.

But Lisa knew that their different personalities were part of what made the three of them friends. In fact, they were such good friends that they had formed The Saddle Club. It had only two rules: Members had to be horse-crazy, and they had to be willing to help one another out. The first part was no problem, since all three girls loved riding together at Pine Hollow Stables. Their riding instructor and the owner of Pine Hollow, Max Regnery, liked to say that The Saddle Club spent more time at
the stable than he did. The second part was usually easy, too—although in the case of overdue library books there was little that even the best of friends could do other than sympathize.

“Chad once lost two library books under his bed for a whole year,” Stevie commented. Chad was the oldest of her three brothers. “He had to get a newspaper route just to pay the fines.”

Lisa put some money on the table. “I can lend you a dollar if you need it, Carole,” she offered. “That’s all I have left. I spent all my extra cash on a subscription to that photography magazine.”

“At least I’m not the only one who’s broke this time,” Stevie said as Lisa counted the money on the table to make sure it was enough. Stevie’s parents paid her a weekly allowance, but it usually took her much less than a week to spend it.

“Do you have enough to buy a new cheek strap?” Carole asked.

“Barely,” Stevie replied. She sighed. “I wish I could buy Belle a whole new bridle. That old one is so ratty-looking. My horse deserves better.”

“Sure she does,” Carole said. “But bridles are expensive, and Belle doesn’t care what her tack looks like as long as it’s clean and in good working condition.”

“But
I
care,” Stevie said. “Belle is so beautiful. A new bridle would make her look even better.”

Lisa raised an eyebrow. “Really?” she teased. “Is this my friend Stevie Lake, fashion plate, talking?”

Stevie glanced down at her wrinkled T-shirt and patched, faded jeans and grinned. “Hey, I may not be much of a fashion plate, but Belle could be if she had half a chance.”

“I know what you mean, Stevie,” said Carole as the three friends left the restaurant and strolled toward the Saddlery, which was located at the other end of the mall. “But the truth is, there are more important things than how a horse looks. And Belle is all those things. Look how well she did today.”

“She did do well, didn’t she?” Stevie said proudly. That day in their riding class, they had begun teaching their horses to do a trotting half-pass, a dressage movement in which a horse moves diagonally, spine straight and head bent in the direction it’s going. All the horses could perform the move at a walk, but it was a new challenge to learn it at a trot. Belle was the only horse that had performed the trotting half-pass almost perfectly.

“I’m sure it didn’t hurt that you and Belle have been practicing that move outside of class for the last month,” Lisa teased, dodging a stroller pushed by a distracted shopper.

“Did you notice who else was doing well?” Carole commented.

“You mean Veronica and Danny?” Lisa said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. Veronica diAngelo was a better-than-average rider, and her horse, Danny, was gorgeous, well bred, and perfectly trained. But that didn’t mean The Saddle Club liked her. The spoiled rich girl was snobby and sneaky, and she liked nothing better than making herself look good at someone else’s expense.

“They did pretty well, too,” Carole said grudgingly. “But that
wasn’t who I meant. I was talking about Polly and Romeo.” Polly Giacomin was another member of their class. She owned her own horse, a lively chocolate-brown gelding named Romeo. Romeo was making excellent progress in dressage. He was smart and eager, and Polly had been working hard on his training.

“I noticed that, too,” Stevie said. “Romeo’s pretty talented.” She kicked at an empty paper cup that someone had dropped on the mall floor. “Besides, Polly’s parents bought her all that beautiful new tack when she got him. He could hardly help doing well in that.”

Carole and Lisa exchanged glances. They both knew that a horse couldn’t care less what its tack looked like. They also knew that Stevie knew that, and that she was just feeling grumpy because she couldn’t afford a new bridle for Belle.

Carole decided it was time to change the subject. “Isn’t Deborah’s aunt coming to visit soon?” she asked, stooping to retrieve the paper cup and dumping it in a nearby trash can. Deborah was Max’s wife. She was an investigative reporter for a newspaper in nearby Washington, D.C.

“It’s her great-aunt,” Lisa corrected. “Her name is Eugenia. Doesn’t that sound old-fashioned? She’s arriving on Thursday. When I was in the tack room today I overheard Deborah talking to Mrs. Reg about picking her up.”

“From the airport?” Stevie asked.