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Starlight began trotting.

J UST ABOUT FIVE minutes before the start of the next practice, Lisa had changed her mind about what fun it was going to be to learn polocrosse. The problem could be summed up in one word: Stevie.
    After class on Tuesday, Max had lined up the riders who stayed for practice, and had them all take turns picking up the ball, first on the right, then on the left. That was fine. It was something they needed to practice. Most of them weren’t very good at it at first. Stevie, the first person in the line, got to try it first. She wasn’t very good at it either. That didn’t stop her from giving hints and suggestions to the other riders as their turns came around.
    “No, no!” she yelled at Lisa. “You have to lean forward as well as sideways to reach the ball!”
    Lisa didn’t thank her for the advice.
    When they were trying to pick up the ball on the left-hand side of the horse, it was Carole’s turn to get some advice.
    “You can’t change hands!” Stevie yelled. “That’s not allowed. If you do that in a tournament, you’ll get us a foul!”
    It didn’t make any difference that Stevie happened to be right. The way she delivered the message was so unpleasant that nobody wanted to listen to what she said.
    Carole just slipped the racquet back into her right hand, reached over across Starlight’s neck, stretched, and picked up the ball. She tossed it easily to Max, who caught it with his racquet and smiled. “Nice move,” he said.
    Lisa didn’t know how Carole managed to refrain from glaring at Stevie.
    “Next, we’re going to try passing back and forth to one another.”
    He had the riders split into two groups and line their horses up facing each other, ten feet apart. They counted off. Evens on one side, odds on the other. He announced he would toss the ball to the closest rider, number 1, and explained that he wanted the riders to “lace” it—toss it numerically, 1 to 2 to 3, back and forth across the space, and then back down again to him. Eventually, he said, this would be a timed exercise.
    That would have been fine except the number 1 rider,Adam Levine, didn’t catch the ball. He merely swiped up into the air with his racquet as the ball whizzed by and bounced down to the end of the field. Adam chased after the thing and tried four or five times to pick it up before he finally got it into his racquet. Then he threw it back, getting it only half the distance it needed to go. He had to pick it up again.
    By that time, Stevie was beside herself. A number of the players were yelling encouragement, but Stevie was just plain yelling.
    “Hurry up! We haven’t got all day! The rest of us want a chance to practice, too!”
    Finally, Adam picked up the ball and rode slowly back to his place in line. Some of the riders may have thought he was doing that to be careful so he wouldn’t drop the ball again. Lisa was convinced he was doing it to irritate Stevie.
    Then Adam tossed the ball to the number 2 rider, who also missed it. Most of the riders—including Stevie—missed it and had to chase it down. When they’d finished lacing the ball—all over the field—Max called them to attention.
    “Right now, this exercise seems more like a chasing-down-and-picking-up exercise than a throwing-and-catching one. Don’t worry. We all need practice with chasing down and picking up, too. The time has not gone to waste.”
    He said the last few words slowly, glaring directly atStevie. Lisa thought he was being a little bit too subtle for Stevie in her present mood, but there wasn’t much even Max could do about it. The fact was, she told herself, hitting Stevie in the side of the head with a two-by-four might have been too subtle right then.
    “Now, I want to try something else,” Max said. “I want to try a practice chukka. We have accepted a challenge from Cross County Pony Club, and because of unforeseen scheduling problems, the match is going to take place on