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settle in,” she announced at dinner the first evening. “So I’m not going to do anything except just clean Noodles up until I’m sure he’s settled in.”
    She cleaned him up for three solid days. She got all the tangles out of his mane and tail and combed them smooth. She curried him with her new blue plastic currycomb and brushed him with her new brush all over his body and down his legs clear to the hooves. She wiped his nose and eyes with a damp sponge and washed under his belly and tail with an old washcloth. As she cleaned caked dirt off his back, she found sore places under it, and she worried about them. Probably they were because of the dirt, but what if they were her fault somehow? Was she cleaning him wrong? She biked to the feed mill, asked for advice, and came back with ointment, iodine shampoo, hoof dressing, and fly spray.
    â€œFeed man says when the weather’s hot like this I can just hose Noodles down like he was a car and use the iodine shampoo all over him,” she reported at lunchtime. “Some of you guys help me? Toni? Sis?”
    They shook their heads. Since she had seen Noodles, Toni felt some of the same heartache as Staci. She didn’t want to hang around Noodles either. It was just too hard to take, that he was Paisley’s and not hers. The three ponyless girls were keeping to themselves these days, and leaving Paisley pretty much alone.
    â€œAll right, I’ll do it myself!”
    Which she did. She ran a bucket of warm water and lugged it outside while the others watched through the window—as usual—in glum silence. She tied Noodles to a small tree. She brought the garden hose and sprayed Noodles. She shampooed Noodles. And while she was doing it, Noodles thought of several ways to make her wet all over. Noodles whisked her with his long, sopping tail. Noodles shook himself like a big dog and showered her with soapy water off his mane. Noodles nudged her with his bony nose so hard that she fell down in the mud puddle they were both making. Noodles took hold of the edge of the suds bucket with his teeth and tipped it and poured the suds all over Paisley’s sneakered feet.

    â€œNoodles!” Paisley screamed, sloshing up out of the mud, furious.
    â€œShe’s going to hit him!” Inside the bedroom, Staci jumped up as if she were going to crash through the window like a TV cop hero to save Noodles.
    But Stirling put a hand on Staci’s arm. And as they watched, Paisley started laughing and put her arms around Noodles’s neck, sopping wet as he was, and hugged him.
    â€œShe wouldn’t ever hurt anything,” Stirling told Staci, her voice like a sigh. “She doesn’t really mean to hurt us either. She just doesn’t think, that’s all. She’s kind of gung ho. My dad says he used to be the same way.”
    As soon as Paisley put Noodles back in his paddock after his bath, the pony went and rolled on the ground (fat belly wobbling, stubby legs waving in the air) and covered himself with dirt again.
    â€œNoodles!” Paisley protested. “Jeez! All that work.”
    The girls in the bedroom laughed at the rolling pony so loudly that Paisley heard them and thought they were laughing at her. She looked around and scowled. Then she looked back at her pony again. “Noodles! Oh, no.…”
    Noodles had trotted to his bucket of drinking water, eager to have more fun. He nudged the bucket and tipped it over. He pawed at the puddle of water now on the ground, making himself a wonderful mud hole. He tossed the empty bucket into the air with his teeth and watched with pricked ears as it thudded and clattered to the ground. He bunted it with his nose. He tossed it again, so high it landed outside the fence. He looked at it, then looked at Paisley like a little fluffy-maned white-and-golden angel, waiting for her to come refill his water bucket so he could do it all again and make his paddock a