Horse Feathers

  WHAT COULD DISTRACT STEVIE FROM HORSES?

  “Something’s happened to Stevie,” Lisa blurted out, trying to catch her breath. “We were on the phone and it suddenly went dead.”

  Concerned, Mrs. Lake and Lisa ran up the stairs to Stevie’s bedroom. Without bothering to knock, they burst into the room.

  “Stevie, are you—” Mrs. Lake stopped short.

  Stevie was hovering over the incubator, her expression full of awe. One of the eggs was now definitely wiggling. Mrs. Lake and Lisa crept up beside Stevie, quietly taking a seat on the carpet beside the incubator to watch.

  “It’s hatching! It’s hatching!”

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  HORSE FEATHERS

  A Bantam Skylark Book / May 2001

  “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

  Text copyright © 2001 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: 978-0-307-82603-9

  Published simultaneously in the United States and Canada

  Bantam Skylark is an imprint of Random House Children’s Books. SKYLARK BOOK, BANTAM BOOKS, and the rooster colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc. Bantam Books, 1540 Broadway, New York, New York 10036.

  v3.1

  Special thanks to Sir “B” Farms and Laura Roper

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books You Will Enjoy

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Acknowledgments

  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

  Chapter 14

  About the Author

  My special thanks to Sheila Prescott-Vessey for her help in the writing of this book.

  I would also like to thank Jan Weber and Suzanne Detol of the American Vaulting Association for their gracious assistance and information on vaulting.

  “MAX WAS VERY mysterious about the new schooling horse that’s coming to the stable tomorrow,” Lisa said excitedly.

  “Did you see that smile on his face? He’s definitely up to something,” Stevie said.

  It was a Saturday afternoon and Stevie Lake was walking home with her two best friends, Lisa Atwood and Carole Hanson. They’d just come from Pine Hollow Stables, where they’d had a Horse Wise meeting and a jumping lesson. Horse Wise was the name of Pine Hollow’s Pony Club, run by Pine Hollow’s owner, Max Regnery. Max also happened to be the Pony Club’s director and the girls’ riding instructor.

  The girls hadn’t been able to stop talking about Max’s surprise since he’d announced at the end of the jumping lesson that a new schooling horse was coming to Pine Hollow on Sunday, but just for a visit. There was obviously something very different and special about this horse, but whatever it was, Max was keeping it a secret.

  “Maybe it’s one of those Lipizzaner stallions from the Spanish Riding School in Vienna,” speculated Stevie. “Or a jousting horse—like the kind they use in medieval festivals!” She paused for a moment to take a bite out of a carrot she’d saved from the bag of treats she’d brought for her horse, Belle. “What could be more special and different than that?” she asked.

  Stevie had a habit of thinking big, which for most people would be a positive feature. But with Stevie it was more of a character flaw, since thinking big usually led to thinking bigger, and that often led to one of Stevie’s crazy schemes. Her crazy schemes would often put her in hot water, and then Carole and Lisa would have to come to her rescue.

  “Knowing Max, it’s probably something that involves working hard and learning something new,” Carole offered.

  The girls nodded. Max was always making sure they learned new and interesting things about riding and horses.

  Not that riding could ever become dull, thought Carole. If it were up to her, she’d be at the stables twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks a year. She would choose to share a stall with her treasured gelding, Starlight, over a feather bed any day. Unfortunately, her father insisted that a proper education (one that involved time spent in the classroom, textbooks, and homework) took priority over horses. So Carole had to settle for being at Pine Hollow only a few hours a day, nearly seven days a week, nearly fifty-two weeks a year.

  Pine Hollow Stables was a beautiful sprawling horse farm surrounded by acres of scenic pastures and miles of riding trails. The farm was located in Willow Creek, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., and housed over thirty horses and ponies, most of which were owned by Max and used for the school. Some of the students, like Stevie and Carole, boarded their own horses there. Lisa didn’t have her own horse yet, but she regularly rode Prancer, an ex-racehorse that the girls had rescued.

  Owning a horse required time and commitment. It also required money. In order to keep costs down and encourage teamwork, one of the requirements at Pine Hollow was that everyone who rode there had to help out with the barn chores. Well, almost everyone.

  Veronica diAngelo, the barn prima donna, would never willingly participate in such distasteful tasks as mucking out stalls. Especially not when there were stable hands to do the work for her. Spoiled and used to having her way, Veronica was the worst example of a horse-person that the girls had ever met. More to the point, Veronica was the worst example of a human being that the girls had ever met. If there was an excuse not to pull her own weight, you could be sure that Veronica used it.

  But Lisa, Stevie, and Carole didn’t mind doing barn chores. They were more than willing to do anything that meant spending more time around the horses and the stable. The three girls knew almost from the moment they met that they shared a strong common bond: their love of horses. In fact, they were so horse-crazy, they had formed a group called The Saddle Club. There were only two rules for being a member: Number one, you had to be crazy about horses, and number two, all the members had to be willing to help each other out. To Stevie, Lisa, and Carole, those rules came as naturally and as effortlessly as breathing.

  “I can’t believe Max wouldn’t even give us a hint about this mysterious horse,” Lisa continued.

  “ ‘Different and special,’ ” Stevie said, repeating Max’s words. “That could mean anything. Do you think I should have asked him for an itty bitty hint?”

  Carole smiled. “You mean in addition to the first twenty times you asked him?”

  “Well,” Stevie said, grinning, “maybe all he needed was a little more encouragement.”

  Lisa shook her head doubtfully. “You know that
no one keeps a secret better than Max.”

  “Hey, I keep a pretty good secret,” Stevie replied innocently.

  If there was anything that Stevie definitely couldn’t keep, it was a secret. Worse yet, she could be so persistent that it made it hard for anyone around her to keep a secret, either.

  “Maybe Red knows,” Stevie suggested hopefully. “I’m sure if I cornered him, I could break him down eventually.”

  Carole and Lisa knew from experience that it was difficult, if not impossible, not to be swayed by Stevie’s determination, or as some would call it, persistent pestering. And Red O’Malley was no exception. As the head stable hand at Pine Hollow, Red tended to know most of the goings-on there. But he was also extremely loyal to Max and enjoyed tormenting the students with anticipation almost as much as Max did. In this case, Carole suspected that Red knew all about Max’s secret horse, and it was just as likely that he would never blow the surprise by telling them.

  “This is torture,” complained Stevie. “It’s cruel and unusual punishment. How am I ever going to make it until tomorrow?”

  “Well, the good news is that it’s less than twenty-four hours away. Fifteen hours to be exact,” Lisa calculated. “I guess you’ll just have to wait and see.”

  “Wait and see?” repeated Stevie incredulously. Lisa, the most practical girl she knew, was always willing to offer practical (and on occasion annoyingly practical) advice. Anticipating Stevie’s reaction, Lisa grinned mischievously and ducked behind Carole as Stevie playfully tried to punch her shoulder.

  Carole rolled her eyes. “Lisa, did you forget who you were speaking to?”

  Even Stevie laughed at that. Wait and see was not a phrase that Stevie liked to hear.

  “Patience is a virtue, Stephanie Lake,” Lisa teased further, mimicking Mrs. Lake’s favorite expression when it came to her exuberant daughter.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Stevie grumbled good-naturedly. “You weren’t born with this NTK gene that I’ve been afflicted with. I’m sure it’s hereditary.” NTK was Stevie’s way of saying “need-to-know.” And to be fair, her father suffered from the same gene, most noticeable when Stevie was the cause of a not-so-nice prank pulled on one of her brothers. Once, Stevie helped her twin brother, Alex, dye his hair orange for Halloween and purposely used a permanent dye. Another time Stevie’s father picked her up at the stables and needed to know (quite emphatically) why her older brother Chad’s underwear was on display at the neighborhood community center during a local hockey game. In Stevie’s mind, surviving with an NTK gene was an unfortunate fact of life.

  Not that Lisa didn’t need to know things. In fact, she was a straight-A student and even did extra homework just so she could learn more. Stevie couldn’t understand why someone would do homework instead of doing other stuff, fun stuff. And certainly no one but Lisa could ever consider homework fun. It was just that Lisa’s need to know followed a more logical train of thought and wasn’t likely to motivate her to, say, put salt in the sugar bowl just to see if anyone would notice, as Stevie had once done.

  “Well, I just wish it were Sunday morning right now so that we wouldn’t have to wait to meet the mystery horse,” said Carole.

  Carole was different from both Stevie and Lisa. If Stevie’s need-to-know often sent her off on some crazy scheme, and Lisa’s need-to-know got her straight As, then Carole’s need-to-know applied only to horses. The only thing preventing Carole from achieving straight As in school was the subject matter. She could accurately list every breed of horse known in North America in alphabetical order, plus their significant—and not so significant—qualities, but she often had trouble recalling the names of the fifty states. She always made sure that the horses got watered and fed on time, but she sometimes forgot to eat breakfast or lunch herself.

  Stevie and Lisa had long since realized that even though they were both horse-crazy, Carole was, hands down, the horse-craziest of all of them. Carole had no idea what she wanted to be when she grew up, but she knew for sure that it would involve horses. She had learned to ride almost before she could walk and was what Max liked to refer to as a natural rider. Lisa often thought that Carole galloping her gelding, Starlight, over a set of fences or through a large open field was the most graceful sight she’d ever seen. Stevie and Lisa knew that Carole was undoubtedly one of the best riders at Pine Hollow. Not that this went to Carole’s head; Carole was appreciative and modest about her ability, constantly challenging herself to become even better.

  “Hey, what’s going on over there at your house?” asked Lisa.

  Stevie squinted to see into the distance. From where they were, it looked like a small army had congregated on her front lawn. “Uh-oh.”

  “What did you do this time?” teased Carole. Being the only girl in a family of four children, Stevie was often the victim of practical jokes from her siblings. Unfortunately, Stevie was just as fond of instigating.

  “Nothing that I know of,” protested Stevie. She frowned, now able to make out her brothers, Chad, Michael, and Alex, gathered in the front yard. Her parents were there, too. That many of her family members in one location was never a good sign. Had she forgotten a family gathering? She quickly skimmed through her mental to-do list but couldn’t come up with anything that accounted for the display.

  She turned to Lisa. “Was I supposed to do something today?”

  Lisa shook her head. “Not that I can remember.”

  “Maybe it’s a surprise,” suggested Carole.

  Stevie shook her head. “If it were a surprise, they wouldn’t be standing on the front lawn where I can see them.”

  Carole nodded. “Well, intuition and past experience tell me that you’re involved somehow.”

  Stevie straightened her shoulders, doing her best to appear offended. “Did it ever occur to you that I may not be the cause of this?” asked Stevie.

  “Noooo!” chorused Lisa and Carole, which brought a smile to Stevie’s face.

  As the girls got closer, Stevie could see that her family appeared to be staring at something on the grass in the middle of their huddle. But from a distance Stevie couldn’t make out what it was.

  “What’s the worst it could be?” Stevie asked, shrugging her shoulders.

  Lisa and Carole exchanged looks.

  “Okay, forget I asked that,” said Stevie. “Come on, let’s go find out.”

  The girls quickened their pace and cut across the street. They hurried up the driveway to the cluster of Lakes.

  Stevie pushed into the small circle and peered over Michael’s shoulder to get a look at the object of their attention. It was definitely not anything nearly as exciting as Stevie could have imagined. It was just a large wooden crate, with HANDLE WITH CARE stamped in big, bold red letters across the top of it.

  Mr. Lake glanced up. “Ah, Stevie. I’m glad you’re here. This was just delivered.”

  “What is it?” Stevie asked, now noticing the other suspicious words stamped on the crate, such as LIVESTOCK and OPEN IMMEDIATELY!

  “We were hoping you could tell us,” said Mrs. Lake.

  “Me?” asked Stevie, surprised. “Why me?”

  “Because it’s addressed to you,” said her older brother, Chad.

  Stevie looked at Carole and Lisa, who had wiggled their way into the circle. Carole shrugged. Stevie, filled with uncertainty, took a cautious step toward the box. As she did, everyone else stepped back.

  “It could be a bomb,” said Michael. “They always hand deliver bombs on television.”

  Stevie shot Michael a look.

  “Well it’s true,” he insisted.

  “Don’t be silly,” said Mrs. Lake. “Whatever it is, it’s not a bomb.”

  “Although the delivery man did warn us that it was very important to follow the instructions exactly,” teased Mr. Lake.

  “Stevie, don’t pay any attention to them,” said Mrs. Lake, smiling her encouragement. But then, as if she couldn’t help herself, she playfully took one
small step backward, followed by Chad, Michael, Alex, and Mr. Lake. They seemed to be having an awful lot of fun at Stevie’s expense.

  “Very funny,” said Stevie. She eyed the box warily. “I don’t suppose anyone else wants to open it?” she asked hopefully.

  “It’s your box,” Chad pointed out, his eyes twinkling mischievously as he took yet another step back.

  “Maybe it’s a present from Phil,” suggested Lisa.

  Phil Marsten was Stevie’s boyfriend, and it wouldn’t be unthinkable that he would send Stevie a present. Except that Stevie couldn’t remember the last time Phil had ever had a present hand delivered, unless he was the one doing the delivering. And she certainly couldn’t think of anything he’d give her that was this big.

  “Here’s a thought,” Alex said impatiently. “Why don’t you just open it and find out?”

  Stevie took a closer look at the crate. It appeared to be heavily padded. She shrugged, “It’s not like they would bother padding a bomb, right?”

  Chad just grinned.

  Stevie shook her head and took another step toward the box.

  “Don’t forget to follow the instructions,” Mrs. Lake said.

  “Follow the instructions,” Stevie repeated, nodding.

  Stevie decided to start with the most obvious instruction: HANDLE WITH CARE. She knelt beside the box and very carefully looked for a way to open it. There was a small latch on top, securing the lid. She slid it out of the way, then gently lifted the wooden panel. The inside of the box was lined with Styrofoam, which concealed its contents.

  “What’s in it?” Carole asked eagerly, leaning over Stevie’s shoulder for a better view.

  “I don’t know. But there’s some sort of battery pack keeping it warm.” Stevie paused. “Isn’t Styrofoam supposed to keep things cold?” Now she was really confused. What on earth could someone send her that required a temperature control?

  “Is it ticking?” asked Michael.

  Stevie put her ear closer. It was ticking. She jumped back. At least she thought she’d heard ticking.