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  Night Mare

  Copyright © 2012 by Dandi Daley Mackall. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of girl on horse copyright © by Brandy Taylor/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Cover photograph of birds on fence copyright © by Rowan Butler/iStockphoto. All rights reserved.

  Designed by Jacqueline L. Nuñez

  Edited by Stephanie Rische

  Scripture quotations are taken from the Holy Bible, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996, 2004, 2007 by Tyndale House Foundation. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Carol Stream, Illinois 60188. All rights reserved.

  This novel is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  For manufacturing information regarding this product, please call 1-800-323-9400.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Mackall, Dandi Daley.

  Night mare / Dandi Daley Mackall.

  p. cm. — (Backyard horses)

  Summary: When someone claiming to be her horse’s original owner shows up and wants the horse back, fourth-grader Ellie prays for a miracle.

  ISBN 978-1-4143-3919-1 (sc)

  [1. Horses—Fiction. 2. Loss (Psychology)—Fiction. 3. Christian life—Fiction.]

  I. Title. II. Title: Nightmare.

  PZ7.M1905Ni 2012

  [Fic]—dc23 2011040859

  To Landri Claire Brigmon

  Backyard horses are the opposite of show horses. They don’t have registration papers to prove they’re purebred, and they might never win a trophy or ribbon at a horse show. Backyard horses aren’t boarded in stables. You can find them in pastures or in backyards. They may be farm horses, fun horses, or simply friends. Backyard horses are often plain and ordinary on the outside . . . but frequently beautiful on the inside.

  The Lord said to Samuel, “Don’t judge by his appearance or height, for I have rejected him. The Lord doesn’t see things the way you see them. People judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.”

  1 Samuel 16:7

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1: Sunsets

  Chapter 2: Lucky

  Chapter 3: Surprises

  Chapter 4: No Comment!

  Chapter 5: Happy Trails!

  Chapter 6: Joy

  Chapter 7: Prove It

  Chapter 8: Fiery Furnace

  Chapter 9: Endings

  Chapter 10: Good-Bye

  Chapter 11: Not Again

  Chapter 12: Can’t

  Chapter 13: Okay

  Chapter 14: Change

  Chapter 15: Double

  Chapter 16: Home

  Horse Talk!

  Sign Language Alphabet

  About the Author

  1

  Sunsets

  Ellie James and her famous horse, Dream, have ridden for miles and miles. Ellie sits tall in the saddle, not looking like the shortest kid in fourth grade. Finally she sees the pet store, home of the international Pet Help Line. A crowd comes running out to greet Ellie and Dream. A tall boy with long hair shouts, “Far out! You made it, man! Groovy!” Ellie would recognize Catman Coolidge in a heartbeat, even if he weren’t carrying four fat cats. And she knows at once that the dark-haired, freckle-faced girl next to him is Winnie the Horse Gentler. Winnie leaps onto her white Arabian, Nickers. Then Winnie and Ellie ride off into the sunset on Nickers and Dream.

  Something hits me in the head, knocking me out of a great daydream and back into my classroom. I spot a paper wad on my desk. I don’t have to look far to see who threw it. Colt Stevens, my most-of-the-time best friend.

  I spread my hands apart, palms up. It’s sign language for What? Colt and I learned sign language so we could talk to Ethan, my little brother. But knowing sign comes in handy at school, too.

  Colt faces Miss Hernandez, our teacher. Then he sticks his hands behind his back and signs to me, You’re next.

  I touch my chin and bring my hand down, signing, Thanks. Colt can’t see me, but my mom says being thankful is like breathing. You might not notice when you’re doing it, but you sure miss it when you aren’t.

  “Ellie and Cassie?” Miss Hernandez smiles our way. She has a great ponytail. It swishes behind her. After today, we only have one more day of school before summer will be here and Miss Hernandez won’t be our teacher anymore. I’m going to miss her. One of the best things about our fourth-grade teacher is her ponytail. But there are lots of other best things too. Like her laugh. And the way she doesn’t yell, even when she’s mad. And how she doesn’t make us feel stupid if our work isn’t as good as somebody else’s, like Larissa’s.

  Cassie stands up. She jerks her head for me to join her in front of the class.

  I shake my head. “You’re the spokeswoman,” I remind her.

  Cassie giggles, sounding a little nervous. “Ellie and I split the work on our blog project. Ellie collected all the recipes for horse treats. We made them together and tried them out on real horses. But Ellie did most of the work on the recipes. So you’re stuck with me as spokeswoman.”

  The class laughs, in a nice way. Everybody loves Cassie. I’m lucky I got to be her partner for our final project—creating our own blog. The best thing about Cassie, besides that she has a horse named Misty, is that even though she’s one of the most popular kids in our school, she doesn’t act like it. When Miss Hernandez paired us up to develop a blog for our class project, Cassie seemed honest-to-goodness happy to be getting me for a partner.

  “Well, it sounds as if you girls worked out your partnership very well,” Miss Hernandez says.

  Cassie smiles at me. “It was fun. Tell them how we came up with the idea, Ellie.”

  I feel my face turn hot. But I don’t really mind telling this part. “You guys know how skinny my horse, Dream, used to be.”

  “No kidding!” Larissa says. “That pony looked like a scarecrow.”

  Larissa Richland is as tall as I am short. She thinks she knows everything about horses. But I don’t see how she can know that much because she doesn’t take care of her horse. She lets a fancy stable do everything for her. The best thing about Larissa is . . . well, I guess it’s that maybe she won’t be in my fifth-grade class next year.

  “Larissa,” Miss Hernandez says, “it’s not your turn now, is it?”

  “No, Miss Hernandez,” Larissa answers. “But on my blog—I mean, Colt’s and my blog—we’re always looking for funny stories to tell. So we might want to write about how animal control had to chase that scraggly pinto all over the school lawn.”

  With her teacher stare, Miss Hernandez gets Larissa to stop talking. Only it’s too late. Larissa already got my mind off track. Now all I can think about is the day I first saw my horse out this exact same school window. Everybody thought it was just my imagination. But it wasn’t.

  Who could have known that the skinny horse I saw that day would end up being my very own Dream?

  “Ellie, please go on,” Miss Hernandez says.

  But I can’t go on because I don’t remember where I was.

  Colt signs, Skinny pinto, needed treats.

  “Right!” Now I remember. “Skinny. When I got Dream, she was so skinny you could see daylight through her. Not really. But that’s how my mom put it. She also said my horse
was so skinny she disappeared when she turned sideways.”

  Larissa fake gags.

  “Once I brought Dream home, I had to fatten her up,” I continue. “We used special feed, and that worked. But I started searching the Internet for horse treat recipes. Some were awful. They used peanut butter, and that’s not great for horses. Then I found the coolest thing. A pet help line. Several kids get together to answer questions about animals. They’ve got this guy named Catman who knows everything about cats. And this kid Barker answers all the dog questions.”

  Larissa yawns. It’s as loud as the fire alarm.

  “Anyway, a girl named Winnie knows more about horses than anybody in the world, I’ll bet.”

  “I’ll bet,” Larissa mutters.

  I press on. “Her recipes for horse treats were the best.”

  Cassie takes over. “We’re not using anything without permission. Winnie wrote back to Ellie and said she could use the recipes. We give Winnie credit on our blog. Plus, we blog about how our horses liked the treats.”

  “Good job, girls,” Miss Hernandez says. She calls the next team and the next.

  Larissa and Colt go last.

  Larissa starts to get up, but Miss Hernandez stops her with that look again. “Colt, let’s hear from you first. Tell us about your blog.”

  Colt looks like he wasn’t counting on this. “Well, Larissa wanted to call it Starring Larissa, and I didn’t care. So that’s what it is. Her mom’s helping us a lot with all the blog and computer stuff. She’s got lots of ideas.”

  Miss Hernandez tugs her ponytail. “So your blog is about Larissa?”

  Colt shrugs. He told me he didn’t care what it was about. He just wanted school to end.

  “It’s not just about me,” Larissa says. She stands and walks to the front of the room. “Starring Larissa is fun, entertaining, and educational.” She glances at her note cards. “Just click on ‘The Larissa Show’ and read about horse shows. You can see pictures of my trophies and ribbons. Click on ‘Larissa’s Logic’ for advice about horses and anything else. Or read ‘Larissa Laughs,’ and you may find a good joke or story.” She looks at me. “That’s where I could write about Ellie’s little pony.”

  Larissa knows Dream isn’t a pony. She’s a horse—a beautiful pinto horse. Larissa just calls her a pony to make me mad.

  But too bad for Larissa. Even she can’t get me upset on a day like this. There’s too much to be thankful for. Tomorrow, Saturday, I’m going on a trail ride. Monday is the last day of school, thanks to only one extra snow day this winter.

  Colt and I have better things to do than worry about a blog. Summer will be filled with trail rides, horse shows, early-morning breakfast rides, and moonlight horse strolls.

  Nope. Even Larissa Richland can’t mess up a summer like that.

  2

  Lucky

  “Ellie, what rhymes with fish?” Dad asks. He looks up from his laptop, which sits on our dining room table.

  Colt and my brother, Ethan, are sitting with me on one side of the table. Dad and his work junk are taking up the other side. Dad pretends our dining room is his office, unless we’re eating in here.

  “Lots of words rhyme with fish, Dad,” I say.

  “Anything remotely helpful or whatnot?” he asks, raking his hair with his fingers. The brown waves spread out all over his head. Dad looks like he’s been dropped from a tornado. On his head. He only gets like this when he’s stuck and in need of rhymes. My dad writes jingles for the Jingle Bells Ad Agency. If he doesn’t come up with great ideas, his bosses might fire him. One of Dad’s bosses is Colt’s mom.

  “What’s the ad campaign, Mr. James?” Colt asks.

  Dad slumps in his chair. He’s pretty short, so slumping puts him at about our level. “It’s the Fantastic Fish Food campaign. I had a funny jingle about flying fish and whatnot. But no, they want a rhyming jingle.” He turns to me. I’m the ace rhymer in the family. “So, Ellie?”

  “Fish,” I repeat. I reach for a pen and knock over two cans of dog food. My mom talked Colt and Ethan and me into helping her with her Doggone Drive. We glue pictures of missing dogs on cans and pass them out in the neighborhood. I pick up the tipped cans and start rhyming: “Fish, dish, wish, squish—”

  The table jiggles. “Munch, easy,” Colt says.

  Ethan reaches under the table to pet his dog. Munch is the size of a miniature horse. And he’s still growing. When he wags his tail, it feels like an earthquake.

  I try again. “Fish is a harder rhyme than I thought, Dad.”

  “Tell me about it.” He rests his head on the table.

  “Okay.” In my mind, I race through all possible fish rhymes. Nothing sounds worthy of a jingle. “Maybe we could go with fishy. Then we could use squishy and splishy, like splishy-splashy. Oooh! How about swishy? Like a horse’s tail going swishy?” I always try to squeeze in at least one horse rhyme, no matter what the jingle.

  Dad smacks his forehead on the table.

  Ethan sets down the dog food can he’s working on. He signs, Isn’t Mom at a fish protest today?

  Colt laughs. “I thought you said fish protest,” he says, signing it too.

  We don’t laugh.

  “Seriously?” Colt says. “Your mother is protesting fish?”

  “I tried to talk her out of it,” Dad says.

  Colt glances around the table at Ethan and me. “You guys have to admit that’s a little weird, right? Your dad’s advertising for fish, and your mom’s protesting them?”

  “She’s not protesting fish,” I explain. “She’s protesting for fish.”

  Colt already knows that my mom loves all animals. She’s a professional volunteer. She works at a cat farm, a dog barn, a worm ranch, and lots of other places. “Have you ever seen the fish in that fake pond in front of the fish market?”

  “I’ve never seen fish in that pond,” Colt says.

  “That’s because the water is so scummy. Mom says the fish are dying. That’s why she’s protesting.”

  Munch barks. A second later the front door bangs open. My mom swirls into the dining room on roller skates, the antique kind that clamp to her shoes. One of the best things about my mom is that she never just walks into a place like regular people do. She bursts in like the sun.

  “Hi, honey!” Dad sits up straight. He reminds me of Lance, a boy in my class. Whenever Ashley Harper walks by Lance, he brightens up like Christmas. Dad’s that way every time he sees Mom.

  Mom kisses Dad’s head. Then she rounds the table and kisses all of our heads, even Colt’s. “I’m so hungry I could eat the south end of a northbound skunk!” she declares.

  My mother is wearing pastel-pink and blue painter pants and a T-shirt with just about every other color on it. She tie-dyed the shirt herself.

  “What’s with the old-fashioned skates, Mrs. James?” Colt asks. “My sister likes to roller-skate. But she’s got shoe skates. You know—all in one, with wheels on the boots.”

  Colt’s sister, Sierra, moved to St. Louis with their dad when Colt’s parents got a divorce. He hardly ever mentions her.

  “Ah,” Mom says, fingering a metal key on a string she wears around her neck. “But does your sister get to wear one of these?”

  Colt squints at the old silver skate key. “You got me there. No key for Sierra.”

  “And there you have it.” Mom plunks her orange patent leather handbag on the table and drops into the chair next to Dad. She crosses one leg over the other and starts unlocking her skates. “I’m tired as a squashed bug on a tractor tire.” As if she just now noticed our handiwork, she picks up one of the dog food cans Ethan has finished. A collie named Lucky is on the can, along with a phone number. “Great job! These are pretty as a pumpkin! I’ll pass them out tomorrow. We’ll find Lucky before you know it.” Mom winks at me.

  I wink back. I think Lucky is lucky to have my mom on the case.

  3

  Surprises

  How did the fish protest go, Mom? Ethan
asks.

  “I’m as forgetful as a frog in love!” Mom grabs her orange purse and pulls out a plastic sack of murky water and sets it on the table. “There you go, Ethan. Surprise!”

  Ethan takes the bag. He peers into it, and his mouth drops open.

  I lean over and stare into the bag too. “Mom, there are fish in there!” The bag smells like pond scum.

  “I was only able to rescue three of the poor things. And I have to warn you, Ethan. Those fish are sick as an alligator in a shoe store. But I thought if anyone could nurse them back to health, it’s Ethan James.”

  Colt and I search the attic until we come up with the little aquarium Dad bought me two years ago.

  “Remember when your dad won that goldfish for you at the county fair?” Colt asks. “He had to throw quarters onto a plate, right?”

  I nod. “Mom said we could have bought a boat with the quarters it took to win that fish. And the poor thing didn’t even last one day.”

  Colt helps Ethan set up the tank while I bring in pitchers of water to fill it.

  “What will you name them?” Colt asks Ethan.

  Ethan shrugs. He sets the plastic bag of fish into the tank water. That way the fish can get used to their new home before leaving the old murky water.

  “What kind of fish are they?” Colt asks.

  “Goldfish,” Mom answers. She hands Ethan a small can of fish food.

  “Goldfish?” I stare into the fish tank. All three fish are gray and shriveled up. “They don’t look gold. They look charcoal. Like somebody had a fish fry . . . and they were the guests of honor.”

  That’s it! Ethan signs. His fingers move at lightning speed. They do look burned. So I think I’ll name them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego.

  “What did you say?” Colt squints at Ethan’s fingers.

  Ethan finger-spells the names again.

  “I have no idea what you’re spelling, Ethan,” Colt complains.

  “Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego,” I say. I’m glad I can say it instead of spelling it. Ethan’s only in second grade, but he’s a better speller than I am.