Horseshoe (2 page)

Jessica began to lose ground. One rider crossed between her and Veronica, and she had to be the next person through the center. She gave Penny a desperate kick, and the mare shot forward, galloping—and ran right into Garnet. Garnet squealed and hunched her back, about to kick Penny. Penny saw the kick coming and dodged sideways fast.

Jessica managed to stay on. She threw her weight back into the saddle and rode Penny out of harm’s way. Veronica, not expecting Garnet’s reaction, fell forward onto Garnet’s neck, her fingers clutching Garnet’s mane. She seemed to catch her balance, and then—The Saddle Club was willing to swear later that she did it on purpose—she ever so slowly slid to the ground. Her feet hit first, and she whirled to Max, her face purple with rage.

“Did you see what just happened?” she screamed. Stevie looked up at Carole, who nodded and grinned. They’d all fallen off about a zillion times. It was part of riding. Neither of them believed for a second that Veronica was really concerned about her fall.

But Veronica was not finished. “I didn’t come here to risk my life!” she shouted. “I didn’t come here to risk my purebred horse’s life either! I’m not sure why
we’re even doing this—all this for a bunch of mangy, nasty animals that nobody wants and that aren’t worth anything in the first place!”

Lisa winced. The County Animal Rescue League had sounded important to all of them. Veronica never understood anything.

“You know, Veronica,” Max said slowly, “participation in this drill is not mandatory. You don’t have to be here.”

“Good! I’m leaving!” Veronica dusted some imaginary dirt from the seat of her expensive breeches and led Garnet out of the ring. The rest of Horse Wise gave an audible sigh of relief.

“Well,” Max said with a wide grin. “That’s that. Let’s try it again, everybody, shall we? Remember, if this were easy, it wouldn’t be a worthwhile exhibition. Start with the circles.

“And, Carole, Jessica’s without a big sister now, so keep an eye on her, okay? I’m counting on you to watch
two
young riders.” He grinned, and Carole knew he was referring to her earlier inattention. She smiled back. She’d show Max—plus, she’d be a much better big sister than Veronica ever could be!

“Are you okay?” she asked, riding close to Jessica.

Jessica nodded, but Carole could see that her chin was trembling and her eyes were filled with tears.

“Don’t worry,” Carole said. “It’s hard, but you’ll get it.”

“Why do you think she left?” Jessica asked.

“Who? Veronica? Don’t worry about her either—she’s always a pain in the neck.”

Jessica swallowed hard and nodded again, but Carole didn’t think she felt better. Penny, indignant at being kicked by Jessica and kicked at by Garnet, got slower and slower as the practice went on, and Jessica never managed to cross through the center correctly. The rest of the practice went well, however, and Max called them to a halt after an hour’s hard work.

“Nice job,” he said, smiling at every one of them. “All of you did very well. Think about these movements over the next few days, and Tuesday afternoon we’ll try setting it to music, okay?”

“Okay, Max!” May Grover shouted almost too enthusiastically. The riders laughed.

“Okay, May,” Max said. “All of you, untack your horses, cool them out, and feed them. We’ll meet back at my office in”—he checked his watch—“forty minutes. Horse Wise, dismissed!”

Stevie raised her hand. “Max? I’ve got an idea. Since I think we’re still going to need a lot of luck to do well in the drill, I think we should all touch the good-luck horseshoe on our way
into
the barn.”

Everyone laughed again. The good-luck horseshoe was the best known of the Pine Hollow traditions. The horseshoe hung near the main entrance of the stable. Everyone touched it before they rode, and no one had ever been seriously injured at Pine Hollow. However, no one ever touched it
after
they rode.

“I don’t think we need luck to take off a saddle,” Lisa said.

“I don’t think we’ll get hurt filling up the horses’ water buckets,” Carole added, laughing, and the little riders all giggled.

“Luck,” Stevie insisted. “We’ll need it for the drill.”

“Skill,” Max countered. “Not luck. Precision, accuracy, control, careful thinking—”

Stevie shook her head, her face serious. Dismounting Belle, she walked up to the good-luck shoe and gave it a loud slap, like a high-five, as she led Belle into the barn. One by one, all the other riders followed her example.

“H
OW
’
RE YOU DOING
with Outlaw, Jasmine?” Carole leaned over the door into the stall where her “little sister” was carefully untacking the pony. Carole had just finished taking care of Starlight.

“Pretty well,” said Jasmine. She unbuckled the girth and reached up to lift the saddle off Outlaw’s back. The saddle was heavy and awkward for her, and she staggered a little. “Except—”

Carole hurried to help her. Where Jasmine reached up for the saddle, Carole reached down, because she was so much taller than Jasmine. She helped Jasmine balance the saddle across her arm.

“Thanks,” Jasmine said, grinning. “I’ll take this to the trailer and be right back to groom him.”

“I’ll help you,” Carole said.

“I don’t really need help,” Jasmine said, turning to face Carole and walking backward down the aisle. “Really. I’m okay.”

Carole waited with Outlaw anyway until Jasmine came back. She offered to help brush him, but Jasmine shook her head. “See, Carole,” she said, a serious expression on her face, “when my parents said they would buy me a pony, I promised them that I would take care of it myself. I know they wouldn’t mind you helping me, but I’d rather do everything that I can by myself. Besides, I really
like
taking care of Outlaw.” She smiled a little anxiously, as if afraid Carole would be offended.

Carole understood right away. “I feel like that myself,” she said. “There’s nothing I like better than taking care of Starlight. I’ll go see how Jessica’s doing. You yell if you need me.”

Jasmine grinned and nodded, her anxiety gone. Carole went down the aisle to Penny’s stall, but before she got there, she could hear muffled thumps and what sounded like a small girl crying. She ran the last few steps and threw open the door.

Penny was whirling in her stall, her head and hindquarters
crashing into the walls. Jessica was chasing her, lunging at her head and crying softly, “Stop it! Stop it!
Penny!
”

Carole caught Jessica in her arms before the frantic pony could hurt her. “Hey, hey! Whoa! Jessica, what’s wrong?”

Jessica sagged against Carole, covering her face with her hands. “Penny won’t come, she hates me!” she wailed. “I can’t unbuckle the girth, she won’t let me near her, I tried talking nice to her! She hates me!”

Carole knelt in the sawdust and used the edge of her T-shirt to wipe Jessica’s face. Penny, standing warily against the back wall of the stall, came forward and began to eat hay. Carole saw what the problem was—Penny was wearing her saddle but not her bridle.

“Penny doesn’t hate you,” she said, comforting Jessica. “She just got a little wound up today, and she’s not behaving. Here.” She walked very slowly and cautiously toward the pony’s head. Penny eyed her and began to back up, but relaxed when Carole spoke soothingly to her. At last Carole was able to grab a handful of her mane. “Hand me her halter,” she said to Jessica.

Jessica ran to get it from its hook on the stall door.
She handed it to Carole without saying a word. “Now the lead rope,” she said. Jessica gave it to her. Carole tied the other end of rope to a ring built into the stall wall for just that purpose. Penny stood quietly.

“Now,” said Carole, “next time, take her saddle off first. That way you can still hold on to the bridle if she starts to move away from you. Or put the halter on first and tie her in the corner. Then she’ll stay put when you groom her too.

“And don’t ever chase a pony around in its stall like that,” she added. “Penny started out thinking it was fun, but she might have decided you were scary and tried to kick you. You could have been hurt. Next time you have trouble, come get me, or Max or Red, or one of my friends. We’ll help you.”

Jessica nodded and sucked in her breath with a quivering noise that still sounded very much like a sob. “Okay?” Carole asked.

“I guess so.” She didn’t sound convinced.

Carole felt sorry for her. “Jess, it wasn’t your fault,” she said. “Penny’s being uncooperative and you just don’t know all this stuff yet. You’ll learn. I didn’t know it either when I was your age.”

Jessica shrugged. “She hates me,” she repeated, and went to get Penny’s grooming gear.

Carole wished she knew of something to say to
make Jessica feel better. Unfortunately, just as she’d understood how Jasmine felt, she also understood how Jessica felt. Carole could still remember when she didn’t know how to control a horse, and she knew that when the horses she rode misbehaved, she had sometimes felt that they had done it on purpose, because they hated her. Now that she was older, she knew that horses had good days and bad days, just like people, but she realized she probably couldn’t explain this to Jessica. Instead, she decided to talk about something else, to get Jessica’s mind off the pony.

“Did you just move to Willow Creek?” she asked when Jessica came back. She knew Jessica had been riding at Pine Hollow for only a few weeks.

“We moved here six months ago,” Jessica answered. “I took riding lessons for about a year where we used to live. My parents work, and for a while they didn’t have time to find me another stable.” She brushed Penny’s ears carefully and smoothed her copper mane.

“We used to move around a lot when I was little too,” Carole said. “My dad’s in the Marines.” Only, Carole thought, her parents made sure they found her a place to ride right away, because they knew how important it was to her. Of course, Marine Corps bases often had riding stables, but still—

“Do you have brothers and sisters?” she asked Jessica.

“No.”

“Me neither,” Carole said.

Jessica continued as if Carole hadn’t spoken. “We have a yellow house with eleven rooms and 2.2 acres of land. There are three houses down the road and there are no kids living in any of them.” She was brushing Penny’s legs now. Carole rested her arms on Penny’s back and leaned over to look at her. Jessica’s bent head looked sad.

“Who do you play with?” she asked.

Jessica shrugged again. “Just me. I play by myself. The school bus stops at the end of the lane and I walk home from there. I have a snack usually. Sometimes I read, or watch TV. I wait for my dad—he gets home first.

“I know lots of girls at school, but I’m not allowed to go home with them,” she continued, “because somebody would have to go pick me up, and my parents don’t have time. I can’t have anybody over at my house either, because my parents trust me home by myself but they don’t trust me home alone with friends. Now I get to come here once a week to ride. I take a different bus.” She stood up as she was saying
the last part, and Carole was amazed at the soft smile that spread over her face. Clearly, riding was important to Jessica.

“You love horses?” she asked the little girl.

“I love all animals. I love horses best.” Jessica took the grooming bucket away from Carole. They untied Penny and shut her stall door, and Jessica went to put the grooming bucket away.

“Thank you—thank you for helping me,” she called back to Carole. “I hope I didn’t bother you too much.”

A
S SOON AS
Lisa had finished making Delilah comfortable, she went to check on May. As she expected, May was cheerfully grooming Macaroni. Lisa admired the pony which May had just gotten. She had out-grown her old, smaller pony, Luna.

“I like Macaroni an awful lot,” May confided. “I loved Luna, but do you know what?”

“What?” asked Lisa.

“Last Saturday I went to visit Luna in her new home. I met the little girl who owns her now, and do you know what?”

“What?” Lisa smiled.

“She loves Luna already almost as much as I do. So I know Luna will be okay. Hey, Lisa, I’m almost done.
Why don’t you go help Michael? He keeps asking me where to put things.”

Lisa willingly went looking for the new boy, Michael Grant. She found him in the tack room, holding his horse’s bridle and looking confused. “Can I help?” she asked him.

“Yeah.” Michael held up the bridle and smiled. “I can’t remember where this goes. I know it was
one
of these hooks—” He gestured toward the forty or so bridle hooks that lined the walls.

Lisa showed him the correct place, then helped him put his saddle and grooming bucket away. She was just thinking what a nice person Michael seemed to be, and how nice it was to have one boy at Pine Hollow who wasn’t infatuated with Veronica diAngelo, when he said, “Can I ask you one more question?”

“Sure,” said Lisa.

“Who was that good-looking girl with the black hair in our class? Veronica Somebody—what’s her last name?”

Lisa shook her head in disbelief. It was inevitable. “I didn’t realize you noticed her,” she said.