Team Play (12 page)

“A riding demonstration?” Miss Bellanger said. “Do I recall authorizing that?”

“Well, not exactly,” Stevie said. “But I promise you, it will be neat. The kids will love it.”

Miss Bellanger sighed. “Like I said, Stevie. You think of everything.” She reached for the microphone to the P.A. system and made an announcement. All Stevie heard of it before she raced out the door was, “Your attention please. We have more good news, courtesy of the indomitable Stevie Lake—”

“T
HEY
’
RE JUST AS
good as we thought, aren’t they?” Carole asked Stevie as the two of them stood and watched the Italian boys do their demonstration.

“Absolutely,” Stevie said.

“How do they get their horses to do those things?” Lisa asked.

“Training,” Kate supplied.

The four boys were working through intricate patterns with their horses. Some of the riding was a little like the drill work that Stevie, Lisa, and Carole had practiced, though the boys were much better than they had been. A lot of their performance was a dressage demonstration, in quadruplicate.

The four riders lined up and began walking their horses toward the far end of the oval. At an invisible signal, all four horses began prancing, in step with one another.

“How can they do that with untrained horses? I mean, those guys have never ridden on those horses before!” Carole said, obviously envious.

“The horses may not be trained to do that, but the riders are,” Max said. “The riders are just talking to their horses with their legs, hands, and seat. Isn’t it wonderful?”

“Yes,” Kate agreed.

At the far end of the oval, the formation changed. All four horses returned to the center and then each went to a separate corner, forming a square. At an invisible signal, they began cantering toward the center of the ring, and somehow, miraculously, managed to cross one another without running in to each other. The audience applauded. The horses reversed directions at the corners and repeated the exercise.

“Amazing,” Christine said.

“Could we ever do something like that?” Lisa asked Max.

“Sure,” Max replied, “but first you have to learn to keep your heels down, toes in, hands steady, and—”

“I know, eyes straight ahead,” Lisa finished for him. “I guess he means first things first,” she said to Kate. Kate nodded.

By then, the boys had started a zigzag pattern so complicated that Stevie wished she were in a hot air balloon so she could see it more clearly. What was clear from where she was, however, was that they really knew what they were doing. They proceeded flawlessly through the entire exercise.

“Fabulous!” she exclaimed when they completed the set.

“Outstanding!” Phil said. They both clapped loudly.

Then, with the horses once again responding to imperceptible signals, the riders began a snaking pattern that turned out to be a figure eight. They cantered their horses through the figure. The work was so precise that it appeared the riders would run into each other every time they crossed the intersection in the middle of the eight, but no such thing happened. The boys were too good.

“Boy, and I had them driving pony carts!” Stevie moaned. “They must think I’m a jerk!”

“Nobody thinks you’re a jerk,” Phil assured her. “In fact, now I think they’re going to do something special here just for you.”

As Phil spoke, Stevie looked up and saw that all four horses and riders were approaching her straight on. Stevie wondered what was happening. The crowd did, too.

The horses drew to a halt just a few feet in front of her.

Then, while Stevie watched breathlessly, all four horses inched their front legs forward, lowering themselves into a bow to her—just her.

“Oh,” Stevie said.

“Oooooh,” the crowd agreed.

And when the horses rose back up again, everybody burst into applause for the Italian equestrian team, and for Stevie.

What a day it was!

“D
ID SOMEBODY PACK
up the Nerf balls?” Stevie asked later that afternoon.

“Better than that,” Phil told her. “After the booth closed, we sold them as souvenirs—and made a wicked profit!”

Stevie was sitting in the den in her own house, lounging in her father’s recliner. She had a glass of iced tea in one hand and a bowl of popcorn close by the other. But she wasn’t paying much attention to either of these luxuries. Her mind was still racing over potentially unfinished business from the very full day she’d just had on the hospital grounds. She was discovering that, thanks to the friends who surrounded her, there really was no unfinished business.

“And the games?” she asked.

“All packed and stored back at Fenton, along with the dismantled booths,” Carole assured her.

“Did all the horses and their equipment get safely back to Pine Hollow?” Stevie wanted to know.

“Every bit of it,” Marco promised her. “The horses have been groomed, fed, and watered, and are now enjoying a much-deserved rest. You should learn from them and begin enjoying this party your mother planned for you.”

Stevie smiled. While she had been working on the final matters of the day, her mother had invited her best friends over to their house to celebrate Stevie’s defeat in the school election. She felt good about everything that had happened that day, especially turning the election over to Bobby Effingwell.

“He’ll do a good job. I know it,” Stevie had told her mother.

“Yes, he will,” she’d agreed. “You did the right thing, you know.” Then she’d hugged Stevie.

“I know,” Stevie had said, hugging her back.

“P
IZZA
’
S HERE
!” M
RS
. Lake called down the stairs to the den, where all ten fair-givers were having their celebration. “I need somebody to help with the boxes!”

Instantly, she had five volunteers, more than enough for the four pizzas. The fifth person brought down a case of cold soda.

“Ah, the perfect American meal,” Stevie joked, watching her Italian guests arrive in the den with pizza. “Do you have anything like this at home?” she teased.

Marco and Andre began opening the boxes to see just what it was they were carrying. They shook their heads. “No,” they said. “We have something by the same name, but it isn’t anything like this at all,” Marco told her. “What is all this?”

“Food,” Stevie said simply. She felt too exhausted to try to explain. Phil took over the job. The Italians were quite interested to find things like hamburger and bacon on the pizzas.

“No, I have never seen anything like it at all,” Gian announced finally. He took a bite. “But I hope I see something like it a lot more!”

“As long as you’re in America, you’ll see plenty of it,” Kate promised them all.

Stevie took a bite and thought about what Kate had just said. It reminded her of something that was bothering her a little bit.

“Speaking of what you’re going to see in America,” Stevie said to the boys. “I’m sorry that I haven’t been doing such a good job as a tour guide.”

“You seem to have enough jobs as it is. Do you really want to take on another now?” Enrico teased.

“Well, but you’re here, you know, and there are things you should see—” Stevie began.

“Ah, yes,” said Marco. “The grand tour.” He said it as if it were a title: The Grand Tour. “We travel a lot as a team, you know. And we have been taken on a lot of tours. Everybody has a list of favorite sights. You wouldn’t believe some of the things we’ve had to look at. In one place, in the middle of summer, somebody went ten miles out of their way to show us where the toboggan run was in the winter!”

Stevie recalled that a toboggan run had figured on her original suggestion list. She smiled weakly.

“Well, what about Washington, D.C.?” she asked a little defensively. “I mean, there’s the White House and the Washington Monument and the Smithsonian and the Capitol—”

“We saw it all on our last visit here,” Andre explained. “We were staying in the city and we saw everything. We found that being a tourist in Washington is more exhausting than riding—”

“You mean you don’t want to go into the city?” Stevie interrupted.

The boys looked at one another uncomfortably. Clearly, they didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. “Well, to tell you the truth, we’d rather spend time with friends our own age. We can learn more about your country eating pizza and drinking soda than we can from a tour bus.”

“Really?” Stevie asked.

“Really,” Gian said sincerely, and the other boys nodded.

“Wonderful!” Stevie said, clapping with delight. “I’d much rather stay here tomorrow morning than go on the four-hour tour I talked my father into taking with us.”

“We don’t want to disappoint him,” Marco said.

“You won’t disappoint him. You’ll thrill him,” Stevie said. “So what would you like to do instead?”

“Tomorrow is tomorrow and there’s no need to decide yet,” Andre said. “But right now, we are all wondering about something. Do you mind if we ask you about it?”

“No, what is it?” the Americans responded eagerly.

“Can you show us how to dance like Americans do?”

“Absolutely!” Stevie cried. It took only a few minutes to push back the chairs and clear a dance space. Stevie turned on the stereo and began selecting music for the dance demonstration. At the first sounds of music, the dancing began.

C
AROLE STOOD WITH
her hands on her hips, watching Marco as he tried to dance the way she had.

“No, no,” she said. “You’ve got to loosen up, feel the music and move with it.”

Marco tried again. His dancing was a little better, but not much.

“Stop flapping your arms,” Carole said.

Marco laughed. “I guess I’m awful at this,” he said.

“Not really. It’s just that you don’t have the feel of it. It must be the way I’m describing it.” Carole thought for a second. “Wait a minute. I’ve got it. Think of yourself as riding on a horse. You know how you have to move with the motion of the horse? Now, pretend you’re on a horse that’s cantering, and—Hey, I think you’re getting it!”

“Yes, I can feel it. I don’t look so silly now, right?”

“Right!” Carole said. She began dancing along with him.

“But I don’t understand,” Gian said to Christine. They were sitting in the chairs by the dance area having a serious conversation. Neither of them felt like dancing. Both preferred to talk.

“Why do your people call themselves Native Americans now?”

Christine smiled. “Your own Christopher Columbus is the one who called us Indians,” she said. “He may have been a courageous man and a brilliant navigator—after all, he knew how to get here. He just didn’t know where he’d gotten. He thought he was in India and assumed we were Indians. My people have been named after a mistake for five hundred years. It’s time to correct the mistake.”

“So now the western movies will be called ‘cowboys and Native Americans?’ ” he teased.

“Why not?” Christine countered.

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “Now, tell me about Western riding—”

“Y
OU
’
RE A REALLY
good dancer!” Andre said, watching Kate as she moved to the music on the stereo.

“I always exercise to rock music,” she said. “I’ve got a pretty good collection, too. And now that I’m living on a dude ranch, I’m also starting a country and western collection, but it’s not so good for exercise.”

“What’s different about country and western music?” Andre asked.

“I
T
’
S A SLOW
one, Stevie. Want to dance with me?” Phil asked. He offered her a hand. She took it and let him help pull her up out of the lounge chair. Then he wrapped his arms around her and held her close. Stevie loved dancing with Phil, especially the slow dances. She put her head on his shoulder. They moved easily to the music.

“You’re amazing,” he said softly to her. “You did more today than a lot of people do in a lifetime. It was a little weird, though. Every time I turned around, there was somebody else saying how much work you had done and how good it was. I mean, I’ve always known you’re special, but what you accomplished today was unbelievable.”

“I couldn’t have done it without my friends, like you,” she murmured. He hugged her.

•    •    •

“S
O, HOW DO
you make the horses do all that?” Lisa asked Enrico. “I never saw anything like what you guys did this afternoon. I don’t mean I haven’t seen a good dressage exhibition. I have. I saw Dorothy DeSoto do a program. But all four of you were doing it at the same time. I know it didn’t have anything to do with the horses because I ride those same horses. They’re good, all right, but they haven’t had any special training. How does it work?”

“You want to know our secrets?”

“Are they secret?” Lisa asked. It hadn’t occurred to her that she was prying.

Enrico smiled. “Not to you, Lisa. Not to you and your friends. Now look,” he began. “It’s in the legs. The horse needs to know that you know what you are doing so that if you make the slightest change in the position of your legs, he will respond.”

“All in your legs?” Lisa asked to make sure.