Horse Trade (8 page)

“I
THINK
I’
M
getting it,” Hollie said as she and Lisa walked their horses to the stable after riding class on Tuesday afternoon. “At first this lead stuff was pretty confusing, but now I think I’m catching on.” She paused as she sneezed several times in a row.

“Still have that cold?” Lisa said sympathetically. Not only was Hollie’s nose stuffed, but she was hoarse and her eyes were rimmed with pink. Why Hollie’s mother had let her come to class when she had such a bad cold was something that Lisa couldn’t understand. Her own mother would have kept Lisa in the house for days. And during rehearsals for
Annie
, Hollie had told Lisa her mother was fussy, too. In fact, having overprotective
mothers was something that the girls had talked about several times.

“Does your mother know you’re doing this?” Lisa said.

“What do you mean?” Hollie said. “Of course she knows I’m riding.”

Lisa shook her head. “I mean, riding with such a bad cold,” she explained.

“It’s almost over,” Hollie said, tossing her head. “It’s just … nothing.”

It didn’t look like nothing to Lisa, but she decided to let the subject drop.

“Nice riding,” Stevie called to Hollie as she and Carole approached the girls with their horses. “You’re really getting the hang of it. Pretty soon you’ll be able to try even harder moves.”

“Danks,” Hollie said. “I can hardly date.”

“Me neither,” Stevie said with a giggle. “It seems like every time Phil and I are about to get together, something happens.”

“She means she can’t
wait
,” Lisa explained. “Hollie has a cold.”

“You’re still sick?” Stevie asked.

Lisa nodded. “She says it’s just a tiny cold. I think she looks pretty miserable.”

“Are you up to joining us at TD’s?” Stevie asked Hollie.

“I’d dove to,” Hollie said firmly. “I was supposed to deet my mother at the shopping center anyway.”

“Great,” Stevie said. “We can talk about Phil’s and my dressage dancing. Are we lucky or what? We have Hollie for a songwriter and choreographer, and Lisa for a singer.”

“Better her than you,” said Carole with a grin, because Stevie’s horrible tone-deaf singing was well-known in The Saddle Club.

Stevie feigned a hurt expression.

“Just for that I’ll hide under your window and sing lullabies tonight.”

Carole clutched her head and said, “The curse of the screeching soprano.”

Stevie threw a handful of hay at her, and at this moment Max walked past. “What’s going on?” he asked.

“I’m cleaning up,” Stevie said, bending over to pick up the handful of hay. “Just making sure that everything is spick-and-span.”

His eyes twinkled. “While you’re at it, Stevie, make sure the tack room is spick-and-span.”

The girls groaned. This meant they could forget about the trip to TD’s. But then Max grinned and added, “By Saturday.”

This time Stevie aimed the hay in his direction.

By the time they got to TD’s, Stevie had worked out what she was going to order. “I’ll have one scoop of peppermint-stick
ice cream and one of rum raisin, topped with butter-crunch sauce, chocolate sprinkles, and Red Hots,” she said.

The waitress sighed, wrote it down, and then turned to Hollie. “What’ll it be?”

Hollie got a devilish look on her face and said, “I’ll have hot dudge with a smidgen of budderscotch, dopped by a drinkle of coconud.”

The waitress rolled her eyes and said, “She’s even worse than you. I can’t understand a word she says.”

“She has a cold,” Lisa said. “A very
slight
cold.” She winked at Hollie, then translated for the waitress. “Hot fudge with a smidgen of butterscotch, topped by a sprinkle of coconut.”

“Kill or cure,” the waitress said grimly. She took Carole’s and Lisa’s orders and then marched off.

When she was gone, Hollie turned to Stevie and said, “I’ve been thinking how we could make ‘Almost’ even more special.”

Stevie looked worried. “I wanted this to be an exhibition that no one ever forgets. But now I’m not sure No-Name and I will be able to participate.” When the others looked puzzled, Stevie explained. “She broke out in hives again.”

“That’s terrible,” Lisa said.

“Do you know what caused it?” Carole asked.

Stevie nodded. “I think so. I followed Judy Barker’s directions, and I’ve been trying to test different possibilities. Right before No-Name broke out, I put a lot of saddle soap on her tack.”

“That’s a common cause of horse allergies.” Carole nodded.

Stevie sighed. “You should see No-Name with welts all over her ears and head and neck. It’s terrible.”

“It’s not such a big deal,” said Hollie, sounding a bit impatient. “So she’s a little allergic, so what?”

Lisa looked at Hollie with amazement. Hollie was a thoughtful person. During rehearsals for Annie she had been the first to help anyone who was in trouble. So why was she saying that No-Name’s allergy didn’t matter?

But Hollie was still thinking about the dressage exhibition. With her eyes sparkling she said, “The dressage performance should be visually memorable. Stevie and Phil have to have totally opposite looks. Their horse dance will work twice as well if it’s easy to tell the two of them apart.”

“Wait a second,” Lisa said. Everyone stopped to stare at her. “What happened to your cold?” she said to Hollie. “You sound so much better.”

“It was nothing,” Hollie insisted. “I told you it would go away.”

Lisa shrugged, then turned to watch the waitress set
down their orders. She thought that Hollie’s cold was the strangest thing she’d ever seen. First Hollie was sneezing and rasping, and now she was perfectly normal. It didn’t make any sense.

“And now for my great idea,” said Hollie. “I want you and Phil to look as contrasty as possible.”

“Contrasty?” Stevie echoed. “What’s that?”

“It’s a show-business term,” said Hollie airily. “It means you and Phil should look as different as possible. Which means that you’ll wear a white outfit, and Phil will wear a black one.”

“Oh,” Stevie said, mentally running through her horse wardrobe. “I guess I could do that, except for the boots and hat, of course. And my belt. And my cuff links. I don’t have all that much white riding gear.”

“We’ll pull something together,” Hollie said cheerfully. “Then after all the ‘almosts,’ you and Phil will come together and exchange coats—your white coat for his black coat—so you each wind up half black and half white. That will be a real showstopper.”

“I don’t know,” Stevie said, not wanting to hurt Hollie’s feelings, but wondering how Phil would feel about all this.

“What luck,” came a voice from the doorway. “I was on my way to the supermarket and I saw you in here, Hollie. Hi, girls.”

Hollie leaped out of her seat. “Hi, Mom. Time to go.” Stuffing her riding jacket into her backpack, she hurried toward the door.

“Aren’t you forgetting something?” Hollie’s mother said.

“What?” Hollie looked back at The Saddle Club.

“Paying,” her mother said.

“Silly me.” Hollie pulled some money from her pocket, ran back to the table, and put it down. “See you guys,” she said, and hurried off.

“Is Hollie’s mother weird or something?” Stevie said to Lisa.

“No,” Lisa said. “She’s nice. Maybe a little overprotective. Like some other mothers,” she added with a grin.

Stevie wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t it seem as if Hollie was rushing her out of here?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want her to meet
us
,” Lisa said. “Maybe we’re embarrassing or something.”

“We’re wonderful,” Stevie joked, still feeling confused. There was a mystery here, and she wanted to get to the bottom of it.

“Maybe Hollie doesn’t want us to meet her mother because she’s afraid we’ll talk to her,” said Carole thoughtfully.

“About what?” Stevie said, looking at her friend.

“Didn’t it seem strange that Hollie dismissed No-Name’s allergy? She didn’t seem at all worried.”

Lisa nodded vigorously. “Hollie is one of the nicest people I know. I’ve never heard her sound so uncaring.”

“She treated No-Name’s allergy as if it were a little cold,” Stevie added. “Like she talks about her own cold.”

The three of them looked at each other.

“She doesn’t have a cold, does she?” said Stevie as the pieces snapped together. “She has an allergy.”

“To horses!” Carole exclaimed.

The Saddle Club girls sat there, dumbfounded at the sheer obviousness of the thing. When Hollie was around Pine Hollow, she sneezed, she wheezed, she was in desperate shape. As soon as she left Pine Hollow, she was fine.

“She doesn’t want her mother to know she’s allergic to horses,” Stevie said.

“But we know,” Lisa said in a soft voice. “Do you think we should do something? Should we tell someone?”

“Hollie has a good time with us,” Carole said. “I think she really enjoys hanging out with The Saddle Club and learning more about horses.”

Lisa nodded. “I was worried about her being lonely after
Annie
finished.”

Stevie remembered how lonely and wistful Lisa had looked when she realized that
Annie
was over. For Hollie it must be even worse, Stevie thought. Lisa could go back
to The Saddle Club, but Hollie didn’t have anything like that. “What’s the big deal?” Stevie said. “She coughs, she sniffles, she sneezes from time to time. That’s nothing compared to not being able to ride.”

Lisa thought of how her own mother always wanted to help but sometimes got in the way. Maybe they should tell Hollie’s mother that she was allergic to horses. But if they did, Hollie would wind up embarrassed and angry.

“If Hollie wants to keep her allergy a secret, it’s a secret,” Lisa said firmly. “That’s what friends are for.”

Carole and Stevie nodded their agreement. After all, The Saddle Club always stuck together.

B
Y
W
EDNESDAY
, N
O
-N
AME
’
S
hives were gone. On one hand, Stevie was glad she’d be able to ride No-Name in the dressage exhibition. But on the other hand, she was disappointed she hadn’t made more progress.

“It’s driving me crazy,” Stevie told Phil when he called the morning of the Pony Club exhibition. “I thought for sure I had the cause of No-Name’s allergy nailed down, but when I tried saddle soap for the second time, just to make sure it was causing her allergy, nothing happened. She didn’t break out in a single hive.” She sighed.

“We’re back to square one,” Phil agreed.

“Oh, well,” Stevie said. “At least we’re ready for today—unless
for some reason she has another outbreak.”

“Don’t even say that,” Phil warned. “I don’t want to do ‘Almost’ alone. It would look kind of bizarre.”

“To say the least.” Stevie giggled. “A solo duet—it’s a new dressage concept.”

“Can you come over early?” Phil said. “We’ve got a lot to do.”

“Sure,” Stevie told him. Her mind was back on No-Name and her mysterious allergies. “Isn’t it strange that at your place No-Name is always fine, but whenever we take her somewhere, she breaks out? Maybe she hates traveling.”

“I don’t think so,” Phil said. “She doesn’t seem like the type. If it were Teddy, I could believe it. No-Name is like you. Nothing fazes her.”

“I’m fazed, believe me,” Stevie said. “I’ll see you in an hour and we’ll get to the bottom of this.”

When Phil met Stevie at the bus stop, he looked glum. “My parents are coming to the exhibition—if there is one. We’ve got to make sure No-Name doesn’t have an allergy attack today.”

“I thought about it all the way over,” Stevie said. “No-Name always seems to break out when she goes to Cross County. But when she’s there, she doesn’t even go into the stable. She waits outside, tied to the hitching post
with a lead line. What could possibly be the problem? She just stands there and munches grass.”

“Can horses be allergic to grass?” Phil said.

“Maybe,” Stevie said, “but if she was allergic to grass, she’d be covered with hives all the time because she’s
always
eating grass.”

“It’s a bummer.” Phil shook his head.

Stevie reached out and caught the fuzzy end of a foxtail plant from the side of the road and pulled it from the ground. She nibbled on the tender white end of the stalk. “It can’t be impossible. There’s got to be a way to figure this out.” She blinked. “Maybe there is a way.”

“What?” Phil said.

“I’ve got to be sure,” Stevie said. “Come on, let’s get over to Cross County.”

The two riders had to groom their horses extra carefully for the exhibition. In dressage, it was essential for a horse and its rider to look their best. In fact, points could be lost if riders and horses looked less than perfect.

An hour later Stevie and Phil finally hit the trail for Cross County Stables.

Teddy was frisking along, his head held high. “He can tell something special’s going on,” Phil said. “That extra grooming always gets him going.”

“Is he all right with crowds?” Stevie asked.

“He hasn’t had a lot of experience with shows,” Phil
admitted. “But if he gets nervous, I can always talk to him in horse latin.”