Free Ivy Takes Care by Rosemary Wells Page A

could create a little warm heaven for whomever she blessed and she could just as quickly assign you to Siberia. Ivy was now in Siberia, and Annie didn’t want to be there with her.
    Mary Louise’s best friend, Jennifer, strolled over to the table where Annie and Ivy were eating. “Hey, Annie Evans!” said Jennifer sweetly, “Come and see this!”
    Annie stood. “I told you you should have taken the dog watch off,” she whispered, and wrapping up the second half of her sandwich, Annie followed Jennifer to the popular girls’ lunch table.
    As easily as being snatched into the doors of a flying saucer, Annie walked up the ladder that had been extended down to her and entered Mary Louise heaven.
    It was no good telling anybody about this. Ivy’s mom and dad would just sigh and say Annie would soon forget about whatever foolishness went on at school and be herself again. Ivy knew this was not going to happen.
    Fridays were paydays for Ivy. She got a silver dollar a week from Dr. Rinaldi for her assistance at his clinic. Sometimes in the evening, Ivy clinked the big dollar coins out of their envelope and counted them out on the table. Her mother found her doing this one night after supper.
    “Penny for your thoughts, honey,” she had said.
    “Just counting,” said Ivy.
    “We don’t see Annie,” said her mother. “We haven’t seen her since school began.”
    “Annie,” said Ivy, “is taking Eastern show-riding lessons three times a week in Reno. Her mother drives her. There’s some indoor ring there with jumps and hedges and stuff. I think she got into it at camp this summer. They do English riding and show jumping there.” Ivy said nothing about Annie’s new friends.
    Her mother sniffed and cast around her chair for her sewing box. “That kind of horse show business’ll run you into the poor house sooner than a one-arm bandit,” she said, taking out a sock that needed darning, holding its ragged toe up to the light, and inserting the darning egg. “Of course, Annie’s people don’t have to worry about such things as money.”
    Annie had been invited to sit at lunch permanently with Mary Louise and her gang. Each day Ivy watched her friend breathe in the Mary Louise laughing gas and then, after school was over, quickly disappear into another world. Ivy was too shy to ask Annie if the tourmaline ring ever made it in the mail to Camp Allegro.
    Ivy rode alone to the animal hospital after school. Without a bike of his own, Billy Joe had managed only three work days in September and October combined to pay off his debt to Dr. Rinaldi. In the end, Cora Butterworth paid up Inca’s bill, because the trouble of driving Billy Joe to work and fetching him again wasn’t worth it.
    But Ivy never stopped going. At the vet’s, Ivy cleaned up the dog runs and the cat boxes. She fed the animals, watered them, and exercised the ones that needed it. She liked the work. She was allowed to take temperatures, remove stitches with a tiny pliers, and change IV bottles. Dr. Rinaldi had promised that in a month’s time, she could assist at a spaying surgery.
    One day in November, Ivy stopped at Dr. Rinaldi’s examining room before she left the vet’s building. Someone’s collie was on the table, whimpering about an ear examination. Ivy hopped up to sit on the table and took the dog’s head in her hands, holding him steady for the otoscope.
    Dr. Rinaldi asked her, “Ivy, did you ever hear of the Mexican Derby at the Agua Caliente track down in Tijuana?”
    “I’ve heard of the Agua Caliente track,” said Ivy. She loved all things horse and so read the track news in the sports pages of the
Reno Gazette Journal.
    “Filly named Andromeda beat the big champion, Seabiscuit, by four lengths at Agua Caliente some years back. That’s the race they call the Mexican Derby. Not quite Santa Anita or the Preakness, but it’s a big race all the same.”
    “Seabiscuit! He’s the most famous horse since Man o’ War!” said Ivy.