Lisa Read online

  “In the feed shed, like usual,” Stevie replied with an expression that said she thought the man must be a little slow.

  “This won’t fit in the feed shed like usual,” the driver replied patiently. “This is a big order.”

  For once, Stevie was speechless. I could almost see the wheels in her head turning as she tried to figure out what was going on. She pulled a sheet of paper out of her pocket and glanced at it.

  “Girls, why don’t you go get Mrs. Reg so she can tell us what to do?” the driver suggested. He sounded less patient this time, and I gulped, guessing he was starting to get annoyed with the delay.

  “Uh-oh,” Stevie murmured, but she wasn’t looking at the driver. I wasn’t sure she’d even heard him. She was still staring at that paper. Looking over her shoulder, I saw that it was an invoice from the feed company. Finally she glanced up at the driver and smiled weakly. “This whole truckload isn’t for us, right?”

  “Every bit of it,” the driver answered. “Just like you ordered. Now would you please go get Mrs. Reg?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.” Stevie grabbed me by the sleeve and dragged me after her into the stable.

  “What’s going on?” I asked, hoping that Stevie had more of a clue than I did.

  She did. She proceeded to explain it to me as we entered the office. It turned out that the invoice she had used as a guide had been placed exactly one week before the last big horse show at Pine Hollow. That was why the truck held enough grain, hay, and straw to feed and bed more than a hundred horses.

  As soon as I understood what she was saying, I let out a groan and sank down into the guest chair in front of Mrs. Reg’s desk. “Oh no.”

  “Oh, yes,” Stevie replied grimly.

  “Why don’t you just tell them we don’t need it?” I suggested, figuring that was the only sensible solution.

  Stevie was already shaking her head. “I ordered it; I begged them for it.”

  “But we can’t keep an order that size,” I pointed out. “There’s no place to store it, and it’ll go bad.” I had no idea what we should do about this, but keeping the whole order definitely was not an option.

  Stevie seemed to realize that, too. She picked up the phone and started to dial. “Hi,” she said when somebody answered. “I’m calling from Pine Hollow.”

  I couldn’t hear what the person on the other end of the phone was saying, so I just watched Stevie’s face. For a moment or two she continued to look worried, and I guessed she was trying to figure out how to explain the goof. Then her expression changed. She looked happier and happier with every passing second. I leaned forward on my chair, practically dying of curiosity. Finally she spoke.

  “You mean, you just want us to take a small portion of this gigantic delivery?” she asked.

  I gasped. Stevie has truly amazing luck sometimes, but this sounded too good to be true.

  It wasn’t, though. It was true. Stevie told me the whole story as soon as she hung up. It seemed a nearby racetrack had just had a big fire that had destroyed most of their feed supply. They desperately needed a whole lot of feed right away.

  Naturally, that made it a lot easier for Stevie to admit her mistake to the person at the feed company. Before long, everything had been straightened out. The driver unloaded the portion of the order that we actually needed before driving off to the track with the rest. It was all settled in time for us to tack up for jump class.

  That piece of good luck kept my spirits up for a while. But by the time three o’clock rolled around, I was feeling anxious and panicky. Mrs. Reg would be back in two hours, and there didn’t seem to be much chance of finding her pin before then. I wasn’t sure what upset me the most—the fact that I was to blame, the fact that the pin was valuable, or the fact that it had been a very special gift to Mrs. Reg from her husband, who had died long ago.

  I was thinking about all that as I groomed Diablo after our last class of the day. He still had some paint in his coat from the little accident earlier in the week, and I really wanted to get out as much of it as I could before Mrs. Reg saw him. She was going to be upset enough with me and my friends as it was.

  Carole stopped by to give me a bottle of apple juice and leaned on the stall door to talk for a moment. “That stuff’s really coming out, isn’t it?” she commented, looking at the paint.

  I just shrugged. Diablo was almost back to his normal bay self, but at the moment that didn’t seem like much consolation.

  “I’m going to run an errand,” Carole went on. “Dad told me he wouldn’t get to the store to buy the food for our lasagna tonight, so I brought the recipe with me. I’m going over to the shopping center to get the stuff.”

  I’d been so busy worrying about the missing pin that I’d completely forgotten we were all supposed to have a sleepover at Carole’s that night. Actually, I was a little surprised that Carole was thinking about our dinner at a time like that. Wasn’t she worried about what Mrs. Reg was going to say when she got home in just a couple of short hours? “You’re really going shopping?” I said.

  “I know it seems odd,” Carole said. “I was thinking the same thing you’re thinking now, but the fact is, worrying doesn’t change anything. It won’t help us find the pin.”

  Her words didn’t change the facts, but for some reason they made me feel a little better. Carole can sometimes seem sort of scatterbrained about anything other than horses. But she’s really a wise person deep down underneath all that.

  “All right,” I told her. “You do the shopping, and Stevie and I will search for the pin one more time. We’ll go back to the locker area. I know we combed every inch of it, but it’s still the most logical place.”

  “Good idea,” Carole said. “I’ll cross my fingers for you.”

  For the next two hours, every time I imagined Carole digging for a perfect tomato or grabbing a box of pasta with her fingers crossed, I couldn’t help a secret smile. But there wasn’t much else to smile about. Not only did Stevie and I have zero luck finding the pin, but Veronica diAngelo hung around while we were searching, smirking the whole time. She’d finally figured out what was going on, and she didn’t want to miss seeing Mrs. Reg yell at us instead of her for a change.

  I wasn’t thinking much about Veronica, though, as Stevie and I finally gave up and walked back to Mrs. Reg’s office to await her return. Stevie looked almost as glum as I felt as we dropped into the guest chairs.

  Carole entered a moment later clutching two bags of groceries. She set them on the bookshelf next to Mrs. Reg’s desk and shot us a sympathetic look. “No luck, huh?”

  We filled her in on our search and on Veronica’s annoying behavior. Before long Carole was looking just as depressed as we were.

  But now that the moment of truth was almost there, I was starting to feel strangely calm. There really wasn’t any other option—crying or yelling or running away wouldn’t solve anything. We’d tried our best to fix our mistake, and we’d failed. That was all there was to it. “I think I know what I’m going to say to Mrs. Reg,” I said.

  “You’ve thought up a way to explain the mess we’ve made?” Stevie asked.

  “Well, I haven’t figured out everything I’m going to say,” I replied, “but it’s going to begin with the words I’m sorry.”

  “That sort of covers it, doesn’t it?” Carole remarked. “Beginning, middle, and end.”

  “Very sorry,” Stevie agreed.

  At that moment we all heard the unmistakable sound of a car pulling into the driveway. I suppose it could have been any number of people driving in for any number of reasons, but all three of us knew who it was without looking. It was just about time for Max to return from picking up his mother at the airport.

  “Oh no,” I said, a bit of my earlier panic returning. “I think I’ve forgotten my speech.”

  “It starts with ‘I’m sorry,’ ” Stevie reminded me. “And if you forget, we’ll say it for you.”

  Before I could respond, I heard an
exclamation float through the open office window from the direction of the front of the stable. “Why, this is beautiful!” Mrs. Reg’s familiar voice cried.

  “What’s that, Mother?” Max asked.

  “The front of the stable! You painted it!”

  “Stevie, Lisa, and Carole decided to paint it,” Max explained. “I don’t know why—but they took a turn at painting Diablo while they were at it!” He laughed.

  I exchanged anxious glances with my friends.

  We stood to welcome Mrs. Reg as she bustled into the office a moment later. She grabbed all three of us and gathered us in for a big group hug. “The front of the stable looks great!” she exclaimed before any of us could speak. “When Morris sees how much better it looks, he’s going to love doing the painting for our living room! Don’t you think so, Max?”

  Max looked confused for a second, then his face cleared. “Definitely,” he agreed.

  Before we could try to figure out what any of that meant, Mrs. Reg turned to us with another big smile. “Whatever made you girls decide to take on that job?”

  “It was on your list,” Stevie said. “It said to paint the front of the stable.”

  Mrs. Reg raised her eyebrows in surprise. “No it didn’t,” she said. “Or maybe it did, but that wasn’t what I meant.”

  “Did we mess up again?” I asked, feeling worse than ever.

  “Again?” Mrs. Reg said. “This wasn’t a mess-up. This was a case of mind reading. See, my old friend Morris is coming tonight, and he’s staying with us for the weekend. He’s an artist, and he offered to do a painting of the stable for our home. I was planning to ask him to spruce the place up a bit in his painting, but now I don’t have to. He can make the painting look just like the real thing. Thanks!” She turned to her son. “Max, didn’t you even look at that list?” she asked. “Did you just let these girls do absolutely everything?”

  Max shrugged sheepishly. “They seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it,” he said. “Actually, I came in here last night and took a look at the chart Carole made for assigning horses, and I was very impressed. You have to get her to show you how she did it. I think you’ll want to use it, too. Can you show her, Carole?”

  “Well, sure,” Carole said. “But—”

  “No buts,” Mrs. Reg said, her eyes twinkling. “Because if you’ve gotten as good at assigning horses as Max says, you may just end up with the job permanently.”

  “Oh, no thank you,” Carole said quickly. “Um, I’m sure you do a much better job of it than I ever could.”

  Max smiled knowingly at her. He knew as well as anyone that assigning horses was a tricky job. “Well, that may be true, Mother, but the fact is that these girls have been working some magic around here in your absence.”

  I was a little surprised to hear that. Max had been so busy all week that we’d hardly seen him. I didn’t think he’d noticed much of anything we were doing, which seemed like a good thing when I remembered all of our embarrassing mix-ups and misunderstandings.

  There was a knock at the office door, and Veronica diAngelo strolled in. “Can I speak to you and Mrs. Reg for a minute?” she asked Max. “In private?”

  I gulped, guessing that she was about to spill the beans about the missing pin. It would be just like her to tattle on us before we even had a chance to confess.

  “Not right now,” Max told Veronica. “My mother just got back. Can it wait until morning?”

  “It’s important.” Veronica isn’t used to taking no for an answer, and she didn’t look happy about Max’s response.

  He didn’t notice. “A little later, then,” he said, turning away to address his mother again. “You should have heard what some of the other riders said about these three,” he told her.

  I gulped again. Maybe Max hadn’t been as clueless as I’d thought about what had been going on there lately. Had Mr. French told him what a fool I’d made of myself?

  Max went on before any of us could say anything. “We’ve got a whole basketball team that wants to learn to ride,” he told Mrs. Reg cheerfully. “Apparently their coach told them that horseback riding would help their balance. So four of them came and tried it. They loved it. I don’t know what these three did, but the players just couldn’t stop talking about how wonderful all the riders were and how much they loved the horses that had been assigned to them.”

  Mrs. Reg beamed. “It’s awfully nice to know that when I’m gone, my shoes can be filled by young riders Max and I have trained so well.”

  I barely heard her complimentary words. I’d just checked out Veronica’s face out of the corner of my eye, and she didn’t look happy about all the praise being heaped on The Saddle Club. It wouldn’t be long before she interrupted with her big announcement, I was sure.

  Max was nodding. “But I can’t claim any credit for the French lesson one of these young riders delivered,” he said. “A new rider said he never had more fun or learned more on a trail ride than he did with Lisa. He said something about having a friend who wants to learn Arabic and wondered if we had any Arabian horses. I don’t know what he was talking about, but he signed up for six months’ worth of trail riding. For that, I’ll learn Urdu! I don’t know what you did, Lisa, but thank you.”

  I was stunned, to say the least. “It’s a long story,” I told Max. “But you’re welcome.”

  “Max,” Veronica whined, “I need to talk to you now.”

  “Not now, Veronica,” Max replied. Then he continued to tell his mother about all the wonderful things we’d done that week. He was going on and on about how helpful we’d been to the people at Connor’s when Veronica finally got fed up.

  “Max, now!” she snapped peevishly.

  Max shot her a slightly irritated glance. “Can’t you see that my mother hasn’t even taken her coat off?”

  It was true. Max and Mrs. Reg had been so busy singing our praises that she was still wearing her light raincoat. Max finally reached to help her off with it. When it came off, I couldn’t believe my eyes.

  The pin! There it was, a little golden horse with a diamond eye, fastened securely to Mrs. Reg’s blue blouse!

  There was stunned silence for a moment. Even Veronica was speechless.

  “Y-Your pin—” I stuttered at last.

  “I always wear it when I’m dressed up.” Mrs. Reg didn’t seem to realize that anything unusual was happening. She certainly couldn’t have guessed that I felt as though a sixteen-ton weight had just been lifted off my chest. “Though, of course, it doesn’t belong in a stable. I mean, look what happened last time I had it here. You girls did a wonderful thing by calming Prancer. I had to rush after I picked up the pin where you’d left it for me in the locker area, so I never had a chance to tell you how proud I was of the job you were doing. But I’m sure Max remembered to tell you, didn’t he?”

  “Max?” Stevie repeated.

  “You did remember, didn’t you?” Mrs. Reg asked her son.

  Max’s sheepish look was enough of an answer for all of us.

  “You mean he never told you I got the pin?” Mrs. Reg asked.

  I shook my head, not trusting my voice at the moment. I still could hardly dare to believe that the pin was there, safe and sound, let alone that it had all been a terrible mix-up.

  Mrs. Reg turned to her son again. “Max Regnery,” she began sternly, “is it possible that you knew that these girls were worried sick about my pin and you didn’t tell them, just because you knew they’d be trying to do everything in the world to find it and to try to make up for losing it?”

  Sometimes it’s amazing how quick Mrs. Reg can be about figuring things out. How does she do it?

  We don’t get to see Max squirm too often, but he was definitely squirming just then. “Veronica,” he said, sounding a bit desperate under his mother’s steady gaze. “What is it you wanted to say to us?”

  “Nothing,” Veronica replied darkly. She spun on her heel and marched out of the office.

  My friends a
nd I weren’t far behind her. Oh, and by the way—Mrs. Reg ended up taking Carole’s bags of groceries, thinking Max had bought them for her. It turned out that when she’d put “Buy food for Friday” on her list, she was talking about food for people, not horses. She needed something to cook for her friend who was coming to visit!

  We didn’t bother to tell her the truth. Instead, we went out for pizza and ice cream. And that’s how the day that started out looking like one of the worst of my life turned out just fine in the end!

  Still, I don’t ever want to go through a week like that again. We were just lucky that Mrs. Reg’s pin wasn’t really lost after all. It easily could have been. The next time I borrow someone’s valuable piece of jewelry, I’ll make sure I don’t let it out of my grasp, no matter how many cats or mice or horses or elephants run through the room! If it hadn’t been for that one mistake, we wouldn’t have thought the pin was lost. And we wouldn’t have been trying so hard to impress Max and Mrs. Reg that we ended up making a lot of assumptions and bad guesses that led to big misunderstandings.

  Speaking of misunderstandings, I just remembered that I pasted in that letter from my brother a couple of days ago. I was so busy when it came that I hardly had time to skim it, but I just went back and looked at it. It made me feel kind of strange, actually. Almost sad, in a way. I mean, my brother has been living far away for so long—first he went away to college in Chicago, then he transferred to that university in England. And every summer he seems to have some kind of job or something to do that keeps him away from home, whether it’s being a camp counselor or, now, traveling around Europe. In a weird way, I’ve almost started to feel as though I don’t have a brother anymore at all. It’s almost like all the years when Peter and I both lived here were just a dream, or something that happened to someone else. But that doesn’t make much sense, because I still love him a lot, and I still miss him like crazy at weird times, like whenever I eat a peanut butter and banana sandwich (his favorite). It’s hard to believe how long it’s been since I’ve seen him or even heard his voice.