The Great Pony Hassle (4 page)

“Some of them are smaller than others,” she admitted.

Grandmother Dill was out of the room, busy with her packing. Paisley showed off her polka-dotted legs, then lifted her T-shirt to show the red bumps lined up along her shorts waistband. All the girls stared. Even Stirling, the princess, seemed impressed. “Good grief, Paisley,” she said, “where are you going to have room to fit any more on you?”

“I've got some places left,” said Paisley. “It's a good thing. I've got to get the wire on the posts yet.” She sounded tired.

A little later, loafing in their bunks and watching Paisley through their bedroom window, Staci and Toni saw why Paisley had sounded discouraged. She was having trouble with her fence. The posts were staying in the ground okay, and she had fastened the ceramic insulators to them at pony-chest height, but the wire would not stay tight while she strung it on the ceramic plugs. She was trying to pull her coiled wire taut with one hand and fasten it with the other, but even though she was a big, strong girl for her age, she could not pull hard enough with just one hand. And she really needed two hands, anyway, to manage the wrapping and twisting. As the Fontecchio twins watched, Paisley dropped the roll of wire to the ground, stamped in frustration, and slapped furiously at her bare, itchy, red-speckled legs.

“She needs help,” Toni said. “She can't do it all by herself.”

“Good,” Staci snapped.

“I wasn't talking to you.”

“Who to, then?”

Toni didn't answer. She swung down off her bunk and left to find Stirling. Paisley was Stirling's twin. Toni felt she ought to point out Paisley's problem to Stirling.

The other McPherson girl, Toni found somewhat to her surprise, was helping Grandmother Dill pack. Stirling was smoothing a cotton skirt with both her small, fawn-colored hands.

“Hey,” Toni told her, “Paisley needs some help with her fence.”

“So?”

“So you should help her!” Toni said.

“Why?” Stirling seemed much more interested in the clothing.

Toni could not believe how stupid Stirling acted. “Because you're her twin!”

“Just because she's my twin doesn't mean we're joined at the hips.” Stirling turned to another skirt. “I sure don't want
Guinness Book of World Records
chigger bites.”

“But …” Toni couldn't find words. The way Stirling was acting was so far from the way she had always thought twins should be that she felt fuses popping in her brain. She looked at her grandmother for help. But Grandmother Dill was folding blouses without the faintest sign of interest.

“Anyway, it's going to be Paisley's pony, not mine,” Stirling added. “I'm not the outdoors type.”

“Don't you like ponies?” Toni asked.

“Why should I? Do I have to like everything Paisley likes?”

Giving up on Stirling, Toni turned to her grandmother. “Nana,” she pleaded, using the pet name she had not called her grandmother since she was much younger, “would you help Paisley? She's out there in the heat getting all bitten up, and the dumb wire won't go straight for her, and—”

Her grandmother's glance stopped her. But the stare was calm, and her grandmother's voice kind. “Antoinette, you can see I am busy. If you think about it, I believe you will know who is the best person to help Paisley.”

Toni wandered back out to the hallway, scowling. What could Grandmother be talking about? There were only four people in the house, and she had already asked two of them. And Grandmother couldn't mean Staci. Grandmother didn't say much, but she was not stupid. She had to know how Staci felt about Paisley. And with Staci feeling the way she did, there was no way Toni herself could help Paisley. She couldn't go against her twin.

Could she?

Slowly Toni walked into her bedroom. Through the window she could see that Paisley had sat down in the chigger-infested grass, staring at a tangle of wire.

“Stace,” said Toni, “c'mon. We're going to go help her.”

Staci sat up to stare her down. “Get real!”

“I am real. You're weirded out. C'mon, get human. We've got to help.”

“Who says?”

“I says.”

“Well, you go help her if you're so choked up about her. I'm not going near her or her pony fence.”

Staci flopped back on her bunk, knowing that Toni would not do any such thing without her. Toni was her twin, and Staci could count on Toni to side with her through thick and thin.… When Staci looked up again, Toni had put on her yellow crew socks and high-topped turquoise sneakers and was heading out the door.

“Hey!” Staci jumped up. “Where you going?”

“Out to help Paisley.”

“What—I can't believe this! Are you siding with her against me?” Staci's voice went up so high it cracked.

“I'm not siding with anybody. I'm just helping a girl put up a pony fence,” said Toni.

“You can't! You do that and I'll—”

“You can do what you want,” said Toni. “We're not joined together at the hips.” Toni went out, closing the door hard behind her.

At the garage door she paused, looking at the bug repellent. Then she tilted her chin up a notch, walked on past it and out into the itchy, buggy back lot where Paisley was still trying to untangle her coil of wire.

“Hi,” said Toni.

Paisley looked up. Dirt and sweat and maybe tears were streaked over the red bumps on her cheeks. “If you're coming to laugh,” she said, “don't.” She didn't look as if she had any smiles left in her.

“It's a two-person job.” Toni picked up the wire coil. “I stretch, you fasten. Okay?”

Paisley didn't say anything. She just handed Toni the work gloves and hunted in the grass for the pliers. She found them. Also, somewhere she found a smile.

When Paisley and Toni went in for supper, the fence was strung. Paisley had 139 chigger bites. Toni had 57.

6

In Which Noodles Becomes a McPherson

“Holy cats.” Standing out behind the house that same evening, Bruce McPherson scanned the paddock his daughter had made, then turned to his new wife with a dazed look on his face. “I don't believe this. We go away, come back a couple days later, and the backyard's turned into a pony farm.”

“Bruce, didn't you have any idea what you were getting yourself into?” Cathy's tone was tender.

“Marrying you?” he teased. “If I did, I probably would have run.”

“I meant pony-wise, smartie.”

“Huh. Pony-wise, I'm afraid to ask. Looks like I'm in for …” Bruce McPherson took another look. “For a pony circus,” he said. “How come all the doodads, Paisley? Did you want your pony's pen to look pretty?”

The strips of many-colored rag Paisley and Toni had tied to the wires fluttered extra bright in the evening light. In a few months sun and rain would weather them all to the same whitish shade, but for now they did make the paddock look pretty, Staci admitted sourly to herself. If you liked a paddock that looked like a used-car lot.

“Dad
. They're so the pony can see where the fence is! Otherwise he might hurt himself on the wire. And here's the gate, see?” She showed off the wire gate with its shock-proof orange plastic handle. “What do you think, Dad?” she rushed on. “The man's coming tomorrow to hook up the box, and then we'll be all set. See, the pony has some trees for shade, and we can keep the feed in the garage. All we need is a big bucket for water, and a salt lick, and—”

“And a barn, I suppose.” Bruce McPherson tried to sound gruff, but everybody could see he was proud of what Paisley had done.

“Nuh-uh, Dad! Just a run-in shelter. That's why I put the fence right up to the garage.”

“Paisley,” said Cathy, “well, um, I don't think …”

“She doesn't want a pony in the garage.” At once Toni spoke up for her mother. Cathy seemed even more nervous and hesitant than usual, trying to deal with this new, loud, excited daughter.

“Neither do I!” declared the daughter in question. “You don't put a pony on concrete.” Paisley looked shocked at the idea. “I thought maybe you could build a little shed up against the garage, Dad. Just a roof the pony can get under. Ponies are tough, and it's good for them to be out in all kinds of weather.”

Bruce McPherson blinked at his daughter. “How come you know so much about ponies?”

“Books, Dad! I started reading up the day I—the day you promised me a pony. Lots of library books. I took notes too.”

“Huh.” Bruce McPherson shook himself like an old plow horse trying to wake up. “You're really serious about this pony business.”

“Of course I am!”

It was getting late. Fireflies were coming out in the dusk. So were mosquitoes. Bruce slapped at his arms and looked longingly at the house. “Well, I guess I'm going to have to get busy and build your pony shed.”

“It doesn't have to be ready till winter, Dad. Dad, we can go ahead and get Noodles now!” Paisley jigged up and down like the fireflies dancing over the grass. “Dad, can we? Can we go see them tomorrow? Please?”

“Yo, hold on! Who's ‘them'?”

“Whoever owns Noodles!”

“Who or what is Noodles?”

Staci stood off to one side, head down, slapping at mosquitoes. She knew she could have explained about Noodles in half the time it was taking Paisley, but she said nothing. She hated Paisley. At least she thought she still hated Paisley.… She didn't seem to be able to pay as much attention to hating Paisley as she would have liked. She felt too miserable about being angry at Toni.

Mr. McPherson finally figured out that his daughter had picked the pony she wanted already. “But what makes you think that these people, whoever they are, want to sell their pony?”

“They're not pony people, Dad!”

Mr. McPherson blinked. “How would you know? Have you talked with them?”

“No, Dad, but they've got Noodles in a fence made of barbed wire.
Nobody
who really cares about horses or ponies makes fences out of barbed wire.” Paisley was dancing from one foot to the other. “Can we go get him tomorrow, Dad? Please? Pleeze?”

Bruce McPherson looked worried. “Don't count your chickens, sweetheart.”

“It'll be all right, Dad, I just know it! Pleeeeze, can we go?”

“Sure, we can at least try.”

“All
right
!” Paisley erupted into cartwheels across the lawn. Her bare legs swirled in air filled with fireflies that glowed the same color as a palomino pony's mane.

Staci watched all this in silence.

“I'm being eaten alive,” Stirling complained, swatting at her arms. No one paid any attention. Stirling shrugged and headed toward the house. Staci didn't want to stay out any longer either. She followed.

Stirling went at once to the bathroom and began dabbing itch cream on a few mosquito bites. Staci drifted to the open bathroom door, waiting for her turn.

“I'm glad it was you and not me,” Stirling said, not turning around.

“Huh?”

“With Paisley when she found her precious pony.”

Staci didn't say anything, but she didn't leave the doorway either.

“Is he pretty?” Stirling asked, still talking to the wall.

Something in Stirling's soft voice let Staci tell this quiet, ladylike girl what she could not say to her own twin sister. “He's cute as a—as a—he's just too cute,” she said. The words came out choked. “I'm so mad I could bust.”

Stirling looked at her then, but Staci didn't mind, because Stirling didn't smile. Stirling didn't look as if she were going to make fun. In fact, Stirling looked as if she understood.

Stirling said in the same soft way, “Why don't you just tell your mom you want a pony too?”

But it wasn't that simple any longer. Staci couldn't just say, “I want a pony.” It was Noodles she wanted. Noodles she dreamed about at night. During the day sometimes too.

She thought of telling Stirling this, and then she forgot about how she felt, because she saw a familiar glimmer in Stirling's dark blue eyes. Stirling more than understood about wanting a pony. Stirling—suddenly Staci knew that Stirling felt just the way she did.

“Why don't
you
say you want a pony too?”

“Me?” Stirling shrugged, turning away. “I don't, not really.”

“But you do!” Staci was sure. She knew that look. Hey, she'd seen it often enough in the mirror. But now Stirling, lips tight, was staring at the floor.

“Would you leave, please?” said Stirling. “I have to use the toilet.”

Staci left, and went to bed early to avoid her sister, and noticed that Stirling stayed in the bathroom a long time.

“Oh! Oh my gosh, come look!” Toni squealed from the bedroom window.

Carried away by excitement, Toni actually seemed to be speaking to her, Staci. And it had been a whole day since she and Toni had said anything to each other. So even though she was deep in her book, trying to forget Paisley and all the rest of it, Staci came and looked.