Sidesaddle (7 page)

Feminine, elegant, charming.
Those were nice words from Phil, words Stevie didn’t ever recall hearing him utter about her. Visions of Rhett Butler popped into Stevie’s head. She did her best to shove them back out again. Phil with a pencil mustache was more than she could handle right then.

She was spared further visions when the first of a barrage of spitballs hit her. She didn’t know where they were coming from, but she had no doubt who was propelling them.

“Alexander Lake!” she said. “You come out of there!”

Alex did. He stood up from behind a bush in front of the Lakes’ house (in a bed of flowers that Stevie had weeded on Tuesday), pointed his straw at Stevie, and let fly with another spitball, dart-gun style. This one hit Phil.

“What’s this about?” Phil asked.

“It all has to do with some shaving cream,” Stevie said, offering no further explanation. None was needed. Phil was aware of the ongoing practical-joke battles that Stevie had with her brothers, most especially with her twin. Phil had two sisters whom he found almost as annoying as Stevie found her three brothers. He was
always sympathetic, and often inspired, by Stevie’s sibling rivalries. Being hit by a spitball helped spur his sympathies, too.

“I’ll get the hose,” he offered.

Stevie nodded, but she was more interested in direct retaliation. She dived at her brother, startling him into dropping his straw and spitballs. The two of them scrambled in the freshly weeded dirt of the flower bed, punching and slapping one another. Nobody was getting seriously hurt. That was never the intention, but annoyance had its limits, and Stevie simply had to stop Alex.

The whole thing came to an abrupt halt when Phil turned on the water and began to spray both of them. At that moment, Stevie was lying on the ground and Alex was standing over her in triumph, a foot on her chest, as if he’d just discovered a new land and was about to plant a flag in her.

Stevie was the first to crack. With her brother standing above her and water raining over her, there was nothing to do but laugh. The jouncing of her chest when she started to guffaw upset Alex’s balance, and the next thing Stevie knew, Alex was sitting next to her in the wet grass beside the flower bed, laughing every bit as hard as she was. By the time Phil returned from putting the hose away, Alex and Stevie were shaking hands and forgiving one another, a little.

Alex stood up. “Listen, I’ve got to go now. But don’t
get any more bright ideas about whipped cream labels on shaving cream cans, okay?”

“Deal,” said Stevie. She took Phil’s proffered hand and got to her feet. “Thanks for spraying Alex,” she said. “You really got him.”

“He wasn’t who I was trying to get,” Phil said. “I was trying to get both of you because I knew it was the only way to break up the fight before your mother got wind of it. I don’t like the idea of you being grounded until you’re twenty-five. Think of this as enlightened self-interest. Come on. Let’s get you dried off, okay?”

“Okay,” she said, leading the way into the house. Stevie grabbed a towel from the laundry room and the two of them headed into the family room in the basement, where they might have a little peace and quiet. Alex was gone, Chad was at soccer practice, and Michael was at a friend’s house.

While Stevie toweled her hair dry, Phil put their favorite CD on the stereo. Then she handed him a Ping-Pong paddle. By the time they began playing, everything seemed very normal to her. There was no talk of pink, no discussion about sidesaddle riding. There was simply their own brand of competitive Ping-Pong. And Phil won. Stevie thought that perhaps one of his serves was actually on the white line, but somehow it seemed right to let him feel like the victor, the stronger, the Man.

When they were done with that, they played video
games. Stevie was off her game that afternoon. Phil was ahead by 27,000 life points by the time they heard the doorbell ring at exactly four o’clock.

“I guess I’d better go,” he said, standing up and taking her hand.

“I guess,” she agreed, standing and facing him.

Phil swept a lock of hair back from her face and gave her a quick but very sweet kiss. Then he held her at arm’s length and smiled, just looking at her. It made Stevie feel very beautiful. She practically floated up the basement steps to open the door for Mrs. Marsten.

“Hi, Ste—Is that you, Stevie?” Mrs. Marsten greeted her.

“Hello, Mrs. Marsten,” Stevie responded. “I hope we didn’t keep you waiting. We were just down in the basement playing video games.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Marsten said almost as if she didn’t believe Stevie. Then Phil said good-bye and was out the door. Stevie waved at him through the screen door as the car backed out of her driveway.

Just before she pulled out onto the street, Mrs. Marsten gave Stevie one more very curious look. Then she turned the wheel and took Phil home.

What was that about?
Stevie wondered. She shrugged. Sometimes other kids’ parents could be funny, and there was no explaining it, though Mrs. Marsten was usually almost as normal as Stevie’s own parents. Shrugging again, Stevie went back downstairs and put
away the video games, definitely interested in erasing Phil’s 27,000 life points before one of her brothers found out how badly she’d played, and then she went back up to her own room. She hadn’t even had a chance to shower after her ride. She was ready to freshen up.

She picked up her bathrobe and went into the bathroom. There a very strange image greeted her from the mirror. It was Stevie, probably, but she was barely recognizable through the streaks of mud on her face and hair.

“Oh no,” she said, stepping back from the mirror. And that was when she could see Alex’s very large, muddy footprint across her chest.

“Oh no!”

“H
EY
! I
FOUND A PICTURE
of a mustang, and here’s one of a palomino, so I think that covers all the breeds descended from the ponies left in North America by the Spanish
conquistadores
, right?” Carole said, eagerly picking up her scissors to clip the photographs from a magazine.

After the trip to TD’s, Tiffani, Lisa, and Carole had all gone to the Willow Creek library to work on their projects. The library had a workroom where students could talk to one another. It was the perfect place to work on projects, with its big tables and large sunny windows. Lisa was at one end of the table, a stack of books on horsemanship and history in front of her. She was looking up everything she could find about the military history of horses.

Carole and Tiffani had brought most of their own materials. Carole had brought a selection of what she called her favorite horse magazines. That had made even Tiffani laugh, because Carole didn’t have a “favorite” horse magazine. Any horse magazine was her favorite, and the size of her stack proved that. It must have weighed twenty pounds and had filled her backpack.

Carole had shrugged off her friends’ laughter. It was working, wasn’t it? She’d found pictures of every breed so far, and Tiffani seemed only too happy to paste them down on the charts they were making for their presentation.

“Oh, and here’s another color pattern for the Appaloosa,” Carole announced, clipping busily.

“All right, then next come the ponies,” said Tiffani, pulling another chart out of the stack. “I think this is the last of them.” She riffled through the stack. “Yes, it is, unless we actually manage to find a picture of the Mongolian wild horse.”

“It’s okay,” Carole said. “I think I can draw one. It may not be perfect, but since. I doubt anybody in Horse Wise has ever seen one, nobody’s going to be too fussy. Boy, I hope I get the leg stripes right. Maybe I should see if I can find a picture of a zebra. And here are the pony pictures. I cut them out last night when I came across a whole series of articles on them. I’ve got most of the American breeds and the ones from the British
Isles, plus Icelandic, and that gray French breed—Camargue, is it?”

“Yup,” Tiffani said, taking the stack of photographs from Carole. “Wow, thanks.” She pasted the collection of pony pictures on the chart while Carole went to talk to the librarian. “And how are you doing?” Tiffani asked Lisa.

“Just fine,” Lisa said. “I’m learning a lot. I knew that dressage descended from military techniques, but I didn’t realize how much.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Tiffani said. “Right down to the fact that most of the signals are given with subtle leg movements. That way the soldier had his arms free for battle.”

Lisa made a note.

“And there are other customs that have come down to us from military riders as well.”

“Like?”

“Well, like the side of the road we drive on. I’m not sure exactly how this worked, but I’ve been told that it was considered a friendly gesture to ride to the right when someone was riding toward you. That way, if you happened to have a sword in your hand, it would be very hard to attack because the sword would be on the outside. Of course, it was defensive as well, because it meant you were harder to attack if you kept a potential attacker to your left.”

“Amazing,” said Lisa.

“It seems that way, I know, but it wouldn’t have seemed so amazing a hundred years ago. Back then, everybody had and used horses every day. They had as much to do with people’s lives as cars influence the way we live now. Today almost every house has a garage, or at least nearby parking. Back then, almost every house had a stable, or at least a nearby livery stable.”

It was utterly logical but something Lisa had not considered. Not so very long ago, horses interwove with almost every aspect of life, from farmwork to transportation to the development of roads and even customs of the road.

“Maybe I should be writing about more than military history,” said Lisa.

“No, I think you’ll find that there’s plenty to write about on that one subject. Did you ever hear about Shakespeare’s play
Richard the Third
?”

“Sure, but I never read it,” said Lisa. She had always thought of herself as a good reader, but she had hardly begun Shakespeare.

“Well, King Richard’s final words are ‘A horse! A horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ ”

“I guess I’d better look that one up,” said Lisa.

“It’s a good story,” Tiffani told her. “But historians have pretty much refuted the part about the little princes.”

“What?”

“Well, you’ll see, but that part doesn’t have anything to do with horses.”

Tiffani not only knew just about everything there was to know about horses, she also knew about literature and history. Lisa was totally impressed.

Carole returned then with a book that included a picture of the Mongolian wild horse, and since it was the perfect size, she simply made a copy of it and colored it with her colored pencils.

“Done!” she declared.

“Good work,” Tiffani said. “And good timing, too, because I told my aunt she could pick me up right now.” She stacked her books and all the charts, said good-bye to Carole and Lisa, and headed for the door.

“She’s really something,” said Carole.

“Definitely,” Lisa agreed. “Wait’ll I tell you all the stuff she was talking about when you were looking for that last picture. It’ll blow Stevie away, too.”

“Speaking of whom, what time were we supposed to be over at her house?”

“Whenever we get there,” Lisa said.

Carole looked at her watch. “I guess that means about fifteen minutes from now, right?”

“Right.”

It took them a few minutes to tidy up, packing away the scissors and glue and picking up the scraps of paper. It was a rule of the workroom that you left it as neat as you’d found it.

Five minutes later, they were headed for Stevie’s house, both of them feeling very good about the work they’d gotten done. Carole’s whole project was finished, a full week ahead of time. Lisa had just about all the information she needed to do her own project, and, true to the project’s name, she was definitely learning something new.

Carole rang the bell and then stepped back. It didn’t take long for the door to open, but when it did, Carole wasn’t absolutely sure she was at the right house. She didn’t really recognize the person standing in the doorway. She glanced around her quickly. The three bikes piled on the lawn and the slightly crushed but freshly weeded flower bed confirmed that it was, in fact, the Lakes’.

“Come on in, guys!”

The voice was right, too.

The door swung wide and Carole and Lisa walked in.

“Is Phil still here?” Lisa asked.

“No, his mom picked him up about an hour ago. After he left, I took a shower and changed my clothes,” the person who resembled Stevie said.

“And everything else,” said Lisa, staring at the girl. She was pretty sure it was Stevie, though if someone had told her right then that Stevie and Alex were actually triplets and the Lakes had been hiding the other sister for years, it wouldn’t really have surprised her.

Stevie was wearing a pair of linen pants and a flowered
blouse that matched the description Stevie had given her friends of “the awfulest Christmas present” she’d received last year. Not only was it flowered, but it had puffed sleeves with white lace trim.