Diary Entry

Today was the worst best day ever.

First, the best part. School is out for the summer! I mean, what’s better than that? Nothing that I can think of. Nothing! And nothing is the whole point of summer. Not a thing. No school books. No packed lunches. No homework. Nowhere to be when the rooster crows. Nothing. Doesn’t that sound wonderful?

Doing nothing was my perfect summer vacation plan until the best day turned into the worst.

This is exactly what happened:

After shouting, “Meet you at the barn!” I left my friends in front of school. Spirit was already waiting for me by the old oak tree.

I wrapped my arms tightly around my wild stallion’s neck and gave him a big smooch on the smooth caramel-colored hair just above his warm black nose. He snorted at me, so I kissed him again, when I really knew he wanted the apple in my book bag.

“I’m just teasing you,” I told him, and gave up the red delicious treat. Spirit gobbled it in one big bite, and we were off.

We took a quick stop home to drop off my schoolbag. Adiós, books and pencils and notebooks! See ya next year.

Abigail had this big idea to start the Summer of Spirit (which she is calling Summer of Boomerang) with a horse spa day. Pru loved that idea and thought her horse, Chica Linda, could use some grooming. For Pru’s last birthday, her dad gave her this amazing grooming kit. It had a curry brush, two soft brushes, a hoof pick, and special mane and tail brushes in a beautiful carved wooden box. Pru wanted us all to share the first time she used it, so she saved it for today!

Abigail had used her allowance to buy some rainbow-colored ribbons for her horse, Boomerang, but she could never decide which color matched Boomerang’s tail the best, so she decided to wait to use them until today, too. There were plenty for all our horses. Even Spirit, if he wanted ribbons.

I was the only one who didn’t have something special to contribute to spa day, and I really wanted to share something, too. So after I shoved my book bag into a corner by the door, I started looking around the house.

I could take more apples for a snack. But that didn’t seem very special.

With a final glance around the kitchen, I shouted out to Spirit through the window, “Be right back!” and went upstairs. There had to be something good that we all could use.

Fluffy towels for drying off after the horses’ wash? My dad might not like it when I brought back soggy towels covered in horse hair.

In my desk drawer, I had a mud mask that Abigail’s brother, Snips, gave me for Christmas. It looked like black gunk in a jar. I’d never opened it, so I thought maybe it would be a good addition to spa day. We could do mud masks for the horses! I unscrewed the lid. Ack! It smelled horrible. When I looked closer at the glass container, I could see bits of rotten food stuck in the mud. He had obviously filled the jar with mud from the pig pen! Yick. I sealed the lid and dropped the whole thing in the trash.

I’d never make Spirit do a stinky mud mask on spa day. Besides, he was already covered in mud from his night with the herd. (I sometimes wonder what they do when they are together.) Seriously, Spirit could use a walk through the river, or maybe a bath.…

Oh, that gave me an idea.

Aunt Cora had moved out of the house and into the inn, but there were a few of her things left in a box downstairs. I knew exactly what I needed.

Skipping two stairs at a time, I returned to the kitchen. In the back of the pantry was Cora’s box. I bet she’d even forgotten about it. I dragged the box into the light and dug down deep. There were a couple of frilly aprons, a pair of silver candlesticks, a photo of her and my dad when they were young, and there… at the bottom… was a crystal bottle filled with a light-purple liquid.

I held up the bottle toward the window. The crystal glittered in the afternoon sunlight, casting rainbows on the kitchen walls. It was the prettiest bottle I’d ever seen. For as long as I could recall, I’d seen it on her dressing table by her hairbrush and hand mirror. I knew when it was empty, Aunt Cora could refill the beautiful bottle at the general store in town.

I looked, and now the bottle was full to the top. I slowly pulled out the stopper, careful not to spill even a drop of the precious purple liquid inside. Raising the bottle to my nose, I took a deep breath.

The most amazing scent filled the room: lavender flowers with a hint of lemon.

I held the bottle toward the window and let the crystal cast more dancing rainbows on the ceiling and floor.

“Hey, Spirit,” I called out to where he stood, waiting for me in the shady spot of the yard. “How would you like a bubble bath?”

Spirit whinnied.

“Sounds great, right?”

I knew this was the perfect thing I could to add to the PALs’ Horse Spa Day. We could wash Chica Linda, Boomerang, and Spirit with Aunt Cora’s bubble bath. Groom them with Pru’s brushes. Then, tie Abigail’s ribbons in their manes and tails.

When I jumped on Spirit’s back to ride over to the barn, I smiled. The Summer of Spirit was off to the perfect start.

And then everything went totally wrong.

Turned out that Boomerang didn’t like the smell of the lavender-scented bubble bath. When Abigail put a little of the purple soap in her hand, he backed away from her.

“Try it again,” I encouraged as I poured some into my hand, then passed the bottle to Pru.

I reached up to slather Spirit. He caught one whiff of the lavender and protested loudly as well, huffing and moving back away from my hand.

“Oh, come on, Spirit,” I cooed. “You’ll smell like Aunt Cora.”

I guess Spirit wasn’t into smelling like Aunt Cora.

Abigail was still struggling to put the soap on Boomerang. She was chasing him in and out of barn stalls with her hand held high.

“Maybe the horses would have liked the smell of Snips’s stinky mud better?” she suggested. Abigail admitted she’d tried the mud mask. She said it made her eyes water for a week. No matter how much she scrubbed, she couldn’t get the smell off!

I remembered that after Christmas, she’d worn a garlic necklace around her neck. She told me and Pru it was to keep away vampires in the new year. I should have guessed it was because garlic smelled better than the mud!

So, here’s how the day went from good to bad to worse:

Chica Linda was the only one willing to take a bubble bath. She got all soapy and slippery. She was loving it, but then, just as Pru was handing me back the crystal bottle, Boomerang reared up, once again backing away from Abigail.

Pru’s hands were slippery from the bubbles. Since Spirit wouldn’t let me put soap on him, my hands still had the soap dollop I’d intended to use. That meant my hands were slippery, too.

When Boomerang bumped Abigail, she bumped Spirit. Spirit bumped me, and I dropped the crystal bubble bath bottle. The good news was that before it crashed down, I reached out and caught it again by throwing myself over a barrel of oats with an outstretched hand.

But just as I was about to celebrate, I heard the distinct clatter of crystal on the barn floor.

What was that? I wondered.

It was the lid. I hadn’t caught the bottle and the stopper. Just the bottle.

Abigail shouted when she saw the diamond-shaped stopper on the floor near me. It was casting rainbows of light on the barn walls, which was pretty, but made it hard to see exactly where the stopper was.… We searched through wet bubbles and around horses until…

CRACK.

Boomerang stepped on it.

It wasn’t Boomerang’s fault, or Spirit’s for bumping me. Or Pru’s for having slippery hands. Or even Chica Linda’s fault. She had been the one who loved the bath.

Later, when I went to see Aunt Cora, I had to explain that the broken crystal stopper was all my fault. The truth was hard, but I told it. I’d taken the bubble bath from her box. I’d brought the crystal bottle to the barn.

Aunt Cora was pretty nice about it all. She didn’t yell at me. Or ground me for life, which is what I expected. She didn’t even tell my father. She sat calmly on her sofa, looking at the empty bottle and the broken stopper.

And then she said the words that ruined my summer vacation.

“Lucky,” Aunt Cora told me, “you will need to earn money this summer to replace the bottle and fill it with bubble bath.” She looked me straight in the eye. “I like lavender.”

The Summer of Spirit was over before it had even started. I won’t be doing nothing all summer after all. The best day turned into the worst because…

I need a job.