Penalty Points

by Bonnie Bryant

  As she slipped her feet into the work boots she kept under the desk, she heard Max calling for someone to help him with some hay bales, and she threw herself into her work. Unpleasant thoughts of Ben and the party faded slightly as she raced through her stable chores, and they receded completely into the background a couple of hours later when she finally tightened Samson’s girth and climbed into the big black horse’s saddle to start his daily training session.

  The thoughts all came crashing back, however, when she walked into the tack room after the session with Samson’s sweaty saddle and bridle and found herself face to face with Lisa. “Oh,” Carole said, her heart starting to pound. “Um, hi.”

  To her surprise, Lisa gave her a civil nod. “Hi.” Her voice was neutral.

  Before Carole could figure out what that meant, Stevie came barreling into the room. She stopped short when she saw her friends standing there. “Oops,” she said quickly. “Uh, I didn’t know anybody was in here.”

  For a long second there was silence. Carole could feel her face turning red as she searched her mind for something to say. All she kept coming back to was the fervent wish that she could wave a magic wand and put everything back to the way it was before. Before she had ruined Lisa’s life. Before she’d babbled like a fool and made Stevie’s brother miserable.

  The awkward moment was shattered when Max’s five-year-old daughter, Maxi, raced in. “Hey!” the little girl cried when she spotted them. “Carole, Lisa, Stevie. Daddy needs to talk to you. He says I’m s’posed to tell you to hurry, hurry, hurry.”

  Prancer. Carole’s first thought was for the pregnant mare. She hadn’t seen Judy Barker yet that day, but the vet had promised to stop by and check on Prancer’s condition if she could. “Where is he?” Carole asked Maxi urgently.

  “Prancer’s stall.” The little girl skipped out of the room without waiting around for any more questions. The three older girls raced out after her, passing her in the hall and hurrying on toward the big box stall where Prancer spent most of her time.

  Lisa’s heart was in her throat as she rounded the corner and came within sight of the stall. With everything that had happened at the party the night before, her worries about Prancer had slipped to the back of her mind. But today they were back, and little Maxi’s orders to hurry, hurry, hurry had sent an icy chill skittering down her spine.

  After everything else that’s happened, I don’t think I can take any more bad news, she told herself fearfully. I don’t think I could stand it.

  Max and Judy were standing just outside Prancer’s stall when the girls reached them. Max didn’t keep them in suspense for long.

  “Good news, girls,” he called as soon as he spotted them. “Judy just checked, and both foals’ heartbeats are pumping along nice and steady.”

  Lisa collapsed against the nearest support beam with relief. “Are you sure?”

  “Positive,” Judy replied, snapping her black medical bag shut. “The babies are both fine, and so is Mama.”

  “Whew!” Stevie exclaimed, speaking for all of them.

  Feeling a little weak in the knees, Lisa walked over to the stall to pat Prancer, who had her head out over the door and was watching the humans with her calm, unreadable dark eyes. Stroking the mare’s neck, Lisa felt her barely repressed fears melting away. She knew she couldn’t really relax completely—Prancer still had a long, difficult road in front of her, and Lisa knew that it would be remarkable if she wound up at the end of it with two healthy foals—but this was certainly a step in the right direction. They all deserved to be happy about it.

  Max and Judy said good-bye and wandered off around the corner, discussing a yearling that needed some inoculations and leaving the three girls alone in the aisle. Lisa was feeling so grateful about Prancer’s positive diagnosis that she found new strength in her resolve to make things right with her friends. Seeing Carole back in the tack room had startled her, reminding her as it did of what had happened. But she had recovered her wits now—she was ready to talk.

  “Listen,” she said, turning to Carole first. “I want to say something. I’m really sorry about the way I yelled at you yesterday. I hope you can forgive me.”

  Carole looked astonished. “Me forgive you?” she blurted out. “Are you kidding? I was just trying to figure out how to ask you to forgive me. I mean, I totally ruined your life.”

  “Not really.” Lisa smiled tentatively. “Alex and I are going to be okay. We made up last night just before the party, um, ended.”

  “You mean before the big police raid,” Stevie corrected dryly.

  “Whatever.” Lisa put out a hand toward Carole. “Anyway, do you think we can forget about all that?”

  “I hope not,” Carole replied truthfully, taking her friend’s hand and squeezing it. “I want to remember it so that I don’t make the same kind of mistake again. But I can forgive it all if you can. Both of you.” She glanced at Stevie, who looked rather surprised.

  “Me? What do I have to forgive?”

  “You could forgive me for putting you in the middle of me and Alex,” Lisa said. “I wish I’d never asked you to keep that secret from him.” She grimaced. “I wish I’d never had any secrets to begin with. The last couple of months would have been a whole lot easier if I hadn’t had that on my mind all the time.”

  Carole glanced at Prancer, who was resting her big head on Lisa’s shoulder as the girls talked, and said, “Well, maybe not totally easy.”

  Lisa smiled ruefully. That was the truth. It had been a busy autumn any way you looked at it. But that didn’t change what she was trying to say. “Right. But anyway, I just want to tell you both right now—from this day forward, I’m going to be as truthful as I can be. And part of that means trying to trust other people more, too.” She shrugged. “For instance, I’ll try to trust people to handle it when I tell them the truth.”

  “If we’re making vows here, I’ve got one.” Carole’s dark eyes were earnest. “I’m going to try to start thinking more before I speak. Especially when what I’m speaking about is other people’s lives.”

  Stevie was happy that her friends were making up. It wasn’t easy to see two people she cared about angry with each other the way Lisa and Carole had been the night before. Or the way Lisa and Alex had been when they’d broken up. Being in the middle was tough because it often meant she was pulled in two directions at once without really being able to do anything to help. But she supposed she would just have to get better at dealing with it.

  “Okay,” she said briskly. “So does this mean everybody’s forgiven everybody and we’re all friends again?”

  “I hope so,” Lisa said. “Carole?”

  Carole nodded, smiling shyly. “Definitely.”

  “Good.” Stevie spread her arms. “Then come on. Three-way hug time!”

  The three of them wrapped their arms around each other and squeezed tight for a long minute before coming apart again. When they did, suddenly the tenseness that had existed among them just moments before had disappeared.

  Carole hated to interrupt their reunion, but she suddenly remembered that she was supposed to be working. “I’d better get back to the tack room before Max notices the dirty saddle and bridle I left there,” she said. “Want to come keep me company?”

  “Sure,” Stevie and Lisa said in unison.

  “I can’t stay long, though,” Stevie added as they wandered back down the aisle. “I’m technically grounded right now, and if I’m not home in an hour, Mom and Dad will probably send out the National Guard to drag me there.”

  Carole gasped. “I forgot to ask!” she exclaimed. “What happened after the rest of us left last night?”

  “You don’t want to know.” Stevie rolled her eyes. “By the time the cops called my parents, it was too late for them to get a train home. But they rushed down here first thing this morning and didn’t stop yelling for about three hours. Maybe four. The only one worse off than me is Alex. He’s totally hung over today, and I don’
t think all that yelling helped his headache one bit.”

  “How long are you grounded for?” Carole asked.

  Stevie sighed as the three girls entered the tack room. “They didn’t exactly say,” she said. “All they would promise was to discuss letting us off sometime after the holidays. I just hope the holidays they’re talking about aren’t Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.”

  “So if you’re grounded, what are you doing here now?” asked Lisa, logical as always.

  “Fortunately, they decided that in my case, the Colesford Horse Show is an exception to my grounding. I’m still allowed to be in it, which means they kind of have to let me keep training for it.”

  “Wow.” Lisa looked surprised. “That was nice of them.” A miracle is more like it, she added privately. Stevie’s parents were kind, easygoing people most of the time. But they could be strict when they wanted to be—really strict.

  “Maybe. Personally, I think it’s probably only because they know Max is counting on me—and has already paid my entry fees.” Stevie shrugged. “But hey, I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. So to speak.”

  Carole had already set to work scrubbing Samson’s tack, but she glanced up from her task. “Whatever the reason, I’m glad you can still be in the show,” she said.

  Stevie picked up some saddle soap and started helping Carole. “Me too. But I don’t want you to get the wrong idea and think that my parents took this well.” She shook her head ruefully, still hearing the echoes of her father’s yelling in her ears and seeing the shadow of her mother’s disappointed expression. “They didn’t. They’re really furious at the three of us—me, Alex, and Chad. While we’re grounded, Alex and I have to do all sorts of work around the house to earn the money to pay them back for the stuff that got damaged. We convinced them that Chad shouldn’t have to chip in since it wasn’t really his fault, but they’re still not exactly happy with him right now.” She sighed. “I think it will be a really long time before they trust any of us again.”

  Carole nodded, understanding exactly what she meant. But another question was tugging at her mind, stirring her curiosity. She cleared her throat. “Listen, Stevie,” she began hesitantly. “When you—I mean, what was it like, um, you know. When you were—well—”

  “When I was drunk? Wasted? Blotto? Soused?” Stevie asked bluntly. “You can say the words.”

  “Okay, then,” Lisa said. “I’m curious, too. What was it like to get drunk?”

  Stevie looked pensive. “It’s kind of hard to describe,” she said. “At first I didn’t think it was affecting me. I mean, I was sipping that first beer, and really I was just trying to figure out what to do about Alex and A.J. Then I realized the can was almost empty, and I remember thinking, Wow, that didn’t do anything at all.” She tossed the saddle soap she’d been using back into the bucket in the corner. “But gradually I starting thinking that maybe what Alex and A.J. were doing wasn’t such a big problem after all. And while I was thinking that, A.J. handed me a second beer and I just sort of automatically opened it. I took a small sip, and it tasted really good, even though I hadn’t really liked the taste at first. And I couldn’t really think of a reason not to keep drinking, since I didn’t think it was affecting me.…”

  “Sounds like it was, though,” Lisa commented.

  “I realize that now,” Stevie agreed. “But I’m just telling you what I was thinking at the time. One thing I know I wasn’t thinking about was the fact that I’d barely eaten a thing all day because I was so busy getting ready for the party and that even a few sips of beer would go straight to my head.”

  “Yikes,” Carole said. “No wonder it happened so fast.”

  Stevie nodded. “It really did. Before I knew it, I was so buzzed that I’d forgotten all about everything I’d been worried about, and all I could think of was how much I wanted to go inside and give Phil a big hug and do some serious dancing. So the three of us went in, and the rest is history.”

  “Wow.” Carole shook her head, trying to imagine what it would be like to do what Stevie had done. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out anytime soon. She still couldn’t shake the memory of Alex’s sloppy attempt to kiss her, or the way A.J. had kept crashing into things while he danced, hardly seeming to notice as he knocked over furniture and spilled food and drinks all over the place. It had been scary to see people she knew so far out of control. She only hoped that Alex didn’t remember the kissing incident now that he was sober again. “You seem all right today, at least,” she told Stevie, looking for whatever bright side she could find in the situation.

  “I’m okay,” Stevie said. “My stomach still feels a little queasy and I’m really tired, but otherwise I’ll live. Alex, on the other hand …”

  “I know,” Lisa put in. “I spoke to him this morning before I came over here. He didn’t sound too good.”

  Stevie grimaced. “No kidding. He was up half the night hurling his guts up into the toilet. This morning he barely managed to choke down a piece of toast before he headed back upstairs to take some aspirin, drink three gallons of water, and go back to bed.”

  “Poor guy.” Carole felt terrible for Alex, especially since she still felt responsible for the way he’d ended up. If she hadn’t opened her mouth about Skye, and if he and Lisa hadn’t had that fight as a result, then maybe he wouldn’t have been tempted to drink. Maybe instead he and Stevie would have made A.J. put the beer away, and the whole disaster wouldn’t have happened.

  She shook her head. If she kept thinking that way, she’d go nuts. This wasn’t like that botched history test, where she had brought everything on herself. Maybe she had made a mistake this time, but other people had made some really bad choices, too. She hadn’t forced them to make those choices, any more than her history teacher had forced her to cheat by giving her a retest. Everyone had to live with the consequences of their own actions.

  “So you and Alex are okay now?” she asked Lisa tentatively.

  “More or less,” Lisa replied. “I know we both have a lot of work to do to get our relationship back on track. But we’re both willing to try, and I guess that’s half the battle. I hope so, anyway.”

  “Alex said you’re coming over later to talk,” Stevie said.

  Lisa nodded. “We’re going to spend the afternoon figuring out where to go from here. Your parents weren’t going to let me come over since he’s grounded, but I guess they figured we wouldn’t have much fun, considering his current condition.”

  “I’m sure that’s part of it,” Stevie agreed. “But I overheard them talking after breakfast, and I think it’s also because they know you didn’t drink last night. They’re probably hoping you’re going to help them yell at him.”

  Lisa smiled, but she felt her stomach flip-flop as she thought about the conversation to come. She and Alex had a lot to say to each other, and not all of it was going to be easy. They had to learn to trust each other more, but already she felt as though she had a secret hanging over her head.

  How am I going to tell him that I’m going to California for Thanksgiving? she wondered. He probably still thinks I’m spending the holiday with him. And why shouldn’t he? I told him I would.

  When she’d called her father that morning, hoping to explain things to him and beg off the trip, she’d found that she’d been too late. Even before she’d said a word about Thanksgiving, her father had proudly announced that he’d gone online the night before right after she’d called and bought her a plane ticket over the Internet. Because it was for a holiday weekend, the ticket was nonrefundable, which he’d turned into a joke about how he’d trapped her into coming to visit. Lisa had swallowed all her excuses and explanations, realizing that she really was trapped, and had done her best to fake happiness at his news.

  Oh, well, she thought apprehensively. Alex will just have to understand.

  Callie felt a bit wistful as she left Max’s office. She had just stopped in for a quick discussion of her therapeutic riding
schedule for the next couple of weeks. It was strange to think of continuing her sessions without Emily, who was spending the next couple of days packing and tying up the loose ends of her life in Willow Creek before flying off to her new life in Australia on Tuesday.

  But Callie wasn’t the type to waste a lot of time wishing that things were different. She would miss Emily like crazy, but she had to move on. She had finished her first solo session that morning aboard Patch, one of Pine Hollow’s gentlest school horses, and it had gone pretty well.

  As she walked past the tack room on her way to the locker room, where she was supposed to meet Scott, she saw Stevie, Carole, and Lisa emerging. To her relief, it appeared that the three of them were friends again despite everything that had happened the night before.

  Stevie spotted her first. “Callie!” she said. “Hi there. How’s it going?”

  “Okay.” Callie couldn’t help sighing. “Well, mostly, anyway. I miss Emily already, even though she hasn’t even left yet.”

  “Me too,” Carole said, and Lisa nodded agreement.

  Stevie rubbed her forehead. “I miss her too, but I doubt she’s going to miss me much after what happened last night.”

  “I’m sure she won’t hold it against you,” Callie said tactfully. She was dying for more details about the party’s aftermath, but first she had to get something off her chest. “Actually, though, speaking of guilty feelings, I want to apologize for the way Scott and I ducked out last night when the police turned up.”

  “I’m glad you did,” Stevie said. “I never would have forgiven myself if the party that was supposed to be Scott’s ticket to victory in the election had ended up destroying his chances.”

  “That’s what Veronica was worried about, too,” Callie admitted. “It was actually her idea to scoot out the kitchen door. Thanks to her quick thinking, we got away clean.” She shuddered as she remembered the close call. Scott had only had a few sips of beer, but he’d still had the scent on his breath. If the cops had smelled it and called their parents … She broke off the thought as she noticed that Stevie looked slightly disgruntled. “Are you sure you’re not mad?”