The Great Pony Hassle (2 page)

Early the next morning Paisley was busy making some noise. “I've got to go into town.”

Three girls looked at her, bleary-eyed, from over bowls of oatmeal. Grandmother Dill had insisted on getting everyone up and making them oatmeal for breakfast, even though the June day was going to be hot enough to fry a Frisbee. None of the girls were really eating the stuff.

“I've got to go into town!” Paisley insisted to Grandmother Dill. “Can I be excused? I'll ride in on my bike.” The van was sitting in the garage, but Grandmother Dill did not drive.

Staci had said only half a dozen words to Paisley since she had met her, and they were, “You just blobbed oatmeal on yourself.” But this idea of biking into town made her butt in before her grandmother could answer. “There's nothing open yet!”

“Feed mill's open. I got to see what I need for the pony.”

“What do you know about ponies?”

Paisley looked Staci in the eye for the first time. “More than you do, I bet.”

“That is enough,” said Grandmother Dill, getting up to rinse cereal bowls, holding herself very straight. She had been a teacher in a private school, and she sounded stern, as always, when she spoke. “Paisley, you cannot bicycle into town by yourself.”

“Aw!”

Nobody ever said “Aw!” to Grandmother Dill. Staci waited with glee for lightning to strike, but for some reason it did not. Grandmother Dill merely said, “However, Anastasia will go with you.”

Staci winced. Her grandmother always used her full name, and she hated it. She hated it almost as much as she hated having to go into town with Paisley.

“I'll go too,” said Toni quickly, knowing at once how Staci felt.

“No, Antoinette,” said Grandmother Dill. “You will stay here and keep Stirling company.”

And that was that. No one ever argued with Mrs. Dill, not even her daughter, Cathy Dill Fontecchio—no, McPherson. Especially not Cathy. Staci and Toni knew from way back that their mother was no match for Grandmother. Whenever Grandmother visited, they had to protect their mother by never starting trouble.

So five minutes later Staci was on her bike, trailing after Paisley.

The house where the girls lived stood at the edge of town. One way lay a long bike ride to the stores at the center of town and an even longer ride to the feed mill on the far side of town. The other way lay country. Paisley jumped on her ten-speed bike and headed for the country.

Fine, Staci thought, pedaling after her. I'm not going to say a word. If Paisley wanted to grab the lead without knowing where she was going, then let her. Staci hoped she got permanently lost.

It was hard to keep up with the tall, stocky girl on her big bike, but Staci did it grimly. Not enjoying herself a bit. She felt kind of lost without Toni—the Fontecchio twins were seldom apart from each other. Already the sun was hot, and Staci knew that by the time she and Paisley rode home, the day would be scorching. Altogether, Staci felt grumpy enough to punch Paisley's lights out if it weren't that the other girl was so much bigger than she was.

At a fork in the road Paisley called over her shoulder, “Which way,
Anastasia
?”

About time she asked. “Whatever way you want,
PARsley
,” Staci shot back.

“My name's Paisley.”

“Nuh-uh.
Par
sley. That's what you looked like in that frilly dress yesterday, a big green bunch of parsley.”

Paisley chose the left fork, rode on a few minutes longer, then turned her bike sharply onto a dirt road.

This was ridiculous. “Hey!” Staci yelled at her. “For your information, you're going the wrong way!”

“You told me, whichever way I want!” Paisley sang back with a smirk in her voice.

Staci knew then that Paisley was punishing her for calling her Parsley. She was going to make Staci eat dust. Staci pumped her pedals at top speed, trying to sprint past Paisley, but it was no use. Her bike was an old fat-tired one-speed; she couldn't even catch up with Paisley. On her ten-speed Paisley pedaled as if she could ride all day, and Staci stayed behind her, coughing in the clouds of dirt Paisley churned up. Grimly she panted along, refusing to be left behind, focusing on Paisley's back with a stare like two black knives.

Paisley swerved onto a narrow, stony lane that snaked steeply downhill.

If she hadn't been panting so hard, Staci would have smiled. It was a farmer's lane, a private road. She and Toni had never gone down there, because it was sure to come to a dead end. Probably it stopped at the front porch of a hillbilly farmer who would chase them off his land. She said nothing. If they got in trouble, it would be Paisley's fault.

“Oh!” from Paisley, ahead. She saw something. Maybe a watchdog. Maybe the farmer. Paisley was so dumb she didn't know a farm lane from a dirt road, and now she was going to get in trouble.

“Oh!” cried Paisley again, and she swung her bike into the weeds that edged the lane and let it fall. She almost fell herself. But she got her feet untangled in time, and stood there like an airhead, bare-legged in the bugs and maybe poison ivy, gaping at something beyond the tall grass.

“
Oh
,” she wailed, “he's the one!”

Then Staci saw him, and stopped where she was, and felt her heart squeeze, because he was. The one. The pony of all her dreams.

Just inside the barbed-wire pasture fence he stood, chest-deep in grass and daisies, looking sleepily back at the girls with the biggest eyes in the known universe. He was a palomino, a round, short-legged little palomino with a mass of forelock, like bangs that needed to be combed and trimmed, over those huge eyes. He had enough creamy-blond mane and tail for six ordinary ponies. His golden ears, turned at a contented sideward angle, pricked tiny through his thick mane. His golden cheeks and pink nose moved as he selected a tuft of daisies and chewed it. His tail, long and plump, swished almost as white as the flowers. Somewhere hidden in the tall grass, Staci knew, were dainty legs and tiny hooves, maybe with white stockings.

“Oh,” Paisley gasped, “Oh! Daddy's
got
to get him for me!”

And knowing Mr. McPherson, he would. The McPherson twins had lived with their father for only a few months, Staci knew. Since their mother had gone into the Army. Before that, he had only had them on weekends. He hardly acted like a parent to them, more like a pal. He did anything they wanted.

“Oh, just
look
at him! Isn't he
adorable
!”

Paisley reached toward the pony as if she were going to climb through the barbed-wire fence and get on him then and there. The pony gazed back at Paisley as sweet as a little milk-and-honey angel. He needed grooming. His coat was not as sleek as it should have looked in the warm June sunshine, and his mane was uncombed and ropy.

Staci spoke, startled by the harshness of her own voice. “His mane looks just like your sister's hair,” she heard herself say. “That same icky pale color, and clumped together, and everything. Like a bunch of wet noodles.”

Paisley turned and beamed at her. Excitement and happiness seemed to have transported her someplace where she could not hear what Staci was really saying. “That's wonderful!” she exclaimed. “What a great name! I'll call him Noodles.”

Staci couldn't have hated her more if Paisley had spit in her eye.

3

In Which Hostilities Heat Up

“If you don't help me,” Paisley told Staci, “I'll just have to make two trips, and the pickle lady will make you come with me again.”

“Don't you talk about my grandmother that way!”

Sometime during the long, hot, dusty bike trek back to town and across it to the feed mill, Staci had told Paisley that she hated her. From then on it was open war. Paisley didn't seem to mind. In fact, Paisley was having a great day. At the feed mill, she had discussed pony care with the man behind the counter, making a friend of him within a few minutes. Adults seemed to like Paisley, Lord knew why.

“Sure, that's right, missy,” the man told Paisley. “Electric fencing's the way to go. Cheap, easy, quick. But you listen to me: It can be dangerous too. I don't want you trying to plug it in.”

“But it'll be okay for me to put up the posts and wires?”

“Sure, nothing to it, so long as you don't hook up to no current. Tell you what. I don't feel right giving you the hookup box.” The man penciled a number on a scrap of paper and handed it to Paisley. “You get done, you give me a call, I'll come out and bring the box and plug it in for you.”

“That'll be great! Hey, thanks!”

Then, to Staci's astonishment, Paisley had pulled a big stash of money out of her pocket and bought a bundle of metal fence stakes, a role of wire, a plastic gate handle, some ceramic insulators, and the boxlike gizmo that would operate the whole setup and was to be delivered later.

“You have some kind of sledge or maul to drive the posts with? Okay. Ground's not too hard yet. Good luck with the new pony!” the counter man had called after her as she struggled out the door with her purchases. “Make sure you tie lots of bits of rag to the wire!”

“Sure thing!” Paisley called back. “Thanks!”

Staci wondered why rags had to be tied to the wire, but she would have let herself be tied to an African anthill before she asked Paisley. She was so thirsty her eyes bugged, but she would have eaten raw hamburger before she hinted for a soda. And it didn't make her feel any better that Paisley really did seem to know something about ponies. She watched without helping as Paisley fastened all the stuff she had bought to her bike rack with some binder's twine she got from the feed-mill man. Paisley could tie everything onto her bike except the roll of wire. It dangled too far and brushed her wheel.

“Here, carry this,” she told Staci.

“Carry it yourself,” Staci said. Not for all the palomino ponies in the Western Hemisphere would she do Paisley any favors.

“I need my hands free for my brakes and gears.”

“Tough,” said Staci. That was when Paisley threatened her with the pickle lady remark, and Staci told her not to call her grandmother Dill a pickle.

“Sure, Anastasia. Whatever you say. She's not a sour cucumber. Not really.”

“And you're not really parsley, Parsley.”

“But of course you truly are a Russian princess, Anastasia.”

That stung. Staci had reasons to feel sensitive about her fancy name. She knew she was small and bony and dark-skinned, with a plain, thin face and entirely too much nose. She did not feel that she would ever be pretty, much less a princess, and she wished her parents had named her something ugly that would have suited her better.

“Shut up,” she said.

“Soon as you start to carry this.” Even arguing, Paisley was in a good mood. A happy mood. As if she was in love, ever since she had seen Noodles.

“Forget it.”

“You carry it,” said Paisley gaily, “or I'll tell my sister what you said about her hair.”

“Go ahead,” Staci said, even though she didn't really want Stirling to know. She felt as if she could kind of like Stirling. Sometime. Maybe.

“And I'll tell the whole world you'd rather play with baby-toy ponies than help with a real one.”

“Sneak!” Had Paisley been snooping in her room? Looking in the bottom drawer?

“I can't help it if you're going to leave that ugly green one lying under the edge of your bed where I can see it from the hallway. Nice braid job you did with the mane and tail. But isn't that plastic hair icky? Wouldn't you rather braid a real live pony's mane?”

“You can take your pony and—”

“And ride,” said Paisley dreamily. “Here. C'mon. Carry this, and I'll let you ride Noodles sometimes when I get him.”

“I'm not going to even
touch
your rotten pony!”

“Sure. Whatever you say. But you're going to carry this roll of wire, or else I'm going to tell your grandmother the things you say about me and Stirling.”