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“Own good? Then you wear it!”
    Summer faked a smile to Victoria Hawkins, who hadn’t so much as blinked during the shouting match. “Winifred doesn’t realize cribbing is catching. We can’t have our entire stable chewed to the ground.”
    It was all I could do not to shove her face-first into the manure wagon. “Cribbing isn’t a virus!” I cried. “Horses don’t catch it!”
    Summer’s gray eyes narrowed like she knew she had me now. “Then how do you explain the fact that half of our horses chew on the stalls?” She folded her arms in front of her.
    “How do I explain it?” I demanded, stepping closer, forcing Summer to take a step back. “Easy! They’re all cooped up like Towaco! They hate Stable-Mart! What else is there to do in here? I’d chew wood if you locked me up here! They’re bored! ” I pushed past Summer and almost slammed into Victoria and her bird.
    “Bored! Bored! Bored! ” squawked the parrot.
    “Well, at least one of you has a brain,” I muttered, storming down the stallway to the nearest exit.
    “Don’t bother coming back!” Summer yelled after me. “I’m telling Daddy to fire you!”
    Not until I got outside and inhaled the dusky air did it hit me. Fired? I’d just lost my job.
    Without the trainer’s job, maybe I never would have had the Arabian anyway. I would have had to muck a lot of stalls to buy the mare. But at least I could have stayed close to her. I could have seen her morning and night. I could have looked out for her.
    Now I didn’t even have that.
    I hadn’t just lost my job. I’d lost the Arabian. And it felt like losing everything all over again.

A loneliness burned in my chest as I ran to the south pasture. I had to see Wild Thing one more time.
    She was racing the wind at the back fence. With her neck stretched into the sunset, she looked like she might jump into the sky. For an instant I pictured my mom riding the Arabian bareback across heaven.
    Suddenly the mare tossed her silvery mane, slid to a stop, and craned her neck in my direction.
    She saw me. I knew she did.
    I would have given anything to hear her nicker. A nicker is the warmest, friendliest greeting in the world. I could almost have stood not seeing her again if only I could hear her nicker.
    “Hey, Winnie!” Richard Spidell joined me at the gate. “Think we can catch her—like in a couple of days?”
    “You’re asking me?” I said sarcastically.
    “Come on,” Richard said in a mushy voice that probably worked with most girls. “We could work together.”
    I turned to glare at him. “Don’t they tell you anything? I won’t be around. Your sister fired me.”
    “Summer?” he asked, his forehead wrinkling.
    “That’s the one,” I answered.
    “She can’t do that,” he said.
    “Well she did.”
    “No. I mean, she can’t fire you . . . or anybody. I hire barn labor.” Richard put an arm around my shoulder.
    I scowled at him until he removed it. “So she’ll tell your dad to fire me,” I said. “Same difference.”
    “No way!” Richard insisted. “When it comes to Stable-Mart and the horses, Summer doesn’t tell Dad anything. It just starts a fight. Dad wants her to show English and Western, but she won’t do it. She loves decking out in her English riding habit, posting on that American Saddle Horse. If she shows Western, she’s afraid she’ll look like a cowboy. But Dad’s determined to get her into Western classes in the fall horse shows. Trust me. Summer’s not about to bring up horses or you with Dad.”
    Hope tingled through me like electricity. “Don’t just say this stuff, Richard,” I warned.
    He crossed his heart. “I promise! You’re not fired.”
    “I’m not fired?” I repeated, letting it sink in.
    He shook his head. “What would I do without my best mucker?”
    I was practically his only mucker, and I knew it. Some ninth-grade guy came in on the weekends, but mostly I was it.
    “So . . .” He started to put his hand on my