Amber Brown Horses Around

by Paula Danziger

  When I open the envelope, there is a sudden whirring that makes me jump. “Whaaaa!” I scream.

  I think it’s a giant bug.

  It falls off my bed onto the floor.

  Cleo shouts too.

  Grace gets to it first. She’s got a shoe ready to squash it. Then she starts laughing. “This is made from a bent paper clip and rubber bands,” she says. “Where did it come from?”

  “It was in this envelope,” I tell her. “It was booby-trapped!”

  I don’t want to show them the envelope because I don’t want anyone to see what was written on it. I know they would tease me about thinking I have a secret admirer when all I really have is someone who wanted to play a joke on me. It would be a big laugh.

  Then I notice that someone is laughing already.

  It is Hannah Burton, of course.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I, Amber Brown, am about to do the thing I love most at Camp Cushetunk . . . . . be with Cinnamon.

  Carrie has asked me to come to the stable after her last morning class. She said she has a special surprise.

  Cinnamon is saddled up, waiting for me.

  I go over to her. She lifts her head and her ears flick forward.

  “She knows you,” Justin says.

  I didn’t realize he was there. He is sitting on the fence. He is not the only one there. Hannah is standing behind him.

  “We just finished our riding lesson,” Justin says. He takes off his helmet. His hair is sweaty and clings to his forehead.

  “Justin and I are in the same riding group,” Hannah tells me.

  I know their group is just learning to trot. I am already doing figure eights on Cinnamon . . . . . at a canter! This makes me smile a little, but I decide not to say anything. I don’t want to end up sounding like Hannah.

  Carrie comes out of the stable. “Ah, there you are, Amber. I’ve got a surprise for you. Kind of a treat for all the extra work you’ve been doing here at the stable.”

  “What is it?” I ask eagerly.

  She points to a pole lying in the middle of the ring.

  “What’s that for?” I ask.

  “She wants to see if you can walk over it without tripping,” Hannah says.

  Justin snorts. He sounds a little like a horse.

  Carrie turns and shoots Hannah a look. Hannah spreads her arms in a “What did I do?” gesture.

  Turning back to me, Carrie says, “I thought we would start working on the basics of jumping today.”

  I can hardly believe my ears. I turn to Justin. “I’ve been dying to try this.”

  Justin grins at me. “I want to stay around and watch.”

  “Me too,” Hannah says. “It could be pretty funny.”

  I don’t want her there, but I don’t know how to get rid of her.

  The phone in the stable’s office rings. Carrie sighs. “I’ve got to get that. I’ll be back as soon as I can. In the meantime, check Cinnamon’s tack, Amber.”

  Justin wrinkles his brow. “What does ‘check the tack’ mean?”

  “She’s planning to put the horse on a bulletin board,” Hannah replies.

  I scowl at her. “The tack is horse talk for saddle and bridle. I’m even learning to tack her myself. That means put her saddle and bridle on and make sure it’s all perfect.”

  Justin looks impressed. Hannah looks bored.

  I stroke Cinnamon’s neck. Her coat is smooth and velvety. I slip my hand under the cinch, which is the strap that wraps around Cinnamon’s belly to hold the saddle in place. It is nice and tight.

  I pat Cinnamon again and say, “I have to pee. I’ll be right back.”

  Hannah giggles. “You tell your horse when you’re going to pee? I bet she doesn’t tell you!”

  Hannah has a point. Horses pee whenever they want.

  “I gotta go too.” Justin jumps down from the fence.

  Hannah rolls her eyes. “This feels like third grade. You two couldn’t go anywhere without each other.”

  Justin blushes and looks at the ground. As we walk behind the stable to the Porta-Potties, I say, “I can’t believe you’re hanging out with Hannah.”

  Justin shrugs. “It’s more like she’s hanging around with me. Carrie told me that you were coming, so I stayed after my riding lesson to see you. Hannah decided to stay too.”

  We go into separate Porta-Potties.

  When I go back to the rink, Justin is already there. Hannah is sitting on the fence close to him.

  I ignore them and go up to Cinnamon. “We’re going to start to jump today,” I whisper to her.

  I put my left foot in the stirrup and grab the pommel of the saddle. As I swing my right leg up, the saddle starts to slip. I am sliding under Cinnamon! I fall out of the saddle and land with a thud against wet ground . . . . . which is strange, because it hasn’t rained in days.

  Justin runs to me. “Amber, are you okay?”

  I get to my feet. Cinnamon is looking at me as if she doesn’t understand why I am not on top of her, where I belong.

  Carrie comes running out of the stable. She looks worried. “Amber, are you all right?”

  I nod, embarrassed. “I don’t know how I fell off.”

  I hear giggling. It is Hannah.

  “What are you laughing about?” I ask.

  “Cinnamon peed at the same time you and Justin did. I was going to warn you. Sorry.” She giggles again.

  I glare at her. “It’s not funny.”

  “That’s enough, Hannah!” Carrie grabs Cinnamon’s cinch and says, “Amber, this is way too loose . . . . . I told you to check it.”

  “I did,” I tell her.

  “Well, it’s loose now,” Carrie says. She lifts the flap from Cinnamon’s saddle and tightens the cinch. “Are you ready to start again? It’s important to get back up on the horse. Both for you and Cinnamon.”

  What I really want to do is go back to the bunk and change my clothes, but I nod and hike myself back into the saddle. Once I am up, I stroke Cinnamon’s neck. “It’s not your fault,” I whisper. I look down at Hannah, who is whispering to Justin. I am pretty sure that I do know whose fault it is.

  “Focus, Amber,” Carrie says as she leads me into the ring.

  This makes me feel like I am back in school, since it seemed like all any adult said to me toward the end of fourth grade was “Focus!”

  Carrie is still talking. Yikes! I had focused on “focus” and not her.

  “I want you looking straight through Cinnamon’s ears. It’s a bad habit to look down, especially when you jump. You won’t actually be jumping now, but even so, you should practice good form. As you get close to the pole, let your hands move forward over Cinnamon’s neck. We call that the release.”

  “Why?” I ask.

  “You’re releasing her to jump. If you pull back, you’re going to stop her instead. It can feel scary to let the reins go loose at that point, but if you don’t, she’ll balk and shy.”

  This is making me nervous. I’m glad we’re starting by just having Cinnamon trot over a pole that’s on the ground!

  “You have to use your legs and your balance. The reason you’re such a natural rider is that you’ve got great balance.”

  This is a surprise to me. No one has ever complimented me on my balance before.

  “Go into a trot,” Carrie orders.

  I nudge Cinnamon with my heels and cluck to her. Instantly she responds. I start to post. That’s using my legs to go up and down with Cinnamon’s movements.

  As we approach the pole, I learn forward for the release, just like Carrie told me.

  We go over the pole in one smooth motion.

  “Beautiful,” Carrie calls.

  I hear clapping. I look over. It is Justin.

  “You did great, Amber,” C
arrie says.

  I take Cinnamon around the ring and over the pole several more times. The wet spots on my pants from Cinnamon’s pee are starting to bother me, so even though I am having a good time, I am a little relieved when Carrie says, “All right, that’s enough for today. You need to clean up and get ready for swimming. Bring Cinnamon to me. I’ll take care of her.”

  I slip down from the saddle and hand the reins to Carrie.

  Now that I’m not focused on riding, my jeans feel disgusting. They smell too.

  Carrie lowers her voice and says, “Next time I tell you to check the cinch, make sure you do it.”

  I bite my lip. I don’t want to tell her again that I did check the cinch.

  I glance at the side of the ring. Hannah is whispering to Justin.

  I walk over to them. Hannah glares at me as if I’m interrupting something.

  “You looked like you really know what you’re doing,” Justin tells me, jumping down from the rail. “See you . . . I gotta go get changed for swimming.”

  “Amber and I do too,” Hannah says. “See you at the raft.”

  Groan. I have to walk back to our bunk with Hannah.

  “Justin is so much cuter than I remember,” she says to me. “It’s too bad you took that tumble in front of him . . . and too bad you landed in pee.”

  She giggles but she won’t look at me. That’s when I know . . . . I just know . . . . Hannah Burton was the one who made me fall in Cinnamon’s pee.

  Chapter Fourteen

  “You can’t be certain Hannah did it,” Kelly says.

  “Sure sounds to me like it was Hannah,” Brandi replies.

  It is afternoon free time, and we are sitting under Herbert. That is what we named the big tree halfway between our bunks where we like to meet to talk. I have just told them what happened at the stable this morning.

  “It wasn’t just the saddle,” I say. “Hannah has been pranking me since we got here. First it was the hair gel on my pillow.”

  “Then there was that ‘secret admirer’ envelope,” Brandi says.

  Kelly makes a face. “Yeah, that was mean!”

  “And then today the saddle,” I say. “Falling in Cinnamon’s pee was the worst! It’s time for revenge. I need a prank that will make Hannah’s hair stand on end.”

  Brandi sits up straight. “Bulletin! Bulletin! Bulletin! Hannah Burton is scared of the Cushie Monster!”

  “That’s right!” Kelly says. “Remember how nervous she got while we were talking about Cushie when we were out on the party boat?”

  “What are you suggesting?” I ask.

  Brandi smiles. “What if we make Hannah think that the Cushie Monster has decided she should be its next victim?”

  My eyes get wide. “I love it! Only how do we do it?”

  Kelly scrunches up her face for a minute. Then she rubs her hands together. Using a voice like the witch in the Wizard of Oz movie, she says, “These things must be done delicately.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Brandi asks.

  “Well, we can’t just go up to Hannah and tell her that we were talking to Cushie and found out that she’s out to get her. We’ve got to build up to it somehow.”

  “Oh! Oh!” I cry. “You know the Marshalls, the family my dad rents his apartment from? Well, one time, Dylan wanted to scare his little sister Savannah.”

  “I remember that,” Brandi says. “You told me your father is afraid Dylan is going to grow up to be a criminal mastermind.”

  “What did Dylan do?” Kelly demands. “And why don’t I know about it?”

  “You were away at your grandmother’s,” I tell her.

  “So what did he do?”

  “Well, he worked out a four-step plan. He says things have to happen in fours.”

  “I thought they happen in threes,” Kelly says.

  “According to Dylan, it’s three and what he calls a ‘topper’ . . . that’s the biggest thing of all. And you always go from the smallest to the biggest. So first he told Savannah this spooky story about a monster that lives under beds.”

  “All kids think there is a monster under their beds,” Kelly says.

  “Right, so that was easy,” I say. “But he added details. He told her that the monster liked crackers and bananas and little girls, in that order. So the next night, he made a trail of cracker crumbs leading under her bed. Savannah is kind of a slob, so when she told her father about them, he just thought it was a mess she had made herself. Dylan waited a few days, then left a banana peel on her pillow. That was the third thing.”

  “Wow, that was nasty,” Kelly says. “I’m glad he’s not my brother. So what was the topper?”

  “He waited a few more days, then he snuck into the room and hid under her bed. He was planning to make scary noises and kind of thump the mattress. He figured she would get so scared she would go running for her father and then he would get out and go to his own room and play innocent. That was where he made his big mistake.

  “Savannah was too scared to get off the bed, so she just kept calling for her dad. When he came in and she said there was something under the bed, he told her not to be silly. But she kept insisting, so he said he would look to be sure. It turned out Savannah was telling the truth . . . there was something under the bed . . . . . Dylan. He was totally busted!”

  “Wow. That was some plan,” Kelly says. “Except we don’t want to get busted.”

  “Right,” I say. “So we’ll have to be careful. And with three of us, it will work even better.”

  We start brainstorming about what we can do to convince Hannah that Cushie is after her.

  “What if we have Cushie send Hannah a letter?” Brandi suggests.

  “No one’s going to believe that,” Kelly tells her.

  Brandi scowls. “Don’t you remember what Mrs. Holt taught us? The first rule of brainstorming is you never shoot down an idea when it is suggested.”

  “Right,” I say. “Just get the ideas out there.”

  Kelly blushes a little. “Sorry. You’re right.”

  “Okay,” Brandi says. “Now, the first thing is to convince Hannah that Cushie is on the move . . . . . up from the lake and into the camp.”

  “How about a stinky pool of water?” Kelly suggests.

  “Brilliant!” Brandi cries. “How do we do it?”

  “Oooh! Oooh! I know how to get a stinky pool of water,” I say. “Manure tea!”

  “That’s disgusting!” Kelly says.

  “Of course it’s disgusting,” I say. “That’s the point.”

  “No, I mean it’s disgusting that you thought of it.”

  “I didn’t think of it—it’s a real thing! Carrie told me about it. Gardeners use horse or cow poop and water to make an organic fertilizer.”

  “Okay,” Brandi says, “but you have to make it!”

  I shrug. “No problem.”

  I am so used to shoveling horse poop by now that the idea doesn’t bother me.

  “But how do we make Hannah think that she’s the one Cushie is after?” Kelly asks.

  We stand up and pace. I don’t know what good this is supposed to do, but I saw it in a movie once, and it seems like a good idea. We walk around Herbert several times.

  “I’ve got it!” Brandi cries. Then her shoulders slump. “Never mind. I don’t got it.”

  We start walking again.

  Kelly stops. “What if . . . oh, never mind.”

  We change directions and walk the other way around Herbert.

  “Snow White!” I cry.

  “Huh?” Brandi asks.

  I smile. “Who does Hannah think is the prettiest girl in the camp?”

  “That’s easy,” Kelly answers. “Herself.”

  I nod. “Right. She’s like the queen in Snow White going, ‘Mirror,
mirror, on the wall, who’s the fairest of them all?’”

  Brandi wrinkles her nose. “I still don’t get it.”

  “I do!” Kelly says. “We tell Hannah that Cushie always goes for the prettiest girl in camp.”

  Brandi nods. “Perfect! So what’s the next thing? We need something to convince Hannah that Cushie really is coming after her, slimy tentacles and all.”

  “Slime!” I cry. “We can use hair gel, just like Hannah used on me.”

  Brandi shakes her head. “She would figure out what it is pretty quick.”

  “Oh! I know where to get some good slime,” Kelly says. “Remember when we made modeling dough in crafts class last week and that one kid put in too much water?”

  Brandi nods. “Right. He got total slime instead! A smear of that on a window would look just like a tentacle mark!”

  “This is great,” I say. “But what do we do for a topper?”

  Brandi rubs her hands together. “Hehhh-hehhhh Hannahhhh!” she moans in a gurgly voice. “Hannah, I neeeeeed you.”

  “I don’t get it,” I say.

  “In the radio lab I can make a recording that we can play outside Hannah’s window. We can do all kinds of things to a voice, make it really weird and spooky. That will definitely scare her.”

  I love this plan.

  I love my friends.

  I love that I am finally going to turn the tables on Hannah Burton.

  Chapter Fifteen

  I, Amber Brown, am shoveling poop into a bucket.

  In secret.

  This is not something I ever thought I would be doing.

  Manure tea seemed like a better idea when I thought of it yesterday than it does now that I am actually making it. I sure hope this is going to be worth it.

  I use a hose to fill the bucket, then carry it into an empty stall. I put it in a back corner, where I don’t think it will be noticed. It will need a day or so before it is ready.

  On Day Two of Operation Cushie, Kelly, Brandi, and I go to check on the brew.