The Girls Get Even (9 page)

When Caroline awoke the next morning, she decided that life was more wonderful in Buckman than she had ever imagined. The day before, she had been a Goblin Queen, and today she was the hindquarters of a giant lizard. She made her parents laugh by waddling around in her part of the costume, sticking out one leg, then the other.

Coach Malloy carefully tied the lizard forms to the roof of his car and drove them to school. As the girls carried them in on their heads, they saw the Hatford boys stop in their tracks and stare.

“You guys still in the parade, or do you just want to give up now?” Eddie asked, as they arranged the sections in the proper order.

“Why don’t you just promise to be our obedient slaves and get it over with?” said Beth.

“Whatever you’ve thought of, I’ll bet it can’t top this,” said Caroline.

And she saw Peter look up at Wally. “We can’t, can we?” he asked, and Caroline and her sisters smiled.

Why didn’t the boys stop trying to drive them out of Buckman? Caroline wondered. That trick Wally had pulled on her during the play really backfired when he had to carry her out.
Everyone
had cheered for her. She was the Goblin Queen to end all Goblin Queens, and Wally had only created a scene that was even better.

“The contest isn’t over yet,” said Jake.

“It hasn’t even started,” Peter said.

“Don’t count your chickens … uh, lizards … before they’re hatched,” said Wally.

•

It was hard to keep their minds on their studies that morning. Wally seemed nervous as a cat in a doghouse, Caroline thought, and it was strange to know that with a mother who worked in a hardware store, the Hatford boys couldn’t have thought up something original themselves.

At noon the lunchroom was buzzing with chatter about the afternoon, and when the bell rang at one, all students who were going to enter the contest in groups were allowed to get ready.

Caroline went to the rest room, her last chance before she became a lizard, then hurried out into the hallway. She stopped, for there, disappearing around a corner, was a huge giant inner tube, propelled by the Hatford brothers, all wearing strange alien helmets and carrying space guns. The boys even had green paper ears. It was a
wonderful
costume¡ They’d win for sure.

No sooner had the aliens disappeared, however, than Eddie came racing down the hall, fire in her eyes.

“Where are they?” Eddie was saying, Beth at her heels. “Where are they?”

“Who?”

“The Hatford goons, that’s who,” said Eddie. “Did you see what they did to Izzie?”

Caroline ran down the hall and looked. Izzie the Lizard was flat as a slice of cheese.

“Them?”
cried Caroline.

“Them!” said Beth.

“Students who are entering the parade singly, please stay in your classrooms until your room is called,” came a voice over the loudspeaker. “Students who are part of a group costume, please line up in the hall.”

“We’ll worry about the boys later,” said Beth. “Come on, Eddie, and help me bend this wire back into shape again. If we hurry we can fix up Izzie again before the parade starts.”

“I’m going to fix
them!”
Eddie declared. “I don’t know when or where, but they’re not getting away with this. That’s fighting dirty. They’re so afraid we’ll win the contest they can’t stand it.”

“We were ready to smash their pumpkins,” Beth reminded her, and nobody spoke for a while. With the three of them working, it didn’t take long to fix Izzie. Once they got their hands inside the chicken wire frame, they were able to shape the
lizard the way it had been, and gradually the legs and head and body emerged, good as new.

But Caroline felt a part coming on, as actresses sometimes do. The alien spaceship had become a loathsome dragon, and only she, the fair and lovely maiden, could destroy it. While everyone waited in the hall for the parade to begin, she slipped out of her section of the chicken wire costume and into her empty classroom.

Opening her desk, she got out her new scissors, the best scissors she had ever had, scissors that had points as long and as sharp as an alligator’s tooth. And then, aware of nothing else but the role she was destined to play, she walked down the line of costumes in the hall—past the troop of clowns, past the flowers in a pot, the swarm of bees, the deck of cards, the acrobats, until she saw the alien spaceship up ahead.

And then, the fair and lovely maiden faced the dragon, and, taking a deep breath, cast her eyes heavenward for courage. Holding the scissors in both hands over her head like a dagger, she ran forward and plunged the sharp points into the side of the giant inner tube, using all the strength she could muster.

BANG¡

It was an explosion. Somehow Caroline had thought that the air would slowly leak out. Somehow
she had thought it might be more like a soft hiss.

She fell backward, as Jake, Josh, Wally, and Peter stared down at the strip of black rubber that lay around their feet.

The next thing she knew, she was being led to the principal’s office, Beth on one side of her for support, Eddie on the other, while the four Hatford brothers, still in shock, brought up the rear.

•   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •   •
Twelve
•
Letters

W
hat happened was that neither the Hatfords nor the Malloys won the contest. Both groups were disqualified because the boys had smashed the lizard to begin with, and Caroline had destroyed the spaceship.

Instead, five kids who were dressed up like instruments in a symphony orchestra won first place, and if
they
had been in on the bargain, both the Hatfords and Malloys would have been taking orders from a violin, a viola, a clarinet, a bassoon, and an oboe.

The girls had seemed almost relieved at the verdict. At least they didn’t have to worry about being anyone’s slaves, Wally thought. And maybe in a way he and his brothers were glad it was over, too, because they didn’t want to be slaves, either, but they
had
had big plans for that inner tube on the river next summer.
That’s
what hurt.

The boys stayed at school just long enough to drink some cider and eat some doughnuts at the Halloween party after the parade, but then they slipped away and headed home. It was the first Halloween they could remember that they had not been in the parade.

“This is absolutely, totally, all-out war,” said Jake. “They ruined all the fun we could have had with that inner tube next summer, and for what? It didn’t take them long to put their costume back together. We smashed it, but we didn’t
destroy
it.”

“We wanted to, though,” Wally reminded him, but Jake paid no attention whatsoever.

“You know what I’d like to do to those girls? Trap them in the cemetery.”

Wally looked quickly over at Jake as they slouched along the sidewalk toward home.

‘
“Then
what?” asked Wally.

“I don’t know. That would probably be enough. They’d be scared out of their skin.”

Would it never end? Wally wondered. When they were eighty-five-year-old men, would they still be trying to get even with three old women named Malloy? He could see it now: when Eddie, Beth, and Caroline each graduated from high school, the Hatford brothers would have to attend just so they could boo when a Malloy walked across the stage.
When each of the Malloy girls married, the Hatford brothers would go just so they could tie junk on the backs of their cars. Wherever the Malloy girls went, the Hatfords would forever follow just to make them miserable.

“Why don’t we just forget them!” Wally said. “Tomorrow night’s Halloween. Just forget them, and go trick-or-treating like we used to. If the Ben-sons were here, we’d be starting out about six o’clock, and we wouldn’t stop till close to ten. We were always the first ones out on the street and the last ones in. Man, we’d get so much loot, we’d have enough candy to last all year.”

“No matter what we do, we’ll probably run into Beth or Caroline or Eddie,” Jake said disgustedly. “They’re everywhere!”

“They’ll figure out some way to ruin Halloween for us,” said Josh. “I wish we could just lock them up on Halloween night and have the town to ourselves.”

“Fat chance,” said Wally.

There was a letter waiting for them when they got home. It was a letter to Wally from his friend Bill Benson:

Dear Wally (and Josh and Jake and Peter):

We were making plans for Halloween the other day and wondered what you guys are doing
this year. Man, we used to have fun, didn’t we? Remember the time we soaped the windows of the prìncipal’s car? And the scavenger hunt in the cemetery? Remember the ghost-walk we had at our party when everyone was blindfolded and had to eat a spoonful of guts (spaghetti) and eyeballs (peeled grapes)?

I don’t know whether we’ll be going out trick-or-treating or not, because there are at least two parties going on. Maybe we’ll go to both.

Tony’s teacher (the “Georgia Peach” ) is going to come to school on Halloween dressed as a belly dancer. That’s what she said, anyway. If she does, all us guys are going to be sitting in the first row, I know that. She probably won ‘t, though.

Mom really likes it down here. She’s got a part-time job in a bookstore, and I think she’d sort of like to stay. Dad doesn’t know yet whether he wants to stay or not. Same with us. We really miss you guys, but Georgia’s great too.

Anything happening there since we left? The Malloys taking good care of our house? They better not mess up the walls in our bedrooms with girl stuff.

Write when you can.

Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug)

Dear Bill (and Danny, Steve, Tony, and Doug):

Tomorrow’s Halloween and you know how many parties we’ve been invited to? None. Zero. Today we were disqualified from the Halloween contest because we smashed the Malloys’ chicken-wire lizard and flattened it like a pancake. It didn’t make that much difference, because they got it back in shape by the time the parade began, but you know what Crazy Caroline did? Do you know how nuts she really is? Punctured our inner-tube spaceship with a pair of scissors. It exploded like a paper bag. Then
they
got disqualified. Jake’s up in his room trying to think of a way to get even. If you guys don’t come back pretty soon, we are going to spend all our time thinking up ways to get even, and
they
are going to think up ways to get even, and if this goes on for a whole year, we’ll go nuts.

Don’t fall in love with your teacher, even if she
does
dress up like a belly dancer. Don’t fall in love with Georgia either. Tell your mom she can get a job in the bookstore here.

I mean it, you guys¡

Wally (and Jake and Josh and Peter)

“I’ve got it!”

Jake came into Wally’s room, where he was
just sealing his letter to Bill Benson. Josh and Peter followed him in, Peter still eating a peppermint patty he had found in his jeans pocket but had sat on, and it was as flat as a fifty-cent piece.

“What?” Wally asked.

“Something Bill said in his letter. About all the parties the guys were going to, and the scavenger hunt in the cemetery. Let’s invite the girls to a party.”

“Are you
nuts?”
cried Wally.

“No, let’s invite them to a party. Just not
here.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Josh.

“We’ll invite them to a party at some girl’s house, but they’ll have to go through the cemetery to get there.”

Wally thought it over. “They’ll never go.”

“Sure they will. They can’t resist.”

“And then?” asked Josh.

“We’ll think of something,” Jake told him.

•

The boys spent the evening on the invitation. Jake and Josh even went to the drugstore and bought a pack of party invitations, half price, just for the one they wanted to use. It had to look official.

It was the kind girls would send, all right. There was a border all the way around of tiny
pumpkins, and a perky little witch stirring a kettle of something. On the inside it said:

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.
Time_______
Place_______

“Barf¡ Vomit!’’ said Jake, when he read it to Wally.

Wally studied the invitation. “But what are you going to write at the bottom?’’

“That’s what we have to figure out,” said Jake. “Who do the girls run around with besides each other?”

“Caroline runs around with the girl who played the fairy godmother in the play,” said Wally.

“Nope. Has to be in the same class as Eddie. If it’s any younger, Beth and Eddie won’t go.
Think
, Josh!” Jake said. “Who does Eddie hang around with?”

“What about the girl who plays shortstop at recess?”

“Mary Ruth?” said Jake.

“Yeah.”

“Where does she live?” asked Wally.

Josh looked at Jake, and started to grin. ‘Over near the cemetery.’’

“Perfect!” said Jake.

The boys gathered around the dining-room table while Jake filled out the invitation with Mother’s pen.