Western Star Read Free Page A

herself with a giggle as she headed into the main passageway of the mall.
    She was systematic when it came to shopping. She took the escalator up to the top of the mall and began walking quickly down the halls to see what stores might offer possibilities for her friends.
    Clothes? Her friends both had very nice clothes. Stevie looked down at her sweatshirt and jeans, which were covered with a faint dusting of horsehair and hay. She didn’t think she’d be very good at selecting clothes for them.
    There was a record store. Now
that
had possibilities. They all liked music. The problem was that Carole had recently developed a taste for country-and-western music and Stevie didn’t share that taste. Stevie preferred rock—classic and modern. She was afraid that if she bought an album for Carole that
she
liked, Carole would hate it. But if Stevie bought something she herself hated, Carole might find out and be insulted. She decided against buying anything in the record store.
    The next shop that caught her eye was the bookstore. She veered into it and, purely from habit, went straightto the horse-book section, where she quickly analyzed everything on the shelf.
    “Got it, got it, don’t want it, Carole has it, Lisa has it, don’t want it, can’t afford it, Carole has it, Lisa’s parents are giving it to her …”
    There was nothing there. She checked out the paperback section and saw that the three of them were completely caught up with the most recent titles in their favorite series. She had to go to another shop.
    She hurried out of the bookstore. She dashed past the scent shop, a candy store, three shoe stores, two electronics stores, a toy store, an athletic store, and a department store.
    She scooted down the stairs to the lower level. She tried another bookstore, with no better luck. She glanced at the little specialty carts in the middle of the aisle. A mug for each of her friends? With their names on them? No, she didn’t think so. Lisa and Carole weren’t exactly coffee drinkers. Earrings with horses on them? No. The nice ones were too expensive and the cheap ones were too tacky.
    She looked at her watch. Fifteen minutes gone and she hadn’t spent a penny! She sighed. Why was it that Stevie had had no trouble buying presents for her three brothers (whom she often hated), but when it came to shopping for her best friends (whom she always loved), it was hard?Maybe because it mattered so much to her that she get exactly the right thing.
    Something ahead of her glinted in the sun. It was at the cart that held specialty glass items. Sometimes there were nice things. Stevie stepped forward and squinted. Was it possible? There were horses made of glass—dozens of them, all different sizes and shapes. And they were pretty. There was one with a beautiful arch in its neck, and another flipping its tail …
    C AROLE STEPPED OFF the bus. It was a good thing the same bus that went to her house also stopped at the mall. The next one would be there in a little over an hour to take her home. That was all the time she had because she still needed to pack. Until then, she had a very important job to do. She wanted to get the nicest possible Christmas presents for her two best friends.
    She’d done all her other shopping. She’d gotten her father some CDs of classic golden oldies. He loved everything about the 1950s—especially the music. She knew he was going to love the ones she was giving him this year. Also, she and her father had shopped together to buy gifts for their cousins in other parts of the country. Those had gone out in the mail weeks ago. There were things that Colonel Hanson could be Marine Corps–style efficient about. Family Christmas gifts were among them.
    So now all that was left was shopping for Stevie and Lisa. But it wasn’t easy to buy things for people you cared about as much as Carole cared about her best friends.
    Her first stop was the bath store. There were oodles of sweet-smelling bubble