Horse Spy

by Bonnie Bryant

  “No thanks,” Lisa said. “I have to go back to Pine Hollow. I left a library book in my cubby, and I’d better return it today or I might not have a chance.” She took out her wallet and added her share.

  The three girls stood up.

  “We’ll talk to you before you go,” Stevie said.

  Lisa nodded. “Definitely,” she agreed. She gave them each a quick hug and headed for the door.

  Stevie and Carole walked the short distance to Stevie’s house.

  “Where’s the car?” Carole asked.

  “In the garage,” Stevie said. Carole was a little surprised. Normally both Stevie and Alex left the car in the driveway, ready to go in a second. “Wait here, I’ll bring it out,” Stevie said.

  Stevie had backed the car into the garage so that it could be stored with the broken taillight and dented end in the place least likely to be detected by her brother or her parents. She knew she was going to have to confess at some point. She just wasn’t at that point yet, and the longer she could put it off, the better. She could tell Carole, of course—but why? If nobody knew, nobody would be nagging her to confess.

  In a few minutes Carole was buckled into the passenger seat and the two of them were on their way to her house.

  “So, what are we going to do about our farewell for Lisa?” Carole asked.

  “We’ll go to the airport, of course,” Stevie said.

  Carole smiled. It was exactly what she had in mind, too. “Alex won’t be able to give her all the send-off she deserves,” she said. “He’s definitely going to need some help from us.”

  “Definitely. We can do balloons and stuff if you want.”

  “No, just us,” said Carole. “A strong reminder, along with Alex, of everything she’s leaving behind.”

  “That’s a deal, and then I can take Callie to the tack shop on the way back from the airport before I go to work.”

  “Callie?”

  “Well, yes, I promised I’d take her to the tack shop at the mall.”

  “Aren’t you going to a lot of trouble for someone you just met?” Carole asked.

  “It’s really no trouble. I like driving, remember?”

  Carole didn’t think driving was the issue. She needed to remind Stevie of the sacrifices they all seemed to be making for Callie Forester. “I was sorry to miss the ride this morning, and I meant to thank you for helping out with Pine Hollow’s newest difficult tenant,” she said, referring to Callie.

  “It was no problem,” Stevie said. “I mean, he acted up a few times on the trail, but Callie controlled him just fine. She said she thought it helped having him between Belle and Prancer, too. He’ll settle down in a few days, I’m sure.”

  Carole thought that was probably true; she just wondered when his owner would settle down. For whatever reason, Stevie didn’t seem concerned about that. Carole thought it best to drop the subject.

  The book was right where Lisa knew it would be. She picked it up, tucked it into her backpack, and was about to leave for the library when she realized she hadn’t given Prancer a proper farewell for the summer. She wasn’t just leaving her human friends for two months.

  Prancer’s stall was on the far end of the U-shaped hallway that housed all the horse stalls at Pine Hollow. The nice thing about that was that she passed all the horses in the place on her way. She greeted them by name, waving, patting, and talking to them sweetly. Most of the horses were in their stalls. The place was quiet.

  “Hi there, PC,” she said, giving Emily’s curious horse a welcome scratch on his neck. He nuzzled her neck with his damp nose.

  “Oh, forget it,” she said, giggling at the tickle. “I don’t have any goodies with me. Besides, I’m absolutely certain I saw Emily giving you an apple this morning.”

  He relented and returned his attention to his hay tick.

  “Hi, Fez,” she said, greeting the horse across the hall. “Are you worn out from our— Oh, Callie, you’re in there. I didn’t see you.”

  Callie stood up. “Yeah, I was working on his coat. It’s amazing how much mud gets on the coat—to say nothing of his fetlock, which I brushed for five minutes before I got the ball of mud off.”

  “I know,” Lisa said. “Horses are very absorbent. Do you want some help?”

  “No thanks. I’m actually finished cleaning up my dirt sponge,” Callie said. She brushed her hands off on her apron, stowed the last of her equipment in the bucket, and unlatched Fez’s cross-ties. “I really do appreciate your offer of help, though. It seems to me that the riders here are always offering to help out—much better than the staff. And that reminds me that there’s something I need to talk to Max about.”

  “What’s that?” Lisa asked. The remark really surprised her. She’d always found everyone at Pine Hollow very helpful. “I mean, what happened?”

  “Well, it was partly my fault, I know,” Callie began. “I got in here to groom Fez and didn’t put him on cross-ties. He got upset and threatening. I asked the stable hand to help me and she refused.”

  “We don’t have any girl stable hands now,” Lisa said. “It must have been a rider.” She couldn’t imagine who would refuse to help.

  “Well, she was wearing one of the stable T-shirts,” Callie said. “And she was grooming that horse over there—the one you were talking to.”

  “PC?”

  “That’s his name?”

  “Right, this one here,” Lisa said. “This is PC, and he belongs to Emily Williams. It must have been Emily— Oh, no. What did she say? I mean, exactly.”

  Callie described what happened. “I asked her to help me. She said, ‘No, I can’t,’ and then she said she’d call for Ben if I wanted—like I needed help calling for help.”

  “She was right,” said Lisa. “She couldn’t help you.”

  “All I needed was for someone to run over here and hand me the cross-ties. Even a child could do that.”

  “As long as the child wasn’t on crutches,” Lisa said.

  “What?”

  “There’s no way you would know, I guess, but Emily has cerebral palsy. She can walk, but only with crutches, and it’s slow. When she said she couldn’t help you, she meant it. You were going to do a lot better with Ben’s help than hers.”

  Callie put her hand to her mouth. “I didn’t know,” she said quietly.

  “Why would you? Look, don’t worry about it. Emily doesn’t like special treatment. She always says she’s not a disabled person, she’s a person with a disability. It’s not the first thing she wants anybody to know, and as a result a lot of people get to know her before they notice. That’s okay, too.”

  “As long as they don’t insult her the way I did,” said Callie. “I … I threatened to report her to Max. I thought she was an employee—”

  “Well, we’re all kind of like employees here, so you weren’t so far off the mark on that one.”

  “Well, I was making noises like I thought she shouldn’t be an employee any longer. I must have come off like a total jerk. I’m so embarrassed!”

  She stepped out of Fez’s stall and closed and latched the door behind her. “Do you think she’s still here?” she asked Lisa. “I’ve got to find her and apologize.”

  “I didn’t see her, but let’s look.”

  The two of them hurried to the office. Denise was behind the desk, trying to straighten out a rider’s bill for the month.

  “Is Emily still here?” Lisa asked.

  “Nope,” Denise said. “She left about half an hour ago. She used the phone to call her mother and asked her to come right away. She seemed pretty upset about something. Do you know what it was about?”

  “I’m afraid I have an idea,” Callie said. “I need to talk to her. Can you give me her phone number?”

  “I’m not really supposed to give out phone numbers,” said Denise.

  “It’s important,” said Lisa.

  The look on Lisa’s face must have convinced Denise to get out the stable address book. She jotted
down the number and address on a scrap of paper and handed it to Callie.

  “Hope it turns out okay,” said Denise.

  “Me too,” said Callie. “Thanks, and bye.” She was out of the office before Lisa had a chance to offer to walk with her. Callie wanted to get home and to the phone as quickly as possible.

  IT WAS getting harder and harder to pretend that nothing was going to be different that summer. Lisa and Alex had a date—their last date before she left. They’d seen a movie, though Lisa doubted she could have told anyone the name of it or anything about it. She and Alex held hands tightly all the way through the film, and she was far more aware of his presence, the tender pressure on her palm, his gentle caresses on her fingers, than she was of anything happening on the screen in front of her.

  He walked her back to her house.

  “This is going to be hard,” Alex said finally.

  “I know,” said Lisa. “I guess it’s time to acknowledge it, too. We’ll talk, we’ll send e-mail. You’re probably going to be spending more time communicating with me over the summer than you do now.”

  “Probably,” he said. “But it won’t be as much fun.” He stopped her in a shadow, and they kissed. “I’ll be thinking of you a lot.”

  “When?” Lisa asked.

  “Often,” he said, a little surprised by the question.

  “Why don’t we make a date to think of one another—say every night at nine or something like that?”

  “That’s midnight here.”

  “So, you’ll still be up. You’ll probably be in your room then. You can look out the window at the moon. The very same moon will be looking down on me in California, and I’ll be looking up at it at the same time.”

  “It won’t even be dark some nights—”

  “So I’ll look where the moon probably is,” Lisa said. “I’ll know. If you’re looking at the same time, I’ll know. I’ll be able to feel it, and that’s how I’ll know where the moon is.”

  “How could I have ever been in love with anyone before I met you?” Alex asked. And then he kissed her again.

  Lisa took that as a yes.

  The house was dark and the phone was ringing when Lisa unlocked the door. Her mother was at what she called Group. It was supposed to be a therapy session, but the group was comprised of women whose husbands had left them. Behind her mother’s back, Lisa referred to it as Gripe Therapy.

  She picked up the phone in the still-dark kitchen.

  “Hi, honey!” a cheerful voice said. It was her father. He knew when Lisa’s mother was likely to be out of the house and often called then.

  “Hi, Dad,” she said, flipping on the light.

  “It’s just one day now and I can’t wait to see you.”

  “Me too,” she said, meaning it. Sad as she was to be leaving Virginia for the summer, she loved her father and was looking forward to having time with him.

  “I wanted you to know that I’ll be at the airport to meet your plane. Evelyn has all the ingredients to make the vegetarian chili you liked so much, so don’t worry about eating any lousy airplane food. We’ll feed you when you get here.”

  “Will Lily still be awake?” she asked.

  “Lily is always awake,” said her father. “Why didn’t someone remind me how little sleep babies get at night? The only time she sleeps really well is in the daytime. Whatever it means, it seems to be good for her because she’s thriving. Wait until you see her.”

  “I can’t wait. I got the pictures from Evelyn and I can’t believe how much she’s grown.”

  “She’s a real beauty—almost as lovely as her big sister.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” said Lisa.

  “And speaking of her big sister, you got a piece of mail here today.”

  “What is it?”

  “I’m not exactly sure, but it’s from WorldWide Studios and the initials on the envelope are SR.”

  “Skye? He said he’d talk to me when I got out there.”

  “Well, apparently he decided to write first. You can see what he wrote tomorrow.”

  “As if I could wait that long. Go ahead. Open it and read it.”

  “Your private mail?”

  “What do I have to do to convince the world I’m not in love with Skye and he won’t be writing anything all that private?” she asked.

  “I guess the best way is to let me read the letter,” her father said. She could hear him opening the envelope. There was a pause. “Okay, here it is. ‘Dear Lisa, I’m so glad—’ yadda-yadda. ‘Lots of things to show you—’ blah-blah. ‘One thing I—’ Got it. ‘One thing I want to ask you about, though, is if you know anyone who might be interested in working on our show’s set this summer. The show is about horses, as you know, and we have a whole stable full of them. One of the assistant stable hands has left and we need to replace her. The job requirements are knowing something about horses and being willing to look after them. It’s not glamorous, of course. A lot of it is going to involve mucking out stalls and carrying buckets of water. Do you, by any wild chance, know of anyone, over sixteen years old, who might, possibly, fit that description, who could be persuaded to take a summer job on a television film set?’ ”

  “Wow! Oh, Daddy, can I? Please?”

  “You mean you think he might have you in mind for this job?”

  “Dad!”

  “Well, I guess he probably does,” her father conceded. “Sounds perfect. We’ll talk with him when you get out here. We have to consider things like hours and transportation, but it might be a good idea.”

  That sounded enough like a yes that Lisa didn’t think she’d have to ask again. Now she really had some news for Carole and Stevie!

  “Dad, I’ll see you tomorrow. Thanks for calling. Love to Evelyn, and give Lily a little hug, okay?”

  “Deal,” he said. “I love you, honey.”

  “I love you, too, Dad.”

  She hung up the phone just long enough to get a dial tone. Stevie’s line was busy. She was probably talking to Phil, and there was no telling how long that would be. Lisa tried Carole next.

  Carole was every bit as excited as Lisa about her news. “A whole summer working with horses and Skye Ransom!” Carole said. “Sounds like every girl’s dream come true.”

  “I don’t think I’ll be spending that much time with Skye,” Lisa said sensibly. “He’ll be on the set most of the time, or in his trailer, or rehearsing. But I will see him, and, best of all, I’ll be with horses. It’s almost perfect.”

  Carole was still grinning when she hung up the phone. That sounded like great news for Lisa. Carole sighed. If only the news around Pine Hollow were better. Lisa would be gone. Stevie wanted to be friends with Callie. And Carole’s world felt a little more mixed up than she wanted it to be.

  Stevie glared at the phone. It had been glaring back at her ever since she’d walked into the house after work. Its glare was almost as bad as the broken taillight’s. She hadn’t had any run-ins that night—no crushed impatiens, no mangled garbage cans, and no more dented fenders.

  But it was the dented fender that was causing her trouble. Every time she’d looked at her own taillight, she remembered the scratch on the Foresters’ car. Her mind was doing flip-flops. One second she was sure she’d done it. The next second it could have been anyone at any time. Then she knew she’d done the damage to her own car that night. How could the Foresters’ car not have gotten damaged? But the damage to her car was so obvious—there was no way that bad dent would have made just the tiny scratch she’d seen on the Foresters’ car.

  She picked up the phone. She had to talk to Callie and Scott—or, worse, their parents. She had to know. No, that wasn’t entirely true. She was actually doing pretty well not knowing. Nobody had asked her about it. Nobody had called Pizza Manor and complained. They would have noticed. Wouldn’t they?

  She hung up the phone. But if she didn’t ask, she’d never know. She picked up the phone. In another second she’d cradled it again. Finally she p
icked it up and dialed. She got a busy signal. That was really good news. She hung up again.

  Callie held the phone tightly in her hand and punched in the now-familiar number. This time, she punched in all the numbers and listened to the phone ring.

  “Hello?” It was an adult, probably Emily’s mother.

  “Is Emily there, please?” Callie asked.

  “Who’s calling?”

  “This is Callie Forester.”

  There was a long pause. Emily’s mother held her hand over the mouthpiece so that Callie couldn’t hear what was being said. Finally the woman came back on.

  “Uh, Callie, Emily is busy now and can’t come to the phone.”

  “It’ll just take a minute. I promise,” said Callie.

  “Not now,” the woman said.

  “May I call later?” asked Callie

  “I don’t think she’ll be able to talk,” the woman said. “Tomorrow, maybe.”

  “I guess it’s getting kind of late,” Callie said. “Tell her I’ll call again.”

  “Sure,” said Emily’s mother. And then she hung up.

  Callie couldn’t remember a time when she’d done something as thoughtless as what she’d done to Emily, and it bothered her a lot that she wasn’t getting a chance to apologize. Not that she really deserved it. She’d been rude. Apologizing wasn’t going to change that. It probably wouldn’t make Emily feel any better, but it might make Callie feel better. She couldn’t wait until the next day. She needed to do something that night.

  She turned to her desk and took out a sheet of stationery. If she wasn’t able to talk to Emily, she could at least write to her.

  Everything she wrote felt clumsy and inadequate, but by her fifth sheet of paper, she had something that expressed her shame and sincerity. It would do until they had a chance to talk.

  Callie asked her mother if she could “borrow” some of the flowers from their backyard for a friend who wasn’t feeling well. It wasn’t exactly a lie. Her mother agreed. The impatiens were thriving. She should take some of those. Callie made a pretty arrangement, wrapped the stems in a moist paper towel, and bound it all together with aluminum foil. She put a ribbon around it and clipped her note to the ribbon.