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Stevie asked. “Oh, I get it.” She waved her hands to silence the crowd. “Everyone, Max has an announcement to make. And that is that the mounted games demonstration will start in five minutes. So get your seats now!” She turned back to Max. “Good thinking. We’ve got to keep this show on the road, or the fireworks will be starting before we know it.”
    That’s another Pine Hollow tradition—watching the Willow Creek town fireworks from that little hill behind the stable. It’s a great spot to see them from.
    “Actually,” Max said, “that wasn’t the announcement I had in mind. But it’s all right. I’ll make it later.”
    After that we all got to work setting up for the games. The costume race and the relay races went very well. Everyone seemed to enjoy watching them, and I
know
my friends and I had fun doing them.
    Then it was time for the grand finale—Stevie’s favorite, the super soaker target shoot. Before we got started, though, we noticed one problem. One of the targets we’d set up was tipping over because the easel holding it had broken.
    Lisa and I just kind of stood there and stared, not sure what to do. But Stevie thought fast. She told us that she noticed Deborah standing on the outskirts of the crowd, looking kind of out of it, and she figured this would be a perfect way to get her involved in things and maybe help her have some fun at the picnic. So sheasked her if she would mind standing in for the broken easel—holding up the target.
    Deborah agreed. I guess she was happy to have something to do. In no time at all, everything was ready to go.
    Just as Stevie had predicted, the crowd loved the game. People roared when the riders missed wildly, and they cheered on their favorite riders. I’m pretty sure most of them—even the adults—were wishing they could take a turn with the water guns themselves.
    Stevie was very pleased with the reactions, of course. “Everyone seems to be having a blast,” she said at one point, looking around with satisfaction.
    Betsy Cavanaugh was standing nearby and overheard our conversation. She pointed to Deborah. “Everyone but that poor woman holding up the target, you mean.”
    We all looked over at Deborah. Most of the water that missed the targets (and that was a
lot
of water) was hitting her, and she didn’t look too happy about it. “Gee,” Stevie said, looking worried. “I thought she might enjoy getting splashed. I guess I was wrong.”
    Stevie was ready to stop the game right then and there, since Deborah obviously wasn’t having any fun. But we decided five more minutes wouldn’t make much difference, so we continued, figuring we could apologize to Deborah later.
    But after the race ended, we were all so excited that we sort of forgot about her for a little while. We were too busy talking about the games, squirting each other with the leftover water, and so forth. Lisa had noticed Deborah hightailing it to the Regnerys’ house, so we figured she was inside changing into some dry clothes.
    But then we heard a door slam, and we saw Deborah comingout of the house carrying a suitcase. A taxicab had just pulled into Pine Hollow’s driveway, and Deborah headed straight for it without so much as a glance at any of us.
    We were all kind of surprised at that, but Max was downright dumbfounded. He stared after the cab with a totally weird look on his face.
    “Uh, Max?” Stevie said. “Max?”
    He hardly seemed to notice her at first, but then he shook his head. “Not now,” he practically whispered. Then he ran toward the house.
    Lisa shook her head as we all stared after him. “I have just one question,” she said. “
What
is going on?”
    None of us knew the answer to that. We held a quick Saddle Club meeting to discuss it, trying to figure things out. All we could agree on for sure was that Max seemed pretty upset about something, so we decided to do what we could to help. We got the picnic back into full swing by inviting everyone