Tight Rein (2 page)

“And didn’t you do that to him once already?” Lisa asked jokingly. “It’s not like you to be repetitive!” It occurred to Lisa that all Stevie’s white clothes that had been in the washer were going to turn pink, too. She decided not to say anything. It would only make Stevie more annoyed with Chad.

“Oh,” Stevie said, “but it was worth it this time! See, Chad’s supposed to be doing his own laundry, too. So he can’t complain to our parents, because then he’d have to
admit that he wasn’t doing his share. It’s perfect!” Stevie unsnapped Belle’s halter, slipped it around her neck, and fastened it. It would hold Belle until she could be bridled.

“Trust me,” Stevie said. “Pink underwear is not too extreme. I don’t care if I wreck
all
Chad’s clothes. After everything he’s done to me this summer—he and his creepy friend Mark—”

Stevie slid the reins of the bridle over Belle’s head. She paused and counted on her fingers. “One, they put whipped cream in my riding boots; two, they replaced the shampoo in my bottle with chocolate syrup—”

“All you need is ice cream,” Carole said. “You’d have a sundae!”

“Three,” Stevie continued, “they glued the pages of my horse magazine together—before I read it—”

“Ouch!” Lisa said. “That’s serious!”

“Fourth and most unbelievably,” Stevie said, “they hung my underwear from the flagpole the day Phil came over to swim.” Phil Marsten was Stevie’s boyfriend. He rode, too, and he was going to Moose Hill camp the same week they were.

“Don’t forget the popcorn incident,” Lisa reminded her.

“That’s right!” Stevie shrieked. Lisa flinched. Perhaps
she shouldn’t have reminded Stevie—she looked plenty worked up already.

A week earlier Carole and Lisa had spent the night at Stevie’s. Chad’s friend Mark had been sleeping over with Chad. The Saddle Club had been upstairs in Stevie’s bedroom, and Chad and Mark had been in the kitchen making popcorn—lots of popcorn—when the girls suddenly thought they heard scuffling noises outside Stevie’s door. Then they definitely heard Chad snicker. Stevie threw open her door, and gallons upon gallons of popped corn poured into the room. The boys had tacked a bedsheet to the doorframe and filled the space in between with popcorn.

It would have been a pretty funny prank, Lisa thought, if it had been played on someone else. Cleaning up all the popcorn had taken ages. There was probably still some under Stevie’s bed.

Lisa looked at Carole and shook her head. They’d heard Stevie complain about these pranks before. She’d been annoyed for days. Lisa knew Stevie really couldn’t complain to her parents. In the first place, Stevie played more than a few practical jokes herself. In the second place, letting her parents intervene would take away all the fun of revenge.

Stevie shook her head. Her wet ponytail slapped her
cheek, and she pushed it away. “I need a strategy here,” she said. “I need a battle plan. I need—”

“—to
hurry
,” Carole cut in.

Stevie laughed. “Definitely. And more than anything, I need to ride.” She eased the bit of the bridle into Belle’s mouth and pulled the headpiece up toward Belle’s ears. Belle tossed her head suddenly, and the bit fell from her mouth.

“Easy, girl,” Stevie said soothingly. Again she gave Belle the bit, and again Belle tossed her head when Stevie pulled the rest of the bridle toward Belle’s ears. This time Stevie was prepared. She pulled the mare’s nose back down gently and carefully settled the headstall. Once the strap was over her ears, Belle seemed to relax.

“What was that about?” Lisa asked. Stevie’s horse, like all well-trained horses, was usually very calm about this sort of thing.

“I don’t know,” Stevie said. She pulled the noseband of the bridle snug against Belle’s jaw and started to buckle it. Belle fidgeted and tried to sidestep away. Stevie persisted.

“You know what?” Stevie said. “I think her teeth must hurt. She was a little funny about this yesterday, too. I bet she needs to have her teeth floated.”

“Probably,” Carole agreed.

“Floated?” Lisa asked. “Floated in what?” She noticed Stevie and Carole exchanging a small grin.
Well
, she thought irritably,
it’s not my fault they know something I don’t. I wasn’t born in a stable; I don’t know everything about horses yet.

“Horses’ back molars grow continuously,” Stevie explained. “When they chew, they grind their teeth down. Unfortunately, a lot of horses grind unevenly, and their teeth develop sharp points. Then it hurts them to have a bridle put on.”

“If you let their teeth go too long, it can even hurt them to be ridden or to eat,” Carole continued. “Vets file the points down, and that’s called floating the horse’s teeth. It needs to be done about once a year.”

“I see,” said Lisa.

“Belle’s due,” Stevie said. “I’ll have to call Judy.” Judy Barker was the Pine Hollow veterinarian. Stevie patted Belle’s nose. “I think it’s just putting the bridle on that hurts; I don’t think it hurts her to wear it once it’s on,” she added. “Carole, do you think it’ll make Belle uncomfortable if I ride today?”

Lisa watched Carole thinking the question over and wished that for once in her life she could be the one people asked for horse advice.

“I think you can ride,” Carole said. “See, the reason it hurts her to be bridled has to do with the anatomy of the horse’s jaw—”

“Let’s
go
,” Lisa snapped. “We’re all going to be late. Max is waiting.” She could tell that Carole was about to launch into one of her fact-filled lectures, and just now she didn’t want to hear it.

Her feelings surprised her. Carole and Stevie were her two best friends! But sometimes, Lisa thought, it got just a little tiresome not knowing as much as they did. She’d never even heard of filing horses’ teeth. Lisa knew she was smart, but around the stable she sometimes felt she’d never catch up to Carole and Stevie.

T
HE RIDING LESSON
didn’t make Lisa feel any better. After their usual warm-up, Max set them to performing exercises. The idea was to change the length of the stride, not the speed at which the horse moved. First Max set up a grid of poles on the ground about four feet apart, and the riders trotted the horses over them. If the horses moved correctly, their feet wouldn’t hit any of the poles.

Then Max pushed the poles closer together. Each rider had to shorten her horse’s stride, making it more up-and-down and less forward-moving, or the horse would knock its hooves against the poles. Stevie and
Carole did fine. Veronica diAngelo glided through on her superhorse, Danny. Simon Atherton and Delilah sounded like a pinball machine:
clank! clank! clank!

Barq, like most Arabs, had no trouble shortening, and Lisa felt proud when they made it through the grid without a single clank.

Then Max spread the poles farther apart. This meant the horses had to stretch their strides out low and long. Barq had become very happy trotting with an up-and-down motion, and he didn’t want to change. He set his jaw against the reins and refused to move into a longer stride. Lisa tried urging him forward with her legs, the way Max said, but Barq just trotted short and fast.

Lisa came around the corner toward the pole grid. In front of her, Starlight and Belle swept through effortlessly.

Barq trotted in.
Clank, clank, clank
. He stumbled over the last pole, and Lisa had to grab his mane to keep her balance. She felt her face flush.

“Don’t worry, Lisa, this is hard for him,” Max said. “Try it again.”

But no matter how many times she tried, she couldn’t get it. Belle would go through the grid, then Starlight, both beautifully. Barq would whack every rail.

Lisa knew she could have gotten Prancer to lengthen her stride easily. The Thoroughbred would have sailed
through this exercise, not staggered and stumbled like short-strided Barg.

If I had my own horse
, Lisa thought,
this would be easier
. Lisa was not the youngest member of The Saddle Club, but today she felt as if she were. She knew her feelings weren’t Carole and Stevie’s fault. It wasn’t Carole and Stevie’s fault that they had their own horses, either, or that she didn’t. Still, she felt miserable.

“N
OTHING
’
S WORSE THAN
riding wet,” Stevie declared as she unsaddled Belle. “I’m going to get even with Chad. I mean it. Right
now
.”

“You can’t get even with him right now,” Lisa reminded her. “You guys are coming to my house from here, aren’t you?” They had planned a sleepover at Lisa’s. “You won’t have to worry about Chad there,” she told her friend.

“Of course I remembered that we’re going to your house,” said Stevie. Suddenly she whirled around, almost dropping her saddle and causing Belle to prance on the cross-ties. “Ohmigosh! I just remembered something else! Mark’s spending the night at my house, with Chad!”

“While you’re at Lisa’s you won’t have to worry about Mark either,” Carole said.

Stevie shook her head. “It’s obvious that you two
have no experience with siblings,” she said. “Don’t you see? Mark and Chad will have the whole night to plan their next attack on me, and I won’t be there to stop them!” She shook her head. “We have got to do something,” she said. “We can’t let him get away with it.”

“W
ELL
,” L
ISA SAID
, suppressing a giggle, “I definitely don’t think this is a smart idea.” She was standing up to her ankles in one of Mrs. Lake’s petunia beds. It was around ten o’clock the same night, and it was cloudy and very dark. To her left, Lisa could see a faint shimmer from the Lakes’ swimming pool, as well as several shrouded humps that she guessed were lawn furniture. Shadows lurked around the edges of the fenced yard.

To her right, Lisa couldn’t see anything, because she was standing against the side of Stevie’s house. Straight
ahead she could see Carole, also trying not to laugh, and between them she could see the ladder they were holding steady while Stevie climbed it.

“Definitely not a smart idea,” Lisa repeated.

“Shhh!” Stevie said from above.

They had put the ladder directly under the window of Chad’s bedroom. Stevie was certain Chad was plotting something evil, and she was determined to know what it was. No stinking older brother was going to take advantage of her!

It was a short walk from Lisa’s house to Stevie’s. The girls had crept out as soon as it looked really dark. Lisa’s parents had been playing bridge with friends in the den, so Lisa was pretty sure they’d never even notice that The Saddle Club was gone.

First the girls had strung toilet paper all over the bushes in front of the house. Eight rolls were all they could come up with on short notice, but they’d made the best of what they had. Stevie had brought her water pistol and sprayed all the TP, making it stick to the bushes like soggy oatmeal so that it would be seventeen times harder to remove. The rule in the Lake house, Stevie had explained, was that if your friends made the mess, you had to clean it up. Since Stevie was staying at Lisa’s, she was pretty certain that the blame for this job would rest solely on Chad’s friends—and therefore on
Chad. Of course, Alex might catch some of the blame, too, but that was okay.

Stevie had even spelled
WE LOVE YOU, CHAD
in the middle of the lawn with pink TP. Not only would that be a false clue leading directly to Chad, but it would make Chad think that some girl actually loved him.

While Stevie had decorated the grass, Lisa and Carole had thrown the remaining rolls of toilet paper through the trees, until streamers hung from all the branches and wafted in the breeze. When they were finished, the front of the Lake house looked decidedly festive.

Then they got a ladder from Stevie’s father’s shed and propped it against the back of the house. Now Stevie was climbing the ladder as quietly as a cat to spy on her brother. She knew he was up to something.

“What if Chad and Mark are in the basement?” Carole whispered. She felt something pricking the backs of her legs. A rosebush, maybe? She knew she was standing on some sort of plant. The smell of crushed petunias hung heavy in the air.

“What if they’re making popcorn?” Lisa whispered. She shook with silent laughter. The ladder trembled.

“Shhh!” Stevie hissed. “I can see them! They’re in there.” Lisa and Carole could hear her take a final step up the ladder. “They’re giggling,” Stevie murmured. “I don’t like it … they’ve got Super Glue.…” Suddenly
Stevie’s screech tore through the silent night air.
“They’ve got my riding boots again!”

Carole and Lisa jumped and nearly dropped the ladder.
“Shhh!”
they said in unison.

Through the window Stevie could see that Chad had spotted her and was laughing. His clammy, troll-like hands were on her beloved new boots. She hammered her fist against the window frame. “Those are mine!” she bellowed. “Mine! Put those down! I’ll get you for this, Chad Lake! You won’t get away with it this time!”

Inside the house, Chad and Mark guffawed and pointed at Stevie. Stevie tried to open the window, but it was locked from the inside.

“Stevie!” Lisa cried. “Your parents will hear!” Mr. and Mrs. Lake had been watching TV in the living room—the girls had peeked in before starting to TP the lawn. Mr. Lake liked to have the TV loud, but it wouldn’t be loud enough to drown out Stevie’s bellowing.