Horse Play Read online

  “3. Misses my brother?” Lisa wrote. Lisa’s brother was away at camp for the summer. Was it possible that she was simply upset about that? It seemed unlikely as an explanation for the overbearing motherliness. Besides, she’d never showered so much attention on Lisa’s brother. He wouldn’t put up with it. Lisa had always just accepted it. Only now, there was too much to take. She was acting like a total mother hen.

  Mother …

  Her pen nearly shook as she wrote her next thought—a possible explanation for weird behavior:

  “4. Pregnant?”

  Could that be possible? Lisa was almost 14 years old! No way! she told herself, hoping that wasn’t just wishful thinking. But pregnant women got strange cravings for food, not interior decorations, she reasoned. Not computer lessons! Homemade chocolate chip cookies, maybe? She shuddered at the thought.

  Lisa looked back over her short list and reconsidered each possibility. Number four was too weird. Number two was too vague. Number one made some sense.

  Except at dinner that night, Mrs. Atwood kept talking about how interesting the drill practice was. And then, for dessert, she served red gelatin with bananas in it, from a horse-shaped mold!

  Does red gelatin with bananas in it qualify as a strange food craving under number four? Lisa asked herself. What can it mean if it’s shaped like a horse?

  FOR THE NEXT couple of weeks, things seemed fairly normal. Lisa’s mother continued to be too much of a mother, but Lisa got used to it. The Saddle Club had classes three times a week, and drill practice three times a week, too. Max was too busy with all his new students to notice the frenzy of activity at the drill practices. But from time to time, as he passed by the ring where the girls were yelling at one another and trying to control their horses, he would note that there was steady improvement.

  “Better!” he said one day—and from Max that was a big compliment. Then he followed up with, “Lisa, don’t forget to keep your toes in. Stevie, stop talking to your horse in English. Comanche talks sign language. Tell him what you want him to know with your legs and your hands. Carole, sit back in the saddle!”

  Lisa wondered, as she had from her very first lesson, how Max could see so many things wrong at the same time!

  After practice that day, the girls were going to begin publicity work for their show. Lisa had made a flyer on her family’s computer and it even had a picture of a horse on it. Stevie had her mother take it to her office to copy. Mrs. Lake’s secretary had made them copies in blue, yellow, and red to put on local bulletin boards and in shop windows. They were going to paint some large posters too.

  “Come on, let’s pack it in for the day,” Stevie said. “I don’t think I can do that cloverleaf one more time!”

  “I don’t think we’ve actually done it once,” Carole said pointedly.

  Stevie looked like her feelings were hurt, but Lisa thought there was some truth to what Carole had said. She also thought Stevie had a point. “So, we’re not perfect. We’re not even good yet,” she said to her friends. “But enough is enough. We’ve been at it for more than an hour and we’re tired. The way we feel right now, we’re not going to get any better. Stevie’s right. Let’s quit for the day. It’s time to stick the posters up.”

  Carole paused for a moment, glancing at both of her friends. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re both right. Let’s go post posters. Where do we start?”

  “We start right here,” Lisa said sensibly. “Mrs. Reg sometimes sends out a newsletter to riders. Maybe she’d include some of our posters.”

  “Hey, great idea!” Stevie said as the girls dismounted and led their horses back to their stalls. “Let’s finish up here and then give her some posters before we leave.”

  “What?” Mrs. Reg said as she looked at the small posters Stevie handed to her. “What is this?” She pointed to the posters in her hand.

  “It’s a little drill show we’re going to put on,” Stevie said, hoping to calm Mrs. Reg.

  “You’ve scheduled a show here without telling me about it? Without asking me about it?”

  “We didn’t think you’d mind,” Lisa said, adding her calming words to Stevie’s.

  “We thought you’d be excited for us,” Carole said. “We’ve made so much progress with our drill work.…”

  “All that yelling at one another I just heard,” Mrs. Reg said. “That’s progress?”

  The girls nodded sheepishly.

  “A lot of progress,” Stevie said. “Anyway, we’ve scheduled the thing for a Friday afternoon at a time when there are no ring classes—only trail rides. It must be okay. Isn’t it?”

  Mrs. Reg frowned. Normally, Mrs. Reg was a cheerful, supportive person. A lot of the riders, including The Saddle Club, really liked her and almost thought of her as a mother. Now, however, her face was dark, her temper was short.

  “Maybe, maybe,” she snapped. “It might work, but it shouldn’t happen this way. You should ask me before you plan something like this. You should probably ask me in writing. I should talk to Max to make sure the stableboys will be free. But you’ve already made all the plans. Without asking me.” She looked at the poster carefully and then flipped through the pages of her plan book.

  “There’s a lot of strange stuff going on here these days,” Mrs. Reg continued. “I never saw so many new students—and every single one of them needs to ask me a million questions. There’s stuff getting all mixed up in the tack room and Max has been storming around here like he doesn’t know what to do with these young riders. Did you hear the racket when those Scouts were here?” Stevie squirmed uncomfortably where she stood. Mrs. Reg didn’t seem to expect an answer to her last question. Stevie was glad about that.

  “And the locker room! A couple of times a week, there’s another mess in there, and nobody to own up to it! What is this, some kind of spa where the staff spends all its time pampering the guests? It is not! It’s a stable. It’s a working stable and right now, nothing seems to be working. Now, I’ve even got to schedule some kind of spur-of-the-moment drill show!”

  Grumbling to herself, she continued shuffling through her calendar. Her hands found the right place in her plan book and she began to write something in, glancing back and forth between the poster and her schedule.

  “Here,” she said, looking back up at the girls. “You’re in the book. It’s done. I’m sending out a mailing in a few days. I’ll enclose these, too.” She put some of the posters in her top drawer with the plan book and closed it shut, firmly.

  Stevie grinned. “Oh, thanks, Mrs. Reg. I knew you’d do it!”

  “Thanks very much,” Lisa said.

  Carole nodded her thanks to the woman, too. “I’m sorry if we caused you any trouble,” she said.

  “Hmph!” Mrs. Reg said, reaching for the catalog she’d been reading when the girls arrived. She looked at it intensely. The girls knew they’d been dismissed.

  In unison, they spun around and returned to the locker room.

  “Phew!” Stevie said. That said it for all of them.

  WHILE STEVIE AND Carole finished packing their riding clothes into their backpacks, Lisa fetched their sodas from the refrigerator. Max and Mrs. Reg always kept soda there for the students. Since the Saddle Club girls had their drill work after class, their sodas were still waiting for them—sort of. Lisa found that on each of the three cans set aside for them, the top had been snapped and the sodas had gotten flat.

  “At least it’s cold,” Lisa said, handing each girl a can of flat soda.

  “Swell,” Stevie said, taking a swig and then pouring the rest of the can out in the sink. “I think I’ll drink water instead.”

  “We could stop at TD’s and get something there,” Carole suggested.

  “Sure,” Stevie agreed. “We need to put notices up at the shopping center anyway. Okay for you?” she asked Lisa.

  Lisa nodded. “It’s okay,” she said. Her mother and Aunt Maude were visiting the Smithsonian Institution twenty miles away in Wash
ington, D.C. It was a very big museum. They’d be gone for hours.

  LISA WASN’T SO lucky on the day of her next class. Her mother insisted on driving her over and on staying for both class and drill practice. Nobody else’s mother was there. It might not have been so bad if Mrs. Atwood had just sat there. But Mrs. Atwood wasn’t a silent sitter. Every time Lisa had passed where she sat, her mother had waved or applauded or smiled. Lisa wished she’d been invisible.

  Stevie and Carole didn’t like seeing their friend so uncomfortable, but there really wasn’t anything they could do to help her. They tried their best between class and drill practice. Carole took Mrs. Atwood to the tack room and introduced her to Mrs. Reg. The girls hoped that the two women would get to talking and Mrs. Atwood would forget about drill practice. It didn’t work. As soon as the three girls were back in the ring, Mrs. Atwood reappeared.

  “Here I am, dear!” she said, waving brightly to Lisa. Lisa sighed.

  It was all Lisa could do to concentrate while her mother watched. Carole was trying to teach her how to get Pepper to change his lead while he was cantering. The horse’s different gaits always followed a definite pattern of footfalls, distinct to the gait, but in cantering, it could start on either the left or the right side. When a horse changed leads in a canter, it had the effect of making it look as if the horse were skipping and it looked really elegant. Carole wanted them to incorporate it in their drill routine. Lisa was having trouble getting Pepper to follow her signals—or perhaps more correctly, she was having trouble giving Pepper signals to follow!

  Finally, after an hour of near total frustration, Pepper came to a grinding halt and refused to move.

  “I know exactly how he feels,” Lisa said. “I don’t want to move either.”

  “I guess that makes it time to stop,” Stevie said sensibly.

  Carole nodded agreement. “You’ve almost got it,” she said. “You’ll get it next time. Pepper will, too, you’ll see. We’d have to stop anyway—I’ve got an orthodontist appointment.”

  “And I promised my mother I’d clean the pool,” Stevie said.

  “Is it time for me to take you home, dear?” Mrs. Atwood asked from the sidelines. Lisa glanced over at her. In spite of herself, she smiled. Her mother always seemed to be there whenever she thought Lisa might need her. Of course, that wasn’t necessarily when Lisa actually needed her. At that moment, what Lisa needed more than anything was some time away from her mother. She had to think fast.

  “I can’t go home yet, Mom,” she said.

  “I know. You have to change, don’t you?”

  “Well, yes, but I have some chores to do,” Lisa fibbed. She’d actually done all her chores as soon as she’d arrived, but there was always more work to do at Pine Hollow. She’d find something, and Mrs. Reg would no doubt be glad to have her help.

  “I’ll wait, darling,” Mrs. Atwood assured her.

  “No, Mom. It could take a long time. You go on home now.”

  “But how will you get home?” she asked.

  Lisa thought quickly. This was a catch question. She smiled. “I’ll call you when I’m done,” she said. “You can come pick me up then, okay?”

  “Okay,” Mrs. Atwood agreed, rising slowly from the uncomfortable wooden bench. “I’ll hear from you later, then. Good-bye, Stevie and Carole. Can I give either of you a lift?” she offered.

  “Oh, no thanks,” they said in a single voice, almost too fast.

  After Mrs. Atwood left, the girls took their horses back to their stalls, removed their tack, resupplied their hay, and gave them a little bit of water. The girls worked efficiently and, for once, didn’t talk much among themselves. Lisa knew that both of her friends were feeling a little sorry for her because of the strange way her mother was acting these days. She didn’t much want to talk about it and they could sense that. When they finished with the horses, they changed back into their street clothes. Stevie and Carole left to go their own ways, leaving Lisa to the quiet solitude of Pine Hollow in the late afternoon.

  She took a saddle down off its rack, grabbed the can of saddle soap and a small bucket of water, and began to work at removing the grimy build-up.

  As she worked, one of the stable’s cats emerged from behind a feed-grain box where it had been hiding, probably trying to corner a mouse. Pine Hollow, like most stables, kept cats around, and they were expected to work for their living. This was a grey tiger kitten—a product of the most recent litter. His name was Justin Morgan. All of the cats at Pine Hollow were named after famous horses. This kitten—stocky, but strong and determined—had been named after the founding horse of the Morgan breed. It seemed appropriate.

  Justin watched the stirrup leathers that dangled to the floor while Lisa worked on cleaning and polishing the saddle. The kitten remained in a crouched position, watching every twitching move of the leather. His body stayed immobile. His eyes followed the action, and his ears twitched. He was waiting for exactly the right moment.

  “You’ve sure got patience,” Lisa remarked to the kitten. “I wish I could have it like you do. I need your kind of patience with my mother.”

  “What did you say, Lisa?” Mrs. Reg asked from her office, which adjoined the tack room.

  “I was just talking to Justin,” she said. “He’s planning his attack on some stirrup leathers.”

  “If he’s interested in stirrup leathers, chances are he didn’t get that mouse I heard him chasing,” Mrs. Reg said. She walked into the tack room and stood near Justin, putting her hands on her hips. “Get to work, now,” she said. “You know what your job is, don’t you?”

  The kitten glanced up at her quickly, and Lisa hauled the stirrup leathers up off the floor and began soaping them. When the kitten looked back and saw that his target had disappeared, he stood up and slunk off, back behind the grain box, presumably to find his mouse again.

  “Good,” Mrs. Reg said. “Now everybody’s working.” She smiled at Lisa. “But what are you still doing here? I thought your mother was going to drive you home.”

  “She wanted to,” Lisa explained. “But I thought I ought to put in some time on these saddles.”

  “Hmmm,” Mrs. Reg said. Lisa thought that meant that Mrs. Reg knew Lisa wasn’t telling the whole truth.

  “Don’t work too hard,” Mrs. Reg said.

  “Why not?” Lisa asked. It wasn’t like Mrs. Reg at all to suggest that riders shouldn’t work too hard.

  “I remember a horse we had here once,” Mrs. Reg said, settling down on the bench next to Lisa. She took the bridle that was paired with the saddle Lisa was working on and began cleaning it with another sponge. “Name was Camille.”

  Lisa cleaned and polished silently. Mrs. Reg had a way of knowing an interesting story about a horse or a rider that would fit every situation. She couldn’t be hurried when she was telling her stories, though. Lisa had learned early on at Pine Hollow to be quiet when Mrs. Reg was in a storytelling mood.

  “Her owner got this idea that she was frail. And for a while, old Max was fooled into thinking so, too.” Old Max was Mrs. Reg’s husband, and the father of Max, Lisa’s teacher. The students sometimes laughed that the Regnery family ran out of names after they discovered “Max.” “Anyway, Camille surprised us. At first, she was healthy and robust, but as time went on, she got weaker and weaker and harder to ride. Max had the vet look at her whenever he came by, but he couldn’t see anything wrong with the horse. After a while, as the horse kind of broke down, the woman who owned her was so upset that she hardly ever came to the stable. Then the horse started to get better.”

  Lisa furrowed her brows trying to figure this one out. There was, she had learned, always a reason for the stories that Mrs. Reg told. She waited patiently as the tale unfolded.

  “So, when the horse became healthy again and her owner returned to ride her, Max watched over them very carefully. It turned out to be very simple. The problem was that the woman was crazy about her horse and always tried to do everything for her. S
he always showed up with an apple or a lump of sugar or carrots or some leftover from her own table. As you know, it’s not a good idea to give horses too many treats, because they come to expect them and can be ill-mannered if they don’t get them. But even worse, this woman was giving Camille so many treats that she was losing her appetite for foods that were really good for her. The poor horse was suffering from an overload of love!” Mrs. Reg soaped the cheek strap carefully, keeping Lisa thinking.

  “Too much of a good thing?” Lisa suggested.

  “What?” Mrs. Reg said, as if she hadn’t heard Lisa because she’d been concentrating too much on the cheek strap.

  “What happened?” Lisa asked.

  “The horse was fine,” Mrs. Reg answered. “Had a foal the next year. Max bred her to one of our stallions.”

  “No, I mean, what happened to the owner?” she asked.

  “Oh, she was just fine, too,” Mrs. Reg said. “As soon as the foal was born, she really had her hands full.”

  Mrs. Reg finished soaping the bridle. Lisa couldn’t believe how fast she could clean a bridle. “There,” Mrs. Reg said, satisfied with her work. She hung the bridle back up on the bracket and retreated to her office.

  Lisa was almost done with the saddle. She finished cleaning the last expanse of leather and looked at the gentle sheen of the dark brown saddle. She thought about Mrs. Reg’s story about the horse, Camille. What was Mrs. Reg trying to tell her.

  Foal? Camille had a foal? Lisa’s heart jumped into her mouth.

  “Oh, no!” she said out loud to nobody.

  CAROLE PUSHED THE “start” button on the stereo and mounted Diablo. Her friends were waiting on the other side of the riding ring for the music to begin.

  “One-two-three, and … she said as the marching band began blasting out “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” On the second count of four, the horses began moving where their riders wanted them to go. The girls were working on an exercise that had proved very difficult in the past. Starting from the edge of the ring at equal distance from the others, each rider was to make her horse trot in spirals, like the groove of a record, so that the three would meet in the center. It took a lot of precision because if the girls didn’t watch out, the horses got all bunched up together while they were still supposed to be apart.