A Summer Without Horses Read online

  STEVIE’S PREDICAMENT

  I called my friends and told them I’d hurt my bottom and I couldn’t sit down.

  “You mean you can’t ride?!!” Carole said. Of course, she got it right away. So did Lisa.

  “Oh, no, how are you going to get into a saddle?” Lisa asked.

  I explained that I couldn’t. We talked about how awful that was for a long time. See, it’s very awful, so there was a lot to talk about.

  The next day, we met at Pine Hollow.

  By the time I reached the stable, I was crying all over again. Carole and Lisa immediately hugged me and they took me into the grain storage room.

  “It just isn’t fair that one of us can’t ride,” said Lisa.

  “Right,” said Carole.

  I was still crying when Lisa turned to me. “I promise, Stevie, that as long as you can’t ride, I won’t ride.”

  “Me, too,” said Carole.

  I could hardly believe how nice my friends were being. When I think back on it, it was the craziest thing any of us had ever done, but at the time, it seemed totally logical.…

  RL 5, 009-012

  A SUMMER WITHOUT HORSES

  A Bantam Skylark Book/July) 1994

  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 registered 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.

  Cover art copyright © 1994 by Garin Baker.

  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: 978-0-307-82516-2

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Cana

  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

  CONTENTS

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  PART I Lisa’s Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  PART II Stevie’s Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART III Carole’s Summer

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  PART IV Reunion

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  About the Author

  PART I:

  Lisa’s Summer

  IT ALL STARTED when one of my two best friends, Stevie Lake, fell out of a tree. Slid down is probably a more accurate way to put it. She was straddling a branch and slid down it, backside first. Unfortunately for Stevie, her three brothers were there at the time and they thought the scene was hilarious.

  But Stevie wasn’t exactly laughing when she ended up on the ground, fifteen feet below where she’d started from. She had an excruciating pain where she sat down (except she couldn’t sit down because the pain was too excruciating).

  The doctors said she had bruised her coccyx. For some people, that’s not a tragedy. It just means you can’t sit down for a while. But for Stevie, it was the worst possible news—if you can’t sit, you can’t ride a horse. And she, along with me and our other best friend, Carole Hanson, are the three most horse-crazy people I know. In fact that’s why we formed The Saddle Club. It’s our club and there are only two rules: Members have to be horse-crazy and they have to be willing to help one another out whenever it’s necessary. It seems as if it’s often necessary, especially this summer, but I’m getting to that.

  Stevie can be more than a little dramatic. She told us that when the doctor said she couldn’t ride for at least three weeks, her life had ended. Then, she relented a little and told us that her summer was over. I opened my mouth and said it really wasn’t all that bad. That was the wrong thing to say because Stevie immediately turned to me and said if I didn’t think it was so bad, I should try it, too. That shut me up in a hurry.

  Carole was the one who suggested it first. When Stevie showed up at Pine Hollow one day crying about not being able to ride, we both felt so bad that Carole said maybe none of us should ride until Stevie could. It was a nice offer, and I’m sure Carole expected Stevie to say it wasn’t necessary, but instead the opposite happened. After Carole said it, Stevie turned to her. Her eyes were round with disbelief. “You mean, you guys would actually do that for me? You and Lisa would really give up riding for three weeks? I can’t believe you two. I always knew you were great friends, but this …” She came over to give each of us a hug.

  It was a good thing Stevie hugged me just then. It was the only way to cover up my horrified expression. At first I wanted to kill Carole, but by now Stevie was so grateful that I started to get the feeling it was the right thing to do. After all, The Saddle Club was supposed to stick together in times of trouble, and this certainly qualified.

  And, after a while, I sort of got into our pact. It’s like a challenging homework assignment, I told myself. And I decided to come up with a way to seal the promise.

  I suggested to Stevie and Carole that if we really meant what we’d said about sticking together and not riding for three weeks, we had to find some sort of dreadful consequence. Stevie really liked that idea.

  “What’s the worst thing you can think of happening?” Stevie asked me eagerly.

  I don’t know why I said it. It just popped into my head: “Inviting Veronica diAngelo to join The Saddle Club.”

  Carole and Stevie both looked at me in awe, as if I’d just said the most important thing in the world.

  “That’s it,” Stevie said.

  “Absolutely the worst,” said Carole.

  And that was the deal. We each swore on our honor that if one of us—any one of us—rode a horse during the next three weeks, we’d have to invite the snobbiest, wormiest, laziest, vainest girl in the whole county to join our club.

  Veronica diAngelo is the kind of person who believes, really believes, that the rest of the world was invented for her convenience and comfort. The three of us can’t stand her, and just the thought of her joining our club was horrifying. It was everything we needed to stick to our guns.

  The very next day, everything started to change for me. It was summer, of course, and there was no school, so I was going to Pine H
ollow. That’s the stable where we ride. Just because we couldn’t ride didn’t mean we weren’t going to spend time around horses. There’s always a lot to do at a stable and Max Regnery and his mother who own the place like to have everybody pitch in. They are always saying it’s to keep their costs down, but the fact is that riding a horse is only a very small part of what horsemanship is about. The majority of the time with horses is spent taking care of them, grooming them, feeding them, watching them for symptoms of illness, and picking up after them. Riding was a lot of fun and the other things are a lot of work, but because they have to do with horses, they are fun work.

  I was on my way out of the house when my mother walked into the kitchen. In her hands she had a lot of paper with scribbled notes. She told me she wanted to talk to me.

  “It’s your aunt Alison,” she began. “She’s been very sick, you know, and she’s not getting any better.”

  I knew. Alison is my mother’s aunt on her mother’s side. I had met her once when I was about eight, and I remembered thinking she was a really nice person. Now she was sick and it didn’t sound good.

  Mom told me that Aunt Alison was in a nursing home in California, near Los Angeles. Mom had decided to go visit her. She didn’t say “one last time,” but I knew that was what she meant.

  “Los Angeles?” I said, thinking quickly about all the summer days in front of me without riding. The truth is, I wouldn’t have been nearly as interested in my mom’s trip if I’d been planning to ride for the next three weeks. “Can I come with you?”

  “I was hoping you would,” Mom replied.

  “Can I visit Skye Ransom, too?” I asked.

  Mom smiled. “I had a feeling that would be your next question. Sure—if you can reach him.”

  I’m sure you’ve heard of Skye Ransom. Everybody has. I have a friend at school who has eight Skye Ransom posters on her ceiling—one for every movie he’s starred in. I don’t have any Skye Ransom posters because Skye is a friend of mine—actually of the whole Saddle Club—and I even get to see him sometimes. We met Skye while we were at a horse show in Manhattan and once he even came to Pine Hollow, to shoot a movie. It had been one of the most exciting things that had ever happened.

  When I got to Pine Hollow and told Stevie and Carole about the trip, they were so excited for me they nearly burst. They are too good friends to be jealous so all they asked was that I give Skye about a million messages when I saw him. Most of Carole’s messages had to do with tips about riding. Stevie’s were more about how much we missed him and wished he’d do another movie in Virginia. I promised I’d tell him everything for them, especially the parts they hadn’t said about how they wished they could be there with us.

  “But we will be,” Stevie said. “That’s the thing about The Saddle Club. No matter where we are, we’re never far apart from one another.”

  It sounds corny now that I’m telling you about it, but the fact is, it’s true.

  I LOVED CALIFORNIA from the moment we arrived. It was sunny and beautiful. Everybody there took the time to tell me that it never rains in the summer. There were palm trees and wide streets. None of the buildings I saw were very tall, though later I did see some skyscrapers in the downtown area.

  Washington, the city nearest where we live, has a sort of old-fashioned elegance and style. New York, where I went with Stevie and Carole the first time we met Skye, is tall, cramped, and rushed. It always feels exciting. Los Angeles is modern, low, open, and seems much more relaxed.

  In New York and Washington, the traffic jams are on the streets. In Los Angeles, they’re on the freeways. As we sat in traffic on the way to our hotel, I was thinking about this and also about how much fun it was to be here, near Hollywood and where Skye lived and worked.

  I still had my fingers crossed that I’d get to see Skye.

  I hadn’t been able to reach him before we left, although I certainly tried. First, I called his home. There was no answer and I couldn’t tell how long it would be until somebody was home. Then I’d called his agent from home. It took me three tries to get past the first secretary and one more to get past the second. I bet they get a lot of calls for Skye from young girls who insist that they are Skye’s friend and just want to know where they can reach him, but I think it would have been easier to get the President of the United States on the phone than Skye Ransom’s agent. Finally, two days later, I got a message back from the first secretary that Skye wanted to have dinner with me the first night we were arriving in Los Angeles and would call our hotel the afternoon I arrived.

  As soon as we got to the front desk at our hotel and said who we were, the man at the desk beamed at me. This was quite a change from the sullen look he’d had on his face before we told him who we were.

  “You had a phone call, Ms. Atwood,” he said. Then, as if it were a crown jewel, he handed me the message.

  I’ll pick you up at 7:30. Skye.

  “Mr. Ransom called about an hour ago,” the man added, as if I couldn’t tell by looking at the note on the phone message. I think it was his way of telling me he knew what an important person I must be to get a phone message from a star like Skye Ransom. I hate it when people make a big deal of Skye’s fame. That’s not what I like about him. What I like about him is that he’s a friend. Stevie probably would have known just what to say to the man who was, by then, practically bowing and drooling all over us. All I could think of was “Thank you.”

  A bellboy showed us to our room. It took us fifteen minutes to unpack (compared to the three hours it had taken Mom to pack) and a half hour later, we were walking up the stairs of the nursing home. It was part of an enormous hospital, but it had its own building and it didn’t feel much like a hospital. I liked that. I bet the patients liked it, too.

  Mom asked directions and we followed a lady along a hallway, past a lot of doors to the last room on the hall.

  “Alison? Are you awake? You’ve got company …”

  We went in.

  The look on Aunt Alison’s face when she saw my mother made me ashamed that I’d ever thought our trip out here was for anything but to see her.

  “Eleanor?” she whispered.

  Mom just nodded. She couldn’t talk. I knew it. She was so happy to see Aunt Alison, and so upset by how sick she looked that the words just couldn’t come.

  “And this is Lisa?”

  I nodded. I was feeling the same way as my mother was. Aunt Alison reached out her arms from her bed. We both ran over and hugged her very gently. Then Aunt Alison started crying. Mom hadn’t told her we were coming so she was surprised, as well as just plain happy.

  It took a few minutes for everybody to get over their tears. A nurse came in with an extra chair so both Mom and I could sit down for a good long visit.

  At first, Mom and Aunt Alison just caught up on things. Mom had to tell Aunt Alison about how Dad’s work was going, then about her own job, then about her brother and his family and, it seemed, almost everybody else in the world. I thought it was pretty boring, but Aunt Alison seemed hungry for news and listened to everything. Then, Aunt Alison turned to me.

  “Are you still horse-crazy?” she asked.

  I hadn’t known she’d known this about me—even if it was the most important fact. Mom must have told her sometime before, and Alison remembered.

  “Absolutely,” I told her. “Totally horse-crazy.”

  “I was, too,” she said. “I think I still am, in a way.”

  “You ride?” The minute the words were out, I was embarrassed. She certainly wasn’t riding now and hadn’t been for a while. She was much too ill for that.

  But Aunt Alison didn’t seem bothered in the least. “You bet I do,” she said. “See, even now I can’t say I did that or I used to. If I could get up out of this bed today, I’d head straight for the high mountains of Montana and be in the saddle in less time than it would take you to tack up one of your fancy-bred English horses. I think that when you’re really horse-crazy, you never get over i
t. Don’t believe people who tell you that you’ll outgrow it. You won’t. Horses stay in the bloodstream forever.”

  I could have sworn she glanced at my mother when she said the part about “people who tell you.” It was a sure sign to me that Mom had been telling her about my riding. Mom was a big believer in “outgrowing” horses. She didn’t understand what I loved so much about horses and everything else at Pine Hollow. Obviously, Aunt Alison did.

  “Did your mother ever tell you about the Montana ranch that your grandmother and I were raised on?”

  “Not really,” I said. “My grandmother once told me that Great-grandfather bought the land for a tune, sold it for a song, and now it’s worth a whole symphony.”

  “If you like malls,” said Aunt Alison glumly. “But it wasn’t a mall then. It was beautiful green acres. Lida and I would get up before dawn sometimes and ride bareback to the hillside, where we could watch the sun come up. Then we’d race its beams back down into the valley.” A sweet smile came over her face with the memory. I knew why, too. I’d done the same thing with my friends when we went out West to a dude ranch. It was such a beautiful time of day, and riding a horse that way made you feel so free. The memory made me smile as well.

  “Did you get dew from the tall grass on the bottom of your bare feet?” I asked.

  “Yes, child, I did. It was cool and fresh. A daily gift from heaven to the beautiful meadow. My horse’s belly would sometimes get wet, too, so when I groomed him, the drops would come off into his brush. I could dry my feet, but I couldn’t dry his belly and Mama would always know when Lida and I had been out by our horses’ legs and bellies.”

  I grinned. “The horses at Pine Hollow tell our secrets like that,” I told her. “We’re always supposed to walk them before we get back to the stable, but sometimes we’re in a hurry and we try to get away with walking them just a little. Max, our instructor, always knows just by looking at them. That’s what Stevie, one of my best friends, says. Carole—she’s my other best friend—says Max knows because the horses are still lathered. Personally, I think he knows from looking at our faces. When we’re guilty, we look it!”