As it turned out, they couldn't get plane seats for two days, so they could have gone climbing after all. But her mother wanted to get some more things done in the house, and her father had some papers to look over, so Jenny was spared.

She wasn't spared, though, from the "getting-ready-to-go-someplace" attitude of her parents. Fortunately, she was used to it, and instead of getting sucked into their controlled frenzy of Ustmaking and double-checking, she offered to drive into town

and pick up some supplies. Her mother, happily adrift in a sea of lists, surfaced just long enough to hand her the car keys and tell her to drive carefully, then dove back into her preparations.

Rimrock was a tiny town; people did their big shopping in Mount Harris, twenty-five miles away, where there was a mall big enough to get lost in. Even though Jenny knew plenty of rich people lived in the area, Rimrock itself didn't look it. Its tren-diest store was a shop that sold candles and hand-painted greeting cards. The rest of the businesses were strictly the necessary ones -- a small grocery, a veterinarian, a post ofiice, a clothing store that dealt mostly in Levis, a drugstore, and a diner.

Jenny liked it, though. She had to admit that the bluff made a beautiful setting for a town, and since she'd never lived anywhere near a place that didn't bustle, she enjoyed the small-town quiet. Of course, it was going to be a different story^ in the winter, when she wouldn't be able to drive or bike into town (she'd heard alarming rumors of three-foot snows and storms that lasted for days), but right now it was warm, and the air was clear and smelled of pine.

She bought the things her mother had asked for, got some snacks and two frozen pizzas for herself, checked to see if the grocery's paperback rack had anything new, which it didn't, then headed back to her car.

She was fumbling in the pocket of her shorts for the keys when she heard the unmistakable clip-clop

of horses* hooves. Then a girl's voice said, "Hi! I bet youVe our new neighbor."

Jenny turned. It definitely was a horse, a big, shiny brown one, and the girl on it had short, curly hair to match. She was riding bareback and she didn't seem the least bit self-conscious about being on a horse in the middle of a paved street lined with cars.

"I'm Sally Rafino," she said. "I've been visiting my grandparents in Ohio, and I just got back yesterday. The first thing Mom told me was that somebody had moved into the house up the road from ours, and they had a girl who looked my age. You've just got to be the one."

"If the road's narrow and steep and doesn't have a name, then you're right." Jenny laughed and introduced herself, and after a couple of minutes, she found out that she and Sally were the same age and would both be juniors when school started.