Sea Horse (6 page)

“You look very exotic!” Lisa told her mother, who grinned.

“Many things grow here that grow nowhere else,” Ben said, indicating all the lush greenery that surrounded them. “Our rain forest is precious to us for its gifts and we take care of it in return.” He pointed to the signs prohibiting visitors from taking anything from the plants.

Lisa had studied rain forests in school. She remembered how valuable they were as homes for thousands of animals and insects, how they alone provided a growing environment for many, many kinds of plants, and how they were being destroyed throughout the world. Now, standing there on a craggy mountain on a small volcanic island, she understood for the first time what the loss
would mean to the world if people continued to destroy rain forests.

“And here is our rain forest botanical garden,” Ben said, showing the Atwoods a path that led up a gentle slope. They all followed the path, reading the signs in front of each tree and bush. It seemed to Lisa that every houseplant or exotic flower she’d ever known grew wild in the rain forest of San Marco.

“This looks like our living room!” she teased her mother, who collected exotic plants.

“How right you are, and how beautiful they are. Look at that!” Mrs. Atwood pointed to a large bush with startling red leaves. It was a poinsettia, but it didn’t look anything like the little ones they had at Christmas in their house. It was almost a tree and it was stunning.

At the end of the path, the Atwoods found themselves looking at a fifteen-foot-high waterfall that plunged into a pool that fed a stream that no doubt helped to keep all the plants green.

Lisa thought she could have watched the water come over the ridge of rocks all day long. Ben had something else in mind.

“Now the volcano,” he announced, shooing them toward his van.

The volcano was only a few miles away, but it took them a long time to drive to it along the rutted roads. There was a hand-painted sign indicating the turnoff to the volcano, but Lisa wouldn’t have needed to see a sign; she could smell its sulfurous fumes from a half mile away.

“This is an inactive volcano, but there is still activity there,” Ben said, thinking he had explained something. The confused looks on the Atwoods’ faces must have told him differently. “I mean, it is not going to erupt again, but there are hot springs bubbling all the time. Come, I show you.”

The Atwoods got out of the van and followed Ben. He introduced them to some friends of his who worked at the volcano. They all walked across the rocky terrain, toward the sulfur pools. Ben pointed out a puddle on the ground and told Lisa to feel the water. It was warm. Another puddle was situated closer to the bubbling pools. Lisa felt that, too. It was hotter than the first. The next puddle was hotter still, and the one that followed was bubbling. Lisa didn’t touch it.

When they could see into what had once been the crater of the volcano, they noticed several different bubbling pools, all filled with dank, opaque water, and all smelling fiercely of sulfur. It was hard to imagine what they were like on the inside, but Lisa wasn’t tempted to find out, especially when Ben told her that the liquid had been measured at 350 degrees Fahrenheit!

They walked around the mouth of the crater and found rocks containing sulfur and iron, which Lisa planned to take back to her class. As she carefully pocketed the stones, Ben announced it was time for their next stop.

“Now we go to the market!”

He drove them into a small town. The entire center of the town was taken up with an open-air market where townspeople bought, sold, and traded their wares.

Lisa and her mother found some wonderful hats and baskets they wanted to buy. Mr. Atwood bought a shirt and a sunhat. He also bought a leather wallet for Ben, who had been admiring it at one of the shops. Lisa was glad they got him a present. He was showing them wonderful things and giving them a lovely time.

Ben proudly tucked his money into his new wallet and then announced their next activity.

“Picnic time!”

They all piled into his van and he drove them to the ocean. Ben explained that there were two kinds of beaches on the island—Caribbean and Atlantic. The beach near their hotel was Caribbean. Now they would see what the Atlantic was like.

At first, Lisa didn’t think it was very different. The whole island was surrounded with the same bright turquoise water. They spread out their blanket and picnic on an empty beach just off the main road. Then they all stripped down to their bathing suits and headed for the water.

The Atlantic water was different. It was a little bit cooler and the surf was higher. Maybe that had more to do with the angle of the beach than the source of the water, but in the end it didn’t matter to Lisa. What mattered was that she had a wonderful time playing in the surf and then enjoying her picnic.

While her parents rested after lunch, she and Ben took a walk on the beach. He showed her different shells and told her the animals’ names. For a few of them, he
even included recipes! By the time they reached the rock outcrop that defined the end of the beach, Lisa’s hands were filled with shells. So were Ben’s. When they returned to the picnic site, they found Mr. and Mrs. Atwood packing up. The afternoon sun was beginning to dip toward the western horizon. It was time to go back to the hotel.

They were all quiet on the return trip. Lisa watched the banana groves, wondering once again at the fact that the bananas grew up instead of down, as she’d always assumed. She thought about all the marvelous things they had seen and done that day. She sifted through her newly acquired rocks and shells. She thought about all the things they had learned from Ben. She remembered all the beautiful sights they’d seen—so unlike anything at home, or even anything at their hotel.

Everything seemed to have taken on a sort of dreamy, unreal quality as they passed through the island’s little villages, now almost familiar to Lisa. It was as different as anything she’d ever seen. It was far away from anything that had ever worried her. She’d had a wonderful day. Before she knew it, her eyelids drooped and shut and she fell asleep.

Lisa jerked awake as they hit the first speed bump entering their hotel’s grounds. There were the tennis courts, the windsurfing beach, the practice putting green, the basketball court, the dining villa, and—Lisa gulped—some riders returning to the stable.

She’d forgotten all about the stable. She’d spent a
whole day not even thinking about Jill, Frederica, Velvet, and Jasper. She hadn’t thought once about her bruises and her riding. She hadn’t even thought about what she was going to do the next morning when she was scheduled to go on another trail ride, and she didn’t want to think about those things now, either.

Lisa occupied herself with helping Ben unload the remains of their picnic, folding towels, and brushing sand off the beach ball and Frisbee. The Atwoods said their good-byes to Ben. Lisa gave him a little hug and thanked him for everything he’d done to make their tour of the island wonderful. He told her it had been his pleasure and she believed him.

Ben drove away then, so Lisa and her parents picked up all their things to take them to their rooms. While they waited for the elevator, Jill came by with another girl about her age. Lisa waved to her. “Hi, Jill,” she said. Jill barely glanced at her. When she was a few steps away, Jill put her arm across her new friend’s shoulders and began whispering in her ear. The other girl glanced at Lisa, then turned back to Jill. The two of them started giggling. Lisa was sure she knew exactly what they were giggling about. She didn’t like it at all. She could feel the wonderful relaxed feeling of the day drain from her as the two girls skipped in the opposite direction.

L
ISA MANAGED TO
avoid Jill for the rest of the day and the evening, but she wasn’t able to avoid the subject of horseback riding.

“What’s that bruise?” her mother asked, looking at Lisa’s shoulder as they sat at dinner that night.

Lisa had almost forgotten it because it was on the back of her shoulder and she hadn’t been able to see it when she’d gotten dressed for dinner.

“What bruise?” she asked innocently, stalling for time. She had no idea what she wanted to tell her parents.

“The big purple patch on your shoulder, Lisa,” her father said in a tone that indicated he didn’t believe her innocent posture.

“Oh, that happened yesterday—” she began cautiously.

“You got hurt riding, didn’t you?” Mrs. Atwood accused her. “I knew it would happen. We have to find out when the doctor is in.”

“Oh, Mother,” Lisa said, exasperated. “It’s just a bruise. It’s nothing.”

Her parents regarded her suspiciously for a few minutes while they all ate in silence.

“It’s not nothing,” her father said after a while. “Why don’t you tell us about it?”

Lisa knew then that she’d have to tell everything. When her mother blustered, Lisa could ignore it, but when her father asked her a straight question like that, she had to answer it.

She began at the beginning, explaining what had happened both days on the trail, how she’d fallen off twice and gotten the bruise the second time. Her parents waited patiently through the whole story, not interrupting
once. But as soon as she was finished, her mother had a lot to say.

“I knew it—I just knew it. Horseback riding just isn’t a safe thing for you to do. I’m sorry I ever encouraged you to do it in the first place. I had no idea it could be so dangerous. You’re only bruised now, but soon you’ll be coming home with broken bones and then heaven knows what.”

“Mother,” Lisa said, trying to sound patient, “I never had one teeny bit of trouble with getting hurt or being thrown at Pine Hollow. They know I’m a good rider and they trust me and I seem to ride better there.”

Mrs. Atwood nodded. “Well, of course, any place that Mrs. diAngelo lets her daughter ride is going to be the very best. I’m sure they have nothing but well-behaved horses and everything is done for your safety. We just can’t trust the horses and instruction at a stable we don’t know. That’s it. There will be no more riding for you while we’re here, and when we get home, we’ll think about whether you can ride at Pine Hollow.”

A week earlier, those words would have made Lisa very angry and hurt and she would have argued strongly with her mother. But now she didn’t say anything. After all, she was a good rider, so the fact that she’d fallen twice on San Marco had to be somebody else’s fault. Maybe it was Velvet’s jerkiness; maybe it was Jasper’s lumbering gait.
Or maybe
, she thought dispiritedly,
I’m really just not as good as I thought. Maybe Mom’s right. Maybe I shouldn’t ride anymore at San Marco and then when I get home, well, I’ll think about that then.

“Don’t you think so, Richard?” Mrs. Atwood asked.

Lisa’s father was contemplating the seafood special in front of him. “I don’t know, Eleanor. I don’t think forbidding Lisa to ride is a good idea. Lisa, I don’t want you to get hurt, but aren’t you supposed to climb back on a horse when you fall off?”

“I did, Daddy. I finished the ride. But maybe”—Lisa hesitated—“maybe Mom’s right.”

“Maybe,” he said, and then ate a shrimp.

T
HE GLOOMY GRAY
skies hung over the shopping mall, dimming the last vestige of winter sun. As far as Stevie was concerned, the weather almost perfectly matched her mood. This was the end of her second day of shopping at the mall, and it had been no better than the first. She was practically talking to herself as she stood by the bus stop, waiting for the bus that would take her to the shopping center in town, from which she could walk home. It felt as if it would take forever until she could be in her own room, away from rude salespeople and masses of shoppers rushing everywhere.

By her own count, she’d been into every store in the mall that sold clothes for females, including a shop for senior citizens and three jeans specialty shops. That just showed her level of desperation. She’d actually tried on a “golden-age special” at the senior citizens’ shop, but even
the saleswoman had to agree that it was “a little mature for you.” The only thing the dress had going for it, in fact, was that it was blue.

The good news was that Stevie had found three dresses she could consider wearing to the New Year’s Eve dance. That is, she could consider them, but she wasn’t so sure that her mother would.

One dress was just beautiful. It was a glittery blue floor-length number. Its major drawback was the price. Stevie wasn’t sure exactly how expensive it was. She’d noticed that the price tag had four digits to the left of the decimal, though, and she suspected her mother would think that was a bit too much to spend—for a car, to say nothing of a dress!

The next possibility was pretty, too. And the price was more reasonable, though still in the outrageous area. The problem was that once her mother saw it, she’d probably say just what the saleslady had said about the golden-age dress. It was a little mature for her, to put it mildly. This one was strapless, with a straight floor-length skirt slit halfway up her thigh. Of course, it was hard to get the full effect while she was wearing loafers and ankle socks, but she’d seen enough to know that her mother would let her wear a dress like that the day she turned, oh, say, twenty-five. If ever.