Free Secondhand Horses by Lauraine Snelling Page A

dozed off when He was finishing
her
brain. After all, He had done an
awful
lot of creating.
    Uncle Dave thought she couldn’t finish anything and that her Great Ideas
weren’t
. What good was a mini horse? She gritted her back teeth and made herself spin. She would make the zoo adoptions the best thing. She would show him the “minor” mini could do something major. She’d remember to take out the butter the night before, for pizza sake. For the zoo, she had to come up with an idea. Not a Great Idea.
No more Great Ideas
. Simply an idea she could finish. The sooner she practiced being Esther, the better.
    The girls cleaned up the kitchen and settled in with their schoolwork. Esther sat on the front porch and did her math while Sunny attended one of her online history classes. Medieval times. Not her favorite. They took the rest of the schoolwork out to the corral and read their assignments to the horses. The zoo insisted on attending, all-attentive with wuffles, bleats, honks, and grunts. Esther said they ought to allow animals in schools to make schoolwork more fun. Sunny agreed.
    With the final work checked off and a video chat to Sunny’s mom to let her know, the two headed out to play with the zoo. Only the mini was interested. Bob wanted to finish chomping on the oval. Which Way was lying next to Piggles, who was in his favorite shady, dusty place. They politely asked the mystery horse they’d named Mystery—of course—if they could borrow the ball, then took the ball and the mini to the back corral that had nearly dried out from the mud party. Piggles and Which Way followed then headed toward the remaining mud.
    When the mini stood shoulder to ball, the ball was taller.
    “Are you sure you can do this? You’re awfully small,” Sunny said. Would this be one more thing a mini couldn’t do that a “real” horse could?
    He flickered an eye as if to say, “Watch me!” First he looked at it. Then he nosed it, crow hopping backward as it rolled. Sunny laughed until tears leaked out of her eyes. In the next moments, as he grew braver, he dashed straight at it until the girls gasped for fear he would roll right up and down the other side. At the last moment, he swerved and gave it a kick with a back leg on the way by.
    Which Way waddled out of the mud to see what was happening. He missed death on numerous occasions by flying into the corral during the mini’s mad charge. This went on long enough that Sunny forgot everything else. The mini was
fun
.
    Finally, Sunny remembered the tractor shed.
    “C’mon, Esther,” she said. They left the mini intent on his game.
    Standing in the shed doorway, they peered into the gloom, stripes of light beaming in from the long, jagged gaps in the shrunken wooden roof.
    “This place is truly creepy,” Esther said, making no move to go farther. “No wonder we felt like someone was watching us.”
    “And dangerous,” Sunny reminded her. “Watch where you step. Let me prop both doors open.” The rest of the Squad would be there shortly. Time to practice telling the girls the way to clean out the shed. Maybe she was a bossy type. It sure worked for Esther. Knocking over a rusty oilcan as she ventured farther in, she bent down to inspect it. She pulled the trigger. Amber oil squirted out.
    “Huh.” The barn doors could use a bit of this.
    At the barn, she eyed the hinges. Where to shoot it?
Squirt
. Whoa. That was a lot.
    “You’re supposed to oil the hinges, not drown them,” Esther said from behind her, critically regarding the operation.
    Tires crunched, and Esther squealed. “It’s Vee and Aneta!”
    Sunny dropped the oilcan.
    “We have so much to tell you!” Esther screeched as Vee and Aneta tumbled out of Aneta’s mom’s SUV. “I thought Aneta’s grandmother was bringing you guys.”
    Ms. Jasper stepped out of the driver’s side wearing a suit that made her look like she should be the president. Her hair, blond and long, fell neatly from a clip. She