Stable Manners

by Bonnie Bryant

  “—and forgot it that same day,” Stevie said, finishing Lisa’s sentence for her.

  May snuffled and then laughed. “I shouldn’t have let go of Nickel, though, should I?” she asked.

  “No, but everybody makes mistakes,” Carole said. Then, glancing at Lisa, she continued, “Even us, sometimes.”

  Lisa didn’t notice Carole’s look, but she was aware of May’s unhappiness. She wanted to reassure the young girl some more.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Lisa said. “Maybe it was a mistake, but, like Carole said, lots of people make mistakes and that’s why you’ve got friends—to help you out when you need it. We were there, we helped you out. No problem. And we’d be glad to help you out again, but I bet you won’t make that same mistake again, will you?”

  “No way,” May promised. “I really learned something today.”

  “Good, because learning is what riding is all about,” Lisa said. She smiled. Lisa was pleased with all the progress that May was making and was glad to know that she had at least a small part in it. May was such a smart girl and so eager that it was a pleasure to work with her on anything.

  “There’s something else I’d like to know about, too,” May said.

  “Ask away,” Carole offered. Carole was never happier than when she had a chance to explain something about horses. Often her explanations were a good deal longer than the questions, but that didn’t stop her from sharing them.

  May reached into her backpack and pulled out a bunch of papers. “It’s this study sheet Max gave us,” she said. “Can you help me with it?”

  “No problem,” Stevie assured her. “And it’s not surprising that you’re finding it a challenge. We are, too. Ask away!”

  May squinted in the fading light of the day and scanned the papers, flipping them as she looked for something. “Oh, yeah, here it is. Under the ‘Call the Vet’ section, it says ‘Below normal temperature.’ I thought only a fever was a bad sign, how could a low temperature be a bad sign?”

  Carole took the question. “You have to understand what a fever actually indicates,” she began. “An animal’s normal body temperature rises when the animal’s defense system kicks in, getting warmed up to fight an infection, any kind of infection. Actually, this is true of humans, too. Anyway, in a sense, a fever is a good sign because it means the horse’s body is doing what it’s supposed to do. When the temperature is below normal and the animal is sick, it can mean that the animal’s own immune system has given up. That means the animal is very sick.”

  “Oh,” May said, thinking about the information Carole had given her. “It makes sense now. Thanks. I just couldn’t understand what the study sheet meant. You’ve made it much clearer. I mean, look at what Max wrote here.” She pointed to the study sheet. “It was so confusing—” May handed the papers to Carole.

  Carole was indeed confused, but not in the way May thought she was. She glanced at the pages she now held and then she looked more carefully. They didn’t look anything at all like the sheets from which she, Lisa, and Stevie had been studying. They included lists of information, not questions and answers. They weren’t divided by point value, either. They had some of the same information and then a lot more.

  “Let me see,” Stevie said, taking the papers from Carole’s hands. Lisa tried to look over Stevie’s shoulder but was interrupted when a car pulled up in front of them. The driver’s window rolled down. Mrs. Grover waved at her daughter.

  “May, dear! Time to go home!”

  May retrieved her papers from Stevie’s hands, once again thanked the Saddle Club girls for all their help, and climbed into the car to drive home. She waved as her mother drove off.

  “What was that?” Stevie asked, confused.

  “Mrs. Grover,” Lisa replied, somewhat surprised that Stevie apparently didn’t recognize the woman.

  “No, not her. The papers. What were they?”

  “The study sheets,” Lisa said. Why was Stevie being so flaky about May and Mrs. Grover?

  “You didn’t see them, did you?” Carole asked her.

  “I’ve spent hours looking at those study sheets,” Lisa said.

  “Not those,” said Carole.

  “What are you two talking about?” asked Lisa.

  “I wish I knew,” Stevie said.

  “I think I do,” Carole said. “And I don’t think I like it at all. You’re not going to like it, either. This calls for an emergency meeting of The Saddle Club. Right now. Right here.”

  Lisa and Stevie knew when Carole was serious and she clearly was serious about this. Carole told her friends to go to the feed room, that she’d meet them there in a few minutes. The three of them returned to the stable. Lisa and Stevie headed for the feed room while Carole dashed off on a mysterious errand.

  “What is this all about?” Lisa asked.

  “I’m not sure what it is, but I am sure we’re not going to like it,” Stevie said. That was a very Stevie-like answer, but it didn’t satisfy Lisa’s curiosity. It did, however, tell her all she was going to learn until Carole returned.

  “Here,” Carole said, entering the feed room. She was carrying three sets of papers—one for each of them. Lisa and Stevie looked at them. At first glance, it appeared to be the question-and-answer sheet the three of them had been studying from since Saturday. At second glance it was a very different set of papers, indeed.

  “What is this?” Lisa asked, but she was beginning to get the feeling that she already knew the answer to the question.

  “This is the set of sheets Max gave us on Saturday.”

  “But it’s not what we’ve been studying from,” Stevie said. “How did that happen?”

  “We’ve been studying from the sheets you took from Dad’s desk,” Carole said.

  Then Stevie understood. “Oh no. He’s a parent volunteer at Horse Wise and Max gave all the parent volunteers the actual questions and answers he’s planning to use at the Know-Down. He must want them to be familiar with the questions he’d be asking and the correct answers, right?”

  “Right,” Carole said.

  Lisa put a hand over her mouth. “That’s why your dad said he didn’t want you snooping on his desk.”

  “I thought it had to do with my birthday, but it wasn’t that at all,” said Carole.

  “I should have known,” said Stevie.

  “Why?”

  “Well, first of all because your birthday is a couple of months off yet. And second of all, there wasn’t anything in the least bit personal on his desk. I mean, if there had been anything to snoop, you know I would have snooped it.”

  “I know,” Carole said. “That’s why I assumed you were lying when you told me that you hadn’t seen anything interesting. You wouldn’t have told me anyway.”

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Stevie said. “You know I’m no good with a secret.”

  It was true, but Carole and Lisa didn’t bother to respond. They had something else on their minds.

  There was a long silence. The grain room was a good place for silence because it was filled with barrels of grain and a small stack of hay bales. The effect was to baffle all sounds and make it like a soundproof room—a good place for a private discussion.

  “You know what this means, don’t you?” Stevie asked after a while.

  “It means we’re cheating,” said Lisa, who had never considered cheating on anything in her entire life.

  “That wasn’t what I had in mind,” said Stevie, who had considered cheating many times, but had always rejected it. “What it means is that we’re just about guaranteed to do better on the Know-Down than anybody else.”

  “True,” said Carole. “We’ve been working very hard, too, and I know we’re learning a lot.”

  “We’re learning the things we’re supposed to learn,” said Lisa, who was beginning to think like Stevie. “Also, I know from experience in taking tests—and doing pretty well on them—that the teachers usually focus on the most important information when th
ey give a test. All the things they ask questions about are the things they really want you to know. The point is that Max must have put the very most important information into the questions he intends to ask. That’s what we ought to be focusing on. And since we’ve been studying exactly that, it is what we’ve been focusing on. We’re learning what he wants us to learn.”

  “And we’re learning it so well that we’ll do better than anybody else,” Stevie repeated. Her eyes were gleaming.

  Carole was thinking about Cam. When they’d first found out about the Know-Down, Carole and Stevie had decided that it didn’t matter whether the boys beat them. But now that the event was drawing closer, Carole realized that she did care about doing well. In fact she really wanted to win.

  She flipped through the study sheets she’d just gotten from Mrs. Reg again. They were packed with detailed information about riding, horse care, stable management, horse health, training. There was a lot more on the study sheets than on the question-and-answer sheets, but it wasn’t as if The Saddle Club hadn’t been working. “Lisa’s right, you know,” Carole said finally.

  That was what sealed it for Lisa and Stevie. Before Carole had spoken, they’d each had some doubts about what they were doing. When it came to fun, Stevie was their leader. If the issue had to do with logical thinking, they turned to Lisa. But in the matters of horse care, Carole was definitely ahead of her friends and they respected everything she had to say on the subject. If Carole thought that studying from the question-and-answer sheet was all right because it was the most important information, that was good enough for them.

  “Max would be furious if he found out,” said Stevie. Since she was the acknowledged expert at adults getting annoyed, her friends had to agree.

  “And besides,” Lisa said, suddenly finding a third compelling reason for them to keep their advantage to themselves. “Think of all the work that’s involved.”

  “How’s that?” Stevie asked.

  “It must have taken Max an awfully long time to put this together,” Lisa said. “If we tell him what happened, not only will he be angry but he’ll also have to make up a whole new set of questions and answers. That’s hard work!”

  “And they won’t include the most important information,” said Carole.

  It was decided, then. The girls had considered every single aspect of the whole situation and had come to the logical conclusion. They hadn’t meant to get the actual questions and answers for the Know-Down, but it had happened by mistake. Trying to rectify that mistake would just cause a lot of people, especially Max, a lot of trouble. And since the purpose of the Know-Down was to make them learn the important things and they were learning the important things, the whole world would be better off if they kept their secret to themselves.

  Carole glanced at her watch. “Yikes, My dad’s waiting for me at the grocery store. I’ve got to go,”

  “So we’re all in agreement?” Stevie asked.

  Lisa and Carole solemnly nodded. Then the three of them shook hands and left the stable.

  “STEVIE, IT’S FOR you,” her brother Chad grumbled. The grumble from her older brother meant two things. First, it meant Chad was disappointed the phone call wasn’t for him. Second, it meant it was Stevie’s friend, Phil. When Chad’s girlfriend didn’t call but Stevie’s boyfriend did, Chad tended to grumble in a particularly obnoxious way.

  “Hi,” Stevie said cheerfully into the phone. Chad’s grumbles always made her particularly cheerful.

  “How can you be so happy?” Phil began. “From the moment I opened the envelope you sent me with the study sheets, I’ve been tearing my hair out. I can’t believe how much material your Max wants us to learn in ten days!”

  Stevie’s first inclination was to gloat. Instead she tried to be encouraging. “Oh, don’t worry about it, Phil,” she said. “You already know about half of that stuff, maybe more. If you get half the questions right, you’ll be doing pretty well. And, then whatever you learn from the sheets between now and then will make you do better.”

  “Half?” he responded. “Is that all you expect? I’ll have you know that when the Cross County Pony Club had a Know-Down last year, my team got the highest overall score.”

  That was the sort of information that usually made Stevie cringe. But this time she had an advantage he’d never know about.

  “I’m sure you’ll get more than half the questions, Phil,” Stevie assured him. “In fact, I’m pretty sure you’ll do very well. I have to warn you, though, Lisa and Carole and I have been studying like mad. So, though you’ll do well, you shouldn’t expect to do as well as we will.”

  Phil knew a challenge when he heard one. “You think so? You think that just because you invited me, I won’t try to beat you?”

  “Not for a minute,” Stevie said. “It’s just that I have the funny feeling that no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to beat me.”

  Now she was gloating and she knew it. It wasn’t her favorite part of her own character, but when Phil egged her on like that—well, she couldn’t help herself

  “I saw a newborn foal today,” Phil said. It was a pretty smooth change of subject. Phil and Stevie were both aware of their tendency to be competitive. There was a sort of unwritten rule between them that when they started trying to top one another, somebody better change the subject.

  “Oh, cute?”

  “Very,” Phil said. “He was just a couple of days old.”

  “We’re going to have a new foal at Pine Hollow soon,” Stevie said. Then she explained about Geronimo and how the mare he would mate was almost ready to foal. “Judy says it’s going to be a week or ten days. The foal might even be born by the time you come for the Know-Down.”

  “That would be nice. There’s something so special about the little ones.”

  “I love their long, spindly legs,” Stevie said. “They hardly look strong enough to hold the animal up.”

  The two of them continued talking for a while. There seemed to be so much to talk about. They talked about foals, then riding, then when they seemed to be approaching the issue of the Know-Down again, they switched to school. When Chad stuck his head into Stevie’s room for a third time to scowl—indicating he was almost certain his girlfriend was desperately trying to call him—Stevie thought maybe she ought to say good-night to Phil.

  “See you next week,” she said.

  “Bye,” he said.

  Stevie cradled the phone and then bounded up off her bed. She went in search of Chad so she could yell at him for interrupting her very private phone call. She would have done it, too, except that the phone rang again and it was for Chad—the call he’d been waiting for.

  She went to work on her homework instead.

  CAROLE’S FATHER SWIRLED the ground meat around in the frying pan. “You’ve got to break it up just so and brown it perfectly, otherwise your chili won’t be as good as mine.”

  Carole listened attentively. She’d been given the job of chopping an onion for him and she found that if she ignored how much the onion was making her eyes water, they seemed to water less.

  “You’re a wonderful teacher,” she said, encouraging him to keep on talking.

  “I don’t know about that,” said Colonel Hanson. “You listen most of the time when I talk, but there’s a certain lieutenant in my office who appears to have a serious hearing difficulty.”

  The frown on his face told Carole he was genuinely worried about something. She asked him what it was.

  “Oh, it was that problem the other night. It never should have happened, you know, but this lieutenant was listening to something he shouldn’t have been listening to and overheard a private conversation.”

  “You mean like on purpose?” she asked.

  “Not really. Maybe if he had been listening intentionally, he would have gotten it right and would have kept his mouth closed. As it was, he heard it wrong and he told some people about it. It got a whole lot of people very upset.”

  �
�Did this have something to do with national security?” Carole asked. Since Colonel Hanson was in the Marine Corps there was that potential, but her father assured her it wasn’t.

  “No, our borders are safe,” he teased. “But the lieutenant’s carelessness caused a lot of trouble. I’ve been smoothing ruffled feathers since Saturday. Oh, there it is!” The triumphant tone was unmistakable and didn’t seem to Carole to have anything to do with the lieutenant. It turned out that she was right. He was talking about the chili. “See, when the meat begins bubbling just like that, then it’s really cooking and should start browning properly. Are you going to grate the cheese, too? That won’t make you cry the way the onions do.”

  “Uh, sure,” she said, scooping the onions into a bowl. She took the jack cheese out of the refrigerator and unhooked the cheese grater from the pegboard. “So tell me more about the lieutenant,” she said.

  Her father shook his head in distress. “Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “I could tell you more, but it just upsets me so. The man had no business doing what he was doing and even less talking about it. He’s a grown-up and should understand that private means private!”

  With that, he gave the meat an extra stir and splattered some of it onto the range. The flame sizzled and spat. Carole took a cloth and wiped it up. Her father’s words echoed in her ear as she worked. If only he knew, she thought.

  She remembered him telling her and her friends to stay away from his desk. She remembered telling Stevie it would be okay because it had to do with her birthday. She remembered not believing Stevie when she told her there weren’t any secrets on the desk. She remembered not thinking there was anything wrong with what they’d done. But then she’d found out that there was something wrong with what they’d done. It didn’t make her feel good. In fact, it made her feel pretty rotten.

  She wanted to tell. She was bursting to tell. She couldn’t stand keeping a secret from her wonderful, trusting father. But if she told him, what would he say? He’d be as angry with her as he was with the lieutenant. There wasn’t any difference between what they’d done, except that the lieutenant had told other people. Carole hadn’t done that. She and her friends would keep the secret forever.