Chocolate Horse by Bonnie Bryant

She was reverting to her lovable old self again. The breakfast in bed was working.
    Before long they were all talking completely normally. Carole and Lisa didn’t have to remind themselves not to talk about Alex, because normally they didn’t talk about Alex. They talked about horses and Pine Hollow.
    They brought Stevie up-to-date on all the horses and people at the stable. One of the ponies had a slightly sore leg, and the Pony Club Horse Wise was using that as a model to practice bandaging legs.
    “Poor old Nickel has that leg rebandaged five or eight times a day.”
    “It’s a good thing it’s not very sore,” said Carole. “Otherwise it wouldn’t be good for him to remove the bandage all the time.”
    “Right. Judy said it didn’t even really need a bandage. Max is just using it as an excuse for the little kids to study bandaging techniques,” Lisa explained.
    “But you should have been there when he asked Veronica to bandage the leg,” said Carole.
    “Oh, let me guess! She didn’t want to do it because Nickel isn’t a Thoroughbred!” Stevie said.
    “How’d you figure that out?” Lisa asked, genuinely impressed that Stevie had gotten it right. “In fact, she asked Max to check with Judy to find out if the pony’s leg was the same as that of the purebreds she was accustomed to riding and caring for.”
    “I bet Max was furious!” Stevie said, her eyes brightening with glee at the image.
    “His face turned bright red,” said Lisa.
    “We didn’t know whether he was angrier that Veronica would have such a stupid snobby attitude toward horses—”
    “Or because Veronica had suggested that
he
wouldn’t know the answer to the question!” Lisa finished.
    “Oh, I wish I could have been there!”
    “Us, too,” Carole said. “We’ve missed you. Really.”
    “A lot,” said Lisa.
    “I know. I’ve missed you, too. But I’m not sure I knew how much I missed you until right now.” Stevie was on the verge of getting sentimental again, and she knew it.She reached for her grapefruit and ate a couple of the sections. Then she slid her spoon under what she presumed was a cherry in the middle of it and put it in her mouth.
    Lisa and Carole waited, wondering.
    She spat it out. “That’s not a cherry.”
    “Red pepper,” Carole told her. “We didn’t have a cherry. We did the best we could.”
    “On the sundae, too?” Stevie asked.
    “Yup,” Lisa told her.
    Stevie’s eyes narrowed. “You guys haven’t missed me at all,” she said. “You’ve done exactly all the things
I
would have done, and I’m proud of you because it means I’ve taught you well.”
    Carole and Lisa couldn’t help themselves then. They each gave Stevie a big hug, and she hugged them back. It was a way to keep from saying what was on all of their minds, and that was all right, because none of that needed to be said anyway.
    In a minute they were back to talking about horses and were deeply involved in a discussion of techniques to control a stubborn horse. Stevie thought it was most important to get him calmed down before giving him any instructions. Carole suggested that it might make more sense to give him lots of instructions—so many that it would keep his mind off what it was he’d wantedto do in the first place. Lisa thought both techniques were worth trying.
    There was a knock at Stevie’s door. It was Stevie’s mother, and she was more than a little surprised to see Lisa and Carole sitting on Stevie’s bed and a tray across Stevie’s lap.
    “We brought her breakfast in bed,” Carole explained. She felt a little bad about having sneaked into the house and was going to apologize for it, but the smile on Mrs. Lake’s face told her no apology was necessary.
    “Good,” she said. “If I’d thought of it, I would have done the same thing. She deserves it. However, I suspect that whatever you made for her tasted better than anything I might have thought of.”
    “We hope you don’t mind,” Lisa