Pleasure Horse

by Bonnie Bryant

  “You mean you think if we get Samson to tolerate the stirrups Max will let him stay?” Lisa asked.

  “Definitely. I’m sure that’s why he suddenly decided to send him to a trainer—he thinks we can’t solve this problem.” Carole stood to hang up the bridle she’d been oiling. “Luckily, Max is going to be at that dressage show, so we’ll have plenty of time.”

  Lisa nodded thoughtfully. “I guess it can’t hurt.”

  “Can’t hurt? It’s our only chance to keep Samson here,” Carole replied.

  “Okay, then,” Lisa said after a minute, “count me in.”

  “LILA, YOU’VE OUTDONE yourself,” Stevie’s father remarked, putting his fork down. The two families had just finished a huge steak dinner. “If the caterer on Sunday is half as good, there won’t be a bite left.”

  “I hope you still have room for dessert—it’s éclairs,” Stevie’s aunt replied.

  Stevie licked her lips in anticipation. “I for one can definitely squeeze in a few bites of an éclair,” she said, grinning.

  “Not me, Mom. No matter what dress I wear Sunday, I have to be able to fit into it,” Angie said. “And besides, I’m saving myself for the chocolate mousse and the hazelnut torte we’re having then.”

  Suddenly Stevie didn’t feel quite so hungry. If Angie was turning into one of those thin girls who always acted like she had to go on a diet, Stevie didn’t want to hear about it.

  “Two desserts, huh?” Alex asked, sounding impressed.

  “Three if you count the birthday cake,” Angie replied.

  “Hey, remember that time we made a carrot cake, but nobody would eat it so we tried feeding it to the horses?” Stevie asked suddenly. The memory made her laugh. Even Sparkles and the hunters had refused the girls’ concoction.

  “I’m not sure,” Angie replied vaguely.

  “Really?” Stevie said, surprised. “Boy, I remember it like it was yesterday. Sparkles looked so funny when he turned his nose up at it. Then again, he always was a fussy eater, wasn’t he? My horse, Belle, can be picky, too. Sometimes—”

  “Do tell us, Stevie. We’re all dying to know exactly what Belle eats for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” Chad commented.

  “That’s right,” Alex piped up. “Please continue. And don’t let anyone tell you that you have a one-track mind and you only talk about horses. We know it isn’t true.”

  Stevie clamped her mouth shut and fixed her brothers with the evil eye. Naturally, they would tease her about being single-minded. And yet they didn’t seem to notice that all anyone else had talked about was the sweet sixteen party. Between their arrival and dinner, Stevie had learned: the reasons Angie’s party was going to be better than anyone else’s; the gifts Angie was expecting to get (none of them was even remotely horse-related); and the Latin names of the flowers Angie and her mother had ordered. Honestly, Stevie would have thought her brothers would be glad to have the subject changed to horses.

  “Did you know that there are different colors of caviar?” Angie was saying. “There’s black, red …”

  Stevie sighed. The long weekend was beginning to look very long indeed.

  ON SATURDAY MORNING Carole and Lisa arrived at Pine Hollow bright and early. They were planning to spend the whole day with Samson. They wouldn’t train him for more than half an hour at a time, but they wanted to be around him as much as possible. That way, there would be absolutely nothing special about their presence—nothing that would alarm him or give him an excuse to act up.

  “The coast is clear,” Lisa announced, rejoining Carole by the colt’s stall. She had checked the parking lot to make sure the Pine Hollow van was gone. It wasn’t that they thought Max would mind their working with Samson some more, but they did feel a little sheepish after what he’d said the day before about the “stirrup problem.” Besides, if they could fix the problem by the time the weekend was over, it would be a perfect surprise.

  “Good, because Samson seems calm and quiet,” Carole responded.

  “You know, I think we may just get him to snap out of it today,” Lisa said optimistically. “It’s not like this is a huge problem. And Samson is an intelligent horse.”

  “He is intelligent,” Carole agreed. “Right, boy?” She gave his withers a scratch. Once they had decided to devote the whole weekend to Samson, Carole felt much more relaxed. She’d stayed up half the night reading training books and jotting down practical ideas that seemed related to Samson’s behavior. Plus she had one idea that wasn’t so practical, which she shared with Lisa. “We shouldn’t need it, but let’s touch the horseshoe anyway, for a little extra luck.”

  The good-luck horseshoe was a Pine Hollow tradition. Normally students touched it before mounting, but Carole figured it could work for training, too.

  “Good idea. After all,” Lisa pointed out, “you can never have too much luck.”

  “WHOA, I FORGOT how big Birdie is,” Stevie remarked. She was sitting atop the Lakes’ sixteen-point-three-hand Thoroughbred-Clydesdale cross, as she and Angie headed out for a midmorning ride. Stevie had always liked the contrast between “Birdie,” the petite, feminine-sounding name, and Birdie, the half-draft horse gelding. “He’s a fun change from my horse,” Stevie added.

  Angie didn’t seem to hear.

  It had taken Stevie a while to convince Angie to go riding at all. Finally Aunt Lila had told Angie that she was driving her crazy asking about party details and had better get out of the house for a couple of hours. “Belle’s only fifteen-point-one,” Stevie went on. She hoped Angie would pick up on her comment and ask her to describe Belle, but her cousin just smiled vaguely and clucked to Sparkles to keep walking.

  “I also forgot how much colder February would be in New Jersey,” Stevie said, persisting. “At Pine Hollow the ground hardly ever freezes like this.” She paused to see if Angie would react at all.

  After a minute, Angie seemed to realize that she should say something to be polite. “What was that? Pine Hollow?” she asked.

  “Right. That’s the place I told you about, where we ride. I keep Belle there, and my two best friends ride there, too. You should see it. It’s got a big indoor ring and—”

  “Speaking of friends, did I tell you who was going to be at the party?” Angie asked, slowing Sparkles so that Stevie could ride next to her on Birdie.

  “Yes, you did,” Stevie lied. She knew she sounded annoyed, but she couldn’t help it. The subject of the party was beginning to make her feel nauseated. “But you never told me why you didn’t take Sparkles to a lot of shows last season.”

  “Look, I just like riding him for fun now, okay?” Angie said defensively.

  “Yeah, sure—definitely,” Stevie said, biting her tongue so she wouldn’t say anything else. The way her cousin sounded, she knew better than to press the subject any further. But it did seem too bad that a talented jumper like Sparkles would never again meet the challenge of showing. Pleasure riding was great, but it didn’t seem enough for Sparkles. Not knowing what else to say, Stevie gave up. It seemed like the best thing to do would be to settle back, enjoy the ride, and resign herself to listening to Angie describe the guest list, as she had just begun to do.

  “Let’s just say it’s all the coolest kids from school. The guys in Voyager—”

  “What’s Voyager?”

  “That’s the name of the band!” Angie half-cried. “Gosh, Stevie, you’re getting forgetful. Anyway, there are four of them, and they’re all juniors. You should see Ted Capuano—he’s one of the best hockey players in the school, not to mention one of the best-looking. He plays bass. And then there’s Jeff on drums and Kevin and Mike on guitars—Mike is Val’s boyfriend. Of course Val is coming too because she’s on the cheerleading squad and they’re all coming—”

  Stevie couldn’t help rolling her eyes. “Why would you invite the cheerleading squad?” she asked. She remembered a discussion she’d once had with Angie about how lame they thought it was to cheer for other teams when you could pl
ay something yourself—or better yet, ride.

  Angie gave Stevie an odd look. “We spend a lot of time together, what with practice every afternoon and the games. The other cheerleaders are my best friends. Naturally, I’d want to invite them to my party.”

  Stevie did a double take. It was one thing for her fun, down-to-earth cousin to start dressing up and wearing makeup. But now she was a cheerleader? Stevie could hardly believe it. She stared wordlessly at Angie as the older girl began to name all the football players who might show up. Football players? Stevie thought. What on earth has gotten into Angie?

  Suddenly Stevie had a sneaking suspicion. There was a phrase that adults used all the time about girls who rode. Stevie hated it, and if anyone ever said it to her, she got so angry she wanted to clobber them. It was: “She may like horses now, but wait until she discovers boys.” Stevie, Carole, and Lisa all agreed that it was a completely dumb thing to say. They had all “discovered” boys, and it hadn’t made them like horses one bit less. In fact, one of the reasons Stevie liked her boyfriend, Phil Marsten, so much was that he was as crazy about horses as she was. Carole had felt the same way about her almost-boyfriend Cam. Before Cam moved, he and Carole had shared some wonderful times together—many of them around horses. And the same went for Lisa and any boy she’d ever liked.

  And yet the awful saying seemed to apply to Angie. Now that she had cool friends at school and knew the football players and the guys in a band, she didn’t seem to care the slightest bit about riding. The way she was sitting on Sparkles summed up her whole attitude toward horses. She was slouching in the saddle, letting Sparkles dog along on a loose rein. She still had a basically good position—heels down, hands light on the reins—but it was obvious that she didn’t care how she looked. At least, not on a horse. Her dress for the party was another story.

  Party, party, party! The more Stevie heard about the party, the more boring it sounded. Angie didn’t even have any fun games or activities planned; apparently everyone was going to stand around and eat and listen to the band the whole time. Even that could be tolerable if the people were nice, but Stevie was betting that her cousin’s friends would be as boring as Angie seemed to have become. They probably wouldn’t know how to have fun. They sounded like the kind of friends that Veronica diAngelo would have. As for the other relatives who would be coming, Angie had barely mentioned them.

  At least Chad, Alex, and Michael will be there, Stevie thought. Then she laughed out loud. Lisa and Carole would never let her forget it if she told them that she was glad that her brothers would be at a party because she wanted to hang out with them more than anyone else.

  Beside her, Angie picked up a trot, motioning for Stevie to follow. “I can finish telling you later,” Angie called.

  “Great,” Stevie muttered, wondering if her cousin would catch the sarcasm that she was finding hard to keep out of her voice. Wistfully she thought of Lisa and Carole back at Pine Hollow, training Samson. If only she could be there, too. Even the stirrup problem couldn’t be harder than putting up with Angie and her never-ending party talk for three days.

  SHAKING HER HEAD despondently, Lisa reached up and unbuckled Samson’s girth. Once again, she and Carole were taking the saddle off the colt, hoping he would relax and forget about the stirrups. It was the second time that morning that they’d saddled him up only to untack him ten minutes later. They had tried putting only one stirrup on the saddle and having Lisa, then Carole, hold it in place while Samson walked. But the strange positioning of the person helping seemed to excite him even more. The worst part was that they always started out trying to encourage the colt but ended up trying to discipline him. Then they were back at square one, but with a sweaty horse who needed to be cooled off. All of the optimism of the morning had faded.

  It was rare for two members of The Saddle Club to be too dejected to talk to one another, but as the girls walked Samson, each of them was lost in her own thoughts about what they should do.

  After a lap or two around the ring, a familiar face appeared at the door. “Hi, girls, how’s it going?” Mrs. Reg inquired.

  Lisa and Carole exchanged glances. Mrs. Reg was Max’s mother, so anything they said would probably get straight back to Max. Reluctantly they led Samson over to the older woman.

  Trying to sound normal, Carole spoke up. “He’s not perfect yet, but he’s getting there,” she said.

  “A little more work and he’ll be just fine,” Lisa said to back her up.

  Mrs. Reg smiled benevolently. “Good, I’m glad to hear it. You know, I was thinking about something today, and I wanted to tell you girls.”

  This time, instead of looking at one another, Lisa elbowed Carole. Mrs. Reg was famous around the stables for her long, drawn-out, confusing stories. Whenever she told one, she got a faraway look in her eye—like the one she had right now. Sure enough, she launched in.

  “When my husband Max was young—you know, Max’s father, Max the Second—he wanted to be an architect. As much as he loved horses and riding, he didn’t think running a stable would be a very exciting career. His father, the one you call Max the First, wanted him to take over Pine Hollow one day—naturally—and they had plenty of arguments about it. But finally Max the First agreed to send his son to college to study architecture.” With that, Mrs. Reg stopped to give Samson a pat. “All right, girls, I’ll catch up with you later.”

  “Wait!” Lisa and Carole wailed in unison. Mrs. Reg looked surprised.

  “You haven’t finished telling us the story,” Carole said.

  “Oh, I suppose you’re right. But there isn’t really any more to tell,” replied Mrs. Reg.

  “But what happened? Did Max the Second become an architect?” Lisa asked.

  “An architect?” said Mrs. Reg. “Oh, no. After a couple of years he changed his major to accounting.”

  “Really? Why?” Carole inquired.

  “Well, he decided that he did want to return to run Pine Hollow with his father after all. He thought a business background would be useful to help him keep the books.”

  “But what happened to make him change his mind?” Lisa asked, exasperated. It was typical of Mrs. Reg to tell a story and never get to the point of it.

  “Well, part of it was that architecture wasn’t quite as exciting as he’d imagined. But the main thing was that he had taken a part-time job at a stable near the university to help with expenses. The stable manager there became a mentor to him and he helped inspire Max’s decision.”

  After Mrs. Reg finished, she wished the girls luck with their training, gave Samson a final pat, and headed out of the ring. Lisa and Carole stood in silence for a minute once she was gone.

  “Do you have any idea …?” Carole asked finally, not bothering to finish the question.

  “What on earth she was getting at?” Lisa ventured.

  “Exactly.”

  “Absolutely none.”

  “Me either,” Carole said with a shrug.

  The girls always liked hearing Regnery family history—it certainly was interesting—but they were stumped about why Mrs. Reg was telling it now. In any case, they didn’t have much time to think about it. They had to get back to work with Samson.

  “Any ideas?” Carole asked, turning to Lisa.

  Lisa put her hands on her hips determinedly. “We’ve just got to think of something.… I know: Let’s pretend Stevie’s here. Without her, we’re one brain short. But we can at least try to think of what she would do.”

  Carole liked the idea. She and Lisa decided to walk Samson a little more and then have a pretend “Stevie brainstorm” after putting the colt away. They could eat lunch at the same time and then resume training in the afternoon.

  “One thing’s for sure: Stevie’s having a better time than we are this weekend,” Lisa said.

  Carole nodded. “You can say that again. Riding with her horsey cousin, going to a great party—sounds like a dream weekend, doesn’t it?”

  THE RIDE TOOK
up part of the morning, but as soon as lunch was over Stevie was bored out of her mind again. When her father suggested that the family go into Philadelphia for some afternoon sightseeing and dinner, Stevie was thrilled.

  “We’ll get out of the way for a few hours and give Angie and Lila some time to take care of a few party preparations by themselves,” Mr. Lake said, as he and Stevie hunted through the bookshelves for a Philadelphia guidebook.

  “You don’t have to explain to me, Dad,” Stevie replied. “I can’t wait to get out of the house and stay out. If I hear the word ‘canapé’ one more time today, I’ll scream.” Her father’s raised eyebrows told her that she had gone quite far enough.

  There was no guidebook to be found, but Chad said that with his knowledge of American history they wouldn’t need one anyway.

  “And to think I’d convinced myself that I wanted to spend some time with my brothers,” Stevie muttered to herself, following the boys out to the driveway.

  In a matter of minutes, Uncle Chester, who had decided to join them, and the six Willow Creek Lakes were seated in the van and buzzing toward Philadelphia.

  “It’s the city of brotherly love and the original capital of this country,” Chad announced. “Probably not something you’d know much about, Stevie,” he added.

  “Brotherly love? Yeah, that would be a change,” Stevie shot back with a triumphant grin.

  “Almost as big a change as your deciding to become an actual girl like Angie,” Alex said, doubling over with laughter at his own joke.

  “Imagine if Stevie joined the cheerleading squad!” Michael remarked.

  Chad put up a hand. “Please, Michael: Even my imagination has its limits!”

  “I wonder if it’ll ever happen,” Alex mused aloud.

  “What?” asked Michael.

  “That Stevie will turn into the sister we’ve never had,” said Alex.

  Chad frowned, pretending to concentrate. “I just can’t see it. What I can see is Stevie attending her senior prom in jeans and riding boots.”