Rascal by Ellen Miles

“Aren’t you scared?” Charles asked. “I know I would be really, really scared. Horses are huge. They’re enormous. Plus, they could bite you.”
    Lizzie laughed. Her little brother came up with the craziest things sometimes. Second graders were like that. As a fourth grader, Lizzie knew better. “Horses don’t bite,” she said.
    Charles nodded. “They do!” he said. “Sammy’s mom said one bit her when she tried to give it a carrot.”
    â€œReally?” Lizzie stopped looking out the living room window and stared at her brother. “A horse actually bit her?” Lizzie did not like the sound of that. “But horses don’t eat meat. Horses are vegetarians.”
    â€œSo was the triceratops, but I wouldn’t want one biting me,” said Charles.
    Lizzie nodded. Charles had a point. “Anyway,” she said, “I’m not scared.”
    But she was.
    Ever since she had let her best friend, Maria, talk her into taking a riding lesson, Lizzie had been secretly dreading this Saturday morning, and now it was here.
    For as long as she could remember, Lizzie had loved animals. Dogs were her favorite, but all animals were wonderful. Penguins, sheep, tigers, pandas — even iguanas! Lizzie loved them all. She loved learning about them, drawing pictures of them, and seeing them at the zoo or on nature shows. Everyone knew that Lizzie Peterson loved animals. What they didn’t know is that there was one animal she was secretly afraid of. Horses.
    When it came to dogs, she loved caring for them and playing with them and training them. She and Charles were dying for a dog of their own,but so far they had not been able to talk their parents into getting one. At least, not a full-time dog.
    But the Petersons were a foster family for puppies who needed new homes. They took care of them until they could find just the right owners for each puppy. They had fostered three puppies so far, and Lizzie and Charles had fallen in love with each one.
    Puppies were a lot of work, but they were so much fun! Lizzie could play with a puppy all day and never get upset if it gave her little bites with its needle-sharp baby teeth.
    But a horse?
    That was a different story.
    Charles was right. Horses were huge. A horse couldn’t curl up and sleep on your lap, the way a puppy did. You couldn’t tell
what
a horse might do. It might kick, or buck, or . . . bite.
    Lizzie shuddered. She peeked out the window again, watching for Maria’s dad’s blue car. Itwould be pulling into the driveway any minute. They were picking her up on their way to the stable. Maria was so excited that Lizzie was finally coming with her. She
loved
horses and had been riding since she was three years old. She even had all the right riding clothes: boots, funny pants called jodhpurs, and a helmet.
    â€œMy parents will never agree to buy me all those special clothes just for riding,” Lizzie had told Maria. She’d been hoping to get out of going to the stable. But that excuse didn’t work.
    â€œThat’s no problem,” Maria had answered. “You can just wear jeans and sneakers. Kathy does require all her students to wear helmets, but I have an extra one you can borrow.”
    Kathy was Maria’s riding teacher. She and her husband, Wayne, owned the stable and lived next to it. Lizzie had been hearing about Kathy for weeks: how nice she was, how much she knew about horses, what a great teacher she was. Maria just
knew
that Lizzie would love Kathy — andthe stable and the horses — just as much as she did.
    Lizzie was not so sure. But she had decided that the best way to deal with her fear was to face it, and that meant going to the stable with Maria, meeting Kathy, and —
eek!
— climbing onto a horse and riding it.
    Every time she thought about that, Lizzie’s hands got sweaty and her heart started to pound.
    â€œEverything okay,