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that Stevie let all the air out of his soccer ball and bicycle tires and then hid the air pump. She didn’t tell us about that.”
    “Chad can’t prove Stevie did it. It could have been Alex, or even Michael.”
    “That’s what Mr. Lake said.”
    “Yeah.” Lisa sighed. “He also said it didn’t matter.” That was the crux of the problem. Stevie’s parents weren’t interested in proof. They were pretty sure Stevie was behind most of the pranks they knew about, and they were pretty sure she was behind other pranks they didn’t know about, and they were tired of living in a combat zone. Stevie was grounded. Two weeks, no early parole. No way.
    “Nice try, girls,” Mr. Lake had said to Carole and Lisa.
    “Oh well,” Lisa said. They ducked around the side of Stevie’s yard to take the shortcut back to Pine Hollow. Stevie’s bedroom window was two stories above them, and they paused to look up at their friend. Sure enough, Stevie was sitting by the window, looking sadly in the direction of Pine Hollow. Lisa knew that from Stevie’s room you could just see the top of the weathervane on the stable roof.
    When Stevie saw them, she waved frantically. Carole and Lisa waved back. Stevie held up one finger and then disappeared.
    “She wants us to wait,” Carole said.
    “I hope she doesn’t try to climb down on a bedsheet or something,” Lisa said. “If she gets in trouble again, she’ll be grounded for life.”
    In a moment Stevie was back. She opened her window and sailed a tiny paper airplane down to her friends. Lisa caught it and unfolded it. Stevie had written them a note.
    I heard you talking to my parents
, it read.
Thanks for trying. I can’t talk
—
I promised I wouldn’t
. Lisa smiled. No matter what, Stevie never broke promises. That was why she so rarely made them.
But they never said I couldn’t write notes. How’s Belle?
    Lisa tried to pantomime
She’s fine
. She didn’t do it very well. Stevie looked puzzled. Lisa wished she knew sign language.
    “
We
can talk,” Carole said to Lisa. “And I think Stevie’s allowed to listen.”
    Stevie nodded, grinning. Lisa smiled. “Of course. Stevie, Belle’s fine.”
    “We hung your sign, and we groomed her for you,” Carole added.
    “And don’t worry about camp,” Lisa said firmly. “We’re going to spring you. We made it a Saddle Club project.”
    Stevie gave them a thumbs-up sign.
    “We’ve got a plan,” Lisa added. “Don’t worry. It’ll work for sure.”

“ ‘W E ’ VE GOT A PLAN ’?” Carole repeated as they hit the main road back to Pine Hollow. “We don’t have a plan! Or if we do, I don’t know about it!”
    “I know,” Lisa said. “We don’t have one.”
    “Then why did you tell Stevie we did?”
    “We’ll get one,” Lisa replied. Even though groveling to Stevie’s parents hadn’t helped, Lisa still felt confident. “Besides,” she continued, “I didn’t want Stevie to feel desperate. If she feels desperate, she’ll come up with a plan of her own, and who knows what’ll happen then.”
    Carole shuddered. Usually it was Stevie who came upwith their plans, and usually what she came up with was good, but if Stevie got caught doing something else wrong now, she’d be grounded until her hair turned gray. Carole saw Lisa’s point.
    Back at Pine Hollow, they sat on the hay bales outside Belle’s stall and tried hard to think of some way to help Stevie. Lisa remembered Mr. and Mrs. Lake’s polite, unyielding faces. This wasn’t going to be easy.
    “What’s wrong, girls? Why the long faces? You look like somebody got your goat. And where’s Stevie?” It was Mrs. Reg, Max Regnery’s mother. She ran the stable. She had come to get one of the bales they were sitting on.
    “Oh, Mrs. Reg, didn’t Max tell you?” Carole asked. She and Lisa helped Mrs. Reg break the hay bale apart and feed it to the horses nearby. While they worked, they told her the whole story.
    “I see,” Mrs. Reg said, nodding.