Horse Magic Read Online Free

all those pranks Dinah and I used to play at school gave me an idea. Wouldn’t it be great to play a Halloween prank on her while she’s here?”
    Carole laughed. “She’d probably love that. It would be just like old times.” She glanced at Lisa. “Stevie and Dinah didn’t just play practical jokes on other people—they were also constantly playing them on each other.”
    “Right,” Stevie said. “But we were so good during my visit to Vermont that she’ll be completely off guard and not expecting a thing. It’s the perfect opportunity. It will be sort of a welcome-back-to-Willow-Creek prank.” She sighed. “Now I just have to think of the perfect prank.”
    “Well, we’ll try to help you come up with something if you promise us one thing in return,” Carole said.
    “What’s that?”
    “That you’ll stop talking about Dinah’s visit long enough to help us do some planning for Saturday,” Carole replied with mock sternness.
    Stevie laughed and agreed.

T UESDAY MORNING SEEMED to crawl by for Stevie. By the time she got to English class, she couldn’t believe the day wasn’t even half over. At least it was almost lunchtime. Then there would be only a few classes to go until her father picked her up on his way to the airport to meet Dinah’s plane. Carole and Lisa were going, too.
    Stevie couldn’t wait. The only unfortunate thing was that she still hadn’t been able to come up with just the right prank to play on Dinah. She had thought of idea after idea but rejected all of them. Either they were too obvious, they were too difficult to set up, or they’d been done before. Now, while the rest of the class was busy reading some boring short story in their textbooks, Stevie racked herbrain. She thought about turning all Dinah’s clothes inside out while she was sleeping, or giving her a mask with black ink on the inside, or trying to convince her that Pine Hollow had been bought by foreign investors, or telling her that Veronica diAngelo had joined The Saddle Club. She even thought about rigging something in Mr. Toll’s wagon so that Dinah would fall out halfway through the hayride on Saturday.
    That last idea was the silliest one yet, but it made Stevie think of something else. “I’ve got it!” she shouted suddenly, sitting bolt upright in her seat. When she realized where she was, she blushed and looked around at the surprised faces of her classmates.
    “All right, Stevie,” Ms. Milligan, the English teacher, said dryly. “You seem to have been particularly moved by this story. So I’m sure you won’t mind answering a few questions about what we’ve just read.”
    “Uh—uh—” Stevie stammered, glancing down at the textbook page. The title at the top was “The Sisters’ Day Out.” That didn’t sound too complicated. Stevie had faked her way out of more difficult problems.
    “First of all, Stevie, what did you think was the major conflict in this story?” Ms. Milligan asked.
    “Um, I guess it was the conflict, um, between the two sisters?” Stevie ventured.
    The teacher looked a little confused. “Well, that’s an odd way of putting it,” she remarked. “What do you think the turning point of the story was?”
    Stevie was feeling more confident now. “It was when they decided to go out,” she said.
    “When they decided to go out?” Ms. Milligan repeated. “Exactly when was that?”
    “Um, after they talked about it?” Stevie said, once again uncertain. Maybe this wouldn’t be as easy as she’d thought.
    “Talked about it?” the teacher repeated again. “Stevie, you know I encourage interpretive readings in this class, but really—just who did you find doing any talking in this story?”
    “Well, the sisters,” Stevie said.
    Ms. Milligan shook her head. “Stevie, you didn’t read the story at all, did you?”
    Stevie gulped. “I—I started to,” she said. “But then I got distracted by, um, thinking about the title.”
    The teacher shook her head again,