Riding Lesson Read online

  CAROLE AWOKE WITH a start. Someone was shaking her shoulder and whispering her name. It was chilly, and bright moonlight poured over her. For a second Carole couldn’t remember where she was. Then she heard a soft whinny from below, and then an answering snort, and she remembered: She was in the stable loft.

  “Carole,” Marie whispered again insistently.

  “What is it?” Carole whispered back. “I’m awake.”

  “Come see,” Marie replied.

  Carole followed her as she crawled to the edge of the loft. Marie pointed down. “Look at that!” she said softly, her voice full of wonder.

  Carole soon saw why. There in the foaling stall, illuminated by moonlight, was the mare Spice—and a spindly-legged little foal. “Oh!” gasped Carole, delighted.

  “I can’t believe it’s standing up already,” Marie marveled.

  Carole nodded, watching the pair below carefully. “She must have foaled a while ago—I’d guess it’s been at least an hour. Look, the foal is trying to nurse.” The girls watched, breathless, as the foal nuzzled its mother’s belly in search of food. They could tell when it found it, for the tiny horse let out a squeal of excitement before settling down to nursing vigorously.

  “Hey, what time is it?” Marie whispered suddenly.

  Carole glanced at her watch, squinting to make out the time in the moonlight. “About five minutes to midnight. Why?”

  Marie smiled and glanced down at the foal. “That means he was born on my birthday,” she said.

  Carole smiled, too. “That’s wonderful, Marie,” she said. “It’s like an extra present.”

  Marie nodded. “It’s a nice one, too,” she said quietly. She paused. “This has been kind of a strange birthday, you know?”

  “I know,” Carole replied. She was sure Marie was thinking about her father. “It was hard for me the first few holidays, too. It still is, really.”

  Marie nodded sadly. “It just seems weird to be celebrating something like a birthday, when …” Her voice trailed off.

  “I know,” Carole said again. “But your dad would want you to have a nice birthday. Who knows, he may be looking down at you right now. Maybe he even had something to do with the foal being born tonight—you know, like his gift to you.”

  Carole regretted her words as soon as she said them. She bit her lip, expecting Marie to get upset at her comment, or at least to make fun of it. But Marie did neither. Instead she leaned over to give Carole a hug.

  “Thanks,” Marie said. In the silvery light Carole could see tears glistening in the other girl’s eyes, but she had a feeling they weren’t really tears of sadness—at least not entirely.

  “Happy birthday,” Carole whispered again as she hugged her back.

  Marie sat back, and they watched the moonlit stall below for a few minutes in silence. Then Marie crawled back to wake Stevie and Lisa.

  “What’s going on?” Stevie murmured sleepily a moment later.

  “Oh! She foaled!” whispered Lisa, peering downward.

  They all watched the little family in silence. It was obvious that the mare had everything under control and didn’t require any human intervention. In fact, she seemed totally unaware of the observers above her as she nuzzled her baby lovingly.

  Soon, despite their fascination, the girls started yawning. By this time the foal had finished nursing and had lain down in the straw to sleep. Reluctantly, the girls tore themselves away from the magical scene below and did the same thing. And the rest of the night was filled with sweet dreams for all of them.

  A WEEK LATER Stevie, Carole, and Lisa were sitting in their favorite booth at TD’s having a Saddle Club meeting.

  “I bet Marie was glad to see her mother,” Lisa said, taking a sip of water.

  Carole nodded. “You should have seen her at the airport last night. When they announced that the plane was going to be half an hour late, she wanted to sue the airline. And when the plane finally arrived, she jumped up and down the whole time it was landing.”

  Stevie and Lisa laughed.

  “That sounds like Marie,” Lisa commented. The girls paused to thank the waitress as she brought them their two hot-fudge sundaes and one blueberry on butter brickle.

  “Yeah,” Carole said as she dug in. “You know, I can’t believe I’m saying this, but I’m kind of going to miss having her around.” She rolled her eyes. “Even if she did play that stupid CD you two gave her twenty-four hours a day for the past week.”

  “Spoken like a true sister!” Lisa declared.

  “Not like this sister,” Stevie corrected. “I never miss my brothers when they’re not around.”

  “Oh, but that’s brothers. Having a sister must be different,” Lisa said.

  “It’s different, all right,” Carole said. “A lot different from what I was expecting.”

  “Really?” asked Stevie.

  Carole nodded. “I really like Marie—I always have. And I hope she’ll be my friend for a long time to come.” She shook her head. “But no matter how much I like her, it’s tougher being her sister than I would have thought.”

  “Well, that’s probably because being sisters is a much different kind of relationship,” Lisa said. “It’s more difficult because you each have more adjusting to do.”

  “That’s for sure,” Carole agreed. “I never realized how much adjusting people have to do to one another.”

  “Like Max and Deborah,” Stevie pointed out. “Now that they’re getting married, he goes shopping for china and she lets him open doors for her.”

  “Right,” Lisa said, nodding thoughtfully. “Those are minor adjustments that make their life together smoother. They want to be together, so they both adjust.”

  But Stevie had been distracted by the entrance of two customers. “Will you look at that,” she exclaimed.

  Carole and Lisa turned to look. “Oh, great, it’s Veronica,” Carole said with a shrug. Then her eyes widened. “Isn’t that your buddy Priscilla with her?”

  Stevie nodded, watching as Priscilla Tyler and Veronica diAngelo sat down at a table on the other side of the restaurant. The two girls didn’t notice The Saddle Club watching them—they were chattering animatedly, pausing once in a while to look down at their feet with interest.

  “My guess is that there’s an intense shoe discussion going on at their table,” Lisa remarked.

  “My guess is that you’re right,” Carole agreed.

  “That just proves that sometimes the adjusting just isn’t worth it,” Stevie said, returning to their previous conversation. “Like with me and Priscilla. If we’d wanted to hang out together, one or both of us would have had to undergo a total personality transplant.”

  “Well, luckily she seems to have found a soul mate,” Carole said with a laugh.

  “Adjusting to Marie was worth it, though, wasn’t it?” Lisa asked Carole.

  “Sure,” she agreed. “Underneath it all Marie and I really have a lot in common—a lot more than Stevie and Priscilla do, for instance. And I think we both learned a lot from each other. Once we got adjusted to being sisters, it was really kind of fun to have her around.”

  “That’s just one more thing I like about The Saddle Club,” said Stevie contentedly.

  “What is?” asked Lisa.

  “We don’t have to adjust to one another,” Stevie explained. “We’re just each who we are and that’s fine with all of us.”

  “Right, like when one of us comes up with some wild notion about throwing somebody out of a hayloft into a net?” Carole asked.

  “Well, but you see, I always knew that Lisa would never let me go through with that,” Stevie explained. “That’s why you two are my best friends—so I don’t get into a lot of trouble.”

  “A lot more trouble, you mean,” Carole corrected her.

  Stevie grinned. “Right! And that’s what best friends are for!”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  BONNIE BRYANT is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, incl
uding The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, the Pony Tails series, and Pine Hollow, which follows the Saddle Club girls into their teens. 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.