Horse Dreams (2 page)

But wait. Another horse is coming. A shaggy horse, covered with mud. It trots one way, then the other. It zigzags like it's lost. I'm not sure what color it is. But I think it's spotted. A pinto? One blob of spot looks like a crooked saddle. The horse is so skinny. It gallops up a side street and disappears.

But it was there.

It was real.

“Miss Hernandez!” I cry, turning back to my classroom.

Miss Hernandez is writing on the whiteboard. She stops in the middle of a word. “Ellie? What's the matter?”

I can hardly get the words out. My throat is dry. I point to the window. “Out there!”

“What? What is it?” our teacher asks.

“I saw a horse!”

2

Trouble

“Ellie James,” our teacher says, laying down her marker. “What did you just say?”

“A horse!” I exclaim. “I saw a horse! Right out there!” I point to where I saw it. But of course, the horse isn't there anymore. It has galloped off by now.

Our whole class groans.

“Didn't anybody else see that horse?” I ask. “It was right there in the street.”

Larissa rolls her eyes. Her green eyes and short red hair make me think of a fox. Plus, she can be sly like a fox. She also happens to be the tallest girl in both fourth grades. It's hard to think of the best thing about Larissa, but I guess it would have to be that she has a beautiful horse that she gets to show all over Missouri.

Larissa leans over and whispers something to Ashley.

Our classmate Rashawn tilts her head. I can tell she feels sorry for me.

Sarah, a friend from Sunday school, makes a face at me. I think she's warning me to back off.

“I
did
see it!” I shout, even though I know I'm supposed to use my inside voice.

“Yeah, right,” Larissa mutters.

“That's enough,” our teacher says. “I guess I'd better take a look.” She walks to the window and peers out. “Where exactly is this horse?”

“In the street, in front of school,” I explain.

Miss Hernandez stares out the window. Her ponytail swishes like a horse's tail. “I don't see anything, Ellie.” She turns and smiles at me. “Are you sure it wasn't your imagination?”

“I'm sure! I saw a horse! I think it was a pinto. You know, a spotted horse. Why won't anybody believe me?”

“Uh . . . maybe because you're always seeing horses?” Larissa says.

Ashley and some of the kids in her row laugh.

“I said that's enough.” Miss Hernandez frowns at them. “Let's get back to work.” She glances at me. “Ellie, you and I can talk about this after school.”

“Ooooh.”

“Uh-oh.”

“Dumm-duh-dum-dum.”

I keep my head down. If I stare hard enough at my desk, I can keep from crying. I think.

“No more talking. Got it?” Miss Hernandez means business. “Copy your assignment from the board, everybody.”

Without turning around, Colt raises his hands where I can see them. Then he signs,
Way to go.

“I said no talking. That goes for you, too, Colt.” Miss Hernandez is good. She can't read sign language, but she sure knows it when she sees it.

I get out my notebook and copy the assignment. But I can't stop thinking about that horse. Our town, Hamilton, Missouri, isn't very big. We have only about two thousand people. So I know most of the horses around here.

But I don't remember seeing a scroungy pinto like that one.

We should all be out looking for that poor, lost horse. I raise my hand. Then I put it back down. I know Miss Hernandez doesn't believe I saw a horse. Nobody in this whole classroom believes me. Nobody in this entire school will believe I saw a wild horse run by, no matter what I say.

It's a horrible feeling when the only one who believes you is you.

Finally the bell rings. I grab my books and hurry toward the door. Miss Hernandez stops me before I get there.

“Ellie? Don't forget. We need to talk.”

“Oh yeah,” I answer.

Miss Hernandez and I wait until everybody else files out of the classroom. I study the coffee mug holding down a stack of papers on her desk. The mug reads,
#1 Teacher
. Larissa gave it to our teacher the first day of class. That was before any of us knew that she really is the #1 teacher.

I lean against the big wooden desk. But I have to be careful because of the stacks of books and papers piled all over it. That's one of the things I like about Miss Hernandez. Ms. Jones, my third-grade teacher, had to have everything in perfect order. She expected us to be perfect too.

Miss Hernandez closes the door after the last kid is out. It's just the two of us. I think I'm in big trouble.

“Have a seat, Ellie,” she says. She sits in her chair again and opens her desk drawer. “Want a peppermint?” She hands me a red-and-white peppermint candy.

I unwrap it. We each pop one into our mouths. “Thank you,” I say, and my voice cracks. I settle into the big chair beside her desk.

She sighs. “So what are you and I going to do about daydreaming?”

“Do you daydream too?” I ask.

She grins. “As a matter of fact, I do. Sometimes I daydream I'm on a beach, lying under the sun. Only I make sure not to daydream at school.”

I look down at the paper clips on her desk. I know she means that I shouldn't daydream at school either. “I'm sorry.”

“I know,” she says. “It's just that when you imagined seeing that horse this afternoon, you—”

“No! I didn't imagine that!”

“Now, Ellie,” she says.

I shake my head. “I saw it. A muddy, scraggly horse trotting this way and that, like it was lost.”

My teacher takes in a big breath and holds it. I think she's counting to 10 before answering. My mom does that a lot.

“I'm not sure how to handle this,” Miss Hernandez begins. “Disturbing the class is one thing. Not knowing the difference between what's real and what's not . . . that's another.”

“But I—!”

She holds up one finger to stop me. It works.

“I think you should go home and give this some more thought.” Miss Hernandez scribbles something on a piece of paper and puts the paper into an envelope. On the outside she writes,
Mr. and Mrs. James
.

She hands me the envelope. “See that your parents get this note, okay? I think it would be a good idea for all of us to talk about this together.”

I think it would be a lousy idea. A king-sized, rotten, crummy, superbad idea.

But I don't say so because I'm already in enough trouble.

3

Hope

Colt is waiting outside for me. “So? What happened?”

I shrug and keep walking. “Miss Hernandez doesn't believe I saw a horse.”

“No kidding.” He falls in step beside me.

“Great. You don't believe me either?” I wish I'd never seen that ugly horse. Still, I can't stop worrying about it.

Colt glances around. I know he's looking for Dylan and Brooks. Colt and I have walked home together almost every day since kindergarten. Now all of a sudden it's a crime if his buddies see us together?

Sometimes I just don't get people. Horses make much more sense. Once two horses partner up, they stay friends forever, no matter what other horses come into the herd. I guess that's why they call it
horse sense
—horses just seem to have a lot more common sense than people do.

“I believe you think you saw a horse,” Colt says. “And I believe you're going to be in a mess of trouble if your dad has to go to school again because you were daydreaming.”

He's right about that one. My dad hates school conferences. He went to my school when he was a kid. He hated conferences then too.

“So?” Colt elbows me. “Did Miss Hernandez call your mom?”

“No.”

“That's good,” Colt says. “Last time I got in trouble, Miss Hernandez called my mother. Or tried to, anyway. She finally gave up and left a voice mail, which was bad enough.”

I'm barely listening to Colt. I'm too busy imagining my dad at another parent-teacher conference. “She gave me a note for my parents.”

“A note? What does it say?” Colt keeps walking beside me. But now he's turned toward me, looking for the note. I've already stuffed it into my backpack.

“I'm not opening the note, Colt.”

We reach the corner. From here we can either keep going straight another block or cut through the ball field. I take the path through the field.

Colt follows me. “Can't you just tell them your imagination got the best of you?”

I stop so suddenly that Colt trips over me. “Colt Stevens, did you hear me say I
saw
—not imagined—a scrawny, spotted horse?”

“Yeah. But you're always imagining you see horses.”

“True,” I admit. “And what kind of horses do I imagine?”

“How should I know?” He tugs at the straps of his backpack.

“Beautiful horses. That's what kind!”

Colt frowns, a sure sign he's thinking. “What are you getting at?”

“In all the years you've known me, have I ever once told you about an imaginary
ugly
horse?”

“No,” he admits.

“When I imagine a horse, I imagine a gorgeous show horse. A Hamilton Royal champion horse.”

I can tell by his raised eyebrows and half-open mouth that I've finally gotten through to him.

“Colt, heads up!”

Out of nowhere, a ball whizzes by, inches from my nose. I wheel around and see Dylan and Brooks running toward us.

Behind me, Colt scrambles for the ball. “Back at ya!” he hollers. He fires the ball at Brooks.

I keep walking home . . . alone.

I used to feel sorry for my little brother because most people will never know what he's saying. But at least the people who can understand Ethan always believe him.

* * *

Mom's car isn't in the driveway. Dad's car is probably in our one-car garage. I squint into the picture window and see my dad sitting at the dining table. His back is to me. Dad calls our dining room his office when we're not eating there.

I'm pretty sure I can make it to my room without being seen.

With the courage of a wild stallion, I slip inside the house. Silently I ease the door shut. No noise.

“Ellie? Is that you?” Dad calls from the dining room. Apparently he has better hearing than Squash, our still-sleeping cat.

I step over the fat cat stretched out in the entryway. “Yeah, it's me!” I holler back, wishing it could be somebody else.

“Come in here! And hurry up!”

My dad couldn't know about the note yet. “Coming!” I grab my backpack with the note still inside. I brace myself.

Dad is sitting at the table. The table is so covered with papers, I can't even see the tablecloth. Paper wads decorate the floor.

“Dad? Are you all right?”

His hair looks like he stuck his head outside during a tornado. He glances up at me, and I notice the deep, dark circles under his eyes. “I'm all right now that you're home, Ellie. What rhymes with 
soap
?”

“Soap?” I repeat.

“No! You can't rhyme
soap
with
soap
!” he exclaims. “All I can think of is
dope
. And I'm not going to land the Riverfresh Soap account with that . . . although . . . hey, what do you think of this?

“Don't be a dope.

Use Riverfresh Soap!”

Dad turns to me, eyes wide. He reminds me of Munch, Ethan's puppy. We picked Munch from the animal shelter partly because his big eyes made him look so cute. That was before he grew to the size of a colt. He's still growing.

“So? What do you think?” Dad demands.

I know my dad wants me to like his new jingle. That's his job—coming up with great jingles and ads that get people to buy stuff.

Only this jingle isn't one of those great ones. “It . . . it sure does rhyme,” I say, trying to let him down easy. “Totally rhymes.”