Maddie’s Dream (10 page)

An hour later, Maddie looked up as the door leading from the house to the garage banged open. Her brother Ryan peered out at her. He was holding a book with his finger stuck in it to save his page. His dark hair was tousled, and his glasses were slightly askew as usual.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“What does it look like?” Maddie sat back on her heels, giving her wrist a break. She'd been scrubbing at a grease spot on the garage's cement floor for at least ten minutes, and it still looked as disgusting as ever.

Ryan shrugged. “Dad said he'll be back out to help in a little while. Oh, he also said to tell you not to forget to sort the nails and stuff on his workbench.”

Maddie glanced at the tools, hardware, and random scraps of wood piled all over the large wooden counter built against the back wall. Ugh. It was going to take at least another hour in the hot garage to sort out that mess. Maddie swiped at the sweat beading on her forehead. Unfortunately, she forgot she was still holding the greasy rag.

“Oh, gross!” she exclaimed as she felt the sticky, gritty grease coat her skin.

Ryan let out a bark of laughter. “Whoa,” he said. “You look like Batman!”

“Thanks a lot,” Maddie muttered.

“Hey, Ty!” Ryan turned and shouted back into the house. “Check this out—Maddie's Batman!”

Maddie tossed the rag in his direction, though it only went a few inches before fluttering to the ground. “Get out of here, will you?” she said. “Either that, or get out here and help me.”

“No thanks.” Ryan grinned at her. “I have better things to do. Like stare at the wall.”

He disappeared, slamming the door behind him. Maddie used the hem of her T-shirt to wipe the grease off her face. Why not? The shirt was already filthy.

She
had better things to do too. Like just about anything that would get her out of this hot, dirty, smelly garage. They'd lived in this house for less than three years. How had the garage ended up crammed full of so much junk? For a second she was tempted to go into the air-conditioned house and tell her father that she'd quit.

But then she remembered why she was doing this in the first place. It was all for Cloudy. She pictured the mare the way she'd seen her earlier that day, happily eating hay in her paddock. At Solano Stables, where she belonged. Suddenly cleaning out the garage didn't seem
so terrible after all. At least not compared to the possibility of losing Cloudy.

Keeping that thought firmly in mind, Maddie grabbed the rag from where she'd tossed it and set to work on the grease spot with renewed energy.

CHAPTER

“WILL YOU TURN OFF THE
light, already?” Maddie grumbled, glaring at her sister.

“Chill. I'll be done in a sec.” Tillie was standing in front of her mirror, running a brush over her chin-length wavy hair. Several bottles and tubes were arrayed in front of her, and as Maddie watched, Tillie set down the brush and picked up one of the bottles. She carefully squeezed a tiny dab of goo onto her finger and started rubbing it on her face in small circles.

Maddie was tempted to get up and switch off the overhead light herself. Let Tillie finish her stupid beauty routine in the dark!

But she was too exhausted to bother. Every part of her body ached. She hadn't been this tired in a long time—maybe ever.

After she'd finished cleaning the garage, Maddie had gone around to all the neighbors' houses looking for more work. And she'd found it. First Mrs. Bracken had hired her to clean all the windows in her entire house. It was only after the insides of the windows were all spotless that Maddie realized the woman expected her to do the outsides, too!

Then Mr. Janicek had practically begged Maddie to take his hyper boxer to the park and toss a tennis ball until the dog got tired. Easy money, Maddie figured. She liked dogs. But after an hour, she'd started to suspect that Bosco wasn't so much a dog as a perpetual motion robot programmed to chase that stupid tennis ball until the end of time. He seemed willing to go until he dropped, but Maddie wasn't. She'd given it another half hour and then taken him home. Luckily, Mr. Janicek had seemed thrilled, and even gave her an extra few dollars as a tip.

Next Ms. Levy had asked Maddie to weed the flower
bed in her front yard. That hadn't been so bad—at least Maddie got to sit down and rest while she worked. Although she'd realized that sitting on the ground might not have been the smartest idea when a colony of stinging ants decided to crawl up her shorts. Yikes! At least her brothers hadn't witnessed that one, or she would have been dealing with ants-in-her-pants jokes for the rest of her life.

Ms. Levy's next-door neighbor had noticed Maddie dancing around, shaking the ants out, and hurried over to make sure she was okay. When she heard that Maddie was looking for odd jobs, she'd hired her to prune her rose hedge. Which was about six feet high and covered in thorns.

By the end of the day, Maddie had been dirty and sweaty, covered with dog hair and scratches and itchy ant bites. Plus, her throwing arm—which also happened to be her scrubbing arm and her weeding arm—had felt as if it was ready to fall off.

Had all the work been worth it? Maddie wasn't sure. She'd ended up with a decent wad of cash, but she was pretty sure it wouldn't be enough for even a small down
payment on Cloudy. And she'd just about run out of neighbors, at least until Mr. and Mrs. Himura got back from vacation. So what else could she do to earn some fast money? If she didn't make an offer on the pony soon, it could be too late!

“I need more ideas,” she muttered.

“Huh?” Tillie glanced at her in the mirror. She was still busy rubbing lotion into her face.

“Nothing. Um, I just remembered I need to do something.” Climbing out of bed, Maddie groaned as her leg muscles protested. Hobbling over to her desk, she sat down and opened her laptop.

As she logged on to the Pony Post, she checked the time. It was almost ten thirty, which meant it was even later in her friends' time zones. There was no way any of her friends would see her post tonight. But with any luck, they'd see it first thing in the morning and there would be more ideas waiting when she checked back tomorrow.

[MADDIE]
Hi guys, it's me again! Still looking for moneymaking ideas. Please let me know if u can
think of ANYTHING I can do to earn $$$ fast. Has to be something I can do in the next 3 days. Seriously, I'll consider anything, no matter how crazy! Write back asap, pls! Thanks!

“Are you done?” Tillie asked as Maddie hit enter. “I want to turn off the light now.”

She sounded slightly annoyed. Typical Tillie. Maddie had been waiting for like a million hours for her to finish her stupid beauty routines, and now Tillie was acting like Maddie was the one holding up bedtime. But it wasn't worth fighting about—not tonight.

“Yeah.” Maddie closed her computer. “I'm done.”

She crawled back into bed. Seconds later the room went dark, and a few minutes after that Tillie was snoring softly on her side of the room.

Despite her exhaustion, Maddie couldn't fall asleep. Her mind was racing, as fast and skittery as a wild pony dashing across the dunes of Assateague. What if she couldn't earn enough money fast enough to buy Cloudy? She couldn't stand the thought of losing her. The Richardsons had
almost ruined her once—Maddie couldn't let that happen to Cloudy again.

She couldn't let it happen to herself, either. She loved everything about being at the barn and couldn't imagine giving it up. She'd miss the people too much—the twins and Ms. Emerson and Kiana and everyone else. She adored every single animal on the place, even Horace, the cranky old barn cat.

But she loved Cloudy best of all. How could she step into the barn knowing her special pony, her best friend, wasn't there anymore?

Then there was the Pony Post. What would happen if Maddie lost her only real connection to Chincoteague? She'd never had any trouble making new friends, and her family had moved around enough to give her plenty of practice. Plus, she'd never even met Nina, Haley, or Brooke in person. Even so, the thought of losing touch with them made her feel lonelier than she'd ever been, even on the first day in yet another new school. But how could they all help but lose touch if Maddie lost Cloudy? It wasn't as if Northern California was crawling with Chincoteague
ponies. Besides, even another Chincoteague pony wouldn't be the same as her Cloudy. . . .

Blowing out a sigh, Maddie switched on the small lamp on the table beside her bed. Then she reached for her well-worn copy of
Misty of Chincoteague
, which she kept tucked into the bedside table's lower shelf. After a quick glance across the room to make sure her sister hadn't stirred, she opened the book, flipping forward to Chapter 3, her favorite part. Settling back against her pillow, she read the familiar words:

Spring tides had come once more to Assateague Island. They were washing and salting the earth, coaxing new green spears to replace the old dried grasses.

On a windy Saturday morning, half-past March, a boy and his sister were toiling up the White Hills of Assateague Beach. . . .

Maddie read on, trying to lose herself in the familiar adventures of Paul and Maureen Beebe and the ponies of
Chincoteague. But after barely half a chapter, she let the book fall into her lap. Reading it was usually a guaranteed way to put her in a good mood. But today it only reminded her of just how special Cloudy really was—and how terrible it would be to lose her.

Setting the book aside, Maddie switched off the light and closed her eyes. But it took her at least another half hour to finally fall asleep.

A shrill buzzing sound jerked Maddie awake. She sat up and rubbed her eyes. Bright sunlight was pouring in through the windows. How late had she slept? She glanced at Tillie's bed, which was neatly made.

The buzz came again, and Maddie realized it was her cell phone. She grabbed it from the bedside table and answered without bothering to check the readout.

“Hello?” she mumbled, her voice still fuzzy with sleep.

“Maddie? Is that you?”

Maddie rubbed her eyes with her free hand, trying to wake herself up. The voice sounded sort of familiar, but for a second she couldn't place it.

“Hello?” the voice said again. “It's me, Nina!”

“Nina?” Maddie sat bolt upright in her bed. No wonder she hadn't recognized the voice right away! She'd spoken to Nina and the other Pony Post girls on the phone before, but only a few times, and always with lots of advance planning. The last time had been a conference call that Nina's father had set up as a special treat for Nina's birthday back in March.

“Did I wake you up?” Nina sounded bright and alert. “I thought it was like nine thirty there. Did I mess up the time difference?”

“Um . . .” Maddie glanced at her alarm clock, which read 9:33. “No, you got it right. Don't worry, I'm up.”

“Good,” Nina said. “Because I need to talk to you, girl. We're all worried about you.”