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stepmother. You’re going to make me wear a dress, and then sell the tape to my sisters.”
    Stevie frowned. “Of course not. I want you to play Prince Charming.”
Even though you’re not being very charming right now
, she added to herself. But she didn’t say it. She needed Phil to agree to be in her film. Sometimes movie directors just had to be tactful, whether their actors deserved it or not.
    “All right, all right,” Phil said. “I’ll play along. Prince Charming it is. When do we start shooting?”
    “Well, I need a day or two to get the script ready and stuff like that,” Stevie said, leaning back on her bed. “How about Wednesday after school?”
    “I can’t do it Wednesday,” Phil said. “I have a riding lesson. But I’m free on Thursday.”
    “Good,” Stevie said. “Thursday it is.” They talked about other things for a while, including the upcoming Horse Wise competition and Lisa’s fall that day. Finally Phil had to hang up.
    “I’ll see you on Thursday,” he said.
    “Uh-huh,” Stevie replied. “I’m looking forward to it.”
    “Me too,” Phil said with a laugh. “Whatever it is!”
    Stevie sighed as she hung up and got ready to try Carole again. She really had given up practical jokes for good. Why didn’t any of her friends believe her?

“S ISTER DEAR , LET us depart,” Carole read. “We don’t want to be late for the dressage ball.” She let out a snort. “A dressage ball? What in the world is that?”
    Stevie frowned. It was Thursday afternoon, she had just passed out the script for
Cinderella
, and her cast was already being difficult. “It’s obvious,” she replied. “It’s a ball where the dancers are on horseback, doing dressage.”
    “That doesn’t make much sense,” Lisa pointed out. “Why would anyone bother to do ballroom dancing on horseback?” She was perched on the fence of the outdoor ring. It was a beautiful springlike day, and the girls and Phil had decided to practice outside. Theirhorses were tied up nearby. Max had agreed to let Phil ride one of the stable horses, Diablo, though he had looked skeptical when Stevie had told him the reason.
    “Don’t ask such silly questions,” Stevie told Lisa, deciding that in this case the best defense was a strong offense. She had spent two days perfecting her script, and she wasn’t interested in editorial comments from the actors. “Now hurry up and read through the whole thing. Then we’ll start practicing. I thought we’d begin with the dressage ball scene, since that will be the hardest. I’ll be right back—I have to get some props.”
    She disappeared inside. But instead of reading the script, Carole and Lisa went back to discussing the same topic they’d been discussing all week: Prancer.
    “She still won’t go near the jumps?” Carole asked Lisa. She leaned back against the wooden fence encircling the ring, letting the stapled pages of her script fall closed. She had had a dentist appointment the afternoon before, so she hadn’t been around for Lisa’s latest attempt to get Prancer to jump.
    Lisa shook her head. “No way,” she said. “She’s perfectly fine as long as we stay on the flat. But any time she gets near a fence, her ears go back and she just plain refuses. I don’t want to force her, but I’m notsure what to do to help her. Nothing I try seems to help.”
    Phil had heard all about the incident, and the girls had already filled him in on the problem Lisa was having with Prancer. He knew that Lisa had been working carefully and patiently to make the mare feel comfortable about jumping again. She had led her all around the jump course. She had left her tied to one of the obstacles for several minutes. She had even trotted her over a series of cavalletti on the ground. None of those things bothered Prancer one bit. But the minute Lisa tried to ride her to a fence, Prancer stopped cold.
    “It’s really a shame,” Phil said, glancing over at Prancer. The pretty mare was