“The only way to get over your fear is to get right back on,” Cole lectured.
“I did that,” she assured him gravely, but with a twinkle in her green eyes.
“And?”
“And I got a concussion.”
Cole’s stomach growled, and his thoughts shifted to apples. He lived on a tight budget, and he seemed to have an appetite that was never satisfied. “I’d better put that bag of apples away before it gets stepped on or someone trips over it,” he said. Harrison picked up the bag and started toward the rear of the stable, fully intending to share in the horses’ bounty. As he passed one of the stalls near the end of the long aisle, an ancient named Buckshot put his head out over the door, his eyes hopeful and inquisitive, his soft nose aimed at the bag in Cole’s arm.
“You can’t walk and you can’t see, but there’s nothing wrong with your sense of smell,” Cole told the horse as he dug an apple out of the bag and gave it to him. “Just don’t go telling your stablemates about these apples. Some of them are mine.”
Chapter 3
COLE WAS PUTTING FRESH HAY into the empty stalls when several of the girls who’d been riding marched into the stable. “Diana, we need to talk to you about Corey,” Haley Vincennes announced. Cole looked up from his chore, took one look at the group, and knew that the all-girl jury was about to deliver their verdict. And it wasn’t going to be a good one.
Diana obviously sensed it, too, and tried to head them off, her voice sweet and persuasive. “I know you’ll all like Corey when you get to know her, and then we’ll all be good friends.”
“That just can’t happen,” Haley decreed with haughty finality. “None of us have anything in common with somebody from a hick town we’ve never even heard of. I mean, did you see that sweatshirt she was wearing last week when you brought her over here? She said her grandmother painted that horse’s head on it for her.”
“I liked it,” Diana said stubbornly. “Corey’s grandmother is an artist!”
“Artists paint on canvases not sweatshirts, and you know it. And I will bet you a month’s allowance those jeans she’s wearing today came from Sears!”
A chorus of murmured laughter from the other girls was proof they agreed; then Barb Hayward finally added her vote to the majority opinion, but she looked a little timid as she decreed poor Corey’s fate: “I don’t see how she can be our friend, or yours either, Diana.”
Cole winced with empathy for Corey and with sympathy for poor little Diana, who he was certain would buckle under the intense peer pressure, but poor little Diana didn’t give an inch, even though her voice never lost its softness. “I’m really sorry you all feel that way,” she said sincerely, directing her words to Haley, who Cole already knew was the leader in this and the nastiest of the dissenters. “I guess I never realized you’d be afraid of the competition if you gave her a chance.”
“What competition?” Barb Hayward asked, looking baffled but concerned.
“Competition with boys. I mean, Corey is very pretty, and she’s lots of fun, so naturally the boys are going to be hanging around her wherever she goes.”
In the stall across from the girls, Cole paused, pitchfork in hand, a smile of admiration on his mouth, as he realized Diana’s strategy. As he’d learned while working there, boys were the most desirable, most valued of commodities to teenage girls, and the possibility that Corey might attract more boys into their collective lair was almost irresistible. He was wondering if that possibility wouldn’t be outweighed in their minds by the threat that Corey might steal their existing boyfriends, when Diana interjected smoothly, “Of course, Corey already has a boyfriend back home, and she isn’t interested in having another one here.”
“I think we should give her a chance and take some time to get to know her before we make up our minds we don’t want her in the group,” Barb said in the earnest, hesitant tone of a girl who knows the difference between right and wrong, but who lacks the courage to be a leader.
“I’m so glad!” Diana said happily. “I knew you wouldn’t let me down. If you had, I’d have missed all of you—I’d have missed sharing some of my best clothes with you, and missed having you go with us to New York next summer.”
“Missed us? What do you mean?”
“I mean that Corey is going to be my best friend. And best friends have to stick together.”
When the others left to return to the party, Cole strolled out of the stall, startling Diana. “Tell me something,” he said with a conspiratorial grin. “Does Corey really have a boyfriend back home?”
Diana nodded slowly. “Yes.”
“Really?” Cole asked dubiously, noticing the guilty laughter in her sparkling eyes. “What’s this boyfriend’s name?”
She bit her lip. “It’s sort of an odd name.”
“How odd?”
“Promise you won’t tell anyone?”
Enchanted with her face, her voice, her loyalty, and her cleverness, Cole drew an X over his heart with his index finger.
“His name is Sylvester.”
“And he’s a—?” Cole prompted.
Her gaze mischievously slid away from his, her curly russet lashes casting shadows on her cheekbones as they lowered over the jade of her eyes. “A pig,” she confessed.
Her voice had been so low, and Cole had been so certain that Sylvester was a dog or cat, that he thought he had misunderstood. “A pig?” he repeated. “As in oink? As in piglet?”
She nodded. “As in ‘hog,’ actually,” she admitted as she lifted glowing green eyes to his. “Corey told me he’s huge, and he tags after her at home like a cocker spaniel. At her old home, I mean.”
At that moment, Cole decided that Corey was a very lucky girl to have a diminutive but potent champion like Diana Foster to help her bridge the social gulf. Unaware of his silent compliments, Diana glanced at him. “Is there anything to drink in here? I’m really thirsty.”
Cole smiled. “Deceit is hard work, isn’t it? And there’s nothing like going to b
attle against a half-dozen stuck-up girls to work up a thirst, is there?”
Unabashed, she rolled her eyes at him and smiled. She was spunky as hell, Cole decided, but with a unique soft-spoken style that completely belied her determination and courage. “Sure,” he relented, tipping his head to the rear of the stable. “Help yourself.”
At the end of the hallway, on the right, Diana found a small room that she assumed was Cole’s, with a single bed made up with military perfection and an old desk with an ancient lamp. Books and papers were neatly stacked on the desk and one of them was open. Opposite the bedroom, to the left of the hallway, was a bathroom and tucked behind that was a kitchen area containing only a sink, a small stove, and a miniature refrigerator like the one under Diana’s father’s bar at home. Diana assumed the refrigerator would be stocked with soft drinks for everyone’s use, but when she opened it, there was nothing inside but a package of hot dogs, a carton of milk, and a box of cereal.
She was surprised to see that he kept his cereal in the refrigerator and even more surprised that although this refrigerator was obviously for his use he didn’t keep much food in it. Puzzled, she closed the door and filled a paper cup up with water from the sink. When she dropped the cup into the little trash can, she saw two apple cores in it. The apples she brought had been old and soft and completely unappetizing, and she couldn’t imagine why he would eat one, let alone two of them. Unless he was hungry. Very, very hungry.
The empty refrigerator and the apple cores were on her mind as she paused to pet a pretty palomino quarter horse; then she returned to the stable entrance to see how Corey was doing. Three girls were talking to her near the corral.
“Do you think you should go out there, in case she needs more help?”
“No, Corey will be fine. She’s really great, and they’ll find that out. Besides, I don’t think she’d like it if she thought I was sort of . . . helping things along.”
“You’re quite a ‘helper outer,’?” Cole joked, then realized she was embarrassed, and hastily said, “What if they decide they don’t like her?”