Stevie glanced at her watch. Carole was right. Everything was taking longer than it was supposed to this afternoon.
“Don’t worry,” Callie said quickly. “We can go to the tack shop another time.”
“You don’t mind?” Stevie asked.
“No. I don’t. Really,” said Callie. “I don’t want you to be late for work—either of you. If my parents decide to get a pizza for dinner again, I’m going to want it to arrive on time!”
Stevie laughed, but not because she thought anything was very funny. She wasn’t about to forget the last time she’d delivered a pizza to Callie’s family. In fact, she wished it hadn’t happened, but it had. Now she had to find a way to face up to it.
As she pulled out of the airport parking lot, a plane roared overhead, rising into the brooding sky. Maybe that’s Lisa’s plane, she thought. The noise of its flight seemed to mark the beginning of a long summer.
The first splats of rain hit the windshield as Stevie paid their way out of the parking lot. By the time they were on the highway, it was raining hard. The sky had darkened to a steely gray. Streaks of lightning brightened it, only to be followed by thunder that made the girls jump.
The storm had come out of nowhere. Stevie flicked on the windshield wipers and hoped it would go right back to nowhere.
The sky turned almost black as the storm strengthened. Curtains of rain ripped across the windshield, pounding on the hood and roof of the car. The wipers flicked uselessly at the torrent.
“I hope Fez is okay,” said Callie. “He hates thunder, you know.”
“I’m not surprised,” said Carole, trying to control her voice. It seemed to her that there were a lot of things Fez hated. He was as temperamental as any horse she had ever ridden.
Fez was one of the horses in the paddock. Carole didn’t want to upset Callie by telling her that. If she told Callie he’d been turned out, Callie would wonder why he hadn’t just been exercised. If she told Callie she’d exercised him, Callie might wonder if he was being overworked. Carole shook her head. What was it about this girl that made Carole so certain that whatever she said, it would be wrong? Why couldn’t she say the one thing she really needed to say?
Still, Carole worked at Pine Hollow, and that meant taking care of the horses that were boarding there—and that meant keeping the owners happy.
“I’m sure Fez will be fine. Ben and Max will look after him,” Carole said.
“I guess you’re right,” said Callie. “I know he can be difficult. Of course, you’ve ridden him, so you know that, too. I mean, that’s obvious. But it’s spirit, you see. Spirit is the key to an endurance specialist. He’s got it, and I think he’s got the makings of a champion. We’ll work together this summer, and come fall … well, you’ll see.”
Spirit—yes, it was important in a horse. Carole knew that. She just wished she understood why it was that Fez’s spirit was so irritating to her. She’d always thought of herself as someone who’d never met a horse she didn’t like. Maybe it was the horse’s owner …
“Uh-oh,” said Stevie, putting her foot gently on the brake. “I think I got it going a little too fast there.”
“You’ve got to watch out for that,” Callie said. “My father says the police practically lie in wait for teenage drivers. They love to give us tickets. Well, they certainly had fun with me.”
“You got a ticket?” Stevie asked.
“No, I just got a warning, but it was almost worse than a ticket. I was going four miles over the speed limit in our hometown. The policeman stopped me, and when he saw who I was, he just gave me a warning. Dad was furious—at me and at the officer, though he didn’t say anything to the officer. He was angry at him because he thought someone would find out and say I’d gotten special treatment! I was only going four miles over the speed limit. Really. Even the officer said that. Well, it would have been easier if I’d gotten a ticket. Instead, I got grounded. Dad won’t let me drive for three months. Of course, that’s nothing compared to what happened to Scott last year.”
“What happened to Scott?” Carole asked, suddenly curious about the driving challenges of the Forester children.
“Well, it’s kind of a long story,” said Callie. “But—”
“Wow! Look at that!” Stevie interrupted. There was an amazing streak of lightning over the road ahead. The dark afternoon brightened for a minute. Thunder followed instantly.
“Maybe we should pull off the road or something?” Carole suggested.
“I don’t think so,” said Stevie. She squinted through the windshield. “It’s not going to last long. It never does when it rains this hard. We get off at the next exit anyway.”
She slowed down some more and turned the wipers up a notch. She followed the car in front of her, keeping a constant eye on the two red spots of the car’s taillights. She’d be okay as long as she could see them. The rain pelted the car so loudly that it was hard to talk. Stevie drove on cautiously.
Then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped. Stevie spotted the sign for their exit, signaled, and pulled off to the right and up the ramp. She took a left onto the overpass and followed the road toward Willow Creek.
The sky was as dark as it had been, and there were clues that there had been some rain there, but nothing nearly as hard as the rain they’d left on the interstate. Stevie sighed with relief and switched the windshield wipers to a slower rate.
“I think I’ll drop you off at Pine Hollow first,” she said, turning onto the road that bordered the stable’s property.
Pine Hollow’s white fences followed the contour of the road, breaking the open, grassy hillside into a sequence of paddocks and fields. A few horses stood in the fields, swishing their tails. One bucked playfully and ran up a hill, shaking his head to free his mane in the wind. Stevie smiled. Horses always seemed to her the most welcoming sight in the world.
“Then I’ll take Callie home,” Stevie continued, “and after that I’ll go over to Pizza Manor. I may be a few minutes late for work, but who orders pizza at five o’clock in the afternoon anyway?”
“Now, now,” teased Carole. “Is that any way for you to mind your Pizza Manors?”
“Well, at least I have my hat with me,” said Stevie. Or did she? She looked into the rearview mirror to see if she could spot it, and when that didn’t do any good, she glanced over her shoulder. Callie picked it up and started to hand it to her.
“Here,” she said. “We wouldn’t want— Wow! I guess the storm isn’t over yet!”
The sky had suddenly filled with a brilliant streak of lightning, jagged and pulsating, accompanied by an explosion of thunder.
It startled Stevie. She shrieked and turned her face back to the road. The light was so sudden and so bright that it blinded her for a second. The car swerved. Stevie braked. She clutched at the steering wheel and then realized she couldn’t see because the rain was pelting even harder than before. She reached for the wiper control, switching it to its fastest speed.
There was something to her right! She saw something move, but she didn’t know what it was.
“Stevie!” Carole cried.
“Look out!” Callie screamed from the backseat.
Stevie swerved to the left on the narrow road, hoping it would be enough. Her answer was a sickening jolt as the car slammed into something solid. The car spun around, smashing against the thing again. When the thing screamed, Stevie knew it was a horse. Then it disappeared from her field of vision. Once again, the car spun. It smashed against the guardrail on the left side of the road and tumbled up and over it as if the rail had never been there.
Down they went, rolling, spinning. Stevie could hear the screams of her friends. She could hear her own voice, echoing in the close confines of the car, answered by the thumps of the car rolling down the hillside into a gully. Suddenly the thumping stopped. The screams were stilled. The engine cut off. The wheels stopped spinning. And all Stevie could hear was the idle slap, slap, slap of her windshi
eld wipers.
“Carole?” she whispered. “Are you okay?”
“I think so. What about you?” Carole answered.
“Me too. Callie? Are you okay?” Stevie asked.
There was no answer.
“Callie?” Carole echoed.
The only response was the girl’s shallow breathing.
How could this have happened?
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
BONNIE BRYANT is the author of nearly a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, and the Pony Tails series. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.
Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.
Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.
Don’t miss the next exciting
Saddle Club adventure …
HORSE THIEF
Saddle Club #83
The Saddle Club is taking part in a big Pony Club rally at Pine Hollow. Riders from all the local Pony Clubs will be there, including Stevie’s boyfriend, Phil Marsten. For once Stevie and Phil aren’t being too competitive, so everyone is having a good time—until a thief spoils the fun by stealing $500 from the stable office.
Veronica diAngelo says she saw Phil hanging around the office and acting suspicious. And Phil did need money. But he’d never resort to theft, would he? Could Veronica possibly be telling the truth? Or is there a thief among the other riders? It’s up to The Saddle Club to find out and clear Phil’s name.
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