Alex laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“That’s what everyone says,” Stevie said with a shrug. She listlessly poked at a stray paper clip. “But I don’t care anymore. It’s true, and I know it, even if nobody else does.”
“But why?” Alex asked.
Stevie quickly explained about her teacher’s speech and her own thoughts afterward. “So I figured I was better off playing it straight,” she said. “I didn’t want to get in any more trouble than I already had.”
“That doesn’t sound like you, Stevie,” Alex said. “Usually trouble is your middle name. And I thought you liked it that way.”
“Maybe I used to,” Stevie replied. “But maybe I’ve changed.”
Alex took the camera out from behind his back. “You? Change? I doubt it,” he said skeptically.
“Believe it or not, I don’t care.” Stevie started picking the sequin off her face.
“Hmm,” Alex said, leaning against the door frame. “Your story really isn’t very convincing at all. And that makes me think it just might be true. But I can’t help thinking this could be some kind of a trap.” He shrugged. “I don’t know, Stevie. I want to believe you this time. I really do. But why should I?”
Stevie thought fast. She never would have expected it, but Alex sounded almost ready to believe her. “Well, for starters,” she said, “you should believe it because I knew you were going to the movies with your new girlfriend, Susie, on Sunday afternoon, and I didn’t even think about going to the same show and throwing popcorn. And I saw Chad practicing his soccer moves right below my window the other day after dinner, and I never for an instant considered filling a few of the balloons I have right here in my desk drawer with water and dropping them on his head. And I noticed that Michael left his favorite football jersey lying in the living room last night, and I had absolutely no plans to throw it in the washing machine with my red socks so the numbers would come out pink.” Stevie paused and looked at her twin. “Should I go on?”
Alex held up his hands. “No, no,” he said. “I guess I’m convinced—for the moment, anyway. And if it’s true, I have to admit it’s too bad. You were good, Lake—really good. It’s a shame if you’ve really turned your back on all that talent. If you really have, that is. After all, you can’t blame me for still being a little suspicious.”
“I guess not,” Stevie said glumly. “Goodness knows you’re not the only one. Carole and Lisa don’t believe me, and neither does Phil.”
“Are you surprised?” Alex twirled the camera strap around his finger. “If you ask me, they’d be idiots to believe you, considering your record.”
Stevie sighed. “I know. And I guess it doesn’t help that I’m trying to convince them to wear weird costumes and act in a wacky movie at the same time I’m trying to get them to believe I’ve given up practical joking.”
“No kidding,” Alex agreed. He grinned. “Actually, when you think about it, that’s kind of a practical joke in itself, isn’t it?”
Stevie looked up. Her brother had a very wicked look on his face. Stevie recognized the look, because it was one she had seen in the mirror many times. It meant his mind was working in a very interesting way. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Isn’t it obvious?” Alex replied. “They’re probably going crazy right now trying to figure out what you’re going to do next. They’re so sure you’re playing a joke on them, when actually there’s no joke at all. So they can think about it twenty-four hours a day, but they’ll never be able to figure out what you’re really up to. Because what you’re really up to is … nothing. It’s brilliant!”
By now, Stevie was grinning right along with her twin. “You know, you may be on to something, Alex,” she said. “In fact, you may have just given me a great idea about how to save my movie.…”
BY THE TIME Carole, Lisa, and Phil arrived at Pine Hollow on Thursday afternoon, Stevie was ready for them. First, she had convinced Carole and Lisa to wait at their school for Phil’s mother to pick them up. That would give her a few more minutes, and it would also ensure that they all got to the stable at the same time. If they didn’t, her plan wouldn’t be nearly as effective.
Luckily the weather had turned rainy again, and Carole and Lisa had eagerly agreed to the ride. Stevie herself hardly noticed the rain as she raced over to Pine Hollow as soon as the final bell rang. She couldn’t wait to get there and find out if her plan was all set. It was.
“I don’t know, Lisa,” Carole said as she climbed out of Mrs. Marsten’s car. “She’s getting better, and she’s doing it at her own pace. I don’t know if we should rush her.”
They were talking about Prancer again. The mare was jumping almost every time Lisa asked her to now. She was getting better, but not fast enough for Saturday’s competition. The girls knew they were lucky Prancer hadn’t been scared off jumping for good, but they still couldn’t help wishing they had more time.
Lisa sighed. “Maybe I should just skip the show,” she said. “Or I could try another horse. Max offered to let me ride Delilah if Prancer isn’t in shape for Saturday.”
“You’ll never win a ribbon that way,” Phil pointed out. “Switching horses at the last minute will throw you off, won’t it?”
Carole nodded. “Phil is right. Prancer is the horse you work with the best. And she’s a much better jumper than Delilah.”
Phil waved as his mother turned the car around and headed back down the driveway. Then all three of them scurried through the drizzle and into the warm, dry stable.
“Whew!” Lisa said, shaking the water out of her hair. “What a day.”
“I hope it doesn’t rain on Saturday,” Carole said. The three of them went into the student locker room so that Carole and Lisa could change from their school shoes into their riding boots. “The weather has been so unpredictable lately.”
Lisa sat down on the bench and pulled off her sneakers. “If it rains, I’m sure Max will just move the competition to the indoor ring,” she said, tossing the sneakers into her cubby. “But it would be a little crowded.”
“Speaking of the indoor ring,” Phil said, “I guess that’s where we’ll be rehearsing today.” He was leaning in the doorway, waiting for the girls.
Carole nodded. “I wonder when we’re going to find out what Stevie’s really up to,” she said.
Lisa laughed. “I don’t know,” she replied. “But this has been quite a setup, even for her.”
“You don’t suppose she could possibly be telling the truth about this movie, do you?” Phil asked. “It wouldn’t be the first time she’s had to redo a project because a teacher didn’t appreciate her sense of humor.”
“It’s possible,” Carole said, pulling on her boots and standing up. “But even if the movie is for real, all her talk about giving up practical jokes has got to be setting us up for something.”
Phil chuckled. “I guess you’re right about that,” he said. “Well, come on. If you’re ready, let’s go tack up.”
“Not necessary,” said Stevie brightly, coming up behind him. She was holding her prop bag in one hand and the camcorder in the other. “I got here a little early, so I tacked up all your horses for you. They’re waiting in the indoor ring. So come on, let’s get started.”
Stevie’s friends exchanged glances as they followed her. Had she heard them talking about her? They hoped not. She had seemed a little edgy lately, and they didn’t want to make her angry. But if she had heard anything, she didn’t show it. In fact, she was whistling gaily as she walked toward the entrance to the indoor ring.
“Here we are,” she said, stepping back to let her friends enter first.
The moment Carole, Lisa, and Phil stepped through the doorway, they heard a man’s voice shout, “It’s about time! Do you think we have all day? We’ve got a movie to make here! Now hustle!”
Lisa jumped, startled. Prancer, Starlight, Belle, and Diablo were tied up on one side of the entrance, but she hardly noticed the horses. That was because
there was a much stranger sight in the center of the ring. A tall man was striding impatiently back and forth, tapping a riding crop on his thigh. There was a director’s chair behind him, with a bullhorn sitting on it. The man had a large, carefully waxed mustache, and he was dressed improbably in riding breeches, high boots, a blue silk shirt, and a beret. A bright red scarf was knotted around his neck. Strangest of all, he was wearing sunglasses, even though there was no hint of sunlight coming through the high windows from the gloomy day outside.
“Wha—” Carole began, but the man cut her off.
“Step lively, boys and girls!” he barked, slapping the riding crop on his gloved hand. “Mount up, and hurry up about it. There’s a lot to do. We’re running through the dressage ball scene first; then we’re going to practice the bowing entrance and the wedding parade. Move it, people!”
Carole, Lisa, and Phil automatically started hurrying toward the horses. Carole got there first and swung up into Starlight’s saddle. Phil followed suit with Diablo.
Lisa had one foot in the stirrup and was about to swing herself onto Prancer when she paused. What exactly was going on here, anyway?
“Hey, wait a minute,” she said. She turned to look at Stevie, who was still standing in the entryway, grinning her head off as she filmed the whole strange scene with the camcorder.
Carole, who was in the process of leaning over to unhook Starlight’s lead rope, looked down at Lisa. She frowned. For the first time, she stopped to think. Who was the man shouting at them from the center of the ring?
Phil figured it out at the same time as the two girls. All three of them turned. And all three of them cried out the same name at the same time.
“Stevie!”
Stevie responded by starting to laugh. Soon she was laughing so hard that she could hardly hold the camcorder straight. A second later, the man in the sunglasses started laughing, too.
Lisa took her foot back out of the stirrup. She looked at the man. There was something familiar about him, but she didn’t recognize him until he removed the sunglasses—and the mustache.
Carole gasped. “It’s Mr. French,” she exclaimed. Michael French was one of Max’s adult riders. He worked for the State Department in nearby Washington, D.C., and boarded his horse, Memphis, at Pine Hollow.
“You caught me,” Mr. French said good-naturedly in his normal voice, a pleasant southern drawl. He tucked his riding crop under his arm and began to untie the scarf from around his neck. “I guess I’d never be mistaken for a real Hollywood director, would I?”
“Don’t be so sure,” said Carole ruefully. “You had us fooled for a few seconds, anyway.”
By this time Stevie had come forward to join her friends. Lisa turned to her.
“So was this what the big joke was all along, Stevie?” she asked.
Stevie shook her head. “Nope,” she replied. “The big joke was, there is no joke. But since you guys didn’t believe me, I thought I’d give you what you wanted. That way, maybe you could forget about practical jokes for a while and I could get my movie made.”
Phil looked surprised. “You mean you did all this to get our attention?”
Stevie grinned. “I have to admit, I was inspired by A.J.’s phone call the other day. I decided it was time to go Hollywood myself. Luckily, Mr. French agreed to help me out.”
Mr. French came over and dropped his beret, mustache, scarf, and sunglasses into the duffel bag at Stevie’s feet. “Glad I could help,” he said. “I always thought I should be in the movies. If you need another actor for your film, Stevie, you know where to find me!” He threw Stevie and her friends a mock salute and hurried off.
“So we were right,” Carole said after the man had gone. “You never intended to give up practical jokes at all.”
“Wrong,” Stevie said, fiddling with the buttons on the camcorder. “I meant every word. But desperate times call for desperate measures. I figured I had to break my vow just this once—if only to prove to you that I really meant it. You guys wouldn’t listen to me long enough to let me convince you any other way.”
Lisa thought about that for a second. She realized Stevie was right. Lisa, Carole, and Phil hadn’t really given her a chance to explain before. Lisa and Carole had been too busy worrying about Prancer, and all three of them had been too ready to jump to their own conclusions about Stevie.
“Sorry,” Lisa said. “I guess we shouldn’t have been so quick to doubt you. Can you forgive us?”
“Well, I don’t know,” Stevie said, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. “It all depends.”
“On what?” Phil asked.
Stevie grinned. “On whether you’re all going to buckle down and help me make this movie. I really do need to get a good grade on it, you know. Will you help me?”
“Of course we will,” Carole, Lisa, and Phil said in one voice.
And that’s exactly what they proceeded to do.
“HOW DID IT GO last night?” Carole asked as soon as Stevie walked into the stable on Friday.
Stevie shrugged. She looked tired. “Not bad,” she said. “Not good, but not bad.”
“What happened?” Lisa asked, looking up from Prancer’s mane. She was in the process of untangling a knot. Carole was helping out by rubbing the mare down with a soft cloth.
“My mom made me stop editing and go to bed around midnight,” Stevie said, rubbing her eyes. “That means I didn’t get as much done as I should have.”
Thanks to Stevie’s prank, Carole, Lisa, and Phil had put in a hard afternoon’s work the day before, and Stevie had filmed plenty of footage. Lisa had even come up with a way to end the standoff over Stevie’s silly costumes, which she and Carole were still reluctant to wear, practical joke or no practical joke. Stevie had compromised and agreed to let her friends wear their fanciest riding clothes for the early scenes—if Lisa could borrow some real ball gowns for the dressage ball scene from the charity resale shop where her mother volunteered. With one brief phone call, it was all settled. Half an hour later, a very confused Mrs. Atwood dropped off three fancy gowns in the girls’ sizes. Best of all, Stevie’s was a pearly white one with puffy sleeves, which could easily double as a wedding gown in the final scene. After trying on the filmy yellow gown Mrs. Atwood had brought, Carole was even willing to wear Stevie’s fancy hard hat as part of her costume. It took all of Stevie’s powers of persuasion, but finally Lisa was convinced as well. After all, the stepsisters were supposed to be tacky and obnoxious. And that was fine with the actors—within reason.
The matter of riding in a long dress was a little tricky, but Stevie managed to make Max’s single sidesaddle work three times as hard by moving it from horse to horse and filming each girl separately, one at a time. It all took a long time and was a lot of work, but Stevie was sure it would be worth it. As head costume designer, she had to admit that the ball gowns would look a lot better on film than the “I’m with Stupid” T-shirt.
Once the matter of the costumes was settled, everything else had gone fairly smoothly. The dressage ball scene was a little trickier with the sidesaddle, but Stevie kept Phil in the foreground most of the time to hide any problems the girls had riding in the unfamiliar position. For the bowing scene Stevie wanted to show both stepsisters entering together. So Lisa, in the sidesaddle, had been in the foreground. Carole had perched precariously in the background in a sidesaddle position on a normal saddle. Luckily both Starlight and Prancer “bowed” perfectly on command at the first try, and the scene had required only one take.
Stevie had filmed most of the other scenes from several different angles, just like a real director. She had hurried straight home after the final scene was on tape and spent almost every minute from then until midnight editing her film. She knew part of her grade would depend on her putting the scenes together in the best way, choosing the best angles and views just like a real filmmaker has to do. She also still had to add music to the sound track and do the opening and closing credits.
“Have you
seen Red?” Stevie asked her friends. “I wanted to go thank him again for helping out.” Red had stepped in as cameraman for the scenes all four actors were in together, and he had done a fine job.
“He’s out on the trail with an adult class right now, I think,” Lisa replied. “You can thank him later. Right now, you should get Belle and do some practicing for tomorrow!”
Stevie nodded and yawned. Then she said good-bye to her friends and wandered off toward her horse’s stall. The truth was, she had almost forgotten that the competition was the next day. Somehow, her mind wouldn’t focus on it. She thought it was because she still wasn’t completely satisfied with her film—and it wasn’t because there was more editing to be done. There would be plenty of time to finish that on Sunday.
No, the problem was with the movie itself. It had romance. It had excitement. It had the best dressage/ballroom dancing scene ever put to film. All the special effects had gone off without a hitch and were wonderfully convincing on camera. Carole and Lisa had thrown themselves into their roles as the nasty stepsisters, and they were deliciously wacky and wicked. Phil made an incredibly handsome Prince Charming, of course. And Stevie had allowed Lisa to act as hairdresser and makeup artist before her big scenes, so that, she had to admit, she made a pretty spectacular Cinderella. In fact, Phil had been so impressed with Stevie as Cinderella that their big, romantic kissing scene had lasted even longer than Stevie had intended—and the best part was, Carole and Lisa had started hooting and hollering in the middle of it, which meant they had to do it over. And neither Stevie nor Phil had minded that one bit.
So why did Stevie still feel there was something missing?
“Maybe you can help me figure it out,” she whispered to Belle. But the horse just snorted in reply.
A few minutes later all three girls were practicing in the outdoor ring. The weather had turned nice again after yesterday’s gloominess.
“It’s too bad it wasn’t like this yesterday,” Lisa called to Stevie, who was trotting Belle over a row of cavalletti, concentrating on controlling the length of her strides. “You could have done your filming outside.”
Horse Capades Page 7
