Summer Rider (2 page)

Lisa had spotted the car by now. She shrugged. “It does look like the same one,” she said. “I wonder what it’s doing back here?” The girls had seen the car again—or a
very similar one—just a few days earlier. They had assumed that it belonged to the family of a camper.

Stevie was still watching as the car doors opened and several men in dark business suits climbed out. She narrowed her eyes suspiciously as the men headed into the rec hall. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I think it’s safe to say they’re not here to try out the new arts and crafts room.”

“They’re probably meeting with Barry about something,” Carole said with a shrug. The camp director’s office was in the rec hall.

“What business could Barry possibly have with people who look like that?” Stevie asked. “This is Moose Hill, not Wall Street. There’s something very suspicious about all this.”

Carole and Lisa exchanged glances. Stevie had a curious look in her eye. And when Stevie was curious, she didn’t rest until her curiosity was satisfied—no matter how much trouble it got her into.

“I’m sure it’s nothing suspicious, Stevie,” Carole said quickly.

Lisa nodded. “What do we know about running a camp?” she said. “For all we know, Barry might have meetings with businessmen all the time. In fact, he probably does, since we’ve seen that car around so much.”

“Maybe it’s not even the same car,” Carole suggested. “It could just be a bunch of similar-looking ones. Maybe
business types like their cars to match each other, just like their suits.” She giggled at the thought.

But Stevie wasn’t laughing. She was still gazing thoughtfully at the rec hall. “Barry has been acting awfully peculiar this year,” she mused. “When you talk to him these days, he doesn’t pay attention half the time. And he wasn’t very sympathetic when Lisa ended up in the wrong cabin, remember?”

Lisa remembered. She had accidentally been assigned to a different cabin than her friends, and Barry hadn’t tried very hard to fix the mistake. She hadn’t been able to move until a few days ago. That had meant The Saddle Club had been separated for two weeks.

“So Barry’s a little distracted these days,” Carole said, turning and heading toward the mess hall again. “Big deal. Maybe he’s not feeling well. Maybe he’s in love. Or maybe he’s just overwhelmed, since there are more campers this year than ever before.”

“Or maybe something mysterious is going on and he’s keeping it a secret,” Stevie countered, her eyes bright with excitement as she walked beside her friends. “Maybe someone is blackmailing him. Or he could be mixed up in some kind of illegal horse-trading scheme.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. She thought Stevie was being a bit silly, and she was quickly losing interest in the whole conversation. As far as she was concerned, camp was action-packed enough without inventing wild mysteries revolving
around a car and a bunch of businessmen. “Come on, Stevie,” she said. “If that car was here for something like that, do you really think it would pull right up to the rec hall in broad daylight?”

“Logical as always, Lisa,” Carole said with a smile. “And right as always, too. I’m sure those businessmen are here for some totally ordinary, boring financial meeting or something.”

Stevie shrugged. “Don’t be too sure,” she said. “Maybe it’s not horse rustling, but something strange is going on around here. I’ve sensed it since we got here.”

“Really?” Carole said skeptically. “This is the first time you’ve mentioned it.”

“No it’s not,” Stevie replied as the girls reached the mess hall and paused just outside. “We saw someone mysterious in the woods that time, remember?” Carole and Stevie had heard someone or something moving away through the woods behind the cabins one evening. Stevie had thought it looked like a man in a suit, though she hadn’t gotten a good enough look to be certain.

“Right,” Carole said. “A very mysterious bear.”

Stevie opened the door and held it for her friends. “You may not believe me now,” she said, “but I’ll find out what’s going on around here. Just wait and see.”

S
TEVIE WAS STILL
talking about her mystery half an hour later. The Saddle Club was sitting at a table in the mess hall with Phil and Todd.

“Is she always like this?” Todd asked after Stevie had described the mysterious car for the fourth time.

“You mean completely insane?” Phil joked, helping himself to a handful of carrot sticks from the platter in the middle of the table.

Todd nodded. “Exactly.”

A week earlier, Stevie would have been annoyed at Todd’s comment, but now she just grinned at him. “Sure I am,” she said. “It’s one of Phil’s favorite things about me. In fact, it’s one of everybody’s favorite things about me. Right, Lisa?” She turned and gave Lisa a big smile. Lisa hadn’t been taking part in the conversation, and Stevie
wanted to make sure she and Todd got every chance they could to talk to each other.

Lisa looked up from her plate. “What?” It was obvious she hadn’t heard a word Stevie had said.

Stevie rolled her eyes. “Never mind.” Suddenly she had another idea. “Hey, I was just thinking—you haven’t tried out the new tennis courts yet, have you, Lisa? How about a game this afternoon after classes? It could be boys against girls.” She elbowed Phil in the ribs.

“No way,” Todd said quickly. “Even fantastic players like me and Phil couldn’t beat all three of you at once.”

“Oh.” Stevie glanced at Carole. “Um, I don’t think Carole wants to play. Right, Carole?”

Before Carole could answer, Lisa spoke up. “You and Carole go ahead, Stevie,” she said. “I have some other things to do this afternoon.”

Carole frowned. “You mean your reading list?” One of Lisa’s teachers had given her a summer reading list, and Lisa had brought every single one of the books on the list to camp. She was determined to finish them all before she went home. During the first two weeks Lisa had spent so much time reading that her friends felt as though they had barely seen her. Now that they were all in the same cabin, Carole and Stevie had hoped that Lisa would spend less time on schoolwork and more time having fun with them.

“Actually, no,” Lisa said. “I do have to get some reading done tonight—I’m only halfway through
Jane Eyre
—but
this afternoon I was hoping to put in an extra hour or so with Major.” That was the name of the horse Lisa was riding while she was at Moose Hill.

“Ugh,” Todd put in. “I like riding as much as the next guy, but after a whole day of classes, it’s nice to do something else for a while.” He turned to Phil. “Since nobody seems to be into this tennis plan, how about you and I do some boarding before dinner?”

Stevie grimaced. As far as she was concerned, Todd’s one major drawback was his obsession with skateboarding. He had brought three skateboards to Moose Hill, despite the few paved surfaces on the camp’s rural grounds.

Todd noticed her expression. “Hey, Stevie, don’t look so bummed out,” he said. “You can borrow my spare board if you want to come with us.”

“Thanks, but no thanks.” Stevie sighed. “I’ve developed this strange fondness for my kneecaps,” she said. Getting Todd and Lisa together wasn’t turning out to be as easy as she had expected.

Lisa had tuned out the conversation again. She was busy planning her evening. There was a lot to accomplish, and she wanted to make sure she had time to get it all done. If she worked with Major for forty minutes after her last class and took another twenty cooling him down and putting him away, that still left half an hour before dinner for reading. Suddenly she had an idea: If she brought her book to the stable with her, maybe she could read while
she was cooling Major down. He was a calm horse, and she was sure he wouldn’t give her any trouble if she read while they walked.

She smiled, pleased with the idea. Then the smile faded as she started to calculate how much longer it would take her to finish all the books on her reading list. The more she thought about it, the farther behind she realized she was. Camp was already more than halfway over, but Lisa was less than halfway through the twenty books on her list.

“Are you okay?” Carole’s concerned voice broke into Lisa’s thoughts.

Lisa saw that both Carole and Stevie were staring at her. “Of course I’m okay,” she said, forcing herself to laugh a little. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

Stevie shrugged. “For one thing, you haven’t been listening to a word we’ve said. And you’ve barely touched your food.”

Lisa picked up her fork and quickly shoveled some salad into her mouth. “I’m fine,” she said through a mouthful of lettuce. “I was just thinking about what we learned in class this morning.” Her friends seemed satisfied, and soon Stevie returned to her new favorite topic of conversation.

“The more I think about it, the more strange things I remember,” she said. “There’s the car, of course. And the mysterious figure in the woods. And have you noticed that Barry is late for things all the time now?” She nodded
toward the door, where the camp director was just entering.

“That proves it,” Carole said sarcastically. “After all, there’s no good reason why a man who’s in charge of running a camp with fifty riders and a stable full of horses should ever be too busy to show up for lunch on time.”

Stevie ignored the sarcasm. “Plus, he’s made some pretty odd comments lately …”

Lisa’s attention drifted back to her own thoughts. Carole might think Barry was the busiest guy around, but Lisa was sure that his schedule had nothing on her own. She poked her fork at her salad, feeling her stomach knot as she thought about everything she had to do before the end of camp. In addition to working her way through her reading list, she would have to spend a lot of time with Major practicing for the big show. There was a lot to do, and for a second Lisa wasn’t sure she was going to be able to do it all. It was just too much. Then she remembered Piper.

Piper Sullivan had been Lisa’s cabin mate for the first week and a half of camp. She was a tall, thin, pretty girl a couple years older than Lisa. Besides being a fantastic rider, Piper was a top student at an exclusive school and an accomplished dancer. And she made it all seem effortless, as though being perfect came naturally to her. More than anything, Lisa wanted to be exactly like that. She had always tried to do her best in everything she did. That
was why she got straight As in school and why she had progressed so fast in her riding.

But lately everything Lisa had worked so hard for seemed in danger of slipping away. For the first time, she had received a less-than-perfect mark on her report card—a B+ in math. And these days it seemed she was always being reminded that as far as she had come in her riding, she still wasn’t as good as Carole and Stevie. It was true that they had both been riding years longer than Lisa, but that didn’t make it any easier to hear how good they were. Even worse, people usually went on to say how much Lisa was improving—implying that she still had a long way to go before she could hope to catch up to her friends. She had never been second-best at anything in her life, and she didn’t particularly like the feeling now.

Piper never had to worry about things like that. What’s more, she had seemed to understand Lisa’s need to succeed, because she had the same need herself. Knowing that, and seeing how perfect Piper was, had been an inspiration to Lisa. She wished Piper were there now. But Piper had disappeared the week before without a word of explanation. All Barry would say was that she had been called away for personal reasons.

By this time, the conversation at the table had turned to the upcoming show. Lisa heard the words
blue ribbon
and started to listen.

Todd was grinning at Stevie. “Well?” he said expectantly.
“What do you think? Will Phil win the blue ribbon in dressage, or will I?”

“Yeah, come on, Stevie,” Phil urged. “Who’s your pick, me or Todd?”

Stevie just shrugged and took a bite of her tuna salad sandwich. Dressage was her favorite event, and she and Belle were good at it. Phil and Todd knew that, and they knew she wanted that blue ribbon. They were just trying to get her goat, and Stevie wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction. “I don’t know about that,” she said calmly once she had chewed and swallowed. “What I’m wondering is who’s going to win the show-jumping event.”

Carole’s eyes lit up. “Me too,” she said eagerly. “I still can’t believe we’re actually going to have the chance to be in it.” In show jumping, the competitors had to jump a course of fences within a set amount of time. Unlike hunter jumpers, show jumpers didn’t have to show perfect form or an even stride to score well. All they had to do was clear the fences any way they could. Nobody at the table had ever competed in a show-jumping event before, and everyone was sure it would be the highlight of the show.

“I know the answer to your question, Stevie,” Todd said with a glance at Phil. “Barry will have to award
two
blue ribbons—one for me and one for Phil.”

Carole laughed. “You know that’s impossible,” she said. “There’s no such thing as a tie in show jumping.” That was because all ties in the first round were broken by a
jump-off, with a shorter course of jumps and a much shorter time limit. If more than one rider had a clean round in the jump-off, the winner was the one with the fastest time.