Sidesaddle (13 page)

Shaken because she’d fallen? No, she fell off Belle fairly regularly. All riders fell off their horses from time to time, and it was no big deal

It wasn’t all that often that she had a chance to fall so spectacularly in front of a large crowd of people. Maybe that was it. She dismissed that, too. It was embarrassing, but everybody else there had done the same thing. Was she embarrassed because she’d been such a miserable failure as a sidesaddle rider? Maybe a little. On the other hand, none of the other sidesaddle riders had excelled. They hadn’t been as bad as Stevie, but they were all riding a horse that was experienced. Riding aside was new for both Stevie and Belle. Everybody there knew that. So what was shaking her up?

Stevie ran her fingers through her hair to pull it back from her face. It felt funny. It took her a few seconds to realize that it felt funny because it was all curly. She stood up from the hay bale and walked over to a little mirror that someone had tacked to the wall a long time before.

She barely knew the girl whose reflection greeted her. What was this cloud of curls? Where did the pink sweater come from? Did anyone know who this girl was?

She wasn’t anyone Stevie Lake knew, and then Stevie understood that she wasn’t anyone that Lisa, Carole, or Phil Marsten knew, either. If Phil liked the real Stevie Lake enough to have been her boyfriend all this time, how could he possibly care about curls and pastels? With a shudder, Stevie sat back down on the bale. She didn’t want to see that image in the dusty mirror anymore. And she didn’t think anybody who mattered to her did, either.

“I’
VE LOOKED EVERYWHERE
,” Lisa said to Carole. “I don’t know where she is.”

“Belle’s back in her stall, but she hasn’t been groomed,” Carole said.

“That’s a good sign,” said Phil, meeting up with Lisa and Carole in the tack room

“How?” asked Carole.

“It means she’s still planning on going on the trail ride with us.”

“Or that she’s so crazed she didn’t groom her horse,” Lisa suggested.

“Think positive,” Carole urged her.

“Okay, then, let’s look again. She didn’t disappear into thin air!” Phil said.

The three of them went back to the usual starting point for everything at Pine Hollow—the locker room. And there was Stevie, leaning deeply into her locker so
that all they could see was her backside, now clad in riding jeans instead of the neatly pressed fawn-colored riding pants she’d had on earlier.

“Stevie?”

“It’s me,” she said, standing up and turning around. “I knew this was in here somewhere.” She had a T-shirt clasped in her hand. “Excuse me a second.” She ducked into the bathroom and emerged a few seconds later, wearing the T-shirt and proudly displaying its message:
THE HORSE IS THE ONE WITH THE POINTY EARS
. “Did someone say ‘trail ride’?” she asked brightly.

“Everybody did,” said Phil. “Come on, let’s get Belle tacked up. You want her usual saddle, don’t you?”

“Absolutely!” Stevie said, following Phil into the tack room.

When they were out of earshot, Lisa turned to Carole. “Maybe it was the fall that shook it loose,” she said.

“Shook what loose?”

“The alien spirit that took over her body for a while.”

Carole slung her arm across Lisa’s shoulders. “Maybe,” she said. “Maybe not. Our Stevie is sometimes subject to wild swings. This was just one of the wilder ones.” She looked at the pink sweater, now abandoned on the bench. That seemed to be a good place for it to stay.

Carole and Lisa met Phil and Stevie at Belle’s stall. Tiffani was across the aisle, giving Diamond a final brushing.

“Hey, I’m glad to see you’re okay. You disappeared so fast after class, nobody had a chance to help you?”

“I’m fine,” Stevie said. “Thanks for coming to my rescue. Say, would you like to come along on our trail ride? We can show you some more of these woods this afternoon.”

“Oh, no thanks,” Tiffani said. “I’ve got to get back to my aunt’s house. My parents are coming home soon, and I want to get some new clothes to welcome them. My aunt says the mall is great, but I don’t know any of the stores there. Have you got any suggestions?”

Without hesitation, and in a single voice, the three girls answered. “Simpson’s,” they said.

“It must be some store!”

“It is,” Stevie assured her.

Carole and Lisa left then to get their horses and told Stevie and Phil they’d meet them at the good-luck horseshoe. Carole also said she’d bring Barq, the horse Phil would be riding, because he was already tacked up.

Stevie slipped the bridle into Belle’s mouth and then, smoothing down the reins, found herself on the same side of the big mare as Phil. They were on the far side of the stall door in a rather private corner.

Phil dropped the brush into Belle’s grooming bucket and turned to face Stevie. He put his hands on her shoulders, sweeping her hair back from her face.

“You gave us a scare out there,” he said.

“It wasn’t much of a fall,” she said.

“That wasn’t what scared us—me, especially. It was all that … oh, I don’t know. That un-Stevie stuff. You’re so special just the way you are that when you start wearing fluff and pink, I don’t know what to do.”

“I confused you?”

“Yeah,” he said.

“I sort of confused myself, too,” she said.

“I bet you did.”

“But I don’t think I’m confused now.”

“I hope not.”

“What makes you say that?”

“Because I’m about to kiss you, and I wouldn’t want to be seen kissing someone who was confused.”

“Definitely not confused,” Stevie promised.

A few minutes later, as they walked toward their rendezvous with Carole and Lisa, Stevie asked the question that had been bugging her for a while.

“If I’m the girl you like, how come you were flirting with Tiffani?”

“I was?”

“Definitely,” Stevie said.

“You’re right, I was. But it didn’t mean anything.”

“Not to you, it didn’t.”

“But it didn’t mean anything to her, either.”

“Well, it meant something to me,” Stevie told him. “And it hurt.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But it just happened. You see, there are some girls who flirt the way other girls breathe. It’s totally natural. And it comes naturally to boys to flirt back, but it doesn’t mean anything and it certainly doesn’t mean I like her better than I like you, or as well as I like you, or even that I like her at all. It just means that we were flirting, playing a game.”

“How do you feel about flirting with me, then?” Stevie asked.

“I love it and it means something,” he said.

“That’s not logical.”

“Neither is the way I feel about you. Want to duck into another stall so that I can remind you?”

“Later, maybe,” Stevie said.

Stevie hadn’t felt this good for weeks. Not since the day Tiffani arrived. Even though the sky was overcast, she would have sworn the weather was perfect. Even though Belle was still moody after her unsatisfactory stint as a sidesaddle horse, Stevie would have sworn she was the nicest, most obedient horse in Virginia. And even though the trail ride lasted more than an hour, Stevie would have sworn it flew by in less than fifteen minutes.

The friends rode all around the hillside and then came down to their favorite spot by the edge of the
creek. By the time they settled onto the rock, where they resisted the temptation to dangle their toes in the too-cold water, their conversation turned to shopping.

“Poor Tiffani,” Lisa said. “She’s not going to find a thing left for her at Simpson’s!”

“Aw, c’mon,” Stevie protested. “My mother didn’t let me buy everything. Remember the mint outfit?”

“I don’t think mint will go with her pale blue eyes,” Carole said.

Stevie gave her a withering look.

“Well, if she has trouble finding things there, I might have a few items in my wardrobe I could share with her.”

“You mean like your
LIFE IS UNCERTAIN
.
EAT DESSERT FIRST
T-shirt with the rip in the sleeve?”

“How about the green one with the big red paint smear on it?” Lisa suggested.

“It’s not a big smear,” said Stevie. “You can barely see it.”

“Not unless you happen to be looking at the shirt from within, say, fifty yards,” Carole said.

“Okay, what would you give her?” Phil asked.

“I have this white angora sweater,” Stevie said. “But it’s really worn out.…”

“Holes?

“Nope.”

“Rips?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do you mean, ‘worn out’?” Phil asked.

“Well, it’s not worn
out
so much as just plain
worn.
What I mean is that it’s gotten all the wearing it’s going to get from me!”

Lisa, Carole, and Phil all reached to give Stevie hugs at the same time. It was nice to have her back.

B
ONNIE
B
RYANT
is the author of more than a hundred books about horses, including The Saddle Club series, Saddle Club Super Editions, and the Pony Tails series. She has also written novels and movie novelizations under her married name, B. B. Hiller.

Ms. Bryant began writing The Saddle Club in 1986. Although she had done some riding before that, she intensified her studies then and found herself learning right along with her characters Stevie, Carole, and Lisa. She claims that they are all much better riders than she is.

Ms. Bryant was born and raised in New York City. She still lives there, in Greenwich Village, with her two sons.