Stable Witch

by Bonnie Bryant

  Lisa had to take Prancer’s methodical hay chewing as a “yes.”

  THE NEXT MORNING Lisa fairly leapt out of bed. She had spent the evening writing down a few more things she had thought of to work on. Her new list was sort of an expansion of what she had put down as her goal for the schooling show. When the alarm rang at five after six, she could hardly wait to get over to Pine Hollow and put her intentions into practice.

  It was exciting being at the stable so early—6:45, to be exact. It felt as if she were going to a horse show and had come to braid or put a final shine on her tack. Even Prancer seemed to sense the specialness of the occasion. When Lisa led her out to the cross ties to groom her, she swiveled her ears back and forth, all attention. Lisa went about her brushing happily, whistling and chatting to Prancer. Yesterday’s bad lesson seemed ages ago.

  Just as she was thinking how nice and peaceful Pine Hollow was in the early morning, Lisa heard a loud screech of brakes outside in the driveway. Prancer jumped, startled by the noise. “Maybe somebody else had the same idea we did,” Lisa muttered, wondering who else would want to show up so early.

  She had to stop her jaw from dropping when she heard, coming from the driveway, the unmistakable voice of Veronica diAngelo.

  “Be back in an hour to pick me up. And don’t be late, Mother,” the voice warned snappily. Sure enough, a few seconds later, Veronica strode through the barn doors, tapping her English jumping bat against her custom-made boots.

  Veronica had the same reaction upon seeing Lisa that Lisa had had when she heard Veronica. She stopped in her tracks, and her lips turned down in a classic Veronica pout. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.

  “I was going to ask you the same thing,” Lisa replied evasively. She wasn’t about to let on that she was practicing for the show—that would be like begging Veronica to make a rude remark about her jumping ability.

  Veronica snorted. “Look, you can drop the act because obviously we’re both here for the same reason: the schooling show, right?”

  Lisa nodded cautiously. She still couldn’t believe Veronica had shown up this early in the morning to put in some hard work on her riding. “Early morning” and “hard work” were not usually concepts that one used in the same sentence with “Veronica diAngelo.”

  “Fine. I’ll see you in the indoor,” Veronica said. Then she turned and stomped off to get Garnet.

  Lisa stared after her. Veronica was actually going to groom and tack up her own horse? Usually, she made Red, the head stablehand, do it. This morning was already turning out to be stranger than Lisa had expected.

  In a few minutes, Lisa was mounted and warming up in the ring. She half hoped that she could finish her schooling before Veronica came in, but she knew that was wishful thinking. With the girl’s slapdash grooming style, no doubt she’d be ready in about thirty seconds.

  There was no getting around it: Veronica’s presence made Lisa both uneasy and annoyed. More accurately, she thought, she was annoyed because she was uneasy. The whole point of the morning was for her to get in some quality practice time with Prancer—free from distractions. Now she would have to worry about how she looked in front of Veronica, instead of just concentrating on herself. “But we’ll show her, won’t we, Prancer?” Lisa said aloud.

  The sliding door opened and Veronica led Garnet into the ring. Ignoring them, Lisa jammed her heels down and took a firmer grip on the reins. Silently she vowed not to be shaken by any obnoxious thing Veronica could think of to say.

  “What are you planning on doing about a course?” Veronica asked.

  Lisa paused. She had been so steeled for a critical barb that it took her a couple of seconds to realize that Veronica had actually asked an intelligent question. What was more, she, Lisa, had forgotten all about setting up the jumps because Max usually did it for them. It would be a pain to get off Prancer now and have to re–warm up after erecting a course.

  “Never mind. Since you’re already warming up, I’ll put up some cross rails and verticals before I get on,” Veronica volunteered quickly, tying Garnet. “Then I thought we could critique each other’s performance.”

  Now Lisa really couldn’t believe her ears—or eyes. She watched, incredulous, as Veronica dragged a bunch of poles and standards out and made a few fences for them to school over. Then, without another word, she got on and began her warm-up walk, trot, and canter in a businesslike manner. Evidently, Lisa realized with amazement, Veronica was as serious about practicing as she was. Just then Prancer shied at a shadow in the ring. Shaken, Lisa reminded herself to quit staring at Veronica and start concentrating on her own horse. The mare felt a bit skittish, and Lisa hoped it was just the strange hour. Prancer wasn’t accustomed to being tacked up and exercised so early in the morning.

  After a few minutes, Veronica waved Lisa down to her end of the ring. “What’s the matter—don’t you want to trot the cross rail?” she asked.

  “Of course I do,” Lisa snapped defensively. The truth was, as Veronica had probably guessed, she hadn’t wanted to be the one to start jumping first. Of course it would make sense for her to go before Veronica, considering that she’d been warming up longer. “I just wanted to make sure Prancer was ready,” she explained. The excuse sounded lame even to her.

  “Well, Garnet’s ready, so you can watch me go first, okay?” Without waiting for an answer, Veronica headed for the fence.

  “Sure,” Lisa muttered. “Go right ahead.” It was one of those situations where she couldn’t win. Either she would go first and, more likely than not, mess up out of nervousness, or Veronica would go first and jump perfectly, making Lisa even more anxious about doing well herself. The Arabian approached the cross rail at a rhythmic trot. Veronica stayed balanced in the saddle, her seat lifted slightly in proper jumping position. In the air she released the reins, leaned forward, and landed neatly on the other side.

  “That looked pretty good,” Lisa called in a strangled voice. She had forgotten that when Veronica concentrated, she could compete with the best. This morning she was definitely concentrating. She put Garnet over the warm-up jump a number of times, making her trot it and canter it, and stopping neatly after the jump each time. Lisa stared at the two of them glumly. She just knew she couldn’t match their performance. After all, Garnet was much better trained than Prancer, and much more experienced.

  After her fifth or sixth near-perfect jump, Veronica told Lisa she could give it a go.

  “Thanks,” Lisa muttered sarcastically under her breath. “It’s so nice of you to let me have a turn.” She picked up the reins and asked for a trot. As soon as she turned toward the jump, she tensed up in her back and neck and arms. It felt as if her body were set in concrete, and she couldn’t move out of the position.

  The jump came closer and closer. Lisa stared at the white and red stripes of the crossed poles, feeling almost dizzy. A few strides before the cross rail, she dropped her hands entirely, resting them uselessly on Prancer’s neck. The mare half stumbled over the low X. It was exactly the same mistake Lisa had made in the lesson.

  Before Veronica could comment, Lisa called, “Let me try that again. I wasn’t really—”

  “Oh, I know what your problem is,” Veronica announced, all enthusiasm. “Really, you shouldn’t worry about it. It’s typical of a lot of beginning riders. You’re looking down and you’re dropping her at the fence.…”

  As Veronica droned on, Lisa simmered with rage at the word “beginning.” She knew she still was a beginner in some ways, but hearing Veronica’s condescending tone of voice made her want to strangle someone—the obvious choice was Veronica. A tiny part of her knew that Veronica was right, but she was so upset she couldn’t listen. And she definitely couldn’t concentrate on all of her mistakes at once. “I know I’m dropping her. That’s why I want to do it again—obviously,” she said.

  “Well, you know it’s never a good idea to just keep doing things again and again without knowing what’s wrong,” Veronic
a replied cheerily. “I just thought I’d explain one or two alterations you could make to—”

  “I told you, I know what’s wrong!” Lisa practically screamed. Angrily she picked up a trot again and headed toward the fence. Prancer felt unsure beneath her, surprised at the quick pace. This time, Lisa swore she wouldn’t drop her hands before Prancer had jumped—and she succeeded. Or at least she succeeded in not dropping her hands. Unfortunately, she forgot to release the reins at all, and she ended up jerking Prancer in the mouth. The mare threw her head up in annoyance.

  “That time you—” Veronica began.

  “Don’t tell me! I know! I jerked her in the mouth. Big deal—so I made a mistake. I’ll do it over, okay?” Lisa could hardly believe how she sounded—just like Veronica on a bad day. She halted Prancer at the end of the ring. She didn’t want Veronica to see the tears of frustration welling up in her eyes.

  “Lisa,” Veronica began, her voice sickly sweet, “maybe you shouldn’t keep jumping if you’re going to get so worked up. It’s really not good for Prancer’s training. You should wait until you’re in a calmer state of mind. A green horse can be ruined with an impatient trainer.”

  Lisa bit her lip as hard as she could. Veronica, who was known for hitting Garnet with her crop and jerking on the reins whenever anything went wrong, was telling her to calm down? The injustice of the situation made Lisa seethe. And the worst thing was that she herself knew that she really shouldn’t be jumping when she was so upset.

  “Why don’t you go again, Veronica?” Lisa forced herself to say. She loosened her reins and took deep breaths and stroked Prancer’s neck to try to relax. There was no point in getting angry at Veronica and then taking it out on Prancer, and she knew it.

  Veronica didn’t need to be asked twice to perform for an audience, even an audience of one. She immediately swung into action. She took Garnet around the other four fences twice in a row, making it look as easy as pie. Lisa knew she was still exaggerating her jumping position—acting as if the jumps were bigger than they were. Still, other than her tendency to show off, she looked good and made Garnet behave nicely.

  “So, how was that?” Veronica asked when she had finished.

  “Great, just great,” Lisa said quietly, her eyes on the ground. She refused to elaborate any more. It disgusted her that Veronica would be practically begging for praise when obviously she knew she had ridden well.

  “Really? Aw, that’s sweet of you, Lisa. Thanks loads for watching. You were a great critic. Well, I’ve got to run. So, tah-tah for now.”

  Lisa watched Veronica dismount and head in. She wasn’t about to remind her that she ought to cool down Garnet before putting the mare away. Veronica would probably just make another comment about “beginning” riders or something.

  At the door, Veronica turned. “Good luck with your jumping, Lisa. In another couple of years, you and Prancer could be doing just as well as Garnet and I do.”

  Lisa didn’t even bother to reply. She jumped off Prancer with one thought in her mind: letting herself have a good cry. She buried her face in Prancer’s neck. Then she stopped herself. Crying wasn’t going to solve anything, and it wasn’t even going to make her feel better. The only thing that would make her feel better was getting better. And the only way to get better—and stop being bothered by Veronica—was through hard work. She had made it here at 6:45 once, and she would come again.

  She looked over at the cross rail that had tripped her up. The sight of it actually brought a smile to her lips. It couldn’t have been more than eighteen inches high. To prove something to herself, Lisa led Prancer over to the jump and jumped over it on foot. “If I can do it by myself, I can do it on a fifteen-plus-hand horse,” she said aloud.

  In a flash of determination, she got back on Prancer. She took a deep breath, asked for a trot, and headed toward the little jump.

  This time, Prancer trotted over it as if it were nothing. Lisa cried out jubilantly. Then she leaned over and patted Prancer’s neck gratefully. “We did it!” she whispered. “A perfect jump.”

  LISA REMINDED HERSELF of the perfect jump when she got dropped off at Pine Hollow for her usual riding class on Tuesday afternoon. She knew every jump could be like that if she tried hard—she just knew it.

  Stevie and Carole had beaten her to Pine Hollow and were changing in the locker room when she came in. Not surprisingly, the topic of discussion was the schooling show. Carole was saying that she had dug out a couple of old books on equitation from her vast library of horse books and had been reading them in the evenings.

  Joining them at her locker, Lisa commented drily, “Of course you don’t even touch the horse books until every single bit of your homework is finished.”

  “Oh, of course not,” Carole replied, not missing a beat. “It wouldn’t even cross my mind. You know how much more I care about math word problems than jumping positions.”

  “Same here,” Stevie chimed in. “My mother practically has to drag me away from my homework and force me to come over to Pine Hollow when it’s time for our lesson.”

  After the three girls had stopped giggling, Lisa asked Carole and Stevie whether they’d heard the news about Horse Wise on Saturday.

  “What news?” Carole inquired. “As far as I know it’s a regular Pony Club meeting.”

  “Not exactly. It turns out that the judges for the schooling show are going to be there watching,” Lisa said.

  “You’re kidding—really? Isn’t that illegal or something?” Stevie asked.

  Lisa shrugged. “Normally, it would be kind of questionable, but since it’s only a schooling show, it doesn’t matter. They can even give us advice and help us out with problems. And it gives them a chance to get to know the lay of the land at Pine Hollow,” Lisa explained.

  “I think that’s great. We’ll have two chances to ride well for them, instead of one,” Carole said optimistically. After Saturday’s Horse Wise, she was even more excited about having the judges see Starlight. She felt like a proud mother who couldn’t wait to show off how smart her baby was.

  “So, how did you find out the judges were coming?” Stevie asked.

  Lisa quickly filled her friends in on her early-morning jumping practice on Sunday. She had run into Max on her way out that morning. He had mentioned the judges and told her to spread the word.

  Carole and Stevie both looked up from yanking on their breeches.

  “Why didn’t you tell us that you were coming early to practice?” Stevie asked.

  “Yeah, we could have come and practiced, too—or helped you,” Carole said.

  Suddenly, Lisa realized how her revelation must sound to her friends—as if she were hiding something from them. The truth was she had wanted to come alone so she could clear her head completely from Saturday’s lesson. And she had wanted to be able to think about her goals on her own, without any interruptions, even good ones, from The Saddle Club. Lisa struggled to put her thoughts into words. “I wasn’t trying to be secretive about it,” she said. “But I did like the idea of working on my own for a while. And besides, you guys don’t need the practice, remember?”

  Carole was completely sympathetic. “Sometimes it is better to work with just your horse and no one else around. I love schooling Starlight by myself.”

  “That was my plan, anyway,” Lisa continued. “It turned out to be mostly a waste of time because about fifteen minutes after I got here, who shows up but Veronica.”

  “Veronica?” Carole and Stevie demanded in unison. They couldn’t have looked more surprised if Lisa had told them she had gotten straight F’s on her report card.

  Lisa nodded. “Believe it or not, Veronica diAngelo was putting in extra practice time at seven in the morning.”

  “Are you sure you weren’t seeing things, Lisa?” Carole asked anxiously.

  “Yeah. Or maybe you were dreaming,” Stevie ventured.

  “My eyesight’s fine, thank you very much, and seeing Veronica was more like a nightmare
than a dream,” Lisa countered. In order to prove that the morning had really happened, she told them about how much Veronica had been showing off. “She was so condescending that almost the whole practice was torture. Basically she told me that if I worked hard for about a hundred years I might be good enough to kiss her feet.”

  The girls laughed.

  “Veronica probably dreams about opportunities like that—being alone at the stable with someone she thinks wants her advice,” Carole said.

  “I’m just mad that I let her get to me. It was supposed to be a morning of confidence-building,” said Lisa.

  “I still don’t see why you didn’t mention it,” Stevie commented. She sounded somewhat miffed. “As a matter of fact, Carole and I can always use the practice—or at least I can. Especially with a new horse.”

  Lisa knew in an instant what the slight irritation in Stevie’s voice meant: her naturally competitive instincts were coming out. She hated the thought of someone’s preparing harder for the show than she was.

  Lisa decided to get right to the point. “Listen, Stevie, you know as well as I that a few extra hours of jumping is never going to make Prancer and me good enough to beat you and Belle. It’s not like you have anything to fear from me, competition-wise.”

  Stevie looked surprised by Lisa’s comment. She paused before answering her. Finally she said, “Thanks, Lisa, but to be honest, it’s not you I’m worried about,” In a nice way, Stevie explained that she knew that she was better than Lisa, just the same way she knew that Carole was better than she was. But she lived in fear at the thought of losing to Veronica. “Or not exactly fear—more like vile disgust. I just hate the idea that somebody as terrible as Veronica could be better at something than I am. I mean, she’s so bad, how could she ever be good?”

  At Stevie’s unusual phrasing, Carole and Lisa cracked up. They didn’t like to see Veronica win, either. But somehow they didn’t take her failures and successes quite as personally as Stevie. If Stevie, instead of Lisa, had run into Veronica on Sunday, she probably would have set up a course of six-foot fences and dared Veronica to jump them.