The Girls Get Even (6 page)

“Look.” Eddie threw her books on the bed and sat down. Then, reaching into her jacket pocket, she pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I was supposed to give this back to Josh after I graded it, but I didn’t.”

Caroline leaned over and stared at the paper.

“It says,
Math, 4 wrong.”

Eddie turned the paper over. Caroline looked again. In the center of the picture was a drawing of a small centipede. There were three legs and three arms sticking out one side of it, three legs and three arms sticking out the other. And hovering over the centipede were four large ferocious-looking vultures, who were holding it down with their claws.

“They know!” Beth gasped.

“More than that,” said Eddie.
“They’re
going as vultures¡ Or
were.
But read the fine print.”

Caroline looked hard at the first vulture.

Jake
, it said above the vulture’s head, and then, printed along the side:
Eats rotten fish guts. Josh
, it said above the second vulture:
Throws up on the centipede.

“Gross!” cried Beth.

“It gets worse,” said Eddie.

“Wally,”
read Caroline aloud, pointing to the third vulture. She studied the dotted line from the vulture to the centipede, then turned the paper sideways to see what this vulture was doing.
“Pees
on the centipede!” She stared aghast, but Beth snatched the paper away.

“Peter,”
she read. “Peter … doo—” She gasped. “Peter does the doo-doo.”

“They wouldn’t!’’ cried Caroline.

“I don’t know what they’d do, but I never met four more disgusting guys in my life,” said Eddie.

They sat motionless on the bed, staring at each other.

“So much for the centipede,” said Beth.

“I wouldn’t be a centipede for anything in the world,” said Caroline.

“Then
think!”
said Eddie. “What
are
we going to be in the parade? We’ve got to be a bunch of something.”

“Bananas?” said Caroline.

“It’s been done.”

“M&M’s?”

“Everybody does that. Last year there were two groups of M&M’s at our school back home. It’s not original enough.”

“One of us could be the Energizer rabbit, and the other two could be batteries,” said Caroline.

Eddie sighed in disgust.

“How about if I go as a tube of Cheez Whiz, and you two go as crackers?”

“Thanks a lot,” said Beth.

“Two dogs and a fire hydrant?” suggested Caroline, amazed at her own creativity.

“Not bad,” said Eddie.

“A parking meter and two coins?”

“Keep going.”

They thought of a toothbrush and molars, or Oxy pads and zits, but when they thought about how to make the costumes it just got too complicated.

“The point is,” said Eddie, “the principal will be the judge. What
we
might like, and what the principal might like, are two different things entirely. It should probably be something with a lesson to it.”

“Ugh.” Caroline clutched her throat.

“I know, I know, but we’ve
got
to win first prize, Caroline. Do you want to be the Hatfords’ slaves? Think what will happen if we lose¡ Do we really want to wash their socks and clean their bathtub and take out their trash every week?”

It was a distressing thought.

“What does the principal like?” asked Caroline.

“Trees,” said Beth. “He really likes trees.
Somebody told me that every spring, he plants a tree at the end of the school yard.”

“And did you ever read the poem he has framed above his bookcase? I think that I shall never see, a poem lovely as a tree …’ “ said Caroline dramatically.

“Okay,” said Eddie. “We’ll go as a shrub, with sticks taped to our arms for branches. Each of us will be a limb—a large limb. We’ll be bound together at the waist and knees, so our legs form a thick trunk, but we’ll each sort of spread our arms and wave them slowly in the wind. The principal will love it.”

•

When Caroline woke the next morning, she had no idea that this would be one of the most wonderful days of her life, and it had nothing to do with a shrub.

“And now, class,” the teacher said after she took the roll, “for those of you who are new at Buckman this year, we have a tradition you may not know about. Every spring the sixth grade puts on a play for the rest of the school” —Carolyn’s heart sank. Only the
sixth
grade?—” but every October the fourth grade puts on a Halloween play for the lower grades.”

Joy in the morning¡

“It’s not a very long play, because small children can’t sit still very long, so there won’t be a lot to memorize, but I think you’ll find it fun.”

Caroline felt as though she were floating above the desks.

“This year I have selected
The Goblin Queen
for our play. As I read each part, if you think you would be interested, please raise your hand. First, the queen herself—”

Caroline’s hand was in the air before the words had even left the teacher’s mouth.

“Caroline?” said the teacher. “Is that all?”

Two more hands went up.

“Caroline, Nancy, and Kim,” the teacher said. “You’ll try out at lunchtime, girls, and we’ll see who reads it best.”

Caroline
was
floating.
She
could read it best. She knew she could.

“Three witches …” the teacher went on.

More hands went up, and the teacher wrote more names on the board.

“A grandfatherly ghost … a black cat … two skeletons …” The list went on and on, and more names were added. Wally didn’t volunteer for a thing, Caroline noticed, but she didn’t care.

After lunch she sat in a little circle by the teacher’s desk, and one by one she and Nancy and Kim read the lines that the Goblin Queen would
say. Caroline wonderfully, gloriously, deliriously outdid the other girls. Even Nancy and Kim had to admit it. “Caroline did it best,” they said.

“Well, you two girls will be her goblins-in-waiting, then,” Miss Applebaum said, “and those are good parts too. You are all good readers.”

“Will the play be in the auditorium?” Caroline asked breathlessly. “Up on stage … with the velvet curtain and everything?”

The teacher looked amused. “Yes, Caroline, at long last, it will be up on stage in the auditorium with the velvet curtain and everything. The seats won’t be filled, of course, only the first few rows, but it will be an appreciative audience. Everyone looks forward to the Halloween play.”

•

When Caroline walked out of school that day, she came down the steps slowly, her back straight, head high, as a queen would walk as she stepped off the throne to greet her subjects.

“What’s the matter, Caroline, a crick in your neck?” asked Eddie.

“You,” said Caroline, “are looking at the actress with the leading role in the fourth-grade play,
The Goblin Queen.”

“Gobble the Queen?” teased Beth.

Caroline gave her a haughty glance.

“I was the very best one in tryouts, and I will perform onstage !” And then she couldn’t contain herself. She grabbed her sisters by the arms and dissolved in happy giggles. ‘Oh, Eddie¡ Beth¡ I’m so excited. We really get to be onstage, with the curtain and everything!”

“Well, just don’t let it go to your head, Caroline,” Eddie told her. “We’ve still got our costume to be working on, because if we don’t win that contest,
Wally
5 going to be king and you’re going to be his loyal subject. And if that’s not enough to make you throw up, I don’t know what is.”

Caroline sighed. “Ugh. What should we be doing?

“We should be finding sticks to tape to our arms. Not too heavy, though, or our arms will get tired.”

When the girls got across the swinging bridge, they went down the bank on the other side, where there were low-hanging branches, and looked for sticks that had fallen on the ground.

“I’ve got two, with lots of twigs on them,” said Caroline, holding them up in the air. “How do these look, Eddie?”

Beth held hers up, too, to see if they would be too heavy.

“Do we look like a tree?” she asked.

“A good-sized shrub, maybe,” said Eddie. She
stood on tiptoe to break off a long branch that was already dangling and added it to the others. “I think this will do it,” she said at last.

“What are we going to call our costume in the contest?” asked Caroline. “Just ‘shrub’?”

“Something that will appeal to the principal,” Eddie said. She thoughtfully chewed her lip.
“I’ve
got it. A natural habitat’¡ That’s what we’ll call ourselves.”

By the time they had put the sticks in the garage, Mother was standing at the door waiting for them: “I’ve made a pie for the Hatfords, and I want you girls to take it over,” she said. “Just give it to whoever answers the door. Tell them it’s in appreciation for the boys washing our windows. I’ve put it in this old hatbox and stuck a note inside.”

“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Eddie.

“Why would I be kidding?” Mother looked at her curiously. “You know, there are times I think I haven’t raised you girls right. Maybe people just aren’t as neighborly in Ohio, but here in West Virginia you show people you’re grateful when they do something for you. It’s the least we can do.”

“I’ll bet they throw it in the river,” murmured Caroline.

“Throw it in the river¡ Why in the world would they do that?”

Caroline didn’t even get a chance to tell Mother she was to be Goblin Queen in the fourth-grade play, because moments later she was crossing the swinging bridge, her sisters beside her, carrying the old hatbox with Mother’s pumpkin chiffon pie inside it.

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Eight
•
Pumpkin Chiffon

“L
ook!” said Josh.

Wally looked where his brother was pointing. On the bank, across the river, Caroline and her sisters were down by the water gathering sticks.

The boys moved behind some wild rhododendron and watched.

“What do you suppose they’re up to?” asked Jake.

Josh turned to Wally. “Your class isn’t doing a project with sticks, is it?”

Wally shook his head.

“Maybe they’re going to have a fire in their fireplace,” suggested Peter.

“The Bensons left them stacks and stacks of wood,” Jake told him. “This has got to be something else. What do you think, Wally?”

Wally watched the girls without answering. He
watched them holding the sticks up in the air, sort of like poles for a tepee.

“A tepee/’ he said.

“That’s
it!”
cried Jake. “Wally, you’re a genius¡ They’re going to come to the Halloween parade as a tepee and Indians¡ Eddie will probably be the tepee and Beth and Caroline will be the chief and squaw.”

“Wow!” said Peter admiringly.

Wally felt sick. The Malloys would win for sure. Nobody had ever entered the parade before as a tepee and Indians. How could they ever top that?

“How can we top that?” asked Josh.

“We don’t
have
to top it!” Jake answered. “All we have to do is stop it. All we have to do is dress up like something that would naturally knock down a tepee.
Think
, everybody!”

“A train?” said Peter.

“Not a train, dum-dum.” A car?

“Peter, we’re talking Old West here, way back before there
were
any cars. C’mon, Wally. What could it be?”

Wally tried to remember pictures he’d seen in his history book, in the chapter called “Westward, Ho!”

“Buffalo,” he said.

“That’s it!” cried Jake. “We’re buffalo. We don’t have to be vultures after all. Josh, you’ve got to design some new costumes.”

The boys went on home and made milk shakes in the kitchen to celebrate.

“I didn’t
think
they’d be a centipede,” Josh said. “I’ll bet they whispered that just loud enough for Peter to hear so it would throw us off. They probably knew already they were going to be a tepee and Indians.”

“All this time they’ve probably been working on their costumes—the chief’s headdress and everything—while we were trying to find something that looked like vultures’ claws,” said Josh.

Ding dong.

Jake had just turned off the blender and was pouring the thick shake into glasses when the doorbell rang.

“Don’t anybody take a drink of mine,” Wally warned as he went to the door and opened it.

There stood Caroline and her sisters holding a hatbox.

“Mom sent this over,” Caroline said, holding out the box. “It’s a pumpkin pie.”

Wally could not believe this was happening. The girls didn’t look as though they liked this any more than he did, but Wally couldn’t be sure.

“Who is it, Wally?” called Jake.

“A pie,” said Wally.

“Who?
”

Peter came running to the doorway and stared down through the cellophane top of the hatbox. “It’s a pumpkin pie!” he said.

“Enjoy,” said Eddie, and the girls turned and walked away.

“Don’t forget to return the plate,” Beth called over her shoulder.

All four boys were standing at the door now.

“I don’t think their mom baked this at all,” said Josh. “I’ll bet there’s a trick to it.”

“That’s what they thought when they threw our cake in the river,” Wally reminded him.

“Just the same, I’ll bet it’s made of dog doo or something. I’ll bet the girls are ticked off because of what I drew on the back of my math paper.” Josh stared hard at the pie.

Wally opened the lid and took a cautious sniff. “Sure doesn’t smell like dog doo.”

“I still think there’s something gross in it. Like centipedes. Bugs of some kind.”

They took the pie to the kitchen and Wally lifted it out of the box. He accidentally let go of one side too soon, and it fell to the table with a plop. A large crack appeared on the top of the pie.

“Hoo boy!” said Wally.

“It’s okay. That will give us a chance to see if
there’s anything in the middle of it,” said Jake. He got out Mother’s magnifying glass and held it over the crack in the pie.