Free Horse Love by Bonnie Bryant

Felipe, and that she was falling in love with the most amazing boy she’d ever met.
    Then she looked at the clock on her bedside table. It was almost nine! She only had a few minutes to get to the dining room before they stopped serving dinner. She leaped out of bed, brushed her teeth, ran a comb through her hair, and pulled on a white cotton dress. She grabbed her key card, slipped into some sandals, and was out the door and onto the path to the diningroom before she remembered that Tec had promised to pick her up for dinner at eight. Had she been sleeping so soundly that she’d missed him? How embarrassing!
    She still felt the vague disorientation of a sound sleep when she arrived at the dining room. The line was dwindling and they were clearly getting ready to stop seating people, but she was in time … to have dinner with whom?
    She stood on her tiptoes and looked around the place for Tec. She spotted him quickly. He was at a table full of other kids around their age. He waved to her cheerfully.
    She slid past the hostess and went over to the table but was disappointed to find that there weren’t any empty seats. It might not matter anyway, because it was clear they were almost finished eating.
    “I guess I must have been sound asleep when you knocked,” she said.
    Tec looked slightly confused and then embarrassed. “Oh, no, I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t wake up until after eight, and I figured you’d already be here by then, so I came straight over.”
    That made sense. “Oh, good, because I was so sound asleep—well, you can’t imagine,” she said. “Look, I’ve got a lot to tell you,” she began.
    “Then let’s get together after dinner, okay?” he asked.
    “Okay,” she said.
    He turned to the other people at the table. “Hey, guys, this is Lisa Altman—”
    “Atwood,” she corrected automatically.
    “Sorry. Atwood. Anyway, she’ll meet us in the lounge after she’s eaten, okay?”
    “Great,” said one guy. “I’m Will.”
    Lisa nodded as the others introduced themselves, too, a sea of names she was sure to forget until she got to know the owners of those names better—Kiki, Sophie, Grant, Brian, Meredith, and Alex.
    “We’ll see you over there, okay?” Tec said. He smiled warmly at her, once again showing those dimples that melted her knees.
    “I won’t be long,” she promised.
    “Take your time,” said Kiki. “We wouldn’t want you to get indigestion!”
    A couple of the kids laughed and so did Lisa, though she didn’t really think that Kiki had said anything particularly funny.
    Lisa returned to where the hostess was taking care of the last diners, but before she was relegated to the tail of the line, she spotted her parents. They were sitting together at a table that was almost empty. Her father saw her and waved her over to them.
    It seemed like days since she’d seen them. She rememberedthat they’d been on an official snorkeling picnic, unlike the impromptu one that she and Tec had devised. Perhaps they could compare notes.
    Lisa picked up a plate and walked through the buffet, selecting a light meal—sure to save her from indigestion—and then sat down next to her father.
    Over the last few months, she’d gotten very good at taking a barometric reading of her parents’ moods, and she could sense right away that the mood was good. It seemed that the vacation was having exactly the effect her parents had hoped for.
    “How’s it going, sweetie?” her father asked. “It looks like you’ve made some friends.”
    “I guess,” Lisa said. She wasn’t thrilled with the idea of talking with her parents about Tec at this point. “Well, there are a lot of kids around my age here now. I guess it’s because it’s spring vacation for a lot of schools. Say, how was that snorkeling thing you did today?”
    It was a good question to ask at a time when she didn’t want to answer questions herself. It turned out her parents had had a great time.
    “The colors