Free Horse Play by Bonnie Bryant Page A

admiring her green pinkie nail. “I think it may be the mystery season. Not only is my mother up to her same weird stuff, but my father’s getting mysterious, too—”
    “Pickles and ice cream?” Stevie asked. “Dad always teases Mom about the strange stuff she ate, especially when she was pregnant with Alex and me. Maybe that’s why I’m so weird!”
    Lisa and Carole smiled at their friend.
    “No, Dad promised me she’s not pregnant,” Lisa said. “He’s noticed her doing weird things, too, but he didnt’t tell me what was causing the situation, or what he was going to do to solve it. Just said he had an idea. Wouldn’t say what.”
    “Speaking of not saying
what
,” Carole said. “What is going on with Max?”
    “Now that
was
weird,” Lisa said. “Maybe some sort of mysterious disease is sweeping the adult population these days.” Lisa had finished one hand. She held it out so her friends could admire her work. “Now, I think I’ll do the other hand in bright red. Then I can cover my face with my hands and hide in a Christmas tree!”
    Stevie grinned, and then turned to Carole. “See, it’s working,” she said.
    Carole began giggling. “You really think you can keepLisa from being logical and normal just by having her polish her nails?”
    “In the silly season, anything can happen!” Stevie declared, reaching for the green nail polish herself.
    “C AROLE , L ISA, AND Stevie, please report to the office. Carole, Lisa, and Stevie!”
    Carole cocked her head in curiosity. She and her friends were in the middle of their afternoon chores before their drill practice, though Carole didn’t know why they were bothering with drill practice after Max’s edict the other day.
    What on earth could be so important that Max would have then interrupt
chores
? She took one more shovelful of wood chips and spread them on top of the peat in Diablo’s stall. He watched her silently, but responded with an affectionate nicker when she patted him on his silky neck.
    “Don’t know what this is about, boy,” she whispered into his ear, “but I hope Max isn’t still angry with us.”
    The horse nuzzled her neck and tickled her. Carole stowed the shovel in the equipment closet and headed for Max’s office.
    She met up with Lisa and Stevie at the door to Max’s office. Lisa had her hands shoved into her pants pocket. Carole glanced at her.
    “I didn’t have time to take off the red and green polish,” she explained. “I don’t want Max to think I’m crazy.”
    Standing between them, Stevie put a green-polished hand on Lisa’s shoulder and a red-polished one on Carole’s. “He already knows I am,” she joked.
    They went in.
    “Stop and go?” Max asked, looking at Stevie. He had noticed her nails first thing.
    Stevie and Carole relaxed a bit. If Max was joking, then he wasn’t angry any more. But Lisa blushed and shoved her hands further into her pocket.
    “Listen,” he said. “Mrs. Reg told me that you girls told her about the show and she okayed it. So, it turns out that the problem is really that I should have told her about
my
plan, but it was supposed to be a surprise. She assumed you’d already told me about yours. I assumed she knew about what I was doing. She couldn’t tell you because she didn’t know what it was that I hadn’t told her and the whole problem comes down to the fact that I’ve been busy out of my mind with one billion new students here which is great but it’s awful, too. You know what I mean?”
    The girls exchanged glances. Carole wondered briefly if Max was losing his mind. She’d never heard him say anything so garbled.
    “Are you okay, Max?” she asked, genuinely concerned.
    “Oh, sure,” he said. “I’ve just been too busy to pay attention to things I ought to be paying attention to,” he explained. “And it’s gotten me in trouble.”
    Trouble was where they had begun, and trouble seemed to be where they still were. There had been too many secrets for