Free Wild Horse by Bonnie Bryant Page B

there, she would still be sad to leave, but the point is, she’s not acting sad,” Stevie reasoned. “She’s way beyond sad.”
    “She’s miserable,” Carole agreed. “And confused and upset and tortured. And this is one time when we know how she feels and her parents don’t. If they knew how much she hated Wentworth, they would never want her to go there.”
    “Well …,” Stevie said doubtfully, remembering Mrs. Atwood’s history of pressuring Lisa into things.
    “No, seriously, Stevie. Her mother might make her look at the place, but she wouldn’t make her go there,” Carole insisted.
    “I guess you’re right,” Stevie conceded. Frustrated, she crossed her arms over her chest and sat back on her bed. “If only we could get Lisa to talk to her mother!”
    “But she won’t—or can’t,” Carole said, sighing.
    “And you know what really gets me?” Stevie said, after thinking for a few minutes. “Everyone keeps mentioning the great opportunities at Wentworth, but how great are they? I think the greatest opportunity is for Lisato stay right where she is, where she’s always been happy.”
    “And successful,” Carole added. “She aces everything, but she has enough competition so she doesn’t get bored.” Carole knew about the crowd of supersmart kids Lisa competed with academically. She’d often heard Lisa say that certain of her classmates, as well as her teachers, kept her on her toes.
    “That’s one thing she won’t have at Wentworth,” Stevie said scornfully. “None of those girls could be half as smart as Lisa. All they care about is their appearance.”
    “Do you think Mrs. Atwood realizes that it’s not that great academically?” Carole asked.
    Stevie shrugged. “Who knows? She’s probably so caught up in how prestigious it is that she’s forgotten all about academics.”
    The girls talked for almost an hour without thinking up any solutions. They wanted to call Lisa and beg her to talk to her parents, but they were scared that that would backfire. They were afraid that Lisa, sick of their interfering, would refuse to talk to them, upset that they were persisting in making it worse for her.
    When Mrs. Lake knocked on the door again to tell them to go to bed, they were beginning to feel desperate.
    “You’ll have to get your own breakfast in the morning, girls,” Mrs. Lake told them, “because I’m not going to be here. I’m leaving very early to get my hair cut before work.”
    “Where are you getting it cut?” Stevie asked idly. She could never keep straight which salon her mother went to because she always seemed to be changing hairdressers.
    “I’m going back to Cosmo Cuts,” said Mrs. Lake. “Everyone agrees it’s the best. It’s owned by that man—”
    “Charles,” Stevie and Carole said in unison.
    Mrs. Lake looked at them, surprised. “How did you know?”
    “Mrs. Atwood took Lisa there, and Mrs. diAngelo and Veronica get their hair done there once a week,” Carole explained.
    “It sounds like the place to go, then,” Mrs. Lake said. “There’s cereal and fruit for the morning, okay?”
    At her mother’s insistence, Stevie turned the lights out. She waited until she heard her mother go into her own bedroom and shut the door. Then she turned the lights back on—and sat bolt upright. “Carole,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady, “do you think that if Lisa’s mother suddenly changed her mindabout Wentworth, Lisa would feel okay about not going?”
    Carole stared at her friend curiously. “I think that if Lisa could get out of this without having to upset her mother, she would do it in a second. Why? What do you have in mind?”
    “Remember what you told me Lisa said about the hair salon?” Stevie asked.
    Carole considered Stevie’s question for a moment. “You mean what the women were saying about Max and Veronica?”
    “Not what they were saying, but
that
they were saying it,” Stevie said breathlessly. “Lisa said that