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Springs.
    Outside, Marcus and Jorge were climbing the huge snow pile the plow had made on the side of the blacktop.
    “Coach is always easy on us the day before a meet,” Keisha explained. “That’s why we just did five-minute speed-jumping rounds, worked on the group jump and practiced our freestyle routines in slow motion.”
    “You did so well in practice,” Savannah said. “So what happens at the meet?”
    Keisha scuffed her boots against the rubber doormat. She got very interested in which boy would be “king of the hill.”
    “I was just asking because I used to get real nervous when I jumped … with Sugar … but I, well, I found some things that helped.”
    “But you were on a horse!” Keisha said. “He was the one jumping, not you.” During the two days Keisha hadspent as Savannah’s buddy, she had learned something about 4-H dressage. Dressage was a test of how well your horse could perform certain tasks, like stopping, turning and jumping, in response to your commands.
    “The competition is how well you do as horse
and
rider. I found that if I was nervous, so was Sugar. I would stiffen up, and then I connected differently to him … do you see what I mean?”
    Keisha shook her head. “Did it really matter if you were a little stiff as long as you stayed in the saddle?”
    Savannah tapped her finger against her lips. Then she grabbed her backpack and stuck it between her knees. “Watch.” She bent down a little and rocked her shoulders back and forth. “You have to use your imagination, but watch my legs. When everything’s loose, I can hinge up here—that’s a riding word. It means … um … flow. My body can respond to the horse and the horse to my body. When I’m tight”—Savannah tightened her legs—“look what happens up here.”
    The girls heard a pop, and Savannah let her backpack fall to the floor.
    “Uh-oh! I think I just busted my lunch box.” Unzipping her backpack, Savannah stuck her hand inside and fished around. “When you get nervous, you tighten. If I tighten on Sugar, then he gets nervous, too. Like last night. When you were surprised you had to stand upand talk, I pressed up against you all relaxed. Didn’t that help?”
    Keisha thought back. She remembered Savannah’s shoulder. It did help.
    “Ew.” Savannah held up a squished sandwich. “I hate egg salad, but I promised Mom I’d bring home anything I didn’t eat.”
    Keisha crinkled her nose. It didn’t smell too good, either, having been in her backpack all day.
    “She probably won’t want it now.” Savannah tossed the smushed sandwich in the trash can.
    “I know your rope isn’t a live thing like Sugar. But as I watched you practice your freestyle routine, I noticed that when your coach was looking, you messed up. And when you started again, you got stiff, and that changed the way you turned your rope.… Oh my gosh, there’s my mom.” Savannah waved at a little red car parked in the bus lane. “Hope she hasn’t been waitin’ long.”
    Marcus took advantage of Savannah’s opening the door to get back in without having to buzz the office. “Colder than it looks,” he said, stomping his boots on the rubber mat. “What’s that stinky smell? Smells like rotten eggs.”
    “Savannah was trying to show me how getting nervous messed up her horse routine, and she smushed her sandwich.”
    Marcus gave her one of his “girls are crazy” looks, where he pulled his head back like a turtle and flared his nostrils, so Keisha tried to explain how the smell of rotten eggs was connected to Savannah’s getting stiff in dressage.
    “Hey, I think I know what she’s talking about,” Marcus said when Keisha had finished. “When I fade back to shoot, if I try too hard, I mess up. But when I just let it flow …” Marcus went through the motions of shooting the basketball. “Score!”
    “Flow! That’s the same word Savannah used. So, how am I supposed to stop thinking about being nervous?