Hobbyhorse (3 page)

Amelia still looked hurt, but she smiled. “Okay. Can we go to the stable now?”

Lisa smiled back. At least there was one thing about
Amelia she could stand. It was awfully early, but Lisa knew Carole would be there early today, and she hoped Stevie would be, too. “Great idea,” she said.

L
ISA
’
S
MOTHER DROVE
them to Pine Hollow. On the way Lisa thought again about the Pony Tails and how glad she was that they would be around this week. They might take Amelia off her hands. “Do you have lots of friends at your stable at home?” she asked the little girl.

Amelia looked out the car window for a long time without answering. “The other girls at my stable are not very friendly,” she finally said. She looked sideways at her aunt. “They’re elegant people, you understand, they just aren’t very friendly.”

Lisa sighed. She could guess what that meant. Amelia had probably acted bratty in front of the people at her stable and no one there liked her. “The people at Pine Hollow are very friendly,” she assured her cousin. She knew it was true, but would they be friendly toward Amelia? Lisa hoped so.

T
HE FIRST PERSON
they saw when they went into the stable was Max. Lisa introduced Amelia to him. Amelia shook his hand gravely, a smile lighting her small face. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” she said. “Thank you for letting me ride here while I’m visiting Lisa.”

“You’re welcome,” Max said. He smiled at Amelia and
raised his eyebrows at Lisa as if to say he was impressed. Lisa wished she could explain that Amelia’s manners were only skin deep.

“Look!” she said instead. “There’s Stevie and Carole!” She grabbed Amelia’s hand and pulled her down the aisle.

“Bye, Max!” Amelia said, waving, as Lisa dragged her away.

“Carole!” Lisa hugged her friend. “How is Starlight?”

Carole and Stevie were both standing beside Starlight in the center of the stable aisle. Stevie held Starlight’s lead rope. Carole had filled a bucket with warm water and set it on the floor. She was about to coax Starlight to put his sore foot into it. “Good boy,” she crooned to him. To Lisa she added, with a grimace, “He’s the same as yesterday. Still lame. Judy’s going to try to come out today, but she’s still tied up with the colicking horse.”

Lisa nodded. It was important that Starlight see a vet, but his lameness probably wasn’t an emergency. “This is my cousin Amelia,” she said. Carole and Stevie both said hi, but neither of them did more than glance at the girl. They were both focused on Starlight.

“Tell me what you were thinking, Carole,” Lisa said, moving to Starlight’s side. The gelding wore his usual calm, pleasant expression. He didn’t seem to be feeling too awful.

“Well, it could be an abscess,” Carole explained. “That’s basically a pocket of infection in his hoof, and if that’s true,
then he’ll be okay as soon as we take care of it.” She stroked Starlight’s neck as she talked. She knew he didn’t look too bad, but when he walked he limped, and his head bobbed in pain every time he put weight on his sore foot. Carole could barely stand to see him in pain. He’d never had anything seriously wrong before.

“Abscesses are pretty common,” Stevie said.

“Didn’t Patch have one last year?” Lisa asked.

Stevie nodded.

“As long as it
is
an abscess,” Carole said. “Look at the way he’s pointing with his foot.” Lisa and Stevie looked. Starlight was standing with his right front foot—his sore one—out in front of him.

“He’s trying to take his weight off it,” Lisa guessed. “Because it hurts him.”

Carole nodded miserably. “I was reading in my horse books last night. It’s a classic sign of navicular disease.”

“Oh no,” Stevie said.

“What’s that?” Amelia asked. She reached up to pat Starlight’s nose as she spoke. “Did he do something wrong?”

“Of course not,” Carole said sharply. “It isn’t his fault.” As Carole bent to put Starlight’s hoof into the bucket of water, Lisa could see that she was scowling.

Amelia nodded. “I guess not, because he looks like a nice horse. He’s really beautiful.”

“Thank you,” Carole said, straightening up. She bit her
lip. She’d been struggling all morning not to cry. The navicular bones were some of the tiny ones in a horse’s foot. They corresponded roughly to the human wrist.

“It’s too bad he’s hurt,” Amelia continued. “I’d really like to ride him.”

Carole grinned at the little girl, but then she realized that Amelia was serious. “You couldn’t ride Starlight,” she said. “He’s not used in lessons.” Carole knew Lisa’s cousin was a beginning rider, and beginning riders had no business on spirited horses like Starlight.

“Carole is the only person who rides Starlight,” Lisa explained patiently. “He’s still young, and she’s training him.”

Amelia drew her mouth into a pout. “But I want to ride him,” she said, as if that were the only important thing.

Stevie and Lisa exchanged looks. “But he’s hurt,” Lisa said.

“I understand.” Amelia nodded. “What are you soaking his foot in?”

“Water mixed with some salts Max gave me,” Carole explained. She went on to describe exactly what sort of salts they were, how much she put in the bucket, and how often and for how long she used them.

Lisa and Stevie smiled at each other. It was entirely like Carole to recite all the tiny details of her horse’s care. Most little kids, even ones who liked horses, would have been bored, but Amelia listened carefully, nodding and peering
into the bucket. When Starlight started to lift his foot out of the bucket, Amelia said “Whoa” and gently pushed it back in, even before Carole could.

“She really likes horses,” Stevie whispered to Lisa in a tone of approval. “I don’t know, Lisa, she doesn’t seem that bad. After everything you told us about her, I expected a real brat.”

Lisa rolled her eyes. “Sometimes she’s not that bad, but just give her time and you’ll see what I mean,” she said.

“Hey, Carole,” Stevie said more loudly, “tell Lisa your good news.”

Carole looked at Starlight and frowned. “What good n—oh, right! Lisa, Max asked me to be an assistant instructor for the kids’ camp this week. He said that since I couldn’t ride Starlight, I could help him. I’ll still be doing something around horses.”

“That sounds great!” Lisa was happy for her friend. Being an assistant instructor would be fun, and Carole would learn a lot. But when she looked at Carole, Lisa could see that her friend wasn’t really thinking about her good news. She was worrying about her horse.

“H
ELLO
, M
AX
!” L
ISA
heard May Grover shout outside the stable. Lisa stood on tiptoes to look out a window.

“Hey, it’s the Pony Tails! Amelia, come on, I want you to meet them. Carole, we’ll be right back.”

Corey, Jasmine, and May all had ponies of their own that they kept in their backyards. May’s father had a four-horse trailer, and he often brought May’s pony, Macaroni, Corey’s pony, Samurai, and Jasmine’s pony, Outlaw, over to Pine Hollow for Horse Wise, riding lessons, and other activities. Since the little girls would be going to the school-break camp, they’d arranged to have their ponies spend the whole week at Pine Hollow. That way Mr. Grover wouldn’t have to keep bringing them back and forth. Max had three empty stalls he was letting them use, but before Mr. Grover arrived with the ponies, the girls had to get the stalls ready.

Lisa pulled Amelia down the aisle just as all three Pony Tails disappeared into the feed room. They emerged with wheelbarrows and pitchforks and hurried to the empty stalls. Lisa hurried after them. “Hey, guys! This is my cousin Amelia. She’s going to spend the week here and ride in the camp.”

May stopped shoveling sawdust into her wheelbarrow just long enough to smile. “Super!” she said. “We’re going to have a lot of fun!” She wheeled the barrow across the aisle and dumped it into an empty stall.

“Hi, Amelia!” Corey said. “I’m Corey. Lisa told us you were coming.” She hung Samurai’s special water bucket in his stall. Samurai could be particular, and he only liked to drink out of one special bucket.

“You can help us if you want to,” Jasmine added. “Grab a pitchfork.”

“Why would I want to do that?” Amelia asked. She sounded genuinely confused.

All the Pony Tails seemed surprised by her reaction. “Because it’s fun,” Jasmine answered.

Amelia shrugged in a way that reminded Lisa instantly of Veronica diAngelo, her least favorite person. Lisa sighed. How could Amelia be so interested in Starlight’s treatment and so uninterested in preparing some stalls? To Lisa, they were both part of the same thing: taking care of horses.

“At my stable,” Amelia said, “we don’t
work.
”

Aha
, Lisa thought.
The snob factor difference.

Corey and May stopped working and stared at Amelia. “At our stable,” Jasmine said, “we do.”

Amelia blushed, then swept a glance over them. Her gaze rested longest, and most pointedly, at the ragged hole worn through the knee of May’s jodhpurs. “Of course,” she said with a shrug, “maybe you need to work. I don’t. At Windswept, the stable where I ride, everything is the very best. The best sort of people ride there.”

Lisa winced. Amelia was switching into full brat mode. So much for Lisa’s hope that Amelia could spend the week with the Pony Tails. She could already guess that they weren’t going to like Amelia any better than Lisa did.

“You should see the horse I ride,” Amelia continued. “Her name is Star, and she’s exceptionally well bred. She’s the nicest horse at Windswept. Of course she isn’t easy to ride, but my instructor says I’m naturally talented, and I handle her just fine. I’m a very advanced rider for my age.”

May looked directly at Lisa. “Is that true?” she asked.

Lisa wanted to say “Of course not, she’s being a horrible bragging brat”—but then she’d never seen Amelia ride. “I don’t know,” she said after a pause. “I don’t think so.”

Amelia flushed red. She looked furious. “Lisa! I told you all about it!”

“I know you did,” Lisa said uncomfortably.

“How long have you been riding?” May cut in.

Amelia lifted her head proudly. “Since last September.”

“Ohhh,” May said softly. She and her friends went back to their work.

May had been riding since she was three years old, and Jasmine and Corey had both ridden for a long time, too. Amelia might think that four months was a long time to be riding, but the Pony Tails weren’t going to agree. Even a naturally talented rider needed longer than four months to become a good rider.

“Come on,” Lisa said, reaching to touch Amelia’s shoulder. “Let’s go meet some more horses. I haven’t introduced you to Prancer.”

Amelia swerved away from Lisa’s touch. “I
told
Lisa,” she
said to the Pony Tails, in a loud voice. “She just must not have been listening. Star is a very good horse, she’s very beautiful, she’s very hard to ride—”

“Excuse me,” May cut in, “but I think my dad just pulled up. We have to go get our ponies out of the horse trailer now.” The Pony Tails hardly looked at Amelia as they left the stable.

Amelia stared after them openmouthed. “Do they all have their own ponies?” she asked in a whisper.

“Yeah,” Lisa said. “They do.” She felt bad. On the one hand, Amelia had gotten what she deserved; but on the other hand, Lisa felt as if she should have stuck up for her cousin. Lisa was beginning to understand that bragging was Amelia’s way of trying to be liked. It wasn’t a good way, but maybe she just didn’t know any better.

Amelia stamped her foot. “I don’t like the people at this stable, either!” she said.

Lisa sighed. Feeling sorry for Amelia seemed like a waste of time.

L
ISA LED
A
MELIA
back to the other end of the stable and stopped outside Belle’s stall. Stevie was inside, grooming her beautiful mare. “This is Stevie’s horse, Belle,” Lisa said to Amelia. “And next to her is the horse I usually ride, Prancer.”

“Oh, Stevie! She’s beautiful!” Amelia clasped her hands and looked up at Belle with rapt adoration. Lisa stifled a giggle. Belle was beautiful. She was a bright bay with a shiny black mane and tail and white markings on her face and forehead that looked like an upside-down exclamation point. Still, it seemed to Lisa that Amelia was overdoing it. Belle wasn’t
that
beautiful.

“And Prancer! Lisa, you didn’t tell me she was
this
gorgeous!” Amelia held her hands flat under Prancer’s nose, and as the mare sniffed them, her ears pricked forward with interest. Prancer always seemed to love children. “She’s almost as pretty as Star,” Amelia said. Lisa glowed with pride until she saw Stevie grinning at her. Then she realized that Amelia was complimenting Prancer just as extravagantly as she had complimented Belle—in other words, overextravagantly.

“I can see you’re a fine judge of horses,” Carole commented dryly. She’d overheard the whole exchange. Lisa and Stevie laughed a little self-consciously.

“I’m glad you like them,” Lisa told Amelia. “They’re both good horses.”

Amelia looked from Prancer to Belle and back. “I just don’t know how I’ll ever pick between them,” she said. “I want to ride them both!”