The Long Ride Page 3

  “Is that a horse van I hear?” Emily asked, sitting up in her chair so that she could see through the office window.

  Carole looked, too. Emily was right. Fez was there. Time to become the welcoming innkeeper, directing her newest guest into the stable.

  TWO

  “Welcome to Pine Hollow,” Carole said to the van driver. “My name is Carole Hanson, and—”

  “Let’s just get this baby unloaded. We’re late and it’s all because of him. Here are the papers.”

  The driver shoved a clipboard at Carole and went to the back of the van, where he started opening the latch. Even before the door was open, Carole knew they were in for some trouble. She could hear the horse stomping on the floor. He whinnied. The sound conveyed both irritation and restlessness.

  She looked at the papers. Everything seemed to be in order. Fez had come from a farm in West Virginia. He’d been traveling about six hours, and he obviously didn’t like it. Some horses took traveling in stride, settled into new homes easily, adjusted to a variety of riders, and did their best for each one. Nothing that Carole had learned so far about Fez made her think he was that kind of horse.

  While she finished checking the paperwork, Ben stepped up to give the van driver a hand. It was almost like opening a Christmas present—one that really wanted to get out of the box.

  First the outer doors were unlatched and swung open. Then the driver lowered the ramp. Next came the inner door, the stall enclosure inside the van. And there was Fez—or at least Fez’s rump. His tail switched agitatedly.

  Ben hopped up into the van and clipped a lead rope onto the Arabian’s halter.

  “You’re going to have to mask him,” the driver said. “It took that, and more, to get him on. Lord knows what it’ll take to get him off.”

  Carole and Ben each took one side of Fez, guiding him every step of the way, and every step was painful—at least for Carole. With Fez’s first step, he managed to give Carole a solid kick in her thigh. She could feel her flesh welting up into a swollen mass and knew it would be a beauty of a bruise.

  “Thanks, boy,” she said gently. It wasn’t what she really wanted to say, but losing her temper with a horse had never done any good. She patted Fez on the neck, hoping to soothe him. He eyed her warily, and then Ben slipped a hood over his head.

  The theory was that if a horse couldn’t see where he was going, he would follow a lead willingly, since it was probably more reliable than information he was getting with his eyes. Fez apparently wasn’t confident about Carole’s and Ben’s ability to lead him, so he remained almost as balky with the mask as he had been without it.

  “Time for a bribe,” Carole said. She pulled a carrot out of her pocket and held it in front of his nose. Fez sniffed and then took it up in his teeth, nipping Carole’s hand as he did so. Carole suspected he’d done it on purpose, but she still didn’t lose her temper. She had a bruised leg and a sore hand and all they’d managed to do was to get the horse to the top of the ramp.

  It took another half hour before the job was done. Step by step, carrot by carrot, sore finger by swollen toe, Carole and Ben finally had Fez on the ground and removed his mask. He thanked them by rearing. Carole wasn’t sorry when she could finally ask Ben to take the horse to his stall while she finished up the paperwork. Ben said nothing as he led the balky gelding into the stable. A lot of horses were difficult to get into and out of vans. Few remained cranky when they were on solid ground. Fez appeared to be an exception to that rule. Ben patted him and spoke to him, but Fez’s ears remained pinned to his head. Still, he followed Ben.

  “Whew, he’s a handful,” Carole said. “I guess it’ll take a few days for him to settle in.”

  “Don’t count on it,” said the driver. He took his own copy of the documentation and left Carole wondering what he knew that she didn’t.

  She could have checked to see if Ben needed a hand, but she headed straight back to the office. Callie was bound to show up in a few minutes, and Carole wanted to be sure her file was complete and all the stable’s records were properly prepared. She didn’t want to disappoint the congressman’s daughter. Each of Pine Hollow’s boarders had a notebook in which all the paperwork was kept—everything from transport records to immunizations to feeding schedules to exercise records. There was a lot of information to enter already. She sat down at her desk and took out a new notebook, plus dividers, labels, and forms. She had barely begun to type up the labels before her first interruption.

  “Guess what I got!”

  It was Stevie, running into the office breathless with excitement. It could only mean one thing.

  “You passed?”

  “You bet I did!” Stevie said. “I am now a fully licensed driver. Here, look!” she said, holding out the brand-new license. It looked a lot like the one Carole already had.

  “It’s beautiful!” Carole said, with only a hint of sarcasm. She’d long ago learned that sometimes the easiest way to get along with Stevie was to agree with her—especially when she was being totally irrational. Actually, considering the accomplishment, Carole didn’t really think Stevie was being all that irrational. A new driver’s license was something to be happy about.

  “And Alex?” Carole asked. Stevie and Alex were taking their tests on the same day.

  “Well, it was a near thing, but he passed, too,” Stevie conceded. Carole strongly suspected it hadn’t been a near thing at all. Stevie used to spend a lot of time competing with all three of her brothers. Their house still bore the scars of a few water balloons gone astray. Now that they were older, they no longer fought as they had in the past, but it was still sometimes difficult for Stevie to admit in public that her twin was actually related to her. The only thing he’d ever done that she boasted about on his behalf was to fall in love with her friend Lisa.

  “He told me he started to turn the wheels the wrong way in the middle of his three-point turn, but he corrected it before they said anything. Can you imagine? Blowing a three-point turn?”

  “And you?” Carole asked.

  “It went like a breeze,” Stevie said. “When they asked me what the rearview mirror was for, I explained that it was for putting on lipstick without lowering the visor. No problem.”

  Carole almost believed her, but then Stevie had been able to pull her leg as long as they’d known each other.

  “And the horn is to let your friends know you’re waiting, right?”

  “Exactly,” said Stevie. “Now, do you want to go for a ride?”

  “Well, sure,” Carole said. “I’ll be done here in another hour, and I was planning to exercise Starlight then. Why don’t you go groom Belle and tack them both up? We can be on the trail right after I’m done. We can’t take a long ride, but it should be fun—”

  “Actually, I meant in my car. I don’t have time to ride Belle today. I saw this ad in the paper—”

  “Oh,” Carole said, disappointed. It would have been fun to ride with Stevie.

  “No, it’s really good news,” Stevie said, sensing Carole’s disappointment. “See, now that Alex and I have our licenses, we can both drive the car Chad left when he went to college. We’ve worked out a schedule for it, and it means I can get a job. Actually, I just about have to get a job, because Mom and Dad are making us pay the insurance and that’s a lot of money, which is why Alex is going to be spending the summer breaking his back mowing lawns. Anyway, I heard that Pizza Manor is looking for a delivery person because Alex’s friend, Elroy, quit last night and the manager gets in at eleven today and he’ll be desperate for a new driver. Who could be more perfect than yours truly?”

  “Nobody,” Carole agreed. “You are, without a doubt, the ideal person for the job. Go for it.”

  “Well, the interview isn’t for another forty-five minutes, so I thought I’d visit with you.”

  Carole looked at the pile of work on her desk, including the notebook of Fez’s records. Time spent with Stevie was rarely time spent doing a job, much as she w
ould have liked to talk with her friend—even to hear more details about her driving test. But she had to work.

  “Look, I can’t,” she said. “I’m sorry, but the new horse just came in, and I’ve got to get some paperwork done before the owner arrives. But the good news is that I’ve asked Emily to cover for me the day after tomorrow so you and Lisa and I can go on our farewell ride before you-know-what happens.”

  “I sure do know what,” Stevie said. “It’s the only topic of discussion at my house these days. Well, I mean it’s the only thing Alex wants to talk about. I’m sorry Lisa’s going away for the summer, but I guess I understand it. It’s her father, after all.

  “That’s great that Emily can cover for you. We should be able to be out of here by ten o’clock or so.”

  “That’s what I thought,” said Carole. “And we won’t have to worry about your new job meaning you can’t go. There aren’t too many people who order pizzas for breakfast.”

  “I think we’ll be safe on that score, if I get the job.”

  “Job? What job?” Lisa entered the office.

  “I got my license, and now I’m going to apply for a job at Pizza Manor.”

  “Oh, that’s great!” said Lisa. “By any chance, did anybody else in your family get a license today?”

  “Gee, who could she be asking about?” Stevie said.

  “Both your parents have licenses,” Carole said. “And we all know Chad does. So that leaves the dog, right?”

  “Only if the dog is named Alex,” said Lisa. “Did he pass?”

  “Yeah, he did,” Stevie assured her. “And that means he can get to all those lawns he’s going to mow while you’re away. You won’t have to worry about him getting into trouble at all. He’ll be too tired every night to do anything.”

  “I wasn’t worried about that,” Lisa said. “I know you’ll look after my interests.”

  “Actually,” Stevie said, “you are the one thing we almost never talk about. He used to confide in me about his girlfriends, but not about you. Oh, sure, he’s been mooning around the house, complaining about you going away for the whole summer, but he never says anything really personal. He assumes you talk to me about him.”

  “Which of course I don’t,” said Lisa.

  “That’s the problem with having your brother date your best friend. I’m missing out on all the good dope from two people I used to be able to count on!”

  Lisa flopped into the other chair in Carole’s office. Carole glanced at Fez’s incomplete notebook and the pile of other paperwork that awaited her, but for the moment, her friends’ concerns were more important. Fez could wait a few minutes.

  “This is the worst!” Carole said. “Stevie and I are going to miss you, and Alex is going to be miserable, and that’ll make Stevie miserable, and you know that when Stevie’s miserable, the whole world is miserable.”

  “Aw, come on,” Lisa said, a little bite in her voice. “It’s not going to be that long. I didn’t ask my parents to get a divorce. I didn’t tell Dad to fall in love with someone who lives in California. I didn’t choose to have my life split in half.”

  “Easy, easy,” Carole said. “We’re just venting. I guess none of us much likes the whole situation, so maybe we’d better stop talking about it.”

  “Or else we could look on the positive side,” Stevie suggested.

  “And that is?”

  “You’re going to spend a whole summer in sunny Southern California. You’ll certainly get to see Skye, and that’s always lots of fun.”

  “He’s pretty busy,” Lisa said.

  “Starring in another movie?” asked Carole. Skye Ransom was an actor the girls had known for a long time. They’d met him by accident—his accident—when he’d fallen off a horse. They’d helped him out, and they’d been friends ever since.

  “No, it’s not a movie,” said Stevie. “It’s a television series. A contemporary series set on a horse ranch. He’s been cast as the young romantic lead. All the girls who come to the ranch fall in love with him.”

  “That’s more like fact than fiction,” Lisa remarked. Then she realized that her boyfriend’s sister might not find that very funny. “Not that he’s my type, mind you. Personally, I prefer the lawn mower type to the handsome young star type.”

  “I’ll be sure to tell Alex you said that,” Stevie promised.

  “No, don’t,” said Lisa. “I don’t think he likes to hear anything about Skye Ransom. He can’t help being insecure, but, honestly, he has nothing to be insecure about. Skye’s just a friend.”

  “Even with all the razzle-dazzle of Hollywood?” Carole asked.

  “Especially with all that,” Lisa said. “It’s a nice place to visit, you know?”

  “But you wouldn’t want to live there?”

  “Never,” Lisa said. “Absolutely never.”

  “Well, that’s good enough for me,” Carole said. She pulled a pile of papers in front of her.

  “I think that’s a hint,” Lisa said. She stood up. Stevie stood up as well, then glanced at her watch.

  “Oh, look! It’s time for me to go to Pizza Manor. Do you want to come along for a ride?” she asked Lisa.

  “Sure,” Lisa agreed.

  “You can’t apply for the job,” Stevie said, suddenly a little concerned that super-organized Lisa might beat her to the job she was counting on, just to avoid being away from Alex.

  “Don’t worry. I’m hungry. I’ll have some veggie pizza while you wow the manager with your driving skills, your reliability, and your sparkling personality.”

  “Deal,” Stevie said.

  The two of them said good-bye to Carole and headed out.

  Carole opened up the notebook, and on the top of the first page, she wrote Fez.

  THREE

  “Stevie, relax. You don’t have to hold the wheel so tightly,” said Lisa.

  “I do kind of clutch it, don’t I?” Stevie acknowledged. She tried to relax her hands. Her knuckles changed from milky white to a healthy flesh color.

  “Are you nervous when you drive?” Lisa asked uneasily.

  “No, not really,” said Stevie. “But you know, it’s kind of new, with my driver’s license and all. I don’t want to make any mistakes.”

  “You won’t,” Lisa said. “All you have to do is to keep a few things in mind. Keep your hands steady, your foot limber, and your eyes moving, and concentrate on where you’re going.”

  “Sounds just like riding a horse,” Stevie said.

  “I guess so, and, like riding a horse, it’s a matter of being able to focus on fifteen or twenty things at once, like that double-parked—Stevie!”

  Stevie swerved to the left, avoiding the double-parked car by a good tenth of an inch. Lisa felt her heart slowly settle back into her chest.

  “No problem,” Stevie assured her.

  “Right,” Lisa agreed. She decided not to distract Stevie by giving her any more instructions until they reached Pizza Manor. It hadn’t been all that long ago that Lisa had gotten her own driver’s license. She was a year older than Stevie, a year ahead of her in school, and a year more experienced as a driver. Her own first day had been spent driving her friends to and from every place in town where they’d wanted to go. It had been wonderful fun, even if they had never gone above fifteen miles per hour. Now, a year later, she was an able and confident driver. Soon enough Stevie would be, too.

  Stevie managed to complete the trip without any more near misses or even not-so-near ones. She looked at her watch. She was right on time for her interview. Being on time had never been one of her strong points. Perhaps getting her driver’s license and being on time for an appointment on the same day meant she was turning over a new leaf. She took a nice deep breath. Everything was going to be wonderful. She would get the job. She was sure of it. She and Lisa walked in together.

  Pizza Manor was a small restaurant in the shopping center near Pine Hollow. The shopping center had few things to recommend it. Besides Pizza Manor,
which was a relatively new addition, there were a handful of other stores that seemed to change regularly: a shoe store that became a record store; a gift shop that turned into a liquor store and then into a dry cleaner’s. The two things there that never seemed to change were the supermarket and TD’s. TD’s stood for Tastee Delight. It was an ice cream shop that Stevie, Lisa, and Carole had been going to as long as they’d been friends. They still liked crowding into their favorite booth every now and then for something sweet and gooey.

  “Welcome to Pizza Manor. May I help you?” said the smiling girl behind the counter.

  The girl was Polly Giacomin. She rode at Pine Hollow with Stevie and Lisa. It felt funny to have her offer to wait on them.

  “Hi, Polly,” Lisa said. “I’ll have a slice of veggie pizza and a small diet soda.”

  “M’kay.… Stevie?”

  “I’ll have an interview.”

  Polly smiled. She knew Stevie.

  “So you passed the test?”

  Stevie nodded.

  “The manager’s in the back. I’ll let him know you’re here. He’s been tearing out his hair all day because Elroy quit last night. He’s afraid he’s going to have to make the deliveries himself. Just smile nicely, show him your license, and you’ll get the job.”

  She drew a soda and slipped a slice of pizza onto a red-and-white-checked paper plate, then handed them to Lisa. “Hang on a second,” she said to Stevie.

  Lisa took her lunch to a nearby table and sat down to eat and wait.

  Stevie didn’t move, afraid that she couldn’t. The day had been something else. In spite of what she’d said to her friends, her driving test hadn’t gone that smoothly. She loved driving. She’d loved it from the first moment her father had let her sit behind the wheel the day she’d gotten her learner’s permit. She loved the powerful feel of the car, knowing that she and she alone was in charge. It was similar to but not exactly the same as riding, since the car was only a machine and not a living, responsive animal. But what a machine it was—big, noisy, shiny, expensive. It could take her anywhere. She didn’t have to feed it or groom it. She only had to give it gas—and pay the insurance.