Spirit Riding Free: PALs Forever

by Stacia Deutsch

  Apparently, he didn’t make his dinner date with Kate, either. My dad was still at a meeting with the railroad people until late, and when I got home, Kate was asleep. So I just went to sleep, too. He must have been out most of the night.

  I know, I know. I shouldn’t jump to conclusions without asking someone about it, but it’s as if Dad and Kate aren’t even on this vacation with me! Here, let me tell you what I know. I’m sure if you reason it out how Boxcar Bonnie does, you’ll agree that all signs point to us moving to Destiny Falls.

  1. Julian showed Spirit the amazing local barn and bet me how much Spirit would like it. (It is really nice but definitely not as nice as yours.)

  2. Dad told Julian to introduce me to people so I could make new friends. (He said—actually said—it would be good for me to make new friends, as if I needed to replace the friends I already have!)

  3. Kate is meeting with the school principal today. (Why would she need to meet with the principal here unless it was for a job?)

  4. Kate brought pretty much everything she owned on this vacation. (I wish I’d never joked about us moving here.)

  5. The house next to Julian’s is for sale and my dad told me to go see it with him. (Why would I need to go see some silly house?!)

  6. My dad is in important meetings all day every day. (It’s like they can’t make any decisions without him!)

  7. Dad keeps asking if I like it here. (As if he really cares!)

  That’s seven clues. That’s more clues than even Boxcar Bonnie ever uses. She only needs three or four clues, and then she’s certain enough to solve the mystery. I don’t need to talk to my dad anymore because my clues can only point to one thing:

  We’re moving to Destiny Falls.

  Pru! Help! I need to do something before everything gets settled!

  I need to convince my dad that we can’t—just CAN’T—move away from Miradero, but I’m not going to be able to do it alone. I need you and Abigail to drop what you’re doing and come here right now to help me convince my dad not to make us move so no one buys a new house or gets a new job or anything like that! I know you have the rodeo and that Abigail is having fun with her family, but you need to go get her and then hurry to Destiny Falls—before it’s too late.

  PALs forever?

  Lucky

  “Whew,” Lucky said. The letter didn’t make a ton of sense, but it was much better than before, and no one would worry if they read it. She put the letter back in the envelope and gave it to the mail carrier. “Thanks again.”

  The woman smiled as she tucked the letter back in her bag. “You’re welcome. It sounds like you’ve got a great group of friends.” With a click of her tongue, she and her horse continued on in the direction of Miradero.

  Giving a happy sigh of relief, Lucky turned Spirit around and hurried back to Destiny Falls.

  Hopefully, her dad and Kate would want to go out for dinner soon. All that riding had left Lucky starving.

  I want to race!” Snips was sitting on the ground next to the bushes, pulling twigs out of his hair as Abigail fussed over him.

  “That is not happening,” Abigail declared. She looked over to where Señor Carrots was busy munching on the hedge that the car had crashed into. The donkey didn’t have a scratch on him. Snips, on the other hand, had scrapes and scratches all over his arms, legs, and, oddly, the back of his neck. The good news was, by the way he was arguing with her, Abigail could tell nothing was broken.

  “But, Abigail,” Snips whined, “we spent all week preparing for this.” He looked over at Ariella for support, but she was busy extracting the car from the shrub.

  “You can’t possibly be serious,” Abigail told him, sounding very motherly. “Your soapbox-car days are over.”

  “Ugh, come on, Abigail.”

  “No,” she said firmly.

  Snips crossed his arms and scrunched up his face in a pout. “Ariella knew you wouldn’t understand.”

  Abigail stood up straight in surprise and glanced over to Ariella, who had frozen as she tugged the soapbox car onto the grass. “What do you mean, I wouldn’t understand?” She looked at Snips, but he just stared at the ground, knowing he had slipped up. She looked back at Ariella. “Well?”

  Ariella shuffled her feet, refusing to make eye contact with Abigail. “Well… it just seemed like soapbox racing wouldn’t really be your… thing.”

  Abigail frowned. “But why not?”

  Ariella looked up at her. “You’re just so…fancy! You would never want to be dirty and build things!” she exclaimed.

  “Me? Fancy?” Abigail was shocked.

  “Yes!” Ariella said. “I mean, I used to think you were so interesting and we had so much fun doing those bonfires and stuff, but now you wear those nice clothes and curtsy and talk all funny!”

  “But I thought you were fancy! You said exploring is boring!” Abigail protested.

  “Exploring is boring when you’ve lived in the same place your entire life,” Ariella said stubbornly.

  Abigail sighed. “Fine, you have a point there. But honestly, I was just trying to be fancy because I thought I would fit in better with you. I wanted to spend time with you, but it felt like you only wanted to spend time with Snips. I still love riding my horse and having bonfires and getting messy! Those shoes hurt my toes!”

  Ariella giggled, but then got serious again. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I figured you wouldn’t be interested in building a car with us. I should have asked you instead of assuming.”

  Abigail smiled. “I’m sorry, too. I should have just been myself! If I could do this whole week over, I would. And I would bring more pants!”

  “I would, too,” Ariella agreed, “especially since the car doesn’t matter much now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “We made it too big! If Snips is too short for it, then I’m definitely too short to drive it.” Ariella gestured at her small frame.

  “Hmm.” Abigail tapped on her chin. “What if…I drove it instead?”

  “You?!” Snips said from the ground.

  Abigail nodded down at him. “I’m much taller than either of you. I won’t slide around as much in the seat, and I’ll probably be able to reach the brake.”

  Ariella’s face lit up in a smile. “That would be amazing!”

  Abigail clapped her hands happily. “Then it’s settled! Let’s get this race car ready.”

  Snips scrambled to his feet. Together, the three of them grabbed the end and tugged it out of the bushes. After a couple of tries, they were able to get it out of the branches. They excitedly circled the car, checking it for damage.

  “It all looks okay,” Snips said. “I guess Señor Carrots and I weren’t such bad drivers after all!”

  “I wouldn’t be so sure about that,” Ariella said glumly. She was crouching next to one of the back wheels. Abigail and Snips hurried to Ariella’s side and looked over her shoulders.

  “What’s wrong?” Abigail asked.

  “Is it broken?” Snips worried.

  Abigail pointed to the axle that held the wheel. “Look, a part of the axle is damaged. The wheel isn’t secure anymore.” Abigail looked closely and saw there was a small gap between the wheel and the axle where a piece of wood had chipped off from the impact. “If we don’t fill that gap, the wheel might not stay on and there might be an even worse crash,” Ariella finished.

  Abigail took a step back to think. They needed something narrow enough to fit in the gap that would be flexible enough to move with the wheel. Suddenly it came to her.

  “My letter!” she cried, reaching into her back pocket.

  Snips and Ariella looked back at her in confusion. “Your letter?”

  Hurriedly, Abigail folded and twisted the letter. She reached past her brother and her cousin and fit the paper into the gap. “Mm-hmm. I wrote a letter earlier to one of my friends, but I don’t need to send it now. That should hold until the end.”

  The three pushed the car back and forth
a bit to make sure the wheel would hold. When everything looked good, Abigail grinned. “Let’s show off what our family can do… together!”

  Suddenly, there was an announcement for all racers to report to the starting line. Together, Abigail, Ariella, and Snips pushed the car back up the hill with all the other cars. Abigail carefully climbed into the race car. The seat fit her just fine. She checked that she was able to reach the brake and the steering. They were both perfect. She gave a thumbs-up to her cousin and her brother on the sidelines. They gave thumbs-ups back.

  There was a countdown from three.

  Then the man with the flag shouted, “Go!” He swung the flag down in a mighty arc.

  “Wahoo!” Abigail shouted as the soapbox race car flew down the hill.

  Pru.” Mrs. Prescott called her name from the front of the class. “How about if you go first today and tell us about your spring break?”

  “I have to go first?” Pru moaned. “Can’t Lucky go first?”

  “I’ll go first!” Snips exclaimed, holding up his first-place soapbox derby trophy. “I’m the King of First!” He hadn’t stopped bragging about the trophy from the minute Abigail had crossed the finish line in the race. Abigail let him have the trophy with the agreement that they’d take turns with it and he’d bring it back for Ariella next time they visited.

  Snips carried the gold cup everywhere he went.

  “I think we all heard about that race. You made a tour of the town, stopping at nearly every house,” Mrs. Prescott said.

  “Every house,” Snips assured her. “When we got back from our cousins’ house, Señor Carrots and I threw our own victory parade.” He frowned. “But no one showed up, so that’s why we knocked on doors. Everyone needed to know the news!” He raised the trophy. “First-place winner. That’s me. I couldn’t have done it without the help of my cousin Ariella.”

  Abigail sighed. “And?” she said expectantly.

  “And my sister, I guess.” Snips rolled his eyes.

  Mrs. Prescott nodded wearily. “Once again, I say for us all, ‘Congratulations.’”

  Snips stood. “Time for my presentation to the class.”

  Mrs. Prescott quickly wrote Snips’s name on the chalkboard and drew a check mark next to it. “I think we can all agree, Snips, that you’ve more than given us your presentation already.”

  “Pru.” Lucky leaned over from her seat. “You’d be doing us all a big favor if you’d speak. I mean, I spent the whole vacation with our teacher, and Snips is going to start up again any second….”

  Pru leaped out of her chair. “Fine, I’ll do it. I’ll go first.”

  “Second,” Snips corrected, pointing at his name on the board and raising his trophy.

  Pru sighed and moved up to the front of the class.

  “So it turns out that my big job over break was to organize a children’s rodeo. But when it came down to it, the rodeo was not going well,” she began, pausing to consider how best to tell the tale. “Mrs. Prescott? I think I need some help telling what happened.”

  “I don’t understand, Pru,” Mrs. Prescott said. “It’s your story.”

  “Nah,” Pru said, then she pointed to her classmates. “It’s their story, too.”

  Mrs. Prescott tilted her head, confused. “Go on…”

  “I was in the barn with the fifteen rodeo kids! I had no lunch, no trophies, no barrels, no ice-cream cones, no real plans whatsoever. It was a disaster. I thought I would be able to handle it all by myself, since my PALs were out of town, but luckily I had some other friends come to the rescue.” She pointed to Maricela, who stood and came to stand next to Pru.

  “I brought lunch,” Maricela said proudly. “I mean, Cook prepared sandwiches and carried them, but I asked her to make them and I led the way.”

  Pru turned to Maricela as if she were a reporter, getting the interview. “And why did you do that?”

  Maricela shrugged. “I was bored. I’d painted three landscapes, learned four new songs to sing, and I noticed that Pru needed help.” She smiled. “I needed something to write about for my speech.” She held up twenty pages.

  “And I’m sure it’s a wonderful speech. I can’t wait to hear it,” Mrs. Prescott assured Maricela.

  Pru grinned. “Lunch was delicious. And then…” She pointed at Turo.

  “I brought barrels.” He stood up and walked over to Pru as well. He told the class how he’d been worried about Pru ever since he’d told her he was leaving town. “I came back, just in time.”

  Mary Pat and Bianca stood at the same time. “We helped, too!” they said together.

  “We were walking by Snips’s house,” Bianca said, batting her eyelashes.

  “Ugh,” Mary Pat groaned.

  “We’d been sick the whole vacation, and it was our first day outside,” Bianca said. “I wanted to see if Snips was home yet. I made him brownies.”

  Snips looked conflicted at the news. He liked brownies, but Bianca? Not so much.

  “We heard the cheering from Pru’s ramada…” Mary Pat said.

  “And decided to check it out,” Bianca continued.

  “We provided the brownies for snacks and got to be the event judges,” Mary Pat said.

  “And there was one other helper I couldn’t have done it without…” Pru said with a grin. Suddenly there was a snort and a neigh from outside the schoolhouse window. The kids all ran to look out. Chica Linda was there with Boomerang and Spirit. Chica Linda whinnied.

  “Chica Linda gave up some of the ribbons that she’d earned in old competitions so I could remake them into new ribbons for the kids at the rodeo!” Pru reached out the window to rub Chica Linda’s nose. “Real winners don’t need trophies.”

  “Yes, they do,” Snips said, hugging his trophy tightly.

  Pru turned back to Mrs. Prescott and said, “I wrote letters to Abigail and Lucky begging them to come help me, but it turned out that all the help I needed was right here all along.” She smiled. Then quickly added, “Though I wish that Lucky and Abigail had been there.”

  “We wish we were there, too,” Abigail said.

  “Well, since I’m not moving away,” Lucky said, “maybe we can plan to host the Wranglers’ meeting and kids’ rodeo again next year?”

  “I’ll ask my dad…” Pru started, but then realized what she’d heard. “What do you mean you aren’t moving away?”

  Lucky winked at Kate and said, “It was a big misunderstanding.”

  Kate stepped in front of the room and said, “Lucky, maybe you should tell the class about your vacation?”

  Lucky considered what to say. “Destiny Falls is a nice place to visit, but”—she wrapped her arms around her best friends—“Miradero is my home.”

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