The Girls Get Even (10 page)

“What clues?” asked Peter.

“We’ll have them posted all around the cemetery, right up to that bench by the stone wall in the Remembrance Garden,” Jake told them. “When they get that far, we’ll let them have it.”

“Have what?” asked Peter.

“Worms,” grinned Jake. “A bucket of worms. We’ll be watching from the top of the wall, and as soon as they sit down, we dump.”

Wally stared. “Do you know how long it takes to dig up a whole bucket of worms?”

“It will really be a bucket of spaghetti with a can of worms tossed in. There will be just enough worms wriggling about to make them think that it’s all worms. They’ll probably faint.”

Peter sucked in his breath.

They spent the entire evening in Wally’s room making a map of the cemetery and figuring out where to place the clues. Then, keeping the map for themselves, they put the invitation in its envelope and wrote,
Eddie, Beth, and Caroline
on the front. Just before going to bed Wally went across the swinging bridge beside Jake and Josh, and they silently dropped the envelope in the Malloys’ mailbox.

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Thirteen
•
Clue

G
irls,” Mother said on Saturday, coming through the door with the mail in her hand, “it looks as though you got a party invitation. It’s the right size, anyway.”

Caroline, Beth, and Eddie were doing their Saturday chores. At the word
party
they all stopped their sweeping, dusting, and mopping and gathered around the small white envelope in Mother’s hand.

“It didn’t have a stamp, so someone must have hand-delivered it,” Mother said, giving it to Eddie.

Eddie opened it up, and read aloud:

“Little witch has come to say,
Ghosts and goblins like to play.
Won’t you come and join the fun?
There’ll be treats for everyone.”

“Yuk!” said Beth. “Who would send an invitation like that?”

Eddie stared at the name at the bottom. “It’s Mary Ruth, from school¡ This doesn’t sound like her.”

“Maybe it’s all she could find,” said Mother. “Anyway, all three of you are invited.”

Eddie kept reading. “It’s tonight¡ The party starts at the cemetery and we have to follow clues. Now, that’s more like it.”

“And it’s
all
girls!” said Beth.

“We won’t even go trick-or-treating. We won’t have to run into the boys,” added Caroline.

“Maybe that’s the way they do things here in West Virginia, deliver the invitation the day of the party,” Mother said. “I think it’s wonderful that you’re making friends at school. Finish your work, and you can spend the rest of the day deciding on costumes.”

The Malloy girls had always liked putting together their own costumes instead of buying them ready-made in the stores. Eddie decided to go as a football player, in one of Dad’s old uniforms; Beth would go as a robot from outer space, with a stocking over her hair to make her look bald; and Caroline would wear her Goblin Queen costume from the play at school.

Caroline simply could not wait for the party to
begin, and when she heard Beth say that you went up one street to get to the cemetery, and Eddie saying no, you went up another, Caroline told them she would get on her bike and check it out.

It was almost five o’clock when Caroline left the house, and it was much colder then when they’d gone camping but still a beautiful October evening. Leaves fell down around her face and shoulders as she rode, and Caroline wondered if it ever got that beautiful in Ohio. Probably. She’d just never had as much fun back in Ohio as she did here, even though she
had
got herself and her sisters in trouble for stabbing the alien spaceship.

It wasn’t all her fault, though. She never would have punctured their spaceship if they hadn’t flattened Izzie. Why couldn’t the Hatford boys be normal? Or was that normal for boys? She didn’t know. Peter’s only fault was that he was a Hatford. Wally might have turned out all right if he hadn’t had Josh and Jake for brothers. It was the eleven-year-old twins she suspected of being the worst—Jake, for giving orders, and Josh, for the stuff he drew in his sketchbook.

She turned up a road at the edge of town. To the left of her were the gravestones of the Buck-man cemetery—Eddie was right—and on up ahead she could see the big iron gate at the entrance. She began pedaling up the hill, but suddenly skidded to
a stop, letting her bicycle tip, and fell over into a clump of weeds.

There, not thirty yards ahead, were Jake, Josh, and Wally, taping a piece of paper to the iron gate of the cemetery.

Them¡

Caroline was torn between riding up to the boys and catching them in the act, or racing home to tell Beth and Eddie. She decided to stay put until the boys left, and as soon as they had gone through the gate and were out of sight, she pedaled home as fast as her feet would go.

She burst into the house and collapsed on the sofa, panting.

‘‘Caroline?” said Beth, coming over.

Eddie clattered downstairs. ‘‘What’s wrong?”

“Wait till you hear!” said Caroline, and told them that the boys had been taping something to the gate of the cemetery.

“Them!”
cried Beth and Eddie together.

“I
wondered
why Mary Ruth didn’t say anything in school yesterday about a party!” said Eddie. “Those dumb boys¡ Didn’t they even think we might have called Mary Ruth to check it out?”

“But we didn’t,” Beth reminded her.

“You’re right, we didn’t. We almost fell for it. Well, there’s only one thing to do. Go over to the cemetery now and see what they’re up to.”

They took a flashlight and headed up the street. When they got to the cemetery, there was the note the boys had taped to the gate:
Turn left and go to the first grave on the right.

Beth and Caroline giggled. “They must think we’re really stupid to fall for this,” said Beth.

“But we would have if I hadn’t seen them here,” Caroline reminded her.

“Let’s follow it and see what they were planning to do,” said Eddie.

They soon found the tombstone, a stone pyramid, and there was a note taped to that:
Follow the winding drive to the fence.

Cautiously the girls followed the winding drive, and when the beam of the flashlight fell on the fence, there, just as the instructions said, was another piece of paper:
Fifty steps to the right, then left to the shed.

They found the shed. Still another note.
Follow the path on your left to the bench in the Remembrance Garden.

“I don’t like this,” said Beth. “They’re up to something, all right.”

Quietly they followed the path until they came to a bench by a high stone wall, with rosebushes all around—probably a beautiful place in the summer, Caroline thought, but sinister-looking now in the moonlight.

Eddie shone the flashlight around. There was a note on the bench:
Sit here and wait for instructions
, it said.

‘Oh, no, we don’t,” said Beth. “I’ll bet it’s wet paint.” Gingerly she put out one hand and tested. Dry.

“They were probably going to jump out of the trees with masks on and scare us silly,” said Caroline.

“Or throw water on us,” said Beth. “Look how we’d have been trapped here in this corner, right up against the wall.”

“Well, I think we ought to look around,” said Eddie. They climbed the bank beside the wall, making their way through the bare rosebushes, until they had scrabbled to the top of the stone wall behind the bench.

“Eddie!” said Caroline. “Look here.”

The girls stared at a pan sitting just behind the wall. It was an ordinary saucepan with a lid on it, as though someone had made a pot of stew and left it there to cool.

Slowly Caroline put out one hand and lifted the lid, as Eddie shone the light on it. “Spaghetti?” she said. And then she gave a little cry, because the spaghetti started to move.

“Worms!” gulped Beth.

“Spaghetti
and
worms!” said Eddie. “They
were going to
drop
them on us, I’ll bet¡ They were going to be waiting right up there behind the wall, and as soon as we sat down on that bench, they were going to dump it on our heads!”

Caroline shivered with the thought. All three girls shivered.

“What are we going to do?” asked Beth.

“We are going to go home and leave the house again at five of eight, just as though we were going to a party,” said Eddie. “Just in case they’re watching. But after that …” She began to smile. “Trust me,” she said, and took out a pen and paper.

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Fourteen
•
Party

J
ake, Josh, and Wally sat on the wall overlooking the bench in the Remembrance Garden, and watched for a beam of a flashlight that would tell them the girls were coming.

“I can’t understand it,” said Jake. “We saw them leave the house around eight, we followed them to the cemetery … we saw them start off with the first clue before we came over here. Where the heck could they be?”

“Peter was smart,” said Josh. “He said he’d rather go trick-or-treating than get even with the girls. It’s a good thing he didn’t come. He’d never stop complaining.”

“Well, you’re doing a pretty good job of it yourself,” grumbled Jake.

“Maybe they got lost and decided to go back,” said Wally, feeling pretty cold and tired, too, and
certainly
ready to give up and go trick-or-treating. They had wasted enough time as it was.

“I don’t think so. Eddie wouldn’t give up that easily,” Jake told him. “They were so close¡ There were only four clues altogether!”

“But
they
didn’t know there were only four. Maybe they thought they’d be here all night,” said Wally.

The boys sat huddled together another three or four minutes, scanning the dark cemetery for any sign of a light.

“Well, I don’t know what happened to them, but this is a lousy way to spend Halloween,” said Josh. “If we don’t go trick-or-treating soon, people will start turning off their porch lights and we won’t get anything. Peter’s out there getting all the candy.”

“Maybe he’ll share it,” said Jake.

“C’mon,” said Wally. “I’m not going to wait a whole year for Halloween to come again.”

“You guys give up too soon,” said Jake. “They’ve
got
to come.”

“Five more minutes, and then we go trick-or-treating,” said Josh.

They waited. The wind picked up, and it grew colder still. And though Wally strained to see, there was no beam of light, no voices, no sound of leaves or footsteps, no snap of a twig.

“They’ve gone home/’ said Jake. “They
must
have gone home!”

‘Or else they went over to Mary Ruth’s and found out there wasn’t any party,” said Josh.

“Hoo boy, if
that
happened, they’ll be ready to kill us,” said Wally.

Jake jumped down off the wall. “Okay, I give up. Let’s hit all the houses we can on the way back.”

“You and your lousy ideas,” grumbled Josh.

“You were in on it too!” Jake told him. “You helped choose the invitations. And you cooked the spaghetti, Wally, so don’t blame it all on me.”

“Don’t remind me,” said Wally. “What do we do with the spaghetti and worms?” He knelt down with the flashlight and lifted the lid on the saucepan. Then he gasped.

There was no spaghetti. No worms. Instead, there was a little piece of paper in the bottom of the pan, which read,
You boys come home this instant. Mom.

Jake read it, then Josh.

“Oh, no¡ How did she find out!” said Josh.

“She must have missed her spaghetti. I
told
you we shouldn’t have used the whole box, Jake!” Wally moaned.

“Are we ever going to catch it!” whistled Josh.

But Jake wasn’t so sure. “Wait a minute,” he said. “Think about it.”

“I
am
thinking about it. We’re in trouble,” Wally croaked.

“Somehow this doesn’t sound like Mom,” Jake went on.

“Yes, it does,” said Wally.

Jake shook his head. “Mom would say, ‘You boys come home this
minute.
’ Did you ever hear her say ‘this
instant’?
And when she leaves us a note, she uses those little notepads from the hardware store, not a piece of yellow tablet paper. Also, she never prints, and
this
note is printed instead of written.”

Wally looked at Josh, Josh looked at Jake.

“Them?”
they cried.

“Them!” said Jake. “They’re trying to ruin our Halloween. Somehow they found out what we were up to, and they figure we’ll go right home, confess everything, and lose out on trick or treats.”

Wally felt an enormous burden lifting off his chest. “Then we
don’t
have to go straight home?”

“Of course not. Somebody’s got to carry the pan, but there’s still time to hit a lot of houses.”

Wally carried the pan. They headed for the cemetery entrance, and the first row of houses just beyond.

“Where are your costumes?” one woman
asked them. “You boys don’t look like trick-or-treaters to me.” But she gave them candy anyway.

The pickings were slim, however. Some people had already turned off their lights. Some houses had run out of candy, and still others were down to little boxes of raisins or pennies. The dentist was even giving out apples instead of candy¡

Desperate, they fanned out, trying to ring as many doorbells as possible. Sometimes, Wally knew, when you were the last one to come by, people dropped all the remaining candy in your bag, but it wasn’t happening now, and he had to work twice as hard and run twice as fast to fill up even his pockets.

They met again on the corner, and by twenty after nine there were no more porch lights on anywhere. A policeman cruising by stopped when he saw them and rolled down his window. “You fellas better get on home now,” he called.