Best Friends by Bonnie Bryant Read Free Book Online Page B

house.
    Lisa picked up her backpack and the wallet and went up to her room. She had plenty of homework to keep her busy until her mother got home. And there was the phone call from Veronica to look forward to.

 

    S TEVIE AND C AROLE could hear the Lakes before they got to their house. Stevie’s brothers had wasted no time taking advantage of the snow and were totally oblivious to its nearly blinding intensity. They were heaving snowballs at one another.
    “Gotcha!”
    “Did not!”
    “Well, this one will!”
    There was a brief moment of silence, followed by a “Yeooowww!” and then a “That one missed me, too.”
    “Right!”
    Stevie and Carole ducked in the back door, dropped their bags off in the kitchen, and then sneaked back outthrough the garage entrance, where they found a pile of snow accumulating very quickly. In a matter of minutes they’d begun a stealthy attack from the rear on the battling brothers, who were only too happy to join forces against the girls.
    “It’s a good thing we keep in such good shape with our riding,” Stevie said, packing a snowball tightly. She heaved it across the lawn and had the satisfaction of watching it hit her brother Chad on the shoulder. She laughed with joy, until Alex wreaked revenge with a direct hit to her rear end.
    The battle ended as suddenly as it had begun when Mrs. Lake appeared at the kitchen door and yelled, “Cocoa!” A truce was declared instantly.
    “You know, the only thing better than a good snowball fight is the cocoa afterward,” Stevie told Carole, slinging her arm around her ally’s shoulder.
    “Weren’t you complaining just the other day about all the snow we’ve had this winter?” Carole asked. She blew gently on her cocoa, waiting for the sweet concoction to cool down enough to drink.
    “Yeah, but I didn’t mean snowball fights,” Stevie said. “I just meant I hate it when we have to ride indoors!”
    Carole smiled. This was no time to explain that you can’t have one without the other. She took a sip of her cocoaand listened to Chad talk about the fine points of lobbing snowballs until her father came to pick her up.
    L ISA TURNED ON another light. It was completely dark outside and the house seemed cold. She’d finished her homework. There wasn’t much to do now that they were so close to the winter holiday, and it had all been easy.
    She went into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. Her mother had made a casserole the night before. Lisa took it out, turned the oven to what seemed to be a reasonable temperature, and slid the dish in. She looked at the clock. It was 6:30, so her mother would be home soon.
    She walked to the window and looked out. The snow had stopped, leaving a few inches on the ground—enough to cover last week’s snow, enough that her neighbor was sweeping his walkway, enough that there was going to be a snowman in the yard across the street, but not enough to close school or stop businesses.
    She took out some placemats and silverware and began to set the kitchen table.
    While she’d been doing her homework, she’d once again noticed the blank application for the show. She was going to have to do something about it. She could offer to pay some of the registration fee, but she knew she’d need her parents to pay most of it if she was going to be in the CI at all.
    On one hand, it didn’t seem like such a big deal. Her parents had paid for her to be in many shows in the past. But they hadn’t been separated then, and they hadn’t been talking about money being tight. It had just been an entry fee—no big deal at all. So why was it a big deal now?
    Lisa took the nice napkins out of the linen drawer. She put crystal glasses on the table. Even though they were just eating a casserole in the kitchen, there was no law that said the table couldn’t be pretty.
    As soon as her mother got home … Well, as soon as she’d taken off her coat and sat down … Or maybe if they had a little visit in the