Stray Horse

Lisa woke up at dawn. Her room was gray in the early morning light, and the house was as quiet as it had been the night before. She looked at her watch. It was 6:15. She didn’t have to be at school until eight. If she hurried, she could stop by CARL on her way to school and check on PJ. Her parents wouldn’t be up for another half hour. It would mean she’d miss them, but PJ was important, and she was sure they’d understand.

Lisa hurried through her morning routine, then picked up her book bag and went downstairs. She scribbled a note for her mother and headed for the front door. As she passed the den, she noticed a pile of blankets on the sofa, and then realized it wasn’t really a pile of blankets. It was her father with some blankets on him. He must have gotten in really late the night before and hadn’t wanted to wake up Lisa’s mother. She blew him a silent kiss and went out the front door.

L
ISA
A
TWOOD OPENED
her eyes. In the gray light that filtered through the window, it took her a moment to orient herself. She was home. It was a Saturday morning. Nothing unusual in that. She glanced at the clock on her bedside table. It was 6:30. She calculated backward. She wanted to get to the stable by eight. Half an hour to shower and dress, fifteen minutes to eat, fifteen minutes to walk over there. She could sleep for another few minutes.

“Good morning, sleepy.”

Lisa had almost forgotten that one of her best friends, Carole Hanson, had slept over.

“Good morning to you,” Lisa said. “Been up long?”

“No, I just woke up,” said Carole. “Is it time to get up?”

“Not quite,” Lisa said.

“We promised Stevie we’d call her at seven,” Carole reminded Lisa.

“We’ve got half an hour, then,” Lisa said, pulling the covers up securely under her chin and enjoying the tranquility of the morning. She loved it when everything was quiet in her house. A car door slammed. Lisa turned on her side.

“We should call her at quarter of and then again at seven,” Carole said.

Lisa laughed. “Maybe we should have started calling her at five o’clock!”

Stevie—short for Stephanie—Lake was the third of their inseparable threesome. Although the three of them were very different from one another in many ways, they had a common bond that was far stronger than their differences: They were all utterly, totally, absolutely nuts about horses. They’d discovered this bond soon after they’d met and had decided to formalize it by declaring themselves the first members of their own club: The Saddle Club. They gave themselves only two rules. The first was one none of them had ever been tempted to break: They had to be horse-crazy. The second had been a little dicier. They’d declared that they always had to be willing to help one another out, no matter what.

Sometimes it seemed that Stevie was the one who needed the most help. Her friends liked to describe her as lots of fun and a magnet for trouble. Stevie had three brothers, one older, one younger, and her twin, Alex. A lot of the time when she was getting into trouble it was because she was determined to right some wrong she felt they’d done her. The Lake household was a minefield of practical jokes the boys and Stevie played on one another. More than once, Stevie had had to explain to her teacher that she really
had
finished her math homework, but she’d done it with a disappearing-ink pen, and if the teacher would just put the paper in lemon juice …

Stevie was wild, fun, funny, and irrepressible. She was also a sound sleeper. Calling her to be sure she woke up in time for their Pony Club meeting was one of the easiest things her friends ever had to do for her.

While Stevie was prone to practical jokes and wild schemes—and her will was almost always good—her results were uneven at best. She often complained that her grades in school would be better if she didn’t have to spend so much of her class time in the principal’s office. Her teachers didn’t see it that way.

Lisa was the absolute opposite in that regard. She never handed in her assignments late, she never forgot to study for a test, and she never got less than an A on anything.
Her clothes were always clean and neatly ironed, and her hair always stayed in place. She was calm, rational, and logical. Sometimes she took on more than she could handle, but her friends were always there to help her out when that happened. Lisa was the newest rider of the three, but as their instructor, Max Regnery, said, she was a very fast learner. Within a short time she’d just about caught up with the years of experience that Carole and Stevie had.

Carole was the best rider of the three of them, and if they were all horse-crazy, Carole was the horse-craziest. She’d been riding since she was very young. Her father, a colonel in the Marines, had had to move from base to base when she was a little girl. The bases may have been different from one another, but they all had stables either on them or nearby, and Carole learned at an early age that when everything was changing around her, horses were her anchor. That had comforted and helped her through those moves and through her mother’s illness and death a few years earlier. She and her father lived not far from Quantico, Virginia, where he was now stationed. Quantico was near the town of Willow Creek, where Carole and her friends rode at Pine Hollow Stables and where the girls went to school. But Carole’s house wasn’t within walking distance of the stable, so she liked to sleep over at one of her friends’ houses when she wanted to be at Pine
Hollow early on a Saturday morning. Both Stevie and Lisa were always happy to have her. In fact, the three of them were planning a sleepover at Stevie’s house for that night so that they could get to the stable early on Sunday morning as well. Sleepovers usually meant extended Saddle Club meetings, at which the girls could do their next-to-favorite thing, which was talking about horses. Their favorite, of course, was actually riding them.

Carole pushed the covers away and reached for the phone. After three rings, a sleepy-sounding Stevie picked up.

“Fifteen-minute warning,” Carole said. She hung up before Stevie could say something she might regret. “I’ll shower first,” Carole said to Lisa.

Lisa smiled. Like Carole, she was eager to get to Pine Hollow. But unlike Carole, she was glad for another few minutes in bed.

While Carole showered, Lisa listened for sounds in the house. Her parents were usually up early on Saturdays, but she didn’t hear any movement downstairs. She had a few minutes of utter calm and peace. Who knew what the rest of the day would bring?

When Carole emerged from the bathroom, Lisa went in, leaving Carole to make the final, dire call to Stevie. Twenty minutes later the two girls went downstairs together.

The lights were on, but the house was unusually quiet. Lisa’s father was sitting in the den, reading the newspaper, a glass of orange juice on the table near him.

“Good morning, Daddy,” Lisa said.

“Morning, Mr. Atwood,” said Carole.

“Good morning, girls,” he said, then shuffled his paper.

Lisa and Carole went into the kitchen. Mrs. Atwood wasn’t there, but there were signs she had been. The kitchen table was set for them for breakfast; the coffee was made.

Lisa selected a variety of cereals from the cabinet, poured juice for herself and Carole, and invited her father to join them.

“I’ll just read the paper,” he said, remaining in the den.

“Where’s Mom?”

“Hmph,” he answered.

Lisa shrugged and sat down. They were out of milk. She put the cereal back and took some bread out of the refrigerator to make toast. She popped four slices into the toaster, and when they emerged she and Carole buttered them and spread on some jam. Breakfast was finished in just a few minutes. The girls then took some time to scrounge up sandwich fixings for lunch.

It didn’t take long to assemble a couple of tuna fish sandwiches, slice some carrots, and find some cookies and chips and a can of soda for each of them. Carole was putting a
napkin in each bag when the kitchen door swung open and Mrs. Atwood marched in, her face stony, apparently unaware of the presence of either Carole or Lisa.

“There!” she sputtered toward the door to the den. “Now you’ve got the milk for your coffee. Are you satisfied?”

She put the milk in the refrigerator and slammed the door. Then she poured herself a cup of coffee and sat at the kitchen table, scowling.

Mr. Atwood came in, poured himself some coffee, and went to the refrigerator for the milk.

Carole was uncomfortable with witnessing such a scene and found herself wishing she’d stayed in the shower a lot longer. Maybe she could run upstairs and get back in. Or maybe a hole in the floor would open up and swallow her. Another look around and she realized it wouldn’t have made any difference. Nobody seemed to have the slightest idea that she was there.

“I got my history project back yesterday,” Lisa said brightly. “Remember the one about Julius Caesar? With the model of the Roman senate?” Nobody said anything, but Lisa continued. “I got an A on it.” Still no response. “I had to work really hard on that one—boy, you can’t imagine how hard it was to build a model of the Roman senate. It made a big difference that we’d been in Rome on vacation. So thank you guys for that!”