Chocolate Horse Read online

  BAD NEWS

  Stevie and Phil returned to Pine Hollow as quickly as possible. In less than ten minutes, the stable was in sight.

  That was when Stevie started getting worried, for she could see Carole and Lisa in the field at the back of the stable, perched on the fences. As soon as they spotted Stevie and Phil, they began waving. It wasn’t a greeting, it was a hurry-up wave. Stevie nudged Topside and got him to quicken his gait. She felt a little knot tighten in her stomach. Something was wrong, and the closer she got to Pine Hollow, the surer she was something was really wrong and it had to do with her.…

  RL 5, 009–l012

  CHOCOLATE HORSE

  A Bantam Skylark Book / May 1996

  Skylark Books is a registered trademark of Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and elsewhere.

  “The Saddle Club” is a trademark of Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  The Saddle Club design / logo, which consists of a riding crop and a riding hat, is a trademark of Bantam Books.

  “USPC” and “Pony Club” are registered trademarks of The United States Pony Clubs, Inc., at The Kentucky Horse Park, 4071 Iron Works Pike, Lexington, KY 40511-8462.

  All rights reserved.

  Copyright © 1994 by Bonnie Bryant Hiller.

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  For information address: Bantam Books.

  eISBN: 978-0-307-82514-8

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Books are published by Bantam Books, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc. Its trademark, consisting of the words “Bantam Books” and the portrayal of a rooster, is Registered in U.S. Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries. Marca Registrada. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Many thanks to Lisa Scott of Breyer Horses for her help and expertise, and to Sue Cook of Transworld, whose research inspired this story.

  For Craig Virden, a true chocolate-lover,

  who inspired this book and this story.

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  About the Author

  Taking Care of Gifted: America’s Largest Olympian

  “LET ME JUST say one more good-bye to Starlight,” Carole Hanson said to her two best friends, Stevie Lake and Lisa Atwood.

  “Sure,” Stevie agreed. “You won’t be seeing him for another full day, will you?” She was teasing and Carole knew it.

  “If Starlight were your horse, you’d be doing the same thing, wouldn’t you?” Carole asked, giving the horse a final farewell hug.

  Stevie smiled because Carole was right, and just to show there were no hard feelings, she gave Starlight a hug, too. He liked the attention. The girls liked giving it to him.

  The girls had just finished their Tuesday riding class at Pine Hollow. They had a class every Tuesday, and their Pony Club, named Horse Wise, met on Saturdays. Since twice a week wasn’t anywhere near enough horses for the three horse-crazy girls, they tried to get to Pine Hollow almost every day. When they couldn’t ride, they could just talk about horses, and there were always chores to do around the stable. The stable owner, Max Regnery, and his mother, affectionately called Mrs. Reg by all the riders, encouraged everyone to pitch in at Pine Hollow. “Encouraged” wasn’t the word they usually used, though. “Insisted” was more like it.

  The girls didn’t mind. They were so horse crazy that they’d do anything to be around horses, and when they weren’t around horses, they talked about them. They called that having a Saddle Club meeting. The three of them had formed the club, and it had only two rules. Members had to be horse crazy, and they had to be willing to help one another out. They were such good friends that they never had trouble following either of those rules.

  Stevie slung her book bag over her shoulder, grimacing under the weight, and then followed her friends out the stable door. It was time to get home; she had a lot of homework. She’d do it, too, but not because she liked doing it. She knew that if her grades slipped, Max wouldn’t let her ride. He insisted that his riders maintain a satisfactory grade average. Stevie’s grade average hovered perilously close to Max’s idea of satisfactory. At the moment she was in hot water because two of her math assignments had mysteriously disappeared somewhere between her desk and her teacher’s desk. Her teacher wasn’t happy about it and refused to believe that Stevie’s cat, Madonna, had eaten the homework.

  “Cats don’t like prealgebra,” Miss Snyder had said. Stevie had resisted the impulse to add that she didn’t either.

  “So what are you going to wear to the dance?” Lisa asked, bringing Stevie’s attention to a more fun subject. Valentine’s Day was just a week and a half away, and Pine Hollow was celebrating the event by holding a barn dance for its young riders.

  Lisa was the most clothes conscious of the three girls, always perfectly turned out. Stevie favored casual clothes—jeans and turtlenecks. Carole never much cared what she wore as long as she could ride horses in it.

  “I guess as long as it’s a barn dance, I’ll wear my jeans,” Stevie said. “And I have a cowboy shirt and my cowboy boots. How’s that?”

  “Sounds perfect,” Lisa said. It wasn’t often that she totally agreed with Stevie’s wardrobe. “Your boots are really nice, too. I remember you bought them before you and Carole went out West last summer.”

  “Yup, and they got scuffed up, too, and that’s a good thing, because there’s nothing worse than looking like a dude—with shiny boots.”

  Carole beamed at her friends. “Have you ever noticed that even when we’re talking about clothes, we’re still talking about horses?” Stevie and Lisa grinned. That was the kind of thing that made The Saddle Club special to its members.

  Stevie’s house was the closest to Pine Hollow, and when the three of them reached it, she said good-bye to her friends, and the Saddle Club meeting ended. They promised they’d talk later that night. Stevie waved and went into the house.

  She paused on her way through the family room, shrugging off her coat and her backpack. Her mind was not on those things, though. All she could see was the box of tissues next to the most comfortable chair. That reminded her that her twin brother Alex had stayed home from school today. The lucky guy. He’d claimed he had a cold. Since Stevie’s day at school had been especially rotten, it didn’t seem fair that Alex had had a nice quiet day at home—watching game shows and soap operas.

  Stevie grumbled jealously. “He probably spent the rest of the day copying the math homework he stole from me that Miss Snyder was so upset about.” Only her cat heard her say that.

  “Stevie, don’t drop your backpack on the floor and don’t forget to hang up your coat,” her mother called from her home office. Stevie picked up the backpack and the coat, barely registering the fact that her mother’s admonition had been delivered from a place where she could not have seen the coat and the backpack on the floor. She just knew.

  Stevie stomped upstairs. She wished she could get a cold and stay home, too. In fact, it might be a good idea
to get a cold on Thursday morning, because she had a history test that day. It was on the Spanish Armada, and it still wasn’t clear to her how a bunch of fishing boats could possibly overthrow a gigantic navy. Her teacher, Mr. Thiele, seemed to think it was very important, though.

  The door to Stevie’s room was ajar. That was odd. It was usually open wide when she wasn’t there, or else closed completely. The fact that it was neither of those seemed suspicious to Stevie. She slowed down as she approached the door and peered in.

  Alex was in her room. He was wearing his pajamas—in his case that meant a pair of sweatpants—and he was holding something in his hand.

  “What have you got?” she demanded, storming into the room.

  Alex spun around in surprise. He looked pale, and to Stevie that meant guilty. She’d caught him in the act. In his hands he held a gold-foil-covered chocolate horse. She’d bought it at the mall one day when she’d been looking for a birthday present for Carole. She’d thought it was really pretty and liked having it in her room. She’d never thought of eating it. Alex, however, clearly had thought of eating it.

  The wrapper was torn on one of the horse’s forelegs.

  “What are you doing with that?” Stevie asked angrily.

  “I just wanted—my throat’s so sore and I’ve got a headache and, well—I thought maybe some chocolate would help,” Alex stammered meekly.

  “Well, just think again,” Stevie said. She marched forward and grabbed the horse out of Alex’s hand. She was outraged when she discovered that the horse’s leg was broken, and she was going to tell Alex exactly what she thought about what he’d done, but she found that he’d fled to his room. She marched across the hall and flung his door open.

  “Just because you can find some excuse not to go to school doesn’t mean you’re going to get any sympathy from me! And don’t try to come up with any more lame excuses about stealing my things. That horse was mine—not yours! You had no right—”

  Stevie was just warming up to her lecture about property rights and respect for others’ belongings (it was a lecture she could deliver well, because it had been delivered to her many times) when she noticed that Alex was behaving peculiarly. Instead of standing up to her as he usually did, he just backed down, literally, sitting on his bed, then lying down and pulling the covers up. His eyes closed.

  Stevie was so astonished, she didn’t know what to do. He wasn’t going to yell back, or make fun of her?

  “I’ll get back at you,” she went on, but with Alex just lying there, her heart wasn’t in it anymore.

  She spun on her heel and strode back into her room. He could hide under the covers if he wanted. In the meantime she had to find a way to fix the horse’s leg.

  Stevie decided to use a toothpick for a splint. She got a box of them from the kitchen and began the painstaking job of inserting toothpicks into the sun-softened chocolate. When the leg was as straight as Stevie thought it was going to get, she carefully rewrapped it in the gold foil and put it back on her windowsill. It tilted to the right. She adjusted it. It listed to the left. Then it occurred to her that she could do a leg wrap on it, the same way she would with a real horse whose leg had gotten wounded.

  She hunted through all her desk drawers until she found a tape dispenser that had a note on it reading: “This Belongs to Mom! Do Not Touch! Do Not Borrow! This Means YOU, Stevie!” Stevie carefully pulled out a length of tape and wrapped the horse’s leg. It worked well enough for the horse to be able to stand.

  She stuck the tape back in her drawer, considered returning the toothpicks to the kitchen but rejected the notion, at least until dinnertime, and settled on her bed, using her backpack filled with undone homework assignments as a prop for her feet. She knew she had to do some work, but she also had some thinking to do. The subject was revenge.

  The phone rang, interrupting her thoughts. It was Phil Marsten.

  Phil was Stevie’s boyfriend. He lived a couple of towns away, so they didn’t get to see one another very often, but they did get to talk on the phone quite a bit. It was one of Stevie’s favorite things to do.

  “Hi there!” he greeted her cheerfully.

  “What are you so happy about?” Stevie asked.

  “I’ve got some good news,” he said.

  “I could use some of that.”

  “Well, here it is, then: How’d you like to do something together tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Really?” Stevie asked, sitting up straight. This sounded as if it were good news.

  “Really,” Phil said. “My mother has an errand in Willow Creek—something to do with a committee for something or other—and she said she’d bring me over after school and drop me off at your house if you’re going to be free. Are you?”

  Was she? Stevie thought about it for a while, perhaps a quarter of a second, and then told Phil she definitely was free. Then, when she thought about it for another quarter of a second, she realized that she’d rather see Phil someplace where her three brothers weren’t, especially if Alex was still able to convince their parents that he was sick. All she needed was a twin brother wandering around in his sweatpants when Phil was there.

  “Why don’t we meet at Pine Hollow instead—and, like, maybe go for a ride?”

  “That’s just what I was hoping you’d want to do,” Phil said. “Will it be okay with Max?”

  “Sure,” said Stevie. “He knows you’re a good rider, and he’ll be glad to let you take one of the horses out.

  I’ll get there first and arrange it all with Mrs. Reg or Max or whoever’s there. How long have we got?”

  It turned out that Phil expected to arrive about three-thirty, and his mother would pick him up at five-thirty. That was a perfect amount of time to tack up, go for a ride, bring the horses back, untack, and groom them.

  “We can go by the creek. It’s so pretty there this time of year,” Stevie suggested.

  “Wherever you want to go, we’ll go,” said Phil. “Say, how are plans coming for the dance?” he asked.

  That question reminded Stevie of two things: first, that she’d be seeing Phil again in just a week and a half. The second thing was that she’d promised Carole and Lisa that they’d do some work on the decorations for the dance the next day. Now, here she’d gone and promised Phil that they could go for a ride. If she’d thought about Phil’s invitation for more than half a second, she would have remembered that before she’d answered. Still, she didn’t get many opportunities to see Phil, and she thought her friends would understand. It wasn’t as if they were going to be putting up the decorations yet. They were just going to think about what they were going to put up. That could wait another day or two, she was sure.

  “The plans are coming fine,” Stevie said. “In fact, I think the whole thing is going to be just about perfect.”

  “It always is when you, Carole, and Lisa put your heads together to do something.”

  Stevie was glad that Phil had such confidence in them, because that was exactly the way she felt about The Saddle Club. Its members seemed to have an infinite ability to solve problems.

  “PHIL’S HERE,” LISA announced, looking over Stevie’s shoulder through the dingy window in Topside’s stall. Stevie felt a little chill, a nice little chill. She always liked seeing Phil, and this was no exception. She gave Topside a pat, tugged once more on his girth, pulling it one notch tighter, and went to greet Phil. Lisa brought Topside out of his stall. Carole finished tacking up Barq for Phil and led him out of his stall as well. The girls took the horses into one of Pine Hollow’s rings, ready for Stevie and Phil to take their ride.

  “How’s it going, fellow club members?” Phil asked Lisa and Carole cheerfully. Technically Phil was also a member of The Saddle Club—they called him one of the out-of-town members—and he was always a welcome addition.

  “Just fine,” Lisa responded. “We’ll even survive having the chairperson of our decorating committee miss the first meeting in order to take a ride with you.”

/>   “Miss a meeting on my behalf?” Phil asked. “You don’t have to do that, Stevie. We can stay here and plan with Lisa and Carole. I’ve got some great ideas for decorations. You start with crepe paper and some chicken wire, you see—”

  “I’m sure they’ll do just fine without us,” Stevie said. The last thing in the world she wanted was to miss the chance to take a ride with Phil in order to talk about crepe paper and chicken wire.

  “No problem,” Carole assured him. She’d seen the moment of panic in Stevie’s face. “We’re just going to take some measurements today to figure out how much crepe paper we’ll need. Two can do that as easily as three. Go already.”

  “If you insist,” Phil said.

  “I do,” said Stevie. That was enough for him. Lisa told her where she and Carole had put the horses. It was time to go.

  Phil had been to Pine Hollow many times and was familiar with the horses and even some of the traditions. As soon as he was settled into Barq’s saddle, he returned to the stable entrance and touched the good-luck horseshoe. That was something all riders at Pine Hollow did every time they rode. Stevie was there right after Phil. Nobody was sure what the magic was, but they knew it was true. No rider who’d touched the horseshoe had ever gotten seriously injured. Some of the riders suspected the horseshoe was as much a reminder of safe riding habits as it was a talisman. Whatever the case, it worked.

  “Let’s go,” Stevie said. “I’ll lead the way.”

  “You always do,” Phil said. Stevie winked at him, clucked her tongue, nudged Topside, and their ride began.

  It was a warm February afternoon. The sun shone brightly, heating the dry winter grass and softening the earth below. Stevie found herself keenly aware of everything around her. She could smell the fresh promise of spring and feel the gentle breeze on her cheek. She loved the sound of the horses’ hooves rustling the grass as they walked, and then striking the turf sharply when they trotted. She could sense Barq and Phil behind her and Topside below her. She felt very alive and very happy. All thoughts of pesky brothers and missing math assignments fled from her. All she felt was the joy of doing something she loved with someone very special to her.