Riding to Win

by Bonnie Bryant

  Carole smiled ruefully. “I am sort of worried, actually,” she admitted. “Not about the test, though. I was just thinking about Starlight.” She glanced around cautiously, but none of the students rushing by was paying the least bit of attention to their conversation. “That girl Tanya—you know, the one Stevie’s cousin told her about? She loved Starlight when she rode him, and she wants her vet to come see him tonight.”

  “But that’s great!” Lisa said, trying to sound as though she meant it. She still had trouble accepting the fact that Carole was really selling Starlight—he’d been around for so long that Lisa had just assumed he would always be at Pine Hollow, just like Prancer or Belle or Barq or Topside or any of the other horses. “The sooner you get it settled, the sooner you can talk to Max about selling you Samson, right?”

  “That’s what I’ve been telling myself,” Carole agreed, leaning against the wall and hugging her books to her chest. “But I can’t help thinking about Rachel Hart. She really loved the idea of buying Starlight. I know he’d be a good match for her.” She shrugged. “But who knows how long it could take her to convince her parents to buy her a horse?”

  Lisa shook her head. “You don’t know,” she said. “They may never agree. That’s why you shouldn’t waste one minute waiting around for her or worrying about what she wants. You have to do what’s right for you—forget about anybody else.”

  Carole looked surprised. “What do you mean?”

  Realizing that her words might have sounded a little blunt, Lisa tried to explain. “It’s like with me and college. Other people have their needs and opinions and whatever, but I have to forget about that and do what’s right for me. Only I can really know what that is.”

  She thought back to some of the comments her mother had made that morning. Mrs. Atwood still seemed to think that Lisa had made some sort of careless, seat-of-the-pants decision, one that was destined to ruin her life. Lisa didn’t know how to get through to her—to convince her that she was the one who would have to spend four years at the college she picked, and nobody else could understand all the things that would mean to her. That was why she’d made this decision alone and why she was standing up for it now. After all, if she didn’t, who would?

  Suddenly, though, Lisa remembered that there was one more viewpoint Carole had to consider in her own situation. “Unless you think this buyer is wrong from Starlight’s perspective,” she added. “You know, if he seemed to dislike her or something like that, or if she was mean to him.”

  “No, that’s not the problem. He seemed to like her fine.” Carole bit her lip and gazed down at her books. “I mean, I don’t have strong feelings about Tanya one way or the other. I hardly know her. But I know Rachel, and I know she could learn a lot from a horse like Starlight. And I know she’d treat him right.”

  “All right, then. If this Tanya girl is a serious buyer and you’re serious about selling, then that should be that.” Lisa snapped her fingers to emphasize her point. “Other people are always going to have other needs and opinions and everything, but you can’t let that stop you from getting what you want.”

  Carole still seemed surprised at Lisa’s declaration, and perhaps a bit puzzled as well. “But I’m not sure this is the same sort of ... I mean, no offense, and I see your point and everything, but I can’t help thinking it all sounds kind of, you know, selfish or something.”

  “Only if you think it’s selfish to stand up for yourself,” Lisa replied firmly. “Look at it this way. The big horse show is this Saturday. You’re going to ride to win, right?”

  Carole shrugged. “Of course.”

  “Right. Of course. Why else would you bother to enter?” Lisa said. “You probably won’t spend one second worrying about hurting your competitors’ feelings or whatever because that would just mess you up in the ring—make you lose, compromise your own performance.” She smiled grimly. “So that’s what you’ve got to do with this Starlight thing, too. Take care of yourself first and don’t worry about what everybody else thinks. That’s the only way to win.”

  Nine

  “Hi, Tanya?” Carole said, gripping the receiver and glancing cautiously toward the office door. She had closed it behind her when she’d entered, but that didn’t mean much. Denise or Red or Max himself could burst through it at any moment looking for some paperwork or needing to use the phone.

  “Carole!” Tanya sounded thrilled to hear from her. “What’s up? Did you check your schedule? I talked to my vet, and she can come by just about anytime you want, but I told her I was hoping we could do it tonight. So what do you say? Are you free or what? Because I really want to move on this right away.”

  Carole waited until Tanya paused for breath, then jumped in. “Tonight’s fine,” she said quickly. “Why don’t you bring your vet by around seven o’clock? Is that okay with you?” She figured that by then most of the people at Pine Hollow would have left for the day. Max would be up at the house tucking his daughters into bed, and Red and Denise would probably be busy with the evening feeding. With any luck, nobody would even notice Tanya and her vet.

  “Sure!” Tanya sounded thrilled. “That would be perfect. I just hope I can stand the suspense between now and then! But I’m sure Starlight will vet out just fine. I have a really good feeling about it.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry,” Carole agreed. “Starlight’s the healthiest horse in the barn. But it’s best to get a vet’s opinion before you buy. My dad did the same thing before he bought Starlight for me.”

  “Okay,” Tanya said brightly. “Well, I’ll see you and Starlight tonight. I can’t wait!”

  “Right. See you then. Bye.”

  Carole put down the phone and stared at it for a second. Then she rubbed her eyes, feeling a sudden wave of sadness wash over her. She already knew that Starlight was perfectly sound—there was no way Tanya’s vet was going to find anything wrong with him. That meant there was really nothing standing in the way of the sale. Her horse could be leaving Pine Hollow soon. For good. Carole had been preparing herself for just that event for a while now, but she still couldn’t quite believe it was really going to happen.

  When she looked up again, Carole almost jumped out of her chair. Ben was standing in the office doorway, his expression hovering between uncertainty and embarrassment.

  “Sorry,” he said gruffly at her gasp of surprise. “Didn’t mean to scare you. I didn’t know—uh, anyway. Sorry.”

  “That’s okay.” Carole put a hand on her heart, which was beating fast. “Um, you just startled me, that’s all. I didn’t hear the door open.”

  “Not just that,” Ben mumbled, his voice so low she could hardly make out his words. “Sorry about, you know. Starlight. It must be tough. Now that it’s really happening. I’m—I hope you’re okay.”

  Carole realized that he must have overheard at least part of her conversation with Tanya. She flashed back to Lisa’s comments earlier that day. At first she had thought her friend’s advice seemed too hard-hearted. But maybe she had a point. “I’m fine,” she told Ben, doing her best to sound normal and upbeat. “It’s all for the best. I mean, I’m getting what I wanted. And that’s good, right?”

  “Sure.” Ben looked a little surprised. “But still, you know—well, you know. I just wanted to say something. In case you want to talk or—or anything.”

  “Thanks, but I’m fine,” Carole said briskly, pushing back the office chair and standing up. “Well, I’d better stop sitting around and get to work. I have a ton to do today.”

  “Whatever.” Ben shrugged and turned away quickly.

  As he did, Carole caught a flash of an odd expression on his face. Was it confusion? she wondered. She thought it was, at least partly. But she also couldn’t help thinking he looked a little bit hurt as well.

  Oops, she thought, feeling bad. She hurried to the office door. I guess he really wanted to help. Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to blow off his sympathy. It’s not like he offers it all that o
ften.

  But it was too late now. Ben was already disappearing around the corner at the end of the hall. Carole bit her lip, realizing she’d been so wrapped up in her own problems that she hadn’t even noticed how nice was Ben was being—or at least trying to be—until she’d scared him off.

  Then her mind flashed back to the image of Tanya soaring over those jumps the day before on Starlight, and she suddenly felt tears well up in her eyes. She could worry about Ben later. Right now she had more important things to deal with. Like figuring out how she was going to be able to say good-bye to her horse.

  Lisa pressed her foot down on the brake, bringing her car to a halt behind a pickup truck that had stopped at a red light. As she idled, waiting for the light to turn green, her mind wandered back, once again, to her argument with her mother that morning.

  You’re not thinking straight, Lisa, Mrs. Atwood had said through clenched teeth. You’re going to regret this someday. I just want to save you from that. I know how these things work. So why won’t you listen to me?

  Because you don’t know how these things work, Lisa had replied hotly. You don’t know what it’s like to be me. You don’t have my life. You may think you know what I need, but you don’t. Only I know that.

  Mrs. Atwood had smiled bitterly at that. You’re the one who thinks only you know what’s going on here, she had told Lisa. You think you have your whole life all figured out. You think you’re making all the right moves. But all you’re doing is closing off your options. And for what? A high-school romance. You’re letting someone else control your life.

  “If she only knew,” Lisa muttered, clutching the steering wheel more tightly. After all, Alex didn’t even seem to want her to go to NVU anymore. That didn’t mean she was changing her mind, of course. It didn’t change anything.

  The light flashed to green, and Lisa followed the truck into the intersection, taking the familiar turn toward home. She glanced at the packet of freshly developed photos on the seat beside her; she’d just picked them up at the drugstore. Before that she’d bought herself some new school notebooks at the stationery store and dropped off her good white blouse at the dry cleaner’s. She only wished she had more errands to use as an excuse for not going home.

  Then again, why do I need an excuse? she asked herself, blinking at the road in front of her. I’m almost an adult, right? If I don’t feel like going home and waiting for Mom to get home from work so that she can start yelling at me again, maybe I should just go do something else for a while.

  But what? She was tempted to stop by Pine Hollow and visit Prancer. But she realized she didn’t particularly feel like running into either of her best friends at the moment. She was sure that Alex must have told Stevie by now about their little scene the previous afternoon. Besides that, she was starting to wonder if maybe Carole and Stevie might have some doubts about her college plans, too. They had seemed glad and supportive enough when she’d first told them of her decision, but they hadn’t said much to her about it since. That wasn’t really like them. And hadn’t there been something a little odd about the way Carole had looked at her earlier when she’d mentioned her plans?

  Stop being paranoid, Lisa told herself, squeezing the steering wheel. You’re just looking for trouble. Still, she passed by the road to Pine Hollow without so much as a glance.

  A few minutes later she reached the turnoff for her own street, but instead of making the turn, she kept going straight, planning to loop around the long way instead. That would kill a few more minutes.

  Once it had occurred to her, she couldn’t quite shake the thought that her best friends weren’t acting quite the way she might have expected them to when it came to her college plans. In fact, nobody was reacting to her news the way she’d thought they would—not Alex, not her parents, not her friends. She’d thought her decision would make them all happy. Instead, they all seemed to think she’d royally screwed up her life.

  But they’re wrong, she told herself. Aren’t they?

  At that moment a bird flew across the road right in front of her car, low and fast. Lisa automatically tapped the brakes, even though the bird was already across. As she moved her foot back to the gas pedal, she glanced in the direction the bird had gone and noticed a sign indicating the way to Highway 12. The quiet two-lane country road ran past the Willow Creek Mall and then continued northwest as far as New Salisbury, the town where NVU was.

  As she read the sign, something suddenly clicked in Lisa’s head. “What a great idea,” she said aloud. “I’ll drive up to NVU for the afternoon.”

  As soon as she said it, she felt better. It was the perfect way to kill two birds with one stone. She could postpone the next round with her mother while also reminding herself of what she’d actually chosen, instead of focusing only on what everybody else claimed she was giving up.

  At the next stop sign, Lisa leaned over and flipped open the glove compartment, feeling around inside until she located her cellular phone. Her father had bought it for her the day she’d gotten her driver’s license, ordering her to keep it in the car at all times in case of emergency. Lisa often forgot it was there, though she’d learned to appreciate it late one stormy night the previous spring when her tire had blown along a deserted stretch of highway between her house and the mall. She had been able to call for help instead of struggling to change the tire on her own.

  Now she dialed her home number and waited for the answering machine to click on. “Don’t be there. Don’t be there,” she muttered, hoping that her mother hadn’t decided to take another day off from work.

  After four rings, the machine clicked on. Lisa left a brief message after the beep, telling her mother that she would be at Pine Hollow for the next several hours helping her friends get ready for the horse show, and that she might not be home for dinner.

  I just hope Carole or Stevie won’t call before I get home, she thought as she turned off the phone and slid it back into the glove compartment. If they do, Mom will probably freak out and think I got into some horrible accident on my way to the stable. Either that or she’ll figure out that it was all a cover story.

  Still, she couldn’t manage to worry about that too much. In fact, she thought it might do her mother good to get a taste of how a typical teenager operated. Then maybe she would appreciate that Lisa really was pretty mature and responsible most of the time—the kind of girl who was more than capable of making important decisions all by herself.

  Gunning the engine as she shot across the intersection and headed for the access road leading to the highway, Lisa did her best to forget about the present and the past and think only of the future. She had been to NVU a number of times before, but she was sure she would see it in a whole new light now that she knew she’d be spending the next four years of her life there.

  It only took her an hour to reach the edge of the NVU campus. She quickly found a parking spot in the visitors’ lot near the football stadium. Climbing out of the car, she stretched and glanced around, slipping on her jacket against the slight autumn chill. Then she locked her car, dropped her keys in her purse, and headed across the parking lot, following a sign pointing the way to the Center Green.

  The campus was bustling. Most classes were over for the day, and students were everywhere—walking back to their dorms, rushing to the library or an early dinner at the dining hall, or just hanging out on the grass with friends, enjoying the pleasant evening. Lisa moved among them, strolling down the wide brick-paved walkway that meandered in and out and around the broad, tree-studded swath of lawn known as Center Green. Buildings of every conceivable vintage ringed the green, from the ivy-twined stone walls of the venerable eighteenth-century edifice that housed the admissions offices and other administrative departments to a modern glass-and-steel structure that, if Lisa recalled correctly from her campus tour the previous spring, was the new home of the university’s law school. Somehow all the disparate architectural styles worked together, creating a vibrant, interesting pict
ure.

  Lisa traveled the full circle around the green, checking out each of the buildings she passed. She remembered most of them from her tour and other visits—the library, the student life building, the science center. She also kept a wary eye on the students all around her, not really wanting to run into anyone she knew. Still, she wasn’t particularly worried. The population of NVU was large enough that she knew her chances of accidentally encountering Chad Lake or any other acquaintance were pretty slim.

  Once she’d completed her walk around Center Green, she headed down an offshoot of the walk that led between the English department building and the student health office toward East Campus, where most of the freshman dorms were clustered around a parklike area surrounding the main dining hall.

  I wonder which of these dorms I’ll live in next year? Lisa thought, wandering off the path and pausing on a slope near a small, picturesque pond. More than two dozen students were sprawled on the grass on the pond’s banks. Several of them were reading or studying. A couple of small groups were chatting with each other. One solitary guy was wearing headphones, tapping his foot as he bit into an apple. Another guy was sound asleep on his back, completely oblivious to the couple making out passionately nearby.

  After looking around at the dorms for a few minutes, wondering what it would be like to live in one of them, Lisa turned her gaze to the low, concrete bulk of the dining hall across the grass. As the hour grew later, more and more students were hurrying through the building’s wide glass doors. Lisa’s stomach grumbled, and she realized she was getting hungry.

  Too bad I’m not a student here yet, she thought ruefully, rubbing her stomach. I don’t care how much Chad complains about college food. I could really go for a nice dining hall burger or something right about now.