4

No Comment!

I stare at the computer screen. My fingers grip the chair so I don’t fall down. The words blur together: Hey! The horse in that picture—that’s my horse!

“Are you okay, Ellie?” Colt asks.

I can’t answer him. I can’t take my gaze off the final two words in the comment: my horse!

Before I realize what I’m doing, I’m screaming, “No!” Then I shout even louder, “Mom! Dad! Mom! Dad!”

My parents thunder up the stairs and into Ethan’s room.

“Ellie?” Dad says. “What on earth . . . ?”

Mom strides to the computer in two steps. “I’ll be a mummy’s mummy if you didn’t scare ten years off my life. What’s so catawampus that you had to ruin a perfectly good rerun of Saved by the Bell?”

“Ellie read something on Larissa’s blog and freaked out,” Colt explains.

“The freaked-out part we got,” Mom says.

“What’s on the blog?” Dad asks. “Aren’t you doing a blog with Cassandra?”

“Read it.” My voice sounds like I’m under murky water. A dying fish. That’s how I feel—like I’m drowning in pond scum. I can hardly move. Mom and Dad have to crowd in to get a better look at the computer screen.

“Is that Dream?” Dad asks, pointing to the old picture. “I almost forgot how sickly your horse was before we got her.” He scrolls up a little. “Is that Larissa’s horse?”

I glance at the photo. Larissa is holding a trophy. Next to her is her American saddle horse, Custer’s Darling Delight.

“The one on the right is Larissa’s horse,” Colt informs Dad. “The one on the left is Larissa.”

Mom chuckles. “Well, that Larissa has a way with words, all right. She got the story wrong. But it’s kind of funny. You shouldn’t take it so personally, Ellie.”

“It’s not the story we’re worried about,” Colt explains. “It’s the comments. The last comment.”

I watch Mom’s eyes narrow as she reads.

“I’ll be a blue-nosed gopher,” she mutters.

Dad is reading through the comments too. His eyebrows shoot up and down like the wings of a bird trying to take off. “It has to be a joke or whatnot,” he finally says.

“Do you think so, Mr. James?” Colt asks.

“Must be,” Dad answers.

Mom slaps Dad on the back. “You are the smartest man I know, Lenny James! Of course it’s a joke. A very bad joke.” Mom looks totally relieved.

I want to believe them. I want to feel relieved. “But what if it’s not a joke?” I demand. “What if whoever had Dream before she showed up at the cat farm really did recognize her from Larissa’s blog?”

My mind flashes back to the day when I saw the shaggy pinto from my classroom window. Nobody else saw her there. And by the time Colt and I walked home from school, he almost had me believing the horse was all in my imagination. Then Mom came home from volunteering at the cat farm and announced she’d lost a stray spotted horse. And that was the beginning of my dream come true.

Mom puts her arm around me. She has to bend in half to look me in the eyes. “Sugar, whoever had that poor horse before you got her wouldn’t likely be admitting it.” She points toward the picture on the screen. “Who would confess to starving a horse like that? Why, I’d arrest him myself for being cruel to animals. He’d be hog-tied and strung up in a court of law.”

“Your mom’s got a point, Ellie,” Colt says.

“She always does,” Dad agrees.

“Hey!” Colt scoots his chair up to Ethan’s desk again. “I’m going to comment on the comment.”

“Can you do that?” Dad asks.

“This is my blog too,” Colt says. “I got teamed with Larissa for the blog project.”

“And you call it Starring Larissa?” Mom asks.

Colt types, and the rest of us read his comment as he goes along: Oh yeah? This is NOT your horse. And even if you did own this horse once, you better not admit it. They put people in jail for starving horses.

“There!” Colt leans back in the chair and clicks the button to post it. Only Colt’s comment doesn’t show up. Instead, he gets a message back that says, “Thank you for your comment. All comments must be approved by Larissa. Have a nice day!”

“That stinks!” Colt shouts.

It’s at that moment when I get it. “Yes! I should have thought of that right off. It’s Larissa!”

“What do you mean, honey?” Dad asks.

“That comment! Don’t you get it? I’ll bet you anything Larissa is the one writing all the comments on her site.” I can picture her sitting at home making up every word. “She’s the one calling Dream a scarecrow. She’s the one making fun of backyard horses. And she’s the one trying to stir up trouble by claiming my horse is really her horse.”

“Well, I’ll be a four-toed fiddler,” Mom mutters.

“I guess,” Colt says. “I know she and her mother were worried that nobody would see the blog. Larissa really wanted people to write comments.”

“See? I’m right!” I’d love to send Larissa a few comments of my own right now.

“So when she didn’t get any comments, she must have decided to write them herself,” Colt says, like he’s thinking aloud.

Dad sighs and backs away from the computer. “If this crisis is over, then I guess I’d better get back to my own crisis. Fish rhymes.”

“I’ll help,” Mom offers, even though she once tried to rhyme bowling with sewing. That jingle almost got Dad fired.

After Colt leaves, I fill Ethan in on Larissa’s blog. He makes me find the website so he can read it for himself. When he’s done, he signs, Are you sure Larissa wrote that comment?

I make a fist and wave it up and down at him, signing, Yes! But I wish he hadn’t asked.

Ethan shakes his head. That’s awfully mean, even for Larissa. You’d better take the computer to your room so you can keep an eye on her blog.

After we move the computer into my room, Ethan and I check on Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. They’re still alive, but they’re not swimming much.

By the time I’m ready for bed, I’m pretty tired. I open my bedroom window and call, “Dream!” Stars are just starting to light up the sky.

In seconds I hear my horse’s hoof beats and know she’s trotting toward me. Dream appears at the edge of the yard, tossing her head. Her white mane floats across her neck. Dream doesn’t stop until she’s at my window.

When Dad and I fenced in our backyard, we decided one side of the fence would be our house. That’s why my bedroom window opens up into Dream’s pasture—our yard.

Dream nickers and sticks her head in through the window so I can pet her. I sit on the window ledge, and my horse stretches her neck until her head rests in my lap. When I scratch her jaw, her eyes droop shut.

“You’re mine, Dream. All mine.”

I usually say my going-to-bed prayers when I’m in bed. But I’m so wound up from Larissa’s blog that I decide I’ll say my prayers with Dream tonight. “God, thanks for helping Dream and me find each other.” I thank God for Ethan and Mom and Dad and Colt and Cassie and everybody else I can think of. Only not Larissa.

“Dream,” I whisper when I’m done talking to God, “you and I have a lot to be thankful for, including that trail ride tomorrow.”

I kiss Dream good night and watch her trot off in the starlight. Then I curl up in bed and try to sleep. Only I’m so excited about the trail ride, sleep stays away for a long, long time.

Just when I start drifting off, I jerk myself awake because I’m starting to have a nightmare. In my dream, Larissa is taking my horse and handing her over to some stranger.

And then I can see Ethan’s hands signing, That’s awfully mean, even for Larissa.