Hayride

The phone rang at the Marsten household. Phil answered it, hoping to hear Stevie’s voice again. Instead, a female voice he didn’t recognize right away spoke to him. “Stevie Lake was at the mall with Bob Harris yesterday. They were sitting together in the back of a restaurant, laughing a lot. They seemed to know each other
quite
well. If I were you, I’d do something … 
fast.
”

“Who is this?” Phil demanded. The line went dead. He listened to the dial tone for a minute, frowning.

I would like to express my special thanks to Caitlin C. Macy for her help in the writing of this book.

C
AROLE
H
ANSON SPRANG
out of bed. The bright light streaming through her windows told her that it would be a perfectly cloudless day. She glanced at the clock radio on her bedside table: 9:34
A.M.
It was a Sunday morning, and Carole had arranged to go trail riding that afternoon with her two best friends, Lisa Atwood and Stevie Lake. She did some quick calculating. They were supposed to hit the trail at noon. If she hurried, it would take under an hour to get dressed, eat breakfast, and get to Pine Hollow, the stable where the girls rode. As long as she got there by eleven, she’d be fine. She could give her horse, Starlight, a special Sunday grooming, go for a ride, and still have plenty of time to help out with afternoon barn chores.

Carole and her friends always pitched in at Pine Hollow, partly to help the stable’s owner, Max Regnery, but also because they couldn’t think of a better way to spend an afternoon than surrounded by horseflesh and horsey people. All three girls loved horses and riding. In fact, they had started a club just for horse-crazy people. It was called The Saddle Club, and the only other requirement for membership was that members had to be willing to help each other out.

As Carole combed her long, black, curly hair, she thought about her two friends. Other than their love for horses, Lisa, Stevie, and Carole were very different, both in looks and personality. That was part of what made it so much fun to belong to The Saddle Club.

Lisa was the oldest in age but the newest rider. She was a total perfectionist who always got straight A’s in school. Stevie, on the other hand, was anything but an A-student. She preferred practical jokes to studying, and her grades and sparkling hazel eyes showed it. As for herself, Carole knew her friends sometimes thought she had a split personality. At school she lost homework assignments, stuffed crumpled papers into notebooks, and got caught daydreaming. But as soon as she set foot in the stable, she was all business. Even her father had said that she understood horses better than she understood humans.

A sudden knock on her door interrupted Carole’s
musing. “Your POV will be leaving in forty-five minutes,” Carole’s father announced.

“What’s a ‘POV’?” Carole asked, poking her head out the door.

“A privately owned vehicle, ma’am,” Colonel Hanson replied smartly. Then he confided in a whisper, “In this case, a blue station wagon.”

Carole smiled. Translated, her father’s announcement meant that she wouldn’t have to take the bus to Pine Hollow, as she sometimes did, because he was going to give her a ride. “Yes, sir!” Carole replied, giving him a crisp salute.

The colonel eyed her skeptically. “It appears that the private—er, daughter—is still wearing her nightgown.”

“I’ll be ready for inspection in two minutes, sir!” Carole promised.

“Okay, honey,” Colonel Hanson said, letting his commanding-officer stance lapse. “Pancakes and bacon—if you’re hungry, that is,” he called back over his shoulder.

Because Colonel Hanson had been in the Marine Corps for so many years, he had a way of adding a military flair to things. Carole loved it when the two of them joked around together. Having such a great father helped make up for the absence of her mother, who had died when Carole was eleven.

Catching a tempting whiff of the bacon frying, Carole quickly pulled off her nightgown and grabbed her riding
clothes. Usually she kept everything at Pine Hollow—clothes, boots, etc.—but she had brought stuff home the night before to wash and polish. Everything she needed was laid out on her chair: the old rust breeches she used for every day—she saved her newer buff pair for Pony Club meets and shows—long-sleeved cotton shirt, light sweater, windbreaker, and tall boots. As usual, getting her tight-fitting boots on took several yanks of the boot-pulls. Carole knew, though, that if they slid on easily, they’d probably be too loose for riding.

As soon as she was dressed, she joined her father downstairs at the breakfast table.

“So do I pass?” Carole demanded, turning around for Colonel Hanson to inspect her outfit.

“With flying colors,” her father answered. “Here’s your reward.”

Carole gladly accepted the heaping plate of pancakes and bacon and then dug in hungrily.

“T
HERE
’
S SOMETHING
I want to talk to you about,” Colonel Hanson said as he and Carole drove over to Pine Hollow.

Carole looked up, surprised by her father’s stern tone. A quick glance at his profile, however, assured her that his dark eyes were twinkling.

“Ahem.” Colonel Hanson cleared his throat. “Some of us may have forgotten that a certain girl’s birthday is a
week from yesterday, but I, personally, am planning to celebrate, even if it’s a party for one.”

Carole sighed. It wasn’t that she had forgotten her own birthday, it was just that she hadn’t come up with any great plans for celebrating it yet. Most of the kids in her class were starting to have boy-girl parties, which was what Carole wanted to do, too. She just wanted her party to be something different and special.

“Well, I had to bring it up,” Colonel Hanson continued. “You’re so full of boots and spurs and bone spavins that you haven’t even been hinting about a party.”

“It’s not that,” Carole said. “It’s just that I don’t know what I should do.” She explained her birthday dilemma to her father. “I can’t think of a single kind of party that would truly be fun for everyone,” she said.

Colonel Hanson was full of ideas. Unfortunately, most of them seemed more appropriate for five-year-olds. First, he suggested a magician. Carole groaned.

“But you loved it when we got the mysterious Merlin to come and do tricks,” her father protested.

“In first grade Merlin was mysterious. Now he’d be more like—embarrassing,” Carole explained.

“How ’bout Bozo the Clown—I could get Corporal Gleason to dress up and—”

“Dad, I’m too old for clowns,” Carole interrupted. “I’d die if my friends—” Carole stopped midsentence when
she heard her father trying unsuccessfully to stifle a laugh.

“Oh, Dad, you’re no help,” Carole grumbled.

“I’ll bet Stevie and Lisa will have some ideas,” Colonel Hanson assured her.

“They haven’t had any so far,” Carole said. The problem was that when she was with her Saddle Club friends, practically all they ever talked or thought about was horses. That was great most of the time, but it wasn’t much help when you needed to plan a birthday party.

Carole and her father fell silent. They were both trying to think of a special way to celebrate Carole’s birthday. Carole glanced out the window at the rolling countryside of Willow Creek, the small suburb of Washington, D.C., where they lived. They were driving through the most rural part of the town, past fenced acres and farms. Rolls and bales of hay left from the summer dotted the fields.

“I’ve got it!” Carole cried suddenly.

“What?” her father asked.

“A hayride!” Carole exclaimed. “I can invite lots of friends—even the nonhorsey ones—it’ll be perfect, Dad! Absolutely perfect!”

“When we Hansons put our heads together, perfection is usually the result,” he said modestly.

Carole grinned. Her father had been almost no help whatsoever, but his heart was surely in the right place.

The rest of the way to Pine Hollow, Carole and her father discussed the birthday plans. They decided Carole would have a party at the house first—her father said it was okay to invite boys as long as there were a couple of adults on hand to chaperon—and then have the hayride. They would serve lots of food, and Carole’s friends could bring their favorite CDs for dancing. For the hayride Colonel Hanson planned to ask Mr. Toll, a local farmer, to drive his big hay wagon pulled by his matched pair of Clydesdales. There wouldn’t be much time to organize everything and invite people, since Saturday was less than a week away, but the two agreed they could pull it off. They would start late that afternoon, by making lists of everything that had to be done. To give them more time, Colonel Hanson volunteered to pick up Carole at Pine Hollow after the football game he was planning to watch had ended, around four-thirty.

Carole couldn’t wait to tell Stevie and Lisa the news. When her father pulled into the lot at Pine Hollow, she gave him a quick hug and fairly leapt out of the car. As she jumped, her sweater snagged on the car door. She tripped and fell to the ground, twisting her ankle as she landed.