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there are only about a hundred at Fenton Hall,” Stevie teased Lisa.
    Lisa gave her a withering look.
    “Anyway,” Stevie went on, “he likes
you
, Lisa.”
    “Me?” Lisa fairly shrieked.
    “Yes. You. Lisa Atwood of Willow Creek, Virginia,” Stevie explained patiently. Lisa’s eyes widened. “He kept trying to catch your eye during the whole conversation, but you kept staring at your pizza. I’ve never seen you so interested in crust before, Lisa. Lisa? Lisa!” Stevie poked her friend.
    “Yeah?” Lisa asked dreamily. “Did you say something, Stevie?”
    Now it was Stevie’s turn to sigh. She knew she’d acted the same way when she first met Phil at riding camp. Stevie would just have to direct Lisa’s actions. She definitely couldn’t be trusted to think for herself in this state. “I said, we’ve got to go finish looking for Carole’s present. The mall’s going to be closing soon.”
    “Carole’s present?” Lisa asked vaguely. “What’s wrong with those horse earrings we found?”
    “They’re one hundred and fifty dollars, that’s what’s wrong!” Stevie cried in exasperation. “Remember?”
    “Oh, right.”
    Obviously, Lisa wasn’t going to be any help. Then Stevie got an idea. She might as well put Lisa’s spaced-out condition to good use. “Come on, Lisa,” she said. “We’d better go buy you that sweater on sale right now before someone else gets it. You do want to wear it to the party now that Bob’s coming, don’t you?”
    Lisa made an effort to focus her attention on what Stevie was saying. “Oh. Yes. Bob. Sweater. Bob. Right. Yes,” she said, obediently following Stevie out of the restaurant.

“S TEVIE ! I T ’ S P HIL !” Mrs. Lake called up the stairs to Stevie’s bedroom. Stevie slammed her science book shut at the magic words.
    “Got it!” she called back, picking up the receiver to the phone in her room and settling back onto her bed.
    “Don’t talk too long. You’ve got a lab report due tomorrow!”
    Stevie shook her head in disbelief. How could parents think about science of all things when she had a coed hayride birthday party to plan?
    “Five days and counting,” Phil said by way of greeting. Stevie laughed. She had called him last night after getting home from the mall to invite him to Carole’s party.He had told her that he’d be there, and that he’d be counting the days.
    “Me, too,” Stevie said. “I hope everything worked out with Mr. Toll’s Clydesdales. Colonel Hanson was supposed to ask today.”
    “You’ve got the Marine Corps on your side. What more could you want?”
    “How ’bout the Army, Air Force, and Navy?” Stevie joked.
    “I don’t know if they could fit in the hay wagon,” Phil countered.
    Part of the fun of having Phil as a boyfriend was that they could each kid around to their heart’s content and still know that, underneath it all, they seriously liked one another.
    “Do you know who’s going to be there?” Phil asked.
    Through Stevie he had met some of the invited guests at Pine Hollow and at Pony Club events, but he didn’t expect to know many people. Stevie gave him the list, updating it as best she could.
    Phil groaned. “Meg Roberts
and
Meg Durham! I can never remember which is which.”
    “But it’s easy—one’s short and the other’s tall,” Stevie said.
    “Yeah, but they both have dark blond hair.”
    “So do I, Phil Marsten!”
    “Yours is different,” Phil said. He sounded shy all of a sudden. “Yours is nicer.”
    Stevie glowed with pleasure. “Thanks,” she said.
    “And it’s a good thing,” Phil declared, raising his voice to its normal tone again, “because when we get out there in the open, I want to make sure it’s you and not someone else I smother in hay!”
    Stevie knew a challenge when she heard one. “You couldn’t smother me if you tried! I’d jump on the back of one of those Clydesdales and make him take off!”
    “Sure you could stay on—bareback?”
    “Why,