Girls Rule! (10 page)

The girls’ father took the stick and looked it over. “This from the Corbys’ house?” he asked.

“Yeah. I just wondered how we should paint their trim—if you knew anything about painting.”

“I don’t know a whole lot, but if this is part of their window frame, I’d say it’s going to take a lot more than paint. This looks like the wood’s infested with something. Termites would be my guess.”

“Termites!” said Jake in horror, gingerly taking the stick back. “That’s pretty serious, isn’t it?”

“Sure is. If I were your neighbor, I’d get my house
inspected by an expert,” Mr. Malloy said, and he went

on up the steps and then inside.

The girls looked at each other.

“When did you decide to do some painting?” Eddie asked, turning to Jake.

“Well, their house looked as though they could use it. It would be one more way to earn money.”

“That’s pretty hard work. How much are the Corbys paying you?” Eddie said.

“We haven’t exactly come to an agreement yet,” Jake answered, and threw the stick into the bushes as though he didn’t even want it near him.

Peter looked from one girl to the other. “Are you going to move in next door to us?” he asked. “Is that what your mother was doing over at the Corbys’?”

“Anything is possible,” Eddie said. “Of course, if we rent their place, there would have to be some conditions.”

“What do you mean—conditions?” asked Wally.

“Well, when you rent a house you have to sign papers and have an agreement,” Eddie explained. “I mean, the Corbys might say that we couldn’t have pets and that nobody could smoke, and we couldn’t hang heavy objects on the walls—things like that. And we could say that the neighbors couldn’t shoot baskets after nine at night or turn up the TV too loud or have cookouts outside our windows—that kind of stuff.”

“You could tell the
neighbors
what to do?” Josh choked.

Eddie shrugged. “You can put anything at all in an agreement,” she said.

Jake took a deep breath. “Well, I don’t think you’d want to live in a house with termites.”

“Yeah,” said Wally. “Some termite mounds are twenty feet high. I read that in a book. Just one termite mound could fill your whole living room.”

“Oh, man! And do they ever bite!” said Josh. “I’ll bet if a termite bit you on the cheek, your face would swell up like a basketball!"

Jake stood up and stretched. “Well,” he said, “we’d better get home. We just thought we’d come over and tell you we can do the car wash at our place on Saturday.”

“Sold,” said Eddie.

“Goodbye!” said Peter. “Have a nice supper.”

“We will,” said Caroline.

The girls watched them go. “Those boys are so transparent you can see right through them,” said Eddie. “That’s the most far-out story they’ve come up with yet.”

“How do you know it’s not true?” asked Caroline. “It really did look like termite wood to me.”

“Sure,” said Eddie. “But it’s not off the Corby house.”

“How do you know?” asked Beth.

Eddie went down the steps and searched around in the bushes until she found the stick of wood Jake had thrown away.

“What color is this?” she asked her sisters, pointing to the peeling paint along one edge.

“Green,” said Beth and Caroline together.

“And what color is the trim on the Corbys’ windows?” Eddie went on. Then she answered for them: “Yellow.”

Twelve
Alone on an Island

“W
ell, that’s that!” said Jake as the boys walked home. “They’ll
never
rent the house now.”

“I sure wouldn’t want termites in
my
bed,” said Peter. “It’s nice of you to paint the Corbys’ house for them, Jake.”

“Uh…yeah. Sure,” said Jake.

It did seem as though termites would put the Corbys’ house at the bottom of the Malloys’ list, Wally thought. Surely, if they stayed in Buckman, they would look at other houses for rent before they chose one with termites.

He turned his attention to the last project for school—where would he choose to be plane-wrecked?
He thought Caroline Malloy had chosen Australia, but she could always change her mind, especially if she found out he had chosen the North Pole. So what should he choose? Africa?

He imagined himself in a jungle. He imagined himself sitting under a banana tree. He imagined looking up and seeing Caroline swinging toward him on a vine. Nope. Not Africa.

The Sahara Desert, maybe? He imagined himself crawling up a sand dune looking for water. He imagined himself reaching the top and coming face-to-face with Caroline, crawling up the other side. Scratch the desert.

He could not imagine Caroline at the North Pole, however, so he decided to stick with that.

When he got to school the next morning, some people were checking maps at the front of the room. Some were looking through books at the back of the room. Others were going to and from the library.

Wally went to the library and spread out a map of the Arctic. It was very white. It was very empty. No roads, no cities, no lakes, no rivers. He closed his eyes and waved one finger around and around above the map, then let it drop.

There. Right there was where his two-engine plane would crash, about two inches from the spot marked NORTH POLE.

Wally decided he would use his hatchet to dig out blocks of ice and build himself an igloo. Unlike the boy in
Hatchet,
however, he would find a box of matches in
the airplane. He could not see himself trying to start a fire without matches at the North Pole. And maybe he’d have a ham sandwich and a blanket, too.

First step: Get out of the plane in case it was going to explode.

“Hey, Wally!” a boy said. “I’m going to be shipwrecked off the coast of New Zealand. Want to be shipwrecked with me?”

“No!” Wally said emphatically. Too close to Australia.

“Well, don’t get your britches in an uproar,” the friend said. “I was just asking!"

The more Wally thought about Caroline, however, the more afraid he was that on the last day of school, she would announce that she had been plane-wrecked in the same place he had. Then everyone would say, “Oh,
Wal
-ly! How’s
Car
-oline?” the whole rest of the summer. Or worse:

It seemed that every time Wally unfolded a map, Caroline Malloy walked by his chair. Every time he got a book off the shelf, Caroline saw what it was. She was probably only pretending she was going to Australia, he thought. Whatever place he chose, he had to keep secret.

An
island
. That was the only place Wally could escape her, he was sure. He got a magnifying glass from the librarian, held it over a group of islands in the Pacific Ocean, and chose Banaba, one of the smallest islands he could find. It was so small, in fact, that Wally couldn’t find out anything about it at all, and that suited him just fine.

Rainfall in the Pacific Islands varied from a few inches to many feet per year. Some islands were merely mounds of sand on a reef. Some were volcanic lava. Some had mountains and some had thick jungles. Wally decided his island could be anything he wanted it to be. But whenever he unfolded a map of the Pacific Ocean, he hid it beneath a map of the Arctic, just to fool Caroline. He absolutely would
not
go all summer with friends teasing him about being in an igloo with her, which was exactly what they would do if both he and Caroline chose the North Pole.

“Hey, Wally!” they would say. “Was it cold enough for you, or did
Car
-oline keep you warm?”

After school that day, the boys stayed behind a few minutes to help the music teacher load some instruments into her van. By the time they finished, the Malloy girls had already left, so the Hatfords walked home alone.

“Hey, Josh,” Wally asked. “If you were stranded on an island in the Pacific, what kind of clothes would you wear? I have to know for my report.”

“None,” said Josh.

“None?”

“It would be hot! You’d be alone! Why would you want to wear clothes?” asked Josh.

Wally
definitely
did not want Caroline Malloy anywhere
near
his island.

As they got closer to home, they saw their neighbor weeding her lawn at the house next door to theirs.

“Hi, Mrs. Corby!” Peter called. “Jake’s going to paint your house for you.”

“Peter!” Jake snapped. “Shut up.”

Mrs. Corby turned around and straightened up, bunches of dandelions dangling from both hands. “What?” she said. “Paint my house?”

Peter looked confused. “Well…I think he…”

“Shut
up
!” Jake muttered again through clenched teeth.

“
I
didn’t tell her about the termites!” Peter said to his brothers.

“Termites?
What
termites?” Mrs. Corby said worriedly.

Josh clapped one hand over Peter’s mouth, and Jake said, “We’re just making up a story, that’s all. Since you’re moving away, we’re making everything happen in your house.”

Mrs. Corby looked doubtful. “Well, don’t give me termites, not even in a story!” she said.

The phone rang when the boys walked inside, and Peter answered it. “Jake and Josh are mad at me!” he complained, ready to tell his mother everything. The
twins clutched their foreheads. But then Peter stopped talking. “It’s not?” he said. And then, to his brothers, “It’s Beth.”

The boys looked at each other. “What does she want?” Wally whispered.

“What do you want?” Peter said into the telephone. There was a long pause. “Uh-huh…,” said Peter. He listened some more. “Yes,” he said. “Yeah, I saw her…. Uh-huh…. Uh-huh…. Uh-huh….”

Wally and Jake and Josh all tried to get the phone away from Peter, but he had a tight grip on it and pressed himself against the wall. Finally he said, “Okay, goodbye,” and hung up.

“What did she want?” the boys cried together.

“Why didn’t you give me the phone?” demanded Jake.

“I can talk on the phone same as you!” said Peter.

“But what did Beth
want
?” asked Wally.

“She said, ‘How are you, Peter?’ “

“
Besides
that!” said Jake.

“She wanted to know if I knew whether or not Mrs. Corby was home, and I said yes.”

“Why did Beth want to know that?” asked Josh.

“She said that she and Eddie and Caroline wanted to see the inside of her house themselves so they could choose their own bedrooms before they moved in,” Peter told them.

“What?”
Jake and Josh and Wally all yelled together.

“They didn’t buy the termite story!” moaned Jake. “
Darn
it! Peter, when are they coming?”

Peter shrugged. “Soon, I guess.”

Jake continued staring at Peter as though he were looking straight through him. Then he grabbed the Yellow Pages, leafed through them quickly, and dialed a number.

Wally knew when Jake lowered his voice that he was trying to sound grown-up. “Hello,” Jake said. “I wondered if you had a truck in the College Avenue area. You do free inspections, don’t you?”

Wally covered his eyes.

“Yes,” Jake went on. “I’d like you to take a look at our house and the house next door.” And he gave the address. “Sure….Okay, that’s fine….Yes, that’s terrific!” And he hung up.

“Jake, what are you
doing
?” said Josh.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” said Jake. “The Malloys don’t believe me about the termites.”

“So what?” said Wally. “We don’t believe you either!"

“So they’ll move in!” said Jake. “They’ll spy on us and make our lives miserable. All I want is for a termite company truck to be parked outside when the girls come over. That’s all I ask.”

This was a bad idea, Wally knew. This was a terrible idea!

“Well, if you think
I’m
going to answer the door and lie about termites in Mrs. Corby’s house, you’re nuts!” he said, knowing the way Jake always tried to pass the dirty work on to him.

“Nobody has to lie.
I
didn’t lie either, did I? I just
said I wanted an inspection of our house and the house next door. It’s free. I could even have done the Corbys a favor if the inspector finds something.”