Girls Rule! (11 page)

“What are we going to
say
when a truck gets here, Jake?” asked Josh. “Where do we think there are termites?”

“We don’t have to say anything because we’re not going to be here,” Jake explained. “When we see the truck pull up, we’re going to slip out the back door and hide in the toolshed till it’s gone. The driver will walk around inspecting the outside of the house and then go over to Mrs. Corby’s, and that’s all the girls have to see.
Then
they’ll believe there are termites, and they’ll tell their folks. The driver will drive away, and that’s all there is to it. The end.”

The end, my foot!
Wally thought. Mrs. Corby would find out they’d fibbed, and the termite truck driver would chase them to the ends of the earth. And as if that weren’t enough, Wally just knew that Caroline was going to follow him to his island in the Pacific.

Thirteen
A Bad Idea

“W
e’ll shake them up,” said Eddie. “Jake thinks he can fool us with that old stick of termite wood. All we’re going to do is knock on Mrs. Corby’s door and tell her we want to see the bedrooms—that Mom was over there yesterday to look at the house, and we just wondered what our bedrooms would be like.”

“Gosh, Eddie, I don’t know …,” said Beth.

“What harm could it do? I’m not telling her we
are
renting her house. We’re just taking a look, and we want the guys to watch us go in. Can’t you just
see
Jake’s face! We’ll tell him later that we have our rooms all picked out.”

Caroline giggled. “Maybe we should bring Dad’s
binoculars and look into the Hatfords’ upstairs windows while we’re over there.”

“Yeah! Bring those too!” said Eddie, and the girls laughed out loud.

A note from their mother on the table said she was shopping.

The girls ate some cheese crackers and drank some orange juice. Then Eddie said, “Let’s go. We’d better get back before Mom comes home.”

“You do the talking,” Beth told her as they walked down the hill toward the bridge. “I don’t want to lie.”

“Who’s lying? All I’m telling Mrs. Corby is we’d like to see the bedrooms. We would!"

Caroline was simply happy to go along. She was putting so much work into her Australian project that she was glad to get away. She had even made a watercolor painting of what an Australian hillside would look like with
HELP
spelled out in rocks, her little shelter made out of a raincoat off to one side.

She didn’t know why Wally was being so secretive about
his
choice. Every time she looked his way, he had some other book tucked inside a book on the Arctic, and all the while he was really planning to be shipwrecked on a Pacific island. Why did
she
care where he was shipwrecked? Did he think she was going to follow him there? Just for that, maybe she
should
!

The girls were halfway across the footbridge when Caroline said, “Look at that! What
is
it?”

Her sisters looked. On the other side of the river, halfway between the Hatfords’ house and the Corbys’
next door, sat a white truck with a huge fiberglass insect on top. The big insect had a tapered body, wings, and terrible eyes and pincher jaws. termite x, it said on the side of the truck.

“What’s the
X
for?” asked Caroline.

“Death,” said Eddie. “It means death to termites.”

“Then it’s true?” said Beth. “The house next door really
is
full of termites? I’m sorry for the Corbys, but I’m glad for us, because I
know
Mother wouldn’t rent their place now.”

“Yeah, but how do we pretend we’re still interested in those bedrooms if they’ve got termites?” said Caroline.

“Look. We told Peter we were coming over to look at the house next door. So we’re
going
to look at the house next door!” said Eddie. “We just know he’ll tell his brothers.”

They passed the Hatfords’ house and went up the walk to the Corbys’. Eddie rang the bell. A few moments later a gray-haired woman in a blue sundress answered. “Hello?” she said.

“Hi. We’re Mrs. Malloy’s daughters, and I think she looked at your house yesterday,” Eddie said.

“Oh, yes, she did!” Mrs. Corby’s face brightened. “Have you decided to rent it after all?”

“Well, not exactly,” said Eddie. “But we just wanted to see the bedrooms, in case we move in here.”

“Certainly!” Mrs. Corby said, holding the door open. “Please come in.”

And when the girls were inside she said, “The bedrooms
used to belong to my children, you know. But they’re all grown up and married.” She started up the stairs, the girls following. “I’ve got bad knees, so this house is a little too much for me anymore. My husband and I are planning to move closer to our daughter in Elkins.”

She held on to the banister as she climbed and stopped to catch her breath when they reached the top. Everything looked dark and old, and there was a certain mystery to the house. Caroline thought of all sorts of things she might explore if she lived here—cup-boards to open, an attic to investigate.

“There are two bedrooms on this side of the hall and two on the other,” Mrs. Corby said. “The bathroom’s at the end.”

Sure enough, two of the rooms looked directly toward the Hatfords’. As they peeked out the windows, the girls saw the Termite X driver in his white jumpsuit walking around the Hatfords’ house, looking it over. The boys were nowhere in sight. Caroline even used the binoculars when Mrs. Corby wasn’t watching, but she still couldn’t see them.

“Well,” Eddie said. “Thank you so much. You must really love this house.”

“Oh, I do, and I’ll hate to leave it,” Mrs. Corby said, going back downstairs beside them. She told them to be sure to look at the flower beds as they left. “And please tell your mother I know she’ll love the house as much as we do,” she added.

As the girls opened the front door, they almost
bumped into the Termite X driver coming up the steps.

“Excuse me, ma’am,” he said to Mrs. Corby, “but would you happen to be the person who called about termites in your house?”

“Termites!” Mrs. Corby said. “What
is
all this about termites?”

“I don’t know, ma’am. My dispatcher told me to check out this house and the one next door, but no one’s home over there.”

“Well, I want you to know there are no termites in
this
house!” Mrs. Corby said. “And I don’t appreciate your implying that there are.”

“I’m only telling you what the dispatcher told me, ma’am,” the driver said. “Sorry to have bothered you.” And he went back to his truck and drove away.

“What do you suppose
that
was all about?” Eddie asked her sisters as they went down the sidewalk. “You don’t suppose the Corbys really
do
have termites, do you?”

“And where do you think the guys went?” said Beth. “We wanted them to see us go in.”

They walked back across the bridge, then up the bank and on up the grassy hill to their house. Mrs. Malloy was standing on the back porch, hands on her hips, waiting for them.

“Uh-oh,” said Caroline.

“Just what have you girls done?” their mother said, and she sounded angry.

“Wh—what do you mean?” asked Eddie.

“I called Mrs. Corby this morning and told her that we’d decided against renting her house, and now you girls go over there to look at her bedrooms! What got into you? She has her hopes up again and thinks I’ve changed my mind. She just called and said you had only looked at two of the bedrooms and missed the most charming one of all.”

Caroline could hear Eddie swallow as they started timidly up the back steps.

“I didn’t know what to say!” Mrs. Malloy went on. “She was so disappointed when I told her there must be some mistake, but we had definitely decided we didn’t want to live so close to the river.”

“Well, I…,” Eddie began. “We might…We didn’t know if you were going to take it or not, and in case you did, we wanted to see what our bedrooms would be like.”

“I wish you would
ask
me before you do something like this!” Mrs. Malloy went on, following the girls inside.

“I’m sorry,” Eddie said meekly.

“Well, you
should
be!” said her mother. The phone rang just then, and Mrs. Malloy picked it up. “Hello?” she said. She stood for a moment without saying anything, her eyes wide with astonishment. Then she slowly put the phone back down.

“Wh—who was that?” asked Caroline, almost afraid to know.

“That was Mrs. Corby again. She simply said, ‘And we do
not
have termites!’ and hung up.”

Fourteen
A Worse Idea

W
ally crouched between the rake and the lawn mower and tried to see through the narrow crack in the door.

“What’s he doing?” Jake asked. “Is he going over to Mrs. Corby’s yet?”

“No. He’s coming around the side of our house,” said Wally. “I think he’s going to knock on the back door.”

“Oh, man!” breathed Josh. “What if he comes out here? What’ll we say?”

“How do you do, what else?” said Wally, wishing for the hundredth time that he hadn’t got mixed up in
this. The huge termite on top of the white truck out by the curb seemed to have one eye on the Hatfords’ tool-shed at the back of the yard, and Wally could almost imagine it was watching him through the crack.

Jake climbed over the wheelbarrow and nudged Wally aside so he could see out.

“Oh, boy!” he whispered. “He
is
knocking. And now he’s looking all around the yard!"

“Maybe he’s inspected the outside of our house for termites and he’ll inspect the shed next,” said Josh.

“I’m hot!” Peter complained from his perch inside the wheelbarrow. “I can’t breathe in this shed!"

“Shhhhh. Don’t talk so loud, Peter. Oh, no! He
is
starting back here!” Josh said.

“What are we gonna do?” said Josh. “Suddenly burst out of the toolshed and yell ‘Surprise’?”

Wally considered picking up a burlap sack and pulling it over his head.

“Wait,” whispered Jake. “Now he’s stopped. Now he’s looking toward the house next door. Yay! He’s going around in front again. I think he’s going over to the Corbys’. He
is
going next door! All we need is for him to knock on Mrs. Corby’s door while the girls are over there.”

This will never work,
Wally thought. Things never turned out quite the way Jake planned them. Wally considered going around with a burlap sack over his head for the rest of his life.

“I’m going to melt!” Peter warned.

“Just a few more minutes, Peter, and then he’ll be gone,” said Jake.

“I’m turning into butter!” Peter wailed.

“There he goes, up on the Corbys’ front porch!” said Jake. “Hey! The girls are coming out! They’ve seen him! They almost bumped into him. Is this perfect, or is this perfect?”

“I’m starting to ooze,” said Peter from the wheelbarrow.

Josh took his place at the crack in the door. “Mrs. Corby’s talking to him now. She’s sending him away, and the girls are staring after him. You just know they’ll go home and tell their folks!"

“Did he leave?” asked Wally.

“Yep. He’s going back to his truck. And the girls are leaving too,” said Josh. “Wait one more minute, Peter, and we’ll get out of here.”

The boys opened the door of the toolshed at last and stepped out into the fresh air. Their heads were wet with perspiration, and sweat trickled down their backs.

“Saved!” yelled Jake, and they went into the house for some lemonade.