Stray Horse by Bonnie Bryant

Author:Bonnie Bryant [Bryant, Bonnie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82605-3
Publisher: Random House Children's Books
Published: 2013-02-06T05:00:00+00:00

LISA AWOKE WITH a start very early the next morning. Something was wrong. Something was different. It seemed vague and felt uncomfortable. She swallowed hard. PJ, she thought. I have to get to PJ. She sat up and then got out of bed.

The light that came through her window was the gray of dawn, still too early for her to need to be up, but not too early for PJ to need her. If she left now, she could spend more time with him, check those wounds, put ointment on them. She and the horse could even have a little talk before anyone else got there, and then she could go to school.

She was pretty sure the ointment was working. She thought the swelling was going down. But cat scratches were dangerous, particularly from a wildcat whose claws could have awful germs on them from other things it had scratched or animals it had attacked.

Lisa got a chill just thinking about the infections that could be plaguing her horse. That beautiful light chestnut coat would become permanently scarred if she didn’t take really good care of him. Judy had seemed confident that PJ would get better, but what if she was wrong?

And the swelling on PJ’s ankle: Was it getting better? Lisa realized she’d been paying so much attention to the scratches that she had almost forgotten about the ankle. If the ankle didn’t get better, nobody would ever be able to ride PJ.

“That horse was born for riding,” Lisa whispered into her mirror. “I just know it.”

She didn’t even have to close her eyes to let her imagination soar. She could practically feel the powerful animal flying across an open field, loving every minute of freedom and union with a rider. And not just any rider. It would be Lisa.

Her parents had often considered getting her a horse. PJ’s arrival at CARL was like a dream come true. It was fate: PJ was for her. They’d grow together and learn together. She knew that PJ’s faith in her was boundless, and her confidence in him was infinite. They were a pair, inseparable.

All she had to do was … everything.

She dried her face, ran a comb though her hair, and hurried out of the bathroom. Two minutes to get her clothes on, another two in the kitchen, plus a scribbled note for her parents—no, just her mother, she reminded herself—and she was out the door with her backpack on her shoulder.

Lisa dropped her backpack by the paddock shed and then whistled for PJ. As soon as he spotted her, he trotted over. Lisa compared him to the reluctant and petulant horse she’d taken off Angus Rutherford’s trailer just a few days before. He was still too thin, he was still scratched and scabbed, but he seemed to have gotten his heart and his spirit back—at least around Lisa. Besides, Lisa was sure that her special feeding program was helping to put some meat on his bones.

When he reached her, she gave him a hug.

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